A 
 Ai 
 
 Oi 
 
 o! 
 
 u 
 
 ^^sl 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 Gl( 
 
 
 8 
 
 g 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 1> 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 > 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 

 
 
 
 r-^ 
 
 ■MM 
 
 i' ')■

 
 ,n 
 
 c 
 
 (V
 
 n 
 
 HISTORICAL ESSAYS
 
 ^0?m.
 
 HISTORICAL ESSAYS 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 EDWARD /^EEEiMAN, M.A., Hon. D.C.L. & LL.D. 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OP MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF OXFORD 
 
 " Gallorum levitas Germanos justijieahit ; 
 Italics gravitas Gallos confusa necahit ; 
 Succumbet Gallus, aquil(S victricia regna 
 Mundus adorabit, erit urbs vix prcBsule digna. 
 
 % * Sf it^ if * * 
 
 Papa cito moritur, Ccssar regnabit ubique. 
 Sub quo tunc vana cessabit gloria cleri." 
 
 Peter Langtoft, ii. 450 
 
 FIRST SERIES. -FIFTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 MACMILLAX AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1896 
 
 [The Right of Translation and Beproduction is reserved']
 
 First Edition, 1871 ; Second, 187a; 
 
 Third, 1875 ; Fourth, 1886 ; 
 
 Fifth. i8q6. 
 
 OXKOKI) : HORACE HART 
 PIMNIKK 10 rilU UNIVES.SITV
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 The Mythical and Eomantic Elements in Eably English 
 
 History [Fortnightly Review, May 1866) ... 1 
 
 The Continuity or English History' {Edinburgh Eevieiv, 
 
 July i860) ........ 40 
 
 The Relations between the Crowns oi'' England and 
 
 Scotland {Fortnightly Pceview, June 1867) . . . 53 
 
 Saint Thomas of Canterhukt and his Biographers 
 
 {Xational Review, April i860) ..... 80 
 
 The Reign of Edward the Third {Fortnightly Review, 
 
 :\Iay 1869) 116 
 
 The Holy Roman Empire {yorth British Review, jMarcb 
 
 1865) 128 
 
 The Franks and the Gauls {National Review, October 
 
 i860) 164 
 
 The Early Sieges of Paris {British Quarterly Reviev.\ 
 
 January 1871) . . . . . . . .212 
 
 Frederick the First, King of Italy {National Review, 
 
 January 1861) ........ 257 
 
 The Emperor Frederick the Second {North British Review, 
 
 December 1866) ....... 290 
 
 Charles the Bold {National Review, April 1864, and 
 
 Fortnightly Revieiv, October 1868) . . . . 323 
 
 Presidential Government {National Revieiv, November 
 
 1864) 384
 
 PREFACE TO THE FODETH EDITION, 
 
 I FIND, a little to my surprise, that a fourth edition of 
 this first series of essays is needed, while the second series 
 still remains in the second edition and the third remains in 
 the first. I should have thought that the last, containing 
 writings at once more mature and on the whole on fresher 
 subjects, would have been the favourite of the three. But 
 I must take facts as I find them. 
 
 In looking again through these papers, written mostly 
 from twenty to thirty years back, and of which the last 
 edition is dated eleven years back, what chiefly comes 
 home to me is how things have changed since they were 
 first written. I believe I may take for granted that both 
 myself and my readers have advanced ; if I were to make 
 fresh discourses on the same subject now, I might assume 
 many things which I had then to insist on. We have now 
 to deal with another map of Europe from that of i860 or 
 even that of 1866. I had then to speak of wrongs which 
 have since been redressed, while I was but little called on 
 to speak of wrongs which have since come to the front. 
 To me at least it seems that whatever value the essays 
 have is chiefly as a record of progress. I have therefore, 
 in revising writings which have already become somewhat 
 antiquated, dealt with them as in some sort things of the 
 past. I have corrected some things, but I have improved
 
 viii PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 nothing. I have struck out or changed a few lines here 
 and there, which I thought actually wrong or likely to 
 mislead ; I have not struck out or changed anything 
 merely because I could now put it better or because it 
 referred to a state of things which has now passed away. 
 On one point at least the essays have become historical. 
 In 1 860 I had still to speak of the Austrian power as the 
 enemy of Italy, the oppressor of Venetia. In 1871 I had 
 been led into hopes which have certainly not been fulfilled, 
 but the fulfilment of which was possible as late as 1875. 
 I have left what I wrote at both times. But I may still 
 be allowed to wonder why it is that a reference to the 
 bondage of Milan and Venice stirred every heart in those 
 days, while a reference to the bondage of Ragusa and 
 the betrayal of Cattaro and Crivoscia stirs so few hearts 
 now. 
 
 On the subject of one piece, that on " Saint Thomas of 
 Canterbury and his Biographers," I have had, since 1875, 
 to wage another controversy on behalf of truth and historic 
 justice. But I have let the old essay still stand just 
 as it was first written. In the essay on Presidential 
 Government there is comparatively little in the main 
 subject which would call for any change now, though at 
 every step there is much to remind one of the time which 
 has passed, and of the change in the world during the last 
 three-and-twenty years. Everything brings home to us that 
 we live in a time of the world's history which yields to 
 few in the number and importance of the events which have 
 happened within the memory of men who are yet hardly 
 old. If I had the same call to revise my third series of 
 Essays, though it deals largely with later events, I should
 
 PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. ix 
 
 doubtless find that much has changed even since 1878. 
 The intermediate volume stands on a different ground, 
 except so far as even that might suggest new parallels in 
 later times, which might throw light on the facts, though 
 themselves unchangeable, which are dealt with in it. 
 
 16 St. Giles', Oxford, 
 March IZrd, 1886.
 
 PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. 
 
 The following essays have been chosen out of a much 
 larger number which have appeared in various periodical 
 works. The principle on which they were chosen was 
 that of selecting papers which referred to comparatively 
 modern times, or, at least, to the existing states and nations 
 of Europe. It is by a sort of accident that a large number 
 of the pieces chosen have thrown themselves into something 
 like a continuous series bearing on the historical causes 
 of the great events of the last and the present year. In 
 revising the essays, I have commonly let passages referring 
 to the state of European politics ten or fifteen years back 
 stand as they were written at first, merely adding a note 
 whenever a note seemed to be called for. I have done the 
 same whenever change of circumstances or increase of 
 knowledge on my own part has led me to change my 
 views on any point. But whenever I could gain in accuracy 
 of statement or in force or clearness of expression, I 
 have freely changed, added to, or left out, what I wrote 
 in the first instance. To many of the essays I have added 
 a short notice of the circumstances under which they were 
 written. 
 
 I have to thank Messrs. Longman for allowing me to 
 reprint the essay which stands second in the series, the 
 only one among several contributions of mine to the
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xi 
 
 Edinburgh Review which seemed to come within the scope 
 of the present volume, I have also to thank the pub- 
 lishers and editors of the Fortnightly, British Quarterly, 
 North British, and National Reviews for leave to reprint 
 the articles which appeared in their pages. It is much 
 to be regretted that two of the Reviews which I have 
 just mentioned have now to be reckoned among things of 
 the past. 
 
 If the present venture should prove successful, I hope that 
 it may be followed by a further selection from among my 
 smaller writings, whether from among essays of the same 
 class as those now reprinted, but bearing on earlier periods 
 of history, or from among smaller pieces on various subjects 
 not always strictly historical. 
 
 SOMEKLEAZE, WeLLS, 
 
 August 9th, 1871-
 
 HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS 
 IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 I DO not intend in the present Essay to enter into any- 
 full examination of the nature of mythical narratives, or 
 systematically to compare those which we meet with in early 
 English history with those which we meet with in the early 
 history of other nations. The origin of mythical narratives 
 in general, and the relation of the myths of one nation to 
 those of others, is an important and fascinating subject, 
 and one which has lately been zealously taken up by a 
 special school of inquirers. The doctrine of the compara- 
 tive mythologists traces the myths of at least all Aryan 
 nations to a certain common stock of sayings, expressive of 
 the chief phaenomena of nature. These sayings, set forth in 
 the simple poetical language of an early age, have gra- 
 dually grown into narratives of the adventures of personal 
 beings. Zeus, for instance, is the Sky, Apollo the Sun, and 
 the legends of Zeus and Apollo resolve themselves into 
 poetical descriptions of those processes of nature in which 
 the sky and the sun are concerned. This view must not 
 be confounded with that of an earlier school of mytholo- 
 gists, who saw in the Grecian legends a system of physical 
 truths set forth under the veil of allegory. The compara- 
 tive school admits of nothing like conscious allegory. In 
 the view of its followers the physical truth grows into the 
 mythical story by a process perfectly gradual and uncon- 
 scious. The doctrine is new and fascinating, and, as put
 
 2 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 forth by Professor Max Muller and by Mr. G. W. Cox, it is 
 in the highest degree capable of poetical treatment. But 
 I must confess that I can as yet accept it only in a modified 
 form. I must make a distinction between legends of the 
 Gods and legends of the Heroes — between myths which are 
 qitasi-i\\.Qo\ogicQ\ and myths which are quasi-hi^ioYicdl. 
 I can fully believe that Zeus is the Sky and that Demeter 
 is the Earth, and that the legends of Zeus and Demeter 
 arose from poetical statements of physical phsenomena re- 
 lating to the sky and the earth. But I confess that I have 
 some difficulty in accepting the doctrine that the mythical 
 histories of Herakles, of Meleagros, of Paris, of Achilleus, and 
 of Odysseus, are all of them mythical ways of describing 
 the daily course of the sun. The idea is most ingenious, 
 and the way in which it is carried out is, in many of its 
 details, not only ingenious, but highly beautiful. But I 
 confess that I am as yet only half a believer. Perhaps 
 I am under the influence of a dread that, if Achilleus and 
 Odysseus are ruled to be the sun, later heroes of mythology 
 and romance, Arthur and Hengest and Cerdic and the 
 Great Karl himself, may some day be found out to be the 
 sun also. The fear is natural on the part of one who does 
 not scruple to confess that he sees a certain historical 
 element alike in Hellenic and in Teutonic legend. Yet I am 
 told that the fear is an unreasonable one, inasmuch as the 
 two views are really not inconsistent. I am given to 
 understand that Achilleus may be the sun, and yet that 
 I may see, if I please, in Achilleus' conquest of Lesbos 
 a fragment, however exaggerated and distorted, of the real 
 primitive tradition of the Hellenic conquest of the land 
 which that conquest turned into Aiolis. Nay, I believe 
 it is allowed that, if the Charlemagne of romance should 
 also turn out to be the sun, the position of the his- 
 torical Emperor Karl will be in no way damaged by the 
 discovery. 
 
 I mention all this only to show why I do not feel called 
 on to enter into any scientific explanation of such mythical
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 3 
 
 stories as I have here to deal with. I leave them to in- 
 quirers of another class, and I shall be well pleased if I find 
 that my line of inquiry, though wholly different, is held by 
 them not to be necessarily inconsistent with their own. 
 But when I say that I recognize a certain historical ele- 
 ment in the myths, I wish especially to guard against 
 a probable misconception. I have as little sympathy with 
 the old pragmatizing or Euhemeristic school of mytholo- 
 gical interpretation as the comparative mythologists have 
 with the old physical school. The pragmatizers take a 
 mythical story; they strip it by an arbitrary process of 
 whatever seems impossible ; they explain or allegorize 
 miraculous details; and, having thus obtained something 
 which possibly may have happened, they give it out as 
 something which actually did happen. This system has 
 been thoroughly rooted up by Mr, Grote. It will never do 
 to take the tale of Troy, to leave out all intervention of the 
 Gods, and to give out the remnant as a piece of real 
 Grecian history. It will never do, as Thucydides did, to 
 piece out whatever seems unlikely by possible, but perfectly 
 arbitrary, conjectures of our own. And yet I cannot but 
 think that Mr. Grote goes too far in censuring all attempts 
 to extract a certain amount of historical truth from the 
 Trojan legend, or from any other legend. I will explain 
 my notions on this head a little more fully. But to do so, 
 I must first explain the nature of what I understand by 
 romantic as distinguished from mijthkal narratives. 
 
 I divide then the statements contained in our early 
 EngKsh history, or in any other history which may be 
 chosen for our illustrations, into four classes — historical, 
 romantic, traditional, and mythical. Of these I look on the 
 mythical statements as standing to the traditional in the 
 same relation in which the romantic statements stand to 
 the historical. I shall therefore first inquire into the 
 relation of these last two classes to one another, and then, 
 arguing from the known to the unknown, attempt to 
 point out more briefly the light which these relations cast 
 
 B 3
 
 4 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 on the obscurer relation between traditional and mythical 
 statements. 
 
 By historical statements I mean those which we accept 
 as undoubtedly true, as resting on contemporary or other 
 sufficient evidence : say, that Eadward the Elder died in 
 the year 925, and that iEthelstan his son was chosen King 
 in his stead. Or perhaps the words " undoubtedly true " 
 may be too strong ; for we often meet with statements 
 which we must set down as historical, which we nevertheless 
 receive with a certain hesitation, as resting on a mere 
 balance of evidence. Owing to the natural imperfection of 
 all human testimony, owing to unavoidable errors, to men's 
 different ways of looking at things, to the way in which 
 statements are, sometimes wilfully, sometimes unconsciously, 
 coloured by party spirit or other interested feelings — owing 
 to all these causes, we often find contradictory statements 
 of facts, between which we have to judge as we best can, 
 but where there is nothing mythical or romantic about 
 either version. Thus, in the whole career of Godwine and 
 Harold, we have to pick our way between the opposite 
 statements of friends and enemies. Both versions cannot 
 be true ; but the version which we reject is not myth or 
 romance, but mistake or calumny, as may happen. The 
 true statement is historical — the false one we may call 
 psevdo-Iiislorical ; it assumes the form of history, and it is 
 put forth in the hope and belief that it will be accepted 
 as true. Such misstatements are, in a later stage, often 
 adorned with romantic details— such, for instance, as we 
 shall presently find in the legend of the death of Godwine — • 
 but in their original state they arc not romance, but history 
 misconceived or misrepresented. 
 
 By romanlic statements I understand stories about his- 
 torical persons, which we set aside, sometimes as merely 
 doubtful, sometimes as positively untrue, by other tests 
 than those by which we distinguish historical from pseudo- 
 historical statements. Around many famous men there 
 gathers a mass of tales and anecdotes, the evidence for
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 5 
 
 which is insufficient. Sometimes all that we can say is that 
 the evidence is insufficient. The story may be neither im- 
 probable in itself, nor inconsistent with the recorded actions 
 and character of the person spoken of. Of this kind is 
 a large proportion of the personal anecdotes handed down 
 to us by Plutarch. They may have happened, but we 
 cannot feel certain that they did happen. We know that 
 anecdotes are often invented, and that they are often im- 
 proved in the telling. We know that the fact of an 
 anecdote being probable and characteristic is no proof of 
 its historical truth. For clever anecdote-mongers always 
 take care that their anecdotes shall be probable and charac- 
 teristic. Many a living man has heard stories about him- 
 self, some of which are pure invention, some of which 
 contain a kernel of truth, but which in both cases illustrate, 
 if only by caricature, some real feature in his character. 
 Stories of this sort, where a distinct play of fancy is at 
 work, set us down within the borders of the land of 
 romance. In j)S€udo-h\^tor\c,&\ statements, the narrator is 
 either himself deceived, or he intentionally seeks to deceive 
 others ; in purely romantic statements deception hardly 
 comes in either way. The teller and the heai'er have no 
 set purpose to contradict historical truth ; they are simply 
 careless about historical truth. They tell an attractive 
 story, heedless whether it be true or false ; the tale may be 
 coloured by the narrator's passions or opinions, but it is 
 not a direct pleading on the side of those passions or 
 opinions, as are the statements which I have caXle^ j^iseudo- 
 historical. If the teller and the hearer have knowledge 
 and tact enough, they will take care that the story, if not 
 true, shall be at least characteristic. But in more careless 
 hands no such propriety is aimed at. The tale may, in 
 such a case, be utterly improbable from the beginning, or, 
 though it may have been characteristic at starting, it may, 
 in process of telling, get incrusted with circumstances 
 which make it no longer even characteristic. Every detail 
 is exaggerated, improved, or corrupted ; and circumstances
 
 6 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 are brought in from other stories about other people. In 
 this last process we come across one of the most fertile 
 sources of legendary matter. 
 
 There is a class of stories which seem to be the common 
 property of mankind, and which may be said to go about the 
 world with blanks for the names, dates, and places, ready to 
 be filled up as occasion may serve. We meet with abundance 
 of these stories both in undoubted mythology and in what 
 professes to be history. Stories, for instance, of women 
 falsely accusing men who have refused their favours, stories 
 of kings' daughters betraying their country for love of in- 
 vaders who in the end punish their treachery, turn up, with 
 little more than the change of name, in all times and in all 
 places. Now stories of this sort we instinctively doubt, 
 even in their earliest form, and in every later form we 
 unhesitatingly reject them. It comes indeed within the 
 compass of belief, and even of probability, that such a story 
 may have happened once. In some cases indeed we may be 
 sure that one form of the story is historical, the later repe- 
 titions only being legendary ; nay, it is within the compass 
 of physical possibility that such a story may have happened 
 several times. It is even possible, especially when a story 
 occurs both in legend and in history, that the later story 
 may be a conscious repetition of the earlier. Alexander 
 maj/, as Mr. Grote believes, have dragged Eatis at his 
 chariot- wheels, in conscious imitation of the treatment of 
 the body of Hektor by Achilleus. But the chances are 
 always strongly against any tale of the kind. Knowing, 
 as we do, the way in which stories grow and wander 
 about, we need the strongest contemporary evidence to 
 make us believe any of them. Take, for instance, one of 
 the best known of the class. There is nothing actually 
 impossible in the story of a father being set to shoot an 
 apple off his son's head. We should have no difficulty in 
 believing the fact on sufficient evidence. But when we see 
 the story turning up in various forms in various places, 
 when in some instances it is evidently a mere tale, when in
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 7 
 
 no instance does it rest upon any convincing testimony, we 
 set it down as simply one of the stories which make the 
 round of the world. Another point must be mentioned, 
 namely that, when we have two or more stories of this sort, 
 there is no need to suppose that any one of them is borrowed 
 from any other. So to argue is like deriving Greek from 
 Sanscrit, or French from Italian. Those who told the story 
 of Palnatoki could not have heard the story of William Tell, 
 and it is not likely that those who told the story of William 
 Tell had heard the story of Palnatoki. It is far more prob- 
 able that both are portions of that general stock of romantic 
 narrative which is the common property of mankind. 
 
 By romantic narratives then I understand stories about 
 historical persons, which are neither historical nor psendo- 
 historical, neither real truth nor invention with a purpose, 
 but mere plays of fancy, in which historical truth is simply 
 disregarded. In most of them there is probably a kernel of 
 truth ; in some of them we can see what the kernel of truth 
 is ; but aU the colouring, all the circumstances, everything 
 which gives life to the story, are, at the best, doubtful, and 
 are in many cases clearly fictitious. The story, at its best, 
 cannot be proved to be true, and in many cases it can be 
 proved to be false. Such a story may be laudatory, or it 
 may be calumnious. In such a case we may feel sure that, 
 in its first form, it was put forth by the friends or by the 
 enemies of the person spoken of ; but as the story grows, 
 virtues are heightened, vices are blackened, new good 
 actions and new crimes are attributed to the hero, by the 
 mere process of mythopoeic growth, without any regard to 
 truth, but without any intentional departure from it. 
 Truth and falsehood, as I have before said, are matters 
 foreign to the state of mind both of the teller and of his 
 hearers. Of this state of mind Mr. Grote gives a lucid 
 explanation in the chapter on mythical narratives to which 
 I have already referred. Stories of this sort, as long as 
 they are acknowledged to be mere stories, may often be 
 told and heard with real pleasure. The evil begins when
 
 8 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 they are mistaken for history, as they constantly are, and 
 that sometimes at a time surprisingly near to the period 
 at which they are said to have happened. Our early 
 English history, and all early history, is full of them. To 
 show their true character is one of the highest duties of the 
 historian ; but none of his duties runs more distinctly 
 counter to popular prejudice^ there is none in the discharge 
 of which the results of his labour are more distasteful to 
 large classes of his readers. With most people our early 
 history is a mere collection of legends. Alfred is simply 
 the King who forgot to turn the cakes, or, in another form, 
 the King who invented trial by jury. Eadgar is the King 
 who imposed a tribute of wolves' heads upon the Welsh, or 
 the King who slew ^thelwald and married his widow. 
 Dunstan is the monk who took the devil by the nose, or 
 possibly the Archbishop who caused .^Ifgifu to be put to a 
 horrible death. In all these cases history is simply sacri- 
 ficed to silly stories. The real actions of very remarkable 
 men are utterly forgotten, because their names have got 
 inseparably attached to legends which at best are doubtful, 
 and which in most cases can be shown to be untrue. Yet 
 many people cry out as if some wrong were done to them, 
 as if the grounds of all human belief were shaken, when 
 they are simply asked to accept history and to reject fable, 
 to see which statements rest on evidence and which do not, 
 and to believe or disbelieve according as such a test requires. 
 People deliberately set themselves against the truth ; some- 
 times because truth contradicts some prejudice, sometimes 
 merely to escape the trouble of inquiry. But the case 
 becomes worse when the prejudice to be fought against 
 takes the form of some political or provincial point of 
 honour. For instance, the character of the greatest of 
 England's later Kings is blackened in popular estimation, 
 because people will accept late legends and ballads rather 
 than the undoubted history written down at the time. 
 History sets before us William Wallace as quldam latro 
 piihUms, the savage devastator of England ; it sets before us
 
 L] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 9 
 
 Kobert Bruce as a traitor in turn to every cause, as a par- 
 doned rebel, who at last took to patriotism as his only- 
 chance to escape the punishment of a treacherous private 
 murder. It sets before us the great Edward as simply 
 asserting: the acknowledo-ed rig-hts of more than three hun- 
 dred years — rights as fully acknowledged by his Scottish 
 vassals as by his English subjects * It sets him before us 
 as acting throughout with a justice and a disinterestedness 
 to which his age, or any age, affords few parallels — as acting 
 throughout in strict adherence to law and right, and, after 
 repeated provocations, staining his conquest with the 
 smallest amount of bloodshed on record. But it makes a 
 prettier story to tell of the hairbreadth scapes of hunted 
 patriots tnan to record the real actions of a wise and 
 righteous King. The legend therefore turns out the his- 
 tory. Scotch people make it a point of provincial honour 
 to reject the truth, and English people — more unpardonably 
 still — reject it simply because the legend is thought to be 
 prettier. To crown the whole thing, novelists not only 
 substitute the legend for the history, but alter the history 
 itself to make the tale more convenient still. I believe 
 there is a Scotch story-book which makes the great 
 Edward, and not his wretched son, fight the losing fight of 
 Bannockburn, and I dare say there are people, both Scotch 
 and English, who believe that it really was so. 
 
 This is the sort of difficulty against which simple historic 
 truth has to struggle. In many cases it illustrates the pro- 
 verb that there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. 
 
 * Nothing could be more strictly just than Edward's whole dealing in the 
 affair of the disputed fief. His singular disinterestedness stands out most 
 clearly in the refusal of the proposal to divide the kingdom made by Hastings 
 and the elder Bruce. Nothing could have been more tempting than such 
 a proposal to a suzerain whose clear interest it was to have three weak vassals 
 rather than one powerful one. But Edward, as ever, stuck to his motto — 
 pactum servn ; he scorned all such considerations, and adjudged the whole fief 
 to the lawful heir. If any one wishes to see the difference between an honest 
 man and a rascal, let him compare the dealings of Edward with John of Balliol 
 in the matter of Scotland, and the dealings of PhiUp of France with Edward iu 
 the matter of Aquitaine.
 
 10 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 To those who are accustomed to look facts in the face, it is 
 hard to understand the clinging to a story as a truth 
 simply because the story is pretty. As an avowed fable, 
 as a mere novel, it would bo just as pretty to hear. A 
 romance without a shadow of truth may be exquisitely 
 beautiful as a story, and the most severe historian has 
 no wish to interfere with any one enjoying his favourite 
 legend on those terms. All that he asks is that truth 
 should never be tampered with, when truth, and not 
 artistic beauty, is the question at issue. Belief is purely 
 a matter of evidence, not a matter of taste or of preju- 
 dice. But disbelief of a story as a matter of historic 
 reality is consistent with the fullest appreciation of the 
 artistic beauties of the tale which is pronounced to be histo- 
 rically false. The historic mind is never offended by either 
 myth or romance as such, but only when people obstinately 
 cling to them to the rejection of historic truth. Thus the 
 legends of iElfred are singularly beautiful ; the legends of 
 Dunstan are disgustingly absurd. We can, as a matter of 
 taste, enjoy the one and despise the other, while, as a 
 matter of historic truth, we hold both to be equally 
 worthless. The legend of William Tell throws a halo over 
 the marketplace of Altdorf, and the legend of Achilleua 
 throws a halo over the plains of Ilios, which can be as fully 
 entered into by those who distinguish between history and 
 legend, as by those who make their prejudices the measure 
 of their belief. In fact, the lovers of legendary lore lose 
 nothing by accepting the historic standard. A new source 
 of enjoyment is opened to them, and the old one is not 
 taken away. 
 
 I will now take two well-known legends in early English 
 history, and attempt to dissect them, and to trace their 
 several elements to their respective sources. In both cases 
 we shall find a certain kernel of truth round which a whole 
 tissue of romance has been woven. 
 
 In the year 933 the .ZEtheling Eadwine, son of King 
 Eadward the ]<vlder, and brother of the reigning King
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 11 
 
 -^thelstan, was drowned at sea. This simple entry is all 
 that we find in the English Chronicles, and there is nothing 
 about the entry to make us suspect any sort of foul play. 
 We are at once reminded of the similar fate of a later 
 ^theling, William the son of Henry the First ; and there 
 is nothing to make us think that the prince who was 
 drowned in 933 came to his end in any other way than the 
 prince who was drowned in 11 20. Among later writers, 
 Henry of Huntingdon, who so often preserves fragments of 
 early tradition, records the drowning of Eadwine as a mis- 
 fortune clouding the otherwise successful career of ^thel- 
 stan : " Adversa percussus fortuna fratrem suum Edwinum, 
 magni vigoris juvenem et bonje indolis, maris fluctibus 
 flebiliter amisit." Not a hint is here given that .^thelstan 
 had any hand in his death, but quite the contrary. But 
 on turning to Simeon of Durham, who wrote in the twelfth 
 century, but who copied a much earlier Northumbrian 
 Chronicle, we are amazed to find a direct assertion that 
 Eadwine was drowned by order of his brother : " Rex 
 iEthelstanus jussit Eadwinum fratrem suum submergi in 
 mare." We are amazed at such a charge brought against 
 one of our noblest Kings, a prince with whose whole cha- 
 racter such a crime seems specially inconsistent. Nothing 
 stands out more conspicuously in the reign of " glorious 
 iEthelstan " than the care which, himself childless and pro- 
 bably unmarried, he took of his numerous brothers and 
 sisters, and the harmony in which he always appears to act 
 with them. On the field of Brunanburh the royal brothers, 
 ^thelstan and Eadmund, appear side by side, almost like 
 the Kastor and Polydeukes of Grecian legend. Can we 
 believe such a tale of such a man 1 We might look at the 
 story as a mere piece of slander, invented by the Northum- 
 brian enemies of the West-Saxon conqueror. But it is far 
 more hkely that the story is a mere bit of romance, which 
 the Northumbrian chronicler inserted in his annals — a very 
 likely bit of romance to be preserved in a dry pragmatized 
 form, but for the genuine romantic shape of which we must
 
 12 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 look elsewhere. The garrulous pages of William of Malmes- 
 bury help us to the key. I will translate the tale as 
 William gives it: — 
 
 " When King Eadward was dead, his son ^Ifward, born of his lawful wife,* 
 followed his fiithei" by a speedy death. Then, when the hopes of all were fixed 
 upon ^'Ethelstan, Alfred alone, a man of great insolence, with his party, resisted 
 secretly as much as he could, disdaining to be subject to a lord whom he had 
 not chosen of his own will. But when he, as the King told the tale above,i' 
 was discovered, and had ended his life, there were some who accused Eadwine, 
 the King's brother, of treachery — a horrid and foul crime to disturb brotherly 
 affection by hostile suggestions. Eadwine, though calling on his brother's faith, 
 both in person and by messengers, and even denying the charge on oath, was 
 driven into banishment. The insinuations of some men had so far prevailed 
 over a mind occupied by many cares, that, forgetting the ties of kindred, he 
 di'ove out a youth whom even strangers might have pitied, and that with an 
 unheard-of kind of cruelty, for he was compelled, alone with his armour-bearer, 
 to embark in a boat, without oars or rowers, and moreover rotten with age. 
 Fortune laboured for a long while to bring back the guiltless to the shore. But 
 when at last, in the midst of the sea, the sails could not abide the fury of the 
 wind, he, as a delicate youth, and weary of life in such a case, sought death by 
 a sudden plunge into ths water. His armour-bearer, with wiser mind, endur- 
 ing to prolong his life, now evading the adverse waves, now rowing with his 
 feet, brought the body of Ids master to land, namely, over the narrow sea from 
 Dover to Witsand. ^thelstan, when his anger had cooled, was shocked at the 
 deed in his calmer mood, and having undertaken a seven years' penance, 
 avenged himself wrathfully on the accuser of his brother. He was the King's 
 cupbearer, and had therefore opportunities of effectually pressing any of his 
 schemes. Therefore, once, wlien on a solemn day he was handing wine to the 
 King, slipping with one foot, he recovered himself with the other; then, seizing 
 the occasion, he uttered a word fatal to himself — ' So brother helps brother.' 
 When the King heard that, he commanded the traitor to be beheaded, often- 
 times speaking aloud of the help which he should have had from his brother, 
 if he had lived, and bitterly lamenting his death." 
 
 Such is William of Malmesbury's tale, on which he him- 
 self thus comments : — 
 
 " TJiis story of the death of his brother, although it seems probable, I afiBrm 
 
 * Tliis qualification alludes to the legend, which Williani had just before 
 told, which represents .(Ethelstan as the natural sou of Eadward by a shepherd's 
 daughter. This again is a mere legend, which, with its accompaniment of 
 dreams and marvels, doubtless made a very pretty story in some ballad. 
 
 t Namely, in a real or spurious charter of JEthelstan which William had 
 quoted a little time before, and in which ^thelstan tells tlio tale in his own 
 person. According to this story, .zElfred was sent to Rome to deny his con- 
 spiracy on oath before the Pope. He swore, of course falsely, fell down before 
 the altar of Saint Peter's, and died on the third day.
 
 L] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 13 
 
 witiL less confidence, because he showed a wonderful and affectionate care 
 towards his other brothers, whom, when their father had left them as mere 
 children, he brought up while young with every kindness, and when grown-up 
 made them partners in his kingdom. Of his sisters, I have already said to 
 what greatness he promoted those among them whom his father had left 
 unmarried and untochered." 
 
 The readers of Livy will remember the story of the 
 stratagems of Sextus Tarquinius at Gabii, a tale made out 
 of two stories which are also found in Herodotus. The trick 
 by which Sextus gains admission into Gabii comes from the 
 same source as the trick by which Zopyros gains admission 
 into Babylon. The policy recommended to Sextus by his 
 father's symbolical action is the same as the policy recom- 
 mended to Periandros of Corinth by the like symbolical 
 action of Thrasyboulos of Miletos. Our present story of 
 Eadwine is a compound story of the same class. It is made 
 up of several current tales, which have had their blanks 
 filled up with the names of .^thelstan, Eadwine, and the 
 cupbearer, while any other names would have done just as 
 well. A number of floating tales have gathered themselves, 
 like barnacles on a plank, round the simple fact that Ead- 
 wine was drowned. The treacherous servant who falsely 
 accuses his lord's wife, or son, or brother, is one of the 
 stock characters of story-tellers in all time and places. He 
 is always found out and punished when too late. 
 
 " Likewise he made the master-cook 
 In boiling lead to stand, 
 And made the simple scullion-boy 
 The heir of all his land." 
 
 This was the ending of a nursery-tale'^ which delighted 
 and horrified my own childhood, and the master-cook and 
 iEthelstan's cupbearer are only different forms of a single 
 legendary sinner. But we may get more into detail than 
 this. Stories of people exposed in boats, and being carried 
 safely to some shore or other, are exceedingly common. 
 To speak of no others, one is introduced into legendary 
 English history in the century before J^thelstan. Lothe- 
 
 * It may be found in Percy's Reliques.
 
 14 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 brok, a Dane of roj'al descent, is driven by a storm to the 
 coast of East-Anglia with only his hawk on his wrist. He 
 is there murdered by Biorn, the huntsman of Saint Ead- 
 mund, King of the East- Angles. Eadmund exposes the 
 murderer in an open boat like his victim. Biorn is carried 
 to Denmark, as Lothebrok was to England, and there, of 
 course telling the story his own way, he excites the sons 
 of Lothebrok to vengeance against his own master. He thus 
 leads to the Danish conquest of East-Anglia, and to the 
 martyrdom of Eadmund. It required a little invention to 
 piece this story on to the fact that Eadwine was drowned ; 
 but this difficulty was got over by the introduction of the 
 armour-bearer. The latter part of the tale comes over 
 ao-ain in the Norman legend of Earl Godwine, which also 
 contains details somewhat similar to those of the death of 
 Alfred. I will translate the tale as it is told in its fulness 
 by Roger of Wendover, or those whom he copied : — 
 
 " In the year of grace 1054, Eadward, King of the English, kept the Paschal 
 festival at Winchester, where, as the said King was sitting at the table, as his 
 cupbearer was carrying to the table a royal beaker full of wine, he struck one 
 foot against the floor of the house, but recovering himself with the other foot, 
 he escaped falling. When Earl Godwine saw this as he was sitting, according 
 to custom, by the King at dinner, he said, ' This brother brought help to his 
 brother.' On this the King ironically answered him, ' My brother might now 
 help me, if it had not been for the treachery of Godwine.' Then Godwine, 
 who had betrayed the King's brother, being much distressed at the King's 
 answer, replied : ' I know, King,' said he — ' I know that you suspect me of 
 the death of your brother Alfred; but may God, who is true and righteous, 
 not let this morsel of bread which 1 hold pass my throat without choking me, if 
 your brother ever underwent death or hurt of his body through me or by my 
 device !' When he had said this, tlie King blessed the morsel, which Godwine 
 put in his mouth, and, conscious of his guilt, was choked and died. When the 
 King saw him de;id and pale, ' Drag out,' said he, ' this dog, and bury him in 
 the highway, for he is unworthy to have Christian burial !' When his sons, 
 who were present, saw that, they dragged out their father from the table, and 
 buried him in the Old Minster of that city, the King knowing nothing at all 
 about it." 
 
 Now the whole Norman account of Godwine is in itself 
 one of the best specimens of the growth of legend, the par- 
 ticular course taken by invention being in this case dictated 
 by political enmity. This whole romance of the death of
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 15 
 
 Godwine, which William of Malmesbury gives in an inter- 
 mediate shape, has gathered round the simple fact that the 
 Earl fell down in a fit while at dinner with the King, and 
 died four days after. But I am now concerned with it only 
 as showing that the story of " brother helps brother " was a 
 current one, ready to be fitted into any place which it would 
 at all suit. Roger, who gives it in the legend of Godwine, 
 does not bring it into the legend of -^thelstan, and William, 
 who gives it in the legend of -^thelstan, does not give 
 it in the legend of Godwine. The seven years' penance 
 of ^thelstan also seems borrowed from the seven years' 
 penance said, with better likelihood of truth, to have been 
 imposed by Dunstan on Eadgar for the seduction of Wulf- 
 thryth. 
 
 We thus see what the elements of romance really are 
 which have gathered round a very simple historical fact. 
 I may add that chronology alone upsets the legend. The 
 legend connects Eadwine's death with an opposition to 
 -^thelstan's election to the crown. But ^thelstan was 
 chosen King in 925, while Eadwine was not drowned till 
 933. A seven years' penance again, dating from this last 
 year, would reach to the end of ^thelstan's reign, and 
 would take in his most important actions. 
 
 For ni}^ own part I hold, not only that the details of the 
 exposure of Eadwine and of the punishment of the cupbearer 
 are altogether unhistorical — which I suppose few people will 
 deny — but that there is no evidence at all to connect -^thel- 
 stan in any way with the death of his brother. But if any one 
 chooses to accept the Northumbrian statement as historical, 
 all that I have said will equally apply. The legendary 
 details will have grown in exactly the same way round an 
 historical kernel, j ust like the legendary details of the death 
 of Godwine. 
 
 The second story which I have chosen as an illustration of 
 the romantic element in what passes for our early history is 
 one which I imagine to be more commonly known than that
 
 16 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 of the death of Eadwine, namely the legend of Eadgar and 
 his wife ^Ifthryth, commonly Latinized into iElfrida. This 
 I cannot do better than introduce with the comments made 
 on it by Lord Macaulay in the preface to the "Lays of 
 Ancient Rome : " — 
 
 "'History,' says Hume, with the utmost gravity, 'has preserved some 
 instances of Edgar's amours, from which, as from a specimen, we may form 
 a conjecture of the rest.' He then tells very agreeal)ly the stories of Elfieda 
 and Elfrida — two stories which have a most suspicious air of romance, and 
 which greatly resemble, in their general character, some of the It- gends of early 
 Home. He cites, as his authority for these two tales, the Clu-onicle of William 
 of Malmesbury, who lived in the time of King Stephen. Tlie great majority of 
 readers suppose that the device by which Elfleda was substituted for her young 
 mistress, the artifice by which Athelwold obtained the hand of Elfrida, the 
 detection of that artiiice, the hunting-paity, and the vengeance of the amorous 
 King, are things about which there is no more doubt than about the execution 
 of Anne Boleyn, or the slitting of Sir John Coventry's nose. But when we 
 turn to William of Malmesbury, we find that Hume, in his eagerness to relate 
 these pleasant fables, has overlooked one very important circumstance. William 
 does indeed tell both the stories ; but he gives distinct notice that he does not 
 warrant their truth, and that they rest on no better authority than that of 
 ballads. Such is the way in which these two well-known tales have been 
 handed down. They originally appeared in a poetical form. They found their 
 way from ballads into an old chronicle. The ballads perished, the chronicle 
 remained. A great historian, some centuries after the ballads had been 
 altogether forgotten, consulted the chronicle. He was struck by the lively 
 colouring of these ancient fictions ; he transferred them to his pages ; and thus 
 we find inserted, as imquestionable facts, in a narrative which is likely to last 
 as long as the English tongue, the inventions of some minstrel whose works 
 were probably never committed to writing, whose name is buried in oblivion, 
 and whose dialect has become obsolete." 
 
 A professed student of early English history may be a 
 little amused at finding the work of William of Malmesbury 
 called a "chronicle," and at finding David Hume spoken of 
 as " a great historian." But, low as I rate the confused and 
 rambling narrative of William, he at least stands out here in 
 honourable contrast to Hume.* The monk of Malmesbury 
 had some notion of the difference between truth and false- 
 
 * [I now rank William of Malmesbury higher than I did. His narrative is 
 " confused and rambling ; " his neglect of chronoloi,'y makes him most provt)king 
 to one who consults him ; but no one more commonly gives us two sides of a 
 story, and no contemporary writer makes, as may be seen iu the extract already 
 given, a nearer approach to historical criticism.]
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 17 
 
 hood, between history and legend ; the Scotch philosopher, 
 it seems, had absolutely none. But the process by which 
 legend gets transmuted into apparent history could not have 
 been better described than it is by Lord Macaulay, and he 
 could not have found better instances to illustrate his posi- 
 tion. But it is needful to go a little further into the matter 
 than Lord Macaulay has done. The story, as told by William 
 of Malmesbury, is not the only form of the legend, and I do 
 not think that it is the oldest form. It bears signs of being 
 improved from another still extant version. It is improved 
 at once by the doing-away of one or two manifest contradic- 
 tions, and by the introduction of one or two incidents which 
 are not found in the earlier version, and which, if they 
 increase the criminal horrors of the story, certainly add to its 
 poetical effect. But let us first see what the history is. In 
 the English Chronicles we read, under the year 965 : ^ — 
 
 " This year Eadgar King took yElfthryth to him to Queen, She was 
 Ordgar Ealdorman's daughter." 
 
 Florence of Worcester, the best of our Latin writers, the 
 discreet and careful translator and harmonist of the English 
 Chronicles, tells us one more circumstance about yElfthryth. 
 She was the widow of -lEthelwald, Ealdorman of the East- 
 Angles : — 
 
 " Rex Anglorum pacificus Eadgarus Ordgari Ducis Domnaniae filiam, ^If- 
 thrytham nomine, post mortem viri sui ^thelwaldi, gloriosi Ducis Orien- 
 talium Anglorum, in matrimonium aecepit." 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, who so often preserves older tradi- 
 tions, is silent. 
 
 Thus far, and it is as far as certain history goes, there is 
 not the slightest shadow of crime or scandal thrown upon the 
 matter. The King, himself a widower, marries the daughter 
 of one of his chief nobles, the widow of another. We know 
 indeed that the character of neither husband nor wife was 
 altogether spotless. Eadgar, the lover of the nun f Wulf- 
 
 * Florence makes it 964. This difference of a year, owing to imperfect 
 calculations, is very common. 
 
 f It is not perfectly clear whether Wulfthryth was a professed nun, but, at 
 any rate, the sanctity of the cloister was invaded. 
 
 C
 
 18 THE MYTHICAL AND BOJ/A.XTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 thrjd-h, was not absolutely perfect in his relations with 
 women; and iElfthryth afterwards incurred a suspicion, 
 amounting almost to certainty, of being concerned in the 
 death of her stepson Eadward,"^ But, as far as her marriage 
 goes, there is nothing at all in the recorded history to make 
 us look on the transaction as being otherwise than regular 
 and honourable. Yet the mere fact of scandalous stories 
 arising, if it does not exactly prove anything, at least 
 awakens our suspicions. And in this case, there is some- 
 thing like internal evidence for some small part of the 
 legend. Let us then examine its different versions in detail, 
 beginning with the familiar story as told by William of 
 Malmesbury. 
 
 Eadgar, according to this legend, hears of the beauty of 
 Ordgar's daughter, and thinks of marrying her. But he 
 first sends his confidential favourite ^thelwald to see 
 whether report spoke truly of her. -i^llthelwald goes to her 
 father's house, falls in love himself, and marries her, per- 
 suading the King that she is unworthy of a royal alliance. 
 After a while Eadgar hears of the deception, and proposes 
 a visit to ^thelwald. ^thelwald, in his alarm, tells his 
 wife how he obtained her, and begs her to disguise her 
 beauty from the King. Instead of so doing she adorns 
 herself to the utmost of her power. Eadgar becomes en- 
 amoured, and kills -^thelwald at a hunting-party. He 
 turns round to -^thelwald's natural son, who happens to 
 be present, and asks how he likes such a quarry. The 
 youth answers that whatever pleases the King pleases him. 
 Eadgar takes him into his special favour, and marries the 
 widow iElfthryth. 
 
 * " Give a dog a bad name and hang him." When ^Ifthryth's character 
 was damaged in one way, it was easy to make stories to her discredit in 
 other ways. There is a wild fable in the Ilistor'm JSUensis, about her and 
 lirihtnoth, Abbot of Ely, in which she is first described as a witch, and then 
 made to play the part of Zuleikha to the Abbot's Joseph. Of course such 
 changes are made as were needed to adapt the story to the case of a widow — 
 for the tale is placed after the death of Eadgar — instead of that of a married 
 woman.
 
 L] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 19 
 
 But the story, as told by Geoffrey Gaimar, and in the 
 Chronicle known as that of Bromton, is widely different. 
 It is not only told with much greater detail, but it contra- 
 dicts the other version in some of the essential parts of the 
 story. Down to the marriage of -^thelwald and iElfthryth 
 there is no substantial difference. But at that point the 
 stories part company. Eadgar's visit to ^Ethelwald does 
 not take place till after ^Elfthryth has borne a son, whom 
 the King holds at the font, and to whom he gives his own 
 name, but without having seen his mother, ^thelwald 
 purposely asks the King to become godfather to the child, 
 in order that he might thereby contract a spiritual affinity 
 with the mother. yEthelwald is thus put more at his ease 
 as to any possible designs on the part of the King, either 
 on the vii'tue of ^Elfthryth or on his own life. Then comes 
 the story of the visit, essentially the same as in William's 
 version, only it is told, by Bromton at least, with much 
 greater detail, and with a fervid description of the growth 
 of Eadgar's passion. Eadgar then considers how he may 
 get rid of iEthelwald by craft. He holds a meeting of his 
 " parliament " at Salisbury, and, as the Danes had lately 
 invaded Yorkshire, it is determined to send .^thelwald to 
 the defence of that country. He is met on the road in 
 Wherwell Forest by armed men — whether sent by Eadgar 
 or not, neither Geoffrey nor Bromton ventures to decide — 
 who kill him. Eadgar marries the widow, contrary to the 
 canon law, which forbade marriage with the parent of a 
 godchild. For this he is rebuked by Saint Dunstan, 
 who pronounces the marriage to be mere adultery, and 
 requires Eadgar to separate from his wife. So great how- 
 ever is his love for her that he can never bring himself to 
 do so. 
 
 Let us compare these two stories. The latter, I may re- 
 mark, though improbable, is just possible, and I suspect that 
 it contains one little germ of truth which explains how the 
 whole story arose. The main improbability lies in the 
 utter misconception of ^thelwald's position, which however
 
 20 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 would not necessarily involve the falsehood of the rest of 
 the story, -^thelwald was the son of ^thelstan, the reign- 
 ing Ealdorman of the East-Angles, and he was associated 
 with his father in that dignity, one short only of royalty. 
 In the story he is represented as a needy adventurer, glad 
 to marry the daughter of the rich Ordgar, and when married, 
 he lives in Devonshire, with or near his father-in-law."^ 
 The deception and the visit are of course just possible, 
 though we may safely set them aside as mere romance. 
 But the birth of the child to whom the King is godfather, 
 the essential point of difference between this version and 
 the other, is much more likely to contain a germ of truth. 
 That the marriage of Eadgar and ^Elfthryth was in some 
 way uncanonical, and brought husband and wife under 
 Dunstan's rebuke, is perfectly probable, and it is not the 
 Bort of thing which a mere minstrel would invent. On the 
 other hand, it might be thought that we have here some 
 confusion between ^Elfthryth and Wulfthryth, and that 
 the legend-maker was thinking of the penance imposed 
 on Eadgar by Dunstan for the sacrilegious abduction of 
 a consecrated virgin. But I think that in this breach of 
 canonical rule we shall find the real germ of truth in the 
 story. The way in which the tale goes on is very remark- 
 able. The narrator clearly has the story of David and 
 Uriah in his head, and to make the parallel complete, he 
 ought to kill -^thelwald by the sword of the Danes. But 
 he stops short in a most lame and impotent way, killing 
 him on the road to his new government, and not venturing 
 to say whether those who killed him were the King's agents 
 or not. It strikes me that a piece of genuine history or 
 tradition stood in the way of the original romance. Let 
 us suppose that ^thclwald really was murdered by some 
 
 * Neither Geoffrey Gaimar nor William of Malmesbury makes any allusion 
 to ^thelwald being Ealdorman of the Eaat- Angles. Bromton makes him at 
 once the King's secretary and Ealdorman of the East-Angles, and makes him 
 talk of himself as a poor man to whom a rich marriage was desirable. Of 
 course the oris^inal legend knew nothing of his dignity, but Bromton put in the 
 title of Ealdorman without thinking of the contradiction.
 
 1.] Us' EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 21 
 
 unknown persons, and that Eadgar married the widow in 
 breach of some canonical restriction,"^ and we have the germ 
 round which the whole story grew. By a supposition of this 
 kind we get at the origin of the legend, which otherwise is 
 puzzling. If there were nothing remarkable about the 
 marriage, whence all this talk about it 1 If ^thelwald 
 died a violent death, and if the marriage of his widow was 
 uncanonical, though there would be no proof at all of any 
 criminality on the part of Eadgar and Jj^lfthryth beyond the 
 mere breach of the canon law, there would be quite enough 
 to set slanderous tongues on imagining moral aggravations 
 of their formal offence. 
 
 If this be so, we have, just as in the case of Eadwine, a 
 germ of truth round which a certain portion of fabulous 
 matter has gathered. It is almost necessary to suppose 
 something of the kind to account for the existence of the 
 legend at all. In the case of Eadwine, the manner of his 
 death, as recorded in the Chronicles, suggested the tale of 
 his exposure ; but in the simple record of the marriage of 
 Eadgar and ^Ifthryth there is nothing to suggest any one 
 feature of the tale. I think then that we may assume a 
 violent death of -^thelwald and an uncanonical remarriage 
 of his widow as almost certain. To this germ of truth the 
 fii-st romantic nari-ative added the story of the deception of 
 Eadgar by iEthelwald and the visit of the King to ^If- 
 thryth. The next stage took a much gi-eater liberty with 
 the facts. The story now probably got into other hands. 
 The tale in Bromton has an ecclesiastical tone about it : it 
 turns on a breach of canonical rule, and one object of it is 
 to set forth the holy courage of Dunstan in rebuking a royal 
 offender. As a mere story, it is but a lame one : iEthelwald 
 
 * It would be simpler and more natural to suppose a marriage entered into 
 ■with indecent haste after the death of the first husband. But there is reason 
 to believe that two or three years passed between the death of ^thelwald and 
 the marriage of his widow. Up to 962 ^thelwald signs charters in company 
 with his father yEthelstan ; in that year he ceases to do so, and his brother 
 ^thelwine takes his place. It is therefore almost certain that .<3Ethelwald 
 died in 962.
 
 22 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 is killed somehow, but the tale-teller does not know exactly 
 how : he suspects the King, but he does not venture directly 
 to accuse him. This is a state of mind which in an historian 
 is often highly praiseworthy, but« it is not one suited to 
 produce any very effective romantic narrative. The tale 
 next fell into the hands of some one who did not care about 
 the credit of Saint Dunstan, and who was not thinking of 
 David and Uriah. It manifestly was far more effective to 
 make Eadgar kill iEthelwald with his own hand. There 
 are many stories of people being killed at hunting-parties, 
 and indeed a hunting-party is brought in among the details 
 given by Bromton, though nobody is killed at it. The 
 murder at the hunting-party was thus suggested. But this 
 was not all. The story of Kambyses and Praixaspes in 
 Herodotus stood ready to be worked in. I do not mean 
 either that the English minstrel had read Herodotus, or 
 that ho knew anything about Praixaspes from any other 
 source. I only mean that a tale, forming part of the com- 
 mon fund of romantic tales, which the informants of Hero- 
 dotus had ages before shaped into one form, was now shaped 
 into one slightly different. In Herodotus the tyrant shoots 
 the son, and calls on the father to admire his archery. In 
 the legend of Eadgar father and son necessarily change 
 places. Now that the tale had reached the dignity of an 
 unmistakable murder, the mere breach of canonical order 
 was left out, or became quite secondary. But the new ver- 
 sion borrowed one important feature from the old. The son 
 of iEthelwald, whom Eadgar afterwards loved so dearly, 
 was surely, in the first form of this second version, the 
 young Eadgar, the son of iElfthryth, the King's own godson 
 and stepson. Lastly, William of Malmesbury, or those 
 whom he immediately followed, saw the absurdity of 
 bringing in a son of ^Ifthiyth's of an age to speak and 
 act. They therefore made the youth, not a son of M\i- 
 thryth, but a bastard of ^thclwald by some unknown 
 mother. The stoiy of the birth of young Eadgar, and of 
 the spiritual affinity between his mother and the King, was
 
 I.] IX EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 23 
 
 now simply in the way, and, not being very capable of 
 poetical treatment, it was left out altogether. In short, 
 while the first version of the legend still retains a certain 
 kernel of truth, the second is simply fabulous throughout. 
 New imaginary incidents have been introduced, and the 
 little truth which remained has been turned out to make 
 way for them. 
 
 One or two features may be noticed in both versions which 
 illustrate the feelings of the time, or possibly point to a 
 traditional conception of the personal character of Eadgar. 
 ^thelwald's delight in his fancied security, when he has 
 succeeded in placing the bar of spiritual affinity between the 
 King and his wife, points to an age, or to a character, which 
 looked on the breach of a petty canonical restriction as a 
 greater crime than adultery or murder. Till that point is 
 made safe, ^thelwald feels no security that Eadgar will not 
 seduce his wife or murder him for her sake. But he thinks 
 that he will most likely have a scruple about either seducing 
 or marrying the mother of his godson. On the other hand, 
 in neither version does Eadgar, enamoured as he is — and 
 Bromton's version helps us to all the details of an ex- 
 travagant passion — make any attempt to corrupt the virtue 
 of -^Ifthryth while she is the wife of ^Ethelwald. His first 
 thought seems to be, not to make iElfthryth his mistress, 
 but to get rid of iEthelwald and marry his widow. Eadgar 
 is, in short, set before us as a character something like 
 Henry the Eighth, as one who feels more scruple at adultery 
 than he feels at murder, and who is expected to feel more 
 scruple at an uncanonical marriage than he feels at adultery. 
 That is to say, a breach of Divine law is more serious in his 
 eyes than a breach of natural justice, and a breach of human 
 law is more serious than a breach of Divine law. We have 
 no reason to say that such was the real character of Eadgar, 
 but it was a caricature very hkely to be drawn by the enemies 
 of a prince who was so zealous in enforcing the observance 
 of canonical restrictions. It would have been a triumph 
 indeed to represent the great champion of clerical celibacy
 
 24 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 as a murderer and adulterer, after the pattern of David. 
 But it was a still greater triumph to describe him, either in 
 fiction or in real history, as himself breaking a canonical 
 restriction of the same class as that which he was foremost 
 in imposing on others. 
 
 Such are the two legends which I have chosen out of 
 many others to illustrate the nature, origin, and growth of 
 romantic fiction. Each of them has its special value for my 
 purpose. In the story of Eadwine we see how the fiction 
 was suggested by the real history as we find it recorded. 
 In the story of iElfthryth, we see how the germ of truth, 
 which the recorded history has failed to preserve, is to be 
 found by internal evidence in the details of the legend itself. 
 The story of iElfthryth also, being happily preserved in two 
 quite distinct versions, helps us to trace out in a more dis- 
 tinct way how tales of this sort grew, how each stage 
 brought in fresh imaginary details, and still further con- 
 cealed the truth which lay at the kernel. It is also a good 
 illustration of the great rule for testing two contradictory 
 stories. If, supposing A to be true, we cannot account for 
 the origin of B, while, supposing B to be true, we cannot ac- 
 count for the origin of A, we have found an argument almost 
 approaching to certainty in favour of the truth of A. This 
 rule applies equally to real and to fictitious narratives. 
 When it is applied to two statements, each claiming to be 
 historical, it determines A to be the true account, and B to 
 be pseudo-\i\QioviQ.3i\. When it is applied to two romantic 
 statements, it does not indeed prove that A is historically 
 true, but it proves that it possesses a kind of relative truth. 
 It shows that it is an older form of the fiction than B, and 
 one therefore likely to depart less widely from historical 
 truth.-^ 
 
 Having thus, as I hope, done enough to set forth and 
 illustrate the nature of what I call the romantic element in 
 
 • [I have struck out a paragraph here in which I found that it was my own 
 geography that was in fault. i8S6.]
 
 I.] IX EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 25 
 
 our early history, I will now argue backward from the better 
 known to the less known, and endeavour to set forth the 
 nature of what I distinguish from it as the vii/thical Qlevaeni. 
 In a mythical narrative, as it appears to me, we may fairly 
 expect to find the same sort of elements of truth which we 
 find in the romantic narrative, though we are not able to test 
 the mythical narratives in the same convincing way. A 
 mythical narrative, as I hold, stands to genuine tradition in 
 the same relation in which a romantic narrative stands to 
 recorded history. If out of such a mythical narrative we 
 succeed in disentangling the element of genuine tradition, 
 we reach something which I hold to be essentially of the 
 same nature as recorded history, though infinitely inferior 
 in degree. 
 
 By mythical stories then, as distinguished from romantic 
 stories, I understand tales in which, as being placed before 
 the beginnings of recorded history, we cannot fix the re- 
 spective amounts of truth and falsehood from direct evidence. 
 In examining such stories as those with which we have just 
 been dealing, we are in a position to affirm some facts, and 
 to deny others, with as full confidence as we can affirm and 
 deny anything which does not come within the range of our 
 own personal knowledge. Much may be left doubtful, which 
 we do not venture positively either to assert or to deny ; 
 but the state of historical certainty, the possibility of con- 
 fident assertion and confident denial, is matter of constant 
 occurrence. That Eadgar married ^Ethelwald's widow we 
 may positively assert ; that Eadgar slew ^thelwald with 
 his own hand we may positively deny. That iEthelwald 
 met with a violent death, that Eadgar was godfather to a 
 son of JEthelwald and -^Ifthryth, are assertions which are 
 highly probable, aU but certain, but still assertions which 
 we do not make with perfect confidence. We know the 
 value of the evidence, internal and external, for every part 
 of the story. But when we come to a mythical tale, a tale 
 whose scene is laid in a time of which we have no recorded 
 history, we cannot test its component elements in the same
 
 26 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 way. On the mere strength of the tale itself, we may often 
 positively deny, but we can never positively affirm. The 
 furthest point that we can reach is that the internal evi- 
 dence for some statements renders them highly probable ; 
 but we cannot get beyond such probability, unless the 
 mythical statement is confirmed by external evidence of 
 some sort or other. For it must be remembered that ex- 
 ternal evidence is often to be had, even for times before 
 wiitten history ; I mean evidence of the antiquarian class 
 in its various forms, buildings, barrows, sepulchral remains, 
 philological evidence derived from language and local no- 
 menclature. All this is just as much direct evidence as 
 the statements of chronicles and charters,'^ and, compared 
 with evidence of that class, it has some advantages and 
 some disadvantages. Written evidence may, after all, not 
 be trustworthy; the author may have been misinformed, 
 or he may have wilfully perverted the truth ; or again, he 
 may be both honest and well-informed, but we may misin- 
 terpret his testimony. In the case of antiquarian evidence 
 this latter source of error is greatly increased, while the 
 former source is altogether taken away. We are more 
 liable to misunderstand the evidence supplied by a sepul- 
 chral barrow than we are to misunderstand the evidence 
 supplied by a written document ; but then the written 
 document may err or may lie, the sepulchral barrow can 
 neither err nor lie. In inquiries of this kind we must be 
 constantly on our guard against our own misinterpretations, 
 but we need stand in no fear of error or deception on the 
 part of our informants. Or again, what is an age of re- 
 corded history for one nation is an age before recorded 
 history for another, so that casual allusions in writers of 
 other nations may also be taken as conclusive external 
 evidence. The two or three references in Greek writers to 
 the mythical period of Roman history, the two or three 
 
 * Coins and inscriptions are strictly written documents, differing from 
 clironinles and charters only in their material. In fact, they go some way to 
 combine the advantages of both species of evidence.
 
 L] IN EAELY ENGLISH HISTORY. 27 
 
 references in Byzantine writers to the mythical period of 
 English history, so far as they fall in with the mythical 
 tales, form corroborative evidence for those tales. But, 
 without corroborative evidence of one or other of these 
 kinds, no statement during mythical times can get beyond 
 probability. The distinct, probable, and uncontradicted 
 statement of a contemporary chronicle we accept as certain 
 truth ; but a statement, however distinct, probable and un- 
 contradicted, relating to times before recorded history, we 
 do not accept as more than probable, unless it be confirmed 
 by some evidence of another kind. 
 
 The point then at which I part company with Mr. Grote 
 is this. Mr. Grote has done excellent service by utterly 
 upsetting the old pragmatizing way of dealing with my- 
 thical stories. No one can any longer venture, as so many 
 have done from Thucydides onwards, to take a poetical 
 tale, to strip it of its impossible elements, to turn it by an 
 arbitrary process into something which may have happened, 
 and then, without any further evidence, to give it out as 
 something which did happen. That Achilleus killed Hektor 
 by the personal help of Athene we all agree in disbe- 
 lieving; but to leave Athene out, and to give it forth as an 
 historical fact that Achilleus killed Hektor without the 
 help of Athene, is utterly unphilosophical. One statement 
 is impossible ; the other is perfectly possible ; but there is 
 no more evidence for one than for the other. Thus far I 
 heartily go along with Mr. Grote ; but I cannot go on with 
 him to say that every attempt to extract truth, or even 
 probability, from mythical stories is only time thrown 
 away. I believe that by other processes, by the processes 
 at which I have already hinted, a good deal may be re- 
 covered which is highly probable, something which is all 
 but certain. I am led to this belief by an argument from 
 analogy. I argue from the known to the unknown ; I 
 employ pur knowledge of the way in which we know 
 that romantic stories were formed, to help us to the way in 
 which it is probable that the mythical stories were formed.
 
 28 THE MYTHICAL AND BOMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 We have seen then that the makers of romantic lesjends 
 did not purely and wholly invent. There is a kernel of 
 truth at the bottom of their stories. A real action of a real 
 person is distorted, exaggerated, incrusted with all kinds of 
 fictitious details, details sometimes transferred to a wrong 
 person, or to a wrong time or place ; but we see that a real 
 action of a real person did form the groundwork, after all. 
 The Charlemagne of romance departs so utterly from the 
 Karl of history that we seem to be dealing with two different 
 persons. The actions of Charlemagne are, for the most part, 
 purely imaginary, and, when they are grounded on any real 
 actions of Karl, those actions are so perverted as to seem 
 hardly the same. The character of Charlemagne is not the 
 character of the historical Karl ; the person of Charlemagne 
 is made up by taking Karl as the groundwork, and throw- 
 ing in all kinds of elements, earlier and later. His very 
 nationality is mistaken ; the greatest of Germans has be- 
 come the national hero of a people who in his age had no 
 national speech or national being, and whose land he knew 
 only as a province of his German kingdom. Still even in 
 the legend of Charlemagne there is a groundwork of real 
 history. It preserves a memory of the time when a single 
 Emperor reigned over all Western Europe. Here is a fact 
 which we should hardly have guessed from later history, 
 but which the legend of Charlemagne preserves no less than 
 the history of Karl. Again, some of the utterly fabulous 
 exploits of Charlemagne, though they have no groundwork 
 in the history of Karl, have a groundwork in the history of 
 other people. The ally of Haroun, the political lover of 
 Eirene, never. led armies against Jerusalem or Constanti- 
 nople. But later heroes did ; and the fact that the legends 
 carry Charlemagne to Constantinople and Jerusalem would, 
 of itself, almost be enough to prove the reality of some ex- 
 peditions to those cities. When a crusade was the type of 
 heroism, when Charlemagne was the type of a hero, it was 
 assumed that so great a hero must have gone on a crusade, 
 and a crusade was accordingly invented for him. But such
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 29 
 
 an invention could have been made only in an age to which 
 real crusades were familiar ; it is therefore in itself a wit- 
 ness to the historical truth of some crusades, though not of 
 the particular crusade spoken of. Again, though doubtless 
 many of the minor actors in the legend are purely fictitious, 
 some are not. Eoland is such a pure hero of romance that 
 we might easily fancy that he never existed. But two 
 lines of Eginhard preserve to us the fact that Roland was 
 a real man, and that his famous legendary death is a very 
 easy perversion of his historical death. He did die in 
 Pyrensean warfare, though in warfare waged not against 
 Saracens, but against Gascons."^ Now it seems to me that 
 legends of this sort, which we can test by real history, give 
 us a key to the amount of truth likely to be found in those 
 legends which we cannot test in the same way. Arguing 
 from the known to the unknown, I should expect to find 
 about the same amount of truth in the legend of the Trojan 
 war which I find in the legend of Charlemagne. The legend 
 of Charlemagne, amidst infinite perversions, preserves a 
 certain groundwork of real history. I should expect to 
 find in the legend of Agamemnon a similar groundwork of 
 real history. There is of course the all-important difier- 
 ence, that we can test the one story, and that we cannot 
 test the other, by the certain evidence of contemporary 
 documents. This gives us certainty in one case, while we 
 cannot get beyond high probability in the other. But, 
 pursuing the analogy, let us see what amount of probability 
 there is in the Trojan story. Later Grecian history would 
 never lead us to believe that there had once been a single 
 dynasty reigning, if not as sovereigns, at least as suzerains, 
 over a large portion of insular and peninsular Greece. So 
 later mediseval history would never lead us to believe that 
 there had once been a Latin or Teutonic Emperor whose 
 
 * Eginhard, Vita Karoli. c. 9 : " In quo prcelio Eggihardus regise menste 
 prsepositus, Anselmus comes palatii, et Sruodlamlus Brittannici limitis prce- 
 fedus, cum aliis compluribus interficiuntur." This is, I believe, the whole of 
 the authentic history of Roland.
 
 30 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 dominions stretched from the Eider to the Ebro. But we 
 know that the Carolingian legend is thus far confirmed by 
 history; there is therefore no a priori objection to the ana- 
 logous features of the Pelopid legend. The truth is that the 
 idea of such an extensive dominion would not have occurred 
 to a later romancer, unless some real history or tradition 
 had suggested it to him. So again, without some such 
 groundwork of history or tradition, no one would have 
 fixed upon Mykene, a place utterly insignificant in later 
 history, as the capital of this extensive empire. The 
 romances have transferred the capital of Karl from Aachen 
 to Paris ; had it really been Paris, no one would have trans- 
 ferred it to Aachen. To have quartered the Bretwalda of 
 Hellas at Argos or Sparta would have been the natural 
 course of perversion ; to quarter him at Mykene could have 
 been done only under the influence of a genuine tradition. 
 And that tradition again is confirmed by those striking an- 
 tiquarian remains which show by indisputable evidence that 
 Mykene really was in early times a far more important city 
 than it appears in later history. Whether Agamemnon be 
 a real man or not, the combination of intei-nal and external 
 evidence leads us to set down the Pelopid dynasty at Mykene 
 as an established fact. Again, one can hardly doubt that 
 the war of Troy is a mythical version of some part or other 
 of the warfare which gradually Hellcnizcd the north-west 
 coast of Asia. The warfare of Agamemnon in the Troad 
 may be as imaginary as the warfare of Karl at Jerusalem, 
 because, if Agamemnon was a great traditional name, 
 legend -makers would, at a time when Grecian imagination 
 was filled by schemes of conquest in Asia, be as sure to 
 carry him thither as Karl was sure to be carried to Jeru- 
 salem. But a false crusade implies a real crusade, and 
 mythical warfare in the Troad points to that real warfare 
 there which we know, from the results of the case, must 
 have taken place. The Greek chief who conquered Lesbos 
 may, or may not, have been named Achilleus ; but some 
 Greek chief must have conquered Lesbos ; and, with the
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 31 
 
 example of a real Roland before our eyes, we may be in- 
 clined to say that the chances are stronger that he was 
 named Achilleus than that he was not. I could mention 
 many other portions of the Trojan story which seem to me 
 to have such a measure of evidence, internal or external, as 
 to enable us to set them down as, if not certain, at least 
 probable in a very high degree. But I hope to discuss the 
 matter more at length in another work ; at present I have 
 only referred to the main outline of one of the most familiar 
 of mythical narratives in order to show the sort of amount 
 and kind of truth which we are likely to find in any 
 mythical narrative. 
 
 The truth, as it appears to me, is that the difference 
 between romantic and mythical narratives, as I defined 
 them at starting, is simply a difference in the degree of our 
 knowledge of them, not a difference in the nature of the 
 tales themselves. We can test the one class in detail, and 
 we cannot so test the other ; but each class seems really to 
 consist of exactly the same elements. In both alike there 
 is an element of truth and an element of imagination. A 
 romantic narrative we can commonly compare with an 
 historical narrative of the same event, and we can thereby 
 disentangle the several elements of which it is made up. 
 So, in dealing with a mythical narrative, if we can, by any 
 sort of evidence, external or internal, distinguish the ele- 
 ment of genuine tradition from the poetical or imaginative 
 element, we are doing what is virtually the same thing. 
 We are too often apt to confound these two elements in a 
 mythical story, and to forget that tradition is really a means 
 of information essentially of the same kind as history. 
 Each alike intends or professes to hand down a true state- 
 ment of facts ; only one works with a very imperfect in- 
 strument, the other with a much more perfect one. History, 
 in short, is written tradition, and tradition is oral history. 
 History and tradition, as having the same object, the pre- 
 servation of a true account of past times, form one class, as 
 opposed to mere poetical or romantic tales to which the
 
 32 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 truth or falsehood of statements is indifferent. The differ- 
 ence between such tales and either history or tradition is a 
 difference of kind, while the difference between history and 
 tradition themselves is only a difference of degree. Tradi- 
 tion has the same objects as history, but it is a much ruder 
 instrument for attaining those objects. It is far more open 
 to corruption, both accidental and wilful ; it is far more 
 liable to be mixed up with mythical or romantic additions. 
 In many cases it exists only in combination with such ad- 
 ditions, and it has to be disentangled from them how it can, 
 while history commonly exists in an independent and 
 parallel shape. It is therefore by no means so easy to 
 get at genuine tradition as to get at genuine history, and, 
 when we have got at it, it is by no means worthy of the 
 same undoubting acceptance. In short, its inferiority in 
 degree as compared with history is almost infinite ; all that 
 I assert is the absolute identity in kind of the two sources 
 of information. The oral statement of an eyewitness is as 
 trustworthy as his written statement ; the only difference 
 is that the oral statement is much more likely to be cor- 
 rupted by the various mouths through which it afterwards 
 passes. But such a statement, however much corrupted, 
 still differs in kind from the mere romantic tale. The dis- 
 tinction was observed long ago by Herodotus, who remarks 
 on the widely different versions as to certain points in the 
 half-mythical history of Peloponnesos, as they were told in 
 the songs of the poets and as they were told in the native 
 traditions of Sparta.^ 
 
 To get then at genuine tradition is a difficult matter; 
 and the genuine tradition, when it is got at, is only a very 
 imperfect form of history. Still I maintain that it is an 
 imperfect form of history, and that, as such, it is entitled to 
 a certain measure of respect. But to entitle it to such 
 respect it must be genuine tradition. It must not be a 
 romantic legend cut down into prose. It must not be 
 
 * Herod, vi. 52 : Kaict^aifjLuvioi yap, u/xoKoyfouTfs ovBfyl iroitjTfi, Ktyovat. 
 ic. T. A.
 
 I.] 7.y EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 33 
 
 later inference or invention or imitation. For instance, I 
 look on the War of Thebes, the War of Troy, the Dorian 
 Migration, as all pieces of genuine tradition, as far as 
 concerns the essence of the story, however mythical every 
 detail may be. The first of the three is cast so far back 
 into mythical darkness that we cannot accept a single 
 detail, so far back that even for the main story there is only 
 the faintest shadow of probability. In the War of Troy we 
 can discern the historical event of which the story is a 
 legendary representation ; and we here and there meet with 
 details which are capable of such an amount of corrobora- 
 tion of one kind or another as to clothe them with the 
 highest degree of probability. The Dorian Migration is all 
 but historical, and the most sceptical historians admit the 
 main story as true. Doubtless in all three the mythical or 
 romantic element is very strong ; but then that element 
 lives on to a much later stage of Grecian history, and is by 
 no means wanting even in the narrative of the Persian 
 War.'^ On the other hand, tales about Keki-ops coming 
 from Egypt are not traditions, or even myths, but inferences 
 from a theory. The legend of Aineias coming into Italy is, 
 as far as we can see, a bit of genuine tradition ; that is, 
 there seems no ground for supposing it to be mere inference 
 or invention. But it must be an inaccurate tradition, 
 because it contradicts another tradition which has strong 
 corroborative evidence.f But the catalogue of Alban kings 
 in Livy is pure invention. It is made up to cover over 
 a chronological difficulty which showed itself when men 
 began to affix dates to the legends. The elder story made 
 Aineias the father or grandfather of Romulus. Put when 
 the fall of Troy got a date, and when the foundation 
 
 * See Cox's Tale of the Great Persian War, p. 112. 
 
 •f- I refer to the passages in Homer which distinctly speak of an Aineiad 
 dynasty as reining in the Troad, and which have been often quoted to show 
 that a dynasty descended, or claiming to be descended, from Aineias, was 
 actually reit;ning there in the time of the poet. To me this inference seems as 
 certain as any mere inference can be. See Iliad, xx. 307. Cf. Hymn to 
 Aphrodite, 197, 198. 
 
 D
 
 31 rilE MYTHICAL AXD ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 of Rome got a date, it was seen that the founder of Rome 
 could not, according to the received chronology, be the son 
 or grandson of a fugitive from Troy. A series of names 
 was therefore invented to fill up the gap. So the whole 
 series of Attic legends is full of mere invention of this kind. 
 So again, while the Trojan origin of Rome is apparently a 
 genuine tradition, the Trojan origin of Briton and Frank is 
 mere imitative invention. A Trojan descent was the right 
 thing for a distinguished nation, and it was invented accord- 
 ingly, just as pedigree-mongers nowadays invent pedigrees, 
 Norman,Welsh,or Scotch, according to taste. Human nature 
 and human vanity are the same in all times and places, and 
 rubbish of this sort, however ancient, must be carefully 
 distinguished from those orenuine traditions which are an 
 inferior form of history. 
 
 Again, I must here repeat a remark with which I started, 
 namely, that I draw a much wider distinction than the 
 Comparative Mythologists seem disposed to allow between 
 theological and historical myths. Legends of the gods and 
 legends of the heroes undoubtedly run into one another in 
 such a way that it is not always easy to draw an accurate 
 line between them. Still the two things are essentially 
 distinct. Tales about Zeus and Woden, and tales about 
 Achilleus and Hengest, seem to me to be altogether different 
 in kind. The former class are theological, physical, what 
 we please, anything but historical. The latter have at least 
 the form of history, and it is worth inquiring in each case 
 whether they contain any measure of its substance. The 
 doctrines of all religions must largely take the form of 
 facts ; but purely theological facts, true or false, do not 
 come within the range of history, and they are seldom 
 capable of historical proof or disproof That Zeus deposed 
 his father Kronos, that Loki brought about the death of 
 Balder, arc propositions altogether beyond the range of 
 history ; their examination belongs to another science. 
 But that Achilleus conquered Lesbos and Hypoplakian 
 Thebes, that Hengest and Horsa founded the first Euglish
 
 I.] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 35 
 
 kingdom in Britain, are propositions essentially of the same 
 class as the propositions that Henry the Fifth conquered at 
 Agincourt and that Edward the First massacred the Welsh 
 bards. Of these last propositions we know one to be true 
 and the other to be false. The propositions about Achil- 
 leus and Hengest we cannot so undoubtingly accept or 
 reject ; but the difference is not in the nature of the propo- 
 sitions themselves, but in the difference of our means of 
 testing them. But the strictly theological propositions of 
 either a true or a false religion we deal with in a dif- 
 ferent way. In the words of Scripture, we walk in the 
 one case by faith (or its opposite), in the other case by 
 sight. 
 
 I have but little space left to illustrate, in the purely 
 mythical history of England, the principles of mythical 
 interpretation which I have been trying to lay down. But 
 take, for instance, the story of Hengest. As there is an 
 historical Eadgar and a romantic Eadgar, so is there a 
 traditional Hengest and a mythical Hengest. The personal 
 existence of Hengest is doubtful ; that is to say, it is 
 doubtful whether the founder of the Kentish kingdom bore 
 the name of Hengest.* The name has a mythical air ; but 
 as men have been called Wolf and Bear and Lion, a man 
 may also have been called Horse. The name may be 
 merely a mythical expression of the national standard, or 
 a chieftain may really have been called after the national 
 standard. Hengest again is undoubtedly a mythical hero, 
 and the different versions of his origin and exploits cannot 
 be made to agree. But it is possible, on the one hand, that 
 a real conqueror of Kent may have become a hero of 
 Teutonic minstrelsy, and may thus have gathered a mythical 
 reputation round him ; it is possible, on the other hand, 
 that the conquest of Kent may have been mythically 
 attributed to a favourite hero of legend. All this is utterly 
 doubtful. But beyond this we get matter which we can 
 much more positively accept and much more positively 
 
 [* I now see no reason to doubt the real existence of Hengest.] 
 D 2
 
 36 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 deny. That about the time when Hengest is said to have 
 lived, certain Teutonic conquerors began — most undoubt- 
 edly not the first Teutonic incursion into Britain, possibly 
 not the first Teutonic settlement in Britain — but the first 
 pure and self-existent Teutonic kingdom, the first Teutonic 
 settlement after the Roman power was withdrawn, the first 
 Teutonic settlement which involved, whether by extirpation 
 or assimilation, the utter driving out of the earlier British 
 and Roman elements — all this is not indeed directly proved 
 by contemporary evidence, but it is asserted by an evidently 
 genuine tradition, and it is borne out by all the later 
 phaenomena of English history. The Chronicles give us a 
 narrative which is, in the main, perfectly credible, and most 
 of which is evidently genuine tradition — tradition, it may 
 be, assisted by some rude artificial helps to memory, such 
 as have existed among many nations. The invitation of 
 Vortigern looks as if it had come in from a Welsh source ; 
 but even here there is nothinsf incredible in the main tale 
 itself; it only wants evidence. A British prince, like a 
 Roman Emperor or an Abbasside Caliph, may have taken 
 barbarian mercenaries into his pay ; they may have turned 
 against him, and may have invited fresh hordes of their 
 brethren. But the details of this story, as given in one 
 version of the Chronicles, are certainly mythical, and though 
 the main story itself is possible, yet I suspect that the whole 
 tale is a bit of Welsh romance which has found its way into 
 the English Chronicles. But what follows, namely the 
 meagre details of the conquest of Kent, is surely genuine 
 tradition, and it is, allowing perhaps for an artificial com- 
 putation of years, as trustworthy as any tradition can be. 
 The Chronicles confine the conquest of Hengest to Kent, 
 and they give us nothing but what is credible and probable. 
 But in Nennius we begin to get mythical details which are 
 unknown in the earlier version ; Hengest's daughter,* for 
 
 * Is it possible, however, that even in this wihl story an element of truth 
 may lurk ? In most tales the stranger marries the daughter of the native 
 prince; here the native prince mairies the daughter of the stranger. Does
 
 I.J IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 37 
 
 instance, is now introduced, though her name of Rowena"^ 
 is as yet unheard of. When we come to Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth we get a whole tissue of pure myth, working in all 
 kinds of wonders and stereotyped fables, till there arises a 
 mythical Hengest as different from the traditional Hengest 
 as the romantic Charlemagne is from the historical Karl. 
 
 Yet it is worth notice that, even among these tales, a bit 
 of probable history peeps out. Nennius, like our own 
 Chronicles, confines Hengest himself to Kent ; but he makes 
 two chieftains of his house, Octha and Ebissa, conquer and 
 settle far to the north, on the confines of the Picts. We find 
 nothing of this in the Chronicles, nor is there any entry at 
 all about the North of England till, in 547, the accession of 
 Ida the Angle to the Northumbrian crown is recorded. It 
 is the first recorded Northumbrian event, but it is recorded 
 in a way which shows that Ida, though the founder of the 
 subsequent Northumbrian kingdom, was not the first Teutonic 
 settler in that part of Britain. This earlier settlement of 
 Octha and Ebissa just fills up the gap, and fills it up in the 
 most unsuspicious way. It appears again in a somewhat 
 different, but perfectly probable, form in William of Malmes- 
 bury and Henry of Huntingdon. They make Ida the first 
 King of the Northumbrians, the settlement having been 
 originally made by chiefs who took no higher title than 
 that of Ealdormen. And if we can suppose a distinctively 
 Saxon settlement in the north, before the establishment of 
 Ida and his Angles, one or two points in the later history of 
 Northumberland would be cleared up. Hengest indeed and 
 his followers are not called Saxons, but Jutes : but I suspect 
 that the ethnical connexion between Jutes and Saxons was 
 closer than that between either and the Angles. 
 
 not this typify the probable fact that the English settlers, to a great extent at 
 least, bfought their women with them, in short, that our settlement in Britain 
 was a strictly national migration ? [The researches of Dr. Eolleston have set 
 this matter beyond doubt. He has seen our Teutonic grandmothers.] [1872] 
 
 * It is amusing to find this purely fictitious name, which is nowhere found 
 in real history, assumed by novelists and newspaper-writers as the typical name 
 of an Englishwoman before the Norman Conquest.
 
 38 TUE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay 
 
 The mythical history of England, that namely which we 
 have no direct means of testing, lasts down to the conversion 
 of the English to Christianity, about one hundred and fifty 
 years after the time assigned to Hengest. But I can call it 
 mythical only in the sense that it does not, as far as we 
 know, rest on contemporary written evidence. Some names 
 and dates may be doubtful, but I have no doubt that the 
 main story represents a genuine and trustworthy tradi- 
 tion, perhaps, as I before hinted, assisted by some means of 
 artificial memory. The more the details of the story are 
 examined by antiquarian and philological tests, the more 
 clearly does the general truth of the narrative come out. 
 No doubt we have here the great advantage that we are 
 dealing with the very last stage of a mythical period, when 
 the first twilight of proper history is beginning to dawn. 
 We are dealing with a period analogous, not to the War 
 of Thebes, or even to the War of Troy, but to the Dorian 
 Migration and the Wars of Messene. When I find that the 
 boundary of my own parish and my own property coin- 
 cides, after thirteen hundred years, with the boundary 
 assigned by two independent inquirers,^ following two 
 distinct lines of investigation, to the conquests of the 
 West-Saxon Ceawlin in 577, I cannot say that I find 
 myself inclined to the over-sceptical way of judging of 
 these matters. 
 
 Once more, in all these inquiries our one object is truth — 
 truth to be sought after at all hazards, at whatever sacrifice 
 of preconceived opinions, whether they take the form of per- 
 sonal theories or of national prejudices. Historical criticism 
 requires us to give up many^ beliefs to which we are naturally 
 attached, but it in no way interferes with our artistic enjoy- 
 ment of romantic stories, and it gives us, above all things, 
 the one jewel — truth. And happily, in early English history 
 at least, the substitution of history for legend almost always 
 tends to exalt instead of to depreciate the ancient heroes of 
 our land. It is something to find in real history that iElfred 
 * Dr. Guest and the late Rev. Francis Warre.
 
 I.] IS EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 39 
 
 was as great and good, and that most of his successors were 
 greater and better than they appear in legend. It is some- 
 thing to find, as we do iSnd, in the pages of real history, 
 that ^thelstan was not a fratricide ; that Eadgar was not 
 one of the basest of murderers ; that God wine was a patriot 
 and not a traitor; that Harold was no usurper, but the 
 noblest of Englishmen, the true choice of every English 
 heart ; it is something to find elements of greatness and 
 even of goodness in the awful portrait of his mighty rival ; 
 to see in Henry of Anjou and in Thomas of Canterbury 
 men both of whom had a zeal for God, though it was for 
 God alone to say whose zeal was according to knowledge ; ^ 
 to see in Simon of Montfort no selfish and crafty rebel, but 
 the combined saint and hero and statesman to whom we 
 owe our freedom ; to see in the great Edward no reckJess 
 invader of other men's rights, but the wise and just and 
 merciful assertor of his own. For truths like these it is 
 worth while to surrender a few pleasant fables ; but on the 
 other hand, we must beware lest sound criticism degenerate 
 into indiscriminate scepticism. We have seen, I think, that 
 the probability is in favour of any mythical narrative being 
 founded on a groundwork of truth. To distinguish truth 
 and falsehood amid such darkness needs great caution, and 
 a constant check upon the temptation of fancy. But I 
 believe that the task is not impossible, and that antiquarian 
 and philological research opens to us the means of testing 
 many a tale which at first sight appears to be hopelessly 
 beyond our power of examining, and of showing that much 
 which appears to be the merest fiction, may really contain 
 no small element of genuine truth. 
 
 * I borrow the expression of Thomas's friend and biographer, Herbert of 
 Eosham : "Certo enim certiiis quod uterque Dei habuerit semulationem, unus 
 pro populo, alter vero pro clero; utrius tainen eorum fuerit cum scientia zelus, 
 non hominis qui cito fallitur, sed scientiarum Domini qui in fine declarabit 
 judicium." Vita S. Thoma9, iii. 18 (p. 109, Giles). The whole passage, from 
 which I have made only a short extract, is very remarkable.
 
 40 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 II. 
 
 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY * 
 
 A COMPARISON between the histories of England, France, 
 and Germany, as regards their political developement. 
 would be a subject well worth working out in detail. 
 Each country started with much that was common to all 
 three, while the separate course of each has been wholly 
 different. The distinctive character of English history is 
 its continuity. No broad gap separates the present from 
 the past. If there is any point at which a line between 
 the present and the past is to be drawn, it is at all events 
 not to be drawn at the point where a superficial glance 
 might perhaps induce us to draw it, at the Norman in- 
 vasion in 1066. At first sight that event might seem to 
 separate us from all before it in a way to which there is 
 no analogy in the history either of our own or of kindred 
 lands. Neither France nor Germany ever saw any event 
 to be compared to the Norman Conquest. Neither of them 
 has ever received a permanent dynasty of foreign kings ; 
 neither has seen its lands divided among the soldiers of 
 a foreign army, and its native sons shut out from every 
 position of wealth or dignity. England, alone of the three, 
 has undergone a real and permanent foreign conquest. 
 One might have expected that the greatest of all possible 
 historical chasms would have divided the ages before and 
 the ages after such an event. Yet in truth modern England 
 has practically far more to do with the England of the 
 
 * [This was originally a review of Dr. Vanghan's work called Revolutions 
 in English History, and the former part of the article consisted mainly of minute 
 criticism on the book. I'.ut the latter part was of more general interest, and 
 Beemed worth j)reserving. ]
 
 II.] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 41 
 
 West-Saxon kings than modern France or Germany has to 
 do with the Gaul and Germany of Charles the Great, or 
 even of much more recent times. The England of the age 
 before the Norman Conquest is indeed, in all external 
 respects, widely removed from us. But the England of 
 the age immediately succeeding the Norman Conquest is 
 something more widely removed still. The age when 
 Englishmen dwelt in their own land as a conquered race, 
 when England was counted for little more than an acces- 
 sion of power to the Duke of Rouen in his struggle with 
 the Kinof of Paris, is an age than which we can conceive 
 none more alien to every feeling and circumstance of our 
 own. When then did the England in which we still live 
 and move have its beginning"? Where are we to draw 
 the broad line, if any line is to be drawn, between the 
 present and the past? We answer in the great creative 
 and destructive age of Europe and of civilized Asia — the 
 thirteenth century. The England of Richard Cceur-de- 
 Lion is an England which is past for ever ; but the England 
 of Edward the First is essentially the still living England 
 in which we have our own being. Up to the thirteenth 
 century our history is the domain of antiquaries ; from 
 that point it becomes the domain of lawyers. A law of 
 King j3£lfred's Witenagemot is a valuable link in the chain 
 of our political progress, but it could not have been alleged 
 as any legal authority by the accusers of Strafford or the 
 defenders of the Seven Bishops. A statute of Edward the 
 First is quite another matter. Unless it can be shown to 
 have been repealed by some later statute, it is just as good 
 to this day as a statute of Queen Victoria. In the earlier 
 period we may indeed trace the rudiments of our laws, our 
 language, our political institutions ; but from the thirteenth 
 century onwards we see the things themselves, in that very 
 essence which we all agree in wishing to retain, though 
 successive generations have wrought improvement in many 
 points of detail and may have left many others capable of 
 further improvement still. Let us illustrate our meaning
 
 42 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 by the greatest of all examples. Since the first Teutonic 
 settlers landed on her shores, England has never known 
 full and complete submission to the will of a single man. 
 Some assembly, Witenagem6t, Great Council, or Parliament, 
 there has always been, capable of checking the caprices of 
 tyrants and of speaking, with more or less of right, in 
 the name of the nation. From Heufvest to Victoria Eno-- 
 land has always had what we may fairly call a parliament- 
 ary constitution. Normans, Tudors, and Stewarts might 
 suspend or weaken it, but they could not wholly sweep 
 it away. Our Old-English Witenagemdts, our Norman 
 Great Councils, are matters of antiquarian research, whose 
 exact constitution it puzzles our best antiquaries fully to 
 explain. But from the thirteenth century onwards we 
 have a veritable Parliament, essentially as we see it before 
 our own eyes. In the course of the fourteenth century 
 every fundamental constitutional principle became fully 
 recognized. The best worthies of the seventeenth century 
 struggled, not for the establishment of anything new, but 
 for the preservation of what even then was already old. 
 It is on the Great Charter that we still rest the foundation 
 of all our rights. And no later parliamentary reformer has 
 ever wrought or proposed so vast a change as when Simon 
 of Montfort, by a single writ, conferred their parliamentary 
 being upon the cities and boroughs of England. 
 
 This continuity of English history from the very beginning 
 is a point which cannot be too strongly insisted on, but it 
 is its special continuity from the thirteenth century onwards 
 which forms the most instructive part of the comparison 
 between English history and the history of Germany and 
 France. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the many 
 small Teutonic kingdoms in Britain had grown into the 
 one Teutonic kingdom of England, rich in her barbaric 
 greatness and barbaric freedom, with the germs, but as yet 
 only the germs, of every institution which we most dearly 
 prize. At the close of the thirteenth century we see the 
 England with which we are still familiar, young indeed
 
 IL] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 43 
 
 and tender, but still possessing more than the germs, the 
 very things themselves. She has already King, Lords, and 
 Commons ; she has a King, mighty indeed and honoured, 
 but who may neither ordain laws nor impose taxes against 
 the will of his people. She has Lords with high hereditary 
 powers, but Lords who are still only the foremost rank of 
 the people, whose children sink into the general mass of 
 Englishmen, and into whose order any Englishman may 
 be raised. She has a Commons still diffident in the exer- 
 cise of new-born rights : but a Commons whose constitution 
 and whose powers we have altered only by gradual changes 
 of detail ; a Commons which, if they sometimes shrank 
 from hard questions of state, were at least resolved that 
 no man should take their money without their leave. 
 The courts of justice, the great offices of state, the chief 
 features of local administration, have assumed, or are 
 rapidly assuming, the form whose essential character they 
 still retain. The struggle with Papal Rome has already 
 begun ; doctrines and ceremonies indeed remain as yet 
 unchallenged, but statute after statute is passed to restrain 
 the abuses and exactions of the ever hateful Roman court. 
 The great middle class of England is rapidly forming ; 
 a middle class not, as elsewhere, confined to a few great 
 cities, but spread, in the form of a lesser gentry and a 
 wealthy yeomanry, over the whole face of the land. 
 Villainage still exists, but both law and custom are paving 
 the way for that gradual and silent extinction of it, which, 
 without any formal abolition of the legal stains, left, three 
 centuries later, not a legal villain among us. With this 
 exception, there was in theory equal law for all classes, 
 and imperfectly as the theoiy may have been carried out, 
 it was at least far less imperfectly than in any other king- 
 dom. Our language was fast taking its present shape ; 
 English, in the main intelligible at the present day, was 
 the speech of the mass of the people, and it was soon to 
 drive out French from the halls of princes and nobles. 
 England, at the end of the century, is, for the first time
 
 44 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 since the Conquest, ruled by a prince bearing a purely 
 Euglish name, and following a purely English policy. 
 Edward the First was no doubt as despotic as he could be 
 or dared to be ; so was every prince of those days who 
 could not practise the superhuman righteousness of Saint 
 Lewis. But he ruled over a people who knew how to 
 keep even his despotism within bounds. The legislator 
 of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems 
 truly like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus sitting 
 once more on the throne of Cerdic and of iElfred. The 
 modern English nation is now fully formed ; it stands 
 ready for those struggles for French dominion in the two 
 following centuries, which, utterly unjust and fruitless as 
 they W'Cre, still proved indirectly the confirmation of our 
 liberties at home, and which for ever fixed the national 
 character for good and for evil. 
 
 Let us here sketch out a comparison between the history 
 and institutions of England and those of France and Ger- 
 many. As we before said, our modern Parliament is traced 
 up in an unbroken lino to the early Great Council, and 
 to the still earlier Witenagemot. The later institution? 
 widely different as it is from the earlier, has not been 
 substituted for the earlier, but has grown out of it. It 
 would be ludicrous to look for any such continuity be- 
 tween the Diet of ambassadors which meets at Frankfurt * 
 and the assemblies which met to obey Henry the Third 
 and to depose Henry the Fourth. And how stands the 
 case in France 1 France has tidied cojistitutional govern- 
 ment in all its shapes ; in its old Teutonic, in its mediaeval, 
 and in all its modern forms — Kings with one Chamber 
 and Kings with two. Republics without Presidents and 
 Republics with. Conventions, Directories, Consulates, and 
 Empires. All of these have been separate experiments ; 
 all have failed ; there is no historical continuity between 
 any of them. Charles the Great gathered his Great Council 
 
 * [That this Diet has since given way to Komething wliolly different is only 
 a further instance of the distinction.] [1872]
 
 II.] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 45 
 
 around him year by year ; his successors in the Eastern 
 Francia, the Kings of the Teutonic Kingdom, went on 
 doinsf so long: afterwards. But in Gaul, in Western Francia, 
 after it fell away from the common centre, no such as- 
 sembly could be gathered together. The kingdom split 
 into fragments ; every province did what was right in its 
 own eyes ; Aquitaine and Toulouse had neither fear nor 
 love enough for their nominal King to contribute any 
 members to a council of his summoning. Philip the Fair, 
 for his own convenience, summoned the States-General. 
 But the States-General were no historical continuation 
 of the old Frankish assemblies ; they were a new institu- 
 tion of his own, devised, it may be, in imitation of the 
 English Parliament or of the Spanish Cortes. From that 
 time the French States -General ran a brilliant and a fitful 
 course. Very different indeed were they from the homely 
 Parliaments of England. Our stout knights and citizens 
 were altogether guiltless of political theories. They had 
 no longing after great and comprehensive measures. But 
 if they saw any practical abuses in the land, the King 
 could get no money out of them till he set matters right 
 again. If they saw a bad law, they demanded its altera- 
 tion: if they saw a wicked minister, they demanded his 
 dismissal. It is this sort of bit-by-bit reform, going on 
 for six hundred years, which has saved us alike from 
 magnificent theories and from massacres in the cause of 
 humanity. Both were as familiar in France in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries as ever they were in the 
 last years of the eighteenth. The demands of the States- 
 General, and of what we may call the liberal party in 
 France generally, throughout those two centuries, are as 
 wide in their extent, and as neatly expressed, as any 
 modern constitution from 1791 to 1848. But while the 
 English Parliament, meeting year after year, made almost 
 every year some small addition or other to the mass of 
 our liberties, the States-General, meeting only now and 
 then, effected nothing lasting, and gradually sank into as
 
 46 THE COyriXriTY OF EXGLISH HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 complete disuse as the old Frankish Assemblies. By the 
 time of the revolution of 17H9, their constitution and 
 mode of proceeding had become matters of antiquarian 
 curiosity. Of later attempts, National Assemblies, Na- 
 tional Conventions, Chambers of Deputies,* we need not 
 speak. They have risen and they have fallen, while the 
 House of Lords and the House of Commons have gone on 
 undisturbed. 
 
 And as with the parliamentary constitution, so it is 
 with all our lesser institutions. There is hardly a title or 
 ofhce, from a Lord-Chancellor to a Head-borough, which 
 does not reach back at least to Edward the First, while 
 not a few reach back to Alfred and Hengest. What 
 would Pliilip the Fair have understood by a Prefect of 
 a Department or by a Minister of Public Instruction? 
 But Edward the First corresponded with the Sheriffs of 
 his counties, with the Mayor and Aldermen of his capital, 
 exactly like our present Sovereign. Elsewhere the ad- 
 visers of the Crown bear some title which at once bespeaks 
 their modern origin. Here in England they are some- 
 times the shadows, sometimes the realities, of some great 
 medipeval office. On the other side of the Channel, the 
 Minister bears his portfolio, here the Secretary bears his 
 seal. Look again at our local divisions. Save for the 
 formation of the Welsh counties, the map of England 
 under Victoria differs but little from the map of England 
 under William the Conqueror, we might almost say from 
 the map of England under Eadward the Elder. Of the 
 Old-English kingdoms, several still survive as counties, 
 some of them with their boundaries absolutely unchanged. 
 Nearly all our shires date at least from the tenth century, 
 many of them date from the very beginning of the English 
 Conquest. t But a map of France or Germany sixty or 
 
 * [Here again events which have happened since the essay wus written 
 supply further inwtances of this position.] [1872] 
 
 •|- [I have exjilained tlie distinction in this respect between the shires of 
 Mercia and of Wessex, in the History of the Norman Conquest, vol. i. p. 561, 
 ed. 2.] [1872]
 
 II.] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 47 
 
 seventy* years old is already well nigh useless ; one show- 
 ing those countries as they stood under Frederick Bar- 
 barossa or Lewis the Seventh looks like the map of 
 another region. Normandy, Burgundy, Guienne, are gone 
 — cut up into departments which we suppose only their 
 own Prefects can undertake to remember. In the other 
 of the two old Frankish realms, where are the old Five 
 Nations ? where are the comparatively modern Seven 
 Electors? Franconia, Saxony, Lorraine, Bavaria, and 
 Swabia, have either vauished from the map, or they have 
 so changed their shapes and boundaries that no man would 
 know them for the same. In everything, in laws, in 
 institutions, in local divisions, France and Germany have 
 been alike lands of change, England is pre-eminently the 
 land of permanence. 
 
 But, though the characteristics of English History are 
 thus throughout combined permanence and progress, yet 
 we cannot deny that there are occasional periods of at 
 least apparent falling back. We say apparent, because 
 it may be doubted whether there has been any period 
 which has proved to be such in the long run. One such 
 period we have already seen ; the period of Norman 
 oppression comes between the days of England's earlier 
 and later freedom. Yet even during that gloomy twelfth 
 century that silent union of the two nations was going 
 on without which Enoiand could never have beheld the 
 glorious events of the thirteenth. At a later period, the 
 fifteenth century is a time of distinct degeneracy. Some 
 good laws were made, some good precedents were estab- 
 lished ; but on the whole, the Parliaments of the fifteenth 
 century were less liberal and independent bodies than 
 those of the fourteenth. One of them formally legalized 
 religious persecution ; another stands alone in English 
 history in passing a counter-reform bill. The county 
 franchise was restricted to those freeholders whose pos- 
 sessions reached the amount of forty shillings yearly. 
 
 * [One is now tempted to say " six or seven."] [1872J
 
 48 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 Considering the value of money at the time, this must have 
 been a measure of extraordinary exclusiveness, such as 
 the most conservative of statesmen would not have dreamed 
 of for some generations past. The later Parliaments of 
 this century exhibit the most utter subserviency to the 
 powers which are uppermost for the moment; we feel 
 that we are fast drawing near to the Elysian epoch of 
 Mr. Froude. Again, the war with France has sunk into 
 a mere struggle for an unjust dominion, and is succeeded 
 by fierce and purposeless civil wars at home. The personal 
 and dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century excite 
 a sort of feeling of disgust when compared with the great 
 struggles of principle either of the thirteenth century or 
 of the seventeenth. Yet there is a bright side even to the 
 fifteenth century. That age, looked at alone, may be 
 thought to have gone back, but in the long run, it has, 
 like other ages, contributed to our general progress. The 
 developement of the popular power in the seventeenth 
 century required the previous breaking-down of the old 
 feudal nobility. The general harmony between the two 
 Houses of Parliament, from their very beginning, has been 
 something wonderful ; but it is evident that, till the old 
 nobles were got out of the way, the House of Commons 
 could never become the real ruling body. And the par- 
 ticular way in which they were got rid of hindered any 
 open breach between the mass of the people and a peerage 
 which was really the first rank among themselves. The 
 Norman nobility were not overthrown by any popular 
 movement ; they were cut down by each other's swords 
 at Towton and Barnet, or were reserved to fall beneath 
 the axe of Henry. The Tudor despotism, like the Norman 
 despotism, served to shelter and preserve the elements of 
 liberty through a period of transition. And, if the Par- 
 liaments of the later Plantagenet a^ra were less independent 
 than their predecessors, we see, both then and in the Tudor 
 age, abundant evidence that the importance of Parliament 
 was becoming more and more fully recognized. The very
 
 II.] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 49 
 
 act which narrowed the elective franchise shows that the 
 elective franchise was a thing valued and sought after, 
 that it was no longer felt as a burthen, as it often was 
 in earlier times. Late in the fifteenth century, as the 
 Paston Letters show, the position of a borough member 
 had risen sufficiently to be an object of ambition to men 
 of birth and landed property. In the Tudor age, we come 
 to direct government interference at elections, and to the 
 creation of insignificant boroughs on purpose to secure 
 members in the interest of the Crown. Violent and cor- 
 rupt as were these stretches of power, they still show 
 the advancing importance of the body about whose com- 
 position so much care was taken. And palpably unjust 
 as were the French wars of this age, they were more dis- 
 tinctly national wars, waged for the national glory. Edward 
 the Third, as a French prince, claimed the crown of France ; 
 his son reigned at Bordeaux as Prince of Aquitaine. But 
 Henry the Fifth, as a King of England, obtained a treaty 
 which made the crown of France an appendage to the 
 crown of England. Doubtless England, by grasping at 
 the French crown, lost her own Aquitanian coronet, but 
 that very loss rendered her still more insular and national, 
 and it is clear that all traces of the old Norman feeling 
 must have utterly died out in the breasts of the men who 
 strove to make France a province of England. 
 
 In the ecclesiastical aspect of the fifteenth century we see 
 the same mixture of advance and retrogression. The Church 
 of the fifteenth century was scandalously corrupt; both doc- 
 trinal and practical abuses had reached their highest pitch. 
 The prelates of that day were, at all events in their pro- 
 fessional aspect, men very inferior to their predecessors. 
 They had sunk into mere secular statesmen, members of 
 noble families who preferred the crosier to the sword, and 
 whose ecclesiastical advancement was owing to their birth 
 or their worldly services. The fifteenth century supplies 
 us with none of the saints, heroes, and patriots of the 
 Church, none of the Anselms and Beckets, the Langtons and 
 
 E
 
 50 THE CON TIN U IT Y OF EXGLISII HISTORY. [Essay 
 
 Grossetestes. of former times. Chichele was one of the best 
 prelates of that day, and he certainly owed his promotion 
 to merit in his own calling. But even Chichele was not 
 ashamed to promote an unjust war, in order to draw off the 
 attention of the King and the nation from the overgrown 
 wealth of the Church. But, on the other hand, even this 
 degradation of the Church is not without its good side also. 
 The Church is no longer antagonistic to the State; the 
 clergy have become citizens like other men. 
 
 We have thus tried to trace the outward sequence of 
 cause and effect through a considerable portion of history. 
 This outward sequence is all that we can profess to trace 
 out. We cannot submit the pluenomena of English history, 
 its course at home or its points of difference from that of 
 other nations, to any grand scientific law. If we are asked 
 for the causes of the contrast between the steady course of 
 freedom in England and its fitful rises and falls in France, 
 we have no universal formula of explanation. We can only 
 say that the causes are many and various ; and some of 
 those which we should assign are perhaps rather of an old- 
 fashioned kind. We confess that we are not up to the last 
 lights of the age ; we have not graduated in the school of 
 Mr. Buckle. We still retain our faith in the existence and 
 the free-will both of God and of man. National character, 
 geographical position, earlier historical events, have had 
 much to do with the difference ; but we believe that the 
 personal character of individual men, and the happy 
 thought, or happy accident, of some particular enactment 
 has often had quite as much to do with it as any of them. 
 No one single cause has more effectually and more bene- 
 ficially influenced our whole political developement than 
 the law or custom which gives to the children of a peer no 
 higher legal dattis than that of simple commoners. This 
 alone has allowed us to retain the institution of a hereditary 
 peerage, while it has delivered us from the curse of a 
 nobility of the continental sort, forming a distinct caste 
 from the rest of the people. Yet no one can tell the date,
 
 II] THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 51 
 
 the author, or the cause, of this all- important rule. Again, 
 we do not believe that men like William the Conqueror 
 and Edward the First were mere walking automata. Their 
 personal will, their personal genius, did influence men and 
 things, let philosophers say what they please. Of these 
 several classes of causes we have only space to point out 
 a few of the most important. None, we think, has had 
 greater influence than the fact that we Englishmen live in 
 an island, and have always moved in a sort of world of our 
 own. This, combined with the exterminating character of 
 the first Teutonic settlements, made England, in the days 
 of its earliest independence, a more purely Teutonic country 
 than even Germany itself. And even the Norman Con- 
 quest, which seemed to destroy the old Teutonic life of the 
 nation, in truth only strengthened it. To the Norman 
 Conquest, more than to any other event, we owe the new 
 biith of freedom two centuries later. It gave the finishing 
 stroke to that process of union which had been going on 
 ever since the days of Ecgberht. England now for ever 
 became one kingdom. For a moment she became the prey 
 of strangers ; bat a variety of happy circumstances soon 
 tended to change her conquerors into her children. The 
 gigantic genius and iron will of the Conqueror himself 
 enabled him to establish a power in the Crown which had 
 no parallel in Europe save at Constantinople and at Cor- 
 dova. Then came the accession of the Angevins, which 
 was almost equivalent to a second Conquest. The French 
 domains of Henry the Second were so vast that he was 
 essentially a French sovereign. William was a Norm?n 
 reigning in England ; Englishmen were conquered, but 
 England was great. Henry was a Duke of Normandy and 
 Aquitaine, perhaps a would-be King of France, who ruled 
 England as a dependency beyond the sea. Posts of honour 
 were so far from being held by men of Old-English blood, 
 that they were but sparingly held even by the descendants 
 of the first Norman settlers ; men utter strangers to the land 
 held sway over both. In the reign of John, Normandy and 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the strictly French provinces were lost ; Aquitaine alone 
 was retained, a country as foreign to France as to England, 
 and which found her account in loyalty to the more distant 
 ma^^ter. Then came fresh swarms of foreigners under Henry 
 the Third, when at last the nation was ready for resistance. 
 All these causes had combined to draw all the natives of the 
 soil together. The heavy hand of despotism pressed alike 
 upon the conquerors and the conquered. Men who were 
 wholly alien to the realm were enriched and exalted at the 
 expense of both. The Norman meanwhile had drunk in 
 the air of the free island, and had learned that the laws of 
 good King Edward were as good for him as for his English 
 neighbour. He soon found that his true place was among 
 the English people, not beside the foreign King. Speedily 
 did the Norman lords and gentlemen adopt the name, 
 the feelings, and at last the tongue of Englishmen. The 
 bloody baptism of Lewes and of Evesham made the two 
 races brethren in war and in peace for ever. In short, the 
 true effect of the Norman Conquest was, not to crush or 
 extinguish the Old-English spirit, but to call it out in 
 a more definite and antagonistic form, and to give it a 
 band of worthy proselytes in the conquering Normans 
 themselves. 
 
 Thus did an event which seemed to be the very death of 
 English freedom, prove in the end to be to it, above all 
 others, a savour of life unto life. We will not speculate as 
 to what might have been had William, instead of Harold, 
 fallen upon the hill of Senlac. It is enough to see what 
 has been. It is through the very event which might 
 have seemed to cut off England for ever from her ancient 
 being that she has — more than through any other cause 
 — been enabled to preserve an uninterrupted historical 
 continuity with her earliest days which has been denied 
 to kindred nations which never went through her fiery 
 trial.
 
 ( 53) 
 
 III. 
 
 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS 
 OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 There is something very remarkable in the way in which 
 the popular mind, both in England and Scotland, looks at 
 the whole history of the two countries, and especially at the 
 question of the ancient relations between the two Crowns. 
 It is not very wonderful that it is a point of honour with 
 most Scotchmen to defend the Scottish side of a controversy 
 between England and Scotland. The wonderful thing is 
 that many Englishmen, and we suspect most Englishwomen, 
 take the Scottish side against their own country. And it is 
 more wonderful still that they do this, not from any calm 
 conviction that England was wrong in the controversy, but 
 from the same sort of unreasoning impulse which would 
 more naturally have led them to take the other side. An 
 Englishman, or a native of any other country, if he looks 
 through the past history of his own land, will find plenty 
 of occasions on which he must allow that his own nation 
 and its sovereigns were utterly in the wrong. Still he feels 
 a certain sympathy with his own people, even when they 
 are in the wrong. His judgement draws him one way, and 
 his feelings draw him another way. That the wars of 
 Edward the Third in France were wars of purely unjust 
 aggression it is impossible to deny."^ The only conceivable 
 palliation for them is that even virtuous men seem at the 
 time to have persuaded themselves that those wars were 
 just; and we must not forget that war in general, just or 
 unjust, was not looked on then in the same light in which 
 
 * [This is rather too strong. See the Essay on Edward the Third.] [1872]
 
 54 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 it is looked on now. Still Edward the Third and his son 
 are popular heroes of English fancy. Reason may condemn 
 the aggression, but the glory of Crecy and Poitiers is too 
 dazzling to be withstood. The Black Prince is looked upon 
 so exclusively as the model of chivalrous courage and 
 chivalrous generosity that his real crimes and his real 
 merits are alike forgotten. The cruel massacre of Limoges, 
 an act condemned even in his own age, is forgotten. The 
 real services which he rendered to his country in the Good 
 Parliament are forgotten also. No ordinary English reader, 
 even if he consents to the abstract proposition that the wars 
 of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth were unjust, 
 ever sympathizes with the French who fought against 
 them. 
 
 But from France turn to Scotland, and the scene is com- 
 pletely changed. In dealing with Scottish matters the 
 popular and romantic English mind not only condemns its 
 own countrymen, but throws itself, as a matter of feeling, 
 aga:nst its own countrymen. Under the convenient name 
 of Scots, a variety of persons, from William Wallace, 
 perhaps from Malcolm Canmore, down to Charles Edward 
 Stewart, are jumbled together. All alike are popular 
 heroes, though their only common merit seems to be that 
 they were all, in one way or another, enemies of England. 
 Edward the First is distinctly unpopular, not because he 
 seized the wool or because he was not eager to confirm the 
 Great Charter, but because, with the full approbation of all 
 England, he asserted his right to the ancient overlordship 
 of Scotland, and Ijecause in the end he put William Wallace 
 to death as a traitor. Even Elizabeth, the great Protestant 
 Queen who defietl Parma and Spain, comes off with a very 
 doubtful reputation, because she cut off the head of a 
 Scotchwoman whose crimes had aroused the righteous 
 instincts of the Scottisli people to depose her from their 
 throne. Oddly enough, the greatest English sinners against 
 Scotland, Henry the Eighth and Protector Somerset, are let 
 off. It' people think of Scotland in connexion with King
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 55 
 
 Henry, it is because Flodden was fought in his reign, and 
 a King of Scots invading England is of course an object of 
 romantic English sympathy. The brutal and causeless 
 devastations of Scotland under Henry and Edward the 
 Sixth, the utterly useless slaughter of Pinkie, seem to be 
 wholly forgotten. 
 
 The cause of this strange, and probably unparalleled, 
 direction of popular feeling is to be found in a sort of 
 generous revulsion of sentiment, strengthened by the in- 
 fluence of a few great Scottish writers. A foolish and 
 unworthy prejudice against Scotland and Scotsmen made 
 way, under the charms of romance and poetry, for an 
 equally unreasonable feeling of admiration for everything 
 beyond the Tweed, The Scots, in the widest sense of the 
 word, the inhabitants of modern Scotland of all tongues 
 and races, first made Tip their own differences, and then 
 made a sort of common conquest of English opinion. Lord 
 Macaulay has forcibly shown how every fight in which 
 the Gael overcame the Saxon, and every fight in which 
 the Saxon overcame the Gael, has been thrown into a 
 common stock of Scottish glory. Respectable citizens 
 of Edinburgh, bearing, it may be, such Teutonic names 
 as Smith, Brown, or Wilson, probably believe to this day 
 that the grand charge of Celtic claymores at Killiecrankie 
 somehow reflects honour on themselves. Mary Stewart, 
 whose rejection by the Scottish people is one of the most 
 honourable facts in Scottish history, has become a sacred 
 possession of the Scottish nation, on whom Englishmen at 
 least may not lay their unha.llowed hands. And English- 
 men, at all events Englishwomen, believe all this. They 
 get their notions of English history from the romance of 
 Hume, and they follow them up with the certainly not 
 more unhistorical romances of Sir Walter Scott. Every- 
 thing Scotch becomes invested with a sort of poetical and 
 romantic halo. Wallace and Bruce are heroes, full of 
 exploits and hairbreadth scapes. King Edward may pos- 
 sibly have been a general, a statesman, and a lawgiver, but
 
 56 THE RELATIOXS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 what ai"e such prosaic merits when set against the charms 
 of a hero of romance 1 
 
 The fashion in these matters sets so strongly for the 
 Scottish and against the English side, that it is very 
 difficult to preserve strict impartiality in the matter. A 
 revulsion against utter misrepresentation of truth may 
 easily drive us too violently to the other side. When 
 Englishmen condemn, almost without a hearing, the part 
 taken by the whole English nation under the greatest and 
 noblest King that England has seen for eight hundred 
 years, one is perhaps tempted to do less than justice to his 
 enemies. Trying to look at the matter as fairly as possible, 
 it seems to me that, while the conduct of King Edward 
 can be justified and more than justified, it does not at all 
 follow that there is not a good deal to be said on the other 
 side. The claim of Edward was quite clear enough to 
 justify an honest man in asserting it. It was not so clear 
 but that an honest man might also be justified in resisting 
 it. Crimes were committed on both sides which fully 
 account for bitter national animosity on both sides. In 
 the end, the justice of the case, originally on the side of 
 England, turned to the side of Scotland. I am not con- 
 cerned to defend the way in which Scotland was dealt 
 with either by Edward the Third or by any English king 
 later than Edward the Third. I only ask for justice for 
 his incomparably nobler grandfather. I only ask that 
 our groat king be not hastily condemned for the asser- 
 tion of rights which were not, as I believe people generally 
 fancy, some invention of his own, but which had been an 
 inheritance of his predecessors on the English throne for 
 more than three hundred and sixty years. 
 
 On the subject of the relations between the English and 
 Scottish Ci'ovvns in early times, I have had occasion to 
 say somewhat in the first volume of my History of the 
 Norman Conquest, and especially in the Appendix. I there 
 entered into some controversy with an able writer on 
 the Scottish side, Mr. E. W. Eobertson. I there expressed
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 57 
 
 a hope that I might, at some future time, be able to go 
 into the matter more fully, as in that Appendix I could 
 deal only with points belonging to the very earliest stagts 
 of the dispute. I mention this lest any one should 
 mistake the present paper for the fulfilment of the promise 
 which I then held forth. I mean it for nothing of the 
 kind. To go fully into the matter from the beginning to 
 the end, arguing, as I should have to do, against Mr. 
 Robertson at almost every step, would require much more 
 time and space than can be given to it in a single essay. 
 But where the case on one side is generally misunderstood, 
 a mere statement of the case, even Avithout a minute dis- 
 cussion of the evidence, is worth something. I thought 
 therefore that I might be doing service to historical truth 
 by calling attention to the subject, by clearly showing the 
 line which I trust some day to lind an opportunity for de- 
 fending in a more complete manner, and by getting rid of 
 some mere popular misconceptions, which can never, unless 
 quite unconsciously, affect the minds of real scholars on 
 either side, but which form the whole belief on the subject 
 in the minds of a great many people, Scottish and English 
 alike. 
 
 First, then, I would venture to ask. What is Scotland, 
 and who are the Scots 1 I must here say once more what, 
 I have no doubt, I have said over and over again in one 
 shape or another, but which must be said over and over 
 again till people thoroughly take it in. No one can 
 understand this question, or any other question in early 
 mediaeval history, unless he sets himself altogether free 
 from the bondage of the modern map and of modern 
 national nomenclature. When the disputed relations be- 
 tween the English and Scottish Crowns began, the names 
 of England and Scotland seem not to have been in use at 
 all. And if we choose to use them as convenient ways 
 of expressing the English and Scottish territories as they 
 then stood, we must still remember that the limits of those 
 territories in no way answered to the modern limits of
 
 58 THE RELATIOSS BET WEE X THE CROWDS [Essay 
 
 England and Scotland. Part of modern England was not 
 yet English, and a very large part of modern Scotland 
 was not yet Scottish. The growth of the Scottish nation 
 and kingdom is one of the most remarkable facts in 
 history. It was formed by the fusing together of certain 
 portions of all the three races which in the tenth century, 
 as now, inhabited the Isle of Britain. Those three races 
 may be most conveniently spoken of as English, Welsh, 
 and Irish. A portion of each of these three races was, 
 through a variety of political circumstances, detached from 
 the main stock of its own nation, and all were brought 
 into close connexion with one another. At the beginning 
 of the tenth century the three were still distinct. The 
 original Scots, a colony from Ireland, the original Scotia, 
 had, centuries before, established themselves on the north- 
 western coast of Britain, and, not very long before the 
 period with which I am concerned, they had conquered or 
 fraternized with or exterminated or assimilated the Picts, 
 the people of the north-eastern part of modern Scotland. 
 The relations between the Picts and the Scots I leave in 
 intentional vagueness ; they form a very difficult question, 
 and one whose solution or exposition is in no way essen- 
 tial to my object. It is enough that at tlie beginning of 
 the tenth century an independent Celtic potentate, the 
 King of Scots, reigned over all modern Scotland north of 
 the two great firths of Forth and Clyde, except so far as 
 Scandinavian adventurers had already begun to occupy 
 the islands and the extreme north of the mainland. Here 
 then were the Scots, a Celtic people, whose dominant 
 tongue was Irish, a tongue still represented by the modern 
 Gaelic. These Scots then, a branch of the Irish nation, 
 have given to the modern Scottish kingdom its name and 
 its royal dynasty. But all that gave Scotland its his- 
 torical importance came from other quarters. The applica- 
 tion of the Scottish name to the wliole people of modern 
 Scotland was soinothing like the application, so common 
 before the restoration of the Kingdom of Italy, of the
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 59 
 
 Sardinian name to the people of Savoy, Piedmont, and 
 Genoa. As far as ethnical connexion is concerned, this 
 analogy will hold good. The great mass of the so-called 
 Scots were Scots only by virtue of being subjects of the 
 Kins: of Scots. The great mass of the so-called Sardinians 
 were Sardinians only by virtue of being subjects of the 
 King of Sardinia. But there is this difference, that the 
 King of Scots was really a King of Scots ; the roj'al 
 dynasty of Scotland was Scottish, while the royal dynasty 
 of Sardinia was not Sardinian. But the position of that 
 dynasty as Dukes of Savoy answered exactly to the posi- 
 tion of the Kings of Scots. In both cases the cradle of 
 the dynasty was one of the least valuable possessions of 
 the reigning sovereign. 
 
 The King of Scots then, at the beginning of the tenth 
 century, reigned north of the firths, over an independent 
 Celtic people. The Scots seem to have submitted more 
 than once to a certain superiority on the part of the 
 Northumbrian kings ; perhaps both they and the North- 
 humbrians submitted to the Imperial superiority of Charles 
 the Great. But any submission of this sort was quite 
 transient, and did not affect the later historj'. At the be- 
 ginning of the tenth century the Scots were, as is allowed 
 on all hands, perfectly independent. 
 
 But at that time the southern part of what is now 
 Scotland had nothing to do with the Scots, and it had to 
 do with the King of Scots only inasmuch as an inde- 
 pendent branch of the Scottish royal family reigned in 
 one part of it. All south-western Scotland, with much of 
 what is now north-western England, formed the Kingdom 
 of the Strathclyde Welsh. Over this kingdom, from an 
 early date in the tenth century. Kings of the Scottish 
 family reigned, but it formed a purely distinct state, in- 
 dependent equally of the King of Scots and of the King 
 of the West-Saxons. The south-eastern part of modern 
 Scotland, Lothian in the wide sense of the word, was 
 simply part of Northumberland, that great region which,
 
 60 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 sometimes under one king, sometimes under two or more, 
 stretched from the Humber to the Forth. Lothian was 
 therefore, then as now, a strictly Teutonic country, in- 
 habited by a population mainly Anglian, and speaking, 
 then as now, the Northumbrian dialect of English. In 
 the language of the Scots, the land was Saxony and its 
 people Saxons. An inroad into Saxony was a favourite 
 exploit of the Scottish kings, and they had already begun 
 to look with wistful eyes on the northern bulwark of 
 Saxony, the border- fortress raised by the great Northum- 
 brian Bretwalda, the castle of Eadwinesburh or Edinburgh. 
 
 Here then are the three elements of the modern Scottish 
 nation: the true Scots, the Irish population north of the 
 Forth ; the Welsh of Strathclyde or Cumberland ; the 
 English of Lothian. Of these, the first and the third still 
 survive and still retain their several languages, though, 
 ever since they have been brought into connexion with 
 each other, the English element has advanced and the 
 Irish element has fallen back. The Welsh element has 
 long since been absorbed by the English. The old Welsh 
 kingdom no longer exists as a distinct division ; it is di- 
 vided between modern England and modern Scotland, and 
 its language survives only in some points of local nomen- 
 clature to be traced out by inquiring antiquaries and 
 philologers. 
 
 It was out of the fusion of these three elements that the 
 modern Scottish nation arose, and their fusion arose wholly 
 out of the relations into which they all of them entered 
 with the dominant English power to the south. In 924 
 the kingdom of Eadward the Elder reached to the Humber. 
 Beyond that river the Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh 
 had never owned any superiority in any West-Saxon 
 king. Northumberland, including of course Lothian, 
 might be considered as owing some sort of vassalage, for 
 the whole land had owned the supremacy of Ecgberht, 
 and had even lenewed its submission to iElfred. In 924, 
 according to our national Chronicles, the submission of
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 61 
 
 Noi-thumberland was again renewed in a more solemn 
 way ; and with the renewal of the submission of Northum- 
 berland, Eadward also received — what no West-Saxon king- 
 had ever before received — the submission of the Scots and 
 the Strathclyde Welsh. All the kings and princes north 
 of the Humber, with the assent of their subjects, " chose 
 Eadward to father and to lord." In the latin phrase they 
 commended themselves to him ; they promised him fidelity 
 and put themselves under his protection. This is the 
 origin of the English claim to superiority over Scotland. 
 It is also the origin of the close connexion between the 
 three countries which united to form modern Scotland. 
 All three — Scotland proper, Strathclyde, and Lothian (as 
 a part of Northumberland) — became dependencies of the 
 King of the English. Other changes speedily followed, 
 all of which had a tendency to bring the three countries 
 more closely together. The first change may for a moment 
 have had an opposite effect, ^thelstan was the first to 
 incorporate Northumberland, and Lothian as a part of it, 
 with the English kingdom. That kingdom thus stretched 
 to the Forth. After several revolts of the Danes, this 
 incorporation was finally accomplished by Eadred. Mean- 
 while Eadmund, on a revolt of Strathclyde, conquered the 
 country, and granted it to Malcolm of Scotland, to be held 
 on tenure of military service. From that time it became 
 the appanage of the eldest son of the Scottish King. In 
 Eadred's time Edinburgh came into the possession of the 
 Scots, by what means does not appear. At some later 
 time, either under Eadgar or under Cnut — I have gone 
 fully into that controversy elsewhere — all Lothian was 
 ceded to the Scottish King ; when and on what terms forms 
 one of the points of dispute. 
 
 We thus find, early in the eleventh century, the three 
 countries — Scotland proper, Strathclyde, and Lothian — all 
 united under one sovereign, Strathclyde being usually 
 granted out again to that sovereign's heir-appai ent. A great 
 step had thus been taken towards the formation of the
 
 62 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 modern Scottish kingdom and nation. But all three formed 
 part of the English Empire, and were subject to the Impe- 
 rial authority of the West-Saxon or English King, The 
 three countries however stood in three different relations to 
 their overlord ; and the different relations of Scotland and 
 Strathclyde supply some of the best illustrations of those 
 various kinds of relations, both between sovereigns and 
 between private men, out of which the latter and more 
 finished feudalism gradually grew. 
 
 What lies at the bottom of the whole thing is the personal 
 relation between a man and his lord. The weaker party 
 commends himself to the stronger ; the man promises faithful 
 service, the lord promises faithful protection. The holding 
 of land by military or other service is not an essential or 
 original part of the relation, but it gradually and easily came 
 to be ingrafted upon it. Such land might be an original 
 grant from the lord, held by his man on such terms as they 
 might agree upon ; or it might be the man's own allodial 
 holdinff, which he surrendered to the lord, and received back 
 to be held by him with fief. Out of these simple elements 
 gradually grew up that elaborate feudal jurisprudence which 
 had reached its perfection in the thirteenth century, but 
 which was certainly not known in the tenth. But, even 
 within the tenth century, the different relations of Scotland 
 proper and Strathclyde mark the advance in the strictly 
 feudal direction. The King of Scots, and all the people of 
 Scots, chose Eadward the Elder to father and to lord. The 
 motive was obvious : Eadward was powerful, and was clearly 
 aiming at the conquest of the whole island. It was good 
 policy to meet him half-way ; it was also good policy, and 
 something more, for all the Christian states of the island to 
 unite au'ainst their heathen invaders. Such an union could 
 not be effectually made except under West-Saxon leader- 
 ship. The position of Wessex in Britain then was really 
 not unlike that of Prussia in Germany just now.* By a 
 
 * [The events of 1S70-1871, especially the assiiiiiption of the Imperal title 
 by the Prussian King — the Bietwalda of Germany — have made the likeness 
 etill closer.] [1872]
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 63 
 
 great national act the King and the people of the Scots 
 commended themselves to the West-Saxon King, exactly as 
 numberless states on the continent found it expedient to 
 commend themselves to the Emperor, or as the Duke of the 
 Normans commended himself to the Duke of the French. 
 There was nothing strange or degrading in the relation ; it 
 was the relation in which, in theory, all other princes stood to 
 the Emperor. But the commendation of the Scottish King 
 and people certainly did not make Scotland a territorial 
 fief ; still less did it bring with it any of the feudal in- 
 cidents which were invented long after. In the course of 
 the controversy it was argued that the English King could 
 have no superior rights over Scotland, because Scotland 
 was confessedly not liable to certain feudal incidents. The 
 true answer would have been that the superiority dated 
 from a time older than the feudal jurisprudence, from a 
 time when any incidents of the kind were as yet un- 
 known. 
 
 Scotland proper then — the Irish land north of the firths — 
 was connected with the English King (or, in this relation 
 we should rather say the English Emperor) by a tie of 
 purely personal commendation. Strathclyde, on the other 
 hand, was an early case of a real territorial fief. Eadmund 
 conquered Strathclyde ; he might of course have incor- 
 poi'ated it with his own kingdom. Instead of so doing, he 
 granted the land to Malcolm on condition of military 
 service by sea and by land. Here we have a real fief, 
 though of course all the niceties and intricacies of feudal 
 law are not to be applied to the case. The vassalage of 
 part of Strathclyde, namely of modern Cumberland, is not 
 denied by any Scottish writer. Indeed, Scottish writers 
 eeem rather inclined to exaggerate the feudal position of 
 Cumberland, as affording a means of escape from the fact 
 of any superiority over Scotland itself. Every instance of 
 homage is thus conveniently represented as being done for 
 lands within the modern limits of England. 
 
 Strathclyde then was a torritcrial fief, but not a territorial
 
 64 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [E??ay 
 
 fief within the kingdom of England. But Lothian was 
 an integral part of England. Jedburgh was as much a 
 Northumbrian town as York. Unluckily the cession of 
 Lothian is, as to its date and circumstances, a difficult and 
 disputed point ; there is no contemporary account of this 
 transaction, such as there is of the other two. But it is 
 hardly possible to doubt that the King of Scots must have 
 been intended to be, with regard to Lothian, strictly an 
 English earl, just as he was in later times for other lands 
 within the later English frontier. 
 
 The three countries which make up modern Scotland 
 were thus brought into a close political connexion with one 
 another, while at the same time they stood in three distinct 
 relations to the Liiperial Crown of England. It followed 
 naturally that the three should draw closer together, and 
 that the original difference in the three tenures should 
 come to be foro^otten on both sides. The Scottish kings 
 soon learned that English Lothian was by far the most 
 valuable part of their dominions. They gradual!}' identified 
 themselves with their English territories, and they en- 
 deavoured to spread English culture over the rest of their 
 possessions. As early as the reign of Macbeth they 
 welcomed settlers from England and exiles from England, 
 of whatever kind ; native Englishmen dispossessed by 
 the Conqueror, Norman settlers in England dissatisfied 
 with him or his successors, all found a munificent welcome 
 beyond the Tweed. The marriage of Malcolm and Mar- 
 garet was the great turning-point. The Kings of Scots, 
 from that time, became essentially English princes, and 
 that just at the very moment when French princes were 
 beginning to reign in England itself. English Lothian, 
 and 80 much of their other territories as they succeeded 
 in Anglicizing, became the real Kingdom of Scotland. The 
 true Scots were in a manner forsaken by their own 
 princes ; they gradually came to be looked on simply as 
 troublesome savages, whom the new English Kings of 
 Scots had much ado to keep in any sort of submission.
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 65 
 
 Thus the English subjects of the King of Scots gradually 
 came to be called Scots, and their land Scotland. A part 
 of England, in short, got detached from the rest under the 
 name of Scotland, and held the true Scotland beyond it in 
 a somewhat unwilling connexion. And so long as the 
 Kings of southern England were French, so long as the 
 court laneruasfe of England was French while that of Scot- 
 land was English, the King of Scotland's dominions were 
 in very truth far more English than England itself. 
 
 Thus the Scottish kingdom gradually formed itself. 
 Under such circumstances it was impossible that the 
 different tenures by which the three parts of the dominions 
 of the King of Scots were held should long be remembered. 
 As the feudal jurisprudence developed, all of them became 
 obsolete and almost unintelligible. That Scotland was held 
 by personal commendation — that Strathclyde was a terri- 
 torial fief, but a fief too old to be burthened with aids or 
 wardship or marriage — that Lothian was in strictness 
 an English earldom — were distinctions which naturally 
 passed out of mind. Gradually there came to be no ap- 
 parent alternatives except strict feudal tenure, as feudal 
 tenure came to be understood, and the entire absence 
 of subjection of any sort. The subjection of Scotland 
 to the Imperial Crown of Britain was an historical 
 fact ; there was therefore a temptation on the English 
 side to argue that Scotland was an ordinary fief, differ- 
 ing only in extent and dignity from any English earl- 
 dom. On the other hand, it was equally an historical 
 fact that Scotland had never been subject to the burthens 
 incident to an ordinary fief ; there was therefore a tempta- 
 tion on the Scottish side to deny that Scotland owed 
 any kind of subjection whatever. In an age when the 
 developed feudal jurisprudence was familiar to both sides, it 
 was almost impossible that either side should cleave to 
 the ancient precedents of the tenth century. It was in 
 the nature of things that the lord should claim more, that 
 the " man " should offer less, than those ancient precedents 
 
 F
 
 66 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [-Essay 
 
 dictated. More and less, that is, as regards Scotland and 
 Strathclyde ; as regards Lothian, an integral part of Eng- 
 land, it is clear that the English Kings claimed less than 
 their ancient right. Add to this that, except under some 
 special circumstances, the fear of Danish invasion or the 
 like, any sort of subjection would, from the days of the 
 first commendation onwards, be galling to the Scottish 
 King and his people. The homage due to the Emperor of 
 Britain would never be very willingly paid. It would be 
 paid when England was strong and Scotland weak ; when 
 England was weak it would be refused, perhaps not 
 demanded. Homage for Scotland proper was paid to 
 Eadgar, to Cnut, to Eadward, to William ; it does not 
 appear that it was ever paid to the feeble ^thelred. 
 Then, in later times, the homage due for the different 
 parts of what had become the Kingdom of Scotland got 
 mixed up with various other questions. The Kings of 
 Scots undoubtedly held territories within the later borders 
 of England, both royalties and private estates, for which 
 nobody doubted that homage was as fully due from them 
 as from any English noble. Whenever a King of Scots 
 did homage, it was always possible to raise the question 
 whether the homage was done for the Kingdom of Scot- 
 land, or only for lands held in England. In many cases it 
 might be convenient alike to lord and vassal to allow so 
 delicate a question to remain unsettled either way. Then 
 Hemy the Second imposed conditions on his captive 
 William the Lion which undoubtedly went far beyond 
 all earlier precedent. Richard the First released Scotland 
 from these special and novel burthens ; did he or did 
 he not also release her from all subjection of every 
 kind ? Here then were abundant materials for a never- 
 ending controversy, a controversy in which, if right con- 
 sisted in adherence to precedents which were no longer 
 understood, it is quite certain that neither side could ever 
 be exactly in the right. Here were questions perpetually 
 arising which did not admit of any satisfactory settlement,
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 67 
 
 questions which at different times were sure to be 
 answered in different ways and under different circum- 
 stances. When a weak King of England was troubled 
 with every sort of domestic difficulties at home, while a, 
 national and popular dynasty filled the throne of Scot- 
 land, it was not likely that the English claim could be 
 very effectually pressed. Things changed when England 
 was ruled by the greatest King of his age, by well nigh 
 the greatest English King of any age, and when a crowd 
 of competitors for the Scottish crown were eager to lay 
 their contending claims at his feet. 
 
 The claim which was then put forward by Edward the 
 First was, as I before said, a claim which he had fair 
 grounds for putting forward, but which the other side had 
 fair grounds for contesting. It was easy to prove that 
 Scotland owed some subjection to England ; it was equally 
 easy to prove that Scotland did not owe the subjection of 
 an ordinar}^ English fief. Vulgar and ill-informed Scottish 
 writers always seize the opportunity for hurling every sort 
 of abuse at Edward, seemingly for bringing forward his 
 claims at all. Better-informed and more candid writers 
 on the same side, who know the facts and who make no 
 attempt to disguise them, are satisfied with charging him 
 with ungenerous and unchivalrous conduct. This lack of 
 generosity and chivalry on Edward's part seems to have 
 consisted in his being statesman enough to see an advantage 
 and to make use of it. But I would ask whether Kings 
 and Governments even now commonly show much of 
 chivalry or generosity to one another, or whether it is to 
 be reasonably expected that they should show much of 
 such feelings 1 An angel on earth, like Saint Lewis, may 
 act otherwise ; from ordinary human Kings, Presidents, or 
 Prime Ministers it is enough to expect that they do not, 
 in any time or place, put forth claims which are palpably 
 dishonest. If a claim has any fair ground to go upon, to 
 put it forth in the form, the time, the place, in which it can 
 be pressed with most effect, is generally held to be a mere 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 question of policy. He who chooses the worst time for such 
 a purpose, instead of the best, may possibly show chivalry 
 or generosity ; but no statesman, whether of the thirteenth 
 or of the nineteenth century, will speak highly of his wisdom. 
 Edward then, I hold, had a fair case — such a case, I mean, 
 as would justify an honest man in putting forth an ordinary 
 claim in an ordinary court of law. He claimed an ancient 
 right of his crown, which his predecessors had exercised 
 whenever they could : he claimed it in the only shape which 
 the claim was likely to take in his days. If in some points 
 he claimed more, in other points he claimed less, than an- 
 cient precedents would have given him. In reading the 
 lengthy pleadings in the great suit before the Lord Superior 
 two things constantly strike us. As a rule, the whole 
 matter had reduced itself to a question whether the land 
 north of the Tweed, looked at as a whole, was or was not 
 a fief of England. But ever and anon we are struck with 
 various signs which show a vague feeling, a sort of lurking 
 memory, that the real historical issue was not quite so 
 simple as this. Here and there an expression is found 
 implying some sort of distinction between Scotland, Lo- 
 thian, and Galloway — the representative of ancient Strath- 
 clyde. More commonly we find a very distinct feeling on 
 all sides that a kingdom, even if held in fief, difiered in 
 some way or other from an ordinary feudal holding. More 
 remarkable than all are two passages in which the Lord 
 Superior receives the ancient and now well nigh forgotten 
 title of Emperor. In one of the earliest documents belong- 
 ing to the question, one earlier than the great conference at 
 Norham, Robert Bruce asks for the kingdom of Scotland 
 of Edward as "his sovereign Lord and Emperor T* So, 
 when the question is raised whether the controversy be- 
 tween the candidates should be judged by the Imperial law 
 or by any other, one of the prelates consulted answers that 
 the King of England must follow the law of his own realm, 
 
 * Palsrave, Documents, p. 29. "Sire Robert de Brus .... prie a nostra 
 seigneur le rey come son sovereign seigneur et son Empreur."
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 69 
 
 because he is himself Emperor in his own dominions."^ 
 And passages are rather numerous in which freedom from 
 all subjection to the Empire and to the laws of the Empire 
 is spoken of as a sort of privilege of the Crown of England, 
 and of Scotland as a member thereof. This was of course 
 the old notion. The King of the English was, within his 
 own island, what the Emperor was in the rest of the world. 
 He owed no submission to Csesar, and he himself stood 
 in the place of C?esar to all the other princes of Britain. 
 The Imperial position of the Old-English kings must be 
 thoroughly grasped before the real nature of Scottish sub- 
 jection can be understood. In the full Imperial theory, all 
 kingdoms, Scotland of course included, owed submission to 
 the Roman Emperor. But our West- Saxon kings put in an 
 exception for Britain, as being in some sort another world, 
 and they claimed to be themselves Emperors within its 
 borders. This ancient position, by that time well nigh 
 forgotten, is invoked both by the elder Bruce and by the 
 Bishop. But commonly the matter becomes a mere ques- 
 tion of fief or no fief, allowing for any special privileges 
 belonging to a fief which was also a kingdom. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that Edward was invited to 
 decide the disputed succession to the Scottish crown. He 
 was invited to do so by Robert Bruce, by the Seven Earls,t 
 and by the Scots generally. The Seven Earls appealed to 
 him as their natural protector against the wrongs inflicted 
 by the Regents ; Robert Bruce, as we have seen, appealed 
 to him in the ancient character of Emperor of Britain. 
 Now can any reasonable man blame Edward for demanding 
 that those who thus invoked his interference should make 
 a full acknowledgement of his claims ? In the judge- 
 ment of any statesman, the moment was now come to make 
 
 * Rishanger, ed. Riley, p. 255. " Episcopus Bibliensis requisitus dixit quod 
 dominus rex secundum leges per quas judicat subjectos suos debet procedere in 
 casu isto, quia hie censetur Imperator." I confess that I do not know who 
 "Episcopus Bibliensis" was. I can only guess that he was some Bishop in 
 pariibus, perhaps of Byblos in Syria. 
 
 f See Palgrave, Documents, ]>. 14.
 
 70 THE BELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essat 
 
 certain what was before uncertain. Edward pnt forth his 
 claim, a good and honest claim, urged in good faith. No 
 doubt an equally honest answer might on some points have 
 been made to the claim ; but no answer was made. After 
 a little hesitation, all the competitors for the crown ad- 
 mitted Edward's claims to the superiority in the fullest 
 extent, and they gave him, as surely was reasonable, the 
 temporary possession of the kingdom in dispute. And, if 
 any man's conduct ever was marked by thorough justice 
 and disinterestedness, that of King Edward was so marked 
 throughout the whole business. Every claimant was fully 
 and fairly heard ; judgement was given in favour of the 
 claimant who clearly had the best right ; the new King 
 was at once put into full possession of his kingdom and all 
 its appurtenances. Most princes of that age, and of many 
 other ages, would have devised some excuse for detaining 
 the kingdom itself, or some castle in it, or some other 
 material hold over it. That is to say, most princes would 
 have acted in the matter of Scotland as Philip the Fair 
 did act to Edward himself in the matter of Aquitaine. 
 Edward's conduct was throughout honest and aboveboard. 
 He required the acknowledgement of his claims ; he re- 
 ceived it ; he then acted justly and honourably according 
 to the theory of his own position which he had put forth, 
 and which all the competitors had acknowledged. And, 
 more than all, he rejected the tempting proposal of Hastings 
 and Bruce to divide the kingdom. Had Edward wished to 
 take any unfair advantage, here was his chance. Two of 
 the competitors, when their claim to the whole kingdom 
 was rejected, demanded a share, according to the English 
 usage in the case of female fiefs. No proposal could have 
 been more tempting, had Edward sought anything but 
 what he honestly held to be his due. It was clearly his 
 interest to liave three weak vassals rather than one power- 
 ful one. But Edward, as he did throughout the case, calmly 
 inquired into law and precedent, and ruled, in conformity 
 with at least later law and precedent, that the Kingdom of
 
 in.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 71 
 
 Scotland could not be divided. Edward may have taken 
 a wrong view of his own rights ; but of anything like un- 
 fair or underhand dealing no man stands more thoroughly 
 acquitted. 
 
 The competitors then, the new King, the great men of the 
 realm generally, accepted Edward's claims. But it may be, 
 and it has been, doubted how far they really spoke the voice 
 of the Scottish nation. We must never forget who these 
 competitors and other great men really were. None of the 
 competitors, and comparatively few of the great men of the 
 realm, were genuine Scots in either the older or the later 
 sense. Setting aside foreign princes like Eric of Norway 
 and Florence of Holland, the competitors, Bruce, Balliol, 
 Comyn, Hastings, and the rest, were neither Dah'iadic 
 Scots, nor Welshmen of Strathclyde, nor Englishmen of 
 Lothian. They were Norman nobles, holding lands both 
 in England and in Scotland, who might throw in their lot 
 with England or Scotland at pleasure, but who did much 
 more commonly throw in their lot with England. Balliol 
 and the elder Bruce were essentially Englishmen — Eng- 
 lishmen, that is, in the sense in which any other English 
 noble of Norman descent was an Englishman. John Comyn 
 of Buchan was throughout a faithful adherent of Edward ; 
 John Comyn of Badenoch and the younger Bruce identified 
 themselves more freely with Scotland. But none of them 
 were Scots in the ethnological sense ; none of them were 
 Scots even in the sense of being natives and inhabitants of 
 Scotland, with no interests beyond its borders. John Balliol 
 had lands alike in Scotland, England, and France. After 
 being a king in Scotland and a prisoner in England, he 
 retired to live as a private French noble on his French 
 property. Such men did not, and could not, really repre- 
 sent the feelings of any part of the Scottish people. The 
 event proved that in the heart of the nation there was a 
 feehng against English dominion in any shape which the 
 great nobles did not share. But the apparent consent was 
 universal. Edward might boast, like his great namesake
 
 72 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 and ancestor, that the King of Scots, and all the people of 
 Scots, chose him to father and to lord. And again we may 
 ask, Who were the Scottish people 1 It is plain that the 
 whole affair was one in which the original Scots took no 
 share, or a share hostile to what is commonly looked on as 
 the Scottish cause. The Scots who resisted Edward were 
 the English of Lothian, The true Scots, out of hatred to 
 the " Saxons" nearest to them, leagued with the "Saxons" 
 further off. Candid Scottish writers allow that the true 
 Scots of the Highlands were bitterly hostile to the younger 
 Bruce, and strongly favourable to Edward. No doubt, had 
 Edward kept possession, he would soon have become the 
 object of their hostility. As it was, the true Scots were the 
 faithful allies of Edward against the English of Lothian. 
 
 We thus see Edward the acknowledged Lord Superior, 
 and John of Balliol, undoubtedly the lawful heir, reigning 
 as his vassal. Then comes the question of the appeals. It 
 does not appear that any appeal had ever before been carried 
 from the court of the King of Scots to the court of the King 
 of England. We may be quite sure that no such subtleties 
 were ever di-eamed of in the tenth century. But the idea of 
 an appeal to the court of the overlord naturally grew out 
 of the principles of the new feudal jurisprudence. Edward 
 himself, as Duke of Aquitaine, was often summoned to the 
 courts of the King of France, and he does not seem to have 
 disputed the right of the King of France so to summon him. 
 But we may be quite sure that Edward's predecessors in 
 Aquitaine in the tenth century as little thought of paying 
 any such sign of submission to then- lord at Laon or Paris 
 as his predecessors in Wessex at the same time thought of 
 requiring any such sign of submission from their vassal 
 beyond the Forth. The whole notion of an elaborate system 
 of courts, such as could allow of such appeals, is later than 
 the earliest homage paid either foi" Aquitaine or for Scotland. 
 It could not be part of the original bargain in either case, 
 but in both cases the claim grow up with the gradual 
 developement of feudal ideas. And, after all, it was the
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 73 
 
 Scots themselves who, from the fact of Edward's superiority 
 over the kingdom, drew the inference that they might 
 appeal to his courts. Two Scottish subjects in very different 
 positions, Roger Bartholomew, burgess of Berwick, and 
 Macduff, a near kinsman of the Earl of Fife — surely a 
 genuine Scot, if there ever was one — dissatisfied with the 
 justice to be had in the courts of the King of Scots, 
 appealed to the courts of his acknowledged feudal superior. 
 The thing was a novelty; but it was an obvious conse- 
 quence from a state of things which was now universally 
 admitted, and it was not a novelty of Edward's devising. 
 Ordinary human nature on Edward's part was not likely to 
 refuse what would seem to be so fair and honourable a way 
 of increasing his power. But ordinary human nature on the 
 Scottish part could hardly fail to be offended with what 
 would seem to be a further humiliation of Scotland. 
 
 Next came the Scottish alliance with France, then at war 
 with England, an alliance which gradually led to a series of 
 mutual hostilities, which I need not recount at length, as 
 they do not immediately bear on the relations between the 
 two crowns. The important points are, that the first hostili- 
 ties were the act of the Scots, and that the King of Scots, as 
 soon as the war had actually begun, renounced his homage. 
 The assertion of national independence might be just and 
 expedient ; but the attempt to assert it by a process of feudal 
 law was simply absurd. Then Edward, in i 296, conquered 
 Scotland, and received the abdication of the King and the 
 general submission of the country. The kingdom was his by 
 conquest in a lawful war not of his seeking. I am not 
 saying that the Scots might not be fully justified in revolting 
 against him. All I say is that Edward was fully justified 
 in occupying Scotland, and in putting down such revolts. 
 With the conquest in 1296 the history of the old relations 
 between the Crowns comes to an end. From 1296 to 1328 
 the question was, not whether Scotland should be held by 
 its own King in feudal dependence on England, but whether 
 Scotland should become, as Northumberland and Wales had
 
 74 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 in different ages become, an integral portion of the English 
 kingdom. Meanwhile a new dynasty, that of Bruce, had 
 arisen in Scotland. In 1328 the legitimacy of the new 
 dynasty and the independence of the Scottish kingdom were 
 fully acknowledged by England. From that day forth, 
 wars between England and Scotland must be judged by the 
 same principles as wars between any other two independent 
 nations. The renunciation of 1328 wiped out the fii'st 
 commendation of 924 ; it wiped out what we may call the 
 second commendation of 1292; it wiped out the conquest 
 of 1296. The attempts made by the English Kings to fall 
 back on the earlier state of things, to claim again a homage 
 which they had expressly surrendered, to set up pretenders 
 ' against a dynasty whose rights they had expressly acknow- 
 ledged, were all simply dishonest. The charges of craft, 
 bad faith, and the like, which Scottish writers most un- 
 justly bring against Edward the First, may all be brought 
 with perfect justice against Edward the Third. 
 
 The little space I have left I will give to point out one 
 or two popular misconceptions. I fancy that people in 
 general quite mistake the chronology of the case. They 
 fancy that the whole of Edward's reign was taken up in an 
 attempt to conquer Scotland. Instead of this, it was only 
 the latter part of his reign which was occupied by Scottish 
 matters at all. Edward began to reign in 1272. In the 
 nineteenth year of his reign, 1291, the conference at Nor- 
 ham began. In 1296 came the first hostilities and the first 
 conquest. In 1297 came the revolt of William Wallace and 
 his victory at Stirling. In 129H the battle of Falkirk 
 crushed the revolt, but the war lingered till the surrender 
 of Stirling in 1304. In that year Edward was again un- 
 disputed lord of all Scotland. Scotland was annexed to 
 England as an integral part of the kingdom, and was to be 
 represented in the English Parliament. In 1306, the year 
 before Edward's death, came the murder of Comyn, the 
 revolt and coronation of the younger Bruce. At Edward's 
 death, in 1307, the new King was again a fugitive.
 
 III.] OF EIs^GLAND AND SCOTLAND. 75 
 
 I speak of the wars of Wallace and Bruce as revolts. 
 Their revolts may, like many other revolts, have been 
 justifiable, but they were revolts. Neither of them, Bruce 
 far less than Wallace, was resisting an invader. As for 
 William Wallace, we need not look upon him either as the 
 faultless hero which he appears in Scottish romance, nor 
 yet as the vulgar rufiian which he appears in English 
 history. His tenure of power in Scotland was very short, 
 but for a man who started, as he did, from nothing, to rise, 
 even for a moment, to the command of armies, and even to 
 the government of the kingdom, shows that he must have 
 possessed some very great qualities. That the great nobles 
 mostly shrank from him, or supported him very faintly, is 
 rather to his ci'edit ; it sets him forth more distinctly as a 
 national champion. On the other hand, it is impossible to 
 deny the fiendish brutalities practised by him in England, 
 brutalities which fully explain the intense hatred with 
 which every English writer speaks of him, and which were 
 certainly not retaliation for any cruelties on the part of 
 Edward. Candid Scottish writers allow that no useless 
 slaughter or ravages can be laid to Edward's charge. In 
 the whole course of his warfare he stands chargeable with 
 nothing which even our age would call cruelty, unless it be 
 in the storming of Berwick, where the personal insults of 
 the besieged seem to have stirred him up to fury. At 
 other times we find nothing of the kind, but we do find him 
 checking and reproving the cruelties of others, including 
 his own unworthy son. As for the execution of William 
 Wallace, it should be remembered that his was the only 
 Scottish blood shed by an English executioner before the 
 murder of Comyn, and that he brought his fate upon 
 himself. Every other man in Scotland had submitted. 
 Wallace was invited to surrender to the King's mercy. 
 That mercy had been extended to every man who had 
 sought it, including many who had broken their oaths to 
 Edward over and over again. Wallace refused, and refused 
 with insult. He was seized by Sir John Menteith,
 
 76 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 Edward's commander at Dumbarton, an act of official 
 duty which has been strangely turned into a betrayal.''^ 
 He could now hardly look for the mercy which he had 
 scorned. In the eyes of Edward and of every Englishman 
 he was simply a traitor, robber, murderer, of the blackest 
 dye. On such men the law took its course in 1305 just as 
 it did in 1745. 
 
 The revolt of Robert Bruce was, in every way, far less 
 justifiable than that of William Wallace. Wallace was 
 certainly a native Scotsman in the wider sense of the 
 word. His name seems to imply that he was a Welsh- 
 man of Strathclyde. By his own account he had never 
 sworn fealty to Edward. The position of Eobert Bruce 
 was very different. He has become so thoroughly mythical 
 a being that it may be necessary to explain to many people 
 who he was. One Scottish romance goes so far as to make 
 him defeat Edward the First at Bannockburn ! Another, 
 of older date, identifies him with his own grandfather, 
 makes him the competitor for the crown, but makes him 
 also proudly refuse to do homage for it. We have seen 
 that Robert Bruce the grandfather was an Englishman, a 
 faithful subject of Edward, eager to admit Edward's su- 
 premacy, ready to have the kingdom divided. His son 
 was an utterly obscure person, who plays no part in the 
 politics of the time. His grandson, the future King, pos- 
 sessor of great Scottish estates through his mother, seems 
 always to have inclined to Scotland rather than to Eng- 
 land. Still he was Edward's subject ; he had sworn to 
 him and served under him over and over again. At last, 
 when the country was at peace, when Edward's govern- 
 ment was universally submitted to, Robert Bruce treacher- 
 ously and sacrilegiously murdered John Comyn, the man, 
 be it remembered, who, after the male line of Balliol, was 
 midoubtodly the heir of the Scottish crown. After such 
 
 * Wallace was "betrayeil," not hy Meiiteith, but to Menteith, by liis own 
 servant Jack Short. From this the English chronicler Peter Langtoft drawd 
 the moral that there ih no honour among thieves.
 
 III.] OF EXGLASD AND SCOTLAND. 77 
 
 a crime there could be no hope of pardon. Bruce then 
 threw a desperate stake ; he assumed kingship ; while the 
 great Edward lived he lived the life of an outlaw and a 
 vagabond; over Edward's wretched son he won an easy 
 triumph. Robert Bruce undoubtedly proved himself in 
 the end a great captain and a great king ; but that fact 
 should bhnd no one to the infamous beginning of his 
 career. That all who were concerned in the murder of 
 Comyn met with their merited punishment, who can 
 wonder 1 Who can wonder that lesser degrees of punish- 
 ment fell on the other ringleaders of the revolt ? The 
 nature of punishments, the form of death, the degree of 
 the severity of imprisonment, are questions between the 
 habits of one age and those of another ; but it is quite 
 certain that Edward punished no man or woman who 
 would not be held liable to punishment at the present 
 moment. Indeed, when we look at the atrocities which 
 living Englishmen have committed and justified in India 
 and in Jamaica, King Edward need not blush for the com- 
 parison. The man who pardoned his enemies over and 
 over again, who checked the cruelties of his own son, who, 
 in the suppression of three rebellions, put no man to death 
 who had not added murder to treason, who, save in one 
 case of a stormed town, everywhere carried on war with 
 unparalleled clemency, would hardly have worshipped at 
 the shrine of a Hodson or joined in the festive reception of 
 an Eyre. 
 
 One word more. I do not regret that Scotland won her 
 independence. I cannot regret the formation of a nation, 
 a nation essentially of English blood and speech, a nation 
 which soon developed many noble qualities, and showed 
 itself fully worthy of the independence which it won. On 
 the field of Bannockburn I can almost bring myself to 
 sympathize with the great and wise King of Scots against 
 the foolish and cowardly heir of the greatest of later 
 Englishmen. But these things do not touch the character 
 of the great Edward. The real honour of Scotland in no
 
 78 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay 
 
 way requires the perversion of historical truth, or the 
 depreciation of a King whose object was to unite our 
 island as we see it united now. The vassalage of Scotland 
 to England ought by this time to be looked on as calmly 
 as the vassalage of Northumberland and Mercia to Wessex. 
 An Englishman born north of the Tweed should deem 
 himself as little bound to malign Edward as an English- 
 man born north of the Thames deems himself bound to 
 malign Ecgberht. Or, if a southern victim must be had, 
 let Scottish indignation spend itself on brutal devastators 
 of Scotland like Henry the Eighth and Protector Somerset, 
 not on the noble prince of whom the contemporary^ poet so 
 truly sang: — 
 
 " Totus Christo traditiu- rex noster Eilwardus ; 
 Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus." 
 
 I have now merely sketched out my line of argument 
 both as to the general constitutional question, and as to 
 the personal character of the great Edward. I trust some 
 day or other to work out the whole matter more fully, as 
 fully as I have worked out the two or three points on 
 which I have entered into direct controversy with Mr. 
 Robertson. In the meanwhile, I would recommend to all 
 who are interested in the matter a careful study of the 
 original chronicles and documents, and a comparison of 
 these with the later romances which have supplanted them. 
 As a guide in such a task, I will not venture to recommend 
 a book for which I must nevertheless confess a certain 
 liking, the anonymous volume called " The Greatest of 
 the Plantagenets." The book has much in it that is good 
 and useful ; but it is too much of a mere panegyric ; the 
 writer tliroughout holds, what I certainly do not hold, that 
 the honour of Edward requires the sacrifice of every one 
 who, either in England or Scotland, in any way withstood 
 him. I will rather choose my expositor in the ranks of 
 the enemy. I will send students of the original authorities 
 to a really learned and candid Scottish historian as their
 
 III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 79 
 
 harmonist. In Mr. Burton's lately published History of 
 Scotland the matter is treated in a way which does honour 
 to the writer. Mr. Burton has not wholly triumphed over 
 national prejudices, though in many passages he does 
 justice to Edward on particular points in a way in which 
 I suspect that no Scottish writer has forestalled him. In 
 many cases the inferences which I draw from the facts are 
 very different from those which Mr. Burton draws. But 
 his facts and my facts are the same throughout. Mr. 
 Burton's learning hinders him from neglecting any fact ; 
 his candour hinders him from concealing or misrepre- 
 senting any fact. How far such a book may be accept- 
 able to the less informed and more deeply prejudiced 
 classes of Mr. Burton's own countrymen, I do not profess 
 to know. I hail it as a great step towards the fair examina- 
 tion of a great historical question, which should now be 
 looked on purely as an historical question, not as involving 
 the honour of either of two portions of one happily united 
 realm.
 
 80 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 IV. 
 
 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY AND HIS 
 BIOGRAPHERS.-^ 
 
 Vita S. Thomce Cantnanensis Archiejnscopi et Marty ris. Ejri- 
 
 sfolfB Sa7icti Thomce Cantuariensis et aliorum. GUtjerti 
 
 Ejnscopi Lonchniensis Epistola. Herherti de Boseham Opera 
 
 qufs extant omnia. Edidit J. A. Giles, LL.D. 8 volumes. 
 
 Oxford, 1845. 
 Joannis Sarishvriensis Opera omnia. Collegit J. A. Giles, 
 
 J. CD. 5 volumes. Oxford, 1848. 
 The History of Latin Christianity. By Henry Hart Milman, 
 
 D.D. Vol. III. London, 1854. 
 The Life and Martyrdom, of Saint Thomas Becket, ArMishop of 
 
 Canterbury and Legate of the Holy See. By John Morris, 
 
 Canon of Northampton. London, 1859. 
 Becket, Archliishop of Canterbury. A Biography. By James 
 
 Craigie Robertson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury. London, 
 
 1859. 
 
 A FULL catalogue of the materials for the history of the 
 wonderful man whose name heads this article, a complete 
 list of all the books, old and new, of which he has been 
 the subject, would take up a space rather suited for an 
 article itself than for the mere heading of one. We have 
 selected a few only of the most recent and important. We 
 have original materials of every sort, — chronicles, biogra- 
 phies, private letters, state-papers ; we have the panegyrics 
 of friends, the invectives of enemies, the correspondence 
 
 * [As this article gave rise to some controversy at the time, I reprint it 
 exactly as it originally appeared.] [1872]
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 81 
 
 of the man himself. And as his own age was divided 
 in its opinion of him, ours seems to be divided no less. 
 He has still enemies who pursue him with the fierceness 
 of a Gilbert Foliot, and idolaters who worship him with 
 the devotion of a Herbert of Bosham. There is hardly any 
 man of past times for estimating whose life and character 
 we have such ample means. Every action of his own, 
 every action of others with regard to him, has been 
 chronicled and commented on by men who were both 
 eyewitnesses and actors. And there are few men about 
 the main features of whose history there is so little doubt. 
 Here and there, among the multitude of witnesses, we find 
 unimportant contradictions ; here and there we may have 
 our doubts as to the accuracy of a date or the genuineness 
 of a letter ; but the main events of his life, from his birth 
 in London to his murder at Canterbury, are known to us 
 as clearly and vividly as the transactions of our own time. 
 Our materials are not confined either to the land of his 
 birth or to the land of his exile. The vast Thomaic cor- 
 respondence spreads over the whole Latin world. The 
 terms of peace between a King of England and an Ai-ch- 
 bishop of Canterbury fluctuated according to the triumphs 
 and the failures of a German Emperor in Italy. Our 
 materials, in short, are infinite ; indeed, until somebody 
 shall kindly put them in order for us, they are over- 
 whelming. We know, or by the help of a decent editor we 
 might know, all about everybody and everything. As to 
 mere matters of fact, the points of controversy, for so vast 
 a field, are exceedingly few. The peculiarity of the history 
 is, that, with the same facts before them, no two people 
 seem to be content to draw the same inferences. 
 
 The cause of all this diversity and controversy — a diver- 
 sity and controversy most fatal to historic truth — is to be 
 traced to the unhappy mistake of looking at the men of 
 the twelfth century with the eyes of the nineteenth ; and 
 still worse, of hoping to extract something from the events 
 of the twelfth century to do service in the controversies of 
 
 G
 
 82 SATXT THOMAS OF CAXTEUnrRY [Essay 
 
 the nineteenth. Thomas of Canterbury has become sur- 
 rounded by a mist of theological and qua si -theological 
 disputation ; it is impossible even to name him without 
 raising a storm of controversy. For how is the man to be 
 spoken of? " Thomas a Becket," on the one hand, and 
 "Saint Thomas of Canterbury" both have their dangers, 
 while ever}' intermediate form expresses some intermediate 
 shade of estimation. " Becket " is perhaps neutral ; " Arch- 
 bishop Becket " carries with it a degree of reverence for 
 the oflice, if not for the man. And ajjain, it is doubtful 
 whether his own ago even called him Thomas Becket, 
 much less Thomas a Becket, or Becket alone.* King 
 Henry the Eighth's proclamation has converted his his- 
 torical title of '■ Saint Thomas of Canterbury " into a badge 
 of party. Otherwise we might probably have called him 
 Saint Thomas with no more offence than is incurred by 
 speaking historically of Saint Dominic or Saint Dunstan. 
 By way of being safe, we mean to call him, as his con- 
 temporaries called him, Thomas, which we hope will not 
 commit us to anything either way. Thomas of London, 
 Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas the Archdeacon, the Chan- 
 cellor, the Archbishop, and finally the Martyr, are the only 
 descriptions by which he was commonly known in his 
 own day. 
 
 But when we have settled his name, we come to the 
 more important question of his character. Was he a good 
 or a bad man? Is he worthy of honour or of dishonour? 
 
 * His father was undoubtedly called Gilbert Becket ; but in the twelfth 
 century surnames were very fluctuating, and a son, especially if a churchman, 
 did not at all iiec ssarily bear his fathei's n.inie. The most natural way of 
 calling him would be Thonius of London, inntWke .Tohn of Oxford and Herbert 
 of Eoshani, and we find him actually so called by Gervase (col. 1377). ^® 
 iind the Archbishop himself only once called "'J'homas I'ecket," namely, by the 
 knights at his death, according to Edward Grim (ap. Giles, i. 75), where it 
 II ay be very likely an unusual expression of contempt. This remark, as far as 
 we know, has been made by no English writer ; but we find from M. Buss's 
 work (p. 150) that German industry has forestalled us: M. Buss has found 
 one more instance of the use of the name " Becket," which (perhaps through 
 Dr. Giles's fault) we cannot verify.
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 83 
 
 To two classes of inquirers no question can be more easy 
 to settle. It is a very simple business to rule either that 
 an archbishop must be right who opposes a king, or that 
 a king must be right who opposes an archbishop. But 
 at the tribunal of historical criticism no such sweeping 
 general principles are admitted. Nor does it at all decide 
 the question to say which side we should take if the same 
 controversy were to arise now. What would be very 
 unreasonable and inexpedient now may have been exactly 
 the opposite seven hundred years back. If we Avish fairly 
 to judge of the right and the wrong between Henry and 
 Thomas, we must first of all shut our eyes to all modern 
 controversies whatever. We must not carry into that 
 region any modern theories about Church and State, about 
 Catholicism and Protestantism. We must not think 
 whether the events of those times can be made to help 
 High Church, Low Church, or Broad Church. Even 
 whether we are right or wrong in having no spiritual 
 dealings with the Bishop of Rome, is a question which 
 has just nothing to do with the matter. Yet it has been 
 with at least a side-glance to questions of this sort that 
 the history of Henry and Thomas has been for the most 
 part recently written. If we want to read or write it 
 as it should be read or written, we must forget everything 
 of the kind. We have before us two of the foremost men 
 of the twelfth century ; it is only by the customs, the 
 principles, the light and knowledge, of the twelfth century 
 that we can ever fairly judge them. 
 
 Cautions of this kind are more necessary with regard 
 to the dispute between Henry and Thomas than with 
 regard to almost any other portion of history. With 
 regard to many other controversies of past times, it is 
 almost impossible to avoid looking at them with the eyes 
 of our own day. In many cases, within proper limits, 
 it is even right that we should do so. The controversies 
 of remote ages and countries may be closely analogous 
 to controversies of our own day. The controversies of 
 
 G 2
 
 84 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 our own country in past times may be but the beginning 
 of controversies still going on among ourselves. In such 
 cases the side taken in present politics will always decide 
 the general estimate of past politics. We only ask for 
 the men and measures of the past, what we should ask 
 for the men and measures of the present, that opposition 
 and criticism be fair and honest, that particular men and 
 particular actions be not misrepresented, and that it be 
 never forgotten that, both then and now, wise and good 
 men may be found on both sides. But the twelfth century 
 stands in a peculiar position. It was a highly important 
 period, fruitful in great men and great events ; but its 
 work was a silent one, and its controversies have, less 
 than those of most ages either before or after, any direct 
 bearing upon present affairs. The events of the age which 
 came before, and those of the age which followed it, speak 
 at once to our hearts. The spectacle of a nation, and 
 that the English nation, overcome by foreign enemies, 
 made bondmen and strangers in their own land, is one 
 which re(}uires no explanation. The struggle of English- 
 man and Norman is one which awakens sympathies com- 
 mon to all time and places : 
 
 (is olwvus apiaroi, dfivvtaOai -nepl Trdrprjs, 
 
 is a sentiment which speaks equally to the heart, whether 
 it bo put into the mouth of Hector, of Hereward, or of 
 Garibaldi. The thirteenth century again has for every 
 Englishman an interest of another kind. Wo have now 
 entered on the England of our own time ; the great 
 struggle has begun which still continues ; we have begun 
 to walk among that goodly company of statesmen, heroes, 
 and patriots which leads us from Langton and Grosseteste 
 and Winchelsea, from Fitzwalter and De Montfort and 
 Koger Bigod, on to the Peel, the Russell, and the Glad- 
 stone of our own day. Compared with the eleventh 
 century and with the thirteenth, the age of Henry and 
 Thomas seems like something with which we have nothing
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 85 
 
 to do, and which we can hardly understand. The political 
 position of England was like nothing before it or after 
 it. In the eleventh century and in the thirteenth, there 
 was an English king and an English people ; but in the 
 twelfth such objects are hardly discernible. There is 
 indeed a King of England, the mightiest and richest 
 prince of Europe ; but he is a mere foreigner, a French- 
 man living in France, devoting his energies to French 
 objects, and holding England almost as a province of 
 Anjou. And as with the position of the island, so with 
 its internal controversies. We imagine that no Roman 
 Catholic or High Churchman would claim for the clergy 
 a freedom from secular jurisdiction in criminal cases, or 
 would think the exclusive right of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury to crown the King of England a matter for 
 which it was worth while to resist even unto death. In 
 the twelfth century the case was much less clear. Thomas 
 and Henry, in short, were two very remarkable men in 
 a very remarkable age, who engaged in a controversy 
 about which there could not be two opinions now, but 
 about which opposite sides were then taken by the best 
 and wisest men of the age. If a man will study the 
 matejials before him fully and fairly, he will probably 
 rise up with very considerable respect for both disputants 
 on the whole, mingled with strong condemnation of par- 
 ticular actions of both. Thomas often disgraced a sfood 
 cause by violence and obstinacy ; Henry disgraced a cause 
 equally good by mean cruelty and petty personal perse- 
 cution, and sometimes, which Thomas never did. he allowed 
 momentary passion to hurry him into practically giving up 
 his cause altogether. 
 
 On the modern writers on the subject we do not intend 
 to enlarge at length. Though the history has been touched 
 on incidentally by some very distinguished men, it has 
 never been made the subject of any separate work of first- 
 rate merit. We will therefore touch briefly on the most 
 important modern writers on the subject, and then proceed
 
 86 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 to give our own estimate of Thomas himself and his con- 
 temporary biographers. 
 
 Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Berington were probably the 
 first, among the modern " amici " and " inimici Thomi^e," * 
 who could give any reason for their friendship or enmity. 
 Their histories of Henry the Second were both of them 
 highly creditable to their authors at a time when his- 
 torical learning was at its lowest ebb. In an age of 
 second-hand knowledge they had really read the contem- 
 porary writers. Each maintains his own position well, 
 and each may be still turned to w^ith profit, even after 
 the accumulation of so much recent literature on the 
 subject. Mr. Berington, we may add, though an apologist 
 of Thomas, is by no means a blind admirer ; he is not a 
 Herbert of Bosham, but claims the higher character of 
 a John of Salisbury. 
 
 Among more general historians, in whose pages Thomas 
 and Henry necessarily play a considerable part, Dr. Lin- 
 gard at once occurs as a Roman Catholic writer of much 
 the same school as Mr. Berington. Both of them have 
 the wisdom to write, not as Roman Catholics, but as 
 ordinary men ; they at all events affect impartiality, and 
 of course are much more likely to influence Protestant 
 judgements than if they checked them at the beginning 
 by any ostentatious display of their peculiar dogmas. On 
 the other hand, Southey's agreeable, but very superficial, 
 Book of the Church contains one of the very best of what 
 we may call the incidental biographies of Thomas. It 
 is full, vivid, and sympathizing. It is clear that the 
 heroic grandeur of the Catholic saint appealed irresistibly 
 to the heart of the poet, even while invested Avith the 
 character of a Protestant controversialist. 
 
 Thoinas also figures very promincntlj'' in Thierry's well- 
 known History of the Norman Con((uest, where he is 
 pressed into the service of that writer's peculiar theories. 
 
 * Aiiioiii,' tlie Letters is one (Giles, iv. 256) headed "ALiXfuidn) papm et 
 Dimiiljiis curdiiialil us Inimici Thomce Cautuurieiibis arcliiepi.scopi. '
 
 lY.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 87 
 
 He is made to figure as an English patriot contending 
 against Norman oppressors. Of this utterly untenable 
 notion, and of the small nucleus of truth around which 
 M. Thierry has gathered a mass of very attractive romance, 
 we shall have again to speak. 
 
 The more recent literature on the subject begins with 
 the Remains of the late Mr. R. H. Froude. Strangely 
 enough, the first recent apologist of Saint Thomas of 
 Canterbury was brother of the apologist of King Henry 
 the Eighth. The elder Froude, one of the original leaders 
 of the Oxford Tract movement, was a man of ability and 
 independent thought, but, as one might expect, he ap- 
 proached the subject from a wholly false point of view. 
 His case was one of the most conspicuous of misconceiving 
 history, in consequence of seeing it through an atmosphere 
 of modern controversy. The .subject attracted him from 
 some fancied analogies between the position of the Church 
 in the twelfth century and the nineteenth. The career of 
 Thomas occupies the whole of the third volume of Mr. 
 Froude's Remains, but a large portion of the narrative 
 part is from another hand, no less an one, we believe, 
 than Dr. Newman's. Mr. Froude's own labours were 
 chiefly given to translating and partially arranging the 
 Epistles, a task before which any amount of energy might 
 excusably have broken down. 
 
 After Mr. Froude came Dr. Giles. We suppose we must 
 allow the praises of zeal and research to a man who has 
 edited, translated, and written more books than any other 
 living English scholar. But really we can give him no 
 other praise. The Epistles, as edited in his Sauclu-s Thomas 
 Cantuarieiuns, are, as most later writers have complained, 
 a heap of confusion, made far worse confounded by Dr. 
 Giles himself. The principle of arrangement is an elabo- 
 rate puzzle which renders it almost hopeless to find any 
 particular letter ; the indexes are very meagre, and the 
 mere editing is exceedingly bad.* 
 
 * We thoroughly agree with Mi\ Robertsou's wish, that a really good editioQ
 
 88 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 Dr. Giles has indeed also given us the Life and Letters 
 in two volumes of English, in which there is an attempt 
 to arrange some of the letters in the order of time. But 
 scholars do not want a ti anslation — and a very bad trans- 
 lation too — of some of the letters, but an intelligible edition 
 of the original text of all. Dr. Giles's attempt at original 
 biograph}' amounts to little more than a filling-up of inter- 
 stices, and is moreover as poor and superficial as may be. 
 Nearly everything that is good in it is copied from Mr. 
 Froude. 
 
 The life and death of Thomas have also been taken up 
 by two writers of a widely different stamp from either 
 Mr. Froude or Dr. Giles. Professor Stanley, in his His- 
 torical Memorials of Canterbury, has given us a harmonized 
 narrative of the martyrdom, written with such minuteness, 
 life, and truth, that we deeply regret that it extends to 
 the martyrdom alone, and does not take in the whole 
 history. No less admirable is his treatment of what we 
 may call the posthumous history of Thomas in the chapter 
 on the Shrine of Becket. The Thomaic controversy again 
 occupies a large portion of the third volume of Dean 
 Milman"s Latin Christianity. With some drawbacks, this 
 is the best English Life of Thomas we know, though the 
 narrative perhaps suffers a little from over-compression ; 
 and though we think that the Dean passes on the whole 
 too harsh a judgement on Thomas, it is only fair to add 
 that he sometimes bears rather hard upon Henry also. 
 Still his narrative, allowing for some of those little slips 
 in names and details into which it is strange to find 
 so really learned a man as Dr. Milman so constantly 
 falling, is the very best history of Thomas we know ; far 
 better, considering its scale, than the more special ones 
 which we have now to mention. 
 
 The year 1H59 produced two rival biographies of our 
 hero ; the works of the Roman Catholic Canon of North- 
 
 of tlie whole literature on the suhject slioiikl f'urui part of the Series now publish- 
 ing by authority of the Master of the Kolls.
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 89 
 
 hampton, and of the Protestant Canon of Canterbury. On 
 these we might be tempted to dilate at some length, as the 
 contrast between them is very curious and amusing. Each 
 of the rival canons has read his books well and accurately ; 
 each brings local inspiration to the task ; each does his best, 
 such as it is, to be fair ; but each is disqualified by 
 invincible prejudices, and the work of each alike labours 
 under incurable objections in point of form. Canon Morris 
 writes in a spirit of undiscriminating admiration ; Canon 
 Robertson writes in a spirit of carping and fault-finding, 
 with which we have still less sympathy. Canon Morris 
 might have written a purely devotional life of Saint 
 Thomas of Canterbury for members of his own communion, 
 and no fair person would have objected ; or he might have 
 written a historical life in the same spirit of prudence as 
 Mr. Berington and Dr. Lingard ; but he has confounded the 
 two ideas together, and has produced something far too 
 historical for purely devotional use, while, as a history, it 
 is sure to oflend every Protestant reader. Canon Robertson 
 has worked up into a book two old articles from the defunct 
 English Review, written, it would seem, against Mr. Froude 
 and Dr. Giles. The book retains far too palpable traces of 
 its origin in its somewhat poor and heavy attempts at wit, 
 in its constant sarcasms on the writers reviewed, and its 
 occasional allusions to things quite unintelligible to those 
 who have not all the numbers of the English Review by 
 heart. Nothing for instance can be truer, but nothing can 
 be more out of place, than the elaborate criticism on Dr. 
 Giles's editing which is thrust into the middle of the bio- 
 graphy. For the matter of the book, it is what might be 
 expected from a man who understands his subject without 
 loving it, and whose chief object is to upset Mr. Froude. 
 The narrative is accurate ; the references are highly valu- 
 able. The author does his best to be fair, and rejects all 
 the more vulgar calumnies against his victim ; — for, unlike 
 most biographies, this of Mr. Robertson has no liero. But 
 Mr. Robertson sees everything through the coloured glass
 
 90 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 of the English Review. He is utterly incapable of entering 
 into the position of either a king or an archbishop of the 
 twelfth century. Above all, Thomas of Canterbury, whether 
 saint or not, was emphatically a hero, and a hero is just the 
 sort of person whom Canon Robertson cannot possibly 
 understand. 
 
 Of the foreign writers on the subject, we must confess 
 with shame that we know less than we ou^ht. Reuters 
 History of Alexander the Third is frequently quoted by 
 Deau jNIilman and Mr. Robertson ; and, as it seems to be 
 highly favourable to that Pontiff, we suppose we ought in 
 fairness to have mastered it, for certainly our own. study of 
 the Thomaic correspondence does not lead us to a conclusion 
 at all like what we take M. Renter's to be. M. Ozanam's 
 De7ix Chancellery iV Avgleferre (Paris, 1H36), and M. Buss's I)er 
 HeUige Thomas und se'm Kaiiipf fur die Freiheii der Kirche 
 (Mainz, 1856), we only heard of through Mr. Robertson's 
 references. M. Ozanam's book we have not seen ; M. Buss's 
 has reached us since we began to write this article, and we 
 have had time only to glance at it. It is easy to see that 
 M. Buss is a strong Catholic and partisan of Thomas, but 
 we do not see anything of the offensive ostentation of 
 Catholicism of which we complain in Mr. Morris. His 
 research and labour are unwearied, and, as far as we have 
 seen, his work seems to be the best suited of all to serve 
 as a guide to the original writers. But there are some 
 tasks before which even German industry breaks down, or 
 at least which it cannot go through without complaining. 
 M. Buss complains, not indeed with the sarcastic rhetoric of 
 Ml'. Robertson, but with a simple pathos which is quite as 
 effective, of the superhuman difficulty of finding anything 
 he wants in a book edited by Dr. Giles. 
 
 We will now turn from modern writers on the subject to 
 the original authorities for the Life of Thomas. These are 
 of throe kinds, — the biographers, the contemporary chro- 
 niclers, and the correspondence of Thomas, Gilbert, and the 
 rest. All our authorities arc in Latin, except a single very
 
 IV.] AXD HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 91 
 
 important biography in French verse. English records we 
 unluckily have none. The Saxon Chronicle breaks off at 
 the accession of Henry the Second. What would one not 
 have given to have seen this stin-ing period described, with 
 the same life as the days of the Conqueror and of Stephen, 
 by a real native Englishman, in the old Teutonic mother- 
 tongue ? 
 
 The French Life of Garnier of Pont Sainte-Maxence 
 must be the earliest of all, as the author tells us it was 
 written between 1172 and 11 74, being completed within 
 four years after the martyrdom. The author had himself 
 seen the saint in the flesh, but before he assumed his saintly 
 character : 
 
 "En Gascuingne fu-il lung tens ]jnr guerreier. 
 As G;iscuns i kovint de lur chastens lesser. 
 En Normendie r'out sun seinur grant mester, 
 Ei jo Vvi sor Franceis plusur feiz ckevaucher."* 
 
 He visited Canterbury, and also conversed with Thomas's 
 sister, Mary, Abbess of Barking, so that he had good sources 
 of knowledge ; and he tells us that, in the course of writing 
 his book, he often altered what he had written, as he 
 obtained better information. Besides direct narrative, the 
 book contains many digressions or versified sermons ; he 
 has also taken the trouble to translate several of the more 
 important letters into his French verse, and a very odd 
 effect they have in their new shape. This biography is 
 very important from its early date, and to the philologer it 
 is highly valuable as a specimen of the French language in 
 the twelfth century. 
 
 Of the Latin Lives the most important are those of 
 Edward Grim, Roger of Pontigny, William Fitz-Stephen, 
 Alan of Tewkesbury, and Herbert of Bosham, together with 
 the short Life by John of Salisbury prefixed to that of Alan. 
 All these writers were contemporary, and were intimate 
 with the Archbishop at some portion or other of his career. 
 Each therefore tells part at least of his story from his own 
 
 * Garnier, p. 14, ed. Hippeau.
 
 92 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 personal knowledge. Each, to a great extent, fills up the 
 deficiencies of the others. Thus Edward Grim only entered 
 the service of Thomas a few days before his death ; his 
 earlier narrative is therefore written from heai'say; but, in 
 his new-born zeal for his master, he gives a full and vivid 
 account of his martyrdom : of that martyrdom indeed 
 he was more than a spectator; he was actually a fellow- 
 sufferer, having his arm broken in a vain attempt to defend 
 the Archbishop. Roger was the attendant of Thomas during 
 his sojourn at Pontigny. We might have expected him to 
 be very full on that part of his history; but, writing doubt- 
 less mainly for the monks of Pontigny, he says that he will 
 not enlarge upon what every one knows, and cuts that part 
 very short. He therefore writes mainly from hearsay, but 
 it is from the hearsay of Thomas himself ; so that we may 
 look upon Roger's work as being more nearly an auto- 
 biography than any of the others. William Fitz-Stephen 
 seems to have been attached to Thomas earlier than any of 
 the rest. He was his clerk when Chancellor, and conse- 
 quently gives us many details of that time of his life 
 which are not to be found elsewhere. He did not follow 
 the Archbishop into exile, though he had one interview 
 with him in the course of a journey through France ; but 
 he was present at the martyrdom. Hence he can tell us 
 little from his own knowledge of his master's doings in 
 banishment, but he supplies many valuable particulars of 
 what was going on in England meanwhile. Herbert of 
 Bosbam, on the other hand, followed Thomas through his 
 whole career both in England and France, but he was not 
 present at the martyrdom, and he seems to have known 
 very little of his early life. He is therefore the fullest 
 of all in his biography of the Archbishop, but tells us 
 very little of the Chancellor. Alan, and the fragmentary 
 Life by William of Canterbury in Dr. Giles's second 
 volume, also contain occasional particulars not to be found 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The comparison of these biographies with one another is
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 93 
 
 exceedingly cuiious and interesting. "We fully agree with 
 Mr. Robertson that they need to be more closely analyzed 
 and compared than they have ever yet been, " with a view 
 of ascertaining their correspondences and divergences, and 
 the sources from which each writer derived his materials." 
 Mr. Robertson goes on to say, rather darkly, " Perhaps the 
 result of such an inquiry might be found to throw some 
 light on questions connected with a Hidoria QvadnpartUa 
 far more important than that which is devoted to the Life 
 of Thomas of Canterbury." This we take to be Canon 
 Robertson^s roundabout way of describing the Four Gospels. 
 The hint is an excellent one, especially as coming from 
 so orthodox a source, though it is very likely that some 
 inquirers might push it to results at which Mr. Robertson 
 might be rather alarmed. The general character of the 
 narratives is that of close agreement in the main story, 
 combined with constant contradiction in minute particulars. 
 This is just what might be expected from narratives written 
 from memory some years after the event. Herbert, for 
 instance, did not write till fourteen years after the martyr- 
 dom. He speaks rather pathetically of himself as the last 
 survivor of the whole band of faithful disciples.* On the 
 other hand, there is not uncommonly a minute, sometimes 
 even a verbal, agreement between two or more narrators, as 
 if they had copied from one another, or from some common 
 source. Take, for instance, one grand scene in Thomas's 
 life, his "fighting with beasts" at Northampton. Two at 
 least of our authorities, Herbert and William Fitz-Stephen, 
 were there. Yet if a man were to try to force even their 
 narratives into exact conformity, as commentators do with 
 Mr. Robertson's other lUdoria Qtiadriparfifa, he would 
 utterly break down in tlie attempt. Comparing all the 
 narratives, there is a good deal of difference in the order of 
 events, and even as to the mouth into which particular 
 speeches are put. But in the whole history we only 
 remember one contradiction of any real moment. William 
 
 * Giles, vii. 335.
 
 94 SATXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 Fitz-Steplien saj'S that Thomas did affix his seal to the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, which is stated by no one else, 
 and which the rest implicitly deny. Here we confess is a 
 difficulty. William was something of a lawyer, and seems 
 always careful about legal technicalities, so his testimony 
 is especially valuable. But it has to be set against a 
 consensus of the other writers and the general tenour of the 
 story. Whether Thomas did or did not seal the Constitu- 
 tions is of real importance to the history, and it is strange 
 that any of his followers should be careless or misinformed 
 about it ; but the slighter diversities which elsewhere lie 
 thick upon the narrative are just what always happen to 
 several unassisted human narrators telling the same story. 
 No reader of the Life of Thomas is likely to be troubled at 
 discrepancies of this sort ; but exactly similar ones in the 
 other Hisforia Qiiadriparlila have given no small trouble to 
 tender consciences. Each biographer of Thomas, like each 
 of the Evangelists, has a character of his own. Edward 
 Grim has the greatest tendency to the marvellous ; Eoger, 
 as a Frenchman, is far more bitter against Henry than any 
 of the rest, and he makes just those little mistakes about 
 English matters which a Frenchman would make in any age. 
 William Fitz-Stephen is lively and amusing ; Herbert is 
 given to sermonizing and twaddling, and to putting long 
 speeches, not only into his own mouth (which is his own 
 affiiir), but into the mouths of Thomas and others, which we 
 trust and believe are Master Herbert's own composition. 
 But even this is no more than every historian gave himself 
 the license of doing till very recent times. Herbert is 
 moreover the Boanerges of our story. He seems to have 
 been the double of Thomas in mind and body, and probably 
 did Thomas very little good by his constant company. As 
 if the Primate were not of himself daring and unyielding 
 enough in all conscience, Herbert was always stii-ring him 
 up to the strongest measures. Like Thomas, he did not fear 
 the face of man, and spoke as boldly to King Henry on his 
 throne as to his own master in his chamber. Like Thomas
 
 IV.] AXD HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 95 
 
 too he was tall of stature and goodly of countenance ; and 
 like Thomas in his unregenerate state, he did not object 
 to set off his bodily perfections to the best advantage."^ 
 These two faithful followers appear in their several 
 characters in that most striking scene at Northampton. f 
 Thomas sits with his cross in his hand, defying the King of 
 earth in the name of the King of Heaven. Herbert, the true 
 Boanerges, would fain have him excommunicate every man 
 present on the spot. William counsels meekness and 
 patience. Forbidden to speak to his master, he points in 
 silence to the figure of the crucified Saviour. Even the 
 cold heart of Mr. Robertson forbears to sneer at this most 
 touching incident. 
 
 Besides these biographies by wmters whose names and 
 actions we know, there is a very remarkable one printed 
 in Dr. Gileses second volume, from an anonymous manu- 
 script in the Library at Lambeth Palace. The author 
 aifirms that he was present at the martyrdom ; still his 
 contemporary character is doubted by some modern 
 writers. If it were fully ascertained, the work would be 
 most valuable ; for, though it does not contain many new 
 facts, it is written in a tone of unusually independent 
 criticism, and has fewer coincidences with other Lives than 
 any one in the series. It states the case for Henry and 
 against Thomas with great fulness and fairness, and enters 
 into arguments at some length against those who denied 
 the Archbishop's claims to the title of martyr. 
 
 As for contemporary chroniclers, who wrote, not special 
 Lives of Saint Thomas, but general annals of their own 
 times, several of the best of the class have recorded the 
 reign of Henry the Second. These of course are highly 
 valuable, as giving us the view of affairs taken by those 
 who were not Thomas's immediate followers, and also as 
 helping us to the more exact chronology of the period. 
 The biographers are commonly rather careless as to the 
 order of time. Each, as we have seen, recorded what 
 
 * William Fitz-Stephen, Giles, i. 265. t lb. i. 226.
 
 96 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 struck him most or what he best knew ; one set down 
 one event and another another ; and none of them paid 
 much regard to the order of details. The chroniclers step 
 in to correct their errors and supply their deficiencies. 
 Ealph de Diceto, Dean of Saint Paul's, a moderate partisan 
 of the King's, supplies in his Tinaginen Hhioriarnm several 
 important facts not in the biographies, together with the 
 chronological arrangement of all. Gervase and Roger of 
 Hoveden were also contemporaries : but they were younger 
 men, who wrote after the biographers, whom they con- 
 tinually copy. But it is always curious to see which Life 
 they follow for any particular fact, and they also often add 
 touches and details of their own. Gervase especially, as a 
 Canterbury monk admitted by Thomas himself, had good 
 means of information. William of Newbui-gh is chiefly 
 remarkable for the manly and independent tone with which 
 he treats the whole controversy, doing full justice to the 
 originally honest motives of both the King and the Primate, 
 but not scrupling to deal severe censure on particular 
 actions of both. 
 
 The Letters of course are invaluable ; at least they will 
 be when any one shall be found to edit them decently. For 
 the whole of Thomas's sojourn in France, they, much more 
 than the biographers, are really the history. Many of the 
 letters are strictly public documents, and many others, 
 though private in form, were meant at least for the eyes of 
 all the writer's own party. Mr. Robertson thinks the corre- 
 spondence does not give a favourable idea of the time, and 
 that it is on the whole discreditable to the mediaeval Church. 
 That the letters are full of stronof lanijuaofe is no more than 
 was to be expected ; but we do not know that Saint 
 Thomas and his contemporaries use any stronger language 
 than those worthies of the sixteenth century whom doubtless 
 Mr. Robertson, as a sound Protestant, duly reverences. 
 If Thomas is rather fond of calling Geoffrey Riddell Archi- 
 (liaholvs instead of Arcfiidiaconvs, was it not the established 
 joke of the Reformation to call a Bishop a BUesIieejp, and to
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 97 
 
 turn Cardinal Poole into Carnal Fooll In short, in ages 
 when decorum was not very stringent, all men who have 
 been in earnest, from the Prophets and Apostles down- 
 wards, have used very strong language upon occasion. 
 But Mr. Robertson's taste is so delicate that he is actually 
 offended by Thomas's hearty, honest, and thoroughly 
 English denunciations of the iniquities of the Roman 
 Court. These we suspect, in anybody but Saint Thomas 
 of Canterbury, he would have hailed as an instance of 
 Protestantism before its time. But he has weightier accu- 
 sations still against the unfortunate Letters. They are he 
 thinks full of " cant," and of " stranQ^e tossino- to and fro of 
 Scripture, perverted by allegory and misapplication."* In 
 a certain sense this is true ; but talk of this sort always 
 reminds us very strongly of the doctrine taught us by 
 Mr. Grote, that all religions seem absurd to those who do 
 not believe them. Most undoubtedly a calm and critical 
 reader of those Hebrew and Greek writings which we call 
 Scripture will find constant '• misapplications " and strange 
 '• tossings to and fro " in the writings of Thomas, his friends, 
 and his enemies. But he will find misapplications and 
 tossings equally strange in any sermon, any religious tract, 
 any religious biography, of our own times. In their belief, 
 as in that of the Protestant enthusiasts of the seventeenth 
 century, every word of the Old and New Testament was 
 written for the direct example and instruction of every 
 man of every age. Believing this, they did not shrink 
 from carrying it out in detail. If God spake unto Moses, 
 why should He not speak also to Anselm or Bernard ? If 
 He bade Joshua lead His people against the Canaanite, did 
 He not also bid Peter the Hermit to preach the crusade 
 against the Saracen "? If the destroying angel smote the 
 host of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, was the arm of the 
 Lord to be shortened when the schismatic Frederick threw 
 up his banks and shot his arrows against the tomb and 
 temple of the Prince of the Apostles ? The faith of those 
 
 * P. 173. 
 H
 
 98 SAIXT THOMAS OF CAXTERBURY [Essay 
 
 times was at least a real, living, practical, faith ; professiDg 
 to telieve certain books as their rule of faith and their 
 personal guide of life, they did believe them as such. 
 Consistently, at all events, they shrank from no " misappli- 
 cation," no " strange tossing to and fro," of what they held 
 to be real lively oracles, speaking direct comfort and 
 counsel in every circumstance of the life of every man. 
 
 We however fully agree with Mr. Robertson in placing 
 the letters of John of Salisbury far higher than any others 
 in the collection. John was a thoroughly good and pious 
 man, and withal learned, thoughtful, moderate, and prudent. 
 A firm friend and faithful follower of Thomas, he rebukes 
 him, whenever he thinks him in the wrong, with apostolic 
 boldness ; down to the very day of his death,* he with- 
 stands him to the face as often as he is to be blamed. We 
 have no hesitation in setting down John as a wiser and 
 better man than Thomas himself But does not Mr. 
 Robertson see that it speaks very much in Thomas's favour 
 to have attracted and retained the devoted attachment of 
 such a man ? A really candid writer would have pointed 
 out that if John's bold and faithful rebukes tell greatly to 
 his honour, they tell almost equally to the honour of Thomas, 
 who invariably took them in good part. 
 
 In a similar spirit elsewhere Mr. Robertson exhibits an 
 amount of delight and triumph altogether childish, in 
 pointing out the error of "certain writers" who had not 
 put the events connected with the excommunication at 
 Vezelay and the removal from Pontigny in their right 
 order. The " certain writers " seem to be Dr. Lingard, 
 and perhaps Dr. Giles and Mr. Froude. We are not greatly 
 concerned for them ; but when Mr. Robertson ventures to 
 say f that the original biographers " wished to falsify the 
 history," that is quite another matter. The case is this. 
 In 1 1 66 Thomas went from Pontigny to Vezelay, and 
 there, in discharge of legatine powers with which he had 
 been lately invested by the Pope, he excommunicated, 
 
 * IJog. Pont., ap. Giles, i. 164 ; P.en. retr., ibid. ii. 62. f P. 193.
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 99 
 
 with especial solemnity, several of the King's friends, 
 both clerical and lay, for various offences, and uttered a 
 solemn warning against Henry himself. Him also he had 
 intended to excommunicate, but forebore doing so on 
 hearing that he was dangerously ill. On hearing of this 
 proceeding, Henry, by violent threats against the whole 
 Cistercian order, procured the removal of Thomas from the 
 Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, where he had hitherto been 
 sheltered. The comment of an impartial historian would be, 
 that the Archbishop's conduct was violent and imprudent, 
 the King's revenge mean and cowardly. Unfortunately 
 it happens that not one of the biographers, except the 
 anonymous Lambeth writer, describes this scene in all its 
 fulness. The complete account of the matter has to be 
 made out from the chroniclers and the Letters. That most 
 of the biographers do not mention it is really not very 
 wonderful. Edward Grim was not there, and his whole 
 narrative of this part of Thomas's life is utterly meagre. 
 Roger of Pontigny cuts his almost as short, because his 
 brethren knew all about it. William Fitz-Stephen was not 
 there; he tells us chiefly what happened in Henry's domi- 
 nions. Herbert was there, and records the scene ; he does 
 not indeed directly mention the excommunication ; but 
 this is clearly because the warning against the King was 
 the most striking point, that which he found most vividly 
 impressed on his mind eighteen years after. For an Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury to suspend a disobedient bishop, and 
 excommunicate a schismatic dean and a sacrilegious lay- 
 man, was no very wonderful occurrence. The awful and 
 unexpected part of the proceedings was, when Thomas 
 arose, with a voice broken with tears,^ to warn the King of 
 England that, if he did not repent, excommunication should 
 fall upon him as well as upon inferior sinners. That 
 
 * " Confestim, omnibus audientibus et stiipentibus, miro motu compunctus 
 voce quidem flebili et intentissimo conipassionis afiectu in ipsuin Anglorum 
 regem Henricum nominative coniminatorium emisit edictuni." Herb., ap. Giles, 
 vii. 230. 
 
 H 3
 
 100 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 Herbert had no intention of concealing the far less 
 important fact of the excommunication and suspension 
 appears from his speaking directly of them in the very- 
 next page.* So equally does William Fitz-Stephen f 
 though without strict regard to chronology, he being more 
 intent on the reception of the excommunications in Eng- 
 land than on their first denunciation in Burgundy. In 
 short, if Mr. Robertson enjoys crowing over Dr. Liugard, 
 we have not the least wish to interfere with his enjoyment; 
 but he has not the slightest right to repeat the note of 
 triumph over any one of Thomas's original biographers. 
 
 We must now turn from the ancient and modern bio- 
 graphers of Thomas to the estimate which we have our- 
 selves foi'med of Thomas himself. If we can trust ourselves, 
 that estimate is not swayed by party considerations of any 
 kind. We do not feel ourselves bound to indiscriminate 
 worship because of a papal canonization ; but we do not 
 look on such papal canonization as at all taking away a 
 claim to honour when honour is due. And be it remem- 
 bered that it was not only the Eoman Chancery, but the 
 spontaneous voice of the English nation which raised 
 Thomas to the honours of saintship. Through his whole 
 archiepiscopal career, alike in England and in Franco, 
 Thomas was the darling of the people. One of his 
 biographers is almost content to rest his claims to rever- 
 ence on the adage, familiar then as now, that the voice of 
 the people is the voice of God. J When he " fought with 
 beasts " at Northampton, when his king accused him, when 
 barons condemned him and bishops deserted him, an 
 admiring multitude followed him in triumph from the 
 castle-gate to his lodo;ini>:s at Saint Andrew's. W^hen he 
 turned away from the conference at Montmirail, when 
 every earthly power seemed to have forsaken him, every 
 eye as he passed was fixed in admiration on the Primate 
 who " would not deny the honour of God for the face of 
 two kings." His return from banishment, his reception 
 
 * Giles, vii. 231. f lb. i. 258. J Lamb., ap. Giles, ii. 136.
 
 IV.J AXD HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 101 
 
 at Sandwich, at Canterbury, and at London, was a nobler 
 triumph than ever awaited returning conqueror. The bells, 
 the organs, the processions of monks and clergy, might 
 have expressed a mere constrained or official homage ; but 
 there could have been nothing of such compulsion in the 
 voice with which, in defiance of hostile nobles and officials, 
 all Kent and all London poured forth to bless him who 
 came back to them in the name of the Lord, the father of 
 the orphans and the judge of the widows."^ Such popular 
 reverence does not prove that the cause which he defended 
 was one which the sober voice of history will permanently 
 approve. It does not prove that his own character may 
 not have been disfigured by many and grievous faults. But 
 it is a homage which assuredly was never paid to a mere 
 proud and ambitious hypocrite, or to the assertor of a cause 
 which was at the time palpably that of unrighteousness or 
 oppression. 
 
 Nor must we suppose that the popularity of Thomas in 
 his own day was at all the popularity of an assertor of the 
 cause of the " Saxon " against the Norman, This is a mere 
 dream, to which an unlucky currency has been given by 
 the eloquent writing of Thierry. There is no trace in the 
 history of the period of any such strongly marked antago- 
 nism as Thierry supposes still to have existed ; still less is 
 there any trace of Thomas of London being its impersona- 
 tion, if it did exist. Thomas, in reality, was himself of 
 Norman descent. His family was settled in London at the 
 time of his birth ; but his father was originally from Rouen, 
 while his mother seems actually to have been born at Caen.f 
 It is evident however that at the time of his birth his 
 family was thoroughly established in England, and that 
 they had the feelings, not of strangers, but of Englishmen 
 and Londoners. The truth is that there is not a word 
 about " Saxons and Normans," or any controversies be- 
 tween them, in any one contemporary biographer, chronicler, 
 
 * " Pater orplianorum et judex viduarum." Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 315. 
 t Lamb., ap. Giles, i'. 73.
 
 102 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 or letter-writer. The whole evidence seems to us to show 
 that the wide distinction and hostility between the two 
 races, supposed by Thierry and his school to have re- 
 mained so late as the reign of Henry the Second, is a mere 
 imagination. The probability is that, tliough the upper 
 classes were mainly of Norman, the lower of Old-English 
 descent, the distinction had then become one merely of 
 class, and not of nation. In the middle class, Thomas's 
 own class, the two races must have been much mixed up 
 together. Indeed the Conquest itself must have had the 
 highly beneficial effect of at once forming a middle class 
 out of the higher ranks of the conquered people. The 
 Norman gentleman, born in England, often of an English 
 mother, w(<uld soon feel himself much more English than 
 Norman. The Norman citizen, Gilbert Becket or his father, 
 would do so still sooner. In truth, mankind are every- 
 where far more sensible of birth than of descent, and they 
 identify themselves with the country where they were born, 
 rather than with the country of their fathers. We are 
 sometimes led to suppose that the feeling of race lasted 
 longer than it did because the kings remained foreign so 
 long. Henry the Second was not an Englishman, he was 
 not even a Norman ; he was a great French prince, who 
 reigned in France, and treated England as a dependency. 
 To his English subjects he was the rex transmaruuis,^^ the 
 king beyond the sea, who sometimes visited them, but who 
 commonly dwelt in more favoured parts of his dominions. 
 Twice in his reign he seems to have wished to confine his 
 own immediate government to his French territories, and 
 to convert England into the formal state of a viceroyalty. 
 Such, if we may believe the Lambeth biographor,f was 
 actually his object in pressing the election of Thomas to 
 the archbishopric. Henry was to reign in France and 
 Thomas in England. And afterwards it was clearly with 
 the same object that he procured the coronation of his son 
 
 * William Fitz-Stephen, ap. Giles, i. 284, 2S9, 294. 
 "i" Ap. Giles, ii. 86: cf. Gamier (et Fruteval), 152.
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 103 
 
 as a rex cumarinns during his lifetime. Those whom he, 
 and the kings before and after him, advanced by preference 
 to high office were neither " Anglo-Saxons " nor " Anglo- 
 Normans," but absolute foreigners, natives of the continent. 
 This is especially to be seen in ecclesiastical promotions. 
 Thomas is always said to have been the first Englishman 
 who became Archbishop of Canterbury since the Conquest ; 
 it might have been added that he was nearly the first 
 Englishman who became bishop of any see. This is per- 
 fectly true. He was the first native of England, of either 
 race, who rose to the metropolitan throne ; while his pre- 
 decessors, and the greater number of the contemporary 
 bishops, were natives of the continent. It is probably 
 this ambiguous expression of " Englishman " which led 
 M. Thierry into the mistake of looking on Thomas as an 
 " Anglo-Saxon " patriot. The real ph?enomenon of the age 
 is not the struggle between the two races in England, but 
 the fusing together of the two races preparatory to the 
 struggle with a royal line foreign to both. This silent, 
 gradual, fusing of " Saxons and Normans," is recorded by 
 no chronicler, just because it was so silent and gradual. 
 But we see it plainly enough in its results. It was the 
 great work of the twelfth century. It is this work which 
 gives that century that peculiar character of- which we 
 have already spoken. No process could be more important, 
 more necessary to all that was to come after. But its 
 silent, hidden, nature is alone enough to give a sort of 
 isolated and unintelligible character to the outward aspect 
 of the age. 
 
 Of this fusion Thomas, the son of Gilbert Becket of 
 London, may be taken as the type. Though of Norman 
 blood, his whole feeling, his whole character, is English ; 
 and it is clear that no man in England looked upon him 
 as a stranger. His general character in mind and in body 
 stands vividly forth in his own letters and in the descrip- 
 tions of his biographers. The man of majestic presence 
 and of unyielding soul at once rises up before us. Saint
 
 104 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 Thomas of Canterbury was indeed a " muscular Christian " 
 ■with a vengeance. Of strength and stature beyond the 
 common lot of men ; with a quick ear, a keen eye, a fluent 
 speech ; cheerful in discourse and ready in debate ; foremost 
 in the mimic warfare of the chase and on the actual fleld 
 of battle, — such was Thomas the Chancellor. And scourge 
 and fast and sackcloth did but little to change the essential 
 character of Thomas the Archbishop. The weapons of his 
 warfare alone are changed. Of old he stormed the strongest 
 castles, and unhorsed the stoutest knights in single combat. 
 He laughed at the scruples of his sovereign which kept him 
 back from assailing his liege lord King Lewis within the 
 walls of Toulouse. The saint clearly took exactly the 
 same delight in wielding his spiritual arms. He writhed 
 under the timid and time-serving counsels of Pope and 
 Cardinals, who kept back the sword of Peter from the 
 slaughter. And yet this man, so ardent and headstrong, 
 must have been, at both times of his life, amongst the most 
 amiable and delightful of companions. The intense love 
 with which he inspired his immediate followers breathes 
 in every page of their writings. It is alike in the neophyte 
 Edward Grim, in the fellow-exile Herbert, and in his 
 earlier follower William Fitz-Stephen, who seems hardly to 
 know which most to admire, the magnificent Chancellor or 
 the martyred Archbishop. Nor did he awaken less attach- 
 ment among men of other ways and callings. All their dis- 
 putes could never quite efface the old friendship from the 
 heart either of Henry or of Thomas. At every personal 
 meeting the unextinguished love breaks out again, if only 
 for one brief moment. Henry, there can be little doubt, 
 was kept up to his opposition by men who hated Thomas 
 far more than he did. The bishops, even the better ones, 
 for the most part disliked him from their natural repug- 
 nance to see a man of his early life and conversation so 
 strangely exalted over their heads. Ruffians like the De 
 Brocs were actuated by the motives common to men of their 
 stamp in all ages. The higher and better class of the laity,
 
 IV.] AXD HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 105 
 
 men like the Earls of Arundel and Leicester, oppose Thomas 
 with deep sorrow, and in every respect exhibit a favourable 
 contrast to the bishops on the Kings side. The love and 
 the hatred of Thomas were passions of intense depth, and he 
 could call out both feelings in others in as great intensity as 
 he felt them himself. 
 
 The intellect of Thomas was clearly one ranking very 
 high in the second order of genius. He was not a creator. 
 We should look in vain to him for anything original or 
 comprehensive. He could never have left any such impress 
 upon his age as did Hildebrand among popes, or Charles 
 the Great among kings. His great qualities were an ardent 
 and impetuous spirit, a practical energy which carried 
 everything before him, an admirable versatility which could 
 adapt itself to all circumstances and all people, and a lofty 
 sense of duty which could support him under any amount 
 of adversity and disappointment. His faults were chiefly 
 the exaggeration of his virtues. His impetuosity often 
 grew into needless and injudicious violence ; his strong 
 will continually degenerated into obstinacy. His biogra- 
 phers praise him for uniting the wisdom of the serpent with 
 the harmlessness of the dove. We must confess that we 
 can see in him very little of either dove or serpent ; their 
 other favourite quotation of " the righteous man bold as a 
 lion," is very much more to the purpose. His enemies 
 have accused him of pride and of duplicity. Doubtless 
 he magnified his office to the extremest point ; his long 
 brooding over his wrongs at Sens and Pontigny imbued 
 him with a fanatical spirit, and an overdone, almost frantic, 
 longing for martyrdom. Yet how far the personal exalta- 
 tion of Thomas of London was still thought of in procuring 
 the triumph of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Legate 
 of the Holy See, it is not for mortals to presume to judge. 
 The charge of duplicity, which we are sorry to see brought 
 on one occasion by so weighty a writer as Dean Milman, is, 
 we think, without foundation. The faults of Thomas were 
 the natural faults of his lofty and impetuous character, the
 
 106 SAIXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 faults of obstinacy and violence. But duplicity, conscious 
 bad faith, was utterly alien to his nature. Once, possibly 
 twice, in his life — certainly at Clarendon, perhaps also 
 at Montmirail — he allowed himself to be talked over 
 into conduct which he did not thoroughly approve. He 
 repented ; he drew back ; in a certain sense he violated his 
 promise ; but he was not guilty of any deliberate deception. 
 His conduct may be called either vacillating or obstinate, 
 two qualities quite consistent with one another ; it may be 
 called over- scrupulous ; it certainly was provoking and 
 otFensive ; but we do not think it fairly deserves the name 
 of double-dealing. 
 
 The whole character of Thomas strikes us as essentiall}' 
 secular. He was made for the court and the camp, not for the 
 cathedral or the cloister. His episcopacy and his saintship 
 strike us as mistakes. There was not a particle of hypocrisy 
 in him ; but the whole of his saintly career was artificial, 
 unnatural, and overdone. His misfortune was to be born 
 in an age, and in a class, to which the Church alone offered 
 means of advancement. His first great advancement was 
 indeed secular; he was a statesman and a soldier, not a 
 priest ; but, strangely enough, it was only his ecclesiastical 
 character which allowed him to become a statesman and 
 a soldier. His parentage was respectable, but no more ; he 
 was himself in no way ashamed of his descent, but it is clear 
 that it was humble enough to be used as a means of dis- 
 paragement by his enemies. The son of Gilbert Becket of 
 London would, as a mere layman, have had little chance of 
 presiding in the King's Chancery or of commanding the 
 King's armies. Once tonsured, secular as well as ecclesias- 
 tical greatness was open to him. As Chancellor he nearly 
 cast off his clerical character. Strict men condemned the 
 secular pomp of the great courtier and captain who was 
 also Archdeacon of Canterbury and Provost of Beverley. 
 But two things are to be remembered : first of all, ho was 
 not a priest. Loaded with preferment which now no deacon 
 could hold, the terror of Kinjj: Lewis and counsellor of King
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 107 
 
 Henry remained ecclesiastically in that lowly order. A 
 fighting archdeacon was a scandal, though Edward Grim 
 seems to have thought otherwise ; but the conduct of 
 Thomas did not present the far greater scandal of a priest, 
 one invested with the mysterious powers of sacrifice and 
 absolution, casting off his spiritual character like Caesar 
 Borgia or Talleyrand. In modern estimation the diflEerence 
 between a priest and a deacon seems very slight ; but, when 
 once the full sacerdotal ideal is realized, it becomes some- 
 thing infinite. Secondly, though Thomas as Chancellor 
 led a thoroughly secular life, he did not lead either an ir- 
 religious or an immoral one. Looked on as a layman, he 
 might almost, even then, have passed for a saint. That he 
 already bared his back to the discipline does not prove very 
 much, as Henry himself now and then did the same. But 
 it is no small credit that a man, whose order debarred him 
 from marriage, should, in a profligate court, have strictly 
 preserved his personal chastity. How far he rebuked the 
 King's vices we know not, but he resisted many strong 
 tem^Dtations to share in them, and he was a severe censor 
 of inferior offenders in the same line. At last came the 
 moment of the great change. Thomas the Chancellor- 
 Archdeacon is converted into Thomas the Archbishop. 
 We have every reason to believe that the appointment 
 was against his own wishes. He was as great as he could 
 be in the line which best suited his powers, and he felt no 
 desire to adventure himself in a line for which he must then 
 at least have felt himself less fitted. He warned his master 
 that, once Archbishop, he should be sure to lose his favour.* 
 But Henry insisted on the appointment, and Thomas was 
 ordained priest, and elected and consecrated Primate of all 
 England. 
 
 And now came that great change by which, in the 
 language of his biogi-aphers, he became another man. 
 Was the change miraculous ? Was it hypocritical ? Or 
 shall we say with Mr. Froude that there was no sudden 
 
 * Herb. vii. 26: cf. Rog. i. 108; Will. Fitz-Stepli. i. 193; Alan, i. 322.
 
 108 SAT XT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 change at all 1 To us it seems merely the natural result 
 of change of circumstances in a man of Thomas's char- 
 acter. He was not a man to do any thing by halves ; 
 whatever master he served he served to the uttermost. 
 As the servant of the King he was the most faithful of 
 Chancellors; as the servant of the Church he would be 
 the most faithful of Bishops, One at least of his bio- 
 graphers seems to have quite understood^ what is really 
 no very wonderful phsenomenon. Thomas was in all 
 things a man of his own age ; we never find him rising 
 above it or sinking below it. He accepted without hesi- 
 tation the current notion of a saintly prelate, and en- 
 deavoured to carry it out in his own person. The ideal 
 ecclesiastic of his times was one who united the loftiest 
 hierarchical pretensions with the most unbounded liberality 
 and the severest personal mortifications. Into this ideal 
 Thomas threw himself with characteristic fervour. His 
 perfect sincerity no man can doubt who has studied at 
 once human nature and the records of the time. But the 
 change, though perfectly sincere, was still artificial ; his 
 saintship never sat quite easily upon him ; with the zeal 
 of a new convert he overdid matters. We at once see the 
 difference between him and those holy personages whose 
 sanctity has been the sanctity of a whole life, or those 
 again who have been suddenly turned from notorious 
 sinners into contrite-hearted penitents. Nor was he one 
 of the class of great ecclesiastical statesmen to whom the 
 Church has been through life as a fatherland or a political 
 party. Had Thomas belonged to any one of those classes, 
 he would have been somewhat more chary of his spiritual 
 thunders. But his artificial frame of mind allowed no 
 scope either for the long-suffering of Anselm or for the 
 policy of Hildebrand. His fiery soul would have revolted 
 
 * " Siqiiulein qiinm ante proiiuitionein suam tanqnam unus excellentiam 
 enituisset scculo, non minus etiain postmodum inter prtecipuos ortiiodoxoriuu 
 eminere studiiit niilitans C^hristo. Nesciebat eiiiiii nisi inaximorum unus esse 
 quemcunique sortitua esset ordinem vitse." Will. Cant., ap. Giles, ii. 130.
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 109 
 
 against either as remissness in the cause of God. Thomas 
 could be meek and gentle after a sort, yet always only by 
 an effort ; himself personally he could humble, as he did 
 to his censor John of Salisbury ; but the rights of his 
 office, the cause of the Church, were never to be humbled 
 by him. Throughout his life the garb of saintship never 
 fitted him. Through his whole career the old Adam is 
 perpetually peeping out : we see the spirit of former days 
 when he tells his slanderer at Northampton that, were he 
 a knight, his sword should assert his righteousness ; when 
 he is detected on the Flemish coast by his eye fixed on 
 the hawk on the young noble's wrist ; when, even in his 
 last hour, after years of scourging and penance, the strong 
 arm which had unhorsed Engelram de Trie threw Reginald 
 Fitz-Urse prostrate upon the pavement of the cathedral. 
 It peeps out in less excusable form in those words of 
 reviling, rather than rebuke, from which he could not 
 restrain himself even in the hour of confessorship and of 
 martyrdom.* Had his early life been one of deeper sinful- 
 ness, his conversion might have brought a more chastened 
 and truly mortified spirit to the service of his Maker. 
 But a saintship artificial, though thoroughly sincere, had 
 always something awkward and incongrous about it. 
 If the Church really needed a champion, the lion-heart of 
 Thomas was certainly less fitted for the office than the 
 true union of dove and serpent to be found in his friend 
 and monitor John of Salisbury. 
 
 Our estimate of Thomas's personal character ought not 
 to be at all affected by modern notions, however well 
 founded, as to the abstract justice of the cause which he 
 maintained. The immunity of clerks from the jurisdic- 
 tion of the civil power would now be justly considered 
 monstrous in every well-governed country. All that is 
 wanted is to show that it was a cause which might be 
 honestly maintained in the twelfth century. And that it 
 
 * " Garcionem et spiiriiim" (Will. Cant., ap. Giles, ii. 13) at Northampton. 
 "Lenonem appellans" at Canterbury (E. Grim, ap. Giles, i. 76).
 
 110 SAIXr THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 surely was. Thomas did not invent the ecclesiastical 
 claims ; he merely defended them as he found them. Even 
 if the " Customs " were, which seems very doubtful, the 
 established laws of the land, they were laws which a 
 churchman of those days could at most submit to in 
 patience, and could not be expected to approve or sub- 
 scribe to. None of his fellow-bishops loved the Con- 
 stitutions of Clarendon any better than Thomas did ; they 
 simply submitted through fear, some of them at least 
 clearly against their own judgement. The most violent 
 attack on Thomas ever penned, the famous letter of Gilbert 
 Foliot,* does not blame the Archbishop for resisting the 
 King, but for not resisting him more strenuously. And 
 we must remember that, if the so-called liberties of the 
 Church were utterly repugnant to our notions of settled 
 government, they did not appear equally so in those times. 
 The modern idea of government is an equal system of law 
 for every part of the territory and for every class of the 
 nation. In the middle ages every class of men, every 
 district, every city, tried to isolate itself within a juris- 
 prudence of its own. Nobles, burghers, knights of orders, 
 wherever either class was strong enough, refused the 
 jurisdiction of any but their own peers. Every town tried 
 to approach as nearly as it could to the condition of a 
 separate republic. A province thought itself privileged if 
 it could obtain a judiciiil system separate from the rest of 
 the kingdom. Even within the ecclesiastical pale we find 
 peculiar jurisdictions: orders, monasteries, chapters, col- 
 leges, shake off the authority of the regular ordinaries, 
 and substitute some exceptional tribunal of their own. 
 For the clergy to be amenable only to a clerical judica- 
 ture was really nothing very monstrous in such a state of 
 things. It was of course defended on totally different 
 grounds from any other exemption ; but it could hardly 
 have arisen except in a state of things when exemptions 
 of all kinds were familiar. And we must also remember 
 * Ep. Gilb. Fol., ap. Giles, V. 272.
 
 IV.] AXD IITS BTOGRAPIlEnS. Ill 
 
 that ecclesiastical privileges were not so exclusively priestly 
 privileges as we sometimes fancy. They sheltered not 
 only ordained ministers, but all ecclesiastical officers of 
 every kind ; the Church courts also claimed jurisdiction in 
 the causes of widows and orphans.* In short, the privi- 
 leges for which Thomas contended transferred a large part of 
 the people, and that the most helpless part, from the bloody 
 grasp of the King's courts to the milder jurisdiction of the 
 Bishop. The ecclesiastical judicature was clearly inade- 
 quate to deal with the most serious class of offences ; but, 
 on the other hand, it did not, like that of the royal courts, 
 visit petty thefts or assaults with such monstrous penalties 
 as blinding and castration f One of the Constitutions of 
 Clarendon, that which forbade the ordination of villains 
 •without the consent of their lords, w^as directly aimed at 
 the only means by w^hich the lowest class in the state 
 could rise. And this constitution did not, as Dean Milman 
 saySjJ pass unheeded ; on the contrary, it called forth an 
 indignant burst of almost democratic sentiment from the 
 French biographer of Thomas. § 
 
 But while we do justice to Thomas, we must also do 
 justice to Henry. Foreigner as he was, careless of special 
 English interests, and stained as his life w^as by vices and 
 faults of various kinds, Henry had still man^^ of the 
 qualities of a great ruler, and we have no reason to doubt 
 that he was sincerely desirous for the good government of 
 his kingdom. The civil wars of Stephen's reign had left 
 England in a state of utter anarchy. This state of things 
 King Henry and Chancellor Thomas set themselves to work 
 in good earnest to undo. Their government did much to 
 
 * See the letter of .John of Poitiers, Giles, Ep. Gilb. Fol. vi. 23S. 
 ■\ See a most curious story in Benedict's Miracles of Saint Thomas, pp. 1.S4- 
 193. On the cruelty of the royal jurisprudence, see Herb. vii. 105. 
 X Lat. Christ, iii. 465. 
 
 § " ' Fils a vilains ne fust en nul liu ordenez 
 
 Sanz I'otrei sur seignur de cui terre il fu nez.' 
 
 Et Deus a sun servise nus a tuz apelez ! 
 
 Mielz valt tls a vilain qui est preuz et senez, 
 
 Que ne feit gentilz hum failliz et debutez." Gamier, p. 89.
 
 112 SATXT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay 
 
 restore order and peace ; but it is easy to see that, to 
 restore perfect order and peace, no class of men must be 
 allowed to break the law with the certainty of an inade- 
 quate punishment. Thomas's own admirers state Henry's 
 case very fairly, and do full justice to his motives."^ 
 Herbert himself goes so far as to say that King and 
 Archbishop alike had a zeal for God, and leaves it to God 
 Himself to judge which zeal was according to knowledge. f 
 No doubt both Henry and Thomas saw the evil, and each 
 set himself vigorously to correct it in his own way. The 
 number of clerical offenders was large, and some of their 
 offences were very serious. Thomas, during the short 
 time that he lived in England as Archbishop, certainly did 
 his best to strike at the root of the evil by unusual care as 
 to those whom he ordained ; and he also passed severe 
 sentences, though of course not of life or limb, upon the 
 offenders whom he sheltered from the royal vengeance. 
 Still there can be no doubt that there were a good many 
 churchmen in the kingdom for whom the gallows was the 
 only appropriate remedy. Henry had a noble career before 
 him, had he but adhered steadily to his own principles. 
 The only danger was, that the full carrying out of those 
 principles would have led to ' consequences which in the 
 twelfth century would have been altogether premature. 
 They involved, not only the subjection of the clergy to the 
 ordinary jurisdiction, but the throwing off of all dependence 
 upon the see of Rome. This noble, but perhaps impractic- 
 able, cause Henry wilfully threw away. He let the contest 
 degenerate from a strife of principles into a petty personal 
 persecution of the Archbishop. In the scene at Clarendon 
 we see the clashing of two causes, both of which contained 
 elements of right. In the scene at Northampton we see 
 only a series of mean and malignant attempts to crush 
 a man who had become offensive and dangerous. Henry 
 was now the tyrant and Thomas the hero. By allowing his 
 
 * See Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 102, 122 ; Ann. Lamb. ii. 85, 86. 
 •^ Herb. vii. loS, loy.
 
 TV.] A ND HIS BIOQRA PHERS. 1 1 3 
 
 Bishops to appeal to the Pope, by appealing to the Pope 
 himself, Henry gave up his own cause. Nor did he mend 
 it when he recognized the Pope as arbiter whenever he 
 thought him favourable, but, whenever he turned against 
 him, denounced savage penalties on all who should intro- 
 duce any papal letters into the kingdom, Henry, at the 
 beginning at least, appears as the statesman of wider and 
 clearer vision ; but Thomas deserves the higher moral praise 
 of sticking firmly and manfully to the principles which he 
 conscientiously believed to be right. 
 
 And now for a few words on the closing scene. As usual, 
 we find a heroic firmness, a lofty sense of right, mixed 
 up with circumstances detracting from the purely saintly 
 ideal. We admire rather than approve. We hold Thomas 
 to have been highly blameworthy in returning to England 
 amidst a storm of censures and excommunications ; so did 
 many of his wisest contemporaries. An amnesty on such 
 a triumphal return would have been naturally expected 
 from a secular conqueror ; much more would it have 
 become a minister of peace victorious in a bloodless struggle. 
 But in the state of fanatic exaltation into which Thomas 
 had now wrought himself, lenity would have seemed a 
 crime which would incur the curse of Meroz ; to have failed 
 to smite the contumacious prelates would have been failing 
 to come to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The 
 quarrel in itself was not so frivolous an one as it seems in 
 these days. The ancient right of the Primate of Canterbury 
 to crown the English King seems to us a mere honorary 
 privilege ; it was a very different matter when a king was 
 no king till he was crowned and anointed. And in the 
 actual choice put before him, no one can wish that Thomas 
 had chosen otherwise than he did. "Absolve the prelates; 
 fly, or die." He would not fly; he had fled once ; he would 
 not again desert his church. As for the absolution, he w^as 
 probably canonically right in saying that the Pope alone 
 could pronounce it ; but a conditional absolution he did 
 oSer. Now, whether the sentence was just or unjust, w^ise 
 
 I
 
 114 SAIXT T/IOMAS OF CAXTFA'Bri?}" [Essay 
 
 or foolish, no public officer, Bishop, Judge, or any other, 
 could be justified in withdrawing a solemn and regular 
 judgement in answer to the bidding and threats of four 
 ruffians armed with no sort of legal authority. To have 
 absolved the bishops through fear of the words of Tracy 
 and Fitz-Urse would have been unworthy cowardice indeed. 
 That Thomas showed a most unhealthy craving after 
 martj^rdom cannot be denied ; but a martyr he clearly was, 
 not merely to the privileges of the church or to the rights 
 of the see of Canterbury, but to the general cause of law and 
 order as opposed to violence and murder. 
 
 We have thus tried to deal, by the clear light of impartial 
 historical criticism, with a man whose history has been 
 disfigured by three centuries and a half of adoration, 
 followed by three more centuries of obloquy. The almost 
 deified Saint Thomas, the despised Thomas a Becket, 
 appears by that light as a man of great gifts, of high and 
 honest purpose, but whose virtues were disfigured by great 
 defects, and who was placed in a position for which his 
 character was unsuited. Indiscriminate adoration and 
 indiscriminate reviling are alike out of place with so mixed 
 a character; petty carping and sneers are yet more out of 
 place than either. Thomas and his age are gone. He has 
 perhaps no direct claims upon our gratitude * as English- 
 men ; none certainly for those acts which most won him the 
 admiration of his own day. He M'on the martyr's crown 
 in contending for principles which we must all rejoice did 
 not ultimately prevail. The Constitutions of Clarendon 
 are now, with the good will of all, part and parcel of our 
 law. We do not claim a place for Thomas of Canterbury 
 beside iElfred and iEthelstan, beside Stephen Langton and 
 Simon de Montfort ; yet, as a great and heroic Englishman, 
 he is fully entitled to a respect more disinterested than that 
 
 * We speak dotihtingly, l)ecause the account of one exaction of Henry's 
 resisted by Thomas (Edw. Grim, ap. Gile.'-, i. 21 ; Rog. Pont. i. ii.^ ; Gamier, 
 p. 30) reads very much as if it were resisted tm general and not on purely 
 ecclesiastical grounds. lOven Mr. I'oLertson allows (p. 74), in his half-sneering 
 way, that " tho primate appeared as a sort of Hampden."
 
 IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 115 
 
 which we show to benefactors whose gifts we are still 
 enjoying. Of no man of such wide-spread fame have we 
 so few visible memorials ; Northampton castle has van- 
 ished, Canterbury cathedral is rebuilt ; a few fragments 
 alone remain on which the eyes of Thomas can have rested. 
 No great foundation, no splendid minster or castle, survives 
 to bear witness to his bounty or to his skill in the arts. 
 He lived in and for his own age. To understand him 
 thoroughly, one must first thoroughly know what that age 
 was. And no fair-minded man who has at once mastered 
 the history and literature of the twelfth century, and has 
 attained the faculty of throwing himself with a lively 
 interest into times so alien to our own, can rise from his 
 studies without the conviction that Thomas of Canterbury, 
 with all his faults, is fairly entitled to a place among the 
 worthies of whom England is proud. 
 
 I a
 
 116 THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 V. 
 
 THE KEIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD.* 
 
 To lovers of chivalrous adventure I presume that no part 
 of English history is more attractive than the reign of 
 Edward the Third. Edward himself is to some extent a 
 popular hero, and his son the Black Prince is so to a 
 much greater extent. But in Edward himself, when we 
 come fairly to examine him, there is not very much to 
 admire ; and as to his son, the provoking thing is that 
 people admire him for the wrong things. Throwing aside 
 all the fopperies and fripperies of chivalry, we have to 
 balance how we can the good and the evil points of the man 
 who was at once the savage conqueror of Limoges and the 
 patriotic statesman of the Good Parliament. 
 
 To the political student the reign of Edward is rather 
 repulsive at first sight, but a closer examination soon 
 shows that there is a great deal of important matter below 
 the surface. The primary and popular notion of Edward 
 the Third and his son is that they were two great 
 conquerors, who won brilliant victories, which victories 
 abundantly showed how few Englishmen could beat a 
 vast number of Frenchmen. And no one will deny that 
 Cr^cy, Poitiers, even Navarete, were wonderful victories 
 indeed, victories of which it is impossible even now to 
 read the account without a thrill of national pride. The 
 pity is that they were victories which served absolutely 
 no purpose — Crecy and Navarete absolutely no purpose, 
 Poitiers only a very temporary purpose. England was 
 successful in battles, but she was thoroughly beaten in war. 
 Edward the Third succeeded by lawful inheritance to a 
 
 * This was a review of Mr. Longman's Life and Times of Edward the Third. 
 I have dealt with it in the same way as I dealt with the article on Dr. 
 Vaaghau'd Itevolutiuna in English History.
 
 v.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 117 
 
 large part of southern Gaul. He left to his successor the 
 mere shadow of that ancient inheritance, together with a 
 still more shadowy title to the kingdom of France itself. 
 His only conquest, in the strict sense of the word, was 
 Calais. One may conceive a point of view in which the 
 gain of Calais might counterbalance the loss of nearly all 
 Aquitaine, but this is a very philosophical point of view, 
 and one from which we may be quite sure that no one 
 looked at things in the time of Ed\^'ard the Third. The 
 broad and plain fact of Edward's reign is that it was a 
 time of great territorial losses. As far as glory consists 
 in winning wonderful battles and leading foreign kings 
 captive, no other age in English history was equally 
 glorious. But at no time, save that of Heniy the Sixth, 
 was England ever so thoroughly stripped of possessions 
 which had once been hers. 
 
 The comparison which I have just made suggests 
 another. One can hardly help contrasting the two great 
 periods of English warfare and English victory in France. 
 Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth almost necessarily 
 suggest one another ; but the difference between the two 
 men is infinite. There is indeed a striking superficial 
 likeness between those among the exploits of the two 
 princes which have found for themselves the most abiding 
 resting-place in popular memory. The story of Azincourt 
 is almost a literal repetition of the story of Cr^cy, and the 
 victory of Azincourt was hardly richer in immediate results 
 than the victory of Cr^cy. But Edward was simply victor 
 in a battle ; Henry was victor in war, in diplomacy, in all 
 that he attempted. In reading the reign of Edward, the 
 years seem to pass away we know not how. Every ten 
 years there is a great battle, a glorious victory, but the 
 intermediate periods slip by like a dream. The}^ are full 
 of purposeless, unconnected, events, which fall into no 
 certain order, and which it is almost impossible to keep in 
 the memory. The time is stirring enough ; there is always 
 something going on ; the difficulty is to understand or to
 
 118 THE REIGX OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 remember what it is that is going on. We move back- 
 wards and forwards from Britanny to Gascony, from 
 Flanders to Germany, from Scotland to Castile, without 
 any very clear notion why we are thus flitting backwards 
 and forwards. In the reign of Henry, on the other hand, 
 the wonder is how so many great events, pressing close 
 upon the heels of one another, could be crowded into the 
 few years of his warfare. Edward, in short, made w^ar 
 like a knight-errant ; war was a noble pastime for princes 
 and nobles ; the whole thing, from beginning to end, reads 
 like a long tournament, a tournament carried on for 
 the amusement and glor}^ of a few, at the expense of 
 suffering millions. Henry cared as little for human suffer- 
 ing as Edward did, perhaps even less. The besieger of 
 Rouen was at least as stern as the besieger of Calais. But 
 the warfare of Henry was no purposeless tournament ; not 
 a 1)1 ow was dealt by him, whether on the field or in the 
 council-chamber, which was not dealt in deep and deadly 
 earnest. It was not as a knight-errant that he made war, 
 but as a general and a statesman of the highest order, as a 
 king worthy to wear the crown of the great William and 
 the great Edward. No doubt Henry w^as favoured by 
 fortune as few men ever have been favoured. France lay 
 before him in a state which seemed almost to invite his 
 invasion. The murder of John of Burgundy, and the 
 position assumed by his son, served the purposes of Henry 
 as directly as if he had himself planned them beforehand. 
 Edward certainly had no such manifest advantages. But 
 after all, what does statesmanship consist in except in 
 makins: the most of such advautaijes as a man has? The 
 position of Henry was undoubtedly far more favourable 
 than the position of Edward ; but then Hemy made the 
 most of his position, while the Edwards, father and son, 
 failed to make the most of theirs. Henry knew his purposes, 
 and he fulfilled them. Edward failed to fulfil his pur- 
 poses, or rather it is hard to say whether he had any 
 purposes to fulfil.
 
 v.] THE REIGX OF EDWAIW THE THIRD. 119 
 
 Looking at the morality of the two great enterpiises 
 against France, a modern writer is perhaps tempted to 
 judge both Edward and Henry with undue harshness. 
 Lord Brougham, for instance, brings Heniy up before the 
 tribunal of abstract right, and before the tribunal of ab- 
 stract right it must be allowed that Henry cuts but a 
 poor figure. But it is seldom fair to judge any historical 
 character by so unswerving a standard ; we must make 
 allowance for the circumstances, the habits, the beliefs, the 
 prejudices, of each man's time. As a lesson in moral phi- 
 losophy, as a comment on the doctrine that man is very 
 far gone from original righteousness. Lord Brougham's 
 estimate of Henry the Fil'tli is highly instructive; but as 
 a portrait of Henry the Fifth it is unfair. The biographer 
 of Edward, Mr. Longman, cannot wield the trenchant 
 weapons of Lord Brougham, but he is really fairer in his 
 estimate of Edward than Lord Brougham is in his estimate 
 of Henry. He is not dazzled with Edward's somewhat 
 tinsel glories, but he equally avoids the other extreme of 
 unreasonable harshness. He strongly brings out the fact 
 that Edward was really forced into the war by Philip. 
 Philip, in truth, had a policy, while Edward had none. 
 Philip's policy was the obvious, the traditional, French 
 policy, the policy of consolidating his kingdom by con- 
 venient annexations. He clearly aimed at the annexation 
 of Edward's duchy of Aquitaine, and he sought for a war 
 which would give him a chance of annexing it. A per- 
 fectly calm and passionless English statesman might have 
 doubted whether Aquitaine was worth the keeping. Aqui- 
 taine, we must remember, was now strictly an English 
 dependency. When England and Aquitaine fii'st became 
 possessions of the same sovereign, it was not so. Henry 
 of Anjou, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of 
 Aquitaine, count and lord of a crowd of smaller states, 
 was no more a national prince in any of them than Charles 
 of Ghent was a national prince in Castile or Germany or 
 Sicily. But Henry's various continental dominions, widely
 
 120 THE EEIGX OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 as they differed from one another in speech and feeling, 
 might still be looked on as forming one whole, in opposi- 
 tion to his insukr kingdom. And in his eyes, and in 
 those of his immediate successors, they certainly out- 
 weighed his insular kingdom. Henry was primarily a 
 great continental sovereign, the rival of his less powerful 
 lord at Paris. That he was also Kino: of Enjjland was a 
 very important accession to his power and position ; still 
 it was an accession and little more. But things changed 
 when John lost all his possessions in Northern Gaul, with 
 the solitary exception of that insular Normandy which his 
 successors have kept to this day. Aquitaine, or what was 
 left of it, was now a mere accession to England, an out- 
 lying and distant possession of the English crown. And 
 as the relation of Aquitaine to England changed, its rela- 
 tion to France changed also. We must not forget that 
 Aquitaine, though a fief of the French crown, was in no 
 sense a French province. Unless we except the short time 
 during which Lewis the Seventh ruled there in right of 
 Eleanor, Aquitaine had never been a possession of the 
 Parisian kings, and its people had, in speech and origin, 
 no kindred with the people of France beyond that general 
 kindred which they shared equally with the people of 
 Spain and Italy. When Henry was lord of Rouen, of 
 Tours, and of Bordeaux, none of those cities seemed at all 
 called upon to bow to Paris. But when Paris had 
 swallowed up Rouen and Tours, the position of Bordeaux 
 was sensibly changed. It was changed both politically 
 and geographically. Aquitaine was now no longer a part 
 of the great continental monarchy of Henry. It was a 
 dependency of the island kingdom, which the French con- 
 quest of Toulouse had caused to be surrounded by French 
 territory on every side, except those occupied by the sea 
 and the mountains. The Parisian King, instead of being 
 a mere nominal suzerain, was now the immediate master 
 of the larger part of Gaul. Aquitaine now looked like a 
 natural portion of his kingdom, unnaturally detained from
 
 v.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 121 
 
 him by a distant potentate. Within the duchy itself the 
 feelings of the inhabitants presented great differences and 
 fluctuations. There was always an English and a French 
 party ; of a Spanish party, of which we see signs in the 
 thirteenth century, we see none in the fourteenth. And 
 men's minds might well be divided on the question whether 
 it were better for their country to remain a dependency of 
 England or to become an integral part of France. There 
 can be no doubt that the English rule was the better of 
 the two, as was soon found out when Aquitaine was finally 
 conquered. The nearer master was far more dangerous to 
 local liberties and customs than the more distant one. 
 Bordeaux, while it was a distant dependency of England, 
 came much nearer to the position of a free city than when 
 it had sunk into a provincial town of France. But 
 Englishmen failed then, as they fail now, to adapt them- 
 selves to subjects of another race and speech. Their rule 
 was essentially better than that of France, but it was less 
 attractive. France was already beginning to exercise that 
 strange fascination which she goes on exercising still, and 
 which enables her to incorporate and assimilate her con- 
 quests in a way in which no other conquering power has 
 succeeded in rivallins: her. And, marked as was the 
 ethnical distinction between France and Aquitaine, it was 
 slight compared to the ethnical distinction between Aqui- 
 taine and England. All these causes contributed to pro- 
 duce a very divided state of feeling in the duchy. The 
 strength of England lay mainly in the cities ; that of 
 France lay mainly among the nobles of the country. But 
 it is easy to see throughout Edward's wars that the English 
 party w^as decaying, and that the French party was grow- 
 ing. To annex then this great province, which lay so 
 temptingly open to him, a corner which seemed so needful 
 to round off* his dominions, was the main object of the 
 policy of Philip of Valois. We are commonly inclined to 
 blame Edward for setting up a claim of his own on the 
 French crown, after he had done homage to Philip, and
 
 122 THE REIGX OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 had thereby recognized him as lawful King of France. 
 But Edward was fairly goaded into the war by Philip, 
 and he seems to have assumed the title of King of France 
 as much to satisfy the scruples of the Flemings as for any 
 other reason. It was fairly a case of drifting into war — 
 a war which, notwithstanding the two gi'eat battles and 
 many other gallant exploits, was begun, continued, and 
 ended in a way which is throughout purposeless and 
 perplexing. 
 
 The lirst war, the war of Crecy and Poitiers, was ended 
 by the Peace of Bretigny. People often fail to understand 
 how important a bearing that peace had upon the wars of 
 the next century. The French are perfectly right in 
 speaking of the whole time from Edward the Third to 
 Henry the Sixth as the Hundred Years' War. Tlie Peace 
 of Bretigny was the formal justification of Henry the Fifth. 
 On no tlieory could Henry have any hereditary right to 
 the crown of France. The principle on which Edward the 
 Third had claimed that crown was the principle of female 
 succession, and the principle of female succession would 
 have ffiven the rii^hts of Edward the Third to the house 
 of Mortimer. But Henry the Fifth succeeded to the crown 
 of England at a time when England was at war with 
 France. The Peace of Eretigny was undoubtedly broken 
 on the French side. From Bretigny to Troyes no other 
 peace was concluded ; there were only truces, and at the 
 end of any truce the King of England had a perfect formal 
 right to begin the war again. That the Peace of Bretigny 
 did not last is a sign of the cliange of feeling which was 
 gradually coming over southern Gaul. Two hundred 
 years earlier we may be sure that Aquitanian patriotism 
 would have rejoiced in an arrangement which made the 
 lands south of the Loire free from all superiority on the 
 part of the Parisian crown. But a large part of the 
 former dominions of Hemy the Second submitted with 
 the utmost ivluctanco to those terms of the treaty which 
 restored them to the rule of the descendant of their ancient
 
 v.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 123 
 
 dukes. Even within the lands which bad never been 
 separated from England the rule of the Black Prince seems 
 not to have thoroughly taken root. In fact an independent 
 principality of Aquitaine was fast becoming, in French 
 phrase, an anachronism. And an independent principality 
 of Aquitaine in the hands of an English prince was some- 
 what of a pretence into the bargain. At an earlier time 
 independent commonwealths of Bordeaux and La Rochelle 
 mijjht have been something more than a dream. But in 
 Aquitaine, as throughout the fiefs of the Parisian crown, 
 with the single half exception of Flanders, the princely 
 power, royal or ducal, was always too strong to allow of 
 the growth of a system of free cities, such as arose within 
 the bounds of each of the three Imperial kingdoms. 
 
 The reign of Edward the Third is also of great importance 
 in a constitutional point of view; it is equally so in a social, 
 a literary, and a religious point of view. But in these 
 points also the reign of Edward has something of the same 
 character that it has in military affairs. Changes take 
 place in a sort of invisible, incidental way ; we cannot lay 
 our hands on any marked revolutions, like those of the 
 reign of Henry the Third, nor on many great and lasting 
 enactments, like those of the reign of Edward the First, 
 The fourteenth century is indeed more fertile than any 
 other in one most important class of political precedents. 
 It is the only century since the eleventh* which saw two 
 kings deposed by authority of Parliament. Yet even 
 the depositions of Edward the Second and Richard the 
 Second do not stand out in the same way as the events of 
 the thirteenth century or of the seventeenth. The reign of 
 Edward the Third was a reign of frequent Parliaments and 
 of much legislation, but Edward could no more be com- 
 pared to his grandfather as a legislator than he could as 
 a statesman and a warrior. Even his commercial legislation 
 
 * Charles the Fu'st was not deposed, but was executed being King. This 
 leaves the seventeeuth century with only one case of deposition su-ictly so 
 called.
 
 124 THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 was done, as it were, by haphazard. So indeed was every- 
 thing that he did. He constantly wanted money, and 
 his constant want of money was a great constitutional 
 advantage. He was driven to summon Parliaments, com- 
 monly yearly, sometimes oftener ; and those Parliaments 
 gradually learned their strength. How important these 
 silent influences were is shown when we reach the last two 
 years of Edward's life. In the Good Parliament we see 
 how the Commons had been gradually gaining more and 
 more of power and enlightenment, till they were able to 
 carry some of the most thorough measures of reform, and 
 to make one of the most successful attacks on the execu- 
 tive government, that any legislative body ever made. No 
 doubt it was a great help for the popular party to have the 
 Prince of Wales on their side, and, when he was gone, his 
 loss was sadly felt in the reaction of the next year. But 
 it was a great thing to see a Prince of Wales put himself 
 at the head of a real popular movement of reform, a 
 very different process from a Prince of Wales getting 
 up a factious personal opposition against his father. It is 
 his conduct in this Parliament, far more than any of his 
 doings beyond the sea, which gives the Black Prince his 
 real claim to rank among the worthies of England. The 
 acts of the Good Parliament and their unhappy reversal in 
 the next year, the good intlueiice of Prince Edward and the 
 evil influence of John of Gaunt, are points which stand out 
 conspicuously in the legislative histoiy of this reign. On 
 the legislation of this time there is one dark blot, which 
 even touches the Good Parliament itself: I mean the con- 
 stant attempt to control matters which are beyond the 
 proper province of legislation, and, worse still, the constant 
 attempt to control them in a way contrary to the interests 
 of the most numerous and the most helpless class of the 
 people. The depopulation caused by the Black Death 
 made labour scarce ; wages of course rose, and successive 
 Parliaments, the Good Parliament among them, undertook 
 the cruel and impossible task of keeping wages down by
 
 v.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 125 
 
 law. At the same time, and very much by reason of the 
 same causes, the emancipation of the villains was largely 
 going on. Thus the class of free labourers was being 
 enlarged and strengthened : the payment of wages for 
 work done was constantly becoming more habitual, while 
 the class of people who could be set to work without wages 
 was constantly diminishing. One might almost have ex- 
 pected that the emancipation of villains would have been 
 forbidden by law, just as in old Rome restrictions were put 
 on the emancipation of slaves. But happily the Church 
 taught that to set a bondman free was a pious and 
 charitable deed, and men could hardly be ordered by Act 
 of Parliament to abstain from adding to the number of 
 their good works. 
 
 The mention of the religious and the literary condition 
 of England during this reign at once suggests that we are 
 dealing with the age of Wyclif and the age of Chaucer. 
 I am not going to discuss either of them at the end of an 
 article. But those names stamp the age of Edward the 
 Third as the beginning of the theological reformation in 
 England and as the beginning of modern English literature. 
 I confess that the purely theological aspect of the time 
 interests me less than the part played by this age, as by 
 other ages, in the long struggle between England and Rome. 
 The English spirit which, three centuries before, had, 
 through the mouth of Tostig, defied Pope Nicolas on his 
 throne, came out in the Parliaments of Edward the Third 
 as it came out in other Parliaments before and after him. 
 And it was a sound and happy line of argument, a true 
 English love of precedent, which led the Good Parliament 
 to appeal to the practice of the sainted Edward himself as 
 unanswerable evidence of the true and ancient supremacy 
 of the crown in matters ecclesiastical. Oddly enough, this 
 was the very moment when the old ground on which that 
 supremacy was based was beginning to give way. Up to 
 this time, ever since the last Englishman ceased to worship 
 Thunder and Woden, Englishmen had been united in reli-
 
 126 THE BEIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay 
 
 gion ; the Church and the nation had been two aspects of 
 the same body. But the teaching of Wyclif gave birth in 
 the next generation to our earliest Nonconformists ; when 
 we ought to have had our first toleration, we did have our 
 first persecution. With the appearance of the Lollards, 
 the Church and the nation ceased to be fully one, and 
 the puzzles and controversies of modern times had their 
 beginning. 
 
 Anotlier &\<m. of the times in relio-ious matters is the turn 
 which the bounty of pious founders and benefactors was 
 now taking. The day of the monks was over. The great 
 struggle which had been going on ever since the days of 
 Dunstan was at last decided in favour of the seculars. 
 Monasteries were still founded now and then, but there is 
 nothing like the zeal for them which followed on the 
 Benedictine movement in the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
 on the Cistercian movement in the twelfth, on the Francis- 
 can and Dominican movement in the thirteenth. Colleges 
 in the Universities, chantries for the repose of their 
 founders' souls, colleges for the more splendid performance 
 of divine service in this or that parish church, hospitals for 
 the poor, schools for the young, are now the objects of 
 pious benefactions far more largely than the monastic 
 orders. On the other hand, the constant wars with France 
 led, on an obvious principle of policy, to temporary seizures 
 of the property of the Alien Priories. These temporary 
 seizures again suggested the complete suppression of those 
 priories in the next century, and this formed a precedent 
 for the general suppression of all monasteries in the century 
 after that. 
 
 On the whole then the fourteenth century, the age of 
 Edward the Third, is an age whose importance lies below 
 the surface. It sets before us nothing like the great 
 tragedy of the eleventh century or the mighty new birth 
 of the thirteenth. It has more in common with the silent 
 working of the twelfth. But the visible actors are on 
 a smaller scale. The tinsel frippery of chivalry hangs
 
 v.] THE REIGX OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 127 
 
 around the names of Edward and bis son, but, when 
 stripped of these factitious attractions, they seem small 
 indeed beside the two great Henries. Edward seems great 
 between his father and his grandson, but the real personal 
 greatness of our kings leaps from Edward the First to 
 Henry the Fifth. But there is this difference between 
 them. The work of Edward the First, like the work of 
 the Conqueror, still abides. Each of thorn has left his 
 direct impress on English history for all time. Henry, 
 hardly their inferior in natural gifts, has had only an 
 indirect influence upon after events. The war wdiich he 
 waged, the war in which France was so nearly conquered, 
 showed in the end that France could not really be con- 
 quered. His son, the only English King who was ever 
 crowned King of France, was the king who lost the last 
 relics of that continental dominion which England beiifan 
 to lose under the king who first took up the vain title of 
 French royalty. As long as Calais was kept, men ever 
 and anon dreamed that those who still held the key of 
 France, might one day enter on the possession of France 
 itself. But such thoughts were mere momentary dreams, 
 and never continuous!}^ influenced our policy. The victories 
 of Edward the Third began the chain of events which in 
 the end made England a strictly insular power. As such 
 we may be thankful for them.
 
 128 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 Tfie Eoly Boman Empire. By James Bryce, B.A.^ 
 Oxford, 1864. 
 
 It may seem a hard saying, but it is one which the facts 
 fully bear out, that hardly one student in ten of mediaeval 
 history really grasps that one key to the whole subject 
 without which media?val history is simply an unintelligible 
 chaos. That key is no other than the continued existence 
 of the Roman Empire. As long as people are taught to 
 believe that the Empire came to an end in the year 476, 
 a true understanding of the next thousand years becomes 
 utterly impossible. No man can understand either the 
 politics or the literature of that whole period, unless he 
 constantly bears in mind that, in the ideas of the men of 
 those days, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Augustus, 
 Constantino, and Justinian, was not a thing of the past but 
 a thing of the present. Without grasping the mediaeval 
 theory of the Empire, it is impossible fully to grasp the 
 theory and to follow the career of the Papacy. Without 
 understanding the position of the Empire, it is impossible 
 rightly to understand the origin and developement of the 
 various European states. Without such an understanding, 
 the history of the nations which clave to the Empire, and 
 the history of the nations which fell away from it, are 
 alike certain to be misconceived. Unless viewed in the 
 light of the Imperial theory, the whole history of Germany, 
 Italy, and Burgundy becomes an inexplicable riddle. The 
 
 * [Now D.C.L. and llegius Professor of Civil Law. The article was founded 
 on the first edition. The third edition (1871), to which I have brought in 
 several references, is greatly enlarged and improved.] [1872.]
 
 YL] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 129 
 
 struggle of Hildebrand and Henry loses half its meaning, 
 the whole position of the Swabian Emperors becomes an 
 insoluble puzzle, the most elaborate prose and the most 
 impassioned verse of Dante sink into purposeless gibberish, 
 if we do not fully grasp the fact that in the mind of all 
 contemporary Europe, the Hohenstaufen were the direct and 
 lawful successors of the Julii. How Germany, once the 
 most united state of Western Europe, gradually changed 
 from a compact and vigorous kingdom into one of the 
 laxest of confederations, can never be understood unless we 
 trace how the German kingdom was crushed and broken 
 to pieces beneath the weight of the loftier diadem which 
 rested on the brow of its kings. Those misrepresentations 
 of all European history with which French historians and 
 French politicians are apt to deceive the unwary can never 
 be fully exposed, except by a thorough acquaintance with 
 the true position and true nationality of those Teutonic 
 kings and Caesars whom the Gaul is so apt to look upon as 
 his countrymen and not as his masters. The relations 
 between Eastern and Western Europe can never be taken 
 in, unless we fully understand the true nature of those rival 
 Empires, each of which asserted and believed itself to be 
 the one true and lawful possessor of the heritage of ancient 
 Rome. We see our way but feebly thi-ough the long 
 struggle between the East and the West, between Christen- 
 dom and Islam, unless we fully grasp the position of the 
 Caesar, the chief of Christendom, and the Caliph, the chief 
 of Islam ; unless we see, in the complex interpenetration 
 of the divided Empire and the divided Caliphate, at once 
 what the theory of Christian and of Moslem was, and how 
 utterly either theories failed to be carried out in all its full- 
 ness. In a word, as we began by saying, the history of the 
 Empire is the key to the whole history of mediaeval Europe, 
 and it is a key which as yet is found in far fewer hands 
 than it ought to be. 
 
 The immediate cause of the failure of most historical 
 students to grasp the paramount importance of the Imperial 
 
 K
 
 130 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 history is of course to be found in the fact that hardly any 
 of the books from which students draw their knowledge 
 give its proper prominence to the history of the Empire. 
 This is indeed little more than a truism. The question is, 
 how it comes to pass that even able and well-informed 
 writers have failed to bring forward this most important 
 portion of history as it should be brought forward. The 
 causes, w^e think, are tolerably obvious. 
 
 First. Our own national history has been less affected by 
 the history of the Empire than that of any other European 
 country. Britain, Spain, and Sweden, in their insular and 
 peninsular positions, were the parts of Europe over which 
 the Imperial influence was slightest, and of the three, that 
 influence was slighter over Britain than it was over Spain, 
 and not much greater than it was over Sweden. Of direct 
 connexion with the Empire, England had very little, and 
 Scotland still less. The external history of England does 
 indeed ever and anon touch the history of the Empire, in 
 the way in wdiich the history of each European state must 
 ever and anon touch the history of every other European 
 state. Once or twice in a century we come across an 
 Emperor as a friend or as an enemy, in one case as a 
 possible suzerain. As England supplied the spiritual Rome 
 with a single pope, so she supplied the temporal Rome with 
 a single king, a king who never visited his capital or 
 received the crown and title of Augustus. But the whole 
 internal history of England, and the greater part of its 
 external history, went on pretty much as if there had been 
 no Holy Roman Empire at all. Our one moment of most 
 intimate connexion with the Empire brings out most fully 
 how slight, compared with that of other nations, our usual 
 connexion with the Empire was. Every reader of English 
 history knows the name of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and 
 King of the Romans, and knows the part which he played 
 in the internal politics of England. But very few readers, 
 and we suspect by no means all writers, of English his- 
 tory seem to have any clear notion what a King of the
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 131 
 
 Romans was. On Scotland indeed the Eoman Empire has 
 had, in one way, a most important internal influence, 
 through the authority which Scottish lawyers, in such 
 marked contrast to those of England, have for so long a 
 time attached to the Roman law. Eut this is simply because 
 Scottish lawgivers or lawyers chose that it should be so ; 
 on the actual events of Scottish history, external and 
 internal, the Empire and its rulers have had even less 
 influence than they have had on those of England. As 
 then our own national history can be written and under- 
 stood with very little reference to the Holy Roman Empire, 
 Eritish readers lie under a strong temptation to undervalue 
 the importance of the Holy Roman Empire in the general 
 history of the world. 
 
 Secondly. When British readers get beyond the limits of 
 their own island, not only is their attention not com- 
 monly drawn to the history of the Empire, but it is 
 commonly drawn to a history which is actually antagon- 
 istic to the history of the Empire. France, so long the 
 rival of England, and for that cause so long the ally of 
 Scotland, is the country with which, next to their own, 
 most British readers are most familiar. Now it is certain 
 that no one who learns French history at the hands of 
 Frenchmen can ever rightly understand the history of the 
 Empire. The whole history of France, strictly so called, 
 the history of the Earisian kings, has been for six hundred 
 years one long tale of aggrandizement at the expense of 
 the Empire. From the annexation of Lyons to the an- 
 nexation of Savoy, all have been acts of one great drama, 
 a drama of which the devastation of the Ealatinate, the 
 seizure of Strassburg in time of peace, the tyranny of the 
 first Buonaparte over the whole German nation, are 
 familiar and characteristic incidents. French history con- 
 sists mainly of a record of wrongs inflicted on the later 
 and feebler Empire, prefaced by a cool appropriation of 
 the glories of the Empire in the days of its early great- 
 ness. In official and popular French belief, two great 
 
 K a
 
 132 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Espay 
 
 German dynasties, who held modern France as a subject 
 province, are conveniently turned into national French- 
 men. The greatest of German kings, the first of German 
 Cgesars, Charles, the lord of Rome and Aachen, is strangely 
 turned about into a French Emperor of the West, the pre- 
 cursor of either Buonaparte. The ancient landmarks of 
 European geography are wiped out, the names of the most 
 famous European cities are mutilated or barbarized, in 
 order to throw some colour of right and antiquity over the 
 results of six hundred years of intrigue and violence. 
 French history, as it is commonl}^ presented to English- 
 men, exists only through a systematic misrepresentation 
 of Imperial history. Till all French influences are wholly 
 cast aside and trampled under foot, the true history of the 
 Holy Roman Empire can never be understood. 
 
 Thircl/i/. It seems not unlikely that the righteous and 
 generous sympathy which we all feel towards regenerate 
 Italy has tended somewhat to obscure the true character 
 of the Empire. So many Austrian archdukes were elected 
 Kings of Germany and Emperors of the Romans that 
 people have gradually come to identify the House of 
 Austria and the Roman Empire. Nothing is more com- 
 mon than to see the title of " Emperor of Austria," the 
 most monstrous invention of modern diplomac}^ carried 
 back into the last century, and even earlier. Even Sir 
 Walter Scott, in some of his novels, Anne of Geierstein 
 for instance, seems to have had great difficulty in triumph- 
 ing over a notion that every Emperor must have been 
 Duke of Austria, and that every Duke of Austria must 
 have been Emperor. We have seen Frederick Barbarossa 
 set down as an Austrian because he was an Emperor ; 
 we have seen the Leopold of Morgarten and the Leopold 
 of Sempach exalted into Emperors because they were 
 Austrians. People thus learn to identify two things than 
 which no two can be more unlike, and to look on the 
 ancient reality with the eyes with which they rightly look 
 on the modern counterfeit. The dislike whicli every
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 133 
 
 generous mind feels towards the oppressors of modern 
 Italy is thus transferred to that earlier Empire which, 
 always in theory and often in practice, was as much 
 Italian as German. As Charles the Great becomes the 
 forerunner of Buonaparte, so Frederick the beloved of 
 Lodi, and Frederick the national king of Palermo, and 
 Otto, the dream of whose short life was to reign as a true 
 Roman Cjesar in the Eternal City, all are popularly looked 
 upon as forerunners of Francis Joseph, perhaps of Philip 
 the Second.* The Austrian delusion, no less than the 
 French delusion, must be utterly cast aside by every one 
 who would understand what Charles and Otto and Henry 
 and Frederick really were. 
 
 LaMij. Even among those who better know the facts of 
 the case, and who better understand the leading idea of 
 the mediaeval Empire, there is a certain tendency to under- 
 rate the importance of the Imperial history, on the ground 
 that the mediaeval Empire was throughout an unreality, 
 if not an imposture. We fully admit the utter unreality 
 of the position of Francis the Second, Emperor-elect of 
 the Romans, King of Germany and Jerusalem ; we fully 
 admit that Charles the Great himself was not a Roman 
 Emperor in exactly the same sense as Vespasian or Trajan. 
 We may freely grant that the Imperial idea was never 
 fully carried out, and that it was by no means for the 
 interest of the world that it should be carried out. We 
 may wonder at the belief of the ages which held, as un- 
 doubted and eternal truths, jirst, that it was a matter of 
 right that there should be an universal monarch of the 
 world ; secoudli/, that that universal monarchy belonged, no 
 less of eternal right, to the Roman Emperor, the successor 
 of Augustus ; and, thirdli/, that the German King, the 
 choice of the German Electors, was the undoubted Roman 
 Emperor, and therefore, of eternal right. Lord of the 
 
 * We have seen in a popular work the words " The Emperor Philip the 
 Second." The reasoning is irresistible: Philip's father was an Emperor; how 
 could Philip himself fail to be an Emperor too ]
 
 ]34 THE HOLY BO MAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 World. This belief seems to us very strange, but it was 
 the belief of Dante. We rejoice that this scheme of uni- 
 versal dominion was never practically carried out; we 
 pride ourselves that our own island at least was always 
 exempted from the sway of the universal sovereign. But all 
 this should not lead us at all to underrate the paramount 
 importance of the Imperial idea. A belief may be false, 
 absurd, unreal, mischievous, as we please ; but this in no 
 way touches the historical importance of such belief. 
 Christians believe that the leading idea of Mahometanism 
 is a grievous error ; Protestants believe that the leadinor 
 idea of the Papacy is a grievous error ; but no one argues 
 that either Mahometanism or the Papacy has therefore 
 been without influence on the fate of the world, or that 
 any historical student can safely neglect the history of 
 one or the other, merely because he looks on them as 
 erroneous beliefs. In fact, the deadlier the error the more 
 important are the results of an error which is accepted by 
 large masses of men. It may be very wrong to believe 
 that Mahomet was the prophet of God ; but the fact that 
 millions of men have so believed has changed the destinies 
 of a large portion of the world. It may be very wrong 
 to believe that Saint Peter was the Prince of the Apostles 
 and that the Bishop of Rome is Saint Peter's successor; 
 but the fact that millions of men have so believed and do 
 so believe has affected the course of all European history 
 and politics down to this day. In these cases no one 
 attempts to deny the importance of the facts ; no one holds 
 that either Mahometan or Papal history can safely be 
 neglected. So it should be with the history of the medi- 
 suval Empire. The Imperial idea may have been unreal, 
 absurd, mischievous ; but it is not therefore the less im- 
 portant. Men did believe in it ; perhaps they were wrong 
 to believe in it ; but the fact that they did believe in it 
 affected the whole history of the world for many ages. It 
 may have been foolish to believe that the German king 
 was necessarily Roman En)peror, and that the Roman
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 135 
 
 Emperor was necessarily Lord of the World. But men 
 did believe it ; and the fact of their believing it changed 
 the whole face of Europe. It might have been much 
 wiser if the German kings had been content to be real 
 German kings, and had not striven after the shadowy 
 majesty of Roman Emperors. But, as a matter of fact, 
 they did so strive ; it was not in human nature for men in 
 their position to do otherwise ; and the fact that they did 
 so strive entailed the most important consequences upon 
 their own and upon every neighbouring realm. If the 
 history of the Empire were to be set down purely as the 
 history of error and folly, it should still be remembered 
 that the history of error and folly forms by far the largest 
 part of the history of mankind. 
 
 But we are far from admitting that the history of the 
 Empire is purely a part of the history of human folly, 
 though we may be obliged to admit that it is a part of the 
 history of human error. The idea of the Empire, the idea 
 of an universal Christian monarchy, not interferhig with 
 the local independence of particular kingdoms and com- 
 monwealths, but placing Cfesar Augustus, the chosen and 
 anointed chief of Christendom, as the common guide and 
 father of all — such an idea is as noble and captivating as 
 it is impracticable. It is an idea which has commended 
 itself to some of the noblest spirits that the world has 
 seen. It was the idea for which the first Frederick 
 struggled with a far from merely selfish aim. It was the 
 idea to which the early revivers of scientific jurisprudence 
 clung as to the one foundation of order and legal government 
 throughout the world. It was the great principle which 
 acted as the guiding spirit of the prose, the verse, and the 
 life of Dante. To men of that time, living amid the per- 
 petual strife of small principalities and commonwealths, 
 the vision of an universal Empire of law and right shone 
 with an alluring brightness, which we, accustomed to a 
 system of national governments and international rela- 
 tions, can hardly understand. But be the worth of the
 
 136 THE HOLY EOMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 idea what it may, its practical influence on the history of 
 Christendom can hardly be overrated. The Empire may 
 have been a shadow, but it was a shadow to which men 
 were for ages ready to devote their thoughts, their pens, 
 and their swords. The results were none the less practical 
 because the object was unattainable. We repeat that, 
 without a full understanding of the mediasval conception 
 of the Empire, without a full grasp of the way in which 
 that conception influenced men's minds and actions from 
 the eighth century to the fourteenth, the greater and more 
 important part of medifEval history remains an insoluble 
 riddle. 
 
 Knowing then, as we do, the unspeakable importance 
 of right views of the Empire to a true understanding of 
 mediaival history, and being unable, as we are, to lay our 
 hand upon any other book in the English tongue which 
 gives so clear and thorough an account of the whole 
 matter, it is with no common delight that we welcome the 
 appearance of the small but remarkable volume whose 
 name we have placed at the head of this article. It is the 
 first complete and connected view of the mediaeval Empire 
 which has ever been given to British readers. Mr. Bryce's 
 book is of course not a history, but an essay ; he has not 
 attempted so hopeless a task as to narrate the fates of the 
 Empire and its attendant kingdoms within the space of a 
 single thin volume. But no one must confound Mr. Bryce's 
 Arnold essay with the common run of prize compositions. 
 Mr. Bryce's book, if it be not a bull to say so, has been 
 written since it gained the historical prize at Oxford. "It 
 is right," he tells us, " to state that this Essay has been 
 greatly changed and enlarged since it was composed for 
 the Arnold Prize." Any one who knows anything of prize 
 essays could have told as much by the light of nature. It 
 is hardly possible that any mere academic exercise could 
 have displayed the depth of thought, the thoroughness of 
 research, the familiarity with a whole learning of a very 
 recondite kind, which stand revealed in every page of this
 
 VI. J THE HOLY ROM AX EMPIRE. 137 
 
 volume. The merits of the book are so palpably due in 
 the main to this later revision, that we could almost wish 
 that the words Arnold Prize Essay were removed from the 
 titlepage. 
 
 Of the Essay itself, in its present form, we can hardly 
 trust ourselves to speak all our thoughts. Men naturally 
 and rightly look with some suspicion on criticism which 
 speaks of a novice in language which is seldom deserved 
 even by a veteran. But it is only in such language that 
 we can utter our honest conviction with regard to the 
 merits of the volume before us. Mr. Bryce's Essay may 
 seem ephemeral in form, but it is not ephemeral in sub- 
 stance. He has, in truth, by a single youthful effort, 
 placed himself on a level with men who have given their 
 lives to historical study. Like the young Opuntian in 
 Pindar — 
 
 oiov iv MapaOwvi, av- 
 \a9its dyfvtiaiv, 
 
 Mr. Bryce's Essay must be placed in the same rank, and 
 must be judged by the same standard, as the most volu- 
 minous works of professed historians. He has done for 
 historic literature a service as great as any of theirs. 
 
 Mr. Bryce's great merit is the clear and thorough way in 
 which he sets forth what the mediaeval conception of the 
 Empire really was, and especially that religious sentiment 
 which so strangely came to attach itself to the power which 
 had once been the special representative of heathen pride 
 and persecution. This is a part of the subject which we 
 have never before seen set forth with the same power and 
 fullness. For, of course, in combating the vulgar error that 
 the Roman Empire came historically to an end in 476, 
 though Mr. Bryce is doing excellent service to the cause 
 of truth, he is not putting forth any new discovery. Thus 
 much Sir Francis Palgrave has already established for the 
 West, and Mr. Finlay for the East. The Eastern side of 
 the subject is, we cannot but think, somewhat neglected
 
 138 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 by Mr. Bryce, as perhaps, ou the other hand, the Western, 
 side is by Mr. Finlay. Sir Francis Palgrave and Mr. Bryce 
 have to deal with the same side of the subject, but they 
 look at it with somewhat different eyes. With Mr. Bryce 
 indeed the Empire is his main, or rather sole, subject, while 
 the contributions of Sir Francis to Imperial history, valu- 
 able as they are, have come out incidentally in dealing with 
 matters not immediately connected with the Empire. Sir 
 Francis again concerns himself mainly with those outward 
 forms and institutions which show that the Empire did not 
 formally die. Mr. Bryce has more to do with the theory 
 of the Empire itself, and with the various shapes through 
 which it passed from Caius Julius Cresar Octavianus to 
 Francis the Second of Lorraine. This he has done in so 
 complete and admirable a manner that we trust that the 
 essay is only the precursor of a narrative. We trust that 
 Mr. Bryce may one day give us a history of the mediaeval 
 Roman Empire worthy to be placed by the side of Dean 
 Milman's history of the mediaeval Roman Church, 
 
 The theory of the mediaeval Empire is that of an universal 
 Christian Monarchy. The Roman Empire and the Catholic 
 Church are two aspects of one society, a society ordained 
 by the divine will to spread itself over the whole world. 
 Of this society Rome is marked out by divine decree as the 
 predestined capital, the chief seat alike of spiritual and of 
 temporal rule. At the head of this society, in its temporal 
 character as an Empire, stands the temporal chief of Chris- 
 tendom, the Roman Cresar. At its head, in its spiritual 
 character as a Church, stands the spiritual chief of Chris- 
 tendom, the Roman Pontiff. Csesar and Pontiff alike rule 
 by divine right, each as God's immediate Vicar within his 
 own sphere. Each ruler is bound to the other by the 
 closest ties. The Ca'sar is the Advocate of the Roman 
 Church, bound to defend her by the temporal arm against 
 all temporal enemies. The Pontiff, on the other hand, 
 though the Cyesar holds his rank, not of him, but by an
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 139 
 
 independent divine commission, has the lofty privilege of 
 personally admitting the Lord of the World to his high 
 office, of hallowing the Lord's Anointed, and of making him 
 in some sort a partaker in the mysterious privileges of the 
 priesthood. The sway alike of Csesar and of Pontiff is ab- 
 solutely universal ; it is local, in so far as Rome is its chosen 
 seat ; but it is in no way national : it is not confined to 
 Italy, or Germany, or Europe ; to each alike, in his own 
 sphere, God has given the heathen for his inheritance, and 
 the utmost parts of the earth for his possession. And each 
 of these lofty offices is open to every baptized man ; each 
 alike is purely elective ; each may be the reward of merit 
 in any rank of life cr in any corner of Christendom. While 
 smaller offices were closely confined by local or aristocratic 
 restrictions, the throne of Augustus and the chair of Peter 
 were, in theory at least, open to the ambition of every man 
 of orthodox belief. Even in the darkest times of aristocratic 
 exclusiveness, no one dared to lay down as a principle that 
 the Roman Emperor, any more than the Roman Bishop, 
 need be of princely or noble ancestry. Freedom of birth — 
 Roman citizenship, in short, to clothe mediaeval ideas in 
 classical words — was all that was needed. Each power 
 alike, as the power of a Vicar of God upon earth, rises far 
 above all petty considerations of race or birthplace. The 
 Lord of the World has all mankind alike for the objects of 
 his paternal rule ; the successor of Saint Peter welcomes all 
 alike, from the east and from the west, from the north and 
 from the south, within the one universal fold over which 
 he has the commission to bind and to loose, to remit and to 
 retain. 
 
 Here is a conception as magnificent as it was impractic- 
 able. No wonder indeed that such a theory fascinated 
 men's minds for ages, and that in such a cause they were 
 willing to spend and to be spent. That it never was carried 
 out history tells us at the first glance. It is evident that 
 neither the Roman Pontifi" nor the Roman Csesar ever ex- 
 tended their common sway over the whole of the world, or
 
 140 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 even over the whole of Christendom. And the two powers, 
 which were in theory designed to work in harmony, appear, 
 for the most part, in real history as the bitterest of rivals. 
 Still no theory, as a theory, can be more magnificent. But 
 how did such a theory arise 1 What is the Roman Empire 
 and the Roman Emperor 1 At the two ends of their exist- 
 ence those words express ideas as unlike one another as 
 either of them is unlike the theory which Otto the Third 
 and Gregory the Fifth did for a moment carry out in 
 practice. At the one end of the chain we see the heathen 
 magistrate of a heathen commonwealth, carefully avoiding 
 all royal titles and royal insignia, associating on terms of 
 equality with other distinguished citizens, but carefully 
 grasping the reality of absolute power by the stealthy pro- 
 cess of uniting in his own person a crowd of offices which 
 had hitherto been deemed inconsistent with one another. 
 Such was the first Roman Emperor, and in his days the 
 Roman Pontiff as yet was not. The last Roman Emperor 
 was a German king, whose German kingdom was almost 
 as imaginary as his Roman Empire. He was a mighty 
 potentate indeed, but mighty only through the possession 
 of hereditary or conquered realms, which mostly lay beyond 
 the limits of either Roman or German dominion. He was 
 adorned with all the titles, and surrounded with all the 
 external homage, which could befit either German king or 
 Roman Emperor. But as regards the local Rome he had no 
 further connexion, no further authority or influence, than 
 might belong to any other Catholic prince of equal power. 
 The Roman Emperor no longer claimed any shadow of 
 jurisdiction in his ancient capital; even in his German 
 realm, his position had sunk to that of the president of 
 one of the laxest of federal bodies. The Lord of the World, 
 the temporal head of Christendom, retained nothing but a 
 barren precedence over other princes, which other princes 
 were not always ready to admit. His position, Roman, 
 German, and (ecumenical, was, as the event proved, utterly 
 unreal and precarious, ready to fall in pieces at the first
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMTIRE. 141 
 
 touch of a vigorous assailant. Such were Caius Julius 
 Csesar Octavianus, the first, and Francis the Second, the 
 last, of the Roman Emperors. Each is equally unlike the 
 Roman Emperor of the true mediaeval theory. How then 
 did the same title, in theory denoting one unchanged office 
 through the whole period, come to be attached at different 
 times to personages so widely unlike each other ? We will, 
 under Mr. Bryce's guidance, run briefly through the various 
 stages through which the gi-and theory of the Christian 
 Empire arose and fell. 
 
 Mr. Bryce properly begins at the beginning. He starts 
 with a sketch of the state of things under the old Roman 
 Empire, the old dominion of the Roman Commonwealth 
 under her nominal magistrates and practical sovereigns, 
 the Emperors of the Julian, Claudian, and other Imperial 
 houses, down to the changes introduced, first by Diocletian, 
 and then by Constantine. The chief jjoint here to be 
 noticed is the absolute want of nationality in the Empire. 
 But, in this lack of nationality, the Roman Empire does 
 but continue the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic 
 was intensely local ; every association gathered round the 
 one centre, the city of Rome ; but it was less national than 
 any other commonwealth in all history. It grew, in fact, 
 by gradually extending its franchise over Latium, Italy, 
 and the whole Mediterranean world. The edict of Cara- 
 calla, whatever were its motives, did but put the finishing 
 touch to the work begun by the mythical Romulus in his 
 league with the Sabine Tatius. From the Ocean to the 
 Euphrates the civilized world was now Roman in name, 
 and from the Ocean to Mount Taurus it was Roman in 
 feeling. Mr. Bryce, we think, overrates the distinct na- 
 tionality of the Greeks of this age, and underrates that of 
 Syria and Egypt, provinces which never really became 
 either Roman or Greek. Then came, under Diocletian and 
 Constantine, the transformation of the Empire into some- 
 thing like an avowed royalty — we can hardly say an avowed 
 monarchy, seeing that the system of Diocletian involved the
 
 142 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 simultaneous reign of more than one Emperor. Under this 
 system too the Old Rome ceased to be the seat of govern- 
 ment. Milan and Nikomedeia became Imperial cities, till 
 Constantine made a better and more permanent choice than 
 all in his New Rome by the Bosporos. 
 
 With Constantine too comes in a new element more 
 important than all. Hitherto we have indeed had a 
 Roman Empire, but it has as yet had no claim whatever, 
 in a Christian sense, to the epithet of Holy. Hitherto 
 Rome and her princes have been the enemies of the Faith, 
 drunken with the blood of the saints. But from the 
 conversion of Constantine onAvards, the epithet, though 
 not yet formally given, was in truth practically deserved. 
 Rome and Christianity formed so close an alliance that, 
 in at least one portion of the Empire, the names Roman 
 and Christian became synonymous.* Emperors presided 
 in the councils of the Church ; Christian ecclesiastics 
 obtained the rank of high temporal dignitaries ; orthodoxy 
 and loyalty, heresy and treason, became almost convertible 
 terms. Christianity, in fact, became the religion of the 
 Roman Empire, universal within its limits, but making 
 hardly any progress beyond them. And so it is to this 
 day. Christianity still remains all but exclusively the 
 religion of Europe and of European colonies, that is, of 
 those nations which either formed part of the Roman 
 Empire, or came within the range of Rome's civilizing 
 influence. Thus the Empire, which once had been the 
 bitterest foe of the Gospel, now became inseparably con- 
 nected with its profession. The heathen sanctity which 
 had once hedged in the Emperor was now exchanged for 
 a sanctity of another kind. The High Pontiff of Pagan 
 Rome passed by easy steps into the Anointed of the Lord, 
 the temporal chief of Christendom. 
 
 The Empire then and the Emperor thus became Holy ; 
 
 * Tlie (Jrcek, mediteval and modern, down to tliu late classical revival, was 
 indifferently c;illed 'Poj/^afos and Xpianavus. "EWrjv, as in the New Testament, 
 expressed only the Paganiam of a past age.
 
 VL] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 143 
 
 but yet the Empire, even in the East, was not a Caliphate. 
 The successor of Mahomet inlierited alike the temporal and 
 the spiritual functions of the Prophet. In the Mahometan 
 system, Church and State needed not to be united, because 
 they had never been distinct. But closely as the Roman 
 Empire and the Christian Church became united, one might 
 almost say identified, traces still remained of the days when 
 they had been distinct and hostile bodies. The internal 
 organization of the Church, the gradations of its hierarchy, 
 the rights of Bishops and of Councils, had grown up nearly 
 to perfection before the Empire became Christian. The 
 constitution of the Church was a kind of theocratic demo- 
 cracy. The Bishop's commission was divine, proceeding 
 neither from the prince nor from the people ; but it was the 
 popular voice, and not the voice of the priesthood alone, 
 which marked out the person on whom that divine com- 
 mission should be bestowed. Of such an organization the 
 Emperor might become the patron, the piotector, the 
 external ruler, but he could not strictly become the head. 
 The spiritual power thus remained something in close 
 alliance with the temporal, but still something distinct. 
 The two were never so completely fused together in the 
 Imperial idea as they were in the idea of the Caliphate. 
 In the East the priesthood became subservient ; in the West 
 it became independent, and at last hostile. But in either 
 case it was distinct. Whether Emperors deposed Patriarchs 
 or Popes excommunicated Emperors, the Pontiff and the 
 Emperor were two distinct persons. In the Mahometan 
 system the Caliph is Pontiff and Emperor in one. 
 
 From the time of Constantine, Constantinople, the New 
 Rome, became the chief seat of Empire ; towards the end of 
 the fifth century it became the only seat. It should never 
 be forgotten, and Mr. Bryce calls all due attention to the 
 fact, that the event of the year 476, so often mistaken for a 
 fall of the Roman Empire, was, in its form, a reunion of the 
 Western Empire to the Eastern. Here again, nothing is 
 easier than to say that this is an unreal, unpractical, view.
 
 144 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 It is an obvious thing to argue that Italy was not reunited 
 to the East, but that the Roman dominion was destroyed 
 altogether ; that the supremacy of the Eastern Emperors in 
 Italy was merely nominal, and the pretended reunion of the 
 Empii'e merely an excuse to save their foolish pride. Be it 
 so ; but, as we said before on the general subject, when 
 words and forms, however unreal in themselves, exercise a 
 practical influence on men's actions, they cease to be unreal. 
 The majesty of Rome still lived in men's minds ; the Roman 
 Emperor, the Roman Consuls, the Roman Senate and 
 People, still went on. Odoacer and Theodoric might reign 
 as national kings over their own people;* but the Roman 
 population of Italy cheated themselves into the belief that 
 the barbarian king was merely a lieutenant of the absent 
 Emperor. Such a belief might be a delusion, but it was a 
 living belief, and it did not always remain a delusion. 
 When Belisarius, in the year of his consulship, landed in 
 Italy, he appeared to the Roman population, not as a 
 foreign conquerer, but as a deliverer come to restore them 
 to their natural relation to their lawful sovereign. And 
 as Mr. Bryce truly observes, unless we remember that 
 the line of Emperors never ceased, that from 476 to 
 800 the Byzantine Caesar was always in theory, often 
 in practice, recognized as the lawful Lord of Rome and 
 Italy, it is impossible rightly to understand the true 
 significance of the assumption of the Empire by Charles 
 the Great, t 
 
 Almost the only defect of any consequence in Mr. Bryce' s 
 
 * Mr. Eryce, otherwise most accurate in his account of these events, repeats 
 the common statement that Odoacer assumed the title of " King of Italy." We 
 know of no ancient authority for this statement, and it is most unlikely in 
 itself. Territorial titles were not iti use till some ages later, and no one would 
 be so unlikely to assume a style of this kind as one who professed himself to be 
 an Imperial lieutenant. [This slip has been corrected by Mr. Bryce in his 
 third edition, p. 26.] 
 
 •\ Mr. Bryce remarks that, in the Middle Ages, the Western Emperors of 
 the fifth century seem to have been quite forgotten. The lists of Emperors 
 from Augustus to Maximilian or Rudolf or Ferdinand, alwa\s go on uninter- 
 ruptedly in the Eastern line from Theodosius to Constautine the Sixth. 
 
 /
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 145 
 
 work is that he seems hardly to realize the importance, in 
 any theory of the Empire, alike of the Eastern Empire and 
 of the Eastern Church. He shows neither ignorance, nor 
 concealment, nor even misconception of the facts. But he 
 hardly gives the facts their full prominence. The truth is 
 that the existence of Eastern Christendom, as it is the great 
 stumbling-block of the Papal theory, is also the great stum- 
 bling-block of the Imperial theory. Ingenious men might 
 theorize about the two lights and the two swords, and 
 argue whether of the twain were the brighter and the 
 stronger. They might debate whether the Pope held of the 
 Emperor, or the Emperor of the Pope ; but it was agreed 
 on both sides that there could be only one Pope and one 
 Emperor. These magnificent theories of the Church and 
 the Empire were in truth set aside by the fact that a large 
 portion of Christendom, that portion too which could most 
 truly claim to represent unchanged the earliest traditions 
 both of the Church and of the Empire, acknowledged no 
 Pope at all, and acknowledged a rival Emperor. It is 
 impossible to deny that, as far as uninterrupted political 
 succession went, it was the Eastern and not the Western 
 Emperor who was the lineal heir of the old Csesars. The 
 act which placed Charles the Great on the Imperial throne 
 was strictly a revolt, a justifiable revolt, it might be, but 
 still a revolt. It was in the East, and in the East alone, 
 that the Imperial titles and Imperial traditions — in a 
 word, the whole political heritage of Rome — continued 
 absolutely unbroken down to the days of the Frank 
 Conquest. The Greek prince whom the Crusaders hurled 
 from the Theodosian Column was, as Mr. Finlay saj^s, 
 a truer successor of Augustus than was Frederick Bar- 
 barossa. The Eastern Church too presented even a more 
 practical answer to the claims of the Western Pontiff than 
 the Eastern Empire did to the claims of the Western 
 Caesar. The universal dominion of either was a theory, 
 and only a theory, as long as their dominion reached, not 
 to the world's end, not even to the Euphrates, but only 
 
 L
 
 146 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 to the Hadriatic. Alike in the days of Otto and in the 
 days of Dante, the most unchanged portion of the Roman 
 world still refused to acknowledge the sway of either the 
 Western C?esar or the Western Pontiff. In truth, the 
 elaborate theories of the mediaeval Empire were not pro- 
 pounded, and could not with any decency have been 
 propounded, as long as the Eastern Church and Empire 
 retained their old position. When Dante wrote, an Emperor 
 of the Romans still reigned at Constantinople, but he had 
 sunk to be simply one amidst a crowd of Eastern princes, 
 Greek and Frank."^ By that time too there had begun 
 to be some ground for bringing the charge of schism 
 against the ancient Churches of the East. There was at 
 least a pretext for saying that the Church of Constantinople 
 had been reconciled to the Church of Rome, and had again 
 fallen away. Such a theory could hardly have been put 
 forth in the days of the great Macedonian Emperors, when 
 the New Rome, and not the Old, was still mistress of the 
 Mediterranean, and when a large portion of the Italian 
 peninsula still owed allegiance to the Eastern and not 
 to the Western Csesar. Mr. Bryce does not forget these 
 things ; but we cannot think that he gives them all the 
 prominence which they certainly deserve. f 
 
 From the accession of Charles the Great onwards, Mr. 
 Bryce is thoroughly at home. During the whole of the 
 eighth century, the Imperial power in Italy had been 
 gradually waning. Lombard invasions had narrowed the 
 boundary of the Imperial province, and the Iconoclast 
 controversy had shaken the loyalty of the subjects of the 
 Empire. The Bishop of Rome had stood forth as the 
 champion alike of orthodoxy and of nationality, and the 
 practical rule of the city had been transferred to the 
 Frankish King. Still the tie was not formally severed ; 
 the image and superscription of Caesar still appeared on 
 
 * Dante, J)e Monarcldd, iii. lo: " Sciiidere imperium esset destiuere ipsinn, 
 consislente iuijjerio in unitate monarchi;« universalis." 
 
 f [This uniission is largely supplied in Mr. Bryce's tliird edition, p. 1S9.]
 
 VL] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 147 
 
 the coin of his Western capital, and Pippin and Charles 
 ruled, like Odoacer, by no higher title than that of Patri- 
 cian. At last the accession of Eirene filled up the measure 
 of Western indignation. The thi-one of Augustus could 
 not be lawfully filled by a woman, least of all by a woman 
 who raised herself to power by the deposition and blinding 
 of her own child. The throne was vacant ; the Christian 
 world could not remain without an Emperor : * the Senate 
 and People of the Old Rome had too long submitted to 
 the dictation of the New; they asserted their dormant 
 rights, and chose their Patrician Charles, not as the founder 
 of a new Empire, not as the restorer of a fallen Empire, 
 but as the lawful successor of their last lawful sovereign, 
 the injured Constantine the Sixth. This belief in the 
 absolute continuity of the Empire is the key to the whole 
 theory; but it is just the point by which so many readers 
 and writers break down, and fail to take in the true 
 character of the election of Charles as it seemed to the 
 men of his own time. Never was the true aspect of the 
 case more thoroughly understood and more vigorously set 
 forth than it has been by Mr. Bryce. And few descriptions 
 in the English language surpass his brilUant picture of 
 the election and coronation of the first Teutonic Csesar. 
 
 Thus was accomplished that revolution of which, in the 
 West at least, no man had hitherto dared to dream. As 
 yet no man of avowed barbarian blood had dared to 
 assume the Imperial rank. Alaric, Ricimer, Chlodwig, 
 Theodoric, Pippin himself, had never dared to call them- 
 
 * Chron. Moissiac, A. 8oi (Pertz, Mon. Hist. Germ. i. 505) : " Quum enim 
 apud Romam nunc prsefatus imperator moraretur, delati quidam sunt ad eunij 
 dicentes quod apud Graecos nomen imperatoris cestasset, et femina apud eo3 
 nomen imperii teneret, Herena nomine, quae filium suum iniperatorem fraude 
 captum, oculos eruit, et sibi nomen imperii usurpavit, ut Atalia in libro Regum 
 legitur fecisse. Audito, Leo papa et omnis conventus episcoporum et sacerdo- 
 tum seu abbatum, et senatus Francorum et omnes majores natu Romanorum, 
 cnm reliquo Christiano populo consilium habuerunt, ut ipsum Caiolum, regem 
 Francorum, imperatorem nominare deberent, qui Romam matrem Imperii 
 tenebat, ubi semper Csesares et Imperatores sedere soliti fuerunt ; et ne pagan i 
 iniiultarent Christianis, si imperatoris nomea apud Christianos cessasset." 
 
 L %
 
 148 THE HOLY ROM AX EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 selves Emperors of the Romans. They might be Kings 
 of their own people and Roman Consuls or Patricians, 
 they might create or depose Emperors, but the Empire 
 itself was beyond them. But now a man of Teutonic 
 blood and speech was, by the election of the Old Rome, 
 placed on her Imperial throne. The Frankish King be- 
 came a Roman Csesar. And, what should never be for- 
 gotten, he claimed, after his Imperial coronation, to reign 
 not only as King but as Cipsar over the whole of his 
 dominions. Those who had already sworn allegiance to 
 the King were now called on afresh to swear allegiance 
 to the Emperor. Thus was the dominion of Rome and 
 her Emperor again formally extended, alike over large 
 provinces which had been wrested from the Empire and 
 over vast regions which the older Csesars had never held. 
 The Roman eagle was planted again on the banks of the 
 Ebro, and planted for the first time on the banks of the 
 Eider. When Germany swore allegiance to the new Au- 
 gustus, the defeat of Varus might be thought to be avenged 
 at the hands of one who, in blood and speech and manners, 
 was the true successor of Arminius. If Greece led captive 
 her Roman conqueror, Rome now still more truly led 
 captive the barbarian who strove to hide, even from him- 
 self, the fact that he had conquered her. 
 
 All this, it is easy to say, was mere unreality and delu- 
 sion. It is easy to argue that Charles was not a Roman 
 Emperor in the same sense as Augustus, or even as Augus- 
 tulus. With what right could he be called the successor 
 of Constantine the Sixth, when the dominions of the two 
 princes had hardly a square mile of ground in common, 
 while the succession of Byzantine Emperors continued 
 undisturbed, and while they bore sway even over some 
 portions of Italy itself? Charles, it may be argued, was 
 simply a Teutonic king, who satisfied a mere prejudice 
 on the part of a portion of his subjects by assuming an 
 empty title, a title which neither extended his rule over 
 new dominions nor increased his prerogative within the old.
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 149 
 
 All this, no doubt, is true ; it is obvious enough to us 
 at the distance of a thousand years. But it was not 
 obvious to men at the time. And, as men's actions in 
 all ages have been governed, not by what, with further 
 knowledge, they might have thought, but by what they 
 actually did know and think, the assumption of the Im- 
 perial rank by Charles was neither unreal nor illusory, 
 because it led to important practical results. In the eyes 
 of all Charles's Italian subjects, probably in the eyes of 
 many of his Gaulish subjects, the assumption of the Roman 
 title made all the difference between lawful and unlawful 
 dominion. The King of the Franks was a barbarian 
 conqueror, or at best a barbarian deliverer ; in the Em- 
 peror of the Romans men beheld the restorer of lawful 
 and orderly government, after a long and violent inter- 
 ruption. Even in the eyes of his own Germans, Charles 
 Augustus became, in some vague way, greater and holier 
 than Charles the mere Frankish King. And in their 
 exaltation of its prince the nation felt itself exalted also. 
 The form of words did not as yet exist, but the West 
 now saw again a Holy Roman Empire, and it was now 
 a " Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." 
 
 This truth however was not as yet legally acknow- 
 ledged ; indeed it did not as yet exist in all its practical 
 fulness. Charles was indeed a German king ; but the 
 possession of the Imperial crown by a German king did 
 not identify the Imperial crown with the German nation 
 in the same way that it did from the time of Otto the 
 Great onward. The difference between the position of 
 Charles and that of Otto is this. Otto was indeed the 
 most powerful king of the West, but he was not the only 
 king. The Imperial crown was annexed to the distinct 
 local kingdom of the Eastern Franks, when it might 
 conceivably have been annexed to the kingdom of the 
 Burgundians, or even to the kingdom of the Western 
 Franks. There thus arose, from Otto onwards, a direct 
 connexion between the Roman Empire and Germany as
 
 150 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 a distinct country and nation, one country and nation out 
 of several possible competitors. But Charles had been far 
 more than all this : he was not only the most powerful 
 king, but he was in some sense the only king. He might 
 claim to be Lord of the World in a truer sense than any 
 Emperor after his son, in as true a sense as any Emperor 
 since Theodosius. Setting aside our own island, which 
 passed in some sort for another world, Charles was actually 
 either the immediate sovereign or the suzerain lord of all 
 Western Christendom. The East was indeed ruled by a 
 second Csesar, who might, according to circumstances, be 
 looked on either as an Imperial rival, a Tetricus or a 
 Carausius, or as an Imperial colleague, a Valens or an 
 Arcadius. But the West was all his own. He ruled, 
 and, after his Imperial coronation, he ruled distinctly as 
 Roman Augustus, over all the lands from the Ocean and 
 the Ebro to the Elbe and the Theiss. His frontiers were 
 surrounded, as the frontiers of Rome were in ancient 
 times, by a string of allied and tributary rulers, the 
 antitypes of the Massinissas and the Herods. In such 
 a dominion as this the mere Frankish nationality might 
 well seem to be lost: Frank, Gaul, Burgundian, Italian, 
 might seem to be alike subjects of Csesar, or, if they 
 better liked the title, citizens of Rome. Of course this 
 appearance of universal dominion was delusive ; but it 
 was only in human nature that men should at the time 
 be deluded by it. 
 
 But such an Empire as this needed the arm of Charles 
 the Great himself to support it. One hardly knows 
 whether it was in folly or in wisdom, because he saw not 
 the consequences or because he saw that the consequences 
 were unavoidable, that Charles laid down the principle of 
 a division of his dominions among his sons. The Empire 
 was still to be one and indivisible, but the Emperor was 
 to reign only as the superior lord over several kings of his 
 own house. Under Charles himself, his sons had reigned 
 as kings over Italy and Aquitaine, and he had ever found
 
 YL] THE HOLY ROMAK EMPIRE. 151 
 
 them his loyal vicegerents. Perhaps he hardly foresaw 
 that the submission which was willingly yielded to a 
 father, and such a father, would not be so willingly yielded 
 to a brother, an uncle, or perhaps a distant cousin. Per- 
 haps he saw that no hand but his own could keep his 
 dominions together ; that it was better to make the best 
 of a sad necessity; that it was something to secure a 
 nominal and theoretical unity through the vassalage of 
 all the kings to the Imperial head of the family. Anyhow 
 he had precedents enough, Roman and Prankish. He was 
 only treading in the steps of Chlodwig and of Pippin, and 
 he may well have thought that he was treading in the 
 steps of Diocletian, Constantino, and Theodosius. At all 
 events, from the death of Lewis the Pious, or rather from 
 the death of Charles himself, a state of division begins ; 
 kings and Emperors rise and fall ; the Empire is some- 
 times nominally, always practically, in abeyance. For one 
 moment, under Charles the Fat, nearly the whole Empire 
 is reunited; but, with his deposition in 888, the Eastern 
 and the Western Franks, Francia Teutonica and Francia 
 Latina — in modern language, Germany and France — are 
 parted asunder for ever. Germany, West-France, Bur- 
 gundy, Italy, become distinct kingdoms, ruled for the 
 most part by kings who are not of the blood of the Great 
 Charles. Through the first half of the ninth century, 
 whenever there was an Emperor at all, instead of being 
 Lord of the World, he was at most a King of Italy, with 
 a very feeble hold indeed even on his peninsular kingdom. 
 Then came the revival under Otto the Great, the founda- 
 tion of the Roman Empire under its latest form. The 
 kingdoms of Germany and Italy were now united, and 
 their common king, though he did not as yet assume the 
 title, was, from the moment of his coronation at Aachen, 
 Roman Emperor-elect, " Rex Romanorum in Csesarem pro- 
 movendus." Once only, on the extinction of the direct 
 line of the Ottos, did Italy again strive to establish a real 
 national king. Though Kings of Italy were once or twice
 
 152 THE HOLY JiOMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 elected in later times in opposition to the reigning King 
 or Emperor, they were discontented or rebellious princes 
 of the Imperial house, who certainly had no mind to 
 confine their rule to Italy, if they could extend it over 
 Germany and Burgundy also. From the days of Otto the 
 principle was gradually established that the chosen King 
 of Germany acquired, as such, a right to the royal crowns 
 of Italy and Burgundy* and to the Imperial crown of 
 Rome. He was not Emperor till he had been crowned at 
 Rome by the Roman Pontiff; but he, and no other, had a 
 right to become Emperor. This was a state of things very 
 different from the Empire of the first Caesars, very different 
 from the Empire of Charles, but it was still more widely 
 different from the "phantom Empire," to use Mr. Bryce's 
 words, of Guy and Berengar, The union of three out of 
 the four Kingdoms into which the dominions of Charles 
 had split, made the Empire, if not an universal monarchy, 
 yet a power which had as yet no rival in Western Europe. 
 France — modern, Celtic, Capetian, Parisian, France — looked 
 exceedingly like a revolted province, a limb wrongfully cut 
 off from the body of the Empire and from the sway of the 
 successor of Charles. States of which the old Csesars had 
 never heard — Denmark, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, owed 
 a homage, more or less practical, to the Saxon, Frankish, 
 or Swabian Augustus. The Holy Roman Empire had now 
 assumed essentially the same form which it retained down 
 to 1 806 ; another distinct step had been taken towards 
 making it the special heritage of the German nation. 
 
 It is at this point, the beginning of the Empire in its 
 last shape, that Mr. Bryce stops to review the Imperial 
 theory as it was understood in the Middle Ages. What 
 that theory was we have already tried to set forth ; but it 
 should be borne in mind that the theory grew in clearness 
 and fulness, and moreover that the more clearly men saw 
 
 * After the acquisition of the Kingdom of Burgundy in 1032. Mr. Bryce 
 has an important note on the various uses of the word Burgundy, the most 
 fluctuating and perplexing name in history.
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 153 
 
 that the existing Empire failed to answer their ideal con- 
 ception, the more they went on to theorize about the ideal 
 Empire. We may be sure that neither Otto the Great nor 
 any man of his time could have set forth the Imperial creed 
 in the distinct and elaborate shape into which it was thrown 
 by Dante. Still the essential elements of the theory existed 
 from the beginning. It was held, from the days of Otto, 
 that the eternal fitness of things required an universal 
 temporal and an universal spiritual chief of Christendom ; 
 it was held that those chiefs were to be looked for in the 
 Roman Emperor and the Roman Pontiff; and lastly, it was 
 held that the true Roman Emperor was to be looked for in 
 the German King. No Emperor was ever so thoroughly 
 imbued with these notions as Otto the Third, who seems 
 to have seriously intended to make Rome, in fact as well 
 as in name, the seat of his Empire, and thence to rule the 
 world by the help of a Pontiff like-minded with himself. 
 Of the schemes, or rather the visions, of this wonderful 
 young prince, so sadly cut off in the days of his brightest 
 promise, Mr. Bryce gives us an eloquent picture, which 
 forms one of the gems of his book. 
 
 The union in one person of the incongruous functions of 
 German King and Roman Emperor is a fact which Mr. 
 Bryce sets forth witli much power and clearness. He 
 contrasts the two offices, " the one centralized, the other 
 local ; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the 
 rude offspring of anarchy ; the one gathering all power 
 into the hands of an irrespouBible monarch, the other limit- 
 ing his rights, and authorizing resistance to his commands ; 
 the one demanding the equality of all citizens as creatures 
 equal before heaven, the other bound up with an aristocracy 
 the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the most exact, 
 that Europe had ever seen." He then goes on to show how 
 these two conceptions were fused into a third different from 
 either ; how the Emperor- King strove to merge his king- 
 ship in his Empire ; how the titles of German royalty were 
 dropped for ages, so that Csesar was held to rule as Csesar
 
 154 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 no less in Germany than in Italy ; how again, by a natural 
 interchange of thought, the idea of the Empire became 
 mingled with feudal notions ; how the Emperor became a 
 Lord of the World, not as a direct ruler, like the old 
 Casars, but as an universal suzerain, of whom local kings 
 and dukes and commonwealths might hold as his vassals, 
 while he himself held his Empire immediately of God 
 alone. There can be no doubt that, in Germany itself, the 
 effect of the union of the Kingdom with the Empire was 
 the weakening and the final destruction of the royal power. 
 The Germany of the Ottos and the Henries, divided and 
 turbulent as it seems when compared with modern cen- 
 tralized states, was actually the most united power in 
 Western Europe, incomparably more united than con- 
 temporary England or France. The whole later history 
 of Germany is simply a history of the steps by which this 
 once united realm fell to pieces. The King gradually lost 
 all real power, and yet he remained to the last surrounded 
 by a halo of outward reverence beyond all other kings. 
 The full examination of the causes of these phacnomena 
 belongs to German history. But it cannot be doubted that 
 the chief cause of all was the fact that the German King 
 was also Roman Emperor. It was not only that their 
 Italian claims and titles led the German Kings into never- 
 ending Italian wars, to the neglect of true German in- 
 terests. This outward and palpable cause had doubtless 
 a good deal to do with the matter ; but this was by no 
 means aU. The true causes lie deeper. The Emperor, 
 Lord of the World, became, like the supreme deities of 
 some mythologies, too great to act with effect as the local 
 king of a national kingdom. His local kingship was for- 
 gotten. The Emperors strove to merge their kingship in 
 the Empire, and they did merge it in the Empire, though 
 in an opposite way from that which they had intended. 
 They would reign as Emperors and not as Kings, meaning 
 to reign as Emperors with more absolute and undisputed 
 power. They did reign as Emperors and not as Kings.
 
 TL] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 155 
 
 because the Imperial power was found to be practically far 
 less effective than the royal power. The Emperor, Lord of 
 the World, exercised only a most vague and nominal 
 supremacy beyond the limits of his own kingdoms ; why, 
 now that he reigned as Caesar rather than as King, should 
 Cjesar claim any more effective authority over Germany, 
 Bui'gundy, and Italy, than he held over Gaul or Spain or 
 Britain ? He was Emperor alike in all lands ; why should 
 his jurisdiction, nominal in one land, be any more practical 
 in another? Thus, because their suzerain was of greater 
 dignity than all other suzerains, did the vassal princes of 
 Germany obtain a more complete independence than the 
 vassal princes of any other realm. Again, the Empire was 
 in its own nature elective. Mere kingdoms or duchies, 
 mere local sovereignties, might pass from father to son 
 like private estates ; but the Empire, the chieftainship of 
 Christendom, the temporal vicarship of God upon earth, 
 could not be exposed to the chances of hereditary succes- 
 sion ; it must remain as the loftiest of prizes, the fitting 
 object of ambition for the worthiest of Roman citizens, that 
 is, now, for all baptized men above the rank of a serf. The 
 practical effect of this splendid theory was that, while the 
 crowns of England and France became hereditary, the 
 crown of Germany, as inseparable from the Empire, became 
 purely elective.'^ Then followed the consequences which, 
 in any but a very early state of society, are sure to follow 
 on the establishment of a purely elective kingship. Each 
 Emperor, uncertain whether he would be able to transmit 
 his dignity to his son, thought more of the aggrandizement 
 of his family than of maintaining the dignity of his crown. 
 Escheated or forfeited fiefs, which in France would have 
 gone to swell the royal domain, were employed in Germany 
 to provide principalities for children whose succession 
 
 * Of course the old Teutonic law, in Germany and everywhere else, was 
 election out of one royal family, but in England and France the hereditary 
 element in this system grew at the expense of the elective, while in Germany 
 the process was reversed.
 
 156 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 to anything higher was uncertain. The election of each 
 Emperor was commonly purchased by concessions to the 
 Electors, and if an Emperor was so lucky as to procure 
 the election of his son as King of the Romans during his 
 lifetime, that special favour was purchased by further con- 
 cessions still. The Empire sank to such a degree of poverty 
 that it became absolutely necessary to elect a prince whose 
 hereditary dominions were large enough to enable him to 
 maintain his Imperial rank. Such princes made their 
 hereditary dominions their fu'st object, and retreated alto- 
 gether to their hereditary capitals, sometimes beyond the 
 limits of Roman or German dominion. Italy fell away; 
 Burgundy was gradually swallowed up by France. The 
 Holy Roman Empire was cut down to a German Kingdom, 
 whose very royalty was little moi^e than a pageant. As if 
 in some desperate hope of reviving the royal authority, 
 Maximilian revived the royal title,"^ almost forgotten since 
 the days of Otto. And by a strange but inevitable re- 
 action, the crown which had become purely elective became 
 from this time practically hereditary. The form of election 
 was never dropped, but chief after chief of the Austrian 
 house was chosen, because national feeling revolted from 
 choosing a stranger, while no other German prince could 
 be found equal to bearing the burthen. Thus both the 
 Roman Empire and the German Kingdom came to be 
 looked on as part of the heritage of the House of Austria.f 
 From Charles the Fifth onwards, the Roman Emperor was 
 again a mighty prince, but his might was neither as Roman 
 Emperor nor as German King. The Emperor-King, with 
 his Kingdom and his Empire, sank, as we have already 
 
 * The old titles, " Eex Orientalium Francoruni," etc., were gradually 
 dropped under the Ottos. Hcncefoith the Emperor, though crowned at 
 Aachen and sometimes at Arle.s, took no title but "Imperator" or "Rex 
 Roinanoruiii." Maximilian restored the ancient style under the foim of" Rex 
 GermaniBe," " Kiinig in Germanien." This description was common in the 
 ninth century, thougli it was not used as a formal title. 
 
 ■\ The election of Charles the Seventh of Bavaria was no exception. He 
 claimed the Austrian succession.
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 157 
 
 said, to be the president of one of the laxest of federal 
 bodies. 
 
 Thus it was that the acquisition of the Imperial dignity 
 crushed and broke up the ancient kingdom of the Eastern 
 Franks, Yet the influence of that splendid possession was 
 not wholly destructive. It preserved in the very act of 
 weakening. The Imperial idea was like the ivy which 
 first makes a wall ruinous, and then keeps it from falling. 
 The possession of Empire in every way lessened the real 
 power and influence of the Kingdom, but it insured its 
 existence. We may be sure that any other kingdom whose 
 king retained so little real authority as the King of Ger- 
 many would have fallen asunder far sooner than Germany 
 did. But the King of Germany was also the Roman 
 Emperor ; as such he was surrounded by an atmosphere of 
 vague majesty beyond all other kings ; he was the object 
 of a mysterious reverence, which did not hinder his vassals 
 from robbing him of all effectual prerogatives, but which 
 kept them back from the very thought of formally abolish- 
 ing his office. The Koman Empire, as far as any real 
 power or dignity was concerned, was buried in the grave 
 of Frederick the Wonder of the World, But its ghost 
 lingered on for five hundred and fifty years. Csesar sur- 
 vived the Interregnum ; he survived the Golden Bull ; he 
 survived the Reformation ; he survived the Peace of West- 
 phalia. The Roman Emperors, powerful as heads of the 
 Austrian House, became, as Kings and Csesars, almost as 
 vain a pageant as a Merowingian King or an Abbasside 
 Caliph of Egypt. The temporal head of Christendom saw 
 half of his own kingdom fall away into heresy. He saw 
 his vassals, great and small, assume all the rights of inde- 
 pendent sovereigns. He saw cities and provinces fall away 
 one by one, some assuming perfect republican inde- 
 pendence,"^ some swallowed up by royal or revolutionary 
 
 * The Confederations of Switzerland and the United Provinces, whose 
 independence of the Empire, practically established long before, was not 
 formally recognized till 1648.
 
 158 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 France. But the frail bark which carried C?esar and his 
 fortunes still kept on its course amid so many contending 
 blasts. It was only when the magic spell of the name of 
 Empire was dissolved by the rise of upstart and rival 
 Emperors, that the fabric at last gave way. The as- 
 sumption of the Imperial title by the Muscovite was the 
 first step, but this alone did but little. The Russian Em- 
 pire might be looked upon as in some vague way repre- 
 senting the Empire of Byzantium, or its sovereign might be 
 spoken of as Emperor according to that rough analogy 
 which confers the Imperial title on the barbaric princes of 
 China and Morocco. It was not till a rival appeared close 
 on its own ground that the Holy Roman Empire of the 
 German Nation fell utterly asunder. Side by side with 
 the Emperor of the Romans suddenly arose an " Emperor 
 of the French," giving himself out, with consummate but 
 plausible impudence, as the true successor of the Great 
 Charles. The kingdom of Italy, almost forgotten since the 
 days of the Hohenstaufen, arose again to place a new 
 diadem on the same presumptuous brow. A King of 
 Rome, a title unheard of since the days of Tarquin, next 
 appeared, as if to mock the long line of German "Reges 
 Romanorum." The assumption of the Imperial title by 
 Buonaparte was met by Francis the Second in a way 
 which showed that he must almost have forgotten his own 
 existence. He, the King of Germany and Roman Emperor- 
 elect, could find no better means to put himself on a level 
 with the Corsican usurper than to add to his style the 
 monstrous, ludicrous, and meaningless addition of " Heredi- 
 tary Emperor of Austria.""^ An hereditary Emperor of 
 
 * " iJrfckaiser von Oesterreich," as distinguished from " erwuhllervom.isch&v 
 Kaiser." This, as Mr. Bryce remarks, besides its absurdity in other ways, 
 implies a complete forgetfnlness of the meaning of the word " erwcihlter." The 
 title of " erwaftlter romischer Kaiser," " Eonianorum iiiiperator clecfm,'" was 
 introduced l)y Maximilian, under papal sanction, to express what hitherto had 
 been expressed by " Rex Romanorum in Caesarem promovcndus," that is, a 
 prince elected at Frankfurt and crowned at Aachen (latterly crowned at 
 Frankfurt also), but not yet Emj)eror, because not yet crowned at Rome by the
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 159 
 
 Lichtenstein would have seemed no greater absurdity in 
 the eyes of Charles or Otto or Frederick. When it had 
 come to this, it was time that the old titles of Rome and 
 Germany should pass away. As the elective King had 
 made himself an hereditary Emperor, Dukes and Electors 
 thought they had an equal right to make themselves 
 hereditary Kings. Their new-fangled Majesties and High- 
 nesses revolted against their renegade overlord, and found 
 a willing protector west of the Rhine. The Roman Empire 
 and the German Kingdom were now no more; the foreign 
 Emperor declared that he did not recognize their existence,^ 
 and its own Imperial chief proclaimed the final dissolution 
 of the creation of Augustus, Charles, and Otto, in a docu- 
 ment in which, after the formal enumeration of his own 
 now degraded titles, the name of Rome does not occur. f 
 
 We have thus hurried through a period of more than 
 eight hundred years, the revolutions of which are set forth 
 by Mr. Bryce with singular clearness and power. He 
 brings forth in its due prominence the great reign of 
 Henry the Third, the moment when the Empire reached 
 its highest pitch of real power. This was followed by the 
 
 Pope. This was the condition of all the Emperors since Charles the Fifth, 
 none of whom were crowned by the Pope. They were therefore only 
 "Emperors-elect," just like a Bishop-elect, one, that is, chosen, but not yet 
 consecrated. But when " j?r6kaiser " could be opposed to " erwdhlter Kaiser," 
 it was clear that people fancied that erivdhlter meant, not " elect," but elective 
 as opposed to hereditary. In short, Francis the Second seems to have altogether 
 forgotten who and what he was. 
 
 In the Peace of Pressburg, in 1805, the Emperor is called throughout 
 " Empereur d'Allemagne et d'Autriche ; " in the heading he is " Kaiser von 
 Oesterreich " only. 
 
 * See the addition made bj' Buonaparte to the Act of Confederation of the 
 Rhine : " Sa Majesty . . . ne recimndit plus I'existence de la constitution 
 germanique." 
 
 f The fonn used throughout is "deutsches Reich." But the titles run as of 
 old, " erwiihlter romischer Kaiser," " Konig in Germanien," etc. ; oidy the 
 new-fashioned " Erbkaiser von Oesterreich " is thrust in between them. Even 
 tlie " zu alien Zeiten Mehrer des Reichs," the old ludicrous mistranslation of 
 "semper Augustus," is not left out in the document which proclaims the 
 Empire to have come to an end.
 
 160 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 struggles between the spiritual and temporal powers under 
 his son and grandson, which showed how vain was the 
 theory which expected the Roman Ca?sar and the Roman 
 Pontiff to pull together in harmony. But Mr. Bryce's 
 highest enthusiasm centres round the great House of 
 Swabia. He gives us a brilliant picture of the reign 
 of Frederick Barbarossa, into whose real character and 
 position we need hardly say that he fully enters. On the 
 reign of his grandson, "Fridericus stupor mundi et inno- 
 vator mirabilis," Mr. Bryce is less full and less eloquent 
 than we should have expected; but he clearly points out 
 the importance of his reign as an epoch in Imperial history, 
 and marks out boldly the fact that "with Frederick fell 
 the Empire." The Empire, in short, from Rudolf onwards, 
 is a revival, something analogous to the Empire of the 
 Palaiologoi at Constantinople. Internal disorganization 
 had done in the Western Empire what foreign conquest 
 had done in the Eastern. Rudolf, Adolf, Albert, were 
 mere German kings ; they never crossed the Alps to 
 assume either the golden crown of Rome or the iron crown 
 of Monza. With Henry the Seventh we reach a new 
 period, or rather his reign seems like a few years trans- 
 ported onwards from an earlier time. The revival of 
 classical learning had given a revived impulse to the 
 Imperial idea, just as the revival of the Civil Law had 
 done at an earlier time. Of the ideas with which men 
 then looked upon the Empire, Dante, in his work Be 
 Monarchia, is the great exponent. It must not be thought 
 for a moment that Dante's subject is monarchy, in the 
 common sense of the word, royal government as opposed to 
 aristocracy or democracy. With him Monarcliia is synony- 
 mous with Jmper'invi. There may be many kings and princes, 
 but there is only one Monarch., one universal chief, the 
 Roman Emperor. He proves elaborately, in the peculiar 
 style of reasoning current in that ago, that an universal 
 monarch is necessary, that the Roman Emperor is of right 
 the universal monarch, that the Emperor docs not hold his
 
 VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 161 
 
 crown of the Pope, but immediately of God alone. But he 
 has not a word of argument to show that the German King 
 is really the Roman Emperor ; that is assumed as a matter 
 of course ; there was no need to prove, because nobody 
 doubted, that whatever belonged of right to Augustus 
 Caesar belonged of right to his lawful successor, Henry of 
 Llitzelburg. On this branch of the argument— one which, 
 to our notions, stood quite as much in need of proof as any 
 of the others — Dante does not vouchsafe a single line. The 
 illusion survived untouched. 
 
 We have not room to follow Mr. Bryce through all the 
 stages of the later German history, when the Empire had 
 lost all Roman and Imperial character, when the Emperor 
 was again a mere German King, or rather a mere President 
 of a German Confederation. The steps by which Germany 
 sank from a kingdom into a confederation have an interest 
 of their own, but it is one which more closely touches 
 federal than Imperial history. Germany is, as far as we 
 know, the only example of a confederation which arose, 
 not out of the union of elements before distinct, but out of 
 the dissolution of a formerly existing kingdom. From the 
 Peace of Westphalia — we might almost say from the Inter- 
 regnum onwards — the Imperial historian has little more to 
 do than to watch the strange and blind affection with which 
 men clave to the mere name of what had once been great 
 and glorious. And yet we have seen that even that name 
 was not without its practical effect. If, in Mr. Bryce's 
 emphatic w^ords, "the German Kingdom broke down be- 
 neath the weight of the Roman Empire," it was certainly 
 the name of the Roman Empire which hindered the severed 
 pieces from altogether flying asunder. And the recollection 
 of the Empire works still in modern politics, though we 
 fear more for evil than for good. Patriotic Germans indeed 
 look back with a sigh to the days when Germany was great 
 and united under her Ottos and her Henries, but these 
 are remembrances of the Kingdom rather than of the Em- 
 pire. The memory of the Empire is mainly used in modern 
 
 M
 
 162 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay 
 
 times to prop up the position of the two upstart powers 
 which now venture to profane the Imperial title. Because 
 Gaul was once a German province, the Lord of Paris* would 
 have us believe that the successor of Charles is to be found 
 among a people who in the daj^s of the great Emperor had 
 no national beinof. Because certain Austrian dukes were 
 chosen Roman Emperors, we are called upon, sometimes to 
 condemn the great Frederick as a forerunner of Francis 
 Joseph, sometimes to justify Francis Joseph as a successor 
 of the great Frederick. We will wind up with the fervid 
 and eloquent comments of Mr. Bryce on this latter head. 
 A more vigorous denunciation of the great Austrian im- 
 posture we have seldom come across : — 
 
 "Austria has indeed, in some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy 
 of the Saxon and Swabian Caesars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the 
 Italian people ; but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians them- 
 selves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on 
 their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of spreading civilization 
 and religion in savage countries, not of pampering upon their revenues .1 hated 
 court and aristocracy. Like her, they slrove to maintain a strong government 
 at home, but they did it when a strong government was the first of ])olitical bless- 
 ings. Like her, they gathered and maintained vast armies ; but those armies were 
 composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of peasants torn 
 away from useful labour, and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating their 
 own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another nationality. They sinned 
 grievously, no doubt, but they sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous 
 age, not in the noonday blaze of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for 
 mediseval faith and simplicity wliich was ao fervid some years ago, has run its 
 course, and is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the 
 Middle Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in 
 some respects little better than savages. But when lie approaches more recent 
 times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt 
 with their subjects, and with each other, he will forget the ferocity of the 
 Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the treachery, the injustice, all the 
 more odious because it sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces 
 the .innals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to 
 the pretensions of modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the 
 worth of the old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of Imperial 
 greatness was already past when Kudolf the first Hapsburg reached the throne; 
 while during what may be called the Austrian i)eriod, from Maximilian to 
 Francis II., the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and encumbrance, 
 which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not how to rid herself of it. 
 
 * [1865.]
 
 VI.] THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 163 
 
 The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old Empire to prove that they were 
 once a united people. Nor is there any harm in their comparing the politics 
 of the twelfth century with those of tlie nineteenth, although to argue from 
 the one to the other seems to betray a wank of historical judgment. But the 
 one thing which is wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the 
 successor of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and un- 
 genial of modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediaeval chivalry, 
 the noblest creation of mediaeval thought." * 
 
 * [I let Mr. Bryce's words and my own stand as they were first written. 
 Since then we have seen the "sordid and ungenial despotism" scourged by a 
 wholesome defeat into an honourable place in Europe. We have seen the 
 tyrant of Hungary changed into her lawful king. We have seen Italy en- 
 larged and strengthened by the deliverance of Venice and of Rome. We have 
 seen the lod of the oppressor broken ; the power which has been so long the 
 disturbing element in Europe has at last been crushed, and instead of the 
 frontier of France being extended to the Rhine, the frontier of Germany has 
 been again extended to the Mosel. The unity of the greater part of Germany 
 has been secured, and, by a pardonable confusion of ideas, the Imperial title has 
 been assumed by the chief of the united naticm. I need not show that such a 
 title i3 in strictness inaccurate, but it would be hard to find a title more appro- 
 priate than that of Emperor for the head of a Confederation of kings and other 
 princes. The new German Empire is a fair revival of the old German 
 Kingdom, but it must be borne in mind that it is in no sense a revival of the 
 Holy Roman Empire. That has passed away for ever.] [1871.] 
 
 M 2
 
 1G4 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 
 
 We think it right, at the beginning of this Article, to tell 
 our readers exactly what we are going to talk about, and 
 what we are not. We are not going to plunge into any 
 antiquarian minutise about the settlement of the Franks in 
 Gaul, or to perplex ourselves and our readers with any 
 questions as to Leudes, Antrustions, and Scabini. Still less 
 are we about to enter on the disputed ground of Gaulish 
 or British ethnology, to trace out the exact line of demar- 
 cation between the Gael and the Cymry, or to decide the 
 exact relations of the Belgse either to them or to their 
 Teutonic neighbours. What we wish to do is to pass 
 rapidly through the whole history of Gaul and France, 
 from the earliest times down to our own day. We wish 
 to take a general survey of Gaulish and Frankish history 
 from a point of view which is not commonly understood, 
 but which is well suited to throw an important light alike 
 upon the history of remote ages and. upon the latest events 
 of our own day. The past and the present are for ever 
 connected ; but the kind of connexion which exists be- 
 tween them differs widely in different cases. Past history 
 and modern politics are always influencing one another; 
 but the forms which their mutual influence takes are in- 
 finitely varied. Sometimes the business of the historian 
 is to point out real connexions and real analogies which 
 the world at large does not perceive. This is most con- 
 spicuously his duty in dealing with what is called the "an- 
 cient" history of Greece and Italy, and, to a large extent 
 also, in dealing with the early and. mediaeval history of our 
 own island. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is his duty
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 165 
 
 to upset false connexions and false analogies, which have 
 not only misled historical students, but have often exercised 
 a most baneful influence upon public affairs. This is his 
 primary duty when dealing with the history of Gaul and 
 France. It is something to show that the old history of 
 Athens and Rome is no assemblage of lifeless chronicles, 
 but the truest textbook for the real statesman of every age. 
 It is something to show that the England of our own times 
 is in every important respect one and the same with the 
 England of our earliest being. But it is something no less 
 valuable to break down false assumptions which pervert 
 the truth of history, and which enable designing men to 
 throw a false colour over unprincipled aggressions. If it 
 is worth our while to show that Queen Victoria is in every 
 sense the true successor of Cerdic and ^Elfred and Edward 
 the First, it is no less worth our while to show that Louis 
 Napoleon Buonaparte is in no conceivable sense the successor 
 of Clovis* and of Charles the Great. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing which people in general find 
 more difficult to master than the science of historical geo- 
 graphy. Few men indeed there are who fully take in 
 the way in which nations have changed their places, and 
 countries have changed their boundaries. We say " fully 
 take in " because the facts are continually known in a 
 kind of way, when there is no sort of living grasp of them. 
 People know things and, so to speak, do not act upon their 
 knowledge. Almost everybody has heard, for instance, of 
 the succession of " the Britons" and "the Saxons" in this 
 island. A man knows in a kind of way that " the Saxons" 
 are his own forefathers, and that they drove "the Britons" 
 into a corner ; but he does not fully take in the fact that 
 these ''Britons" and " Saxons" are simply Welshmen and 
 Englishmen. When Dr. Guest, like a good and accurate 
 
 * [I seem, eleven years back, to have kept this absurd form of the name. 
 The two names being exactly the same, if we do not write lllodwig or 
 something like it, it would be better to write Lewis from the very beginning.] 
 
 [1871.]
 
 166 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 scholar, talks of " the English " in the fifth and sixth cen- 
 turies, to most ears it sounds like a paradox.* In the 
 meanwhile, the most unmistakeable Teutons will talk 
 glibly about " our British ancestors," and see no absur- 
 dity in the title of Haydon's picture of " Alfred and the 
 fii'st British Jury." In the same way men have a sort of 
 notion that Gaul is the " ancient name " of France, and 
 France the "modern name" of Gaul. A man sees " Charle- 
 magne " called " King of France," and he thinks that the 
 France of Charlemagne is the same as the France of Lewis 
 the Fourteenth or of either Buonaparte. One cause of the 
 evil is doubtless the want of proper historical maps. Every 
 household does not boast a copy of Spruner's Hand- Atlas. 
 People are set to read the history of the world with two 
 sets of maps. One is to serve from Adam to Theodoric or 
 to Charles the Fifth — we are not quite sure which ; the 
 other, from Theodoric or Charles the Fifth to the year 1 860. 
 They sit down to read about John and Philip Augustus 
 either with a map of Roman Gaul or with a map of Napo- 
 leonic France. Now, if you want to find the homes of the 
 Twelve Peers of France, it is no light matter to do so when 
 you have to choose between a map showing you only 
 Lugdunensis and Germania Prima and a map showing you 
 only the departments of Gironde and of Ille and Vilaine. 
 People read of the return of Richard Coeur-de-Lion from 
 the East, how he falls into the hands of the Duke of Aus- 
 tria, and is presently passed over into those of the "Emperor 
 of Germany." This Duke and this Emperor are persons 
 not a httle mysterious to those whose only idea of " Aus- 
 tria " is something which takes in Venetia at the one end 
 and Transsilvania at the other. If a man in this state of 
 mind came across a copy of Eginhard, and found Mainz, 
 Kbln, and Trier spoken of as cities of Francia, he would 
 think that he had hit upon an irrefragable argument in 
 favour of the claims of Paris to the frontier of the Rhine. 
 A " King of France " once reigned upon the Elbe, the 
 
 * [1 trust that it ia not so great a paradox in 1871 as it was in i860.]
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 167 
 
 Danube, the Tiber, and the Ebro ! A patriotic Frenchman 
 would trumpet the discovery abroad as the greatest of 
 triumphs ; a patriotic Englishman might perhaps be in- 
 clined to hide so dangerous a light under the nearest 
 bushel. Our business just now is to show that the fact 
 tells quite the other way, so far as it tells any way at all. 
 If any inference in modern politics is to be drawn from the 
 pha?nomena of mediaeval geography, they would certainly 
 rather prove the right of Maximilian of Bavaria to the 
 frontier of the Atlantic than the right of Napoleon of Paris 
 to the frontier of the Rhine. 
 
 We will begin by admitting, if it is needful for anybody 
 either to assert or to deny the fact, that modern France is, 
 beyond all doubt, connected with ancient Gaul in a way in 
 which modern England is not connected with ancient Britain. 
 There can be no question that the predominant blood in 
 modern France is not that of the invading Franks, but that 
 of the conquered Gallo-Romans ; while in England the pre- 
 dominant blood is not that of the conquered Britons, but 
 that of the invading Angles and Saxons. The truth is that 
 the Frankish conquest of Gaul must, of the two, have been 
 more analogous to the Norman than to the English conquest 
 of our own country. The Frank in Gaul and the Norman 
 in England were predominant for a season ; but in the end 
 the smaller and foreign element died out, and left Gaul once 
 more Gaul and England once more England. In fact, 
 England still retains more traces of the Norman than France 
 does of the Frank. The Romance infusion into our Teutonic 
 speech is far more extensive than the Teutonic infusion into 
 the Romance speech of Gaul. The main difference is that 
 Gaul or part of it has changed its name to France, while 
 England has not changed its name to Normandy. This was 
 doubtless, among other causes, owing to the more settled 
 condition of states and nations in the eleventh century as 
 compared with the sixth, and to the fact that William of 
 Normandy claimed to be, not the unprovoked invader of 
 England, but the lawful inheritor of her crown. But, on
 
 168 THE FEAXKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 the other hand, Gaul has never, even in name, so thoroughly 
 become France as Britain has become England. This may 
 sound strange at first hearing, because " Briton " and 
 " British '' are now such household words to express our- 
 selves ; but their use in that sense is extremely modern ; it 
 has simply come in from the necessity, constant in political 
 language and frequent elsewhere, of having some name to 
 take in alike England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. So 
 lately as James the Second's time, a Briton still meant a 
 Welshman ; * and we believe that exactly a century back, 
 the famous declaration of George the Third that he " gloried 
 in the name," not of Englishman, but "of Briton," was 
 looked upon by many of his subjects as a wicked device of 
 the Scotchman Bute. To this day " England " and " English- 
 man " are the words which always first occur to us in the 
 language either of every-day discourse or of the rhetoric of 
 the heart. The word " Britain," in the mouth of an English- 
 man, is reserved either for artificial poetry, for the dialect 
 of foreign politics, or for the conciliation of Scottish hearers. 
 Before England and Scotland were united, the name " Briton," 
 as including Englishmen, was altogether unheard of; but 
 the name " Gaul " has never fully died out as the designa- 
 tion of France. How does the case stand in the tongue 
 which was so long the common speech of Europe? The 
 most pedantic Ciceronian never scrupled to talk familiarly 
 about Ang/ns and AiigUa ; but Francxs and Francia are hardly 
 known except in language more or less formal. Gallns, 
 (iallia, Gallmruw. liix, are constantly used by writers who 
 would never think of an analogous use of Brifaiinns and 
 Ihiianma. In ecclesiastical matters, Gaul has always re- 
 mained even the formal designation. The Galilean Church 
 answers to the Anglican, the Primate of all the Gauls to the 
 Primate of all England. And if it be said that the reason 
 
 * As in the ballad quoted by Lord Macaulay : 
 
 "Both onr Britons are fooled, 
 Who the laws overruled. 
 And next Parliament both shall be plaguily schooled." 
 The " Britons" are tiio Welshmen .JeHreys and Williams.
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 169 
 
 is that England is not coextensive with Britain, neither, we 
 are happy to say, is France even yet coextensive with Gaul. 
 If Britain includes Scotland as w^ell as England, Gaul 
 includes Belgium and Switzerland as well as France. The 
 difference of expression merely sets forth the truth of the 
 case. France is still really Gaulish ; England is in no sense 
 British, except in a sense lately introduced for political 
 convenience. 
 
 If we turn to a map of the Roman Empire, we shall find 
 in the West of Euroj)e the great province of Gaul, whose 
 extent, as we have hinted in the last paragraph, was far 
 larger than that of modern France. Its boundaries are the 
 Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine. It includes 
 the modern states of France, Switzerland, and Belgium, the 
 lately plundered Duchy of Savoy, and portions of the King- 
 dom of the Netherlands and of the German states of Prussia, 
 Bavaria, and Hessen. And then, as now, the division was 
 geographical, and not national. As France now forms the 
 greatest part, but far from the whole, of the ancient 
 province, so in those days men of Celtic blood occupied the 
 greater part, but not the whole, of geographical Gaul. The 
 German dwelled then, as now, on both sides of the Rhine. 
 The Basque dwelled then, as now, in Aquitaine, though his 
 tongue has now shrunk up into a much narrower corner of 
 the land than it then occupied. Now the only claim of 
 modern France to the Rhine frontier is that the Rhine w^as 
 the frontier of ancient Gaul. But why should one of the 
 states into which ancient Gaul is divided thus claim to be 
 the representative of the whole 1 There is no reason, save 
 that of their relative strength, why France should, on geo- 
 graphical principles, annex Belgium or Switzerland, rather 
 than Belo-ium or Switzerland annex France. If the Parisii 
 claim to reach to the Rhine as the eastern frontier of Gaul, 
 the Helvetii may just as well claim to reach to the Atlantic, 
 as being no less undoubtedly its western frontier. And, on 
 this sort of reasoning, why stop at the Alps ? why be 
 satisfied with Savoy and Nizza? What are Lombardy and
 
 170 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 Romagna but fragments feloniously cut off from the great 
 Gallic whole ? They came as much within the limits of the 
 Gaul of Cfesar as Paris itself. Csesar spent his winters at 
 Lucca without leaving his province. He had got some way 
 into the present Papal territory before he violated the sacred 
 limits of Roman Italy.* Geographical necessities and 
 natural boundaries may, in the mouth of a despot, mean 
 whatever he pleases ; but we really do not see why every 
 argument in favour of the French claim to the frontier 
 of the Rhine would not tell just as strongly in favour of a 
 French claim to the frontier of the Rubico. 
 
 The truth is, that, though modern France does represent 
 ancient Gaul, so far as that the old Gaulish blood is 
 predominant in the veins of the modern Frenchman, still 
 the connexion is purely geographical and ethnological ; 
 modern France is in no political or historical sense the 
 representative of ancient Gaul. France, in short, in the 
 modern sense of the word, the monarchy of Paris, has no 
 continuous existence earlier than the tenth century ; it has 
 no existence at all earlier than the ninth. Parisian France 
 has been in Gaul what Wessex has been in England, what 
 England has been in Britain, what Castile has been in 
 Spain, what Sweden has been in Scandinavia, what Prussia 
 has been in Germany and Sardinia in Italy; that is, it is 
 one state among several, which has risen to greater im- 
 portance than any of its fellows, and which has gradually 
 swallowed up many of them into its own substance. The 
 Kings of Paris gradually united to their domain nearly all 
 the territories of their nominal vassals, and a vast territory 
 besides which never owed them so much as a formal 
 homage. So have the Kings of Castile done in the Spanish 
 peninsula ; so is the Sardinian monarchy doing before our 
 
 * [It IK half a privilege, lialf a penalty, to live in an age when states and 
 nations are making themselves new boundaries. When 1 wrote this article, 
 the Bisliop of Rome was a temporal prince reigning on both coasts of the now 
 liberated peninsula. Piedmont was just beginning to grow into Italy. I leave 
 every word relating to Italy as it was first written.] [1871.]
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 171 
 
 own eyes in Italy. There is of course one wide difference 
 between the cases : Italy is being annexed to Sardinia by 
 its own free will, while, in the Spanish peninsula, Portugal 
 has not the least wish to be again incorporated with Castile 
 and Aragon, and, in Gaul, the free states of Belgium and 
 Switzerland have still less longing to be swallowed up by 
 the despotism of Paris. Otherwise, for Sardinia to annex 
 any Italian state by fraud or conquest or the mere award of 
 foreign powers would be as much opposed to justice as the 
 annexation of Portugal by Spain, or of Belgium by France. 
 The thing which men have so much difficulty in under- 
 standing is that modern France is a power which really has 
 risen in this w^ay. The existence of France in its modern 
 extent, or nearly so, is assumed as something almost 
 existing in the eternal fitness of things. The name of 
 France, a mere fluctuating political expression for a terri- 
 tory which has grown and which may again diminish,* is 
 used as if it had a permanent physical meaning, like the 
 names Spain or Italy, To speak of a time when Lyons and 
 Marseilles were no parts of France would seem to many 
 people as great a paradox as to speak of a time when 
 Rome was no part of the Italian peninsula. People know 
 in a way, but they do not fully take in, that Rouen, 
 Poitiers, and Toulouse were once the seats of sovereigns 
 whose allegiance to the Parisian King was at least as loose 
 as that of Frederick of Prussia to the Austrian Emperor ; 
 still less do they take in that Provence, Dauphiny, Franche 
 Comte, Lorraine, and Elsass were all — some of them till 
 very lately — as absolutely independent of the crown of 
 France as they were of the crown of Russia. There was no 
 reason in the nature of things why, not France, but 
 Aquitaine, or Toulouse, or Burgundy, might not have risen 
 to the supremacy in Gaul, any more than there was w^hy 
 Saxony or Bavaria might not have risen to the place in 
 Germany now held by Prussia. 
 
 * [I had but faint hopes then of seeing Elsass and Lothringen won back 
 again.] [1871.]
 
 172 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 This sort of geographical and historical confusion is very 
 much aided by one or two peculiarities in modern diplo- 
 matic language. When Louis Napoleon Buonaparte first 
 expressed his wish to become master of Savoy, the word 
 selected for the occasion was the verb " revendiquer," and 
 the actual process of annexation was expressed by the noun 
 "reunion," and the verb "rdunir." At first sight this 
 seems very much as if a burglar who asked for your money 
 or your life should be said to " revendiquer " the contents of 
 your purse, and afterwards to efiect a "reunion" between 
 them and the contents of his own. Accordinof to all 
 etymology, '' y-d/vendiquer " must mean to claim back again 
 something which you have lost, and " reMnion" must mean the 
 joining together of things which have been separated after 
 being originally one. Now undoubtedly, in modern French 
 usage, the particle " re " has lost its natural force, and " re- 
 union " has come simply to mean " union." But, first of all, 
 foreigners may indeed get to knoiv, but they can hardly get to 
 realize ihx^ ; you may know the construing in the dictionary, 
 but you cannot get rid of the instinctive impression that "re- 
 vendiquer" and "y'd/union" imply the recovery of something 
 lost, most probably of something unjustly lost. " La reunion 
 de Savoie" will always seem to an Englishman to mean that 
 Savoy was a natural part of France unjustly dissevered 
 from it. If Savoy remains annexed to France for the next 
 hundred years, people will begin to look on it as they have 
 already learned to look upon the " reunion " of Lorraine 
 in the last century and upon the earlier "reunions" of 
 Provence and Lyons. And one can hardly doubt that the 
 twofold meaning of the word, its etymological sense and 
 its modern Parisian sense, has been purposely made use of 
 as a })lind by French diplomatists. They tell us that they 
 use the word merely in its modern Parisian sense ; but they 
 know very well that many people now, and still more 
 hereafter, will instinctively interpret it in its natural 
 meaning. And secondly, it is a most speaking fact that 
 " reunion " should in any language have come to mean the
 
 Yir.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 173 
 
 same as " union." It could only have come to do so in 
 the language of a country where a long series of fraudulent 
 or violent " unions " had been ingeniously passed off as 
 lawful "reunions." 
 
 The truth is that, while all nations have a tendency to 
 annexation, France stands alone in the art of veiling the 
 ugly features of annexation by various ingenious devices. 
 Fiance is not more guilty in this matter than Russia, 
 Prussia, Austria, Turkey, or Spain ; indeed we cannot 
 venture to profess that our own English hands are alto- 
 gether clean. But France stands distinguished from them 
 all by her power of putting a good name on a bad business. 
 A Russian or Austrian aggression is simply an aggression 
 of brute force ; it is defended by the aggressor, if he con- 
 descends to defend it at all, simply on grounds of political 
 expediency. Austria does not retain Venetia for the good 
 of the Venetians, or because the hand of nature has marked 
 out Venetia as a necessary portion of her dominions. She 
 has simply got it, and means, if she can, to keep what she 
 has got. But a French aggression is quite another business. 
 There is always some elaborate reason for it. French 
 ingenuity never lacks a theory for anything. A country is 
 annexed in the interests of French versions of physical 
 geography, of French notions of what has been, or French 
 notions of what ought to be. France "wars for an idea;" 
 an idea, it may be, either of past history or of anticipated 
 futurity. Treaties are broken, legal rights are ti-ampled 
 under foot, natural justice is cast to the winds ; but there 
 is a good reason for every step. French cleverness is 
 alike apt at proving the doctrine that the annexed people 
 ought to desire annexation, and the fact that they actually 
 do desire it. In short, while Austria acts as a mere vulgar 
 and brutal highwayman, France better likes the character 
 of an elegant, plausible, and ingenious swindler. The 
 tendency is not new. Lewis the Eleventh had much to 
 say for himself when he seized on Provence and the Duchy 
 of Burgundy, and Philip Augustus extemporized a tribunal
 
 174 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 and a jurisprudence in order to put himself into lawful 
 possession of Normandy and Anjou. 
 
 Another means by which a false light is thrown upon 
 the successive aggressions of France arises out of the 
 familiar and ahnost universal use of the French language. 
 We are so much more familiar with French than with any 
 other tongue, French has become to so great an extent our 
 medium of communication with other nations, that we have 
 got into a way of speaking of half the cities of Europe, not 
 by their own names, but by Fi-ench corruptions. The 
 custom is quite recent ; in the sixteenth century English- 
 men spoke of a German, Flemish, or Italian town either by 
 its real German, Flemish, or Italian name, or else by some 
 corruption of their own making. Now our habit of calling 
 all places by French names greatly softens the ugliness of 
 French aggression. Alsace sounds as if it had been a 
 French province from all eternity ; the Teutonic Elsass 
 suggests ideas altogether different. The "reunion" oi Nice 
 may a generation or two hence sound quite natural, but 
 that of Nizza would retain its native ugliness to all time. 
 Cologne, Mayence, and Treves sound as if they positively 
 invited annexation : so do Li^ge, Malines, and Louvain ; 
 and it is no wonder that people think that Charles the 
 Great was a Frenchman when they find his tomb at such 
 a French- sounding place as Aix-la-Chapelle. But Koln, 
 Mainz, Trier, and Aachen would, by their very names, 
 stand up as so many bulwarks against Parisian aggression. 
 For at least eight hundred years past Frenchmen have 
 been incapable of spelling rightly any single name in any 
 foreign language ; but it is not at all unlikely that the in- 
 capacity may now and then have not been without a sound 
 political motive. 
 
 We will now return to our geographical survey, which 
 we have perhaps somewhat irregularly interrupted. Some 
 time back we drew a map of ancient Gaul as a province of 
 the Roman Empire. In the days of the great Teutonic 
 migration, when East-Goths poured into Italy, West-Goths
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 175 
 
 into Spain, Vandals into Africa, Angles and Saxons into 
 Britain, the kindred nation of the Franks appeared in 
 Gaul. Everybody knows that France is so called from the 
 Franks ; but people are apt to forget that France is not the 
 only country which is called from them. France and 
 Fraticonia are etymologically the same word ; the difference 
 in their modern forms simply comes from a wish to avoid 
 confusion, a confusion which was avoided in early mediaeval 
 Latin by speaking oiFrancia occid entalis a,nd Francia orie^ifalls, 
 Francia Latina and Francia Teiitonica. The difference between 
 the two is that the Frank of France was a settler in a 
 strange land, while the Frank of Franconia remained in the 
 land of his fathers, that the Frank of France ere long 
 degenerated into something half Roman, half Celtic, while 
 the Frank of Franconia has ever remained an uncontamin- 
 ated Teuton. In short, the Franks conquered Gaul, but 
 without forsaking Germany ; and they conquered different 
 parts of Gaul in widely different senses and degrees. In 
 Northern Gaul, to a certain extent, they settled. Orleans, 
 Paris, Soissons, and Metz became the seats of Frankish 
 kingdoms ; but in the southern provinces of Aquitaine and 
 Burgundy they hardly settled at all. There other Teutonic 
 conquerors had been before them. The Goth reigned at 
 Toulouse, and the Burgundian had given his name to the 
 land between the Rhone and the Alps. Both were in a 
 certain sense conquered. The orthodox zeal of the newly- 
 converted Merwing formed a good pretext for driving the 
 Arian out of Gaul. The Gothic monarchy had to retire 
 beyond the Pyrenees, and the Burgundian kingdom for a 
 while " ceased to exist." But the conquest was at most a 
 political one. Southern Gaul was brought into a more or 
 less complete subjection to the Frankish kings, but it never 
 really became part of the true Frankish territory. There 
 was no permanent Frankish population south of the Loire, 
 and, as the Merowingian dynasty declined, Aquitaine again 
 became to all intents and purposes an independent state. 
 Under Pippin we find a Duke of Aquitaine who has to
 
 176 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 be conquered just as much as any prince of Lombardy or 
 Saxony. In truth, to this day Aquitaine and France proper 
 have absolutely nothing in common, except the old Roman 
 element and the results of their political union during the 
 last four hundred years. The Teutonic element is different 
 in the two lands, and, in a large district at least, the abori- 
 ginal element is different also. The Frenchman is formed 
 by the infusion of the Frank upon the Celt, the Gascon is 
 formed by the infusion of the Goth upon the Basque. Both 
 speak tongues derived from that of Rome, but the differ- 
 ence passes the limits of mere difference of dialect. The 
 arrogance of modern Paris talks indeed of the " bad 
 French " of Aquitaine and Provence. In its ignorant pride, 
 it can see only a patois of itself in a tongue which is as 
 distinct as that of Spain or Italy, and which was a formed 
 and polished speech, the speech of the refined courts of 
 Poitiers and Toulouse, while northern France had still only 
 an unformed and unwritten jargon. 
 
 We thus see that the dominions of the Kinsrs of the 
 Franks of the house of Clovis in no way answered either to 
 ancient Gaul or to the modern French Empire. The Mero- 
 wingian realm consisted of central Germany and Northern 
 Gaul. Southern Gaul was overrun rather than really 
 conquered, and northern Italy was overrun also. For a 
 short time, during the wars of the sixth century, Prankish 
 conquerors appeared south of the Alps on an errand which, 
 for aught we know, may afford a full precedent for the 
 Italian campaigns of Francis the First, or for those of 
 either Buonaparte. But the real Prankish territory of this 
 period does not reach southward of the Loire. North of 
 that river we find the Frank of Neustria, perhaps by this 
 time in some degree Romanized, and to the east of him 
 comes the true German Frank of Austrasia. How far the 
 Franks of Gaul had yielded to Roman influences during 
 the Merowingian period it is impossible to say ; but every- 
 thing leads us to believe that before the time of Pippin they 
 must have begun to differ widely from their uncorrupted
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 177 
 
 Austrasian brethren. We shall see presently that, by the 
 middle of the ninth century, a Roman speech, no longer 
 Latin, but as yet hardly to be called French, had grown up 
 in Frankish Gaul. Now the influences of the previous cen- 
 tury and a half were altogether in a Teutonic direction : a 
 Romance dialect could hardly have lived on through the 
 domination of the Austrasian Mayors and Kings, unless it 
 had been pretty firmly established before the end of the 
 Merowingian rule. 
 
 The Carolingian dynasty dates its formal beginning 
 from the election of Pippin as King of the Franks in 
 752. Eut practically it may be carried back to the be- 
 ginning of the series of Austrasian Mayors in 681. The 
 first Pippin and the first Charles were really sovereigns 
 of the Franks, no less than the Pippin and the Charles 
 who were invested with the royal title. And this transfer 
 of power to the house of Pippin was nearly equivalent 
 to a second Teutonic conquest. Whatever the Merwings 
 and their Gaulish subjects may have been, there is no 
 doubt as to the true Teutonic character of the whole 
 dj'nasty of the Karlings. They were raised to power by 
 the swords of the Teutonic Austrasians ; the cradle of 
 their race was the Teutonic Heerstall ; their favourite seats 
 of royalty were the Teutonic Engelheim and Aachen ; as 
 Mayors of the Palace, as Kings of the Franks, as Roman 
 Csesars, nay even when they had shrunk up into the 
 petty kings of the rock of Laon, they clave firmly, down 
 to their latest dajs, to the dress, the manners, and the 
 tongue of their Teutonic fathers. Under the " kings of 
 the second race," Aquitaine and even Neustria were little 
 more than subject provinces of a German monarch. 
 
 The zenith of the Frankish power was attained in the 
 reign of Charles the Great. Charles, Kiug of the Franks, 
 King of the Lombards, Patrician of the Romans, was 
 something far more than a king either of Gaul or of 
 Germany ; he was the lord of Western Christendom. All 
 Gaul, all that was then Germany, were his ; Aquitaine, 
 
 N
 
 178 THE F/LiXKS AND THE GAULS. [E.say 
 
 Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, were gathered in as con- 
 quered provinces ; the Slave, the Avar, the Northman, 
 became subjects or tributaries; the Commander of the 
 Faithful himself corresponded on equal and friendly terms 
 with the mightiest of the followers of the Cross. At last 
 a dignity fell to the lot of the triumphant Frank to which 
 no barbarian of the West had as yet ventured to aspire. 
 Goths and Herulans had long before made and unmade 
 the Western Caesars ; Gothic chiefs had reigned in Italy 
 with the royal title ; but the diadem and the sceptre 
 of Augustus had as yet been worn by no Teutonic brow 
 and grasped by no Teutonic hand. The Old Rome had 
 stooped to become a provincial dependency of the New ; 
 but it had never submitted to the permanent sway of 
 a barbarian. Theodoric had reigned, a Gothic king indeed 
 in fact, but an Imperial lieutenant in theory ; Alboin and 
 Liudprand had appeared as open enemies, but they had 
 never passed the gates of the Eternal City ; Charles him- 
 self, his father, and his grandfather, had exercised the full 
 Imperial power under humbler names ; but the Patrician 
 was only the republican magistrate of the Roman com- 
 monwealth or the vicegerent of the Eastern Csesar. By 
 that Csesar's regnal years charters still were dated, and 
 his image and superscription were still impressed on a 
 coinage from which no tax or tribute ever reached him. 
 At last the moment came when the Old Rome was again 
 to assert her coequality with her younger sister, and to 
 affirm that she had never forfeited her right to nominate 
 one at least of the masters of the world. Rome once more 
 chose her own Ciesar, but that Cfesar was not of Roman 
 or Italian blood : the golden crown at last rested on the 
 open brow of the lordly German, and the Pontiff and 
 People of Rome proclaimed the Imperial style of " Charles 
 Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor 
 of the Romans." Not that the Roman Augustus gained 
 thereby an inch or particle of territory or power which 
 had not already belonged to the simple Frankish king.
 
 VIL] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 179 
 
 But in the eyes of a large portion of his subjects his 
 rule was thereby at once changed from a dominion of 
 force into a dominion of law ; the elected and consecrated 
 Emperor became, in the eyes of all southern Europe, a 
 different being from the mere barbarian conqueror ; we 
 might almost say that the world recognized the Teuton 
 as its chosen and natural ruler, when for the first time 
 a man of Teutonic blood was raised to the highest pin- 
 nacle of earthly greatness. It shows the true greatness of 
 Charles's mind that his head was not in the least turned 
 by a splendour which might have dazzled the imagination 
 of any mortal. Crowned in the Eternal City by the 
 common father of Christendom, he still remained, Im- 
 perator and Augustus as he was^ the same simple hearty 
 German as of old. Even Alexander, on the throne of 
 the Great King, could not wholly endure the trial ; he 
 went far to exchange the spirit of the chosen King of 
 Macedon and chief of Greece for the arbitrary rule of a 
 Persian despot. Eut Charles was in no way spoiled or 
 changed by the almost superhuman glory from which he 
 seems himself to have shrunk. He still retained his 
 German dress, his German speech, his German habits ; 
 nor did he ever transfer the pomp, the slavery, the 
 almost idolatrous incense of the court of his Byzantine 
 colleague into the free Teutonic air of Aachen and of 
 Engelheim. 
 
 Those were indeed days of glory for the ancient Frank ; 
 but it is a glory in which the modern Frenchman can 
 claim no share. Celtic, Parisian, France had as yet no 
 being. Its language was as yet the unformed patois of a 
 conquered province. Paris was a provincial town which 
 the lord of Rome and Aachen once visited in the course 
 of a long progress amongst a string of its lowly fellows. 
 Gaul, at least its Celtic portions, was seldom honoured 
 by the presence of its German master, and it added but 
 little to the strength of his German armies. The native 
 speech of Charles was the old Teutonic ; Latin, the literary 
 
 N 3
 
 180 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 tongue of the whole West, and still the native speech of 
 many provinces, he spoke fluently as an acquired lan- 
 guage ; Greek, the other universal and Imperial tongue, 
 he understood when spoken, but could not himself speak 
 it with ease. French he could neither sp3ak nor under- 
 stand ; for, alas, as yet no French language could be said 
 to exist ; a King of the Franks was about as likely to 
 express himself in the dialect of a Neustrian Celt as an 
 Emperor of the French is now to indite his pamphlets 
 in Basque, Walloon, or Bas-Breton. The valley of the 
 Loire, the chosen home of the Valois, the valley of the 
 Seine, the chosen home of the Bourbon, had little charms 
 for the Austrasian Frank, whose heart, amid Roman pomps 
 and Aquitanian and Hunnish victories ever yearned for 
 the banks of his own Teutonic Rhine. Under Charles 
 that elder Francia which was the native land of the Frank 
 was at the summit of its greatness ; but there was no 
 period, before oi- after, at which that younger Francia of 
 which Paris is the centre was so utterly insignificant in 
 the eyes of men. 
 
 Another of the many mistakes with which this period 
 of history is overshadowed is the common belief that the 
 long reign of Charles, his wars, his treaties, his legislation, 
 left hardly any lasting fruit behind them. We are too 
 apt to suppose that his great work was almost imme- 
 diately undone amidst the dissensions of his grandsons. 
 This again arises from looking at him and his Empire 
 from a French instead of a German point of view. Looked 
 at from Aquitaine or Neustria, the work of Charles the 
 Great was altogether ephemeral ; but it bears quite another 
 hue if we once step on the other side of the Rhine. Charles 
 found a large part of Germany a mere wilderness of 
 heathendom ; the Christian Frank found the bitterest and 
 most stubborn enemy of his creed and empire in the 
 kindred Saxon. Charles converted Saxony by the sword ; 
 but, however the work was done, it was done effectually. 
 He welded Saxony and the Teutonic Francia together into
 
 VIL] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 181 
 
 that great German kingdom which so long held the first 
 rank in Europe, and which, strange as it seems to us, 
 was really, when we compare it with Gaul, Italy, or 
 Spain, the most united of Western realms. He opened 
 a path in which a long line of illustrious German kings 
 and Emperors, from Arnulf to Frederick the Second, 
 worked with no small success after him. That he be- 
 queathed to them a claim to his Imperial style, and a 
 vague pretension to his Imperial power, was an inheritance 
 of but doubtful advantage. The Kingdom of Germany 
 was in truth crushed and broken to pieces beneath the 
 weight of the Holy Roman Empire ; but of the united 
 and glorious Germany of Henry the Fowler and Otto 
 the Great, of Henry the Frank and of Frederick the 
 Swabian, Charles the Great was the father and the 
 founder. If Gaul and Italy fell awayj the llegnum Teu- 
 tonicum survived for four hundred years, and it still sur- 
 vives in the hearts of a people longing to be one as they 
 were beneath his sceptre.* Only remember what the 
 Francia and the Franci of Charles really were, and the 
 dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire amounts to 
 little more than the lopping-ofF of some outlying foreign 
 provinces from the body of the great Teutonic realm. 
 
 We have now reached the ninth century. Charles was 
 crowned at Rome in the last year of the eighth century, 
 and fourteen years later he was borne to his Imperial 
 tomb at Aachen. He had founded the German kingrdom 
 and won the Roman diadem for its kings. But before 
 the new century had passed, another nation, another lan- 
 guage, was beginning to appear. During the century 
 which followed the death of Charles, we get our first 
 glimpses of the existence of modern, Celtic, Parisian, 
 France. Eefore the close of the second century from his 
 
 * [The Ee(jnam Teutonicuiii has now come to life again, but its chief bears 
 the Imperial title. Still the inaccuracy may be forgiven. Now that dukes 
 and electors have grown into kings, it is hard to see what a Basileus, a King 
 of Kings, could be called except Emperor.] [1871.]
 
 182 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 coronation, modern, Celtic, Parisian, France, the kingdom 
 of Odo and Hugh Capet, is fully established, high in rank, 
 but as yet small in power, among the recognized divisions 
 of Western Christendom. 
 
 The Western or Frankish Empire, as it stood under 
 Charles the Great, was undoubtedly far too vast, and in- 
 cluded nations far too incongruous, to remain permanently 
 united under a single head. Charles himself, it is evident, 
 perceived this. The division of a kingdom among the sons 
 of a deceased king was indeed nothing new ; it was a device 
 which had been constantly tried in Merowingian Gaul. 
 But we cannot believe that Charles would have given the 
 sanction of his master genius to such a plan, had it not 
 been really adapted to the circumstances of the time. His 
 schemes were very elaborate. The mode of succession 
 chalked out by him included a mixture of popular elec- 
 tion and hereditary right, and all the minor kings were to 
 be united in a sort of federal bond by the recognition of a 
 common superior in the Emperor. Whether such a system 
 could have worked may be doubted. It had worked under 
 himself ; he had made his sons kings in Italy and Aquitaine 
 without any prejudice to his own rights as supreme Em- 
 peror. But submission to a father, and that father Charles 
 the Great, was quite another thing from submission to a 
 brother, an uncle, or, as it might soon be, a distant cousin. 
 Charles's own scheme of division came to nothing, because 
 of the death of two out of his three sons. Lewis the Pious 
 succeeded him in the possession of the whole Empire, with 
 only one subordinate king in the person of the unfortunate 
 Bernhard of Italy. But it is well worth while to mark the 
 geographical limits of the several kingdoms as traced out 
 by the hand of Charles himself. Most likely he had no 
 thouff-ht of forminjj national kingdoms at all.* There was 
 still to be one kingdom of the Franks, though it was divided 
 
 * This seems to be shown by the titles wliich Eginhard gives to tlie subordi- 
 nate kings. Lewis, fur instance, is not "rex Aquitanise," or "rex Aquitano- 
 rurn," but merely " rex super Aquitaniam."
 
 VI r.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 183 
 
 among several kings ; just as in the early days of the divi- 
 sion of the Roman Empire, the Empire was still held to be 
 one, though its administration was portioned out between 
 two or more Imperial colleagues. Certainly the three 
 kingdoms traced out for Charles, Pippin, and Lewis co- 
 incide with no national divisions either of earlier or of 
 later times. Roughly speaking, Charles seems to have 
 meant to keep the old Frankish kingdom for his eldest 
 son Charles, and to divide his conquests between Pippin 
 and Lewis. But, besides that the frontier is not very ac- 
 curately followed, one most important exception is to be 
 made. The wholly new acquisitions of Italy and the Spanish 
 March, together with Aquitaine and Bavaria, which had 
 been reduced from nominal vassalage to real obedience, 
 wt-re divided between the two younger sons. Charles took 
 the old Francia ; but he also, by the necessity of the case, 
 took the great conquest of Saxony. Of the three divisions, 
 Aquitaine, the kingdom of Lewis, came nearest to being a 
 national kingdom. Southern Gaul and the Spanish March 
 answer pretty nearly to what were afterwards the countries 
 of the Lingua d'Oc. But the Italian kingdom, cut short at 
 one end by the Byzantine province, was lengthened at the 
 other by the addition of all Germany south of the Danube. 
 Did the theory of " natural boundaries " flash across the 
 mind of the great Charles when he made that great river a 
 political limit ? Certainly no such idea presented itself to 
 him with reg^ard to the Rhine. Not the slio^htest reofard 
 was paid either to the past boundaries of Roman Gaul or 
 to the future boundaries of modern France. Aquitaine was 
 to have something like a national sovereign ; but no such 
 boon was conferred on Neustria. The German king was 
 to reign, as of old, on both sides of the German river. The 
 kingdom of the younger Charles was to consist of what is 
 now Northern France and Northern Germany ; while what 
 is now Southern France formed the great bulk of the king- 
 dom of Lewis. Modern, Parisian, France was so far from 
 answerinfj to the Francia of Charles the Great, that it did
 
 184 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 not even occur to him as a convenient division when he 
 was portioning out the vast monarchy of which it formed a 
 part. 
 
 The division made by Charles had, as we said, no lasting 
 effect. It is valuable only as showing what were the ideas 
 of a convenient partition entertained in the year 806 by the 
 greatest of living men. Charles was succeeded by Lewis. 
 His reign was a mere series of ever-fluctuating partitions 
 of the Empire among his sons. Sir Francis Palgrave, in the 
 first volume of his History of England and Normandy, has 
 taken the trouble to reckon up no less than ten successive 
 schemes of division. In tlie last of these we beoin to dis- 
 cern, for the first time, something like the modern kinofdom 
 of France. Then, in 839, Northern and Southern Gaul, 
 Neustria and Aquitaine, were for the first time united as 
 the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The kingdom thus 
 formed was far smaller than modern France, but it lay 
 almost wholly within it. It took in Flanders at the one 
 end and the Spanish March at the other ; but both of these 
 provinces remained French, in a vague sense, far down into 
 the middle ages. The suzerainty over the county of Bar- 
 celona was only given up by Saint Lewis, and that over the 
 county of Flanders lingered on to be one of the main sub- 
 jects of dispute between Francis the First and Charles the 
 Fifth. The kingdom of Charles the Bald was undoubtedly 
 the first germ of modern France. It was, if we except the 
 Flemings, the Bretons, and the Basques at its several corners, 
 a kingdom wholly of the Roman speech. This fact comes 
 prominently forth in the famous oath of Strassburg, pre- 
 served by Nithard.* That precious document has been 
 commented upon over and over again as a matter of philo- 
 logy ; it is no less valuable as a matter of history. It shows 
 that in 841 the distinctions of race and language were be- 
 ginning to make themselves felt. The Austrasian soldiers 
 of King Lewis swear in the Old-German tongue, of which 
 the oath is an early monument ; but of the language in 
 
 * Nith.ird, iii. 6, ap. Pertz, ii. 666.
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 185 
 
 which the oath is taken by the Neustrian soldiers of King 
 Charles "^ the oath itself is, as far as our knowledge goes, 
 absolutely the oldest monument. In the lingua Iio)iiana, as 
 Nithard calls it, we see for the first time a tongue essen- 
 tially of Roman origin, and yet a tongue which has departed 
 too far from the Roman model to be any longer called Latin. 
 It has ceased to be Latin, but we cannot yet call it French, 
 even Old-French. How far it is the mother of French, and 
 how far rather the mother of Provencal, we must leave those 
 to decide whose special business lies with the history of 
 language. For our purpose it is enough that it reveals to 
 us the existence of a Gaul speakmg neither Celtic, nor 
 Teutonic, nor Latin, but Romance : that iS; it shows that 
 one most important step had been taken towards the crea- 
 tion of modern France. As yet the new speech was known 
 only as lingua Romana ; in the course of the next century 
 it became nationalized as lingua Gallica.^ One might be 
 curious to know how far men had begun really to feel that 
 a new language had been formed ; but we can say nothing, 
 except what we may infer fiom the fact that Count Nithard, 
 a man of high rank and high ability, and, by an illegitimate 
 female descent, the actual grandson of the great Charles, 
 was struck by the phenomenon of the diversity of speech, 
 and thought the formula worth preserving in the very 
 words of the vulsjar tongue. This is in itself remarkable 
 enough, and at all events it proves the observant and in- 
 quiring spirit of Nithard himself. We wish that he had 
 had more followers. There is nothing which we more 
 commonly lack in the Latin chroniclers of the middle ages 
 than notices of the tongue of the people, and even of the 
 tongue of the actors in the story. 
 
 * [It is worth notice that Charles the Bald, as well as his soldiers, could 
 speak the "lingua Romara" or Romance tongue. See the Capitularies put 
 forth by the kings Lewis, Charles, and Lothar at Coblenz in 860. Lewis 
 speaks "liiii.'ua Theothisca," and Charles "lingua Romana" (Pertz, Leges, i. 
 472). Yet Charles, in his own Capitularies, speaks of "lingua Tiieodisc;ie " 
 as the language of the country, exactly as Lewis does (i. 4S2, 497).] [1871.] 
 
 f See Richer, i. 20, iii. 85, iv. ico, ap. Pertz, vol. v.
 
 isr, THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 The wars between the sons of the Emperor Lewis, and 
 the final settlement at Verdun in 843, did but confirm the 
 existence of the new kingdom. The connexion between 
 the two parts of ancient Francia was now severed for ever ; 
 Neustria and Austrasia were never, except during the 
 ephemeral Empire of Charles the Fat, again united under 
 a single ruler. On the other hand, a connexion was formed 
 between Neuslria and Aquitaine, a connexion which was of 
 little moment, but which was destined to bear at the time 
 no small fruit in future ages. Ey the treaty of Verdun the 
 Empire was divided into three parts. Charles took, as we 
 have seen, the purely Romance lands of Neustria and Aqui- 
 taine ; Lewis took the pureJy German lands far to the east. 
 Lothar, their eldest brother, the Roman Cajsar, of course 
 took Frankish Italy; but he took also that long strip of 
 debateable land from the Mediterranean to the Ocean, 
 which took his name, and part of which still keeps it. 
 Lofliariw/ia, Lot/iringen, Lorraine^ lay between the Germanic 
 realm of Lewis and the Romance realm of Charles, taking 
 in doubtless then, as now, lands both of Romance and of 
 Germanic speech. But it was a kingdom which had no 
 principle of unity of any kind ; no kind of tie of language, 
 of history, or of " natural boundaries," united Provence and 
 Holland and the intermediate countries. The kingdom, 
 therefore, had no lasting being. Sometimes we find it cut 
 up into several separate kingdoms ; sometimes, as in our 
 own day, it was divided between the two more compact 
 realms on each side of it. Those two realms remained, 
 grew, and flourished, while Lotharingia fell to pieces. 
 Those realms need names from the beginning, and it is 
 hard to avoid giving them, though it is still too soon to do 
 so, the familiar names of Germany and France. 
 
 Thus we get our first glimpse of France in the modern 
 sense, a creation of the ninth century, not of the fifth. As 
 Sir Francis Palgrave says,* "this division created terri- 
 torial France." Modern France was thus created, but it 
 
 * History of En-land and Normandy, i. 345.
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS ASD THE GAULS. 187 
 
 was created purely by accident. Charles was king over 
 Neustria ; and the Emperor Lewis, wishing to enlarge the 
 appanage of his favourite son, added the kingdom of 
 Aquitaine, which fell vacant by the death of his brother 
 Pippin. Neustria and Aquitaine together made France, 
 such a France as lasted till the fourteenth century; a 
 France without Alpine slopes or frontiers of the Rhine ; a 
 France which, instead of the Rhine, barely reached to the 
 Rhone, and which still had to " reunite," not only Savoy 
 and Nizza, but Provence, Dauphiny, the county of Eur- 
 gundy, Lyons, Presse, Bugey, Elsass, and Lothringen, And 
 even within the limits of the new kingdom, the position of 
 Aquitaine shows how utterly accidental and artificial the 
 creation was. Aquitaine, the kingdom of Pippin, had no 
 love for the sway of Charles of Neustria ; it was constantly 
 revolting on behalf of Pippin's heirs, as the representatives 
 of its national independence. Aquitaine was joined to 
 Neustria by the command of Lewis the Pious ; but no 
 effectual union took place for ages ; all that the command 
 of the pious Emperor brought about was to invest the 
 Neustrian king with vague and nearly nominal rights, 
 which did not fully become realities for six hundred years. 
 Aquitaine was to the Kings of the French pretty much 
 what Romagna was to the Popes. Constantino or Pippin 
 or Charles or Matilda or Rudolf o-ave Romacrna to the Holv 
 See ; but the sovereignty of the Holy See was of the most 
 unpractical kind till its rights were at last enforced by 
 the sword of Cpesar Borgia. So it was with Aquitaine : 
 nominally part of the kingdom of Charles the Bald, it soon 
 split into two great principalities, differing in nothing but 
 name from sovereign kingdoms. The Duke of Aquitaine 
 and the Count of Toulouse came to rank among the princes 
 of Europe. They might be vassals of the King of France, 
 but their vassalage went no further than placing the royal 
 name in the dates of their charters. During the busy 
 French and Norman history of the tenth century, the 
 French chroniclers tell us much about Germany and some-
 
 188 THE FBAKKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 thing about England, but about Southern Gaul we only 
 hear just enough to assure us that it had not vanished from 
 the face of creation. The Loire seems in those days to have 
 been the truest natural boundary ; between Northern and 
 Southern Gaul we find few relations either of peace or war, 
 but something very like utter mutual oblivion. As time 
 rolled on,the Aquitanian duchy was, in the twelfth century, 
 united to the crown of England ; while the eastern portion 
 of Old Aquitaine, Languedoc, or the county of Toulouse, 
 became, in the next age, one of the first and greatest acqui- 
 sitions of the kings of Paris. Few portions of history are 
 less understood than that of the noble duchy which so long 
 formed one of the fairest possessions of our own kings. 
 Few Englishmen understand the difference between the 
 English tenure of Bordeaux and the English tenure of 
 Calais. When the Black Prince kept his court at Bordeaux 
 as Prince of Aquitaine, most readers look upon him as an 
 English conqueror, just like Henry the Fifth at Paris. 
 Bordeaux is marked in the modern map as part of France ; 
 therefore people do not understand that, till its loss in the 
 fifteenth century, the kings of France had never held it at 
 all, except during the momentary and fraudulent occupation 
 of Aquitaine by Philip the Fair. When Talbot fell before 
 Chastillon, he fell in the cause, not of the bondage, but of 
 the independence of the Pyrenrean duchy, in the same 
 cause which Hunholt and Lupus fought against Charles the 
 Great, and Pippin and Sancho against Charles the Bald. 
 In short, Lewis the Pious might grant Aquitaine in 
 the ninth century to Charles the Bald, but it was only 
 Charles the Seventh, in the fifteenth century, who first 
 really obtained possession of the gift. 
 
 The Frank] sh Empire, as we have seen, was divided by 
 the treaty of Verdun into three kingdoms : the Eastern and 
 Western, which grew severally into modern Germany and 
 France, and the central realm of Italy and Lotharingia, 
 which soon fell asunder. The next forty years form little 
 but a history of unions and partitions. Each father tried
 
 TIL] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 189 
 
 to divide his dominions amongst his sons ; each brother or 
 uncle did his best to seize to himself the inheritance of his 
 brothers and nephews. Of all the princes of that age, the 
 Emperor Lewis the Second, reigning in Italy as a I'eal 
 Roman Ca-sar, and fighting in the cause of Christendom 
 against the Saracen, is the only one who can claim any 
 portion of our esteem. Even he was not altogether free 
 from the general vice ; but he has at least merits to set 
 against it which we do not find in the case of his fellows. 
 The whole period is one of utter confusion and division. 
 At last, in 885, nearly the whole of the Carolingian Empire 
 was reunited in the person of Charles the Fat. He had 
 gradually gathered on his brow the Imperial crown of 
 Rome and the royal crowns of Germany, Italy, and the 
 Western Kingdom. Still to this reunion one important 
 exception must be made. One state, part of the Lotharingia 
 of forty years earlier, had set the example of entire revolt 
 from the blood of the great Charles. In 879 Count Boso 
 was elected and crowned king over a kingdom which, as 
 Sir Francis Palgrave says, has almost vanished from history, 
 but whose memorj^ it is just now highly desirable to recall. 
 Boso made the beginnings of the short-lived kingdom of 
 Burgundy or Aries, a kingdom l^'ing between France and 
 Italy, and which may be roughly described as the country 
 between the Rhone and the Alps. In modern geographical 
 language, it includes Provence, Orange, the Venaissin, 
 Dauphiny, Lyons, Eresse, Bugey, the County of Burgundy, 
 (or Tranche Comie), with Savoy, Nizza, and a large part of 
 Switzerland. On the theory of natural boundaries, the 
 Kingdom of Burgundy seems quite as well marked out as 
 the Kingdom of France. The Rhone and the Saone to the 
 west, the Alps to the east, the Mediterranean to the south, 
 make as good lines of demarcation as one commonly meets 
 with in the political map. Nearly all its inhabitants were 
 of the Romance speech — all except a small German terri- 
 tory in what long afterwards became Switzerland. As far 
 as we can see, Burgundy had much more right to ask
 
 190 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 to extend herself to the Ocean by swallowing up the kindred 
 province of Aquitaine than Parisian France had to ask to 
 extend itself to the Alps by swallowing up the far more 
 foreign Kingdom of Burgundy. 
 
 In 887 Charles the Fat was deposed by common consent 
 of his various realms, which were from henceforth separated 
 with a far more thorough and lasting separation than before. 
 The Carolingian Empire vanishes ; even the rank of Em- 
 peror sinks into a kind of abej'ance. Emperors indeed were 
 crowned during the first half of the ninth century ; but 
 there was no dynasty which permanently united Imperial 
 power to Imperial pretensions till, in 962, Otto the Great 
 finally annexed the Roman Empire and the Italian king- 
 dom to his own Teutonic crown. The division of 888 was 
 really the beginning of the modern states and the modern 
 divisions of Europe. The Carolingian Empire was broken 
 up into four separate kingdoms : the Western Kingdom, 
 answering roughly to France, the Eastern Kingdom or 
 Germany, and those of Italy and Burgundy. Of these, the 
 three first remain as the greatest nations of the continent : 
 Burgundy, by that name, has vanished ; but its place as an 
 European pow^er is filled, far more worthily than by any 
 king or Csesar, by the noble Confederation of Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 Of the four kingdoms thus formed, three at once cast 
 away their allegiance to the Carolingian blood. Germany 
 elected Arnulf, a bastard of the Imperial house ; but, after 
 the death of his son Lewis, the Teutonic sceptre passed 
 altogether away from the male line of Pippin and Charles. 
 Boso of Burgundy was connected with that race only by 
 marriage. Italy chose shifting kings and Emperors of her 
 own. The Western Kingdom chose the patriarch of that 
 long line which was, with tv^^o periods of intermission, to 
 rule her down to our own day, which still reigns over 
 Castile and Aragon,* and which we have seen happily 
 
 * [In 1S60 I did not foresee an Italian — in S6o lie would have been a 
 Burgundian — King of Spain.] [1S71.]
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 191 
 
 expelled from the minor thrones of Parma and of both the 
 Sicilies. 
 
 The division of 843 first introduced us to a Romance — 
 that is, really a Celtic — Franna, as distinguished from the 
 elder Teutonic Francia of the old Frankish kings. The 
 division of 888 first introduces us to a Capetian and a 
 Parisian Francia. Since the death of the great Charles, the 
 city on the Seine, the old home of Julian, had been 
 gradually rising in consequence. It plays an important 
 part during the reign of his son Lewis the Pious. Charac- 
 teristically enough, Paris first appears in our history as 
 the scene of a conspiracy against her Teutonic master. 
 There it was that, in 830, the rebels gathered who seized 
 and imprisoned, and at last deposed, the pious Emperor. 
 Later in the ninth century Paris won a more honourable 
 renown ; she became the bulwark of Gaul against the 
 inroads of the Northmen. The pirates soon found out the 
 importance of the position of the city in any attack or 
 defence of Gaul from her northern side. Through her 
 great deeds and sufferings in this warfare, Paris grew into 
 a centre, a capital, first a ducal and then a royal city. 
 The great siege of Paris in 885 and 886, and its gallant 
 defence by Count Eudes or Odo, fixed the destiny of the 
 city as the future capital of the land. On the deposition 
 of Charles the Fat, Count Odo was, after some ineffectual 
 attempts on behalf of other candidates, elected and con- 
 secrated to what we are now strongly tempted to speak 
 of as the Kingdom of France. 
 
 Yet the notion of a great Frankish realm, held in a sort 
 of co-parcenary, long survived the day when the descend- 
 ants of Charles ceased to be its masters. Germany, the old 
 Frankish land, long clave to the Frankish name. One of 
 her greatest Imperial dynasties was of Frankish blood. 
 Nor did their Saxon predecessors and their Swabian suc- 
 cessors reject the title. As late as the reign of Frederick 
 Barbarossa, the name of Frank was still used, and used 
 too with an aii" of triumph, as equivalent to the name of
 
 192 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 German."^ The kings and kingdoms of this age had indeed 
 no fixed titles, because all were still looked on as mere 
 portions of the great Frankish realm. Another step has 
 now been taken towards the creation of modern France ; 
 but the older state of things has not yet wholly passed 
 away. Germany has no definite name ; for a long time 
 it is Francia Orieufalls, F^rancia Teutonlca ; then it becomes 
 Hegnnm Teuionlcum , Hegnvvd TeutonicoTiim.'\ But it is equally 
 clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin 
 France, Francia and F\ancns were fast getting their modern 
 meanings of France and Frenchman, as distinguished from 
 Frank or German ; % they were, in fact, names of honour 
 to which each of the divided nations clave as specially its 
 own. Even so early as the reign of Lewis the Pious, one 
 writer distinguished Franci and Germani^^ meaning by the 
 former the people of the Western Kingdom. Gradually the 
 name was, in the usage of Gaul and of Europe, thoroughly 
 fixed in this sense. The Merwings, the Karlings, the Capets, 
 all alike called \\\Q\:£iS,^y%^ Fleges Francorum ; Fraiicns having 
 of course totally changed its meaning in the meanwhile. 
 In the Eastern Kingdom, on the other hand, the German 
 sovereign, when he had grown into a Roman Emperor, 
 gradually dropped his style as Frankish king. It is this 
 continuity of name and title which gives to modern, 
 "Western," "Latin," France a false appearance of being 
 
 * Otto of Pi'eisiiigen, passim. See especially the speech of Frederick, ii. 22 
 (Muratori, vi. 722). 
 
 f In the bull of deiiosition of Henry IV., Hildebrand uses the curious form 
 " totius re^^'ni Theiitonicorum et Italia? guberuacuLi contradico" (Bruno de 
 Bel. Sax. cap. 70, ap. Pertz, vii. ,^54). Italy had a local name; Germany had 
 none. So Henry just before talks of " regnuni Italite," but we do not remem- 
 ber '•'regiium Germanise" or "Alemania'" in that age. 
 
 X [The use of the word Francia in writers of the ninth century is very 
 vague. Sometimes it seems to be used of the whole lle<jnuni Occidentale. 
 This is an intermediate sense between its widest and its narrowest meaning, 
 and a sense roughly answering to that to which it has come back in modern 
 times. But within the Western kingdom it soon became fixed to the Parisian 
 duchy with its dukes and kings, and in tlie East to Francia Orkntalis or 
 Teulunicn.'] [1S71.] 
 
 § N'ita Hludowici Imp. cap. 45, ap. Pertz, ii. 633.
 
 VIT.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 193 
 
 a continuation or representative of the old Frankish king- 
 dom. But no one who really understands the history of 
 the time can doubt for a moment that, among the four 
 kingdoms which arose out of the ruins of the Carolingian 
 Empire, it was "Eastern i^'awcw," the "Teutonic Kingdom," 
 which might most truly claim, in extent of territory, in 
 retention of language, in possession of the old seats of 
 royalty, to be the true representative of the Francia of 
 Charles the Great. 
 
 Odo of Paris then, in 888, became Bex FrancorMii in a 
 sense which, modern as the words sound, cannot be so 
 well translated as by the familiar title of " King of the 
 French." We have at last France before us, with Paris 
 for her capital and the lord of Paris for her king. But 
 neither the Carolinojian race nor the Carolinjjian interest 
 was as yet extinct in the Western Francia. The next 
 century is a history of a continued struggle in various 
 forms between the German and what we may now call 
 the French blood, between the Carolingian and the Cape- 
 tian house, between Paris and Laon, between the Duke 
 of the French, the lord of Paris, and the lord of laon, 
 still the West-Frankish king. Odo was elected as the 
 hero of the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and 
 of Christendom. But he soon found a rival in the in- 
 capable Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the 
 doubtful belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed 
 in his veins. Charles was again overthrown by Duke 
 Robert, the brother of King Odo, who himself afterwards 
 reigned as the second of the Parisian kings. Charles in 
 his turn overthi-ew Ilobert, who died in battle at Soissons 
 in 923. The heir of the Capetian house was Hugh, sur- 
 named the Great. His career was a strange one : ho 
 refused the offered crown, and preferred the character of 
 a king-maker to that of a king. One can hardly help 
 thinking that he had some superstitious dread of a title 
 which had brought little but sorrow to his father and 
 uncle ; for he certainly bore himself as a king in every- 
 

 
 194 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 thinsf but name. He bore what to us sounds the strange 
 title of I)nx Franconiw ; and, as Duke of the French, he 
 was a far more powerful potentate than the King of the 
 French who was his nominal sovereign. On the death 
 of Robert, he declined the royal dignity for himself, and 
 passed it on to his brother-in-law, Rudolf or Raoul, Duke 
 of French Burgundy. He next, like our own king-maker 
 of a later day, passed it on to Lewis the son of Charles. 
 The Carolingian king once more reigned on the rock of 
 Laon, but he found anything but a peaceful subject in the 
 mighty Duke of Paris. The Duke of the French allowed 
 himself full power of revolt, of disobeying, attacking, ex- 
 pelling, imprisoning the King of the French, — anything, in 
 short, but avowedly reigning in his stead. King Lewis 
 was succeeded by his son Lothar, and Duke Hugh the 
 Great by his son Hugh Capet. The younger Hugh how- 
 ever, though in no imprudent hurry to obtain a crown, had 
 not his father's rooted objection to receive one. He re- 
 mained Duke of the French during the long reign of Lothar 
 and the short reign of his son Lewis ; at last, in 987, on 
 the death of Lewis, Hugh brought about his own election. 
 The struggle went on for a while in the person of Charles 
 of Lotharingia, the Carolingian pretender ; but Hugh kept 
 his crown and handed it on to his descendants. He 
 founded, in short, the most enduring of all dynasties. 
 No other royal patriarch has been succeeded by more 
 that eight centuries of direct male descendants, by three 
 centuries and a half of unbroken succession from father 
 to son. Since 987 no King of France of any other line 
 has felt the touch of the consecrating oil of Rheims. 
 Hugh's own city has indeed beheld the coronation of one 
 English king and of one Corsican tyrant. Both alike 
 yielded to the claims of the returning Capetian. Who 
 can tell whether a race endowed with such an unparalleled 
 gift of permanency may not again return to the city which 
 their forefathers first raised to greatness ? 
 
 The immediate results of Hugh's elevation were not veiy
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 195 
 
 marked. The Duke of the French became the King of 
 the French, and the same prince reigned at Paris and at 
 Laon. But in the greater part of Gaul the change from 
 the Carolingian to the Capetian line was hardly felt. To 
 Hugh's own subjects it made little practical difference 
 whether their prince were called Duke or King. Beyond 
 the Loire men were utterly heedless who might reign 
 either at Paris or at Laon. But slight as may have been 
 the immediate change, the event of 987 was a real revolu- 
 tion : it was the completion of a change which had been 
 preparing for a century and a half, and it was the true 
 beginning of a new period. The modern kingdom of 
 France dates its definite existence from the election of 
 Hugh ; the partitions of 843 and 888 showed in what way 
 the stream of events was running, but the change of 987 
 was the full establishment of the thing itself. There was 
 now at last, what till quite lately there has been ever 
 since, a French king reigning at Paris. When we remember 
 all that Paris has been since, how completely it has become, 
 not merely the centre of France, but France itself, it is 
 clear that the mere change of the royal city was alone an 
 event of the highest importance. The rock of Laon could 
 never have won the same position as the island-city of the 
 Seine. It might have remained a royal fortress ; it could 
 never have become a national capital. The Karlings 
 remained German to the last ; the kings of Laon were 
 Franks in the old sense, the kings of Paris were French- 
 men in the new. The native tongue of King Lewis was 
 Teutonic ; the native tono;ue of king Hugh was Romance. 
 France now breaks off all traces of her old connexion with 
 Germany. Hitherto the " King beyond the Rhine " has 
 been, in friendship or in enmity, an important personage in 
 the politics of Latin Francia ; even in the middle of the 
 tenth century we find Otto of Saxony and Lewis of Laon 
 still acting like royal colleagues in the administration of 
 one Frankish realm. From the election of Hugh the 
 German Csesar becomes an utter stranger to the Capetian 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 realm. Lotharingia too becomes definitely German. As 
 long as kings of the Carolingian house still reigned in 
 Western Fraucia, Lotharingia was a border-land of France 
 and Germany, the seat of loyalty to the Carolingian house, 
 but preferring a German to a mere Frenchman. But after 
 the Capetian revolution it becomes an undoubted fief of 
 the Teutonic kingdom. Its Carolingian loyalty remained 
 untouched ; it still might boast of having a descendant of 
 Charles and Pippin for its immediate ruler ; but that ruler 
 was no longer a King of the Western Fraucia or a pretender 
 to its crown, but a Duke holding his states in fee of the 
 Saxon Emperor. 
 
 Thus the change of dynasty in 987 marks the final 
 establishment of France in the modern sense. The geo- 
 graphical name was still, for the most part, confined to 
 the Parisian Duchy, but the liefinum Francorum, in its 
 modern sense, had now come into being. Its boundaries, 
 as they stood under the early Parisian kings, differed 
 hardly at all from the West-Frankish boundaries as settled 
 in 843. But we should bear carefully in mind how utterly 
 nominal the royal authority was over the greater part of 
 the territory comprised within those limits. It should be 
 thoroughly understood, first, that the kingdom as it then 
 stood was very much smaller than modern France ; secondly, 
 that, even within the kingdom, the King was merely the 
 head of a body of sovereign princes, some of whom were 
 at least as powerful as himself. The subsequent history of 
 France is the history of two processes : first, the conversion 
 of a nominal feudal superiority into a direct sovereignty 
 over the whole kingdom ; secondly, the annexation of 
 divers states which formed no part of the kingdom at all. 
 The two processes are not accurately distinguished in 
 popular imagination, and the Parisian phrase of "rc^union" 
 greatly tends to confound them. To talk of the "reunion" 
 of Normandy or French Burgundy is not absolute non- 
 sense, because Normandy and French Burgundy were, at 
 all events by a fiction of feudal law, grants proceeding
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 197 
 
 from the crown of France, which were afterwards re- 
 incorporated with the royal domain from which they had 
 been severed. But a " reunion " of Provence, Lorraine, or 
 Savoy, is absolute nonsense, because those provinces never 
 formed any part of the Capetian monarchy. These two pro- 
 cesses, of internal consolidation and of external ajjijression, 
 have now been going on side by side for six hundred 
 years. It will best suit our purpose to give a brief sketch 
 of the results of each separately. 
 
 The Kingdom of France, as it stood in 987, contained 
 six great principalities besides the royal domain, namely, 
 those aftei-wards called the six Lay Peerages — Flanders, 
 Normandy, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Burgundy, and Cham- 
 pagne. The titles of Toulouse and Champagne may be 
 a little later, but the states themselves already existed. 
 Besides these, there were a crowd of smaller potentates, 
 holding either of the crown or of these great vassals. With 
 the exception of the Spanish March and of part of Flanders, 
 all these states have long been fully incorporated with the 
 French monarchy. But we must remember that, under 
 the earlier French kings, the connexion of most of these 
 provinces with their nominal suzerain was even looser 
 than the connexion of the German princes after the peace 
 of Westfalia with the Viennese Emperors. A great French 
 duke was as independent within his own dominions as 
 an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria, and there were no common 
 institutions, no Diet or assembly of any kind, to bring 
 him into fellowship either with his liege lord or with 
 his fellow- vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse, as we have 
 already said, seem almost to have forgotten that there 
 was any King of the French at all, or at all events that 
 they had anything to do with him. They did not often 
 even pay him the compliment of waging war upon him, 
 a mode of recognition of his existence which was constantly 
 indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and Flanders. 
 Normandy was the possession of Scandinavian invaders, 
 whom a residence in Gaul was fast transforming into
 
 198 THE FEAi\KS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 Frenchmen of a grander type. Charles the Simple granted 
 the province to Hrolt' Ganger, the Rou or Rollo of French 
 and Latin writers, and along with it he granted a feudal 
 superiority over the turbulent Celts of Britanny. The 
 Norman dukes speedily changed into French princes, and 
 played a most important part in French history. At last 
 one of their number won the crown of England, and nearly 
 a century later a count of Anjou inherited England and 
 Normandy from his mother, and received Aquitaine and 
 Poitou as the dowry of his wife. A perfectly novel power 
 was thus formed in France. We must not transfer to the 
 twelfth century the ideas of two or three centuries later, 
 and look upon Henry the Second as an English king 
 reigning in France. Henry was a French feudatory, who 
 had contrived to unite in his own hands an accumulation 
 of French fiefs, which rendered him, even on French 
 ground, far stronger than his nominal suzerain. The pos- 
 session of Enjjland gave him a hio;her title than that of 
 Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine ; its valiant inhabitants 
 of both races added to his military strength. But England 
 was not his home ; it was not the Englishman who reigned 
 over Anjou, but the Angevin who reigned over England. 
 Henry and Richard held greater territories in France than 
 those of the King and the other feudatories put together. 
 They held the mouths of all the great rivers, and possessed 
 the great cities of Rouen, Tours, Poitiers, and Bordeaux. 
 The King meanwhile, the lord of Paris and Orleans, was 
 cooped up in the centre of his nominal dominions. Thus 
 matters stood at the beginning of the thirteenth century ; 
 but they were not a little altered before its close. When 
 Philip Augustus came to the throne, the King of the French 
 did not own a single seaport ; but Philip the Fair could 
 boast of a seaboard on the English Channel, the Ocean, 
 and the Mediterranean. The crimes of John lost him all 
 the northern part of his French possessions. Normandy, 
 Maine, Anjou, and Touraine were incorporated with the 
 royal domain. Britanny, the arriere-jief of Normandy,
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 199 
 
 became an immediate fief of the crown till the time when 
 it was united with France through the marriage of Lewds 
 the Twelfth and Anne of Britanny. The loss of Normandy 
 and the other lands wrested by Philip from John had the 
 twofold effect of making both the King of the French and 
 the King of the English what their formal titles imported. 
 When the crown of France had entered by forfeiture on 
 Normandy, Anjou, and Touraine, it had become far 
 stronger than any single feudatory. Again, the English 
 kings of the Anoevin house, now cut off from their old 
 home, began to be really English rulers. Hitherto England 
 had been a dependency of Normandy or Anjou ; now 
 Aquitaine became a dependency of England. The wars 
 of Henry the Second and Richard the First were French 
 wars, the struggles of a French feudatory striving to get 
 the better of his suzerain. The wars of Edward the Third, 
 and still more the wars of Henry the Fifth, were English 
 wars. They began indeed in French dynastic claims, but 
 it soon appeared that their real object was the subjection 
 of France to England. As such, they do not immediately 
 concern our subject. The aspect in which they do bear 
 upon it is this. By the Peace of Bretigny Edward the 
 Third gave up his claims on the crown of France ; but he 
 was acknowledged in return as independent Prince of 
 Aquitaine, without any homage or superiority being reserved 
 to the French monarch. When Aquitaine therefore was 
 conquered by France, partly in the fourteenth, fully in the 
 fifteenth century, it was not the "reunion" of a forfeited 
 fief, but the absorption of a distinct and sovereign state. 
 The feelings of Aquitaine itself seem to have been divided. 
 The nobles to a great extent, though far from universally, 
 preferred the French connexion. It better fell in w^ith their 
 notions of chivalry, feudal dependency, and the like ; the 
 privileges too which French law conferred on noble birth 
 would make their real interests lie that way. But the great 
 cities and, we have reason to believe, the mass of the people 
 also, clave faithfully to their ancient dukes ; and they had
 
 200 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 good reason to do so. The English kings, both by habit 
 and by interest, naturally protected the municipal liberties 
 of Bordeaux and Bayonne, and they exposed no part of 
 their subjects to the horrors of French taxation and general 
 oppression. When, in 145 1 , the first conquest was achieved, 
 and the Bordelese for the first time felt what the hand of 
 a French master really was, they speedily revolted in favour 
 of the more distant and more indulgent lord. The French 
 conquest of Aquitaine was very much like what a French 
 conquest of the Channel Islands would be now. The theory 
 of natural boundaries claims them equally, and the theory 
 of identity of language claims them with better right. But 
 in the teeth of all theories, the people of Bordeaux knew 
 then, and the people of Jersey know now, that practical 
 liberty and good government does not lie on the side 
 of the power to which abstract theories would assign 
 them. 
 
 We have somewhat overshot our mark in order to 
 complete the history of the English dominion in France. 
 We now come back to the thirteenth century. Besides 
 Normandy and Anjou, the forfeited goods of the felon 
 John, the crown of France, during that century, obtained 
 the county of Champagne by marriage, and that of 
 Toulouse as the ultimate result of the Albigensian wars. 
 Of the six lay peerages, Flanders and Burgundy alone 
 remained. French Burgundy was granted out by Hugh 
 Capet to a younger branch of his own family, and, when 
 that race of dukes became extinct, the same policy was 
 carried on by Charles the Fifth in 1363, when ho invested 
 his son Philip with the duchy. Philip obtained by mar- 
 riage the remaining peerage, the county of Flanders. 
 Under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold there seemed 
 every prospect of Burgundy, in the later sense, becoming 
 a greater kingdom than ever Burgundy had been in the 
 old. The fiefs which the Dukes of Burgundy of the House 
 of Valois held of the Empire and of the crown of France 
 raised them to a place among the greatest powers of
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 201 
 
 Europe. At last the might and the hopes of Charles were 
 shivered beneath the halbeit of the free Switzer. Ducal 
 Burgundy itself fell into the grasp of Lewis the Eleventh, 
 and a fifth great fief was "reunited" to the Parisian 
 crown. But Flanders remained, together with those Im- 
 perial fiefs which nature seems to have connected with 
 it, to become not the least valuable possession of the 
 universal monarchy of Charles the Fifth. For Flanders 
 and for Artois Charles the Fifth was the nominal liegeman 
 of his rival Francis. The Treaty of Madrid abolished 
 this antiquated claim ; and in vain did the Parliament 
 of Paris, some years later, strive to win back the right, 
 and to carry out against Charles the same process which, 
 three hundred years sooner, had been so successfully 
 carried out against John Lackland. The Count of Flan- 
 ders and Artois was summoned to the court of his liege 
 lord, and, as he did not appear, he was deprived of his 
 lands for contumacy. But the sentence was more easily 
 pronounced than executed against a Count of Flanders 
 and Artois who was also Emperor of the Romans and 
 King of Spain and the Indies. Flanders and Artois re- 
 mained to the House of Austria till the wars of Lewis the 
 Fourteenth incorporated all Artois and part of Flanders 
 with the French monarchy. The rest of Flanders was 
 reserved, by a happier lot, to form part of the free monarchy 
 of Belgium.* 
 
 Thus, at various periods spread over more than four 
 hundred years, all the great feudal states of France were 
 gradually incorporated with the crown. On the other 
 hand, the nominal boundaries of Capetian France have 
 gone back in three places. The feudal superiority of the 
 French crown extended over three districts which now 
 form part of other states. As we have implied in our 
 last paragraph, King Leopold owes no homage to the 
 Parisian despot for the county of Flanders ; nor is any 
 
 * The extreme northern part of the ohl county belongs to the Kingdom of 
 the Netherlands, but much the greater part is Belgian.
 
 202 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 paid by the Catholic Queen for the county of Barcelona,''^ 
 the royal rights over which, even more nominal than 
 elsewhere, were finally surrendered by Saint Lewis. Our 
 own sovereign also retains, with the most perfect good 
 will of the inhabitants, those insular portions of the 
 duchy of Normandy against which Philip's sentence of 
 forfeiture was pronounced in vain. With these three ex- 
 ceptions, the France of i860 takes in the whole of the 
 France of 9(S7 ; it also takes in a great deal besides. 
 
 We have thus traced the steps by which the kings of 
 Paris gradually gathered under their immediate dominion 
 the whole, or nearly so, of those states which were at 
 least nominally dependent upon them. We have now to 
 follow the course of annexation in those countries which 
 had never, even nominally, formed part of the Capetian 
 monarchy. In so doing we may pass lightly over mere 
 temporary conquests, and confine ourselves to those an- 
 nexations which have really become part and parcel of the 
 French monarchy. Thus the Valois kings were always 
 conquering and always losing Naples and Milan, as well 
 as Piedmont and Savoy; but Piedmont, Naples, and Milan 
 have never permanently become parts of France. Thus 
 again, under Napoleon the First, the French " empire " 
 threatened to become the empire of all Europe ; but 
 happily this extended dominion did not descend to Na- 
 poleon the " Third." But we suspect that people in general 
 are not aware how much territory, originally French in 
 no sense, has been gradually and permanently swallowed 
 up by the Parisian monarchy since the reign of Pliilip the 
 Fair. 
 
 France, as it stood under the early Capets, was bounded 
 to the south by the various kingdoms of Spain, to the east 
 by the states holding of the Holy Roman Empire. With 
 Spain France has had comparatively little to do. The 
 existence of a real " natural boundary " may have had 
 something to do with this ; still the line of the Pyrenees 
 
 * [i860.]
 
 VIL] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 203 
 
 has not always been held perfectly sacred on either side. 
 More than one of the French kings held the kingdom of 
 Navarre by a personal hereditary right. The Bourbon 
 dynasty permanently bore the title ; but their Navarre 
 consisted only of that small portion of the kingdom which 
 lies north of the Pyrenees. At the eastern end of the 
 mountain range the frontier was long unsettled, and 
 Roussillon did not finally become French till the Peace 
 of 1659. In the space between Navarre and Roussillon, 
 the sovereigns of France, in the character however not of 
 kings but of Counts of Foix, have appeared in the more 
 honourable aspect of protectors of the republic of Andorra. 
 But the relations of France towards Spain are of far less 
 importance than her relations towards the Empire. We 
 left the German kingdom at the moment of its definitive 
 separation from that of Western Francia in 888. In the 
 next century Otto the Great permanently united to it 
 the crown of Italy or the Lombard kingdom, and also the 
 Imperial crown of Rome. In the next century the king- 
 dom of Burgundy was acquired by virtue of the bequest 
 of its last separate sovereign. Thus were the kingdoms 
 of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy united under a single 
 ruler. The King of the Eastern Franks inherited the 
 Imperial style of Charles the Great, and he possessed three 
 out of the four divisions of his Empire. He held alike 
 the Teutonic and the Italian capital of the great Emperor. 
 Western France might look like a single province torn 
 away from the main body of the Frankish realm. During 
 the first three centuries of the Capetian dynasty, France 
 was weak and Germany strong. The great Saxon, 
 Frankish, and Swabian Emperors wielded a far more 
 practical authority over the whole of their vast dominions 
 than the king of Paris wielded over his nominal realm of 
 Latin France. But while the Capetians were gradually 
 consolidating their power over France, the Emperors began 
 to lose theirs over Germany and Italy, and in the greater 
 part of their Burgundian dominions the Imperial authority
 
 204 THE FEA.\KS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 became more nominal still. Frederick Barbarossa was 
 crowned at Aries as King of Burgundy ; but a century 
 afterwards the allegiance of Provence to King Rudolf of 
 Habsburg was very precarious indeed. As France grew 
 stronger and more united, she found her whole eastern 
 frontier, from Hainault to Provence, formed by a succes- 
 sion of petty states, duchies, counties, bishoprics, and free 
 cities, disunited among themselves, and owning a very 
 nominal subjection to their Imperial suzerain. The King 
 of the French was to most of them at once a nearer and 
 a more powerful neighbour than the Emperor of the 
 Romans : he was a more dangerous foe and a more de- 
 sirable friend. Some provinces had a greater likeness in 
 language and manners to France than to Germany. To 
 the nobles, and even to the princes themselves, the 
 splendours of the French court offered a constant attrac- 
 tion. To take a familiar instance, the great house of 
 Guise, in the sixteenth century, forsook their position as 
 princes of the sovereign blood of Lorraine to assume that 
 of French nobles and French party-leaders. The whole 
 of these small states lay admirably open alike to French 
 intrigue and to French violence ; by one means or the other 
 nearly all have been won. The five centuries and a half 
 since Philip the Fair are one long record of French aggran- 
 dizement at the expense of the territories of the Empire. 
 
 Of the three kingdoms attached to the Empire, Italy has 
 been constantly overrun by French armies, and portions, 
 like Milan, Piedmont, and Genoa, have been held by 
 France, by conquest or by some pretended hereditary right, 
 for considerable periods. But no portion of the Italian 
 mainland has been permanently retained by France. But 
 in the last century, by one of the most disreputable of 
 juggles, France obtained the Italian island of Corsica without 
 a shadow of right, and has been repaid by obtaining from 
 thence the line of her own tyrants. 
 
 The Kingdom of Germany has suffered large dismem- 
 berments. In the sixteenth century the three Lotharingian
 
 VII. J THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 205 
 
 bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun were won by a mix- 
 ture of force and fraud ; but it was only late in the last 
 century that the duchy in which those bishoprics were 
 endures was finally incorporated with France. The Peace 
 of Westfalia gave France, not, as many people think, the 
 whole of Elsass, but the possessions and rights of the 
 House of Austria within it. Such a cession left large 
 portions of the province legally as much parts of the 
 Empire as they were before. But such a cession opened 
 a most taking field for the process of " reunion," and the 
 " reunion " went on bit-by-bit till the last robbery was 
 done at the great Revolution. One act of this long drama 
 stands out above all others, the seizing of Strassburg by 
 Lewis the Fourteenth in a time of perfect peace. The same 
 monarch, too, at the time when he recovered a portion of 
 the old French fief of Flanders, seized also a portion of the 
 Imperial fief of Hennegau — G alike Hainault. 
 
 But it has been against the old kingdom of Burgundy 
 that the aggressions of the Parisian monarchy have been 
 most constant and most successful. For that very reason 
 they are much less familiarly known : there are more 
 people who know that Lorraine has not always been 
 French than there are people who know that the same is 
 true of Provence. It is therefore specially desirable to 
 trace them in order. We have seen that the old frontier, 
 the '• natural boundary," of France to the east, was the 
 Rhone, the line above Lyons being continued along the 
 Saone. The land between the Rhone and the Alps was the 
 kingdom of Boso, afterwards, as we have seen, united to 
 the Imperial crown. At the expense of that kingdom 
 France has, in the space of five centuries, gained fifteen 
 departments, counting those which she has made out of her 
 last stealings of Savoy and Nizza. The Burgundian king- 
 dom, lying further away from the Imperial power than 
 either Germany or Italy, fell away earlier and more com- 
 pletely than either, and split up into a host of small princi- 
 palities and commonwealths. All of these, except those
 
 206 THE FRANKS AND THE GA ULS. [Espay 
 
 which still retain their independence as portions of the 
 Swiss League, have been gradually swallowed up by the 
 vultures of Paris. The Rhone frontier was first perma- 
 nently violated by Philip the Fair in 1310. In the free 
 Imperial city of Lyons, as in so many others, violent dis- 
 putes raged between the citizens and the prince-arch- 
 bishops. Philip seized the favourable opportunity treacher- 
 ously to occupy the city, and to reduce prince and people 
 alike to bondage. Later in the century, the Bauphiny or 
 county of Vienne was bequeathed by its last prince to the 
 eldest son of the King of France for the time being, to be 
 held as a separate sovereignty with the title of Dauphin. 
 This of course soon sank into actual annexation. Lewis 
 the Eleventh, in the next century, seized upon the county 
 of Provence by a pretended hereditary right. The way to 
 this acquisition was doubtless not a little smoothed by the 
 fact that the sovereign counts had for some generations been 
 princes of the blood-royal of France. Bresse and Bugey, 
 part of the dominions of Savoy, were acquired by Henry 
 the Fourth in exchange for the French claims on the 
 marquisate of Saluzzo, a change which first made France 
 an immediate neighbour of Switzerland. Tlie little state of 
 Orange was obtained in 1732 by exchange with Prussia. 
 The county of Burgundy was first acquired in the four- 
 teenth century, like Navarre, by a hereditary claim ; but 
 like Navarre, or like Hanover in the case of our own 
 kings, it was separated again before it had been really in- 
 corporated with the French monarchy. It was not till the 
 days of Lewis the Fourteenth that, after many vicissitudes, 
 the once sovereign county-palatine of Burgundy, and the 
 once free Imperial city of Besanyon, were finally engulfed 
 in the Charybdis of French domination. At the breaking- 
 out of the French Revolution all that had escaped of the 
 Burgundian kingdom was the duchy of Savoy, the western 
 part of Switzerland and the neighbouring allies of the 
 Swiss Leagues, and the papal possessions of Avignon and 
 Venaihsin, long surrounded by earlier annexations. All
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 207 
 
 these were swallowed up by the revolutionary torrent ; ^ 
 but all save the Papal territory recovered their independ- 
 ence by the settlement of 1 814-15. The last act as yet of 
 the drama, one surpassed in perfidious baseness by none of 
 those which have gone before it, has been just performed 
 beneath our own eyes. 
 
 It is, we think, not only curious as a piece of past history, 
 but really important as a matter of present politics, to 
 trace the gradual stages of French aggression in this 
 quarter. A steady course of aggrandizement has been 
 carried out for five hundred years, and the policy of the 
 Capet has been continued by the Buonaparte. The first 
 step was taken by Philip the Fair, the father of the old 
 royal tyranny; the last step as yet has fallen to the 
 lot of the kindred genius of Louis Napoleon ; — we say the 
 last step as yet, because it is impossible to believe that a 
 voluntary check will be put on a settled scheme which is 
 now all but accomplished. There is no difference in 
 principle between the absorption of Savoy and Nizza and 
 the absorption of Vaud and Neufchatel. Whatever argu- 
 ments justify the one would with an equally "irresistible 
 logic " justify the other. We are told that Nizza and Savoy 
 are provinces "essentially French;" they can bo so only 
 in a sense in which Geneva and Lausanne, and yet more 
 Brussels and Saint Heliers, are essentially French also. 
 Those obligations of treaties which guarantee the inde- 
 pendence and neutrality of Switzerland are not more 
 sacred than those which guarantee that neutrality of 
 northern Savoy without which the independence of 
 Switzerland is a name. That this scheme of aggrandize- 
 ment, that all schemes of aggrandizement, are solemnly 
 denied, proves about as much as was proved some months 
 
 * [No part of any of the old Swiss cantons was formally incorporated with 
 France ; indeed Vaud owed to France its independence of Bern. But Swit- 
 zerland became practically dependent on France, and the allied states of 
 Geneva, Wallis, NeufchS,tel, and the bishopric of Basel, were actually seized.] 
 [1871.]
 
 208 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 ago by the no less solemn denial of all designs upon Savoy.* 
 We have long learned how to trust the man whose lips 
 uttered the words " Je le jure," and who kept the oath by 
 a December massacre. 
 
 In short, among a crowd of ancient and independent 
 states which have been gradually swallowed up, one alone 
 remains. Switzerland, the very home and cradle of free- 
 dom, is the last remnant of the many centres of political 
 life which once existed between the Rhone and the Alps. 
 Marseilles, Lyons, Eesan^on, were once as free as Bern and 
 Geneva. The Imperial Rabshakeh may stand before the 
 still unattacked citadel of freedom, and point to the lands 
 which he has destroyed utterly, and ask in his pride if the 
 remnant which is left shall venture to hope for deliverance. 
 French cannon bristling on the shores of the Lake of 
 Geneva can be pointed in one direction only, that direction 
 which French aggression has been constantly taking since the 
 banner of the jleiir-de-lys first showed itself east of the 
 Rhone. It remains for Europe to determine whether it will 
 sit by and see the perpetration of a wrong before which 
 the annexations of Provence and Lorraine, and of Savoy 
 itself, would sink into insigniticcince.f 
 
 We have thus traced out the long history of Parisian 
 aggression; but, in common justice, we must make one 
 remark on the other side. We said at the outset that, 
 except for the monstrous deceptions by which they have 
 always been defended, tlie aggressions of France are in no 
 way more guilty than the aggressions of other powers ; in 
 one important respect France has much less to answer for 
 than other conquering states. To be conquered by France 
 has been at all times a less immediate evil than to be 
 
 * [i860.] 
 
 f [I let all this stand as it was wi-ilteti in i860. It is well to bear in mind 
 that France has ever been the same under all forms of government, and that 
 Switzerland and Europe will have to keep on their guard against any kingdom 
 or commonwealth which may arise out of the chaos of the moment, just 
 as much as they had to keep on their guard against the fallen tyranny.] 
 [1871.]
 
 VII.] THE FRAXKS AND THE GAULS. 209 
 
 conquered by Spain, Austria, or Turkey. A province 
 conquered by France has always been really incorporated 
 with France : no French conquests have ever been kept in 
 the condition of subject dependencies ; their inhabitants 
 have at once been admitted to the rights and the wrongs, 
 the good and the evil fortune, of Frenchmen, and they have 
 had every career offered by the French monarchy at once 
 opened to them. No French conquest has ever been kept 
 in the state in which Spain kept Milan, Naples, and the 
 Netherlands, in which Austria has kept Hungary and 
 Lombardy, in which the whole Ottoman Empire is kept to 
 this day. Savoy will lose much by its transfer from the 
 rule of constitutional Sardinia to that of despotic France, 
 but there is no fear of its being brought down to the 
 condition of Venetia. The geographical position of all the 
 French conquests, except Corsica, has of course tended to 
 this complete incorporation, as well as that inherent spirit 
 of French centralization which tends to wipe out all local 
 distinctions. One must allow that, if conquests are to be 
 made, this is a generous and liberal as well as a prudent 
 way of conquering. But it has its bad side also. The 
 inhabitants of a country conquered by France become 
 Frenchmen, and swell the ranks of the aggressors. The 
 subtle process of denationalization cuts off that hope of 
 undoing the evil work which always exists when a country 
 is kept down under an avowed foreign tyranny. One 
 cannot doubt that, when a part of the Spanish Netherlands 
 was seized by Lewis the Fourteenth, the inhabitants found 
 an immediate gain in becoming an integral portion of 
 France, instead of a distant dependency of Spain. But the 
 immediate gain has been an ultimate loss ; had those 
 provinces then remained to the House of Austria, they 
 w^ould now swell the strength of independent Belgium. 
 So Elsass has not suffered at the hands of France as 
 Hungary has suffered at the hands of Austria ; but the 
 hope of seeing an independent Hungary is a hope far less 
 wild than that of seeing Elsass once more a member of a 
 
 P
 
 210 THE FBAXKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay 
 
 German Confederation or Empire. The very best side of 
 French aggression makes us feel the more sadly that there 
 are vestigia nulla refrors/iu/.^^ 
 
 We have thus done our best to show that Parisian 
 Franco in no Avay represents ancient Gaul or Carolingian 
 Francia. France and the French are a modern power and 
 a modern nation, of which we see the first glimmerings in 
 the ninth century, and which attain something like a 
 definite and lasting position in the tenth. France is 
 essentially an artificial, advancing state, just like Sardinia 
 and Prussia in more recent times. When mayors and 
 bishops hail Louis Napoleon as the "successor of Pepin 
 and Charlemagne," they are asserting a palpable untruth. 
 Modern Europe contains no real successor of either ; but 
 least of all is the successor of the elected king of Aachen, 
 the crowned Caesar of Rome, to be looked for in the upstart 
 usurper of Paris. The work of Charles was to make Italy 
 and Gaul alike subject to a German monarch. No work 
 could less call forth our sympathies at the present moment ; 
 but no work could be more unlike the process of extending 
 the frontiers of the Celt of Paris over Italian, Eurgundian, 
 and Teutonic lands. Italy, in the eighth century and in 
 the tenth, invoked a German king as her deliverer from her 
 intestine troubles. No such remedy now is needed. She 
 can now work her deliverance for herself, and she no more 
 needs the hypocritical friendship of the Gaul than the open 
 enmity of the Austrian. Before our eyes is growing up an 
 Italian kingdom truer and freer than that of Charles and 
 Otto, than that of Eerengar and Hugh of Provence ; and, 
 with a slight change of name and style, we may apply to 
 its first and chosen sovereign the words of the Papal 
 benediction to Charles himself. Not altogether for his own 
 sake, not forgetting the tortuous and faithless policy which 
 bartered away the old cradle of his house, still, as to the 
 
 * [I rejoice to have been here a false projihet. The eleven years since this 
 was written has given the world bolh a free Hungary and a Ciermjin Elsass.] 
 [1871.]
 
 VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 211 
 
 representative of Italian unity, we may say with heart and 
 voice : " Victori Emraanueli, a Deo coronato, magno et 
 pacifico Italorum regi, Romanoruin imperatori future, vita 
 et victoria! "* 
 
 * [Here, unlike the last note, I can rejoice in having been a true prophet. 
 Rome is again the head of Italy. Whether its sovereign would do well to take 
 up the title to which he, alone among Christian princes, has a real right, is 
 another matter. A purely Italian Em[)eror would simpl}' represent Majorian 
 and Lewis the Second.] [1871.] 
 
 V 3
 
 212 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS * 
 
 The events of the last few months have in a special way 
 drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand 
 out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in 
 which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing 
 on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome 
 and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so 
 many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, 
 there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the 
 marked j^eriods of the world's history. And it is not the 
 least wonderful phtenomenon of this autumn of wonders 
 that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and 
 to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with 
 far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn 
 towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whetlier we look 
 back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of 
 the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than 
 any possible result of the war between Germany and 
 France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the 
 
 * [This essay was headed by the names of two books : Lcs ('(mites de Paris ; 
 Jlistoiie de V Avenemeut de la Troisieme Eace, par Ernest Moarin (Paris, 
 Didier & C'**) and liohert der Tapfere, Markfjraf von Anjou, der Stanim- 
 vater des Kapetinr/ixchen Ilauses. Von Dr. Phil. Karl von KalcJcstein (Berlin, 
 Lowenstein). M. Mouiiu's book, dated at Angers in 1869, is a careful and 
 pleasantly-written account of the origin of the Parisian kingdom, and it con- 
 tains one or two good hits at the state of things in 1S69. But it is amazing 
 to see a man who has really read the authorities for the ninth and tenth 
 centuries carried away by dreams about a French frontier of the Rhine. Dr. 
 V. Kalckstein's is a most thoroughgoing monograph, working up all that is 
 known about its hero from every quarter, but perhaps sometimes losing him a 
 little in the general events of his age. A more careful study of his book, which 
 I had barely time to glance at before the Article first appeared, has enabled 
 me to add and modify some sentences, and to add some further references.] 
 L1871.]
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 213 
 
 present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction 
 of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs 
 of the siege and the battlefield, that the really gi-eater 
 event, simply because of the ease with which it has hap- 
 pened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the 
 lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes ; 
 but the shape of a Pontiff spii-itually infallible but poli- 
 tically a subject, and the subject not of an universal 
 Emperor but of a mere local king, is something which the 
 world has not seen before. What may come of it no man 
 can say ; but we may be pretty sure that greater things 
 will come of it, in one way or another, than can come out 
 of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting 
 French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the 
 present fate of Paris unavoidably di-aws to itself more of 
 our thoughts than the future fate of Rome. But it is well 
 to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the 
 more so because the past history and the present position 
 of those two cities have points in common which no other 
 city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which 
 only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them 
 in any degree. 
 
 The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history 
 of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth 
 into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold, Empire. Out 
 of the village on the Palatine sprang the Rome of the 
 Caesars and the Rome of the Pontiffs. From Rome came 
 the language, the theology, the code of law, which have 
 had such an undying effect on the whole European world. 
 Amidst all changes, the city itself has always been clothed 
 with a kind of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its 
 possession has carried with it an influence which common 
 militai'y and political considerations cannot always explain. 
 And from the Old Rome on the Tiber many of these attri- 
 butes passed — some were even heightened in passing — to 
 the New Rome on the Bosporos. From the days of Con- 
 stantine till now, no man has ever doubted that, in the
 
 214 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, 
 must be the seat of empire. To Western eyes this seems 
 mainly the result of her unrivalled geographical situation ; 
 over laroje regions of the East the New Rome wields the 
 same magic influence which in the West has been wielded 
 by the Old. TJie City^* the city of the Ctesars, is in 
 Christian eyes the one great object to be won; in Maho- 
 metan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the 
 Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown 
 into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has 
 sustained it. 
 
 Now of the other capitals of Europe — the capitals of the 
 more modern states — one alone can claim to have been, in 
 this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. 
 Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, 
 are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice 
 or convenience, as administrative centres of states which 
 already existed. Vienna has grown from the cajiital of a 
 duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an 
 empire ; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with 
 the growth of that so-called empire. London may fairly 
 claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have 
 spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, 
 that London, rather than W^inchester, came to be per- 
 manently acknowledged as the capital of England. London 
 won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military 
 and commercial position, partly as the reward of the un- 
 flinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But 
 London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. 
 The history of London is simply that the city was found 
 to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already exist- 
 ing kingdom. But Paris has been what London has been, 
 and something more. Paris, like London, earned her pre- 
 eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance 
 to the Scandinavian enemy. It was the great siege of 
 Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief 
 
 * 'Es T(if 7roAi(/= Staiuboul.
 
 VIII. ] THE EA RL Y SIEGES OF PARIS. 215 
 
 among the cities of Gaul, and its count the chief among 
 the princes of Gaul. Its position first marked it out for 
 the rank of a local capital, and, through the way in which 
 it used its position, it grew into the capital of a kingdom. 
 But it did not, like London, simply grow into the capital 
 of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the 
 county, and then the kingdom, of which it was successively 
 the head. Modern France, as distinguished both from 
 Roman Gaul and from the Western kingdom of the Karl- 
 ings, grew out of the county of Paris ; and of the county of 
 Paris the city was not merely the centre, but the life and 
 soul. The position of Paris in the earliest times is best 
 marked, as in the case of all Gaulish cities, by its place in 
 the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was a city, not of the first, 
 but of the second rank ; the seat of a bishop, but not the 
 seat of a metropolitan.* Lutetia Parisiorum held the usual 
 rank of one of those head-towns of Gaulish tribes w^hich 
 grew into Roman cities. But it never became the centre of 
 one of the great ecclesiastical and civil divisions ; it never 
 reached the rank of Lyons, Narbonne, Vienne, or Trier. 
 Twice before the ninth century, the discerning eye, first of 
 a Roman and then of a Prankish master, seemed to mark 
 out the city of the Seine for greater things. It was the 
 beloved home of Julian ; it was the city which Hlodwig at 
 once fixed upon for the seat of his new dominion. But 
 the greatness of Paris, as the earliest settled seat of the 
 Prankish power, was not doomed to be lasting. Under the 
 descendants of Hlodwig Paris remained a seat of royalty ; 
 but, among the fluctuations of the Merowingian kingdoms, 
 it was only one seat of royalty among several. It was the 
 peer of Soissons, Orleans, and Metz — all of them places 
 which, in the new state of things, assumed a higher im- 
 portance than had belonged to them in Roman times. 
 But, as the Austrasian house of the Karlings grew, first 
 
 * We need hardly say that the archbishopric of Paris dates only from the 
 seventeenth century. Up to that time the Bishop of Paris had been a 
 suffragan of the Metropolitan of Sens.
 
 21 G THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 as Mayors, then as Kings, to the lordship of the whole 
 Frankish realm, the importance of the cities of Weste]-n 
 Gaul necessarily lessened. Paris reached its utmost point 
 of insignificance in the days of Charles the Great, whom 
 French legends have pictured as a French king, reigning 
 in Paris as his royal city. Whatever importance it had, 
 it seems to have derived from its neighbourhood to the 
 revered sanctuary of Saint Denis. By a strange accident, 
 the first king of the new house — the house with which 
 Paris was to wage a war of races and languages — died 
 either in the city itself, or in the precinct of the great 
 monastery beyond its walls. Pippin, returning from a 
 successful campaign in Aquitaine, fell sick at Saintes ; 
 from thence he was carried to Tours to implore the help of 
 Saint Martin, and thence to Paris to implore the help of 
 Saint Denis. He died at Paris, and was buried in the 
 great minster which became the burial-place of the next 
 and rival line of kings.* But Paris was neither the 
 crowning-place nor the dwelling-place of his son, nor was 
 it the object of any special attention during his long reign. 
 Of the two sons of Pippin, between whom his kingdom 
 was immediately divided, Paris fell to the lot of Karlmann. 
 But he chose Soissons for his crowning-place — the place 
 where his father had been crowned before him.f Charles, 
 crowned at Noyon, made Aachen his capital, and, in the 
 course of his whole reign, he visited Paris only on a single 
 progress, when it is incidentally mentioned among a long 
 string of other cities. J 
 
 * Eginh. Ann. 76S : " In ipsa tamen valetudiiie Turonos delatus, apud 
 Sancti Martini memoriam oravit. Inde quuiu ad Parisios venisset, viii. Kal. 
 Octobiis diem ob.it, cujus corpus in basilica beati Dionysii martyris luimatum 
 est." So Vita Karoli, 3 : " Apud Parisius morbo aqua intercutis diem 
 obiit." Mark the singular, but frequent, use of Parisius as an indeclinable 
 noun. 
 
 t Eginh. Ann. 753, 76S. 
 
 X Ibid. 800. The passage is worth quoting, as a specimen of the constant 
 locomotion of the German kings : — " liedeunte verna temperie, medio fere 
 Mariio rex Aquisgnuii digres.sus, litus oceani Gallici perlustravit, et in ipso 
 mari, quod tunc piratis Nordmannicis infestum erat, chissem in.-^tituit, praisidia
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 217 
 
 But this time of utter neglect was, in the history of 
 Paris, only the darkness before the coming of the dawn. 
 In the course of the next reign Paris begins to play an 
 important part, and from that time the importance of 
 the cit}' steadily grew till it became what we have seen 
 it in our own day. The occasional visits of Lewis the 
 Pious to the city are dwelled on by his poetical biographer 
 with evident delight, and with even more than his usual 
 pomp of words.* And the city was now about to appear 
 in its most characteristic light. In the words of Sir 
 Francis Palgrave, who has sketched the early history of 
 Paris with great power and insight,t " the City of Revo- 
 
 disposuit, pasclia in Centulo apud sanctum Richarium celebravit. Inde iterinn 
 
 per litus maris iter agens, Eatumagum civitateni venit, ibique Sequana amne 
 
 transmisso, Turonos ad sanctum Martinuni orationis causa profectus est, 
 
 moratus ibi dies aliquot propter adversam Liutgardae conjugis valetudinem, 
 
 qufe ibidem et defuncta et huniata est; obiit autem diem ii. Non. .Tun. Inde 
 
 per Aurelianos ac Parisios Aquasgrani reversus est, et mense Augusto incho- 
 
 ante Mogontiacum veniens, generalem conventum ibidem habuit, et iter in 
 
 Italian! condixit, atque inde profectus cum exercitu Ravennam venit, ibique 
 
 septem non amplius dies moratus, Pippinum filium siium cum eodem exercitu 
 
 in terram Beneventanorum ir.e jussit, movensque de Ravenna simul cum filio, 
 
 Anconam usque perveuit, quo ibi dimisso Romam proficiscitur." This same 
 
 visit to Paris seems to be alluded to by the monk of Saint Gallen, Gesta 
 
 Karoli, i. lo (Pertz, ii. 735) ; '.' Quum vero ingeniosissimus Karolus quodam 
 
 anno festivitates nativitatis et apparitionis Domini apud Treverense vel Metense 
 
 oppidum celebrasset sequenti vero anno easdem sollenmitates 
 
 Parisii vel Turonis ageret." 
 
 * Ermoldus Nigellus, ii. 143 (Pertz, ii. 481) : 
 
 "Inde Parisiacas properant cito visere sedes, 
 
 Quo Stephanus martyr culmina summa tenet, 
 
 Quo, Germane, tuum colitur, sanctissime, corpus, 
 
 Quo GenuvefFa micat, vlrgo dicata Deo. 
 ***** 
 
 Nee tua praeteriit Dionysi culmina martyr, 
 
 Quin adiens tibimet posceret auxilium." 
 
 And again, iii. 269 : 
 
 " C'iBsar iter tutum per propria regna gerebat. 
 
 Usque Parisiaca quo loca celsus adit. 
 
 Jam tua martyr ovans Dionysi tecta revisit, 
 
 Hilthuin abba potens quo sibi dona paras ; 
 
 Hinc, Germane, tui transivit culmina tecti 
 
 Martyris et Stephani, sou, Genuvefa, tui." 
 
 t History of Normandy and England, i. 279-2S1.
 
 218 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Es^ay 
 
 lutions begins her real history by the first French Revo- 
 lution." * In this particular case we do not even grudge 
 the premature use of the word " French," for the move- 
 ment of which he speaks was plainly a movement of the 
 Romanized lands of the West against their Teutonic master. 
 It is not likely that any such feeling was knowingly 
 present to the mind of any man ; but nations and parties 
 learn to shape themselves unknowingly, and cities and 
 regions learn to play their fitting parts, before they can 
 give any intelligible account of what they are doing. 
 The Emperor was leading an expedition against the re- 
 volted Bretons ; suddenly all the disaffected spirits of 
 the Empire, his own sons among the foremost, gathered 
 themselves together at Paris.t They then seized Lewis 
 himself at Compiegne, and their hated stepmother Judith 
 on the rock of Laon. But one part of his dominions was 
 still faithful to the imprisoned Caesar ; the German lands 
 had no share in the rebellion, and they eagerly sought 
 for the restoration of theii- sovereign. In marking out 
 the geographical divisions of feeling, the writer of the 
 ninth century, like those of the nineteenth, is driven, 
 as it were, to forestall the languao-e of a somewhat later 
 time. The Emperor had no confidence in the French, but 
 he put his trust in the Germans. J 
 
 * History of Norniaudy and England, i. 282. 
 
 t The fact that Paris was the gathering-place comes out most strongly in 
 the Annales Bertiniani, 830 (Pertz, i. 423): ''Nam aliqui ex prinioribus 
 rnurraurationeiu populi cognoscentes, convocaverunt ilium, ut eum a fide, quam 
 doiiino imperatori promissam habebant, averterent ; ideoque oumis popiilus qui 
 in Eritanniani ire debebat ad Parisium se conjunxit, nee non Hlothariuui de 
 Italia et Pippinum de Ac|uitania hostiliter adversum patreiii venire, ut ilium 
 de regno ejicerent et novercam suam perderent ac Bernardum interficerent, 
 compulerunt." 
 
 X Vita Hludowici, 45 (Pertz, ii. 633) ; " Quum autem instaret auctumnalis 
 teinperies, et qui imperatori contraria sentiebant alicubi in Francia conventum 
 fieri generalein volebaiit. Imperator autem clanculo obnitebatur, diffidens 
 quidem Francis magisque se credens Gennanis." (See above, p. 192.) One 
 cannot help talking here about France and French, though such is not the 
 established use of the words till long after. It should however be noticed that 
 the Francia of this writer, while it excludes Germany, equally excludes
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 219 
 
 Such was the part — a characteristic part— played by 
 Paris in the Revolution of 830. Four years later Paris 
 appears playing an opposite yet a no less characteristic 
 part. The Emperor Lewis, already restored and again 
 deposed, is held as a prisoner by his eldest son Lothar, 
 and is led in bonds to Paris.* Again the men of the East, 
 the faithful Germans, are in arms for their sovereign 
 under Lewis, at that moment his only loyal son. But 
 by this time the city has changed sides. Lothar, for fear 
 of the German host, flees to the South, leaving his father 
 at liberty; the late captive is led by his rejoicing people 
 to the minster of Saint Denis, and there is girt once more 
 with the arms of the warrior and with the Imperial robes 
 of the Csesar.f Once then in the course of its long history 
 did Paris behold the inauguration of a lawful Emperor. 
 But it was the re-inauguration of an Emperor whom one 
 Parisian revolution had overthrown, and whom another 
 Parisian revolution had set up again ; and in the moment 
 alike of his fall and of his restoration the force of loyal 
 Germany forms at one time a threatening, at another time 
 an approving, background. 
 
 We thus see Paris, well-nigh unheard of during the 
 reign of Charles the Great, suddenly rise into importance 
 under his son. Under Charles the Bald its importance 
 becomes greater still, and it begins to assume the peculiar 
 function which raised it to the head place in Gaul. The 
 
 Burgundy and Aquitaine. (See c. 49.) The assembly was held at Neomaga 
 (Niniwegen), and we read that " oninis Gerniania eo confluxit imperatori 
 auxilio futura." 
 
 * Annales Bertiniani, 834: " Quum hoc Lotharius cognovisset, de Aquis 
 abscessit, et f atrem suum usque ad Parisius sub memorata custodia deduxit." 
 So in the Vita Hludowici, 50: " Hlotharius patre assumpto per pagum Has- 
 baniensem iter airipuit, et Parisius urbem petivit, ubi obviani fore cunctos sibi 
 fideles prsecepit." 
 
 •[ Annales Bertiniani, 834 : " lUo abscedente, venerunt episcopi qui prsesen- 
 tes aderant, et in ecclesia sancti Dionysii domnum Imperatorem reconciliaverunt, 
 et regalibus vestibus annisque induerunt. Deinde filii ejus Pippinus et 
 Ludoicus cum ceteris fidelibus ad eum venientes paterno animo gaudenter 
 suscepti sunt, et pluriraas illis ac cuncto populo gratias egit, quod jam alacriter 
 illi auxilium prjebere studuissent."
 
 220 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. [Essay 
 
 special wretchedness of the time was fast showing the 
 great military importance of the site. Under the rule 
 of the Austrasian mayors and kings there had been 
 endless wars, but they had been wars waged far away 
 from Paris. Above all, no hostile fleet had for ages sailed 
 up the Seine. Lutetia on her island must, under the 
 Frankish power, have enjoyed for some generations a 
 repose almost as unbroken as she had enjoyed in the 
 days of the Boman Peace. Now all was changed. The 
 Empire was torn in pieces by endless civil wars, wars 
 of brother against brother : and the fleets of the Northmen, 
 barely heard of in the days of Charles the Great, were 
 making their way up the mouths of all its rivers. Men 
 now began to learn that the island city, encompassed by 
 the broad Seine, with its bridges and its minsters and 
 the Roman palace on the left bank, was at once among 
 the most precious possessions and among the surest bul- 
 warks of the realm. It is not without significance that, 
 when the great Charles himself for once visited Paris, he 
 visited it in the course of a progress in which he had been 
 surveying the shores of the Northern Ocean.* He came 
 to Paris as a mourner and as a pilgrim, yet we may 
 believe that neither his grief nor his devotion hindered 
 him from marking the importance of the post. His eye 
 surely marked the site as one fated to be the main defence, 
 if not of his whole Empire, at least of its western portion, 
 against the pirate barks by which the Ocean was begin- 
 ning to be covered. And probably it was not by mere 
 accident that it was in the course of an expedition against 
 Eritanny that Paris became the centre of the conspiracy 
 of 830, In a Breton war, a war by land, Paris would 
 not be of the same pre-eminent importance as it was in 
 the invasion of the Northmen. Still the island strong- 
 hold would be of no small moment in case of a Breton 
 inroad, and in the days of Lewis the Pious a Breton in- 
 road was again a thing to be dreaded. Among the troubles 
 
 * See p. 216.
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 221 
 
 of the next reign the pre-eminent importance of Paris 
 begins to stand out more and more strongly. Of the 
 newly-formed Western kingdom, the kingdom of Charles 
 the Bald, the kingdom to which it was a mere chance 
 that he did not for ever bequeath his name,* it seemed 
 at first that Paris was at once to become the capital ; no 
 other city filled so prominent a place in the early history 
 of his reign. In the very beginning of his reign we find 
 Charles making use of the position of the city and its 
 bridges to bar the progress of his brother, the Emperor 
 Lothar. We find him dwelling for a long time in the 
 city, and giving the citizens the delight of a spectacle 
 by appearing among them in royal pomp at the Easter 
 festival.f Four years later, the city began to appear in 
 its other character as the great mark for Scandinavian 
 attack. The Northern pirates were now swarming on 
 every sea, and the coasts of Britain, Gaul, and Germany 
 were all alike wasted by their harr^'ings. But they in- 
 stinctively felt that, while no shore lay more temptingly 
 for their objects than the shores of Northern Gaul, there 
 was no point either of the insular or of the continental 
 realm where their approach was better guarded against. 
 The island city, with its two bridges and its strongly 
 fortified Koman suburb on the mainland, blocked their 
 path as perhaps no other stronghold in Gaul or Britain 
 could block it. J In the very year of the fight of Fontenay, 
 
 * The Western kingdom is " regnum Karoli," its people Karoli, Karlenses, 
 just like "regnum Lotharii," Lotharii, Lotharienses. (See History of the 
 Norman Conquest, i. 600, ed. 2.) It is a mere chanee that Karolingia, CTiar- 
 laine, did not survive as the name of the Western kingdom, as Lotltaringia, 
 Lorraine, survived as the name of the Middle kingdom. It would have 
 saved many confusions if it had. 
 
 f See the Annals of Prudentius of Troyes, 841 (Pertz, i. 437), and the 
 story in Nithard, ii. 6-8 ; Palgrave, England and Normandy, i. 313, 314. 
 Hildwin, Abbot of Saint Denis, and Gerard, Count of Paris — the first we 
 remember bearing that title — had been among the first to break their oaths 
 to Charles. 
 
 X See the vivid description of Carolingian Paris and its first capture in 
 Palgrave, i. 433-439 ; but Sir Francis has not wholly withstood the tempta- 
 tion to exaggerate the antiquity of some of the e.\isting buildings.
 
 222 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. [Essay 
 
 as if they had scented the mutual slaughter from afar, 
 the Northmen had sailed up the stream, and had harried 
 Rouen and the surrounding lands with the sternest horrors 
 of fire and sword* Four years later they pressed oti yet 
 further into the heart of the defenceless realm ; Paris was 
 attacked ; in strange contrast with the valour of its citizens 
 forty years later, no one had the heart to resist ; the city 
 was stormed and sacked ; and King Charles, finding his 
 forces unequal to defend or to avenge, was driven to 
 forestall the wretched policy of iEthelred, and to buy a 
 momentary respite from the invaders.f Other attacks, 
 other harryings, followed. One devastation more terrible 
 than all, in the year (S57, w'as specially remembered on 
 account of the frightful havoc wrought among the churches 
 of the city. The church of Saint Genoveva, on the left 
 bank of the river — wdiose successor is better known to 
 modern ears as the Pantheon — was burned ; Saint Stephen's, 
 afterwards known as Notre Dame, Saint German's, and 
 St. Denis, bought their deliverance only l)y large ransoms.:}: 
 
 * Ann. Prud. Tree. 841 (Pertz, i. 437) : " Interea piratse Danorum ab 
 Oceano Euripo devecti Eotuniam irruentes, rapinis, ferro, ignique bacchantes, 
 urbem, inonachos, reliquumque vulgura et csedibus et captivitate pessum- 
 dederunt, et omnia monasteria sen quaecumque loca fluniini Seqiianre adhseren- 
 tia aut depopulati sunt aut, multis acceptis pecuniis, teriita relinqunnt." 
 
 "t" Ann. Prud. Tree. 855 : " Nordmannorum naves centum viginti mense 
 Martio per Sequanam hinc et abinde cuncta vastantes, Loticiam Parisiorum 
 nullo penitus obsistente pervadunt. Quibus quum Carolus occurrere moliretur, 
 sed pipevalere sues nullatenus posse prospiceret, quibusdam pactionibus, et 
 mnnere septem milium librarum eis exhibito, a progrediendo compescuit, ac 
 redire persuasit." So in tlie Annals of Fulda, 845 (Pertz, i. 364) : " Nord- 
 manni regnum Karoli vastantes, per Sequanam usque Parisios navigio vene- 
 runt, et tarn ab ipso quam incolis terraj accepta pecunia copiosa cum pace dis- 
 cesserunt." 
 
 X Ann. Prud. Tree. 857 : "Dani Sequanro insistentes cuncta libere vastant, 
 Lutetiamque Parisiorum adgressi, basilicam beati Petri et sanctre Genovefai 
 incendunt et ceteras onines, praeter domum sancti Stepliani et ecclcsiam sancti 
 Vinceiitii atque Germaiii proeterque ccclesiam sancti Diony.sii, pro quibus 
 tantummodo, ne incenderentur, multa solidorum summa soluta est." Sir 
 Francis Palgrave (i. 459, 464") gives a vivid picture of this sack of P.aris. Of 
 Saint Denis he adds: "Saint Denis made a bad bargain. Tiie Northmen did 
 not hold to their contract, or another company of pirates did not consider it as 
 binding : the Monastery was burnt to a shell, and a most heavy ransom paid
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF FAEIS. 223 
 
 In the minds of the preachers of the time, the woes of 
 Paris suggested the woes of Jerusalem, and a wail of 
 sorrow went up from the Jeremiah of the age for the 
 havoc of the city and its holy places.* 
 
 When we remember the importance to which Paris was 
 plainly beginning to rise under Lewis the Pious, we may 
 perhaps be led to think that it was the constant attacks to 
 which the city was exposed which hindered it from be- 
 coming the permanent dwelling-place of royalty under 
 Charles the Bald. That the city held a place in his 
 affections throughout his life is shown by his choosing 
 Saint Denis as the place of his burial. But it never 
 became the royal city of the kings of his house. We need 
 hardly look on it as a mark of personal cowardice in 
 Charles that he preferred to hx his ordinary seat of govern- 
 ment in some other place than the most exposed fortress 
 of his kingdom. Compiegne now often appears as a royal 
 dwelling-place ; f but the home and centre of Carolingian 
 
 for the liberation of Abbot Louis, Charlemagne's grandson by his daughter 
 Eothaida." Sir Francis, as usual, gives no reference : but we may be sure that 
 he could, if he had pleased, have given one for the burning of the monastery 
 as well as for tlie capture of the Abbot, which the Annals mention under the 
 next year, though not in connexion with the sack of Paris. 
 
 * Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 462) says : "Amongst the calamities of the times, 
 the destruction of the Parisian monasteries seems to have worked peculiarly on 
 the imagination. Paschasius Radbertus, the biographer of Wala, expatiates 
 upon this misery when writing his Commentary on Jeremiah." Some extracts 
 are given in Pertz, i. 450 : "Quis umquam ci-ederet, vel quis ufnquam cogitare 
 
 potuisset ut piratse, diversis admodum collecti ex familiis, Parisiorum 
 
 attingerent fines, ecclesiasque Christi hinc inde cremarent circa litus ? . . . . 
 Fateor eniin quod nullus ex regibus terrse ista cogitaret, neque ullus habitator 
 orbis nostri audire potuisset quod Parisium nostrum hostis intraret." 
 
 f Compifegne comes out with amusing grandeur in the Fragmenta Historian 
 Fossatensis, Pertz, ix. 372. There Charles tlie Bald figures as a very great 
 prince indeed: " Hie post multas Imperii divisiones, post innumeras bellorum 
 angustias, Pipino et Lothario decedentibus rex et iiiiperator constituitur. 
 Ludovicus autem Germaniam obtinebat. Quunique universo pene orbi Karolus 
 imperaret, placuit prse ceteris nationibus Gallias honorare reliquiasque qiias 
 patruus suus Karolus Magnus Constantinopoli advectas Aquisgrani posuerat, 
 clavum scilicet et coronam apud Sanctum Dyonisium ; Compendium vero, quod 
 instar Constaiitinopnleos suis diebus decreverat fabricari, ut de nomine suo 
 Karnopolim, sicut Constantiaus Constantinopolim, appellaret, sindonem dele- 
 gavit."
 
 224 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 royalty in the Western kingdom gradually fixed itself on 
 a spot the most opposite to Paris in position and feeling 
 which the Western kingdom could afford. Paris and Laon 
 were in every sense rivals ; their rivalry is stamped upon 
 their very outward appearance. Each is a representative 
 city : Paris, like Chalons and Bristol, is essentially an island 
 city ; the river was its defence against ordinary enemies, 
 however easily that defence might be changed into a 
 highway for its attack in the hands of the amphibious 
 Northmen. But Laon is the very pride of that class of 
 towns which, out of Gaulish hill-forts^ grew into Roman 
 and mediaeval cities. None stands more proudly on its 
 height ; none has kept its ancient character so little 
 changed to our own day. The town still keeps itself 
 within the walls which fence in the hill top, and whatever 
 there is of suburb has grown up at the foot, apart from 
 the ancient city. Paris again was the home of the new- 
 horn nationality of the Romance speech, the home of the 
 new French nation. Laon stood near the actual German 
 border, in a land where German was still spoken ; it was 
 fitted in every way to be, as it proved, the last home of a 
 German dynasty in the West. There can be little doubt 
 that, by thus moving eastward, by placing themselves in 
 this outlying Teutonic corner of their realm, the Carol- 
 ingian kings of the West threw away the chance of putting 
 themselves'at the head of the new national movement, the 
 chance of reigning as national kings, if not over the whole 
 Romance-speaking population of Gaul, at least over its 
 strictly French portion north of the Loii'e. 
 
 Of such a mission we may be sure Charles the Bald and 
 his successors never dreamed. The chances are that those 
 to whom that mission really fell dreamed of it just as 
 little. We must never forget that the national movements 
 of those days were for the more part instinctive and 
 unconscious ; but they were all the more powerful and 
 lastiui; for bcino- instinctive and unconscious. An act of 
 Charles the Bald, one of the ordinary grants by a king to
 
 YIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 225 
 
 one of his vassals, created the French nation. The post from 
 which the King himself shrank was entrusted to a valiant 
 subject, and Robert the Strong, the mightiest champion of 
 the land against the heathen invader, received the govern- 
 ment of the whole border-land threatened by the Breton 
 and the Northman.* We may be sure that the thoughts 
 of the King himself did not at the most reach beyond 
 satisfaction at haviug provided the most important post in 
 his realm with a worthy defender. To shield himself from 
 the enemy by such a barrier as was furnished by Robert s 
 county in Robert's hands was an object for which it was 
 wise to sacrifice the direct possession even of the fair 
 lands between the Loire and the Seine. The dominion of 
 Robert was a mark ; his truest title was Marquess. And 
 this frontier district, like so many other frontier districts, 
 was destined to great things. Rome itself was most likely, 
 in its beginning, a mark of the Latin League against 
 the Etruscan. Castile, a line of border-castles against the 
 Saracen, grew into the ruling kingdom of all Spain. The 
 Eastern Mark, the mark of Germany against the Hun- 
 garian, and the Mark of Brandenburg, her mark against the 
 Wend, grew, under the names of Austria and Prussia, to 
 become the leading powers of Germany, while one of them 
 in a manner has become Germany itself. So the mark 
 granted to Robert grew into the Duchy of France and the 
 Kingdom of France. Robert no doubt, like the other 
 governors and military chiefs who were fast growing from 
 magistrates into princes, rejoiced in the prospect of be- 
 comingthe source of adynasty,a dynasty which could not fail 
 to take a high place among the princes of Gaul. But he 
 hardly dreamed of founding a line of kings, and a line of kings 
 the most lasting that the world ever saw. Still less did he 
 
 * Regino, 86i : " Carolns rex placitum habuit in Compeiidio, ibique ciim 
 optimatum consilio Roberto coniiti ducatum inter Ligerim et Seqiianam adver- 
 sum Erittones commendavit, quem cum ingenli industria per aliquod tempus 
 rt-xit." In the same writer, under S67, be appears as " Ruotbertus qui iiiarcaiii 
 tenebat." So Hincmar (ann. 865) calls him " Marchio in Andegavo." He 
 held also the County of Autun. Hincmar, 866. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE EAULY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 dream of founding a nation. But he himself founded a 
 line of kings, and his son founded a nation for those kings 
 to rule over. It may be doubted whether Robert's mark 
 between the Loire and Seine took in the city on the Seine. 
 Once indeed he went to its help :* but, if it was part of his 
 dominions, it was at least not their capital or centre. 
 Robert was in a special manner Count or Marquess of 
 Anjou. It was his son, the Count of Paris, the defender 
 of Paris, who was the real founder of the nation of which 
 he became the first king. In saving Paris Odo created 
 France. The counts who held the first place of danger 
 and honour soon eclipsed in men's eyes the kings who had 
 retired to the safer obscurity of their eastern frontier. The 
 city of the river became a national centre in a way in 
 which the city of the rock could never be. The people of 
 the struggling Romance speech of Northern Gaul found a 
 centre and a head in the rising city and its gallant princes. 
 That Robert was himself of German descent, the son of a 
 stranger from some of the Teutonic provinces of the 
 Empire, mattered not a whit.f From the beginning of 
 their historic life the Parisian dukes and kings have been 
 the leaders and representatives of the new French nation- 
 ality. No roj-al dynasty has ever been so thoroughly 
 identified with the nation- over which it ruled, because no 
 royal dynasty could be so truly said to have created the 
 nation. Paris, France, and the dukes and kings of the 
 French, are three ideas which can never be kept asunder. 
 A true instinct soon gave the ruler of the new state a 
 hiofher and a more sionificant title. The Count of Paris 
 was merged in the Duke of the French, and the Duke of 
 
 * Hinemar, 866. 
 
 ■\ The origin of Tlohert the Strong has been discnssed by M. Mourin, p. 19, 
 and more fully by Dr. Kalckstein in his first " Exkiir.s." The best-known 
 passage is tliat in Richer, i. 5 : " Odo patreni habuit ex equestri ordine Rotber- 
 tnni, avum vero paternuin Witichinuni, advenani Gernianum." In Ainion of 
 Fleury, ile Iteijihua Francorum (Pertz, ix. 374), he appears as " Rotbertns 
 Andegavensia comes, Saxonici generis vir." In the Annales Xantenses, 867 
 (Pertz, ii. 232), he is " Ruodbertus, vir valde strenuus, ortus de Frantia, 
 dux Karoli." By this German writer Vruntia is of course opposed to Gallia.
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 227 
 
 the French was soon to be merged in the King. The name 
 of Francia, a name whose shiftings and whose changes of 
 meaning have perplexed both history and politics — a name 
 which Eastern and Western writers seem to have made it 
 a kind of point of honour to use in different meanings* 
 — now gradually settles down, as far as the Western 
 kingdom is concerned, into the name of a territory which 
 answers roughly to the Celtic Gaul of the elder geo- 
 graphy.f It has still to be distinguished by epithets like 
 Occidental is and Latina from the Eastern Francia of Teu- 
 tonic speech, but, in the language of Gaul, Francia and 
 Franci for the future mean the dominion and the subjects 
 of the lord of Paris. France was still but one among the 
 principalities of Gaul ; but it was the principality destined, 
 by one means or another, to swallow up the rest. From 
 the foundation of the Parisian duchy we may date the 
 birth of the French state and nation. From that day 
 onwards France is whatever can, by fair means or foul, 
 be brought into obedience to Paris and her ruler. 
 
 Count Robert the Strong, the Maccabseus of the West- 
 Frankish realm, the patriarch of the old Capets, of the 
 Valois, and of the Bourbons, died as he had lived, fighting 
 for Gaul and Christendom ao-ainst the heathen Dane. t But 
 his dominion and his mission passed to a son worthy of 
 
 * The monk of Saint Gallen (Gesta Karoli, i. lo) gives us a definition of 
 Francia in the widest sense : " Franciani vero interdum quum noiiiinavero, omnes 
 Cisalpinas provincial significo .... in illo tempore propter excellentiam glorio- 
 sissimi Karoli et Galli et Aquitani, ^dui et Hispani, Alamaimi et Baioarj, 
 noil parum se insignitos gloriabantur, si vel nomine Francorum servorum cen- 
 seri mererentur." 
 
 f Richer (i. 14) twice speaks of the dnchy of France as " Celtica " and 
 "Gallia Celtica." "Rex [Karolus] Celt'cae [Rotliertiim] ducem praeficit." 
 These are Charles tlie Simple and the second Robert, afterwards king. 
 
 X Ann. Fuld. 867 (Pertz, ii. 380): " Riiodbertus Karoli regis comes apud 
 Ligerim fluvium contra Nordmannos fortiter dimicans occiditur, alter quodam- 
 niodo nostris teraporibiis Machabaeus, cujns proelia qure cum Brittonibus et 
 Nordmannis gessit, si per omnia sciipta fui^sent, Machabaei gestis aequipa- 
 rari potuissent." See tlie details in Regino, 867 ; Hincmar, Ann. 866. Tlie 
 meagre annals of Fleury (Pertz, ii. 254) kindle into life at the exploits of 
 Robert: " Rhothbertus atque Rainnulfus, viri mirse potentise armisque strenui 
 et inter primes ipsi priores, Northmannorum gladio necantur." 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. [Essay 
 
 him — to Odo, or Eudes, the second Count of his house, 
 presently to be the first of the kings of Paris. At his 
 father's death Odo was deemed too young to take the place 
 of his father. The duchy between the Seine and the Loire 
 was granted to Abbot Hugh ;* some fiefs alone of unknown 
 extent were first given to Odo and then taken from him.f 
 But somewhat later we find him holding the post of Count 
 of Paris, without any notice as to the extent of territory 
 which formed* his county. But when at a later time, on the 
 death of Hugh, he received a grant of his father s duchy, 
 the great step was taken ; France, with Paris as its capital, 
 was created. J The grant was fittingly made in the very 
 midst of his great deeds, in the midst of that great struggle, 
 that mighty and fiery trial, which was to make the name 
 of Paris and her lord famous throughout the world. On the 
 great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in 
 the history of the city, of the duchy, and in truth of all 
 Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater 
 detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved 
 the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state 
 of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. 
 The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were 
 spreading their ravages to every accessible point. Every 
 year in the various contemporary annals is marked by the 
 harrying of some fresh district, by the sack of some city, by 
 the desecration of some revered monastery.§ Resistance, 
 
 * Regiiio, 867 : " Hugo abba in locutn liuotberti substitutus est ... , 
 siquidem Odo et Ruotbertus filii Euotberti adhuc parviili erant ; quando 
 pater exstinctus est, et idcirco iion est illis ducatiis conimis-tus." 
 
 •)■ Hincmar, 868 : " Ablatis a Rotberti filio liis quiB post mortem patris de 
 honoribua ipsiiiH ei concesserat [Carolus] et per alios divisis." 
 
 X Regino, 887 : " Ducatus quem [Hugo] tenuerat et streniie rexerat Odoni 
 filio Rodberti ab imperatore traditur, qui e-X tempestate rarisiorum comes 
 ©rat." 
 
 § See especially the entries in the Annales Vedastini (Pertz, ii. 200), under 
 874 and several following years. Take, above all, tlie general jiicture under 
 884 : " Nortmanni vero non cessant captivari atque interfici populum Christi- 
 annm, atque ecclesias subrui, destructis mceniis et villis crematis. Per omnes 
 enim plateas jacebant cadavera clericorum, laicorum, nobilium atque alioruin, 
 inulierun), juvenuni, et lactentium : non enim erat via vel locus quo non jactrent
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 229 
 
 when there was any, was ahnost wholly local ; the in- 
 vaders were so far from encountering the whole force of the 
 Empire that they never encountered the whole force of any 
 one of its component kingdoms. The day of Saulcourt, 
 renowned in that effort of old Teutonic minstrelsy which 
 may rank alongside of our own songs of Brunanburh and 
 Maldon,^ the day when the young King Lewis led the 
 West- Prankish host to victory over the heathen, f stands 
 out well-nigh alone in the records of that unhappy time. 
 While neither realm was spared, while one set of invaders 
 ravaged the banks of the Seine and the Loire, while another 
 more daring band sacked Aachen, Koln, and Trier, J the 
 rival kings of the Franks were mainly intent on extending 
 their borders at the expense of one another. Charles the 
 Bald was far more eager to extend his nominal frontier to 
 the Rhine,§ or to come back from Italy adorned with the 
 Imperial titles, || than he was to take any active step to 
 
 mortui ; et erat tribulatio omnibus et dolor, videntes populum Christianuni 
 usque ad internecionem devastari." 
 
 * The Ludwiydied is printed in Max MtiUer's German Classics, also in 
 the second volume of Scliilter's Thesaurus. 
 
 f A full account of the battle is given in the Annales Vedastini, 88l. 
 
 + Annales Vedastini, 882 : " Australes Franci ^that is, Eastern, Austrasian, 
 not Southern) congregant exercitum contra Nortmannos, sed statim terga 
 vertunt, ibique VValo, Mettensis episcopus, corruit, Dani vero famosissimum 
 Aquisgrani palatium igne cremant, et monasteria atqne civitates, Treveiis 
 niibilissimam et Coloniam Agrippinani, palatia quoque regum et villas, cum 
 habitatoribus terrse interfectis, igne cremaverunt." 
 
 § Annales Fuldenses (Pertz, i. 390), 876 : " Karolns vero, Hhidowici morte 
 comperta, regnum illius, cupiditate ductus, invasit et suae ditioni subjugare 
 studuit ; existimans se, ut fama vulgabat, non solum partem regni Hlotharii, 
 quam Hludowicus tenuit et filiis suis utendam dereliquit, per tyrannidem 
 posse obtinere, verum etiam cunctas civitates regni Hludowici in occidentali 
 litore Rheni fluminis positas huo regno addere, id est Mogontiam, Worma- 
 tiain, et Nemetum, filiosque fratris per potentiam opprimere, ita ut nullus ei 
 resistere vel contradicere auderet." The first entry under the next year irs : 
 " Hludowicus rex mense Januario, geneiali conventu habito apud Francono- 
 furt, quos de regno Karoli tenuit captivos remisit in Galliam." 
 
 II Ann. Fuld. 876. The way in which Charles' Imperial dignity is recorded 
 is remarkable. After a satirical description of the Imperial costume, the annalist 
 goes on : " Omnem enim consuetudinem regum Fraiicorum contemnens, Gryecas 
 glorias optimas arbitrabatur, et ut majorem suae mentis elationem ostenderet,
 
 230 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 drive out the common enemy of all the kindred realms. At 
 last the whole Empire, save the Burgundian kingdom of 
 BosOj was once more joined together under Charles the 
 Fat. Paris was again under the nominal sovereignty of an 
 Emperor whose authority, equally nominal everywhere, 
 extended also over Rome and Aachen. Precarious and 
 tottering as such an Empire was, the even nominal union 
 of so many crowns on a single head, however unfit that 
 head was to bear their weight, does seem to have given for 
 the moment something like a feeling of greater unity, and 
 thereby of greater strength, Paris, defended by its own 
 Count and its own Bishop, was defended by them in the 
 name of the Emperor, Lord of the World.* The sovereign 
 alike of East and West was appealed to for help, and at 
 least a show of help was sent in the name of both parts of 
 the Frankish realm. f The defence of Paris was essentially 
 a local defence, waged by its own citizens under the com- 
 mand of their local chiefs. Still the m-eat check which the 
 invaders then received came nearer to a national act on the 
 part of the whole Frankish Empire than anything which 
 had happened since the death of Charles the Great. 
 
 Our materials for the great siege are fairly abundant. 
 Several of the contemporary chronicles, in describing this 
 gallant struggle, throw off somewhat of their accustomed 
 meagreness, and give an account conceived with an unusual 
 
 ablato regis nomine, se imperatorem et Augustum omnium regum cis mare 
 consistentium apjiellare prajcepit." The phrase "cis mai'e" i.s remarkable, 
 when we think of the English claims to Empire, and of the constant use of 
 the word " traiismai inus " to express England and English things. The com- 
 Ufion name for Charles in these Annals is " Gallise t^^rannus." 
 * Abbo, i. 48 (Pertz, ii. 780) : — 
 
 " Urbs niandata fuit Karolo nobis basileo, 
 Imperio cujus regitur totus proj^e koimus 
 Post Dominum, regem dominatoremqiie potentuni, 
 Excidium per earn regtium non quod patiatur, 
 Sed quod salvetur per earn sedentque serenuni." 
 + Ilegino, 887 (Pertz, i. 596) : " Heinricus cum exeroitibus utriusque regni 
 Parisius venit." " Utrumque regnum " means of course the E;ist and the 
 West Franks. The same Annuls, in the next j'ear, speak of C'harits as reigning 
 over '• omiiiii regna Fraucurum."
 
 VI 1 1.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 231 
 
 degree of spirit and carried out with an unusual amount of 
 detail.^ And we have a yet more minute account, which, 
 even as it is, is of no small value, and which, had it been a 
 few degrees less wearisome and unintelligible, would have 
 been of the highest interest. Abbo, a distinguished church- 
 man of those times, a monk of the house of Saint German, 
 and not only a contemporary, but a spectator and sharer in 
 the defence, t conceived the happy idea of writing a minute 
 narrative of the stirring scenes which he had witnessed. 
 But unhappily he threw his tale into the shape of hexa- 
 metres which have few rivals for affectation and obscurity. 
 The poetical biographer of Lewis the Pious at least writes 
 Latin ; Abbo writes in a Babylonish dialect of his own 
 composing, stuffed full of Greek and other out-of-the-way 
 words, and to parts of which he himself found it needful to 
 attach a glossary. Still, with all this needless darkness, he 
 gives us many details, and he especially preserves many 
 individual names which we should not find out from the 
 annalists. A fervent votary of Saint German, a loyal 
 citizen of Paris, a no less loyal subject of the valiant count 
 who, when he wrote, had grown into a king, Abbo had 
 every advantage which personal knowledge and local in- 
 terest could give to a narrator of the struggle. Only we 
 cannot help wishing that he had stooped to tell his tale, if 
 not in his native tongue, whether Romance or Teutonic, 
 yet at least in the intelligible Latin of Nithard in a past 
 generation and of Richer in a future one. J 
 
 * yee especially the Annales VeJastini, SS5-890 ; other details come from 
 the Chronicle of Eegino, SS7-890. 
 
 \ Let us take one out of several passajres where he describes his own 
 exploits (ii. 300-302) : — 
 
 " Nemo stetit supra speeulam, solus nisi ssepe 
 Jam saiicti famulus dicti, lignum crucis almse 
 In flammas retinens, oculis hsec vidit et inquit." 
 J The book is printed in the second volume of Pertz, 776-S05. The Third 
 Book has a sort of Int rpretatio throughout. We give a few lines (15-18) as 
 a specimen : — 
 
 " laicorum 
 Tapefe midique villofie populorum lectus in itinere, 
 Amphytiippa laou ex tat, badanola necnon^;
 
 232 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 The poet begins with a panegyric on his city, in which 
 he may, while deahng with such a theme, be forgiven for 
 somewhat unduly exalting its rank among the cities of the 
 world.* Its position, the strength of the island-fortress, 
 connected with the mainland by its castles on either side, 
 is plainly set forth. f The defenders of the city are clearly 
 set before us : Odo the Count, the future King, as we are 
 often reminded,J and Gozlin tlie Bishop, stand forth in the 
 front rank. Around the two great local chiefs are gathered 
 a secondary band of their kinsfolk and supporters, clerical 
 and lay. There is Odo's brother Robert, himself one day to 
 wear a crown in the city which he defended, but in times 
 to which the foresight of the poet did not extend ; there is 
 the valiant Count Ragnar ; there is the warlike Abbot 
 Ebles of Saint German's, whose exploits are recorded with 
 special delight by the loyal monk of his house.§ A crowd 
 of lesser names are also handed down to us. names of men 
 
 Ornamentnm decorum ralde amant vestem pnfam vel gniufan clarum jjotio- 
 nem par linteiim. 
 
 Effipiam diamant, stragulam pariterque propomarn. 
 
 lenocinatio J't'nat paleant 
 
 Ag.-igula celebs aginat peeiules nee ablundam." 
 
 But the narrative ])ortions of the poem, though often obscure enoug!), are 
 not altogether in this style. 
 * Abbo, i. lo : — 
 
 " Nam medio Sequanse recubans, culti quoque regni 
 Francigenum, temet statuis per celsa canendo : 
 Sum polls, ut regina micans omnes super urbes ! 
 Quae statione nites cunctis venerabiliori, 
 Quisque cupiscit opes Francoruni, te veneratur." 
 t Ibid. i. 15 :— 
 
 " Insula te gaudet, fluvius sua fert tibi giro 
 Brachia, complexo muros mulcentia circum 
 Dextra tui pontes habitant tentoria liuifie 
 Laevaque claudentes ; horuni hinc inde tutrices 
 Cis urbem speculare falas, citra quoque flumen." 
 : Ibid. i. 45:— 
 
 " Hie consul venerabatur, rex at(jue futurus, 
 Urbis erat tutor, legni venturus et altor." 
 § Ibi.l. i. 66 :— 
 
 " Hie comites Odo fraterque suus radiabant 
 Kotbertus, pariterque conies Tlageuarius ; illic 
 Pontificiscjue nepos Ebolus, fortiasimus abba."
 
 VIII. ] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 233 
 
 who had their honourable share in the work, but with 
 whose bare names it is hardly needful to burthen the 
 memories of modern readers. A great object of attack on 
 the part of the Northmen was the castle which guarded the 
 bridge on the right bank of the river, represented in after- 
 times by the Grand Chdfelet. The watchful care of the 
 Bishop had been diligent in strengthening this and the 
 other defences of the city; but the last works which were 
 to guard this important point were not yet fully finished.* 
 The Danish fleet now drew near, a fleet manned, so it was 
 said, by more than thirty thousand warriors.f As in the 
 tale of our own Brihtnoth.t the invaders began with a 
 peaceful message. The leader of the pirates, Sigefrith, the 
 sea-king — a king, as the poet tells us, without a kingdom § 
 — sought an interview with Count Odo, and demanded 
 a peaceful passage through the city. Odo sternly answers 
 that the city is entrusted to his care by his lord the 
 Emperor, and that he will never forsake the duty which 
 has been laid upon him.|| The siege now began; the 
 Northmen strove to storm the unfinished tower. After two 
 days of incessant fighting, and an intervening night spent 
 in repairing the defences, the valour of the defenders 
 prevailed. The Count and the Bishop, and the Abbot who 
 could pierce seven Danes with a single shot of his arrow, ^ 
 finally drove back the heathen to their ships ; and, instead 
 of the easy storm and sack which they doubtless looked for 
 
 * Ann. Ved. S85 : " Nortmanni, patrata victoria valde elati, Parisius adeunt 
 tunimque statim aggressi, valide oppugnant; et quia necdum perfecte firmata 
 fuerat, earn se capi sine mora existimant." 
 
 i* Regino, 887 : " Erant, ut ferunt, triginta et eo amplius adversariorum 
 millia, omnes peue robusti bellatores." 
 
 X See History of the Norman Conquest, i. 270, ed. ii. 
 § Abbo, i. 38 : " Solo rex verbo, sociis tamen imperitabat." 
 II See above, p. 230. 
 H i. 107 :— 
 
 " Fortis Odo innumeros tutudit. Sed quis fuit alter 1 
 Alter Ebolus huic socius fuit sequiperansque ; 
 Septenos una potuit terebrare sagitta, 
 Quos ludens alios jussit prsebere quoquinae."
 
 23-i THE EARLY SIEGES OF PA/? IS [E^^say 
 
 on this as on earlier occasions, the Northmen were driven 
 to undertake the siege of the city in form.* 
 
 One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher 
 branches of the art of war which had clearly been made 
 by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description 
 of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, 
 at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as 
 they were, were thorough masters of the engineering 
 science of their age.f But, through the whole winter of 
 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and 
 valour of the defenders were equal to those of the besiegers, 
 and their hearts were strung by every motive which could 
 lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in 
 the next year, in the February of 886, accident threw a 
 great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great 
 flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged the 
 lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the 
 island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.:}: That 
 fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb 
 which contained the Roman palace and the minsters of 
 Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from 
 the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the 
 Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the 
 
 * Anil. Ved. 8S5 : " Dani, niultis suorum amissis, rediere ad naves ; indeqiie 
 sibi castrum statuunt adversus civitatem, eamque obsidione valiant machinas 
 construunt, ignein supponuut, et omne ingenium suum apponunt ad captionem 
 civitatis ; sed Christian! adversus eos fortiter dimicando, in omnibus exstitere 
 siiperiores." 
 
 + Let us take Abbo's description (i. 205) of an engine which may have been 
 only a sow or a tortoise, but which certainly suggests the Trojan horse : 
 " Ei'go bis octonis faciunt mirabile visu, 
 Monstra rolis ignara ; modi conipacta triadi, 
 Robt)ris ingentis, super argete quodque cubante 
 Donuite sublinii cooperto. Nam capiebant 
 Claustia binds arcana uteri penetralia veutris 
 Sexaginta viros, ut adest rumor, galeatos." 
 X Ann. Ved. 866 : "Octavo Idus Februarii contigit grave discrimen infra 
 civitatem habitantibus, nam ex gravissima inundatione fluminis minor pons 
 disriiptus est." It is called "pictus pons" by Abbo, i. 250. It was perhaps 
 something like the bridges at Luzeru, with their series of paintings of scriptural 
 and other subjects.
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 235 
 
 attempt was forestalled by the invaders ; the tower was 
 isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and 
 the other defenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, 
 and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren 
 whom they could no longer help."^ The tower was fiercely 
 attacked ; the gate did not give way till fire was brought 
 to help the blows of the Northmen ; the defenders of the 
 tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and 
 their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of 
 their comrades. f The conquerors now destroyed the tower, 
 and from their new vantage-ground they pressed the siege 
 of the island city with increased vigour. 
 
 The chances of war seemed now to be turning against 
 the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last 
 began to fail ; he saw that Paris could no longer be 
 defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a 
 message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, pray- 
 ing him to come to the defence of the Christian people. 
 The Duke came ; we are told that his presence did little or 
 nothing for the besieged city; J yet in the obscure verses of 
 
 * Ann. Ved. SS6 : " Illis vero qui intra turrim erant acriter resistentibus, fit 
 clamor niultitudinis usque in coelum ; episcopus desuper muro civitatis cum 
 omnibus qui in civitate erant nimis flentibus, eo quod suis subvenire non 
 possent, et quia nil aliud agere poterat, (^hristo eos commetidabat." 
 
 "t* Ibid. : " Nortmanni cum impetu portam ipsius turris adeunt ignemque sub- 
 ponunt. Et hi qui intra erant, fracti vulneribus et incendio, capiuntur 
 atque ad opprobrium Christiauorum diversis iaterficiuntur modis, atque in 
 flumine preecipitantur." 
 
 X Ibid. : " HerkeDgerus [the messenger sent by the Bishop, described as 
 Comes] . . . Henricum cum exercitu Farisius venire fecit ; sed nil ibi profecit 
 . . . atque in suani rediit regioneui." 
 
 Regino (887) makes the same confession: ''Imperator Heinricum ducem 
 cum exercitu veinali tempore dirigit, sed minime prsevaluit." The Fulda 
 Annals alone ^886) seem to make out something of a case for Henry. His army 
 *' in itinere propter imbrium inundationem et fiigus imminens non modicum 
 equorum suoruni perpessi sunt damnum." The annnlist then adds : " Quum 
 illuc pervenissent, Nordmanni rerum omnium abundantiam in munitionibus 
 suis habentes, manum cum eis conserere nee voluerunt, nee ausi sunt." He 
 goes on to say that they spent the whole of Lent and up to the Rogation-days 
 in vain labours (" inani labore consuniptis"). They then went home, having 
 done nothing except kill some Danes whom they found outside their camp, and 
 carry ofi a large number of horses and oxen.
 
 236 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 the poet we seem to discern something like a night attack 
 on the Danish camp on the part of the Saxon Duke and his 
 followers.* But in any case the coming of the German 
 allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. 
 They went back to their own land ; Paris was again left to 
 its own resources ; and at last the Bishop, worn out with 
 sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. 
 He began to enter into negotiations with Sigefrith, which 
 were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was 
 known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known 
 within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first 
 learnt from the insultinsf shouts of the besiegers that their 
 valiant Bishop was no more.f 
 
 The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and 
 soul of the whole defence, yet it would seem that, at the 
 actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We 
 hear no more, at least not on the part of the men of Paris, 
 of any attempts at treating with the enemy. One bitter 
 wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and 
 the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. 
 The spiritual chief was gone ; the temporal chief steps into 
 his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears 
 as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and 
 as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers. J 
 
 * Abbo, ii. 3 : 
 
 " Saxonia vir Ainricus foi-tisque potensqiie 
 V'enit in auxilium Gozlini prsesulis urbis, 
 At tribuit victus illi letuiuque cruentis 
 Heu paucis auxit vitam nostris, tiilit araplam 
 His piffidam. Sub nocte igitur quadam penetravit 
 Castra Dandra, multos et equos illic sibi cepit." 
 After some further description he adds : 
 
 " Sic et Ainricus postremum castra reliquit, 
 Culpa tamen, fugiente mora, defertur ad arcem." 
 + Ann. Ved. 886 : " Gauzlinus vero, dum omnibus modis populo Christiano 
 juvare vellet, cum Sigfrido, rege Danorum, amicitiam fecit, ut per hoc civitas ab 
 obsidione liberaretur. Dum hsec nguntur, episcopus gravi corruit in infirmi- 
 tate, diem clausit extremum, et in loculo poaitus est in ipsa civitate. Cujus 
 obitus Nortniannis non latuit ; et antequani civibus ejus obitus nuntiaretur. 
 a Nortmannis de foris prfe licatur episcopum esse niortuum.' 
 
 X Ibid. : " Dehinc vulgus pertsesi una cum morte patris obsidione, irremedi-
 
 VIIL] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 237 
 
 At last hunger began to tell on the strength of the de- 
 fenders ; help from without was plainly needed, and this 
 time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but 
 from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so 
 many realms. Count Odo went forth in person on the 
 perilous errand ; he called on the princes of the Empii-e for 
 help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus 
 himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be 
 lost for ever.* Long before any troops were set in motion 
 in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant 
 Count was again within its walls, bringing again a gleam 
 of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere 
 fact of his presence and by the gallant exploit by which he 
 was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew 
 of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. 
 Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower 
 which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the 
 heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. 
 Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he 
 hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the 
 enemy; he made good his way to the gate, and was once 
 more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every 
 danger of his faithful people.f 
 
 Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the 
 seat of kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a 
 royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant 
 fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the 
 
 abiliter contri.stantur ; quos Odo, illustris comes, suis adhortationibus roborabat. 
 Nortmanni tamen quotidie non cessant oppiignare civitatem ; et ex utraque 
 parte mult: interfioiuntnr, pluiesque vulneribus debilitantur, escse etiam 
 ccepei unt minni in civitate." 
 
 * Ann. Ved. 886 : " Odo videns affligi popnlum, clam exiit de civitate, 
 a principibus regni requirens auxilium, et ut imperatori innotesceret velocius 
 perituram civitatem, nisi ei auxilium detur." 
 
 -|- Ibid. : " Dehinc regressus, ipsam civitatem de ejus absentia niniis repperit 
 nicerentem ; non tamen in earn sine admiratione intruiit. Nortmanni ejus 
 reiiitum prsescientes accurrerunt ei ante portam turris ; sed ille, omisso equo, 
 a dextris et siuistris adversarios csedens, civitatem ingressus, tristem populum 
 reddidit laetum."
 
 238 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 lord alike of Eome, of Aachen, and of Paris appeared 
 before the city where just now his presence was most 
 needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Hemy 
 again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Em- 
 peror himself found his way to the banks of the Seine. '^ 
 Duke Henry came with an army drawn from both the 
 Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.f With more show 
 of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, 
 Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp 
 of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might 
 be made with least risk. J But the Northmen were too 
 wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp 
 with a network of trenches, three feet deep and one foot 
 wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to 
 present the appearance of a level surface. § A small party 
 only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they 
 sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with 
 shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon 
 caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him ; 
 his horse fell and he himself was hurled to the ground. 
 The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him 
 in the sight of his army.|| One of the defenders of the 
 
 * "yEstivn tempore, antequam segetes in miinipulos redigerentur," s.ays 
 Regino (887) of the coming of Henry, and adds, "Post liasc imperator . . . 
 venit." This does not practically contradict the Annales Vedastini (886) : 
 "Circa auctnnini tempora imperator Cari.siacum veniens cum ingenti exercitu, 
 prsemisit Heiniienni, dictum ducem Austrasiornm, Paiisius." 
 
 •\ Eeginii, 8S7 : " Idem Heinricus cum exercitibus utriusque regni Parisius 
 venit." 
 
 + Ann. Ved. 886: "Qui qnum advenisset illuc cum exercitu prope civi- 
 tatem, cum panels inconsnlte coepit equitare circa castra Danorum, volens 
 invisere qualiter exercitus castra eorum posset attingere, vel quo ipsi castra 
 figere deberent." To which Pegino (f^87) adds: "Sitiim loci contemplatur 
 aditumque jierquirit, quo exercitui cum hostibus minus periculosus patcret 
 congn^ssus." 
 
 § This is told most fully by Ilegino (887) : " Porro Nordmanni audicntes 
 appropiiiquare exercitum, foderant foveas, latitudinis unius pedis et profunditatis 
 trium, in oircuitu castrorum, casque quisquiliia et stipula operuerant, semitas 
 tantuiii discursui necessarias intactas reservantes." 
 
 II Ibid. : " Aapiciente uuiver.'so exercitu, absque mora trucidant, arma auferunt, 
 et spolia ex parte diripiunt."
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 239 
 
 city, the brave Count Ragnar, of whom we have already 
 heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the 
 expense of severe wounds received in his own person.* 
 The corpse of the Duke Avas carried to Soissons and was 
 buried in the Church of Saint Medard. The army of 
 Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently 
 returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its 
 own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as 
 might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging 
 leaders in the river.f 
 
 The news of the death of Henry was brought to the 
 Emperor. Notwithstanding his grief — perhaps an euphem- 
 ism for his fear — he pressed on towards Paris with his 
 ai'my ; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is 
 obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the 
 head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing 
 worthy of the Imperial majesty.^ All in truth that the 
 
 * The exploit of Count Ragnar comes only from the Annates Vedastini : 
 " Qiium nudassent ilium ainiis siiis, f^npervenit quidam e Francis, Eagnerus 
 nomine comes, ejiisqiie corpus non absque vulneribus illis tulit ; quod statim 
 imperatori nuntiatuni est." Eegino says only, '"Agminibus impetum facienti- 
 bus, vix cadaver exanime eruitur." He adds, " Exerc:tu.s, amisso duce, ad pro- 
 pria levertitui." 
 ■\ Abbo, ii. 217 : 
 
 " En et Ainricus, superis crebro vocitatus, 
 Obsidione volens illos vallare, necatur. 
 Inque sues, nitens Sequanam transire, Danorum 
 Eex Sinric, geminis ratibus spietis, ]ienetravit 
 Cum sociis ter nam quinqnagenis, patiturque 
 Naufragium medio fiuvii, fundum petiturus, 
 Quo iixit, comitesque simul, tentoria iiiorti, 
 Hie sua castra prius Sequanae contingere fundum 
 Quo surgens oritur, dixit, quani linquere regnum 
 Francorum, fecit Domino tribuente quod iiiquit." 
 X Eegino, 887 : " Post hsec iniperator, Galliarum populos perlustrans, 
 Parisius cum immenso exercitu venit, ibique adversos hostes castra posuit, sed 
 nil dignum im]ieratoria majestate in eodeni loco gessit." So Ann. Ved. 886: 
 ''Ille vero audito nuiltuin doluit ; accepto tamen consilio, Parisius venit cum 
 manu validii ; sed quia dux periit, ipse nil utile ges.sit." So the Annals of 
 Fulda, 886 : " Imperator per Burguiidiam obviam Nortmannos in Galliam, 
 qui tunc Parisios erant, usque pervenit. Occ'so ibi Heiurico, marchensi 
 Francorum, qui in id t' mpas Iviustriani tenuit, rex, parum prospere actis rebus, 
 revertitur in sua."
 
 240 THE EARL Y SIEGES OF PARTS. [Essay 
 
 Emperor Charles did was to patch up a treaty with the 
 barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising 
 the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom 
 of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let 
 or hindrance.* We are told indeed that this step was taken, 
 because the land to be ravaged — are we to understand the 
 kingdom of Boso ? — was in rebellion.f At all events, the 
 Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole 
 Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan 
 teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went 
 straight back into Germany, and there spent the small 
 remnant of his reiscn and life in a diss^raceful domestic 
 quarrel.J One act however he did which concerns our 
 story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Robert the 
 Strong in the greater part of his duchy, had died during 
 the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by imperial 
 grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been 
 held by his father. § 
 
 But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count ; 
 the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of 
 their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came 
 that strange and unexampled event by which the last 
 Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the great Charles 
 was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. 
 The Empire again split up into separate kingdoms, ruled 
 over by kings of their own choice. The choice of the 
 Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the 
 illustrious Count of Paris. Later writers, full of hereditary 
 
 * Ann. Ved. 886 : "Factum est vere consilium miserum ; nam utrumque, 
 et civitatis redemptio illis promissa est, et data est via sine impedimento, ut 
 Burgundiani hieiiie deprsedarent." So Ann. Fiild. 886: "Imperator perterri- 
 tu«, quibusdam per Burgundiam vagandi licentiam dedit, quibusdam plurimani 
 promisit pecuniam, hi a regno ejus statnto inter eos tempore discederent." 
 
 t Kegiuo, 887: "Ad extremum, concessis terris et regionibus (pue ultra 
 Sequanam erant Nordmannis ad depraedandum, eo quod iuoolae illarum sibi 
 obtemiierare nollent, recessit." 
 
 X Tiie details follow immediately after in Regino. 
 
 § See aliove, p. 227. So Aim. Ved. 886 : " Terra patris sui Rothberti Odoni 
 coniiti conceosa, imperator castra movit."
 
 YIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 241 
 
 ideas, seem hardly to have understood the first election of 
 a national king, and to have looked upon Odo as simply 
 chosen as a guardian for the young heir of the Karlings, the 
 future king Charles the Simple.* But Charles, instead of 
 Odo's ward, appeared as his most dangerous rival. For tlie 
 reign of Odo was not undisturbed, nor was his title undis- 
 puted. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign 
 with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in later years he had 
 to withstand the more formidable opposition of Charles 
 himself. And, chosen as he was by the voice of what we 
 may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed 
 as king in the old royal seat of Compiegne by the hands of 
 the Primate of Sens, the metropolitan of his own Paris,! 
 Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher 
 dignity of the Eastern king. He had to acknowledge 
 himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at 
 Arnulfs hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman 
 Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.J 
 
 * Aimon of Fleury, de Regibus Francorum (Pertz, ix. 374) : " Karolus, qui 
 Simplex postea est dictus, in cunis sevuni ageus, patre orbatus remansit. 
 Cujus setatein Franeiae primores incongruam, ut erat, exercendse dominationis 
 arbltrati, maxime quum jam recidivi Nortmannorum nuntiarentur motus, 
 concilium de summis ineunt rebus. Supererant duo filii Kotberti ; senior Odo 
 dicebatur, Rotbertus alter, patrem nomine referens. Ex his majorem natu 
 Odonem Franci, licet reluctantem, tutorem pueri regnique elegere guberiia- 
 torem, qui mente benignus et reijjublicse hostes arcendo strenue prsefuit, et 
 l>arvulum optime fovit, atque adolescenti et sua repetenti patienter regna 
 reludit, a quo parte regni redonatus quo advixit tempore hostibus terribilis 
 eique semper exstitit fidelis." This account leaves out all mention of Charles 
 the Fat, as is done also in the Historia Francorum Senonen«is (Pertz, ix. 365) : 
 " Post hsec defunctus est Hludovicus rex Francorum, filius Karoli Calvi, 
 relinquens filium suum parvulum, Karolum nomine, qui Simplex appellatur, 
 cum regno in custodia Odonis principis. Eo tempore gens incredula Nor- 
 mannorum per Gallias sese difFudit, csedibus, incendiis, atque omni crudelitatis 
 gtnere debacchata. Deinde Franci, Buigundiones, et Aquitanenses proceres, 
 congregati in unum, Odonem principem elegerunt sibi in regem." Alberic of 
 Trois Fontaines, on the other hand, speaks of Charles the Simple as intrusted 
 to the care of Odo by Charles the Fat. 
 
 t Ann. Ved. 888. 
 
 + Ibid.: " Odo rex Rends civitatem contra misses Arnulfi perrexit, qui ei 
 coronam, ut ferunt, misit, quam in ecclesia Dei genitricis in natali sancti 
 Briccii capiti impositam, ab omni populo rex adclamatur." Cf. Ann. Fuld, 
 
 K
 
 242 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. [Essay 
 
 Still the Count had become a king ; the city which his 
 stout heart and arm had so well defended had become 
 a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its 
 king was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of 
 shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between 
 Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, 
 had still to follow. But the great step had been taken ; 
 there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. 
 The city which by its own great deeds had become the 
 cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, had now won 
 its fitting place as their head. The longest and most 
 unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun 
 to reisrn. And it had beffun to reio-n, because the first man 
 of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown 
 as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled. 
 
 But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the 
 treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the 
 siege, but they were left at libert}^ to harry Burgundy and 
 other lands. The citizens of Paris however steadfastly re- 
 fused to allow them to pass up the Seine ; so the Northmen 
 ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as un- 
 paralleled.* They saw, we are told, that the city could not 
 be taken ; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, 
 and set sail at a point on the river above the city.f While 
 the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were 
 
 888-895 ; Regino, 895. Aniulf was not crowned Emperor till 896. An 
 amusing perversion of this confirmation by Arniilf will be found in Alberic 
 des Trois Fontaines (8SS), who turns it into a confirniaiiou b}' Cliarles the 
 Fat: " Normanni, fugati a civitate Parisian, Henonas venerunt, quorum 
 timore Waltherus Senonensis archiepiscopu.s unxit Odonem in regem, ut exiret 
 contra cos. Fuit enim i«te Odo frater ex niatre supra dicti Hiigonis abbatis, 
 filii Karoli niagni ex regina ; unde aliqua erat ratio quod ei in tutela rcgni 
 Kuccessit. Pdtuit igitur fieri, ut primo ungeretur ab archiepiscopo, postea 
 confirmaretur, quod factum erat a memorato imperatoie Karolo." 
 
 * Kegino, 888 : '' Nordmantii, qui Parisiorum urbem obsiilebant, miram et 
 inauditam rem, non solum nostra, sed etiani superiore atate fccerunt." 
 
 t Ibid. : " Qnum civitatem inexpugnabilem esse persensissent, omni virtute 
 oumique ii'genio laborare copperunt, quatenus urbe post tergum relicta clas- 
 sem cum omnibus copiis per Sequanam sursum possent evehere, et sic Hion- 
 na.m fluvium ingredi(.nies, Burgundia; fines absque obstaculo penetrarent."
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 213 
 
 arising and were being struggled for by rival kings, the 
 Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked ;* 
 after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, 
 the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of 
 money, f Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, 
 stood a siege ; but, after the death of their defender, the 
 citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the 
 Northmen ; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were 
 massacred. % By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the 
 Northmen, after their retreat from Sens, had made another 
 attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the 
 valiant citizens. § The King now came to what was now 
 his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the 
 neighbourhood to secure it from future attacks. || Yet, 
 when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the 
 autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the 
 common means of deliverance. The new king, the first 
 Parisian king, bought off the threatened attack by the 
 payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by 
 land and sea to ravage the Constantine peninsula, the land 
 which, a generation or two later, was to become the special 
 land of the converted Northmen.^ 
 
 Paris was at last secured against Scandinavian attack by 
 
 * Ann. Ved. 886. + Ibid. J Ibid. 
 
 § Kegino, 889 : " Nordmanni a Senonica urbe recedentes, denuo Parisius 
 cum omnibus copiis devenerunt. Et quum illis descensus fluminis a civibus 
 omnino inhiberetur, rursus castra ponunt, civitatem totis viribu.s oppugnant, 
 sed, Deo opem ferente, nihil prEevalent." 
 
 11 Ann. Ved. 888 : " Circa autumni vero tempera Odo rex, adunato exercitu, 
 Parisius venit ; ibique castra metatus est prope civitatem, ne iterum ipsa 
 obsiiieretur." 
 
 ^ Regino, 890: "Civibus qui continuis operiim ac vigiliarum laburibus 
 indurueraut, et assiduis bellorum conflictibus exercitati erant, audaciter reluc- 
 tantibus, Nordmanni, ilesperatis rebus, naves i)er terram cum magno sudore 
 trahunt, et sic alveiim repetentes, Britanniae finibus classem trajiciuiit. Quod- 
 dam castelluin in Constantiensi territorio, quod ad sanctum Loth dicebatur, 
 obsident." The action of Odo comes from Ann. Ved. 889 : " Contra quos 
 [Danos] Odo re.K venit ; et nuntiis intercurrentibus, munerati ab eo regressi 
 a Parisius, relictaque Sequana, per mare navale iter atque per terram pcdestre 
 tt equestre agentes in territorio Constantiae civitatis circa castrum sancti Laudi 
 sedem sibi faciunt, ipsumque castrum oppugnare non cessant." 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE EAliLY SIEGES OE PARIS. [Espay 
 
 the establishment of the duchy of Normandy. By the 
 Treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Hrolf Ganger (changed in 
 French and Latin mouths into Rou and Rollo) became the 
 man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away 
 from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the 
 Simple, the restored Karling, was now King ; Robert, the 
 brother of Odo, was Duke of the French ; and there can be 
 no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much 
 by the dismemberment of the Parisian duchy and by the 
 establishment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound 
 by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the 
 Rouen duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of 
 mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the 
 immediate north of her — a neighbour who shut her off from 
 the sea and from the mouth of her own great river — 
 a neighbour with whom she might have her wars as with 
 other neio^hbours — but a neiafhbour who had embraced her 
 creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, 
 and who formed part of the same general political system 
 as herself. The shifting relations between France and 
 Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form 
 no part of our subject, but it will be well to bear in mind 
 that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through 
 the Norman possession of the lower course of the Seine. 
 
 It follows then that the next besiegers of Paris came from 
 a different quarter ; and these next besiegers came from the 
 quarter from which its last foreign besiegers have come. 
 In the course of the tenth century, the century of so many 
 shifting relations between Rouen, Laon, and Paris, while 
 the rivalry between King and Duke sometimes broke forth 
 and sometimes slumbered, Paris was twice attacked or 
 threatened by German armies. Botli the first and the 
 second Otto at least appeared in the near neighbourhood 
 of the city. In 946, the first and greatest of the name, not 
 yet Emperor in formal rank, but already exercising an 
 Imperial pre-eminence over the kingdoms into which the 
 Frankish Empire had split up, entered the French duchy
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 245 
 
 with two royal allies or vassals in his train. One was the 
 Burgundian King Conrad, lord of the realm between the 
 Rhone and the Alps ; the other was the nominal King of 
 Paris and its Duke, Lewis, alike the heir of all the Karlings 
 and the descendant of our own Alfred, whose nominal 
 reign over the Western kingdom was in truth well nigh 
 confided to the single fortress of Compiegne. Among the 
 shifting relations of the princes of the Western kingdom, 
 Hugh Duke of the French and Richard Duke of the 
 Normans were now allied asrainst their Carolinofian over- 
 lord. He had lately been their prisoner, and he had been 
 restored to freedom and kingship only by the surrender of 
 the cherished possession of his race, the hill and tower of 
 Laon. Otto, the mighty lord of the Eastern realm, felt 
 himself called on to step in when Teutonic interests in the 
 Western lands seemed to be at their last gasp. The three 
 kings united their forces against the two dukes, and 
 marched against the capitals both of France and Nor- 
 mandy. But never were the details of a campaign told 
 in a more contradictory way. There can be little doubt 
 that Rouen was besieged, and besieged unsuccessfully. 
 Thus much at least the German historian allows ; * in 
 Norman hands the tale swells into a magnificent legend.f 
 What happened at Paris is still less clear. Laon, for the 
 moment a French possession, was besieged unsuccessfully, 
 and Rheims successfully.^ Then, after a vain attempt on 
 
 * Widukind, iii. 4: " Exinde, collecta ex onini exercitu electorum militum 
 manu, Rothun Danorum urbem adiit, bed difficultate locorum, asperioriqiie 
 hieme ingruente, plaga eos quidem magna percussit ; incolumi exercitu, in- 
 fecto negotio, post tres menses Saxoiiiam regressus est." 
 
 t See Dudo's account in Duchesne, Rer. Norm. Sciiptt., 130-134; or 
 Palgrave, ii. 562-578. 
 
 X Richer, ii. 54 : " Tres itaque reges, in unum collecti, primi certaminis 
 laborem Lauduno inferendum decernunt. Et sine mora, illo exercituin 
 ducunt. Quum ergo ex adverse moiitis eininentiam viderent, et oiiini parte 
 urbis situm explorarent, cognito incassum sese ibi certaturos, ab ea urbe dis- 
 cedunt et Romos adoriuntur." He then goes on to describe the taking of 
 Rheims. This is confirmed by Widukind, iii. 3: "Rex cum exercitu Lug- 
 dunum adiit, eamque armis tentavit." He places the taking of Rheims after
 
 246 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 Senlis, the combined armies of the kings of Aachen, Aries, 
 and Compiegne drew near to the banks of the Seine. 
 Flodoard, the canon of Rheims, the discreetest writer of 
 his age, leaves out all mention of Paris and its duke ; 
 he tells us only that the kings crossed the river and 
 harried the whole land except the cities.* The Saxon 
 Widukind tells us how his king, at the head of thirty- 
 two legions, every man of whom wore a straw hat,f 
 besieged Duke Hugh in Paris, and duly performed his 
 devotions at the shrine of Saint Denis. J From these two 
 entries we are safe in inferring that, if Paris was now in 
 any strict sense besieged, it was at least not besieged 
 successfully. But Richer, the monk of Saint Remigius, one 
 of the liveliest tale-tellers of any age, is ready with one of 
 those minute stories which, far more than the entries of 
 more solemn annahsts, help to bring us face to face with 
 the men of distant times. The kings were drawing near to 
 the Seine. In order that the enemy might be cut off from 
 all means of crossing, the Duke of the French, Hugh the 
 Great, had bidden all vessels, great and small, to be taken 
 away from the right bank of the river for the space of 
 twenty miles. But his design was hindered by a cunning 
 stratagem of the invaders. Ten young men, who had 
 made up their mind to brave every risk,§ went in advance 
 
 the attack on Paiis, and afterwards, perhaps inadvertently, speaks of Laon as 
 if it had been taken. LiujiJumwi is of course a mistake for Laadiumm. 
 
 * Flodoard, 946 (Pertz, iii. 393) : " Sicque trans Sequanam contendentes, 
 loca quisque prseter civitates gravibus atterunt deprredatioiiibus." 
 
 + Widukind (iii. 2) records Otto's an-*wer to a boastful message of Hugh : 
 " Ad quod rex famosuin satis reddit respoiisum ; sibi vero fore tantam 
 multitudinem pileorum ex culmis contextorum, quos ei praesentari oporteret, 
 qnantam nee ipse nee pater suua umquam videret. Et revera, qmini esset 
 niagnus valde exercitus, triginta sc'licet duarum legionuni, non est inventus 
 qui hujusmodi non uteretur tegumento, nisi raiissimus quisque." On these 
 straw hats see Pertz's note. 
 
 * Widukind (iii. 3), innnediatcly after the attempt on Koueu, adds : " Inde 
 J'arisius perrexit, Hugonenique ibi obsedit, nieinoriaui (juoque Dionysii niar- 
 tyris digne honorans veneratus est." 
 
 § Richer, ii. 57 : " Decern numero jUvenes quibus consianti mente fixum 
 erat omne periculuin subire." He then describes their pilgrim's garb.
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. 247 
 
 of the army of the kings, having laid aside their warhke 
 garb and provided themselves with the staves and wallets 
 of pilgrims. Protected by this spii-itual armour, they 
 passed unhurt and unchallenged through the whole city of 
 Paris, and crossed over both bridges to the left bank of the 
 river. There, not far from the suburb of Saint German, 
 dwelled a miller, who kept the mills which were turned by 
 the waters of the Seine.* He willingly received the comely 
 youths who professed to have crossed from the other side of 
 the river to visit the holy places. They repaid his hospitality 
 with money, and moreover laid in a stock of wine, over 
 which they spent a jovial day. The genial drink opened 
 the heart and the lips of the host, and he free'y answered 
 the various questions of his guests. He was not only a miller ; 
 he was also the Duke's head fisherman, and he moreover 
 turned an occasional penny by letting out vessels for hire. 
 The Germans praised the kindness which he had already 
 shown them, which made them go on to ask for further 
 favours. They had still other holy places to pray at, but 
 they were wearied with their journey. They promised 
 him a reward of ten shillings — no small sum in the tenth 
 century — if he would carry them across to the other side. 
 He answered that, by the Duke's orders, all vessels were 
 kept on the left bank to cut off the means of crossing 
 from the Germans. They told hira that it might be done 
 in the night without discovery. Eager for his reward, he 
 agreed. He received the money, and, accompanied by 
 a boy, his stepson, he guided them to the spot where 
 seventy-two ships lay moored to the river-side. The boy 
 was presently thrown into the river ; the miller was seized 
 
 * Richer, ii. 57 : " Ille furlnariuin sese memorat, at illi prosecuti, siquid 
 nmplius pussit inteiToi;ant. Ille etiani piscatorum ducis magistrum se asserit, 
 et ex navium accouimodatione questum aliquem .sibi adesse." This miller of 
 the Seine appears also in a story of Geoffrey Grisegonelle in the Gesta Con- 
 suliim Andegavensium (D'Achei-y, Spicilegium, iii. 247) : "In crastino consul 
 furtivus viator, egreditur, non longe a Parisiaca urbe burgum sancti German! 
 devitans, a molendinario qui molendinos Secanae custodiebat, date ei suo 
 habitu, uavigium sibi parari impetravit."
 
 248 rilE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 \>y the throat, aud compelled by threats of instant death to 
 loose the ships. He obeyed, and was presently bound and 
 put on board one of the vessels. Each of the Germans now 
 entered a ship and steered it to the right bank. The whole 
 body then returned in one of the vessels, and each again 
 brought across another. By going through this process 
 eight times, the whole seventy-two ships were brought 
 safely to the right bank. By daybreak the army of the 
 kings had reached the river. They crossed in safety, for all 
 the men of the country had fled, and the Duke himself 
 had sought shelter at Orleans. The land was harried as far 
 as the Loire, but of the details of the siege of Rouen and of 
 the siege of Paris, if any siege there was, we hear not 
 a word.* 
 
 The military results of the first German invasion of France 
 and Normandy were certainly not specially glorious. Laon, 
 Senlis, Paris, and Rouen were, to say the least, not taken. 
 All that was done was to take Rheims and to ravage 
 a large extent of open country. But in a political point 
 of view the expedition was neither unsuccessful nor unim- 
 portant. From that time the influence of the Eastern 
 king in the aflairs of the Western kinofdom becomes of 
 paramount weight, and under his protection, the King of 
 the West-Franks, king of Compiegne and soon again to 
 be king of Laon, holds a far higher place than before in 
 the face of his mighty vassals at Paris and Rouen. The 
 next German invasion, forty years later, found quite 
 another state of thinj^s in the Western kingdom. The 
 relations between King Lothar and Duke Hugh Capet 
 were wholly diflferent from the relations which had existed 
 between their fathers. King Lewis and Duke Hugh the 
 Great. No less different were the relations between Lothar 
 
 * All tliat Richer (ii. 58) tells us is that Otto's troops, after crossing the 
 river, " terra recepti incendiis pra^disque vehementibus totain regioiiem usque 
 Ligerim deiiopulati sunt. Post hsec feruntur in terrain piratarum ac solo tenus 
 devastant. Sic(iue regis injuriam atrociter ulti, iter ad sua retorquent." The 
 " terra piratarum " is of course Normandy.
 
 TUT.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 249 
 
 and Otto the Second from those which had existed between 
 their fathers Lewis and Otto the Great. The elder Otto 
 had been a protector, first to his brother-in-law and then 
 to his nephew ; the younger Otto was only a rival in the 
 eyes of his cousin.* On the other hand, it was the policy 
 of Hugh Capet to keep up the dignity of the crown which 
 he meant one day to wear, and not to appear as an open 
 enemy of the dynasty which he trusted quietly to sup- 
 plant. For a while then the rivalry between Laon and 
 Paris was hushed, and the friendship of Paris carried with 
 it the friendship of Eouen and Angers. Thus, while Lewis, 
 a prince than whom none ever showed a loftier or more 
 gallant spirit, was hunted from one fortress or one prison 
 to another, his son, a man in every way his inferior, was 
 really able to command the forces of the whole land north 
 of the Loire. Again the king of Gaul looked Rhine- 
 wards ; the border land of Lotharingia kindled the am- 
 bition of a prince who might deem himself king both of 
 Laon and Paris. That border land, after many changes to 
 and fro, had now become an acknowledged portion of the 
 Eastern kingdom. But a sudden raid might win it for the 
 king of the West, and the Duke of Paris would be nothing 
 loth to help to make so great an addition to the kingdom 
 which he meant one day to make his own. The raid was 
 made ; the hosts of the King and the Duke crossed the 
 frontier, and burst suddenly on the Imperial dwelling-place 
 of Aachen. The Emperor, with his pregnant wife, the 
 Greek princess Theophano, had to flee before the approach 
 of his cousin, and Lothar had the glory of turning the 
 brazen eagle which his great forefather had placed on the 
 roof of his palace in such a direction as no longer to be 
 a standing menace to the Western realm. f As in a more 
 
 * Lothar was the son of Lewis and of Gerberga the sister of Otto the 
 Gieat ; Lothar and the younger Otto were therefore cousins. 
 
 f Richer, iii. 71 : " ^ream aquilam quae in vertice palatii a Karolo Magno 
 ac si volans fixa erat, in Vulturnum converterunt. Nam Germani earn in 
 Favonium converterant, subtiliter significantes GaHos suo equitatu quandoque 
 posse devinci." h"0 Thietmar of Merseburg, iii. 6 (Pertz, iii. 761), records the
 
 250 THE EARLY SIEGES OE PARIS. [Essay 
 
 recent warfare, the Gaul began with child's play, and the 
 German made answer in terrible earnest. The dishonour 
 done to their prince and his realm stirred the heart of all 
 Germany, and thirty thousand horsemen — implying no 
 doubt a far larger number of warriors of lower degree — 
 gathered round their Emperor to defend and avenge the 
 violated Teutonic soil. Lothar made no attempt to defend 
 his immediate dominions ; he fled to crave the help of his 
 mighty vassal at Paris.* The German hosts marched, 
 seemingly without meeting any resistance, from their own 
 frontier to the banks of the Seine. Everywhere the land 
 was harried ; cities were taken or surrendered ; but the pious 
 Emperor, the Advocate of the Universal Church, ever}'- 
 where showed all due honour to the saints an<i their holy 
 places. t In primatial Rheims, in our own days to be the 
 temporary home of another German king, the German 
 Coesar paid his devotions at the shrine of Saint Remigius, 
 the saint who had received an earlier German conqueror still 
 into the fold of Christ. + At Soissons Saint Medard received 
 equal w^orship. and, when the church of Saint Bathild at 
 Chelles was burned without the Emperor's knowledge, a 
 large sum was devoted to its restoration. But if the shrines 
 of the saints were reverenced, the palaces of the rival king- 
 were especially marked out for destruction, Attigny was 
 burned, and nearly equal ruin fell upon Compiegne itself. 
 Meanwhile the King had fled to Etampes, in the immediate 
 
 turning of the eagle and adds : " Hsec stat in orieutali parte doinfls, niorisqtie 
 fuit oniniuni hiinc locum possidentium, ad sua earn vertere regna." The raid 
 on Aachen is also described by lialilric in the Gesta Episcoporum Caniera- 
 censiuni, i. 96 (Pertz, vii. 440). He always .speaks of Lotliar as " rex Karlen- 
 .siiim," and of his kingdom as "' partes KarleuNiuni." In Thietmar he is " rex 
 Karolingcrum." S^e above, p. 221. 
 
 * Uicher, iii. 74: "Sic etiam versa vice, Ijothariiim adurgens, eo quod 
 militum copiam non haberet, fluvium Sajuanam transire compulit, et geme- 
 bunduiii ad ducem ire coegit." 
 
 t Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 97 : " Patcrnis moi-ibus inslructus, ecclesias observavit, 
 immo etiam opulentis miineribus dilare potius testimavit." 
 
 + Kicher, iii. 74: "Per fines urbis Kemorum transieus sancto Kemigio 
 mullum honorem exhibuit."
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF EARfS. 251 
 
 territory of the Duke, while Hugh himself was gathering 
 his forces at Paris. At last the German host came within 
 sight of the ducal city. Otto now deemed that he had done 
 enough for vengeance. Ho had shown that the frontiers of 
 Germany were not to be invaded with impunity; he had 
 come to Paris, not to storm or blockade the city, but to 
 celebrate his victorious march with the final triumph of 
 a pious bravado. He sent a message to the Duke to say that 
 on the Mount of Mart^'rs he would sing such a Hallelujah 
 to the martyrs as the Duke and people of Paris had never 
 heard. He performed his vow ; a band of clergy were 
 gathered together on the sacred hill, and the German host 
 sang their Hallelujah in the astonished ears of the men of 
 Paris. This done the mission of Otto was over, and after 
 three days spent within sight of Paris, the Emperor turned 
 him to depart into his own land."^ 
 
 Such, at least, is the tale as told by the admirers of the 
 Imperial devotee. In the hands of the monk of Rheims 
 the story assumes quite another shape, and in the hands of 
 the panegyrist of the house of Anjou it inevitably grows 
 into a legend. f Richer tells us how the Emperor stood for 
 three days on the right bank of the river, while the Duke 
 was gathering his forces on the left ; how a German Goliath 
 challenged any man of France to single combat, and 
 presently fell by the dart of a French, or perhaps Breton, 
 
 * This story comes from Baldric, Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 97 : " Deinde vero ad 
 pompandam victoriaj suae gloriam Hugoni, qui Parisius residebat, per lega- 
 tionem deiiuntiaiis, quod in tautam sublimitatem Alleluia faceret et decantari 
 in quiinta non audierit, accitis quam pluribus clericis Alleluia te martyviim in 
 loco qui dicitur Mons Martyrum, iu tantnm elatis vocibus ilecantari praecepit, 
 nt attonitis auribus ipse Hugo et omnis Pari.siorum plebs miraretur." The 
 " Mon.s Martyrum" is, we need .scarcely say, Montmartre. 
 
 f Gest. Cons. Andeg. vi. 2. Very little can be made of a story in which the 
 invasion of Otto is placed in the reign of Pobert, the son of Hugh Capet, who 
 is represented as King, his father being still only Duke. The expedition of 
 Otto is thus described : " Otto siquidem rex Alemannorum cum nniversis 
 copiis suis Saxonum et Danorum Montem Morentiaci obsederat et urbi Parisius 
 niultos assultus ignominiose faciebat." Geoffrey Grisegonelle couies to the 
 rescue with three thousand men.
 
 252 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 David ;* how Otto, seeing the hosts which were gathering 
 against him, while his own forces were daily lessening, deemed 
 that it was his wisest course to retreat.f As for the details 
 of the retreat, our stories are still more utterly contradictoiy. 
 One loyal French writer makes Lothar, at the head of the 
 whole force of France and Burgundy, chase the flying 
 Emperor to the banks of the Maes, whose waters swallowed 
 up many of the fugitives.! The monk of Rheims transfers 
 the scene of the German mishap to the nearer banks of the 
 Aisne.§ while the Maes is with him the scene of a friendly 
 conference between the two kings, in which Lothar, dis- 
 trusting his vassal at Paris, deems it wiser to purchase the 
 good will of the Emperor by the cession of all his claims 
 upon Lotharingia.|| The most striking details come from 
 the same quarter from which we get the picture of the 
 Hallelujah on Montmartre. The Emperor, deeming that he 
 had had enough of vengeance, went away on the approach 
 of winter : ^ he reached the Aisne and proposed to encamp 
 
 * Richer, iii. 76, The name of the French champion is Ivo. 
 
 + Ibid. iii. 77 : " Otto, Gallorum exercitiim seiisim coUigi noii ignorans, siuim 
 etiam tarn longo itinere qiiam hostiuna incursu posse minui sciens, redire dis- 
 poiiit, et datis signis ca.stra ainoverimt." 
 
 X Rudolf Glaber, i. 3. His way of telling the whole story sliould be noticed : 
 " Lotharius .... lit erat agilis corpore, et validiis, sensuque integer, tentavit 
 redintegrare regnnm, ut olim fiierat." This is explained in the next sentence: 
 " Nam partem ipsius regni superiorem, quae etiam Lotharii regnum cognomi- 
 natur, Otto rex Saxonuiii, inimo imperator Romanorum [this means Otto the 
 Great, ' primus ac maximus Otto '], ad suum, id est Saxonum, inclinaverat 
 regnum." The retreat is thus described : " Lotharius ex omni Francia atque 
 Burgundia niilitari manu in unum coacta, persecutus est Oitonis exercitum 
 usque ill fluvium Mosani, multosque ex ipsis fugientibus in eodem flumine 
 contigit interire." 
 
 § Richer, iii. 77 : " Axonte fluvii vada festinantes alii transmiaerant, alii 
 vero ingrediebaiit quum e.xercitus a rege missus a tergo festinantibus afFuit. 
 Cjui reperti fuere mox gladiis hostium fusi sunt, plures quidem at nullo 
 nomine clari." 
 
 II Ibid. iii. 80, 8i : " Eelgicte pars quse in lite fuerat in jus Ottonis transiit." 
 Rudolf Glaber clearly means the same thing when he says, " Dehinc vero 
 uterque cessavit, Lothario minus explente quod cupiit." 
 
 ^ (iest. Ep. Cam. i. 98 : " Qui [Otto] quum satis exhausta ultione congruam 
 vicissitudinein se rependisae putaret, ad hihorna oportere se concedere ratus, 
 inde simul revocato equitatu, circa festivitatem sancti Andrese, jam hieme
 
 VIIT.J THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS 253 
 
 on its banks. But by the advice of Count Godfrey of 
 Hennegau, who warned him of the dangers of a stream 
 specially liable to floods, he crossed with the greater part of 
 his army, leaving on the dangerous side only a small party 
 with the baggage.* It was on this party that Lothar, 
 hasteniDg on with a small force, fell suddenly, while a sudden 
 rise of the stream hindered either attack or defence on the 
 part of the main armies. f Otto then sends a boat across 
 with a challenge, proposing that one or the other should 
 allow his enemy to cross without hindrance, and that the 
 possession of the disputed lands should be decided by the 
 result of the battle which should follow.:]: '-Nay, rather," 
 cried Count Geoffrey, probably the famous Grisegonelle of 
 Anjou, " let the two kings fight out their differences in their 
 own persons, and let them spare the blood of their fol- 
 lowers."§ " Small then, it seems," retorted Count Godfrey 
 in wrath, •' is the value that j^ou put upon your king. At 
 least, it shall never be said that German warriors stood 
 tamely by while their Emperor was putting his life in 
 jeopardy." II At this moment, when we are looking for 
 
 subeunte, reditum disposuit ; lemensoque itinere, bono successu gestaium 
 rerum gaudens super Axonam fluvium castra metari prsecepit." 
 
 * Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 98 : " Paucis tamen famulorum remanentibus, qui re- 
 trogradientes — nam sarcinas bellicse supellectilis convectabaiit — prae fatigatione 
 oneris, tenebris siquidem jam noctis incumbentibus, transitum in ctastino 
 differre arbitrati sunt." 
 
 •[ Ibid. : " Ipsa etenim nocte in tantum excrevit alveolus, ut difficultate 
 importuosi litturis neuter alteri inanum conferre potuerit ; hoc ita sane, credo, 
 Dei voluntate disposito, ne strages innumerabilis ederetur utrimque." 
 
 X Ibid. The prize was to be, "Commissa invicem jjugna, cui Deus annueret 
 laureatusregni imperio potiretur." This challenge again reminds us of Brihtuoth. 
 Compare the references in History of the Norman Conquest, i. 271, note i. 
 
 § Ibid.: "Quid tot ab utraque parte caedentur? Veniaut ambo reges in 
 unnm tantuminr do, nobisque procul spectantibus, summi periculi soli subeuntes 
 una conferantur, unoque tuso cateri reservati victori subjiciantur." 
 
 II Ibid. : " Semper vestrum regem vobis vileni haberi audivimus non cre- 
 dentes ; nunc autem vobismetip^is fateiitibus, credere fas est. Numquam 
 nobis quiescentibus noster imperator pugnabit, numquam nobis sospitibus in 
 picelio periclitabitur." Compare the proposal of the Argeians for a judicial 
 combat to decide the right to tlie disputed laud of Thyrea ; Thuc. v. ^i,rois Se 
 AaKfSaifj.oi'ioii to fiiv irpSirov kSuKU fxwp'ta tivai ravra, much as it seemed to 
 Count Godfrey.
 
 254 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay 
 
 some scene of exciting personal interest, the curtain sud- 
 denly falls, and our most detailed narrator turns away 
 from the fortunes of emperors and kings to occupy him- 
 self with his immediate subject, the acts of the bishops 
 of Cambray.'^ 
 
 Putting all our accounts together, it is hard to say 
 whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of 
 Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design 
 was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished 
 to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany 
 could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly suc- 
 ceeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on 
 the German side. King and Duke acted together during 
 the campaign ; but each, in its course, learned to distrust 
 the other, and each found it expedient to seek the friend- 
 ship of the Emperor as a check against his rival, f And 
 more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were 
 formally acknowledged by Lothar, and were not again 
 disputed for some ages. J 
 
 This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, 
 as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a 
 forestalling of the events of the last and the present year 
 of wonders. But it is a campaign which marks a stage 
 in the history of Europe. It is the first war that we 
 can speak of as a war waged between Germany and any- 
 thing which has even the feeblest claim to be called an 
 united France. When Otto the Great marched against 
 Paris and Rouen, he was fio^htinfj in the cause of the 
 
 * His comment (Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 99) is: " Hoc igitnr modo regibus inter 
 se discordantibus, jam dictu difficile est quot prucellis factionum intoiiantibus 
 ab ipsis suis vassallis afficitnr Tetlido episi-'opus." 
 
 + Richer, iii. 78. Lotliar debates whether he shall oppose Otto or make 
 friends with him : " Si staret contra, cogitabat possibile esse ducem opibus 
 corrumpi, et in amicitiam Ottoiiis relabi. Si veconciiiaretur hosti, id esse 
 accelerandum, ne dux prae^^entiret, et ne ipse quoque vellet i-econciliari. 
 Talibus in dies afficiebatur, et exinde his duobus Ducem susjiectuni habuit." 
 See also the story of Hugh's dealings with Otto (S2-85). 
 
 J So Thietinar of Merseburg, iii. 6: " lleversus inile imj)er.ator triumphali 
 gloria, tantum liostibus incussit terrorem \it numquam post talia incipere 
 auderent ; recompensatumque est iis quicquid dedecoris piius intulere nostris."
 
 YIIL] THE EARLY SIEGES OF l\iR IS. 255 
 
 King of the West-Franks, the lawful overlord of the 
 dukes against whom he was fighting. When Otto the 
 Second marched against Paris, he was fiofhtino: asfainst 
 king and dukes alike, and king and dukes between them 
 had at their call all the lands of the strictly French 
 speech, the tongue of oil. Aquitaine, and the other lands 
 of the tongue of oc, had of course no part or lot in the 
 matter ; then, as in later times, there were no Frenchmen 
 south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was 
 in this sense the lii-st German invasion of France, it was 
 also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial 
 armies have since that day entered French territory at 
 all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the 
 thirteenth century at Bouvines, and the armies of Charles 
 the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. 
 But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and 
 rebellious vassal, was French only by the most distant 
 external allegiance ; and Provence, in the days of Charles 
 the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and 
 the Impeiial claims over it were not yet w^ioUy forgotten. 
 Botli invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, 
 and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election 
 of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France 
 and of all the vassals of the French kingdom, the city 
 has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and 
 foreign, to the Capetian crown, but it has never, till our 
 own century, been assailed by the armies of the old 
 Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was 
 followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called 
 up the memories alike of Otto of Germany and of Henry 
 of England. The fall of the second Buonaparte was fol- 
 lowed before our own eyes by the siege of Paris, the 
 crowning-point of a war whose first stages suggest the 
 campaign of the second Otto, but which, for the mighty 
 interests at stake, for the long endurance of besieger and 
 besieged, rather suggests the great siege at the hands 
 of Sigefrith. But all alike are witnesses to the position
 
 256 THE EARLY SIEGES OE PARIS. 
 
 which the great city of the Seine has held ever since the 
 days of Odo. Paris is to France, not merely its greatest 
 cit}^ the seat of its government, the centre of its society 
 and literature ; it is France itself ; it is, as it has been 
 so long, its living heart and its surest bulwark. It is 
 the city which has created the kingdom, and on the life 
 of the city the life of the kingdom seems to hang. What 
 is to be its fate?^ Is some wholly different position in 
 the face of France and of Europe to be the future doom 
 of that memorable city ? Men will look on its possible 
 humiliation with very different eyes. Some may be dis- 
 posed to take up the strain of the Hebrew prophet, and 
 to say, '• How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city 
 ceased ! " Others will lament the home of elegance and 
 pleasure, and what calls itself civilization. We will, in 
 taking leave of Paris, old and new, wind up with the 
 warning, this time intelligible enough to be striking, of 
 her own poet : — 
 
 " Francia cur latitas vires, narra, peto, priscas, 
 Te majora triumphasti quibus atque jugiisti 
 Regna tibi ? Propter vitium triplexque piaclum. 
 Quippe supercilium, Veneris quoque feda venustas, 
 Ac vestis preciosiB elatio te tibi tollunt ! 
 Afrcdite adeo, saltein quo arcere parentes -j- 
 Haud valeas lecto, nionachas Domino neque sacras ; 
 Vol quid naturain, siquideni tibi sat mulieres, 
 Despicis, occurrant? Agitainus fas<[ue nefasque. 
 Aurea sublimem mordet tibi fibula vesteui, 
 Efficis et calidaiu Tyria carnem preciosa. 
 Non prseter chlaniydem auratam cupis indusiari 
 Tegmine, decu:'ata tuos geuimis niai zona 
 Nulla fovet luinbos, aurique pedes nisi virgse, 
 Non habitus humilis, non te valet abdeie vestis. 
 HiEC facis ; hsec aliae faciunt gentes ita nullse ; 
 Haec tria ni linquas, vires regnunique paternum 
 Omne scelua super his Cliristi, cujus quoque vates, 
 Nasci testaiitur bibli ; fuge, Francia, ab istis!" 
 
 * [In Januaiy 1871 I did not foresee — who did ? — a second siege of Paris — 
 still less a burning of Paris — at the hands of Frenchmen.] 
 ■)■ That is, simply kinswomen ; parentes in the French sense.
 
 (257) 
 
 IX. 
 
 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY * 
 
 Op all the many odd freaks of diplomacy which we have 
 seen of late, perhaps the very oddest was when an Austrian 
 statesman last year defended the possession of Lombardy 
 by his master on the ground that that province was " a 
 fief of the German Empire." Considering that there never 
 was such a thing as " the German Empire " — considering 
 also that, if there was, Lombardy never was a fief of it f — 
 considering again that Francis Joseph of Lorraine is in 
 no sense the heir or successor of the old German kings — 
 considering also that, if he were, it would by no means 
 prove his right to any particular fief of their kingdom — 
 considering all this, the statement, whether as a historical 
 assertion or a political argument, is certainly remarkable 
 in all its parts. We do not undertake to decide whether 
 the diplomatist who made it was really so strangely igno- 
 rant himself, or whether he was, after the manner of 
 diplomatists, merely practising upon the presumed igno- 
 rance of others. In either case it shows the reckless way 
 in which people allow themselves to turn the facts of 
 past times into political arguments about present afiairs. 
 If it is true in any sense that " Lombardy is a fief of the 
 German Empire," it is equally true of all Germany, of 
 
 * [This Essay appeared in January 1861, and I keep the political allusions 
 as thev were then written. It is curious and pleasant to see all that ten years 
 have done. 
 
 The peculiar title was chosen, because the Essay dealt mainly with the 
 Italian side of Frederick, and also to show people that there had been Kings 
 of Italy.] [1871.] 
 
 f [That is to say, Lombardy was a fief of the Eoman Empire .and of the 
 Kingdom of Italy, not of the Kingdom of Germany.] [1871.]
 
 2.-8 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KISG OF ITALY. [EsfAY 
 
 the greater part of Italy and Felgium, of nearly all Hol- 
 land, all Switzerland, and about a third of France. If 
 Francis Joseph is lawful mastei* of Lombardy, because 
 Lombardy was "a fief of the German Empire," his claim 
 must be equally good to be absolute lord of all the coun- 
 tries which we have reckoned up, to say nothing of vaguer 
 claims to superiority over Poland, Denmark, England, and 
 the world in general. 
 
 We have mentioned this diplomatic freak as an instance 
 of the way in which the ancient relations of Germany 
 and Italy may be misrepresented or misconceived from 
 the German side. Not long ago we fell in with an Italian 
 novel, fairly interesting, but not very remarkable, which 
 shows how they may be misrepresented or misconceived 
 from the Italian side. This novel, Foleheflo Alalef^pina by 
 name, dealt with the days and the deeds of — since the 
 great Charles himself — the greatest German who ever set 
 foot upon Italian soil. Now most certainly any one who 
 drew his idea of Frederick Barbarossa fiom that story 
 alone w^ould set him down as having as little business 
 in Italy as Francis Joseph has at Venice and Cjacow, 
 or Louis-Napoleon at Rome and Chambery. It would 
 never occur to a reader of Fule/teUo j\Iak\y)iHa that Frede- 
 rick, German as he was, was the elected, crow^ned, and 
 anointed King of Italy and Emperor of the Romans, a 
 king whose sovereignty was acknowledged in theory by 
 all Italy, and was zealously asserted in act by a large 
 portion of the Italian nation. 
 
 It is most desirable, for the sake both of the present 
 and the past, that misconceptions of this sort should not 
 be allowed to confuse the right understanding of either. 
 We undertook in a former Essay to show that Louis- 
 Napoleon Buonaparte was not the successor of Charles 
 the Great. We now assert, with equal confidence, that 
 Francis Joseph of Lorraine is just as little the successor 
 of the Saxon Ottos or the Swabian Fredericks. The legal 
 and traditional riijhts of the old Teutonic kings have
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITAL Y. 259 
 
 absolutely nothing in common with the brute force of 
 the modern Austrian tyranny. Let this be well under- 
 stood on both sides, and it will be impossible to dress 
 up an imposture of yesterday in the borrowed plumes 
 of a fallen but still venerable power, and it will be need- 
 less to pervert and depreciate a great cause and a great 
 man, because, at a superficial glance, his career seems to 
 run counter to the cause which has the sympathy of every 
 generous heart of our own day. 
 
 Our immediate business is to give a picture, both per- 
 sonal and political, of Frederick Earbarossa as the greatest 
 and most typical of the German kings of Italy, and therein 
 to show that there is absolutely nothing in common between 
 the position of the old Swabian and that of the modern 
 Austrian. We have chosen Frederick, both as being the 
 most famous name amonor the Teutonic kings, and because 
 he is really the best suited for our purpose. Charles the 
 Great stands by himself, alone and without competitor. 
 He was the founder ; those who came after him were 
 at most his successors. And again, the four centuries 
 which elapsed between Charles and Frederick had greatly 
 altered the position of the world. Charles belongs to the 
 debateable ground between ancient and raedifeval history; 
 Frederick belongs to a century which is the most typical 
 of all the middle ages. In the days of Charles much was 
 still living and practical which in the days of Frederick 
 had become matter of learninof and tradition. Charles was 
 really a Roman Augustus ; he stepped, as naturally as 
 a barbarian Frank could step, into the place of which the 
 female usurper at Byzantium was declared unworthy. 
 Frederick was a real king of Germany, and a king 
 almost equally real of Italy ; but the Imperial title was 
 now little more than a magnificent pageant, to be disputed 
 about by priests and lawyers. In the days of Charles, 
 the Bishop of Rome was as clearly the subject of the 
 Emperor as his rival at Constantinople. In the days of 
 Frederick the Popes had reached that ambiguous condition, 
 
 S 2
 
 260 FBEDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF IT A L T. [Essay 
 
 neither subject nor sovereign, which was in truth the 
 source of their most efficient power. In short, it would 
 require the ingenuity of a French bishop to see any 
 likeness between Charles the Great and anything now 
 on the face of the earth. But Frederick comes near 
 enough to us to be easily misunderstood. In his days 
 the old Francia had vanished. Germany, France, and 
 Italy, in the modern sense of those words, already existed. 
 A King of Germany warring in Italy, now conquering, 
 now conquered, building up with one hand, and pulling 
 down with another, has enough of superficial likeness to 
 phsenomeua of our own times to make it worth while to 
 stop to show the points of real unlikeness. And again, 
 Frederick is the best suited for our purpose of the post- 
 Carolingian Emperors, if only because he is far the best 
 known. Like Charles the Great, he has become a hero 
 of romance : he has become, as it were, the patriarch of 
 a nation, and his memory still lives in the German heart 
 as the impersonation of German unity. Frederick was 
 certainly not personally superior to his predecessors Otto 
 the Great and Henry the Third ; but he has contrived 
 to attract to himself a greater portion of the world's 
 lasting fame. Again, in the reign of Henry the Fourth 
 the chief interest, as far as Italy is concerned, is of an 
 ecclesiastical kind ; in the reign of Frederick the eccle- 
 siastical interest is subordinate to the political. Hilde- 
 brand himself is the arch-antagonist of Henry, but one 
 cannot help looking at Alexander the Third chiefiy as 
 the ally of Milan. Again, Frederick Barbarossa, like all 
 other German kings, and indeed like almost all other 
 men, cannot be compared, in extent and variety of natural 
 gifts, to his wonderful grandson and namesake. But the 
 very genius of Frederick the Second, and the whole cir- 
 cumstances of his life, put him out of all competition. 
 Frederick Barbarossa is essentially a man of a particular 
 age and country ; he is in everything, for good and for 
 evil, a German of the twelfth century. But his grandson
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 261 
 
 can hardly be said to belong to any particular nation. 
 The child of a German father and a Norman mother, 
 born and brought up in his half-Greek, half- Saracen realm 
 of Sicily, the first patron of the newborn speech and 
 civilization of modern Italy, it is hard to say what blood 
 or what culture predominated in him ; but it is clear 
 that the Teutonic element was the weakest of all. In 
 the largeness of his views, in the versatility of his powers, 
 he rises intellectually as far above his grandfather as he 
 sinks beneath him morally. It is never desirable for 
 history to descend, either with prudish or with prurient 
 curiosity, into the secrets of private life ; still it is im- 
 possible to avoid comparing the almost acknowledged 
 harem of the second Frederick, his concubines and bas- 
 tards openly thrust upon the w^orld, with the seemingly 
 decent and regular household of his grandfather. Perhaps 
 indeed we may be more inclined to forgive the license 
 which produced Manfred and Hensius, than the lawful 
 matrimony which gave birth to Henry the Sixth ; still, 
 as concerns the men themselves, it is clear that the elder 
 Frederick lived the life of a Christian king, and the 
 younger that of a Saracen sultan. In matters coming 
 more properly within the sphere of history, we cannot 
 fancv Frederick Barbarossa wanderins: into the reo-ions 
 of forbidden religious speculation ; but still less can we 
 imagine him acting the part of a cruel persecutor of 
 heretics,* without a particle of religious bigotry, simply 
 to ward off the suspicion of heterodoxy from himself. 
 Frederick the Second, in the higher parts of his character, 
 was beyond his age, almost beyond all ages ; but for that 
 very reason he had but little real influence upon his own 
 generation, and is least of all men to be taken as typical 
 
 * How far Frederick Barbarossa was responsible for the death of Arnold 
 of Brescia does not seem quite clear ; but to have spared a man whom every 
 Catholic looked on as a heretic, and every Ghibelin as a traitor, would have 
 required as keen a vision as that of Frederick the Second combined with 
 a clemency beyond that of his grandfather.
 
 262 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIJSG OF ITAL Y. [Essay 
 
 of it. Eut the elder Frederick was one whose every idea 
 was east in the mould of his own age and nation. He 
 devoted himself, with a steadfast and honourable devotion 
 which won the respect of his enemies, to those objects 
 to which it was natural that a German king of the twelfth 
 century should devote himself. Most of those objects are 
 utterly alien to the sympathies of our own time ; many 
 of them were opposed by those men of his own day with 
 whom we are naturally most inclined to side. Still, a 
 candid mind will ever honour the zealous devotion of 
 a life to any cause not palpably unrighteous, and un- 
 stained by means which are palpably dishonourable. A 
 prince whose life was mainly given up to crush the grow- 
 ing liberties of Italy appears at first sight as an object 
 of something almost like abhorrence. But only look at 
 him with the eyes of a contemporary German, or of an 
 Italian of his own side, and we shall soon see that the 
 enemy of Italy in the twelfth century was at least one 
 of a far nobler mould than the Bourbon, the Corsican, 
 and the Lorrainer, witli whom she has had to struggle 
 before our own eyes. 
 
 Our present object is chiefly to consider the character and 
 position of Frederick with regard to the kingdom of Italy ; 
 his relations with powers like Poland and Denmark, his 
 two crusades, even his internal policy in his German realm, 
 hardly concern us. Now, fully to understand that position, 
 we must, for a short space, take up that general thread of 
 early mediseval history which we dropped in our Seventh 
 Essay. We there saw that the great Frankish Empire of 
 Charles the Great was, at least from the year cS8(S, cut up 
 into the four kingdoms of Eastern Fraueia or Germany, 
 Western Fraticla, Burgundy, and Italy ; and that of these it 
 was Eastern Francia, the Fi'f/nitm TenUmiciim, which had by 
 far the fairest claim to be looked upon as the true continu- 
 ation of the kingdom of Charles and Pippin. The Eastern 
 Frank clave to the tongue and manners of his forefathers, 
 and kept possession of the city which was the great
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIXG OF TTA L Y. 263 
 
 Emperors chosen dwelling during life and his resting-place 
 after death. For nearly four hundred years the crown of 
 Germany passed through a succession of dynasties, which 
 produced at least their fair share of able and valiant kings. 
 We have been so used for some ages past to look upon 
 Germany as a country utterly divided, or united only 
 by the loosest of federal ties, that we have some difficulty 
 in realizing the Regmim Tenfouicum of the early middle age 
 as a single kingdom, and, for those times, far from a dis- 
 united kingdom. Of course it would not answer modern 
 ideas of English good government, still less Parisian ideas 
 of centralization. A Duke of Saxony or Bavaria was a 
 very formidable subject, and he had very little scruple about 
 rebelling; against his liesre lord. But he was far more 
 orderly and obedient than a Duke of Normandy or a Count 
 of Flanders. In short, the Germany of Henry the Third 
 was nearly as united as the England of Edward the 
 Confessor, and incomparably more united than the France 
 of Philip the First. A revolt in Germany, like a revolt in 
 England, was a rebellion, and was felt and spoken of as 
 such ; but hostilities between Rouen and Pai-is have rather 
 the character of foreign war. The object of the great 
 Saxon war against Henry the Fourth was to dethrone the 
 reigning king and to set up another, a tribute to his 
 importance which the king of Paris never received from 
 his refractory feudatoi'ies. While the King of the French 
 never got farther from his capital than Orleans or Com- 
 piegne, the kings of the Teutonic kingdom were constantly 
 moving from province to province and from city to city 
 throughout the whole of their vast realm. Above all, while 
 no diet or assembly of any kind brought the French 
 feudatory into peaceful contact either w^ith his lord or with 
 his fellow- vassals, all Germany was constantly flocking 
 together to those Collorpiia which occupy as important a 
 place in the pages of Lambert of Herzfeld as our own 
 Witenagemots, Great Councils, and Parliaments do in those 
 of our own early historians. In a word, the Saxon,
 
 2G4 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIXG OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 Frankish, and Swabian Emperors were, in a true and prac- 
 tical sense, Kings of Germany ; the early Capetians were only 
 in the vaguest and most nominal way Kings of France. 
 
 But the kingdom of Germany was not the only realm 
 
 which obeyed the sceptre of Frederick. For nearly two 
 
 hundred years before his time it had been acknowledged 
 
 that the prince who was elected to the sovereignty of the 
 
 regnum Teutonicum acquired thereby at least an inchoate 
 
 right to the iron crown of the Italian kingdom and to the 
 
 golden crown of the Roman Empire. Otto the Great had 
 
 appeared in Italy, at the call of the Italians themselves, as 
 
 the most powerful among the successors of the Great 
 
 Charles ; he was crowned and anointed Emperor of the 
 
 Romans, and, as Emperor of the Romans, he exercised the 
 
 fullest sway over the Pontiff and the people of the Eternal 
 
 City. From his time onward the rank of King of Germany 
 
 was but a step to the higher rank of Roman Emperor ; till 
 
 at last the very name of the German kingdom was lost, 
 
 and the prince who was crowned at Aachen, but not yet 
 
 crowned at Rome, bore the title of King, instead of 
 
 Emperor, of the Romans. It is easy to see that this 
 
 increase of dignity proved the real ruin of the German 
 
 kingdom. It involved at least one Italian campaign in 
 
 every reign ; each successive king had to fight his way to 
 
 his Italian capital. It called off the sovereign from the 
 
 aiFairs of his native kingdom to struggle with Popes and 
 
 commonwealths in a land which it was vain to hope really 
 
 to hold in any constant and regular obedience. And again, 
 
 the very rank of Roman Emperor, with all the halo of 
 
 superhuman grandeur which surrounded it, must have 
 
 tended to diminish the real power of the German king. 
 
 Csesar Augustus might well be looked upon as almost too 
 
 exalted to act as the local king of a particular kingdom. 
 
 His power gradually diminished ; the Impcrator Urhis et Orbis 
 
 at last owned hardly a foot of ground in his Imperial 
 
 capacity, and another prince was formally acknowledged as 
 
 sovereign of the city from which he drew his highest title.
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 265 
 
 Had therefore the German kings Otto, Henry the Third, 
 and Frederick himself, sternly abstained from all inter- 
 meddling in Italian affairs, we can hardly doubt that the 
 German kingdom would have greatly gained thereby. Per- 
 haps their once compact and powerful realm might have 
 remained compact and powerful to this day. But it would 
 have required foresight more than human to refuse the 
 Imperial crown for themselves and for their nation. 
 National distinctions had not then made themselves so 
 distinctly felt as they have since. The universal sway of 
 the old Csesars, its more recent renovation by Charles, were 
 not yet forgotten among men. That there should be a 
 Roman Caesar was something in the eternal fitness of 
 things ; and to whom could that highest place on earth be 
 so worthily decreed as to the best and most powerful of the 
 successors of Charles ? Again, a large part of the higher 
 ranks in northern Italy were of German descent, and they 
 probably had not yet wholly forgotten their German origin. 
 And, though the speech of daily life was different in 
 Germany and in Italy, yet the use of one language for 
 every public purpose throughout Western Europe greatly 
 tended to make national distinctions less strongly felt. 
 Their practical effect was just as strong; but men did not 
 then, as they do now, openly assert and act upon the 
 principle that difference of race or language is a ground for 
 difference of political government. We do not remember 
 during the whole of Frederick's Italian warfare, any distinct 
 and openly-avowed case of Italians as Italians acting 
 against the German as a German. No man denied 
 Frederick's right either to the Kingdom of Italy or to the 
 Roman Empire. The only doubt was as to the nature and 
 extent of his royal rights ; and no doubt the growing 
 republican spirit of the cities would quite as readily have 
 disputed the rights of a native sovereign. And Frederick 
 was throughout the chief of a large Italian party, who 
 supported him with even greater zeal than his German 
 countrymen. Possibly theii* loyalty was misplaced, but it
 
 2GG FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 was loyalty to an acknowledged legitimate king, not 
 traitorous adhesion to a foreign invader. Frederick was in 
 Italy the king of a party ; if he was cursed as a destroyer 
 at Milan, he was worshipped as a founder at Lodi. The 
 truth is that, in the twelfth century, Italian patriotism did 
 not exist. Each man had the warmest local aflection for 
 his own city, but of Italy as a country he had no idea 
 whatever. Indeed, as the cities more and more assumed 
 the character of independent republics, as the notion of a 
 separate Italian kingdom grew fainter and fainter, national 
 as distinguished from local patriotism grew fainter and 
 fainter also. A variety of circumstances in each particular 
 case made the Emperor the friend of one city and the 
 enemy of another. But the Milanese who resisted 
 Frederick resisted the enemy, not of Italy, but of Milan ; 
 the men of Cremona and Pavia who followed his banner 
 never dreamed that in supporting their own friend, they 
 were supporting the enemy of their country. Difference of 
 blood, speech, and manners may have silently aggravated 
 the bitterness of the conflict ; yet the German historian* 
 holds up his hands in horror at the cruelty of the Italians 
 to one another, compared with which the mutual hate of 
 German and Italian was love and gentleness. Nowhere, 
 in short, do we find any signs of that really national feeling 
 which awoke in aftertimes, the feeling with which stout 
 Pope Julius longed for the expulsion of the Barbarians, or 
 that which now unites all Italy from the Alps to the Pharos 
 in loathing at the sway of Austria. The union of Germany 
 and Italy under a single king was, in truth, something 
 utterly hopeless ; the attempt to bring about such an union 
 brought much of lasting evil on both countries ; but 
 openly to acknowledge that it was hopeless would have 
 required a more long-sighted statesman than the twelfth 
 century was likely to produce. We sympathize with the 
 
 * " Noll ut cogiiatus pnpulus, iion lit cl<jiiiesticiis iiiiiniciis, seJ velut iu 
 externos liostes, in alieiii^'ena*, tauta in sese iiivicein sui gentiles crudulitate 
 BiEviunt quanta nee in barbaros deceret." — Otto Fris. lib. i. cap. 39.
 
 IX.J FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 267 
 
 Italian opponents of Frederick, but we sympathize with 
 them rather as the assertors of civic freedom as against 
 Imperial power than as the defenders of Italy against 
 a foreign invader. Italy, in short, in the twelfth century 
 was not an '• oppressed nationality." 
 
 It was therefore in support of claims consecrated by long 
 and venerable traditions, of claims admitted in name by 
 the whole nation and zealously supported by a powerful 
 party, that Frederick waged his long warfare in Italy. We 
 have endeavoured to give some notion of the cause which 
 he represented ; we will now attempt to draw a picture of 
 the man himself, and to give a slight sketch of his policy 
 and actions as far as concerns Italy. In so doing we shall 
 endeavour, as far as possible, to draw our estimate of the 
 man and his acts directly from contemporary sources. It 
 is of course impossible but that remembrances of Gibbon, 
 Sismondi, and Milman should now and then influence us ; 
 but we have certainly done our best to form our judgement 
 from the evidence of men who were spectators, and some- 
 times actors, in the events. Most of the chronicles of this 
 period are to be found in the sixth volume of the great 
 collection of Muratori. Among these, the first place in 
 rank belongs to no less a person than Frederick himself, 
 who gives a summary of the early events of his reign in a 
 letter to Otto, Bishop of Freising, prefixed to that prelate^s 
 history. The second place in dignity and the first in im- 
 portance is undoubtedly due to Otto himself. This episcopal 
 historian was himself of princely, even of Imperial descent ; 
 he was the son of Leopold the Third, Margrave of Austria, 
 by Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Henry the Fourth. 
 But as this same Agnes, by her first marriage with 
 Frederick the First, Duke of Swabia, was the mother of 
 Duke Frederick the Second, the father of the Emperor 
 Frederick, it follows that Bishop Otto was himself the 
 uncle of the subject of his history. That historj^, as we 
 have said, may be read in the sober text of Muratori ; * 
 
 * [It lias since appeared in one of the latest volumes of Pertz.]
 
 268 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITAL Y. [Essay 
 
 but we have chosen rather to study it in a noble old copy, 
 dated Strassburg 15x5, ushered in with Imperial diplomas 
 from King Maximilian, and adorned with abundance of 
 Imperial eagles. Otto first wrote a general history of the 
 w^orld in seven books, ending with the election of his 
 nephew Frederick, in 1152, followed by an eighth book, of 
 a diviner sort, containing an account of what is to happen 
 at the end of the world. Like all chronicles of the kind, it 
 is valueless alike for prophecy and for early history, but it 
 becomes useful as it draws near the writer's own time. He 
 afterwards accompanied his Imperial nephew in his first 
 Italian expedition, and wrote two books Be Gestis Friderkl 
 Primi, which fill one of the highest places in the list of 
 mediteval writings. He however unluckily gets no 
 further than the fourth year of his hero's reign ; but his 
 work is continued in two books more by Radevic, a canon 
 of his own church, down to 1160, the year in which 
 Radevic wrote. Both these authors, of course, write from 
 the Imperial side, but both seem to write as fairly as one 
 can expect, and they are especially valuable in quoting 
 contemporary documents. Otto writes like a prince, 
 admiring his nephew without worshipping him, and 
 showing throughout the wide grasp of a statesman, and a 
 most remarkable spirit of observation in everyway. Radevic, 
 as becomes his place, is not the rival, but, as far as in him 
 lies, the careful imitator of the prelate who promoted him. 
 Both of them were high-minded German churchmen, and 
 we look on their witness on the Emperor's side with far 
 less suspicion than on that of the Imperialist writer next 
 in importance. This is Otto Morena of Lodi, an Italian 
 lawyer, who filled some judicial ofiice under Frederick and 
 the two preceding kings, Lothar and Conrad. We must 
 remember that this was just the time when the study of 
 the Civil Law was reviving ; and there can be no doubt 
 that its study was of no small advantage to the Imperial 
 cause. Frederick came into Italy with the sword of 
 Germany in the one hand and the books of Justinian in
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITAL Y. 269 
 
 the other. No doubt the jurisconsult of Lodi honestly saw 
 in the Swabian king the true successor of Augustus and 
 Constantine, the Csesar of whom it was written that quod 
 principi placuif, hgh Iiahet vigorem.^ But no doubt this 
 conviction produced in the mind of Otto the Judge an 
 allegiance of a far more servile kind than the Teutonic 
 loyalty of Otto the Bishop. We can fully understand the 
 enthusiastic affection which every citizen of Lodi would 
 feel for his royal patron and founder ; still we soon get 
 wearied of the sancfiss'ujms, the fltdcissimiis, the Chnsfian- 
 usimu-^, and the whole string of superlatives which Otto 
 delights to attach to every mention of the Imperial name. 
 Otto's own chronicle goes down to 1162; both as judge 
 and as annalist he was succeeded by his son Acerbus, an 
 equally firm adherent to the Imperial cause, but who is 
 somewhat less profuse in his adulation, and who does not 
 scruple sometimes to pronounce censure on his master's 
 actions. His attachment to Frederick himself never fails ; 
 but he paints in strong colours the evil deeds of the 
 Imperial lieutenants during Frederick's absence,! and the 
 little heed which the Emperor himself took to punish 
 them. J The history of Acerbus Morena ends with his own 
 death, in 1167 ; the record of that event, and the character 
 of the author, were doubtless added by another hand. 
 
 These are the chief writers on the Imperial side. On the 
 other side we have the too brief chronicle of the Milanese 
 Sire Raul in the sixth volume of Muratori, and the life of 
 Pope Alexander in the collection of the Cardinal of Ai-agon 
 in the third. The sixth volume also contains a few 
 smaller pieces on particular parts of the story ; one of 
 which is Buoncompagni's Narrative of the Siege of Ancona, 
 a most interesting piece of description, but to which, as it 
 is not strictly contemporary, it strikes us that Sismondi 
 has given more weight than it deserves as a historical 
 
 * Inst. Just. lib. i. cap. ii. § 6. 
 t Apud Muratori, t. vi. col. 1 127. J Ibid. col. I131.
 
 270 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIXG OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 document. We may remark generally, that the writers on 
 the papal and republican side commonly speak of the 
 Emperor with a strong feeling of respect. If we want 
 good hearty abuse of Frederick Barbarossa, we must turn 
 to the letters of our own Saint Thomas of Canterbury and 
 his correspondents. The cause of the difference is obvious. 
 To the French and English partizans of Alexander, Fred- 
 erick was a mere distant bugbear, a savage enemy of the 
 Church, to be abhorred as much or more than any Sultan 
 of Paynimrie. Those who saw him nearer, even as an 
 enemy, understood him better. Those who fought against 
 him knew that they were contending with a noble and 
 generous enemy, and with one who, after all, was their 
 own acknowledged sovereign. Popes too always com- 
 manded, even from their own party, less of reverence in 
 Italy than they did anywhere else ; the sacrilegious war- 
 fare of the Ghibelin, which seemed so monstrous on this 
 side the Alps, assumed a dye far less deep in the eyes of 
 those among and against whom it was actually waged. 
 
 Frederick was elected King in 1152. He came to the 
 crown by that mixture of descent and election w^hich was 
 so common in the early middle age, and which modern 
 writers so constantly misunderstand. Nearly every modern 
 state has settled down into a hereditary monarchy, and has 
 enacted for itself a strict law of succession, because it has 
 been found that, wdiatever arguments may be brought 
 aijainst that form of government, it has at least the great 
 practical advantage of hindering dissensions and civil 
 w^ars. Those earlier times had no clear idea of strict 
 hereditary right ; but the family feeling was intensely 
 strong, and in those days the personal character of a king 
 was everything. A king could not then be a mere con- 
 stitutional puppet ; a great man was loved or he was 
 feared — in either case he was obeyed ; a small man, with 
 equal legal autliority, was despised, disobeyed, perhaps 
 deposed (jr murdered. The ideal king needed two (]uali- 
 fications : he must be the descendant of former kings, and
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KISG OF ITAL Y. 271 
 
 he must be himself fit foi' the kingly office. Hence we 
 constantly find a king succeeded, not by the person whom 
 we should call his next heir, but by him who was deemed 
 the worthiest of the royal house. Thus Coni-ad, by his last 
 will, recommended, not his son, but his nephew Frederick, 
 as his fittest successor in his kingdoms : and the princes of 
 those kinofdoms confirmed his choice. Conrad's eldest son, 
 who, according to a common practice, had been crowned 
 in his lifetime as his successor, was dead ; his second son 
 was too }Oung: Germany had no desire for such another 
 minority as that of Henry the Fourth ; Frederick was 
 young, brave, vigorous ; he united the blood of the two 
 great contending houses ; the son of a Ghibelin father 
 and a Guelfic mother, he was the man of all others who 
 might be expected to secure peace* at home and victory 
 abroad. He was therefore unanimously chosen King by 
 the assembly at Frankfurt, and he received the crown 
 of the Teutonic kingdom f at Aachen, the royal city of 
 the Franks. J But besides Germany, the newly-elected 
 monarch had at least an inchoate right to the royal crowns 
 of Burgundy and Italy and to the Imperial diadem of 
 Eome. Of Burgundy we need say little more than that he 
 visited the kingdom once or twice, that he secured his in- 
 terest there by his marriage with the Burgundian princess 
 Beatrice, and at last, rather late in his reign, in the year 
 1 1 78, found leisure for a solemn coronation at Aries. § 
 
 But our interest centres round him in his character of 
 King of Italy and Emperor of the Romans. Otto of 
 Freising distinctly tells us that Italian barons took a part 
 in Frederick's election at Frankfurt. || We know not who 
 
 * Otto Fris. ii. 2 : cf. Urspergeiisis in anno (p. 295), wbo plays on the name 
 rriedrich = Pad's Dives. 
 
 •\ " Post primam unctionem Aquisgrani et acceptam coronam Teutonic! 
 regni." — Ep. Frid. ap. Otton. Fris. 
 
 X " In sede regni Franeoriini, quae in eadem ecclesia a Caiolo magno posita 
 est, collocatur." — Otto Fris. ii. 3. 
 
 § '' Anno Domini niclxxviii. iii. nonas Augusti Fridericus primus imperator 
 coronatus fuit apud Arelatem." — Vit. Alex. iii. ap. Muratori, toui. iii. p. 447. 
 
 II " Non sine quibusdam ex Italia taronibus." — Otto Fris. ii. i.
 
 272 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 these Italian barons may have been, what was their number, 
 or how far they were really entitled to speak in the name 
 of the Italian kingdom. But whoever they were, whether 
 many or few, whether they were summoned or came of 
 their own accord, it is clear that their presence must have 
 tended to give at least an outward appearance of right 
 to the new king's claims over Italy, both in his own eyes 
 and in those of others. As King-elect of Italy, his course 
 was to hold an assembly of the Italian kingdom at Ron- 
 caglia, to receive at Milan the iron crown of the Lombard 
 kings, and thence to advance to Rome, and there receive the 
 golden crown of the Roman Empire at the hands of the 
 Roman Pontiff. This was the regular course for each 
 newly-elected king ; in theory he went on a peaceful errand 
 to his capital ; in practice he commonly had to fight his 
 way at every step. Two things always strike us in these 
 Imperial progresses : no Emperor ever gets to Rome and 
 leaves it aijain without meeting with more or less of resist- 
 ance^ and yet that resistance never assumes any organized 
 national form. No man denies his claims ; a strong party 
 zealously asserts them ; and yet no king is turned into an 
 Emperor without bloodshed. The truth is that it was an 
 utter unreality for a German sovereign of the twelfth 
 century to attempt to unite Italy under his sceptre, yet no 
 one fully understood that it was an uni-eality. The German 
 king claimed only what his predecessors had always 
 claimed ; half Italy was ready to receive him with open 
 arms ; learned doctors of the Civil Law told him that his 
 Imperial rights were something all but eternal ; — how were 
 his eyes to be opened 1 Rome herself lived upon memories 
 of the past ; she fluctuated between memories of the republic 
 and memories of the Empire. Sometimes she set up a 
 consul, a senator, a tribune ; sometimes she welcomed the 
 German invader as the true Augustus Csesar. The whole 
 atmosphere of the age seems saturated with this kind of 
 unreality; it was unreal, but it was not knowingly put on ; 
 people thoroughly believed in it, and therefore the unreality
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 273 
 
 became real, and had most important practical results. We 
 are half inclined to laugh when the German sovereign calls 
 himself Romanorum Imperafor semper Atig^istus.^ — when the 
 German historian studiously adopts Koman language, talks 
 about urhs and orhis Homanus, and dates from the foundation 
 of the city of Romulus. It is quite impossible to avoid 
 laughing, even at the great Frederick, when he writes, or 
 causes some eloquent bishop to write in his name, to tell 
 the Saracen Sultan that he is speedily coming to avenge 
 the defeat of Crassus, and once more to restore his Empire 
 to its widest limits under Trajan.* It sounds strangest of 
 all when the Romans themselves send, first to Conrad and 
 then to Frederick, asking him to come and live among 
 them, and reign over them as a constitutional Emperor, the 
 choice and the child of the Roman Senate and People.f 
 This last was too much ; when it came to this, Frederick 
 did find out that, if he was to reign at all, it could only be 
 as a Teutonic conqueror. The successor of Charles and Otto 
 was not prepared to be told that he was a stranger whom 
 Rome had taken in ; and when Rome asked five thousand 
 pounds of gold as the price of her recognition, Rome 
 learned, in the triumphant words of Bishop Otto, that the 
 Franks did not buy Empire with any metal but steel. All 
 this was very absurd and very unreal ; that is, we at this 
 distance of time see that it was so. But it is not very won- 
 derful that the men of the time were less clearsighted, that 
 old traditions and venerable names were too strong for them. 
 The result is, that, in reading the history of the times, we 
 can fully sympathize with both sides. Our first and most 
 natural sympathy is with the heroes of Italian freedom, the 
 defenders of Milan, the founders of Alessandria, the men who 
 routed Frederick, himself upon the glorious field of Legnano. 
 But we should do very wrong if we looked upon Frederick 
 
 * See Frederick's letter to Saladin, in Roger of Howden, ii. 357, Stubbs; 
 Ralph of Diss, Decern Script. 640. The copy in Roger of Wendover (vol. ii. 
 p. 429, ed. Coxe) le.ives out the flourishes about Crassus and Marcus Antonius. 
 
 t See the letter to Conrad, Otto Fris., i. 28 ; the embassy to Frederick, 
 ii. 21.
 
 274 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KISG OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 as a cruel and unprovoked aggressor, or on his Italian par- 
 tisans as traitors to their native land. Neither side has a 
 monopoly of right or a monopoly of wrong. As no candid 
 man can read our own history of the seventeenth centuiy, 
 and not enter into the feelings alike of the best supporters 
 of the King and of the best supporters of the Parliament, so, 
 if we look upon Frederick and his enemies with the eyes of 
 the twelfth and not with those of the nineteenth century, 
 we shall find equal cause for admiration in the patriots of 
 Lodi and in the patriots of Tortona, in the assertors of the 
 venerable rights of the Roman CiEsar and in the assertors of 
 the new-born freedom of the commonwealths of Lombardy. 
 Frederick then came into Italy as a claimant of strictly 
 legal rights, but of rights which we can now see to have 
 been inconsistent with the circumstances of the time. The 
 Imperial rights in Italy could be exercised only by fits and 
 starts. Frederick came after one of the periods of inter- 
 mission. During the reigns of Lolhar and Conrad the royal 
 authority in Italy had fallen very low ; Frederick came to 
 raise it again, to claim and to win back every power which 
 had been exercised by Charles and Otto and Henry the 
 Third. But he did not come in exactly the same character 
 as any of those great Emperors. They came at the prayer 
 of Italy, as deliverers from utter anarchy, from the tyranny 
 of cruel kings, or from the abominations of rival and wicked 
 pontiffs. Frederick had no such advantage. During the 
 practical interregnum which preceded his reign, a spirit had 
 been at work, and a power had been gi'owing up, in Italy 
 against which earlier Emperors had not had to struggle. 
 The freedom of the cities had made wonderful advances ; 
 municipalities were fast growing into sovereign common- 
 wealths. With this spirit a king, anxious to assert his 
 royal rights to the full, especially after a time of partial 
 disuse, could not fail to come into conflict. Otto and 
 Henry the Third came into Italy as champions of right 
 against wrong ; they did not sin against a freedom which 
 in their days was not yet in being ; Frederick unhappily
 
 TX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 275 
 
 was driven to appear, as no earlier Emperor had appeared, 
 as the direct enemy of freedom. The rights of the crown, 
 as he understood them, and the rights of the republics, as 
 the republics understood them, must have clashed sooner or 
 later. The immediate occasion of his warfare with Milan is of 
 comparatively little moment, because the immediate occa- 
 sion, whatever it was, was not the real determining cause. 
 In the narrative of Otto Morena the wrongs of Lodi hold 
 the first place ; the holy and merciful king comes mainly 
 to deliver Otto and his fellow-citizens from Milanese op- 
 pression.* The Milanese Raul seems hardly to think Lodi 
 worth speaking of: the sagacious Frederick f wishes to 
 bring Italy under his power ; Milan is at war with Pavia ; 
 his sagacity leads him to take the side of Pavia as the 
 weaker city. Frederick's own laureate tells us how, through 
 the neo-lect of former kino's, the wicked had grown stronc^ 
 in Lombardy, and how the proud city of Saint Ambrose 
 refused to pay tribute to Csesar.J The Prince-Bishop of 
 Freising sets forth a variety of motives as working on the 
 mind of his Imperial nephew : the wrongs of Lodi are not 
 forgotten, though they are less prominent in the pages 
 of Otto the Bishop than in those of his namesake the 
 Judge. The immediate occasion of the attack was almost 
 accidental; the consuls of Milan wilfully led the King's 
 array through a country where no provisions were to be 
 had. and that at a time when the soldiers were generally 
 out of humour at the bad weather.§ Anyhow the war, which 
 could not have been long put off, now began, — that great 
 struggle which occupied thirty years out of the thirty-eight 
 of the reign of Frederick. 
 
 * Otto Mor ap. Muratori, torn. vi. col. 957 et seriq. 
 
 ■j- " Rex Fedricus, homo industrius, sagacissimus, fortissimus." Ap. Mur., 
 torn. vi. col. 1 1 73. 
 
 % " De tributo Csesaris nemo cogitabat; 
 
 Omnes erant Caesare?, nemo censum diibat; 
 Civitas Ambrosii velut Troja stabat ; 
 Deos parum, homines minus formidaliat." 
 
 Gedichte auf Kiittiy Friedrich, p. 65. 
 § Otto Fris., ii. 1 3. 
 
 T %
 
 27G FREDERICK THE FIRST, KLXG OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 We of course cannot pretend to give anything like a 
 narrative of this long warfare. All that we can do is 
 to comment on a few points which illustrate the character 
 of Frederick and his cause. Primarily the war was a 
 purely political one ; it was only by accident that it put on 
 anything of a religious character. The struggle between 
 Frederick and Alexander the Third is not exactly analogous 
 to the struggle between Henry the Fourth and Hildebrand, 
 or to that between Frederick the Second and a whole suc- 
 cession of pontiffs. Pope and C?esar never could pull 
 together, and Frederick, almost as a matter of course, had 
 several matters of dispute with Pope Hadrian. One indeed 
 concerned nothing less than the tenure of the Imperial 
 crown. The controversy turned on a word. Hadrian spoke 
 of the heni'jic'ini)! which he had conferred upon Frederick 
 by officiating at his Roman coronation.* Frederick, doubt- 
 less with a feudal lawyer at his elbow, asks if the word 
 beneJiciuM is meant to imply that the Emperor of Rome 
 was a v&,ssal of the Bishop of Rome. Hadrian disclaims 
 any such intention ; he held that he had done the Emperor 
 a benefit.^ but he did not pretend to have invested him 
 with a henejjce. It is not unlikely that, if Hadrian had 
 lived, a struggle of the Henry and Hildebrand type might 
 have arisen between him and Frederick. As it was the 
 strife was of another kind. Henry and Frederick the 
 Second were, as far as Popes were concerned, open foes of 
 the Church ; Frederick the Second certainly was more 
 sinned against than sinning ; still, he was condemned, 
 deposed, excommunicated, by pontiffs and councils whose 
 authority was not disputed. Henry the Fourth indeed 
 disputed the rights of Hildebrand and set up a Pope of his 
 own; but he did not do so till his crimes had brought down 
 upon him the wrath of the hitherto undisputed pontiff. 
 Indeed, Henry did not enthrone his Anti-pope in Rome till 
 Gregory had set up an Anti-Csesar in Germany. The case 
 of Frederick Barbarossa was quite different ; he was not the 
 
 * Kad. Fris., iii. 15 et seqq.
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KISG OF ITALY. 277 
 
 foe of the Church, but merely of that party in the Church 
 which triumphed in the end. The Roman s^^ee was the 
 subject of a disputed election : the accounts of that election 
 are so utterly contradictory that it seems quite impossible 
 to adopt either statement without imputing (what one is 
 always loth to do) direct falsehood to the other party. 
 Frederick had to choose between the rival pontiffs, and he 
 doubtless chose the one whose disposition best suited his 
 policy. Roland, otherwise Alexander the Third, had ali-eady 
 shown himself a strong assertor of hierarchical claims ; 
 Octavian, otherwise Victor, was more disposed — at all 
 events while his party was the weaker — to yield to the 
 successor of Constantine and Justinian that loyal submission 
 which Constantine and Justinian* had most certainly 
 exacted from his predecessors. The cause of Alexander 
 naturally triumphed ; a Pope i-eigning under Imperial pro- 
 tection was no Pope at all ; Frederick's very support of 
 Victor drove strict churchmen to the side of Alexander. 
 Again, the mere fact of Alexander's long reign, which 
 allowed the papal power to be wielded for many successive 
 years by the same hand, greatly contributed to his strength 
 and dignity, as contrasted with the quick succession of the 
 Imperialist anti-popes. Above all, Alexander, the spiritual 
 enemy of Frederick, found it politic to coalesce with his 
 temporal enemies ; and the combined strength of the Church 
 and the republics proved in the end too much for the arms 
 of Csesar. Frederick was at last driven to seek absolution 
 from the Pope, and to acknowledge the liberties of the 
 cities. As Alexander was thus in the end triumphant, the 
 Church has branded Victor, his successors and his adherents, 
 with the charge of schism ; and Frederick, in the invectives 
 of churchmen in other lands, appears in the odious character 
 of a persecutor. Still one might think that to choose the 
 wrong Pope in a warmly-disputed and very doubtful case 
 was at worst a venial sin : it does not appear that Frederick 
 
 * Pope Hadrian was unlucky in quoting .Justinian as the type of Imperial 
 reverence for the papacy. Had. Fris., iii. 15.
 
 278 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 sinned against any acknowledged principle of the religion 
 of his age ; his warfare was not against the popedom, but 
 against a particular pope, whom he denounced, and whom 
 he may well have sincerely looked on, as an usurper of the 
 Holy See. 
 
 Our estimate of Frederick's personal character will be 
 mainly determined by the estimate which we may form of his 
 conduct during this long w^ar. Assuming its justice from 
 his own point of view, we can hardly fail to honour his 
 untiring devotion to the cause which he had taken in hand. 
 It is of course easy to say that that cause was simply his 
 own exaltation. It would of course be easy to draw a 
 touching picture of all the miseries of war, — of slaughter 
 and plunder and devastation, of stately cities levelled with 
 the ground, of men, women, and children driven from their 
 native homes — merely that one man might enjoy the delight 
 of exercising increased power, or that he might gratify the 
 more childish desire for an useless bauble and an empty 
 title. Nothing would be easier than to accumulate charges 
 of cruelty, obstinacy, and disregard of human suffering, 
 against a sovereign who spent nearly his whole reign in 
 warring against his own subjects. Talk of this sort is 
 extremely easy, but it would give a very false view of 
 the case. No one, we think, can go through the history 
 of the time without clearly seeing that Frederick w^as 
 not actuated by any low personal ambition, but that he 
 felt himself to have a mission, to which he zealously and 
 sincerely devoted himself. To him the rights of the Roman 
 Empire were a sacred cause, in whose behalf he was ready 
 to spend and to be spent. He was doubtless stirred up by 
 as clear a sense of duty to assert his Imperial claims as any 
 Milanese patriot was stirred up to withstand them. Of 
 course, in fighting for the rights of the Empire, he was also 
 fighting for his own gi-eatness and glory. And what man 
 is there who can quite separate himself from his cause? 
 Heroes, patriots, martyrs at the stake, do and suti'er for 
 a cause which they hold to be righteous ; but it is utterly
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITAL Y. 279 
 
 impossible that they can wholly forget that the triumph of 
 their cause brings success and power to themselves, and 
 that, even in defeat and martj^rdom, they win the fame and 
 sympathy of mankind. Take the very purest of men, 
 heroes whom no temptation of rank or wealth or power 
 could ever corrupt for a moment, — Timoleun, Washington, 
 or Garibaldi, — even they, we cannot but believe, must feel 
 a greater excitement in the path of duty from the thought 
 that they are winning for themselves the present love and 
 gratitude of their fellow-citizens, and everlasting glory in 
 the pages of history. That Frederick therefore was fighting 
 in the cause of his own greatness really proves nothing 
 against him. His purpose was no petty, passionate, momen- 
 tary ambition, such as has too often influenced the policy of 
 rulers in all ages. We see in him a steady untiring devo- 
 tion to a cause which, in his eyes, was the cause of right. 
 That we do not sympathize with his cause proves nothing. 
 Let us compare him with a prince in almost everything his 
 inferior, but in whom we see a similar unbending devotion 
 to a cause conscientiousl}^ taken up. Whatever we think 
 of Charles the First in his days of power, his violations of 
 law, his breaches of solemn contracts, it is impossible not 
 to respect the thorough conviction of right which bears him 
 up through the more honourable days of his adversity. 
 When he whites to Rupert that to a soldier or statesman his 
 cause must seem hopeless, but that, looking on it as a 
 Christian, he knows that God wall not suffer rebels to 
 prosper nor his cause to be overthrown, it is impossible not 
 to feel that, despot as he was, he was something very different 
 from the vulgar run of despots. And if we feel this respect 
 for Charles, much more may we feel it for Frederick, whose 
 character rises far above that of Charles in those points 
 where Charles, even from a royalist point of view, decidedly 
 fails. Charles, notwithstanding his real devotion to a 
 cause, exhibits a strange mixture of irresolution and ob- 
 stinacy. Frederick was rationally firm ; he was unyield- 
 ing as long as there was a reasonable hope of winning his
 
 280 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIAG OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 endsjbut his firmness never degenerated into blind obstinacy. 
 Again, Charles was one whom no man could really trust ; 
 Frederick was, above all princes of the twelfth century, 
 a man of his word. 
 
 We have claimed honour for Frederick on the ground of 
 his zealous and unbending devotion to a cause which he 
 honestly adopted as the cause of right. This however is 
 a doctrine which must not be pressed too far. It is im- 
 possible to doubt that Philip the Second was zealously and 
 conscientiously devoted to the cause of the Church and the 
 monarchy. The question in all such cases is, By what 
 means is the end sought fori We do not blame Philip 
 merely for coercing those whom he looked upon as rebels 
 and heretics ; to expect him to do otherwise would be 
 simply to expect him to be gifted with a discernment given 
 in its fulness to no European of that age save his Batavian 
 rival. What we do blame him for is the baseness, perfidy, 
 and wanton cruelty, of the means by which he sought to 
 compass his end. In Frederick Barbarossa we find nothing 
 of the kind. According to the standard of his own age, 
 Frederick certainly appears chargeable with neither cruelty 
 nor perfidy. We must remember what that age was, 
 though we really think that the twelfth century need not 
 shrink from a comparison with many later ages. W^ar was 
 in the twelfth century undertaken on very light grounds, 
 and it was carried on with very great cruelty. But it 
 certainly was not undertaken on lighter grounds, or carried 
 on with greater cruelty, than it was in the fifteenth, six- 
 teenth, and seventeenth centuries. The horrors of Burgun- 
 dian and Armagnac warfare, of the Italian wars of the age 
 of the Renaissance, of the Spanish rule in the Netherlands, 
 of the Thirty Years' War, equal anything in the very 
 darkest times, and they certainly far exceed anything that 
 can be laid to the charge of Frederick the First. Frederick 
 had no guilt upon his soul like the sack of Rome or the 
 Back of Magdeburg ; he never, like Charles the Bold,* rode 
 
 * Barante, Dues de Bourgogne, vol. x. p. 6.
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIXG OF ITALY. 281 
 
 with delight through a town heaped with corpses, congratu- 
 lating himself on his '-good butchers." He did not drown 
 his captives like Philip Augustus, starve them to death like 
 John of England, or flay them alive like his own accom- 
 plished grandson.* Charles the Great beheaded four 
 thousand Saxons in cold blood ; Richard Coeur-de-Lion 
 massacred his Saracen prisoners wholesale ; the Black 
 Prince looked on unmoved from his sick litter while men, 
 women, and children were murdered in the streets of 
 Limoges. No such scenes marked the entry of the trium- 
 phant Csesar into vanquished Milan or Tortona. Stern, 
 even cruel, as he seems to us, yet, when we compare 
 Frederick with his predecessors, contemporaries, and suc- 
 cessors, we see that there is a meaning even in the chmen- 
 ik-uiiias axidi (Ink'isshnv-'i of Otto Morena. As long as opposi- 
 tion lasted, Frederick did not shrink from carrying out to 
 the utmost the cruel laws of war f of that stern age. He 
 did not scruple to cut off the hands of those who tried 
 to bring in provisions to a beleaguered town. He tied his 
 hostages to his engines, that they might perish by the darts 
 of their friends, or rather that their danger might move 
 their friends to submission. When submission came, the 
 injured majesty of Augustus required hard conditions of 
 peace ; but, such as they were^ they were always honour- 
 ably kept, and they at least never involved hurt to life 
 or limb. It was a hard sentence for the inhabitants of 
 a whole city to march forth with their lives alone, or with 
 so much of their worldly goods as they could carry on their 
 shoulders \X but such a doom was mercy compared with the 
 lot of those who fell into the jaws of Charles of Burgundy, 
 of Alva, or of Tilly. Milan was levelled with the ground, 
 doubtless as a high symbolic act of justice, a warning 
 against all who should resist the might of the lord of 
 Germany and of Rome. But the vengeance of Frederick 
 
 * " Quoscunque in caatellis suis ex adversariis cepit, aut vivos excoriavit aut 
 patibulo suspendit." Rog. Wend., iv. 209, ed. Coxe. 
 
 + " Utar ergo deinceps belli legibus." Rad. Fris., iv. 50. 
 + Otto Fris., ii. 20; Rad., iv. 56 Otto Morena, col. 981.
 
 282 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 was exercised wholly upon dead walls ; it was another 
 matter when restored Milan fell, three centuries and a half 
 later, into the hands of a Csesar of a more civilized, at all 
 events of a more polished, time. IMo doubt the wars and 
 sieges of Frederick caused much human misery ; vast, and 
 doubtless not very well disciplined, armies, living at free 
 quarters,* must have been a constant scourge to the country: 
 but all this is common to Frederick with countless other 
 warlike princes ; what is specially his own is his constant 
 moderation in victory. This alone would show that his 
 wars were not wars of passion or caprice, but were waged 
 in a cause which to him seemed a high and holy one. And 
 again, in an age not so much of deliberate bad faith as of 
 utter recklessness as to promises, an age when oaths were 
 lightly taken and lightly broken, Frederick's all but in- 
 variable adherence to his word stands out conspicuously 
 and honourably. Once, and only once, he failed. He 
 stooped to attack Alessandria during a time of truce. f and 
 he was deservedly driven back and obliged to raise the 
 siege. This is a deep stain upon Frederick's otherwise 
 straightforward and upright character. It is utterly unlike 
 any other of his recorded actions. We may therefore at 
 least believe that it was not a case of premeditated perfidy ; 
 we may trust that he concluded the truce in perfect good 
 faith, but that he was afterwards tempted into a breach of 
 faith by the sight of a favourable opportunity for attack 
 before the days of truce were expired. 
 
 But, after all, the most truly honourable scene in the 
 life of this great Emperor is that which followed his final 
 defeat. After the Battle of Legnano in 1176, it was plain 
 that he had no longer any hope of conquering the Lombard 
 cities. He sought for peace : the negotiations were slow, 
 but at last the Peace of Constance was agreed upon, and 
 
 * The patiejfyriwt of Acerbus Morena (col. 115.^,^ meiitious it as Lis special 
 and wonderful merit, that he abstained from plunder himself, and did all he 
 could to liiiider it in otiiers. 
 
 ■\ Vit. Alex. III., ap. Muratori, t. iii. p. 464.
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF IT A L Y. 283 
 
 became a law of the Empire. By this document the 
 Imperial rights over the commonwealths were confined 
 within certain moderate bounds. To Frederick's eternal 
 honour, when he had given his people a constitution, he 
 kept it. He did not act like German and Italian kings 
 ten years ago.* After the treaty was once concluded, 
 Frederick honestly threw himself into the altered state 
 of things. He did not even sullenly withdraw himself 
 from Italy altogether. In that very Milan whose citizens 
 had broken his power, the city whose very existence 
 showed how vain had been the schemes of his life, the 
 King of Italy came and dwelt as an honoured guest, and, 
 with perhaps too much regard for his new allies, he allowed 
 the banner of the Empire to be displayed in local war- 
 fare against the enemies of Milan. Doubtless it was now 
 Frederick's policy to preserve the peace of Italy, as his 
 great object now was to obtain the Sicilian kingdom for 
 his son.f Still there have been few monarchs who could 
 have so thoroughly adapted themselves to their altered 
 fate, or who would have so scrupulously adhered to their 
 faith when it was once plighted. We know few things 
 in history more touching, more honourable to all con- 
 cerned, than the last years of the Italian reign of Frederick. 
 At last the hero went forth in his later years, as he had 
 gone in his youth, on a yet higher errand than to maintain 
 the rights of the Roman Empire. The temporal chief of 
 Christendom, the highest and the worthiest of Western 
 kings, went forth once more to do battle for the sepulchre 
 of Christ. We may be sure that no man ever put the 
 cross upon his shoulder with a higher and a purer heart. 
 Well had it been if he had reached the goal of his pilgrim- 
 age, and had given the crusading host a worthy leader. 
 
 * [i860.] 
 
 ■f- It must be remembered that the kinsjdom of Sicily and duchy of Apulia 
 did not — (le facto, at least — form any part of the kingdom of Italy, though 
 the Emperors s;eem always, naturally enough, to have looked on the Norman 
 kings as interlopers.
 
 284 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 But he died before he could again reach the Syrian border, 
 bequeathing the destinies of Germany, Italy, and Sicily to 
 the hands of his unworthy son, and leaving the champion- 
 ship of Christendom against the Moslem to the faithless 
 Philip of Paris and the brutal Richaid of Poitou. 
 
 The more private and personal character of Frederick 
 comes to us only in the language of panegyric. We have 
 his portrait as drawn both by a German and by an Italian 
 admirer,* After making all needful deductions, it is easy 
 to see in him a high and pleasing type of the pure Teutonic 
 character. He was a man of moderate stature, bright open 
 countenance, fair skin, yellow hair,f and, as his nickname + 
 implies, reddish beard. He was a kind friend and a 
 placable enemy ; he loved war but only as a means to 
 peace ; so at least the canon of Freising assures us. § He 
 was bountiful in almsgiving, and attentive to his religious 
 duties. As to his domestic life, we know that his first wife 
 Adelaide was divorced ; the fact is recorded, but we are 
 told little of the circumstances. || His second uife Beatrice 
 is described by his panegyrists as equally admirable with 
 her husband.Tf The amount of his literary accomplish- 
 ments seems doubtful. One passage in Radevic might 
 almost imply that he could not read ; ** but it may merely 
 
 * Rad. Fris., iv. So. Otto Morena, col. 111.5. 
 
 t " Flava csesaries, pauUulum a verlice frontis crispata. Aures vix siiper- 
 jacentibus eriiiibus operiuntur ; tonsore, pro reverentia Imperii, pilob capitis et 
 genarum assidua succisione curtante." Rad., loc. cit. 
 
 X We have not come across the familiar name Barbarossa in the contem- 
 porary writers. Probably, like many other royal nicknames, it was in popular 
 use during the owner's lifetime, but did n<jt find its way into written history 
 till later. 
 
 § " Belloruin amator, sed ut per ea pax acquiratur." Rad., loc. cit. 
 
 II Otto of Saint Blaise (Mur., vi. 869) says it was "causa fornicatioiiis ;" 
 Otto of Freising says, " ob vincula consanguinitatis." In this Muratori (ad 
 Otto Mor., col. 1033) sees a contradiction, wliich we do not. Adultery was 
 no legal ground of divorce ; but a husband's e}es would become very much 
 more sharp-sighted to the consanguinity of a faithless wife. Muratori also 
 argues that a certain Dittho of iJavensliurg, who married her, would not have 
 married a divorced adulteress. Yet Henry the Second of England did. 
 
 1 Acerbus Morena, col. II 17. 
 
 ** " Qui literas non ndsset." Read Fiis., iv. 6. By the way, Acerbus
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 285 
 
 mean that he was not an accomplished scholar like his 
 grandson. The same writer tells us of his study of the 
 Scriptures and of ancient histories, which of course may 
 merely mean that they were read to him, but it is more 
 naturally understood of his reading them himself. Radevic 
 speaks of him also as eloquent in his own tongue, and as 
 having reached the same measure of Latin learning which 
 Charles the Great reached in Greek. He understood the 
 Latin tongue when spoken ; he could not speak it fluently 
 himself. Altogether, w^e do not see in Frederick Barbarossa 
 one of those mighty original geniuses who change the 
 world's destiny, like Alexander or Charles, or who vainly 
 struggle against the age in which they are cast, like 
 Hannibal or Frederick the Second. He is a man of his 
 own age : he adopts the feelings and opinions of his own 
 age without inquiry; he throws himself, without hesita- 
 tion, into all the traditions and prejudices of his own 
 position ; in short, he never rises above the received policy 
 and morality of his own day, but he carries out that policy 
 and morality in its best and most honourable form. It is 
 not needful to compare him either with the superhuman 
 virtue of Saint Lewis or with the superhuman wickedness 
 of John Lackland ; compare him with his great contem- 
 porary, our own Angevin master, Henry. Henry was 
 evidently a man of far greater original genius, of a far 
 more creative mind, than Frederick was ; but he utterly 
 lacks Frederick's honest good faith and steady adherence 
 to what, in his eyes, was the path of duty. In Henry too 
 there was an element of brutality, a trace of the daemon 
 line from which he was said to spring, of which we see 
 nothing in Frederick in his sternest moods. A far nearer 
 likeness, much as either party would have been amazed 
 at it, may be seen between the Swabian Ciesar and the 
 great contemporary English churchman. Frederick of 
 Hohenstaufen and Thomas of Canterbury were alike men 
 
 Morena (col. 1102) dictated his history. Could not a judge (" curiae imperialis 
 judex," col. 1153) write?
 
 286 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITAL Y. [Essay 
 
 of high and noble character, devoting themselves to objects 
 which, in the judgement of their own time, were righteous. 
 We can have no sympathy either with the exemption of 
 the clergy from temporal jurisdiction or with the subjuga- 
 l^on of Italy by a German monarch. We can rejoice that 
 both Frederick and Thomas failed in the long run, but we 
 can honour the men themselves all the same. Frederick 
 had the great advantage of finding himself in a position 
 which allowed all his qualities their free, full, and natural 
 developement. The lot of Thomas constrained him to a 
 course, sincere indeed, but still unnatural and artificial. 
 Frederick would have made but a strange saint and 
 martyr ; but had Thomas been bom of Frederick's princely 
 ancestry, he might have shone on the Imperial throne with 
 a glory equal to that of Frederick himself. 
 
 How far the reign of Frederick worked in the long run 
 for the good or for the ill of Italy may well be doubted. 
 A long and at last victorious struggle against such an 
 adversary of course raised the spirit and confidence of the 
 republics, and thus contributed to the freedom and glory 
 of the great age of mediaeval Italy. But the very same 
 cause doubtless made Italian unity further off than ever. 
 To be a citizen of Milan or Crema or Tortona was to bear 
 so glorious a name that men cared not to sink it in the 
 vaguer and less glorious name of Italians. The war with 
 Frederick gave Italy, as Sismondi says, the opportunity, 
 which she failed to grasp, of forming herself into a power- 
 ful and permanent confederation. Achaia, Switzei'land, 
 Holland, and America, formed themselves under similar 
 circumstances into great and Listing Federal republics; 
 the Lombard cities had no thought of any union closer 
 than that of strict offensive and defensive alliance. Doubt- 
 less the constitutional theory, admitted by Guelf no less 
 than Ohibeline, that the republics were municipalities 
 holding of the King of Italy must have stood in the way 
 of any closer union. The same cause may have hindered 
 even Switzerland from assuming the perfect federal form
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST. KISG OF ITA LY. 287 
 
 till our own day. The kinydom died out. and the cities 
 remained, not cantons of a strong Italian league, but sove- 
 reign states, weak against any powerful foreign invader. 
 In the next century Italy had another chance of union in 
 quite another form. The process which we see going on 
 under our own eyes might have happened from the opposite 
 quarter, and Italy might have formed a great and united 
 monarchy under the sceptre of the Sicilian Manfred. Such 
 a fate would have shorn Florence and Genoa and Venice 
 of some brilliant centuries ; but it would have saved 
 Milan from the rule of the Visconti and Rome from 
 the rule of Borgia, and it might have saved the whole 
 peninsula from the yoke of Spaniard, Austrian, and 
 i renchman. 
 
 To return, in conclusion, to the position from which we 
 started : what conceivable analogy is there between a King 
 of Italy and Emperor of the Romans, reigning by acknow- 
 ledged legal right, in whose election Italian barons had at 
 least a formal share, and who received the crown of Rome 
 from Rome's own Pontiff', a king whose right no Italian 
 denied, and in whose cause many Italians zealously fought, 
 and the lord of a strange disunited collection of kingdoms, 
 who unhappily possesses a corner of Italian soil, and who 
 till lately exercised an illegitimate influence over Italy in 
 general ? It is hard to see why the Archduke of Austria 
 calls himself Emperor, without election or coronation ; it is 
 hard to see what is meant by an " Emperor of Austria " 
 any more than by an Emperor of Reuss-Schleiz ; it is hard 
 to see how a prince the greater part of whose dominions lie 
 out of Germany can give himself out as the representative 
 of the old German kings ; but it is harder still to see the 
 likeness between the foreign prince who does not even 
 claim the Italian kingdom, who by mere brute violence 
 holds an Italian province without a single Italian partizan, 
 and the didchithnus Imperator who commanded the loyal 
 devotion of Pavia and Lodi and Cremona. One of the 
 very strangest notions is that " Austria " is an ancient,
 
 288 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay 
 
 venerable, conservative power. History pronounces it to 
 be modern, upstart, and revolutionary, a power which has 
 risen to a guilty greatness by trampling on every historic 
 right and every national memory. The so-called " Empire " 
 of Austria — a lover of old German history almost shrinks 
 from writing the hateful title — is a mere creation of yester- 
 day, a mere collection of plunder from various quarters. 
 Hungary and Bohemia were once elective kingdoms ; Gali- 
 cia was rent from unhappy Poland by the basest of treachery 
 and ingratitude ; Venice and Ragusa were independent 
 commonwealths within the memory of man ; the liberties 
 of Cracow have been trampled to the earth before our own 
 eyes. What has such a power as this in common with the 
 old days of great and united Germany? What is its '"Im- 
 perial" master but a mere impostor, a bastard Csesar, a 
 profane mockery of the glories of Charles and Otto and 
 Henry and Frederick ? German as well as Italian patriot- 
 ism ought to shrink from the miserable sham. If the Im- 
 perial title — now become the prize of perjury and massacre 
 — has not sunk too low to be borne by the chief of a free 
 people, the true Csesar Augustus will be he whom we trust 
 soon to see enthroned in the old capital of Italy and the 
 world. And if the chosen king of liberated Italy can re- 
 cover either the iron crown of Monza or the golden crown 
 of Rome, not the least ennobling association of these vener- 
 able relics will be that they have pressed the noble brow of 
 King Frederick of Hohenstaufen.* 
 
 * [How all that called forth uiy protest of ten years back has utterly 
 changed every reader can see for himself. The cession of two or three small 
 districts is all that is needed to ni;il<e the Italian kingdom complete. The 
 King of Hungary — to give him his highest lawt'id title — has now a noble 
 future before him. Let his small Italian possessions revert to Italy; let 
 Austria and his other German possessions revert to their natural position as 
 parts of the new German Empire, and let Hungary stand forth as the centre 
 and head of the scattered and distracted nations of Eastern Christendom. 
 The Hungarian king is their natural champion alike against their Turkish 
 tyrant and tlieir insidious Russian deliverer. Union with a kingilom whicli 
 already contains so many inhabitants of their own speech would be a far 
 better fate for the troubled Roman provinces than incorporation with either
 
 IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KIXG OF ITAL Y. 289 
 
 Russia or Turkey, or than an independence for which they are clearly unfit. 
 Kaces, creeds, tongues, are so mingled together in tho.se regions that a strictly 
 national state of any size cannot be formed. But Magyars, Slaves, Eou- 
 mans, Bulgarians, even Transsilvanian Saxons, so far cut off from the Teu- 
 tonic body, might all find their places in a great federal union of the Lower 
 Danube. Buda was once the seat of a Turkish Pasha no less than Belgrade. 
 Hungary, freed from foreign foes, and having changed her tyrant into her 
 king, is marked out as the state charged with the mission of restoring free- 
 dom and civilization among all the neighbouring lands.] [1871.]
 
 290 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 X. 
 
 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 
 
 1. Historia Biplomatica Friderici Secundi, etc. Collegit, etc. 
 
 J. L. A. Huillaed-Breholles, auspiciis et sumptibus 
 H. DE Albert IS de Luynes. Prdface et Introduction. 
 Paris: H. Plon, 1859. 
 
 2. Histon/ of Frederick the Second, Fmperor of the Romans. 
 
 By T. L. Kington [Olipiiant], M.A. Cambridge and 
 London: Macmillan, 1862. 
 
 3. Vie et Correspo7idance de Pierre de la Vigne, Ministre de 
 
 lEmpereur Frederic II., etc. Par A. Huillard-Bre- 
 holles. Paris: H. Plon, 1866. 
 
 Stupor mundi Fredericus — Frederick the Wonder of the 
 World — is the name by which the English historian Mat- 
 thew Paris more than once speaks of the Emperor who di-ew 
 on him the eyes of all men during the greater part of the 
 former half of the thirteenth century, and whose name has 
 ever since lived in history as that of the most wonderful 
 man in a most wonderful age. We do not say the greatest, 
 still less the best, man of his time, but, as Matthew Paris 
 calls him, the most wonderful man ; the man whose cha- 
 racter and actions shone out most distinctively, the man 
 whose personality was most marked ; the man, in short, 
 who was in all things the most unlike to all the other men 
 who were about him. It is probable that there never lived 
 a human being endowed with greater natural gifts, or whose 
 natural gifts were, according to the means afforded him by 
 his age, more sedulously cultivated, than the last Emperor
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. , 291 
 
 of the house of Swabia. There seems to be no aspect of 
 human nature which was not developed to the highest de- 
 gree in his person. In versatility of gifts, in what we may 
 call manysidedness of character, he appears as a sort of 
 mediaeval Alkibiades, while he was undoubtedly far re- 
 moved from Alkibiades' utter lack of principle or steadi- 
 ness of any kind. Warrior, statesman, lawgiver, scholar, 
 there was nothing in the compass of the political or intel- 
 lectual world of his age which he failed to grasp. In an 
 age of change, when, in every corner of Europe and civilized 
 Asia, old kingdoms, nations, systems, were falling and new 
 ones rising, Frederick was emphatically the man of change, 
 the author of things new and unheard of — he was stupor 
 mundi et immuiator miralilis. A suspected heretic, a sus- 
 pected Mahometan, he was the object of all kinds of absurd 
 and self-contradictory charges ; but the charges mark real 
 features in the character of the man. He was something 
 unlike any other Emperor or any other man ; whatever 
 professions of orthodoxy he might make, men felt instinc- 
 tively that his belief and his practice were not the same as 
 the belief and the practice of other Christian men. There 
 can be no doubt that he had wholly freed his mind from the 
 trammels of his own time, and that he had theories and 
 designs which, to most of his contemporaries, would have 
 seemed monstrous, unintelligible, impossible. Frederick in 
 short was, in some obvious respects, a man of the same stamp 
 as those who influence their own age and the ages which come 
 after them, the men who, if their lot is cast in one walk, 
 found sects, and if it is cast in another, found empires. Of 
 all men, Frederick the Second might have been expected to 
 be the founder of something, the beginner of some new sera, 
 political or intellectual. He was a man to whom some great 
 institution might well have looked back as its creator, to 
 whom some large body of men, some sect or party or nation, 
 might well have looked back as their prophet or founder or 
 deliverer. But the most gifted of the sons of men has left 
 behind him no such memory, while men whose gifts cannot 
 
 U 2
 
 292 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOyD. [Essay 
 
 bear a comparison with his are reverenced as founders by 
 grateful nations, churches, political and philosophical parties. 
 Frederick in fact founded nothing, and he sowed the seeds 
 of the destruction of many things. His great charters to 
 the spiritual and temporal princes of Germany dealt the 
 death-blow to the Imperial power, while he, to say the least, 
 looked coldly on the rising power of the cities and on those 
 commercial leagues which were in his time the best element 
 of German political life. In fact, in whatever aspect we 
 look at Frederick the Second, we find him, not the first, 
 but the last, of every series to which he belongs. An Eng- 
 lish writer, two hundred years after his time, had the pene- 
 tration to see that he was really the last Emperor.* He 
 was the last prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not 
 seem a mockery ; he was the last under whose rule the three 
 Imperial kingdoms retained any practical connexion with 
 one another and with the ancient capital of aU. Frederick, 
 who sent his trophies to Rome to be guarded by his own 
 subjects in his own city, was a Roman Cassar in a sense in 
 which no other Emperor was after him. And he was not 
 only the last Emperor of the whole Empire ; he might 
 almost be called the last king of its several kinn-doms. 
 After his time Burgundy vanishes as a kingdom ; there is 
 hardly an event to remind us of its existence except the 
 fancy of Charles the Fourth, of all possible Emperors, to 
 go and take the Burgundian crown at Aries. Italy too, 
 after Frederick, vanishes as a kingdom ; any later exercise 
 of the royal authority in Italy was something which came 
 and went wholly by fits and starts. Later Emperors were 
 crowned at Milan, but none after Frederick was King of 
 Italy in the same real and effective sense that he was. 
 Germany did not utterly vanish, or utterly split in pieces, 
 like the sister kingdoms ; but after Frederick came the 
 Great Interregnum, and after the Great Interregnum the 
 
 * Capgrave, in his Chronicle, dates by Emperors down to Frederick, and 
 then adds: "Fro this tyme forward oure annotacion schal be aftir the regiie 
 of the Kyngis of Ynglond ; for the Umpire, in vianer, sesed here."
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 293 
 
 Yoy?i\ power in Germany never was what it had been before. 
 In his hereditary kingdom of Sicily he was not absolutely 
 the last of his dynasty, for his son Manfred ruled prosper- 
 ously and gloriously for some years after his death. But it 
 is none the less clear that from Frederick's time the Sicilian 
 kingdom was doomed ; it was marked out to be, what it 
 has been ever since, divided, reunited, divided again, tossed 
 to and fro between one foreign sovereign and another. 
 Still more conspicuously than all was Frederick the last 
 Christian King of Jerusalem, the last baptized man who 
 really ruled the Holy Land or wore a crown in the Holy 
 City. And yet, strangely enough, it was at Jerusalem, if 
 anywhere, that Frederick might claim in some measure the 
 honours of a founder. If he was the last more than nominal 
 King of Jerusalem, he was also, after a considerable interval, 
 the fii-st ; he recovered the kingdom by his own address, 
 and, if he lost it, its loss was, of all the misfortunes of his 
 reign, that which could be with the least justice attributed 
 to him as a fault. In the world of elegant letters Frederick 
 has some claim to be looked on as the founder of that 
 modern Italian language and literature which first assumed 
 a distinctive shape at his Sicilian court. But in the wider 
 field of political history Frederick appears nowhere as a 
 creator, but rather everywhere as an involuntary destroyer. 
 He is in everything the last of his own class, and he is not 
 the last in the same sense as princes who perish along with 
 their realms in domestic revolutions or on the field of battle. 
 If we call him the last Emperor of the West, it is in quite 
 another sense from that in which Constantine Palaiologos 
 was the last Emperor of the East. Under Frederick the 
 Empire and everything connected with it seems to crumble 
 and decay while preserving its external splendour. As 
 soon as its brilliant possessor is gone, it at once falls 
 asunder. It is a significant fact that one who in mere 
 genius, in mere accomplishments, was surely the greatest 
 prince who ever wore a crown, a prince who held the 
 greatest place on earth, and who was concerned during
 
 294 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 a long reign in some of the greatest transactions of one 
 of the greatest ages, seems never, even from his own 
 flatterers, to have received that title of Great which has 
 been so lavishly bestowed on far smaller men. The world 
 instinctively felt that Frederick, by nature the more than 
 peer of Alexander, of Constantine, and of Charles, had left 
 behind him no such creation as they left, and had not 
 influenced the world as they had influenced it. He was 
 sfiijwr mundi et inuiiutator mirahilis, but the name oi Frideriais 
 Magnus was kept in store for a prince of quite another age 
 and house, who, whatever else we say of him, at least 
 showed that he had learned the art of Themistokles, and 
 knew how to change a small state into a great one. 
 
 Many causes combined to produce this singular result, 
 that a man of the extraordinary genius of Frederick, a man 
 possessed of every advantage of birth, office, and opportunity, 
 should have had so little direct effect upon the world. It is 
 not enough to attribute his failure to the many and great 
 faults of his moral character. Doubtless they were one 
 cause among others. But a man who influences future 
 ages is not necessarily a good man. No man ever had a 
 more direct influence on the future history of the world 
 than Lucius Cornehus Sulla. The man who crushed Rome's 
 last rival, who saved Rome in her last hour of peril, who 
 made her indisputably and for ever the head of Italy, did a 
 work greater than the work of Csesar. Yet the name of 
 Sulla is one at which we almost instinctively shudder. So 
 the faults and crimes of Frederick, his irreligion, his private 
 licentiousness, his barbarous cruelty, would not of them- 
 selves be enough to hinder him from leaving his stamp 
 upon his age in the way that other ages have been marked 
 by the influence of men certainly not worse than he. Still, 
 to exercise any gi-eat and lasting influence on the world, 
 a man must be, if not virtuous, at least capable of objects 
 and efl'orts which have something in common with virtue. 
 Sulla stuck at no crime which could serve his country or 
 his party, but it was for his country and his party, not for
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 295 
 
 purely selfish ends, that he laboiu*ed and that he sinned. 
 Thorough devotion to any cause has in it something of 
 self-sacrifice, something which, if not purely virtuous, is 
 not without an element akin to virtue. Very bad men 
 have achieved very gi-eat works, but they have commonly 
 achieved them through those features in their character 
 which made the nearest approach to goodness. The weak 
 side in the briUiant career of Frederick is one which seems 
 to have been partly inherent in his character, and paiily 
 the result of the circumstances in which he found himself. 
 Capable of every part, and in fact playing every part by 
 turns, he had no single definite object, pursued honestly 
 and steadfastly throughout his whole life. With all his 
 powers, with all his brilliancy, his course throughout life 
 seems to have been in a manner determined for him by 
 others. He was ever drifting into wars, into schemes of 
 policy, which seem to be hardly ever of his own choosing. 
 He was the mightiest and most dangerous adversary that 
 the Papacy ever had. But he does not seem to have with- 
 stood the Papacy from any personal choice, or as the 
 voluntary champion of any opposing principle. He became 
 the enemy of the Papacy, he planned schemes which in- 
 volved the utter overthrow of the Papacy, yet he did so 
 simply because he found that no Pope would ever let him 
 alone. It was perhaps an unerring instinct which hindered 
 any Pope from ever letting him alone. Frederick, left 
 alone to act according to his own schemes and inclinations, 
 might very likely have done the Papacy more real mischief 
 than he did when he was stirred up to open enmity. Still, 
 as a matter of fact, his quarrels with the Popes were not of 
 his own seeking ; a sort of inevitable destiny led him into 
 them, whether he wished for them or not. Again, the most 
 really successful feature in Frederick's career, his acquisition 
 of Jerusalem, is not only a mere episode in his life, but it is 
 something that was absolutely forced upon him against his 
 will. The most successful of crusaders since Godfrey is 
 the most utterly unlike any other crusader. With other
 
 296 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 crusaders the Holy War was, in some cases the main 
 business of their lives ; in all cases it was something 
 seriously undertaken as a matter either of policy or of 
 relio-ious duty. But the crusade of the man who actually 
 did recover the Holy City is simply a grotesque episode in 
 his life. Excommunicated for not going, excommunicated 
 af>'ain for going, excommunicated again for coming back, 
 threatened on every side, he still went, and he succeeded. 
 What others had failed to win by arms, he contrived to win 
 by address, and all that came of his success was that it was 
 made the ground of fresh accusations against him. For 
 years the cry for the recovery of Jerusalem had been sound- 
 ino" through Christendom ; at last Jerusalem was recovered, 
 and its recoverer was at once cursed for accomplishing the 
 most fervent wishes of so many thousands of the faithful. 
 The excommunicated king, whom no churchman would 
 crown, whose name was hardly allowed to be uttered in 
 his own army, kept his dominions in spite of all oj)position. 
 He was hindered from the further consolidation and exten- 
 sion of his Eastern kingdom only by a storm stirred up in 
 his hereditary states by those who were most bound to 
 show towards him something more than common inter- 
 national honesty. Whatever were the feelings and circum- 
 stances under which he had acted, Frederick was in fact 
 the triumphant champion of Christendom, and his reward 
 was fresh denunciations on the part of the spiritual chief 
 of Christendom. The elder Frederick, Philip of France, 
 Richard of England, Saint Lewis, Edward the First, were 
 crusaders from piety, from policy, or from fashion ; Frederick 
 the Second was a crusader simply because he could not 
 help being one, and yet he did what they all failed to do. 
 So again in his dealinefs with both the German and the 
 Italian states, it is impossible to set him down either as a 
 consistent friend or a consistent enemy of the great political 
 movements of the age. He issues charters of privileges to 
 this or that commonwealth, he issues charters restraining 
 the freedom of commonwealths in general, simply as suits
 
 X.] THE EAIPEEOR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 297 
 
 the policy of the time. In his dealings with the Popes, 
 perhaps in his dealings with the cities also, Frederick was 
 certainly more sinned against than sinning. But a man 
 whose genius and brilliancy and vigour shine out in every 
 single action of his life, but in the general course of his 
 actions no one ruling principle can be discerned, who is as 
 it were tossed to and fro by circumstances and by the 
 actions of others, is either very unfortunate in the position 
 in which he finds himself, or else, with all his genius, he 
 must lack some of the qualities without which genius is 
 comparatively useless. 
 
 In the case of Frederick probably both causes were true. 
 For a man to influence his age, he must in some sort belong 
 to his age. He should be above it, before it, but he should 
 not be foreign to it. He may condemn, he may try to 
 change, the opinions and feelings of the men around him ; 
 but he must at least understand and enter into those 
 opinions and feehngs. But Frederick belongs to no age ; 
 intellectually he is above his own age, above every age ; 
 morally it can hardly be denied that he was below his 
 age ; but in nothing was he of his age. In many incidental 
 details his career is a repetition of that of his grandfather. 
 Like him he struggles against Popes, he struggles against 
 a league of cities, he wears the Cross in warfare against the 
 Infidel. But in character, in aim, in object, grandfather 
 and grandson are the exact opposite to each other. 
 Frederick Barbarossa was simply the model of the man, 
 the German, the Emperor, of the twelfth century. All the 
 faults and all the virtues of his age, his country, and his 
 position received in him their fullest developement. He 
 was the ordinary man of his time, following the objects 
 which an ordinary man of his time and in his position 
 could not fail to follow. He exhibited the ordinary 
 character of his time in its very noblest shape ; but it 
 was still only the ordinary character of his time. His 
 whole career was simj)ly typical of his age, and in no way 
 personal to himself; every action and every event of his
 
 298 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 life could be understood by every contemporary human 
 being, friend or enemy. But his grandson, emphatically 
 stiqwi- vijoidi, commanded the wonder, perhaps the admira- 
 tion, of an age which could not understand him. He 
 gathered indeed around him a small band of devoted 
 adherents ; but to the mass of his contemporaries he 
 seemed like a being of another nature. He shared none 
 of the feelings or prejudices of the time ; alike in his 
 intellectual greatness and in his moral abasement he had 
 nothing in common with the ordinary man of the thir- 
 teenth century. The world probably contained no man, 
 unless it were some solitary thinker here and there, whose 
 mind was so completely set free, alike for good and for 
 evil, from the ordinary trammels of the time. He appeared 
 in the eyes of his own age as the enemy of all that it was 
 taught to hold sacred, the friend of all that it was taught 
 to shrink from and wage war against. What Frederick's 
 religious views really were is a problem hard indeed to 
 solve ; but to his own time he appeared as something far 
 more than a merely political, or even than a doctrinal, 
 opponent of the Papacy. Men were taught to believe that 
 he was the enemy of the head of Christendom simply 
 because he was the enemy of Christianity altogether. 
 Again, the crimes and vices of Frederick were no greater 
 than those of countless other princes ; but there was no 
 prince who trampled in the like sort upon all the moral 
 notions of his own time. He contrived, by the circum- 
 stances of his vices, to outrage contemporary sentiment 
 in a way in which his vices alone would not have outraged 
 it. A man who thus showed no condescension to the 
 feelings of his age, whether good or evil, could not directly 
 influence that age. Some of his ideas and schemes may 
 have been silently passed on to men of later times, in 
 whose hands they were better able to bear fruit. He may 
 have shaken old prejudices and old beliefs in a few minds 
 of his own age ; he may even have been the fountain of a 
 tradition which was powerfully to affect distant ages. In
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 299 
 
 many things his ideas, his actions, forestalled events which 
 were yet far remote. The events which he forestalled he 
 may in this indirect and silent way have influenced. But 
 direct influence on the world of his own age he had none. 
 He may have undermined a stately edifice which was 
 still to survive for ages ; but he simply undermined. He 
 left no traces of himself in the character of a founder ; 
 he left as few in the character of an open and avowed 
 destroyer. 
 
 There was also another cause which, besides Frederick's 
 personal character, may have tended to isolate him from 
 his age and to hindei- him from having that influence over 
 it which we may say that his genius ought to have had. 
 This was his utter want of nationality. The conscious 
 idea of nationality had not indeed the same effect upon 
 men's minds which it has in our own times. The political 
 ideas and systems of the age ran counter to the principle 
 of nationality in two ways. Nothing could be more opposed 
 to any doctrine of nationality than those ideas which were 
 the essence of the whole political creed of the time, the 
 ideas of the Universal Empire and the Universal Church. On 
 the other hand, the conception of the joint lordship of the 
 world, vested in the successor of Peter and the successor of 
 Augustus, was hardly more opposed to the doctrine of 
 nationality than was the form which was almost every- 
 where taken by the rising spirit of freedom. A movement 
 towards national freedom was something exceptional ; in 
 most places it was the independence of a district, of a city, 
 at most of a small union of districts or cities, for which 
 men strove. A German or Italian commonwealth strusfgled 
 for its own local independence ; so far as was consistent 
 with the practical enjoyment of that independence, it was 
 ready to acknowledge the supremacy of the Emperor, Lord 
 of the World. Of a strictly national patriotism for Germany 
 or Italy men had very little thought indeed. These two 
 seemingly opposite tendencies, the tendency to merge 
 nations in one universal dominion, and the tendency to
 
 300 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 divide nations into small principalities and commonwealths, 
 were in truth closely connected. The tendency to division 
 comes out most strongly in the kingdoms which were united 
 to the Empire. Other countries showed a power of strictly 
 national action, of acquiring liberties common to the whole 
 nation, of legislating in the interest of the whole nation, 
 almost in exact proportion to the degree in which they 
 were placed beyond the reach of Imperial influences. 
 Spain, Scandinavia, Britain, were the countries on which 
 the Empire had least influence. Spain, Scandinavia, Britain, 
 were therefore the countries in which we see the nearest 
 approaches to true national life and consciousness. Still 
 there is no doubt that, even within the Empire, national 
 feelings did exercise a strong, though in a great measure 
 an unconscious, influence. Local feelings exercised an 
 influence still stronger. But there was no national or 
 local feeling which could gather round Frederick the 
 Second. There was no national or local cause of which 
 he could be looked on as the champion. There was no 
 nation, no province, no city, which could claim him as 
 its own peculiar hero. Ruling over men of various races 
 and languages, he could adapt himself to each of them 
 in turn in a way in which few men before or after him 
 could do. But there was none of the various races of his 
 dominions, German, Burgundian, Italian, Norman, Greek, 
 or Saracen, which could claim him as really bone of its 
 bone and flesh of its flesh. His parentage was half German, 
 half Norman, his birthplace was Italian, the home of his 
 choice was Sicilian, his tastes and habits were strongly 
 suspected of being Saracenic. The representative of a 
 kingly German house, he was himself, beyond all doubt, 
 less German than anything else. He was Norman, Italian, 
 almost anything rather than German ; but he was far from 
 being purely Norman or purely Italian. In this position, 
 placed as it were above all ordinary local and national 
 ties, he was, beyond every other prince who ever wore the 
 Imperial diadem, the embodiment of the conception of an
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 301 
 
 Emperor, Lord of the World. But an Emperor, Lord of the 
 World, is placed too high to win the affections which attach 
 men to rulers and leaders of lower degree. A king may- 
 command the love of his own kingdom ; a popular leader 
 may command the love of his own city. But C?esar, 
 whose dominion is from the one sea to the other and from 
 the flood unto the world's end, must, in this respect as in 
 others, pay the penalty of his greatness. Frederick was, 
 in idea, beyond all men, the hero and champion of the 
 Empire. But practically the championship of the Empire 
 was found less truly effective in his hands than in the 
 hands of men who were further from carrying out the 
 theoretical ideal. The Imperial power was more truly 
 vigorous in the hands of princes in whom the ideal cham- 
 pionship of the Empire was united with the practical 
 leadership of one of its component nations. Frederick 
 Barbarossa, the true German king, the man whom the 
 German instinct at once hails as the noblest developement 
 of the German character, really did more for the greatness 
 of the Empire than his descendant, whose ideal position 
 was far more truly Lnperial, The men who influence their 
 age, the men who leave a lasting memory behind them, are 
 the men who are thoroughly identified with the actual 
 or local life of some nation or city, Frederick Barbarossa 
 was the hero of Germany; but his grandson", the hero of 
 the Empire, was the hero of none of its component parts. 
 The memory of the grandfather still Hves in the hearts of 
 a people, some of whom perhaps even now look for his 
 personal return. The memory of the grandson has every- 
 where passed away from popular remembrance ; the Wonder 
 of the World remains to be the wonder of scholars and 
 historians only. 
 
 In this last respect the memory of Frederick the Second 
 has certainly nothing to complain of. Few princes have 
 ever had such a monument raised to them as has been 
 raised to the memory of the last Swabian Emperor by 
 the munificence of the Duke of Luynes and the learning
 
 302 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 and industry of M. Huillard-Br^holles. Here, in a series 
 of noble quartos, are all the documents of a reign most 
 fertile in documents, ushered in by a volume which, 
 except in not assuming a strictly narrative form, is essen- 
 tially a complete history of Frederick's reign. M. Huil- 
 lard-Br^holles seems literally to have let nothing escape 
 him. He discusses at length everything which in any 
 way concerns his hero, from the examination of schemes 
 which look very like the institution of a new religion 
 down to the minutest details of form in the wording, 
 dating, and spelling of the Emperor's official acts. We 
 never saw a book which is more thoroughly exhaustive 
 of the subject with which it deals. It is not a history, 
 merely because the form of an introduction or preface 
 seems to have laid M. Brdholles under the necessity of 
 giving us, instead of a single regular narrative, a series 
 of distinct narrative discussions of each of the almost 
 countless aspects in which the reign of Frederick can be 
 looked at. M. Br^hoUes has also followed up his great 
 work by a monograph of the life and aims of one whose 
 history is inseparably bound together Avith that of Frede- 
 rick, his great and unfortunate minister, Peter de Vinea. 
 In this he examines at full length a subject to which we 
 shall again return, and which is perhaps the most inter- 
 esting of all which the history of Frederick presents, 
 namely, the relation of the freethinking and reforming 
 Emperor to the received religion of this age. On this 
 point we cannot unreservedly pledge ourselves to all the 
 details of M. BrehoUes' conclusions ; but they are at least 
 highly ingenious, and the contemporary evidence on which 
 he grounds them is most singular and interesting, and 
 deserves most attentive study. Altogether we can have 
 no hesitation in placing M. BrehoUes' investigation of 
 the reign of Frederick the Second among the most im- 
 portant contributions which our age has made to historical 
 learning. 
 
 Nor has the character and history of Frederick failed to
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 303 
 
 attract notice among scholars in our own country. His 
 career supplies materials for one of the most brilliant parts 
 of Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity; there is 
 no part of his great work which is more palpably a labour 
 of love. More recently has appeared the history of Frede- 
 rick by Mr. Kington-Oliphant, the production of a young- 
 writer, and which shows want of due preparation in some 
 of the introductory portions, but which also shows real 
 research and real vigour as the author approaches his 
 main subject, the hfe of Frederick himself. JMi*. Oliphant 
 is confessedly a disciple of M. Breholles, and his volumes, 
 as supplying that direct and continuous narrative which 
 M. Breholles' plan did not allow of, may be taken as a 
 companion-piece to the great work of his master."^ 
 
 The reign of Frederick, like that of his predecessor 
 Henry the Fourth, was nearly co-extensive with his life. 
 His history began while he was in his cradle. Like Heniy 
 the Fourth, after filUng the fii'st place in men's minds 
 for a long series of years, he died at no very advanced 
 time of life. Frederick, born in 1194, died in 1250, at 
 the age of fifty-six, Henry at the time of his death was 
 a year younger. Yet it marks a difference between the 
 two men that historians seem involuntarily, in defiance of 
 chronology, to think and speak of Henry in his later years 
 as quite an aged man. No one ever speaks in this way 
 of Frederick. The Wonder of the World seems endowed 
 with a kind of undying youth, and after all the great 
 events and revolutions of his reign, we are at last surprised 
 to find that we have passed over so many years as we 
 really have. Frederick was a king almost from his birth. 
 The son of the Emperor Henry the Sixth and of Constance 
 the heiress of Sicily, he was born while his father was 
 in his full career of success and cruelty. His very birth 
 gave occasion to mythical tales. The comparatively ad- 
 vanced age of his mother, which however has been greatly 
 
 * [Mr. Oliphant is now better known for researches into the history of the 
 English language.] [i886.]
 
 304 THE EMPFAIOR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 exaggerated, gave occasion to rumours of opposite kinds. 
 His enemies gave out that he was not really of Imperial 
 birth, and that the childless Empress had palmed off a 
 supposititious child on her husband. His admirers hailed 
 his birth as wonderful, if not miraculous, and placed the 
 conception of Constance alongside of the conceptions of 
 the mothers of Isaac, of Samuel, and of John the Eaptist. 
 Elected King of the Romans in his infancy, his father's 
 death left him in his third year his successor in the 
 Sicihan kingdom, and his mother s death in the next year 
 left an orphan boy as the heir alike of the Hohenstaufen 
 Emperors and of the Norman kings. His election as 
 King of the Romans seems to have been utterly forgotten ; 
 after the death of his father, the crown was disputed by 
 the double election of Otto of Saxony and of Frederick's 
 own uncle . Philip. The child in Sicily was not thought 
 of till Philip had been murdered just when fortune seemed 
 to have finally decided for him ; till Otto, reaping the 
 advantage of a crime of which he was guiltless, had been 
 enabled to secure both the kingdom and the Empire, 
 and till he had fallen into disgrace with the Pontiff by 
 whose favour he had at fii'st been supported. Meanwhile 
 the Sicilian kingdom was torn by rebellions and laid 
 waste by mercenary captains. The land had at last been 
 restored to some measure of peace, and the young king 
 to some measure of authority, by the intervention of the 
 overlord Pope Innocent. Frederick was a husband at 
 fifteen, a father at eighteen, and almost at the same 
 moment as the birth of his first son, Henry the future 
 king and rebel, he was called to the. German crown by 
 the party which was discontented with Otto, now under 
 the ban of the Church. Frederick, destined to be the 
 bitterest enemy of the Roman see, made his first appear- 
 ance on German soil as its special nursling, called to 
 royalty and Empire under the auspices of the greatest 
 of the Roman Pontiffs. He came thither also, there seems 
 little reason to doubt, under patronage of a less honour-
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 305 
 
 able kind. The long disputes between England and France 
 had already begun, and, by a strange anticipation of far 
 later times, they had already begun to be carried on 
 within the boundaries of the Empire. Otto, the son of 
 an English mother, was supported by the money and 
 the arms of his uncle John of England, while the heir 
 of the Hohenstaufen partly owed his advancement to the 
 influence and the gold of Philip of France. In 121 1 
 Frederick was elected King ; three years later, Otto, in 
 Mr. Oliphant's words, " rushed on his doom." At Eou- 
 vines, a name hardly to be written without an unpleasant 
 feeling by any man of Teutonic blood and speech, the 
 King of the French overthrew the Saxon Emperor and 
 his English and Flemish allies. The power of Otto, 
 akeady crumbling away, was now utterly broken. In 
 1 2 15, while John was quailing before his triumphant 
 barons, Frederick, the rival of his nephew, received the 
 royal crown and assumed the cross. Three years later, 
 the death of Otto removed all traces of opposition to 
 his claims, an event which, by a singular coincidence, 
 was nearly contemporaneous with the birth of one des- 
 tined to be himself, not only a king, but the beginner 
 of a new stage in the history of the Empire, the famous 
 Rudolf of Habsburg. In 1220 Frederick's son Henry, 
 then only eight years old, was elected King, although 
 his father was not yet crowned Emperor. But in the 
 course of the same year Frederick received the Imperial 
 diadem at the hands of Pope Honorius. His coronation 
 was an event deserving of special record in the Roman 
 annals, as one of the very few times when an Emperor 
 received his crown without bloodshed or disturbance, amid 
 the loyal acclamations of the Roman people. Possibly 
 some conscious or unconscious feeling of national kindred 
 spoke in favour of an Emperor born within the borders 
 of Italy, and under whose rule it might seem that Germany 
 and not Italy was likely to be the secondary and de- 
 pendent realm. In truth, in that same year, before leaving 
 
 X
 
 306 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 his Northern kingdom, Frederick had, seemingly as the 
 price of the election of his son, put the seal to the de- 
 struction of the royal power in Germany. The charter 
 which he granted in that year to the German princes is 
 one of the marked stages of the long process which changed 
 the kingdom of Charles and Otto and Henry into the lax 
 Confederation which has so lately fallen in pieces before 
 our eyes."^ 
 
 Frederick was still, to all appearance, a dutiful son of 
 the Church ; but there were already signs that a storm 
 was brewing. The union between a Pope and a Hohen- 
 staufen Emperor was something which in its own nature 
 could not be lasting. The magnificent theory which looked 
 on the spiritual and temporal chiefs of Rome as the co- 
 equal rulers of the Church and the world always gave 
 way at the slightest strain. Even before his Imperial 
 coronation, Frederick had fallen under the displeasure of 
 Honorius ; he had received rebukes and had had to make 
 excuses. As usual, the two swords were always clashing; 
 the King of Sicily w^as charged with meddling with eccle- 
 siastical fiefs and with the freedom of ecclesiastical elections. 
 But the great point was the Crusade. Frederick had be- 
 come a crusader at the time of his assumption of the 
 German crown ; but no crusade had he as yet waged. 
 Damietta had been won, and Damietta was soon after 
 lost again, without the temporal head of Christendom 
 striking a blow to win or to defend it. The position 
 thus lightly dealt with was held to be the very key of 
 the Holy Land. In the eyes of a Pope such neglect was 
 a wicked forsaking of the first of duties. It might per- 
 haps have appeared in the same light in the eyes of an 
 ideal Emperor. But the hereditary King of Sicily, the 
 elected King of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy, found 
 occupation enough in the lower duties of ordinary royalty. 
 In all his kingdoms there were matters calling for his 
 attention. In his own hereditary realm he had a work 
 * [December, 1866.]
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 307 
 
 to do which he might fairly plead as an excuse for not 
 engaging in warfare beyond the sea. He had no need 
 to go and seek for Saracen enemies in distant lands while 
 the Saracens of his own island were in open revolt. He 
 brought into subjection both the turbulent infidels and 
 the no less turbulent nobles, and he made Sicily the 
 model of a civilized and legal despotism, framed after 
 the pattern of the best days of the Eastern Empire. The 
 wild Saracens of the mountains were partly constrained 
 to adopt a more peaceful life, partly transferred to a spot 
 where, instead of restless rebels, they became the surest 
 defence of his throne. He planted them in the city of 
 Nocera in Apulia, wheie, isolated in a surrounding Chris- 
 tian country, they dwelt as his housecarls or janissaries, 
 bound by the single tie of personal loyalty — soldiers who 
 could always be trusted, for over them Popes and monks 
 had no influence. Besides this work in his native king- 
 dom, a work enough by itself to tax all the energies of 
 an ordinary mortal, he had other work to do in all his 
 Imperial realms. Not the least interesting among the 
 notices of this part of his reign are those which concern 
 the states along his western frontier. On the one hand 
 France was already encroaching ; on the other hand a 
 movement was beginning which, had it prospered, might 
 have placed an unbroken line of independent states be- 
 tween the great rival powers. The duty which Switzer- 
 land and Belgium, at too great an interval from one 
 another, have still to discharge, fell, in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, to the lot of a whole crowd of rising commonwealths. 
 From the mouths of the Rhine to the mouths of the Rhone, 
 republics, worthy sisters of the republics of Italy and 
 Northern Germany, were springing up through the whole 
 length of ancient Lotharingia and Burgundy. It is sad 
 to see Frederick everywhere interfering to check this new 
 birth of freedom. Everywhere the local count or bishop 
 was encouraged to subdue the presumptuous rebels of the 
 cities. Take two instances from cities widely apart in 
 
 X 2
 
 308 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 geographical position. Massalia, the old Ionian common- 
 wealth, the city which had braved the might of Csesar 
 and which was before many years to brave the might of 
 Charles of Anjou, had begun her second and shorter career 
 of freedom. In the eyes of Frederick the citizens were 
 mere rebels against their bishop, and the Count of Pro- 
 vence was bidden to bring them back to their due obedi- 
 ence. So, at almost the other end of the Empire, the 
 citizens of Cam bray failed to pay due submission to the 
 Imperial commands. But here a more dangerous influence 
 was at work. The Emperor was still on good terms with 
 the King of the French ; he had lately concluded a treaty 
 with him ; binding himself, among other things, to enter 
 into no alliance with England. But the instinctive ten- 
 dencies of the Parisian monarchy were then, as ever, too 
 strong for mere written engagements. France was in- 
 triguing with the citizens of Cambray, and the Emperor 
 had to call upon King Lewis to cease from any inter- 
 meddling with his disaffected subjects. 
 
 We have brought out these points, though of no special 
 importance in the life of Frederick, because they at once 
 illustrate the varied relations of a mediaeval Emperor to 
 all kinds of rulers and communities, great and small, and 
 because they specially illustrate the reality of power 
 which the Emperor still retained both in his Burgundian 
 kingdom and in other portions of the Empire which have 
 since been swallowed up by the encroachments of France. 
 Neither of our authors brings out this point as it should 
 be brought out. M. Breholles is far too learned to be 
 ignorant of, far too candid to suppress, any one fact in 
 his history. Still he is a Frenchman, and we can hardly 
 expect him to enter a formal protest against tlie most 
 popular of all French delusions. Mr. Oliphant knows 
 his facts, but he does not fully grasp them. It is with 
 a kind of surprise that he finds " that many provinces, 
 now included within the boundaries of France, then looked 
 for direction to Hagenau or Palermo, not to Paris." To
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 309 
 
 be sure Mr. Eryce's tabular view of the Ten Burgundies 
 had not been drawn up when Mr. Oliphant wrote. 
 
 At last we reach Frederick's crusade, perhaps rather to be 
 called his progress to the East. The marriage of Frederick 
 with Yolande of Brienne put him into altogether a new rela- 
 tion to the Holy Land and all that pertained to it. His 
 journey to Jerusalem was now, not that of a private adven- 
 turer or pilgrim, not that of an Emperor acting as the 
 common head of Christendom, but that of a king going to 
 take possession of one of his own kingdoms, to receive yet 
 another crown in another of his capitals. And in truth 
 Frederick, when he had once set out, found less difficulty in 
 winning his way to the crown of Jerusalem than some of his 
 predecessors in the Empire had found in winning their way 
 to the crown of Rome. Everything seemed against him ; the 
 papal throne had a new and very different occupant ; to the 
 mild Honorius had succeeded the stern and unbending 
 Gregory. Frederick's second Empress was already dead, 
 and with her, it might be argued, he had lost his right to a 
 kingdom which he could claim only through her. He him- 
 self was excommunicated at every step ; if he went, if he 
 stayed, the ban was equally launched against him for going 
 and for staying. Yet he went : on his way he successfully 
 established his Imperial rights over the Frank king of 
 Cyprus, a rival claimant for the crown of Jerusalem. 
 Without striking a blow, by dexterous diplomacy, by 
 taking advantage of the divided and tottering state of the 
 Mahometan powers, he gained the main object for which 
 Christendom had striven in vain for forty years. A 
 Christian king again reigned in the Holy City, and the 
 sepulchre of Christ was again in the hands of His wor- 
 shippers. It was a strange position when the excom- 
 municated king, in whose presence any religious office was 
 forbidden, placed on his own head the crown of the Holy 
 Land in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. It might almost 
 seem as if it was in this strange moment of trial that 
 Frederick's faith finally gave way. The suspicion of
 
 310 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 Mahometanism which attached to him is of course, in its 
 literal sense, utterly absurd ; but it is wortliy of notice that 
 it was not confined to Christian imaginations. The con- 
 duct of Frederick at Jerusalem impressed more than one 
 Mahometan writer with the belief that, if the Emperor was 
 not an actual proselyte to Islam, he was at least not sound 
 in the faith which he outwardly professed. It must be re- 
 membered that the toleration of Mahometan worship within 
 its walls was one of the conditions on which Frederick 
 obtained possession of the Holy City. A stipulation like 
 this might well arouse suspicions of his Christian orthodoxy 
 in the minds of Christians and Mussulmans alike. In modern 
 eyes his conduct appears simply just and reasonable; 
 setting aside any abstract doctrine of religious toleration, 
 the view of a modern statesman would be that Frederick 
 preferred, and wisely preferred, instead of putting every- 
 thing to the hazard of the sword, to win his main object by 
 treaty, and to yield on some lesser points. The essence of 
 a treaty between two powers treating on equal terras is that 
 each should abate somewhat of that which it holds to be 
 the full measure of its rights. Few will now condemn 
 Frederick for choosing to accept such large concessions by 
 treaty rather than to trust everything to the chances of 
 war. Had he done otherwise, he might probably have had 
 to return to Europe after wasting his forces in a struggle 
 as bootless as those of most of the crusaders who had gone 
 before him. And it seems that, even in his own age, a large 
 amount of general European feeling went with him. His 
 treatment at the hands of the Pope and the papal party -was 
 so manifestly unjust as to arouse a deep feeling in his 
 favour in all parts of Christendom. In Italy, in Germany, 
 in England, the chief writers of the time all side with 
 Frederick against Gregory. Allowance w^as made for his 
 position ; he had done what he could; had he not laboured 
 under an unrighteous excommunication, had he not been 
 thwarted and betrayed by the clergy and the military orders, 
 he would have done far more. Still the iudiunation of the
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 3 1 1 
 
 extreme ecclesiastical party against Frederick was, from 
 their own point of view, neither unnatural nor unreasonable. 
 In the eyes of some zealots any treaty with the infidels was 
 in itself unlawful ; even without going this length, a treaty 
 which, though it secured the Holy Sepulchre to the 
 Christian, left the " Temple of the Lord" to the Mahometan, 
 could not fail to offend some of the most deep-seated 
 feelings of the age. Whatever might be Frederick's own 
 faith, he at least had not the orthodox hatred for men of 
 another faith. Various incidental actions and expressions 
 of the Emperor during his stay at Jerusalem impressed the 
 Mahometans themselves with the idea that he at least put 
 both religions pretty much on a level. We must remember 
 that his toleration of Mahometanism would be a thing 
 which few Mahometans would appreciate, and which would 
 of itself raise suspicions in most oriental minds. A man 
 who could act with justice and moderation towards men of 
 their law would seem to them to be no real believer in the 
 law which he himself professed. But this could not have 
 been all : the impression of Frederick's lack of orthodoxy, 
 and of his special tendency towards Mahometanism, was 
 too deeply fixed in the minds of men of both creeds to have 
 rested only on an inference of this kind. And it is perfectly 
 credible in itself. A King of Sicily, who from his child- 
 hood had had to do with Saracens in his own kino-dom 
 both in peace and in war, who, if he had sometimes had to 
 deal with them as enemies, had also found that they could 
 be changed into its bravest and most loyal soldiers, could 
 not possibl}^ hate the unbelievers with the hatred which in 
 the breast of a King of England or France might be a per- 
 fectly honest passion. Then, just at the moment when he 
 was naturally stung to the heart by his ill treatment at the 
 hands of the head of his own faith, when he was denied 
 communion in Christian rites, when the ministers and de- 
 fenders of the Christian Church shrank from him as from 
 one worse than an infidel — just at such a moment as this, 
 he came across a fuller and more splendid developement of
 
 312 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 the Mahometan law among the independent Mahometan 
 powers of the East. There was much in the aspect of 
 Mahometan society to attract him. The absolute authority 
 of the Mahometan sovereigns was congenial to his 
 political notions. The art and science, such as it was, 
 of the more civilize! Mahometan nations appealed to his 
 intellectual cravings. The license allowed by the Mahometan 
 law fell in no less powerfully with the impulses of his 
 voluptuous temperament. That Frederick ever, strictly 
 speaking, became a Mahometan is of course an absurd 
 fable. It is not even necessary to believe that he ever 
 formally threw aside all faith in the dogmas of Christianity 
 as understood in his own age. But that Frederick, with 
 all his professions of orthodoxy, was at least a freethinker, 
 that he indulged in speculations which the orthodoxy of his 
 age condemned, it is hardly possible to doubt. That he 
 aimed at the widest changes in the external fabric of the 
 Christian Church, in the relations between the spiritual 
 and the temporal, between the Papal and the Imperial, 
 powers, there can be no doubt at all. And, if there was 
 any one moment of change in Frederick's mind, any one 
 moment when doubt, if not disbelief, obtained the supremacy 
 over his mind, no moment is so likely as that in which he 
 saw Christianity and Islam standing side by side in the 
 Holy City of both religions, and when, as regarded him- 
 self, it could not have been Christianity which appeared in 
 the more attractive light. 
 
 We had hoped to give a sketch, if only a short one, of the 
 main events in Frederick's later career — his reconciliation 
 with Gregory, his season of comparative tranquillity in his 
 Sicilian realm, his schemes of government and legislation, 
 his second and final rupture with Gregory, his last struggle 
 with Innocent, his last excommunication and deposition, 
 and the political consequences of that bold stretch of papal 
 authority in the appearance of rival kings in Germany and 
 the general weakening of the Imperial power throughout 
 the Empire. But the reflexions to which we have been led
 
 X.] THE EMPEIWR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 313 
 
 by the consideration of Frederick's position at Jerusalem 
 lead us at once to questions which may well occupy our 
 remaining space. On the question of Frederick's religion 
 Mr. Oliphant hardly enlarges at all; Dean Milman sums up 
 his own view in a few remarkable words : — 
 
 "Frederick's, in my jnclgiuent, was neither scornful and godless infidelity, 
 nor certainly a more advanced and enlightened Christianity, yearning after 
 holiness and purity not then attainable. It was tlie shattered, duhious, at 
 times trembling faith, at times desperately reckless incredulity, of a man 
 under the burthen of an undeserved excommunication, of which he could 
 not but discern the injustice, but could not quite shake off the terrors ; of 
 a man whom a better age of Christianity might not have made religious ; 
 whom his own made irreligious." 
 
 Eut M. Breholles, both in his general Introduction and in 
 his special monograph of Peter de Vinea, goes very much 
 deeper into the question. He gathers together a great 
 number of passages from contemporary writers, which, in 
 his judgement, are evidence that Frederick was, in the eyes 
 of a small knot of enthusiastic admii'ers, looked on as some- 
 thing like the apostle, or rather the Messiah, of a new 
 religion. Such a notion is certainly much less improbable 
 in itself than, with our modern notions, it seems to us. 
 Everything was then looked at from a religious point of 
 view. Political partizanship took the form of religious 
 worship ; the man who died for his country or for his 
 party was canonized as a martyr, and miracles were 
 deemed to be wrought at his grave. The famous case of 
 Simon of Montfort, a younger contemporary of Frederick, 
 is perhaps the strongest of any. Simon died under a papal 
 excommunication ; but no excommunication could hinder 
 the English people, and the mass of the English clergy 
 among them, from looking on the martyred earl as the 
 patron of the English nation, whose relics possessed healing 
 virtues on earth, and whose intercession could not fail to 
 be availing in heaven. The age of Frederick moreover was 
 eminently an age of religious movement. The new 
 monastic orders on the one hand, the countless heresies on 
 the other, sprang out of the same source, and sometimes
 
 314 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 mingled together in a strange way. The heretic who was 
 sent to the stake and the Dominican friar who sent liim 
 thither were, each in his own way, witnesses to a general 
 feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing state of the 
 Church, to a general striving after something new, in 
 dogma^ in discipline, or in practice, according to the dis- 
 position of each particular reformer. Strange writings, 
 setting forth strange doctrines, were afloat before the days 
 of Frederick and remained afloat after his days. The 
 whole of the inner circle of the Franciscan order, the order 
 of personal self-sacrifice and mystic devotion, seemed fast 
 sweeping into something more than heresy. Even the 
 pillars of orthodox}^ the unrelenting avengers of every 
 deviation from the narrow path, the stern, practical, relent- 
 less, Dominicans, did not escape the suspicion of being 
 touched by the same contagion. That contagion was indeed 
 more than heresy ; it was the preaching of a new religion. 
 To the believers in the " Everlasting Gospel " Christianity 
 itself seemed, just as it seems to a Mahometan, to be a 
 mere imperfect and temporary dispensation, a mere prepara- 
 tion for something better which was to come. The reign 
 of the Father, with its revelation in the Mosaic Law, had 
 passed away; the reign of the Son, with its revelation in 
 the Christian Church, was passing away; the reign of the 
 Holy Ghost was approaching, with its own special revela- 
 tion, more perfect than all. The age was one which could 
 hardly bear to look upon anything in a purely secular way. 
 Even when the spiritual and temporal powers came into 
 conflict, the conflict was of a somewhat diflerent kind from 
 similar conflicts in our own day. The Ghibelin doctrine 
 was far from being a mere assertion of the superiority of a 
 power confessedly of the earth, earthy, over a power con- 
 fessedly of higher origin. The Empire had its religious 
 devotees as well as the Popedom. In the ideas of both 
 parties a Vicar of Christ was a necessity; the only question 
 was whether the true Vicar of Christ was to be looked for 
 in the Roman Pontifl' or in the Roman Csesar. To the
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 315 
 
 enthusiastic votaries of the Empire the Emperor seemed as 
 truly a direct representative of Divinity, as literally a 
 power reigning by divine right as ever the Pope could seem 
 in the eyes of the strongest assertor of ecclesiastical claims. 
 It is the growth of independent nations and Churches which 
 has, more than anything else, dealt the death-blow to both 
 theories. But in Frederick's time no man within the 
 limits of the Empire could be a vehement opponent of the 
 temporal or spiritual claims of the Pope without in some 
 measure asserting a spiritual as well as a temporal power 
 in the Emperor. This deification of the Imperial power 
 attained its fullest and most systematic developement 
 among the writers who undertook the defence of Lewis of 
 Bavaria ; but there is no doubt that ideas of the same kind 
 were ah-eady busily at work in the days of Frederick. So 
 far as Frederick was an opponent of the papal power, so far 
 as he contemplated any transfer of power from the Papacy 
 to the Empire, so far in short as he appeared at all in the 
 character of an ecclesiastical reformer, he could only do so, 
 if not in his own eyes at least in those of his admirers, by 
 transferring to himself, as Roman Emperor, some portion 
 of that official holiness of which he proposed to deprive the 
 Roman Pontiff. 
 
 Now, perplexing as is the question of Fredericks personal 
 belief, his external position, as Emperor and Kiug, towards 
 ecclesiastical questions is intelligible enough. He always 
 professed strict orthodoxy of dogma in his own person, and 
 in his legislation he strictly enforced such orthodoxy within 
 the pale of the Christian Church. To the Jew and the 
 Mahometan he gave full toleration ; the Christian heretic 
 found in him a persecutor as cruel as the most enthusiastic 
 Dominican turned loose upon the victims of the elder 
 Montfort. There is no necessary inconsistency in such 
 a position ; it is, in fact, one which was acknowledged by 
 the general treatment of the Jews throughout the middle 
 ages. The Jew or the Mahometan is something altogether 
 external to the Church. He is a foreign enemy, not an
 
 316 THE EMPEROR EREDERTCK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 inborn rebel ; he is one against whom the Church may 
 rightfully wage war, but not one whom she can claim 
 to bring before her domestic judgement-seat. But the 
 heretic is a home-bred traitor ; he is not a foreign enemy 
 of the Church, but a native rebel against her ; he is there- 
 fore an object, not of warfare, but of judicial punishment. 
 A Christian sovereign then, according to the mediaeval 
 theory, is in no way bound to molest Jews or Maho- 
 metans simply as Jews or Mahometans ; he must secure 
 Christians from any molestation at their hands, from any 
 proselytism of their creed ; but the Jew or the Mahometan 
 is not amenable to punishment simply on the ground of 
 his misbelief. But the heretic is so amenable. The Jew 
 has never been under the allegiance of the Church ; he is 
 a foreigner, not to be injured unless he commits some act 
 of national enmity. But the heretic is one who has cast 
 oti' his allegiance to the Church ; he is a spiritual rebel 
 to be chastised as unsparingly as the temporal rebel. This 
 principle was acted on throughout the middle ages. The 
 Jew was often exposed to unfavourable legislation ; he 
 was still more commonly visited with illegal or extra-legal 
 oppression ; but a Jew, simply as a Jew, was never held 
 to be liable to the penalties of heresy. What is remark- 
 able in Frederick's legislation is the real and eftective 
 nature of the toleration which he secured to Jews and 
 Mahometans, combined with the fact that such a man as 
 he was should appear as a religious persecutor under any 
 circumstances. If he really handed over heretics to the 
 flames in cold blood, simply to keep up for himself a 
 character for orthodoxy which he did not deserve, it is 
 hardly possible to conceive a greater measure of guilt. 
 And the guilt is hardly less if ho employed the popular 
 prejudice against heresy to destroy political enemies under 
 the garb of heretics. But it is possible to explain Frede- 
 ricks persecutions without attributing to him such detest- 
 able wickedness as this. Though a legislator may be per- 
 Bonally a freethinker, or oven a confirmed unbeliever, it
 
 X.] THE EMPFAIOR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 317 
 
 does not at all follow that he thinks it either possible or 
 desirable to abolish the public establishment of Christianity 
 in his dominions. And, in the view of all times and places 
 up to his day and long after, the public establishment of 
 any religious system involved the legal punishment of 
 those who separated from it. Frederick might thus hold 
 it to be a matter of public order and public justice to 
 chastise men for publicly rebelling against a system in 
 which he had himself lost all personal faith. Persecution 
 of this sort is far more hateful than the persecutions of the 
 honest fanatic, who burns a few men in this world to save 
 many from being burned in the next. Still it does not 
 reach the same measure of guilt as the detestable hypocrisy 
 which at first seems to be the obvious explanation of 
 Frederick's conduct in this respect. 
 
 Frederick then professed strict orthodoxy of dogma, and 
 persecuted those who departed from such orthodoxy. But 
 it is plain that, as to the relations between the spiritual 
 and temporal powers, he was not orthodox in the papal 
 sense. It was hardly possible that any Emperor should 
 be so. In the ideal theory of the two powers, the Pope 
 and the Emperor are strictly coequal ; the authority of 
 each is alike divine within its own range. But rigidly 
 to define the range of each is so hard a matter that this 
 ideal theory could hardly fail to remain an ideal theory. 
 The practical question always was whether the Emperor 
 should be subject to the Pope or the Pope subject to the 
 Emperor. On this question we cannot doubt that Frederick 
 had formed a very decided judgement indeed. With such 
 an intellect as his, in such a position as his, the subjection 
 of the Pope to the Emperor would be an established prin- 
 ciple from the first moment that he was capable of specu- 
 lating about such matters at all. Every event of his life, 
 every excommunication pronounced by a Pope, every act 
 of hostility or treachery on the part of churchmen or 
 military monks, would tend to confirm his decision. How 
 far Frederick, the innovator, the revolutionist, the despiser
 
 318 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 of received beliefs, may have been influenced by the tra- 
 ditional theories of the Holy Eoman Empire is another 
 matter. It is possible that he employed them as useful 
 for his purpose, without that honest faith in them which 
 clearly moved the Ottos and his own grandfather. The 
 magnificent theory of the Empire may well have kindled 
 his imagination, and he may have consciously striven to 
 change that magnificent theory into a living reality. But 
 the dominion at which he aimed was the effective imme- 
 diate dominion of a Byzantine Emperor or a Saracen 
 Sultan, rather than the shadowy lordship of a world every 
 inch of which was really partitioned out among inde- 
 pendent princes and commonwealths. But, whether strictly 
 as Emperor or in any other character, there can be no 
 doubt that Frederick gradually came to set before himself, 
 as the main object of his life, the depression of the spiritual, 
 and the exaltation of the temporal, power. 
 
 As we said before, whatever might have been Frederick's 
 own secret views, such a transfer of power as this could, 
 in that age, hardly take any outward form or shape except 
 that of a further deification of the temporal power, a more 
 complete acknowledgement of the Emperor, and not the 
 Pope, as the true Vicar of Christ upon earth. We must 
 also remember the tendencies and ways of expression of 
 that age, how every thought took a religious turn, how, 
 just as among the Puritans of the seventeenth century, 
 every strong feeling instinctively clothed itself in scrip- 
 tural language. Every one who knows anything of the 
 literature of those times is familiar with the way in which 
 the thoughts and words of Scripture are liabitually applied 
 by men to their own public or private affairs, applied in 
 the most thorough good faith, but in a tone which to our 
 habits seems in-everent, and sometimes almost blasphemous. 
 It is therefore in no way wonderful to find devoted par- 
 tizans of Frederick investing him with a relio^ious cha- 
 racter, and lavishing upon him the most sacred language 
 of prophets and apostles. Again, the Christian Empei'ors
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 319 
 
 had all along kept on from their pagan predecessors several 
 official phrases borrowed from the old heathendom. The 
 Emperor and all that belonged to him was " divine " and 
 "sacred;" his rescripts were "oracles;" his parents and 
 his children were spoken of as if they belonged to a stock 
 higher than mankind. Between these two influences we 
 are not surprised to find Frederick spoken of in terms 
 which, with modern feelings, we should apply only to the 
 holiest of objects. The question now comes, Was Frederick 
 ever directly and seriously put forth by himself or by 
 his followers as the prophet, apostle, or Messiah of a new 
 religion 1 
 
 That he was so put forth seems to be the opinion of 
 M. Breholles, and we must wind up by a glance at the 
 evidence on which he founds his belief. He would hardly 
 rely with any great confidence on two or three scoffing 
 speeches attributed to Frederick himself, which may or 
 may not have been really uttered by him, but w^hich in any 
 case illustrate the conception which men in general formed 
 of him. Thus, as is w^ell knowm, he was commonly be- 
 lieved to have said that Jews, Christians, and Saracens 
 had been led away by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and 
 Mahomet, and that he, Frederick, would set up a better 
 religion than any of them. If such a speech w^as ever 
 made, it could only have been in mockery ; it would 
 convict Frederick of utter contempt for all religion, rather 
 than of any serious scheme for setting up a religion of 
 his own. The real stress of the argument lies on the 
 meaning to be put on certain passages in which con- 
 temporary partizans of Frederick speak of him in lan- 
 guage wdiich undoubtedly has, at first sight, a very ex- 
 traordinary sound. It is not w^onderful, in an age when 
 every name was played upon and made the subject of 
 mystical explanations, that the fact that Frederick's great 
 minister bore the name of Peter should have been made 
 the subject of endless allusions. The parallel drawn be- 
 tween Simon Peter and his master and Peter de Vinea
 
 320 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 and his master shocks the taste of our times, but it was 
 thoroughly in the taste of the thirteenth century. Peter 
 is to go on the water to his master ; he is converted and 
 he is to strengthen his brethren ; his master has committed 
 to him the trust to feed his sheep and to bear the keys 
 of his kingdom. All these and other expressions of the 
 same kind are found in the original documents collected 
 by M. Breholles. So we find Frederick hailed as a saint ; 
 ■ — Vivat, vie at Saucfi Friderici nomeu in popido. We find 
 Frederick himself, in one and the same passage, applying 
 to his mother the old title of pagan divinity, and speaking 
 of his birthplace in a way which implies a parallel between 
 himself and Christ. Constance is diva mater voi<tra, and 
 Jesi is Bethleem, tiostra. But there is one passage which 
 goes beyond all the rest. This is found in a letter from 
 a Sicilian bishop to Peter de Vinea, a letter which is by 
 no means easy to understand by reason of the figurative 
 lano-uao-e used throughout, but in which there is a direct 
 parallel of the most daring kind between Christ and 
 Frederick. After an allusion, brought in in a strange 
 way, to the Last Supper and the rite then instituted, the 
 writer goes on thus : — 
 
 " Unde nou immerito me inovet hsec externa relatio, quod Petrus, in cnjns 
 petra fiindatur imperialis eccle^ia, quinn augustalis animus roboratur in crena 
 cum discipulis, tale certum potuit edixisse.'" 
 
 The language here is what we should nowadays call 
 blasphemous, but it is really only the habit of scriptural 
 application pushed to its extreme point. We should also 
 remember that Frederick and his partizans, against whom 
 so much Scripture had been quoted, would have a certain 
 pleasure in showing that they could quote Scripture back 
 again, as certainly no one ever did with more vigorous 
 etfect than Frederick himself at some stages of his con- 
 troversy with Gregory. But we do not see that this or 
 the other passages quoted are enough to justify some of 
 the expressions used by M. Breholles ; such we mean as 
 when he says: —
 
 X.] THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. 321 
 
 "Ecrivant aux cardinaux durant la vacance du saint-si^ge, en 1243, il 
 leur rappelle I'exetnple des Israelites, qui, errant sans chef dans le desert 
 pendant quarante jours, en vinrent k prendre un veau d'or pour leur dieu : 
 ' S'il faut renoncer k la consecration d'un nouveau pape, ajoute-t-il, qu'un autre 
 saint des saints paiaisse enfin, mais quel sera-t-il? ' [Si papalis cessavit uiictio, 
 veniet ergo alius sanctus sanctorum, et quis ille est ?] Lui-meme apparemment, 
 puisqu'il aspire au rdle de piophfete et de Messie: et sur ce point les conteiii- 
 porains ne se trompaient gubre quand ils accusaient Frederic de chercher a 
 usurper pour son propre compte le souverain pontificat. Delk a se di^clarer 
 d'une essence presque divine, il n'y a qu'un pas." 
 
 M. Breholles here quotes the passages in which Frederick 
 calls his son Camrei sanrjuinU divma jji'olts, and speaks of 
 his own mother and his own birth-place in the way in 
 which we have already spoken. Elsewhere he says : — 
 
 " Ainsi Frederic II. semble bien, de son vivant, adore et divinise k peu prfes 
 comme une emanation de I'Esprit-Saint. Dans les termes qui servent k ex- 
 primer sa suprt^matie religieuse, il y a quelque chose qui tient k la fois du 
 paganisme de I'Orient, qui rap[)elle le culte personnel impose a leurs sujets par 
 les empereurs de I'ancienue Rome et par les califes fatimites de I'Egypte." * 
 
 Surely this language is stronger than the passages quoted 
 will bear out. To us it seems that the actual designs of 
 Frederick were not unlike those of Henry the Eighth. 
 We forego any comparison between the two men, than 
 whom no two men could well have less of likeness to 
 each other. Henry was at least a firm believer in his 
 own theological system. Frederick, w^e cannot help think- 
 ing, looked on all theological systems chiefly as political 
 instruments. But the immediate object of each was the 
 same, to bring the spiritual power under the control of 
 the temporal, to transfer to the King the ecclesiastical 
 supremacy of the Pope. Within his own kingdom of 
 Sicily the position of Frederick must have been identical 
 with the position of Henry. If he could do no more, he 
 could at least be both Pope and King in his own lealra. 
 But, as Emperor, he must have at least dreamed of a far 
 wider supremacy, even if he gave up any practical hope 
 of obtaining it. The Emperor, Lord of the World, miglit 
 
 * Was there any calipli, except Hakem, who imposed on his subjects 
 anything which could be strictly called " culte persomieV 1
 
 322 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK THE SECOND. [Essay 
 
 dream of establishing a spiritual as well as a temporal 
 supremacy ovei" all the realms which were in theory placed 
 beneath his superiority. He might deem it really possible 
 to establish such a superiority within those realms which 
 still retained some measure of connexion with the Empire. 
 The result would have been the subjection of Western 
 Europe, or, at all events, of three of its most important 
 portions, to the deadening yoke of a caliphate. 
 
 Our remarks have been desultory and imperfect. Such 
 a subject as the life and objects of Frederick the Second 
 might furnish materials for volumes. We can profess to do 
 little more than to call attention to some of the most won- 
 derful chapters of European history, and to point to the 
 collection of M. Br^holles as one of the most wonderful 
 treasure-houses of original materials with which any scholar 
 has ever enriched historical learnings.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 323 
 
 XL 
 
 CHARLES THE BOLD* 
 
 Hutory of Charles the Bold, Ditke of Burgundy. By John 
 Foster Ktrk. London: Murray. Vols. Land H. 1863. 
 Vol. in. 1868. 
 
 We welcome with genuine pleasure a narrative of an im- 
 portant portion of history by a writer who shows in no small 
 degree the possession of real historic power. And we wel- 
 come it with still greater pleasure when we find that it 
 proceeds from an American writer, a countryman of Mr. 
 Prescott and Mr. Motley, a writer fully entitled to take his 
 place alongside of them, and in some respects perhaps to be 
 preferred to either. It is a matter of real satisfaction that 
 so good an historical school should be still growing and 
 prospering, and that untoward political events have not 
 wholly checked its developement.f A very slight glance 
 at Mr. Kirk's book is enough to show that we are dealing 
 with a real historian, that we have before us a work of a 
 wholly different kind from the countless volumes of super- 
 ficial talk which are unceasingly poured out upon the world 
 under the degraded garb of history. Mr. Kirk has his 
 
 * [I reviewed Mr. Kirk's first and second volumes in the Natioi:al Review 
 for April, 1864, and the third in the Fortnightly Review for October ist, 
 1868. The former article was necessarily without my name, and the latter 
 was necessarily with it. But I acknowledged the authorship of the National 
 article in a note to the Fortnightly article. A certain amount of repetition 
 could hardly be helped. I have therefore thrown the two into one continuous 
 essay, but I have taken care to preserve the substance and sentiments of 
 both, especially so far as they regard my estimate of Mr. Kirk's book.] 
 [1871.] 
 
 •\ [Mr. Kirk wrote, and I wrote, wliile the American civil war was going 
 on.] [1 8 7 1.] 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 faults both of style and of matter. That we do not always 
 come to the same conclusions as he does, in one of the most 
 perplexed mazes to be found in the whole range of history, 
 is as likely to be our fault as his. But, besides this, there 
 are features in Mr. Kirk's style which hardly conform to 
 the laws of a pure taste, and portions of his matter which 
 hardly conform to the laws of accurate reasoning. Still 
 his merits in both ways, alike as to form and as to sub- 
 stance, are real and great. He has studied history in its 
 real sources, in the chronicles and documents of the time, 
 and in the best modern writers of the various nations con- 
 cerned. His research has been unwearied.; and in dealing 
 with his materials, he displays, notwithstanding a certain 
 tendency to make the best of his hero, a very considerable 
 degree of critical power. His narratives of events and his 
 general pictures of the time are often of a very high order ; 
 it would not be going too far to say that many of them are 
 first-rate. In his wider political speculations he is less 
 happy. Long disquisitions on matters which hardly bear 
 on his subject are needlessly brought in, and they are far 
 from being written with the same clearness and power as 
 the narrative portions of the book. And in his occasional 
 references to times earlier than his own immediate subject 
 Mr. Kirk's accuracy is certainly not unimpeachable. Besides 
 a few strange errors in detail, it is plain that he is not 
 wholly free from those popular misconceptions which have 
 perverted the whole early history of Germany and France. 
 These are serious defects ; but they are defects which are 
 quite overbalanced by the sterling excellences of the work, 
 and they in no way hinder us from gladly hailing in 
 Mr. Kirk a welcome recruit to the small band of real 
 historians. 
 
 In estimating Mr. Kirk's style, it would be unfair not to 
 take into account the fact that we are dealing, not with 
 a British but with an American writer. We use the word 
 British by choice, as best expressing mere geographical and 
 political distinctions ; for we trust that Mr. Kirk is not one
 
 XI.J CHARLES THE BOLD. 325 
 
 of those whose birth on the other side of the Ocean leads 
 them to despise the name of Englishmen. American litera- 
 ture has a special interest, as bearing on the probable future 
 fate of the language which is still common to all men of 
 English blood in both continents. It is quite clear that 
 good writers and speakers in the two countries speak and 
 write — and will doubtless long go on to speak and write — 
 exactly the same language. The divergences of speech 
 which may occasionally be noticed between England and 
 America simply arise from the fact that in both countries 
 the language is corrupted by bad speakers and writers, and 
 that British and American corruptions of speech do not 
 always follow the same course. A few local expressions 
 springing out of the several wants and circumstances of the 
 two countries, a few words kept in use in one country after 
 they have become obsolete in the other, make hardl}^ any 
 perceptible difference. They are only worth speaking of 
 because half-informed people often apply the name of 
 Americanisms to expressions which have simply dropped 
 out of use in England, or which linger only in particular 
 districts or among old-fashioned people. In Mr. Kirk's 
 style it is not often that we detect any signs of the Ameri- 
 can origin of his book. Here and there indeed we find 
 such words as "proclivities," "reliable,"* and the like ; but 
 these, though American corruptions of the language, have 
 become too common among British writers to be marked as 
 sure signs of American birth. But the worst of Mr. Kirk's 
 defects is that, in some very important points, he does not 
 improve as he goes on. In point of style there is a great 
 and gradual falling-off from the beginning of the first volume 
 to the end of the third. Mr. Kii'k forms, in this respect, a 
 striking contrast to his countryman Mr. Motley. When Mr. 
 Motley began his work, he constantly mistook extravagance 
 for eloquence. This was shown both in many of his 
 descriptions and in his trick of giving fantastic — what we 
 
 * [It is perhaps worth noting that seven years ago I looked on these ugly 
 and needless words as Amez-icanisms.] [1871.]
 
 326 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 may call sensational — headings to his chapters. But Mr. 
 Motley's style, as his work went on, became gradually 
 improved and chastened, till in his later volumes, though 
 traces of the old leaven may still be tracked out, they appear 
 only as casual blemishes, not seriously interfering with 
 the general merits of a clear and forcible diction. Mr. Kirk, 
 on the other hand, began far better than he went on. 
 In the early part of his work his story is well told ; he 
 writes, especially in his strictly narrative portions, at once 
 with clearness and with purity. It is only here and there 
 that we stumble on a passage where a forced expression, or 
 a confusion of metaphors, might offend a refined taste. 
 Take for instance a passage in the second volume. The 
 following parable is quite beyond us ; indeed, we suspect 
 some confusion in the writer's mind between the shaft of a 
 pillar and the shaft of a pit : — 
 
 "The shaft of Saxon liberty, raised high and solid in the time of the deepest 
 obscurity, — while the Continental races were still undergoing the crushing and 
 rending of a veritable chaos, — had pierced through the supervening layers of 
 the Norman Conquest and of feudalism, incrusting itself with glittering ex- 
 traneous decorations, but preserving its simple and massive proportions ; and 
 now, in like manner, it towered above the too aspiring pretensions of royalty, 
 reared upon other and narrower foundations" (ii. 339). 
 
 As the work goes on, passages of this sort become thicker 
 on the ground. As he warms with his tale, Mr. Kirk begins 
 to take a pleasure in ever and anon lashing himself into a 
 cei'tain vehemence of language which often rises to the 
 level of actual rant. In the third volume he stops at every 
 crisis of his narrative to pour forth a page or so of what 
 can be called by no name but that of absolute raving. 
 Over the death-scene of his hero Mr. Kirk becomes simply 
 frantic. He who, when he chooses, can tell a story as well 
 as any man, breaks off into that wild spasmodic style whose 
 mildest form consists in the writer rigidly turning his back 
 on all the historical tenses. A scene, than which none more 
 striking can be found in the whole range of history, dissolves 
 in Mr. Kirk's hands into page on page of tawdry bombast. 
 " Night ! thou art crueller than Day." " Bid his brother,
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 327 
 
 his captive nobles, his surviving servants, come." " Let 
 Rene come." '• Gentle Rene, good and gentle prince, God, 
 we doubt not, hath pardoned many a fault of thine for 
 those tender thoughts." " Thou art right, Commines." And 
 so on, through several pages, till the book itself winds up 
 
 with — " Alas! Alas!" in all the dignity of 
 
 sensational printing. What can have possessed Mr. Kirk 
 to take to this sort of thing it is impossible to guess. It 
 certainly is not because he cannot do better. This frenzied 
 way of writing is simply put on now and then as a kind of 
 holiday garb. In his general narrative there is none of it. 
 His battle-pieces are admirable ; and, when he chooses, he 
 can moralize without ranting. There is something really 
 striking and pathetic when, after describing the spoil of 
 Granson, the wanderings of the three great diamonds, the 
 relics still treasured up in the Swiss towns, Mr. Kirk goes 
 back to the days of Charles's own triumph and hard- 
 heartedness at Dinant and Liittich : — 
 
 " For our own part, while looking at these trophies, or turning over the 
 leaves of the time-stained lists in wiiich they are enumerated, we have been 
 reminded of other relics and another inventory. Tlie ' little ivory comb,' the 
 'pair of bride's gloves,' the 'agnus enchased with silver,' the 'necklace with 
 ten little paternosters of amber,' picked up among the ashes of Dinant, and 
 duly entered to tlie credit of ' my lord of Burgundy ' — was there no connec- 
 tion between those memorials of humble joy, of modest love, of ruined homes, 
 and these remains of fallen pride and grandeur ? Yes, without doubt ! though 
 it be one which history, that tracks the diamond from hand to hand, is in- 
 capable of tracing." 
 
 Perhaps even here a very stern critic might say that Mr. 
 Kirk was verging on the sensational, but if this had been 
 the extreme point which Mr. Kirk had allowed himself, it 
 would have been unreasonable to find fault. Mr. Kirk, in 
 a word, can write well, and he constantly does write well. 
 But there is for that very reason the less excuse for his ever 
 deliberately choosing to write in the wild fashion in which 
 he has written the last pages of his book. 
 
 To turn from manner to matter, large parts of the general 
 disquisitions contained in the second and third chapters of
 
 328 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 Mr. Kirk's fourth book seem to us wanting both in force 
 and in clearness. In many places Mr. Kirk needlessly goes 
 out of his way to grapple with earlier writers, as Hallam 
 and Macaulay, and that sometimes altogether without 
 ground. Thus Mr. Kirk tells us in a note : — 
 
 "We cannot help protesting* against what seems to us the most radically 
 false, the most pernicious in the general inferences to be drawn from it, and 
 yet the most characteristic — inasmuch as it even runs through his literary 
 criticisms — of the paradoxes in which Macaulay loved to indulge. Speaking 
 of England in the reign of John, he says : ' Her interest was so directly 
 opposed to the interest of her rulers that she had no hope but in their errors 
 or misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her six first French 
 Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the sevrnfh were her 
 salvation.^ And so too when he comes to a later period he writes : ' Of 
 .Tames the First, as of John, it may be said that if his administration had 
 been able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country, 
 and that we oive more to his weaknesses and meannesses than to the wisdom and 
 courage of much better sovereigns^ " (ii. 355). 
 
 Now Mr. Kirk looks on these words of Lord Macaulay's 
 as contradicting a remark of his own that the English Par- 
 liament and nation, in contradistinction to the communes and 
 Estates of the Netherlands, " seconded the enterprising spirit 
 of their monarchs while assertinsj and enlarging their own 
 constitutional rights." But there is no contradiction and 
 no paradox. What Lord Macaulay says and what Mr. Kirk 
 says are both perfectly true of different periods of English 
 history. Lord Macaulay is speaking of our " French kings," 
 of the first seven kings after the Conquest. And what he 
 says of them is perfectly true. England had no interest in 
 the aggrandizement of Henry the Second in France. For 
 the Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine to strengthen himself 
 at the expense of the King of Paris could in no way profit 
 the kingdom which he held as a sort of insular de- 
 pendency. The folly of John lost Normandy and all his 
 other French possessions except Aquitaine. That loss was 
 
 * By the way, we cannot help protesting, in our turn, against Mr. Kirk's 
 fashion of speaking of himself as " we " and " us." In a newspaper or review 
 there are manifest reasons for the practice, none of which apply to a book 
 written by a single avowed author. Such a man should not talk of himself 
 more than need be; but, when he does talk of himself, he should say "I" 
 and " me."
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 329 
 
 the salvation of England. Hitherto England had been, like 
 Sardinia and Sicily in later times, the source of the highest 
 title, but by no means the most valued possession, of her 
 sovereigns. But now England again became the most im- 
 portant part of the King of England's dominions. England 
 had been a dependency of Anjou ; Aquitaine was now a 
 dependency of England. At last a King of England under- 
 took a war of aggrandizement in France, from which England 
 and English freedom were then in a position to reap great, 
 though doubtless only indirect, advantage. All this was the 
 direct result of the follies and vices of John. What Lord 
 Macaulay says is perfectly true of the reign of John ; what 
 Mr. Kirk saj^s is perfectly true of the reign of Edward the 
 Third. There is no kind of opposition between the two 
 statements, and, both in this and in several other places, 
 Mr. Kirk need not have gone out of his way to pass censures 
 on Lord Macaulay which are quite undeserved. 
 
 We also mentioned occasional inaccuracies and miscon- 
 ceptions as to earlier times as among the faults of Mr. Kirk's 
 book. It is ludicrous to place (i. 288) the saying " Non 
 Angli sed angeli " in the mouth of Gregory the Seventh. 
 It is hardly less so to call Citeaux (i. 45) the " head of the 
 great Carthusian order." And such a passage as the follow- 
 ing is utterly inaccurate in fact, and still more false in 
 deduction • 
 
 " But the Norman sovereigns of England were not related, at least by 
 any close affinity, to the Capetian race. They had acquired their chief pos- 
 sessions in France, as they had acquired the English crown, not by grant or 
 inheritance, but by the power of tlieir aims. They were foreigners and open 
 enemies; their only adherents in France were secret traitors or avowed rebels ; 
 and they could not, therefore, mask their designs against it under the pretext 
 of serving the nation and reforming the state" (i. 3). 
 
 We suppose that Mr. Kirk is not here thinking of the 
 strictly '• Norman sovereigns of England," the Conqueror 
 and his sons. It is not hkely that he means any king 
 before Henry the Second. But Henry the Second did not 
 acquire his chief possessions in France by force of arms, but 
 by lawful inheritance and marriage : Normandy came from
 
 330 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 his mother, Anjou from his father, Aquitaine from his wife."^ 
 He was not a foreigner, but a Frenchman by blood and 
 language ; he was an open enemy only as every powerful 
 and turbulent vassal was an open enemy ; in what sense his 
 " adherents in France " were " secret traitors or avowed 
 rebels " we cannot in the least understand. It is not likely 
 that Mr. Kirk uses the word France in the older sense, the 
 sense in which it is opposed to Aquitaine and Normandy ; 
 and it is hard to understand how a loyal subject and 
 " adherent " of the Duke of Normandy or Aquitaine can be 
 called a rebel or a traitor against the King of France. It 
 may be — indeed the next paragraph makes it probable — 
 that Mr. Kirk intends this description to apply, not to 
 Henry the Second and Richard the First, but to Edward the 
 Thii-d and Henry the Fifth. But the " Norman sovereigns 
 of England" is an odd way of describing the two latter 
 princes, and the assertion as to the origin of the dominion 
 of the Kings of England in France remains equally in- 
 accurate in any case. 
 
 In point of research Mr. Kirk's labours have been in 
 every way praiseworthy. He has made diligent use of all 
 printed sources, and he has also toiled unweariedly among 
 the manuscript archives of the Swiss Cantons ; nor has he 
 neglected another object of study, which is quite as worthy 
 of the historian's attention as anything recorded by pen and 
 ink. He has thoroughly mastered the geographical features 
 of the districts where the great events of his history took 
 place. Mr. Kirk's geographical minuteness, illustrated as 
 it is by careful ground-plans, makes his battle-pieces clear, 
 lively, and intelligible. We can here speak as something 
 more than a mere reader. We cannot pretend to have gone 
 over the field of Granson with the same minuteness as Mr. 
 Kii-k has done, but we have seen enough of it to be able to 
 
 * [Henry inherited Normandy, liis mother's inheritance, peacefully ; but his 
 father liad conquered it from Stephen. 
 
 I Bhould now hardly speak of Normandy ami Aquitaine as "possessions in 
 France."] 1886.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 331 
 
 bear a general testimony to the merit of his description of 
 the sieoe and the battle ; and at the same time we heard 
 enough in Switzerland of Mr. Kirk's labours among manu- 
 script sources of information to make us put full confidence 
 in whatever he professes to have drawn from archives which 
 we have not ourselves examined. 
 
 Putting aside then Mr. Kirk's occasional bursts of extra- 
 vagance, which might be simply cut out of his book without 
 doing it the least damage, and making some other deduc- 
 tions which we shall have to make before we have done, we 
 have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Kirk has given us 
 a good, clear, and vigorous narrative of the career of Charles 
 the Bold, containing much that will be quite new to the 
 English reader. Where he breaks down is in failing to give 
 his subject the necessary connexion with the general history 
 of Europe before and afterwards. Mr. Kirk, who ends his 
 history with a frantic ejaculation over his hero's dead body, 
 does not even attempt to connect his hero's story with any- 
 thing that came after him, and his attempts to connect it 
 with anything that went before cannot be called successful. 
 Mr. Kirk hardly attempts to trace matters at all further 
 back than to the establishment of the princes of the house 
 of Valois in the French duchy of Burgundy, and the few 
 references which he makes to earlier times, or to countries 
 beyond the immediate range of his story, show no width or 
 accuracy of grasp. He has not, for instance, mastered the 
 various meanings and uses of the name Burgundy, of which 
 minute inquirers have reckoned up no less than ten. In 
 truth it was not likely that Mr. Kirk should make himself 
 thoroughly master of this aspect of his subject, because he 
 shows throughout his book that he has failed fully to grasp 
 the importance of historical geography. Physical and pic- 
 turesque geography he is thoroughly master of, as he shows 
 by his descriptions of Granson and Morat. But he has not 
 been able fully to emancipate himself from bondage to the 
 modern map. Of course he knows that the frontiers of 
 France and of Switzerland were widely different then from
 
 332 CHABLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 what they are now. But he has not got rid of a sort of 
 superstition which affects many even among people who 
 know the facts — a sort of notion that, even if France, as 
 a matter of fact, once had a narrower frontier than it has at 
 present, still it was in the eternal fitness of things that it 
 should some day reach to its present frontier, or to a 
 frontier wider still. In short, Mr. Kirk has listened to 
 French babble about natural boundaries and the frontier of 
 the Rhine. Now every one who has mastered historical 
 geography knows that this sort of talk is babble and 
 nothing else. There was no more reason in the nature 
 of things why Aries or Nancy should bow to Paris than 
 there was why Paris should bow to Aries or Nancy. Mr. 
 Kirk does not thoroughly understand the utter difference 
 in blood and speech between Gaul north and south of the 
 Loire, heightened by utter difference in political position 
 between Gaul east and west of the Saone. He seems 
 throughout to identify the modern kingdom of France with 
 that ancient monarchy of the Franks which is far more 
 truly to be identified with the German kingdom which 
 was dissolved in 1806. Thus, in introducing a really 
 beautiful description of the county of Burgundy, he tells 
 us how, 
 
 " After a long separation from the Duchy of Burgund}', it again became 
 subject to the same rule in the early part of the fourteenth century. It 
 was a fief, however, not of France, but of the Empire, thotiijh situated within 
 the natural boiiiictaries qf France, governed by a line of princes of French 
 descent, and inhabited by a people who spoke the French language " (i. 47). 
 
 Here Mr. Kirk knows the facts, but he does not fully 
 understand them. He is in a manner surprised at finding 
 a great fief of the Empire within what, on the modern map, 
 are the boundaries of France. As for " natural boundaries," 
 they may of course be placed wherever any one pleases. It 
 is quite as easy to call the Elbe the natural boundary of 
 France as it is so to speak of the Rhine. It is quite as 
 easy, and more true historically, to give that name to the 
 Rhone and the Saone. The French counts of Burgundy, 
 one of them a reigning king of France, had come in quite
 
 XI.J CHARLES THE BOLD. 333 
 
 lately through female succession from the descendants of 
 Frederick and Beatrice. As for language, the county of 
 Burgundy, like nearly the whole of the kingdom of Bur- 
 gundy, spoke a Romance lauguage ; but we greatly doubt 
 its speaking in those days anything that could fairly be 
 called French. In another place we read : 
 
 "Wherever the French race existed, wherever the French language was 
 spoken, wherever mountain or river difered a bulwark to the integrity of 
 the French soil, there the French monarchy must seek to fix its swaj' and 
 establish its supremacy. France, in distinction from all other nations or 
 countries, aspires to uniformity and completeness. Her foreign wars, her 
 foreign conquests, for the most part have had for their object the attain- 
 ment or recovery of her ' natural boundaries.' Again and again the tide 
 has swollen to those limits, often with a force that cairied it beyond them. 
 Again and again it has receded, leaving a margin still to be reclaimed, but 
 bearing still the traces of a former flood" (ii. 157). 
 
 Towards the end of this passage Mr. Kirk gets so meta- 
 phorical that we hardly know what he means. But what 
 on earth is " the French race " ? Why are all sorts of 
 Romance dialects to be jumbled together under the name 
 of " the French language " ? And Elsass at least is surely 
 not peopled by " the French race," nor did its inhabitants 
 ever speak the tongue either of oc or of oil. On Mr. Kirk's 
 principles we must take to "rectifying " the map of Europe ; 
 and a poor look-out it will be for Brussels, Saint Heliers, 
 Neufchatel, and Geneva. 
 
 So again with regard to Switzerland. Though it is a 
 point essential to Mr. Kirk's argument to bear in mind that 
 Vaud was, in Charles the Bold's time, a country absolutely 
 foreign to Switzerland, though he constantly points out the 
 fact whenever his narrative calls for it, yet he still carries 
 about with him some notion about Helvetia and the Hel- 
 vetii, as if that Celtic tribe had some kind of historical 
 connexion with the Swabian cities and districts which 
 united to form the Old League of High Germany* Of 
 
 * It is most curious to see how early this sort of confusion arose. Valerius 
 Anshehn, who flourished about 1530, speaking of the County of Burgundy, 
 says : — " Ein wunderbare Sach, dass die uralten Eydijenonaen so vil uf dise 
 Graflschaft gesetzt hatten, dass ehe sie davon stahn wcilltiut [sie] ehe ihr 
 Land, Lyb und Gut gegem Ecimischen Keiser Julio unabwyslich wagteut"
 
 334 CHAVxLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 course he knows these things, but he does not fully grasp 
 them ; and through not realizing them, he often fails fully 
 to grasp the true position of Charles and of those with 
 whom Charles had to deal. He of course knows, but he 
 does not seem thoroughly to enter into, the purely German 
 position and purely German feeling of the Confederates of 
 those days. In the Swiss writers the war is always a war 
 of Dutch and Welsh {Tiltscheu and Wdhchen), and the position 
 of the Confederates as members of the Roman Empire and 
 of the German nation is always put strongly forward. The 
 '• tlitsche Nation " is constantly heard of in Swiss mouths 
 as something entitled to the deepest patriotic affection, and 
 we hear not uncommonly of "das heilig Rych," and of 
 '•unser Herr der Keiser," as of objects to which Swiss 
 loyalty had by no means ceased to be due. Now there is 
 no habit of the historical mind so hard to acquire in its 
 fulness as this habit of constantly bearing in mind the 
 political divisions and the nomenclature of the particular 
 time of which one is Meriting, and of utterly freeing oneself 
 from what we have already spoken of as the bondage of the 
 modern map. It is by no means always a question of mere 
 knowledge, but rather a question of practically remembering 
 and making use of one's knowledge. Many a man who, if 
 directly asked for the names and divisions which existed at 
 a particular date, would at once give the right answer, will 
 go away and use some expression which shows that his 
 knowledge of them is not a real living thinef which he con- 
 stantly carries about with him. We do not at all mean 
 that Mr. Kirk is a remarkable offender this way, or that his 
 pages are full of geographical blunders. It is quite the 
 
 (Berner-Chroiiik, i. 145). To call the Helvetii " Uralten E;/(J[/etws>ten" is 
 even more wonderful than when Machiavelli calls the Gauls of Brennus 
 Frenchmen : but it ia almost more amazing still when, in another passage 
 (i. 140), Valerius Anshelm distinctly claims the ancient frontier of the Hel- 
 vetii as the hereditary frontier of tlie Confederates : " Hat ein gliicksame 
 Stadt Bern, mit Bystand ihrer Eydgnossen . . . eroberet und gewunnen der 
 ■urdllen Eydiinoasuchaft uralte Landmarch, gegen Sonnen-Nidergang rei- 
 chend — namlich das Land zwiisclien dem Liiberer-Gebirg und dem Kotten, von 
 Erlach und Murten an bis gan lenf an die Brugg," &c.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 335 
 
 contrary. Mr. Kirk's position as an historian is many- 
 degrees above that level. We only mention what strikes 
 us as his deficiencies in this respect, because it influences 
 the general character of his narrative, and sometimes 
 hinders him from fully grasping the aspect of affairs as 
 it looked in the eyes of a contemporary. 
 
 It follows from what we have said that the earlier part of 
 Mr. Kirk's work is the best. The career of Charles the 
 Bold, as he points out, naturally falls into two parts, and 
 Mr. Kirk is more successful in dealing with the former of 
 the two. This twofold division is naturally suggested by 
 Charles's twofold position. His career divides itself into a 
 French and a German portion. In both alike he is exposed 
 to the restless rivalry of Lewis of France ; but in the one 
 period that rivalry is carried on openly within the French 
 territory, while in the second stage the crafty king finds 
 the means to deal far more effectual blows through the 
 agency of Teutonic hands. That Charles should thus play 
 a part in the affairs of both countries naturally followed 
 from his position as at once a French prince and a prince of 
 the Empire ; but it is certainly remarkable that his two 
 spheres of action can be thus mapped out with almost as 
 much chronological as geographical precision. The position 
 of Charles was a very peculiar one ; it requires a successful 
 shaking-off of modern notions fully to take in what it was. 
 He held the rank of one of the first princes in Europe 
 without being a king, and without possessing an inch of 
 ground for which he did not owe service to some superior 
 lord. And, more than this, he did not owe service to one 
 lord only. The phrase of " Great Powers " had not been 
 invented in the fifteenth century ; but there can be no 
 doubt that, if it had been, the Duke of Burgundy would 
 have ranked among the foremost of them. He was, in 
 actual strength, the equal of his royal neighbour to the 
 west, and far more than the equal of his Imperial neighbour 
 to the east. Yet for every inch of his territories he owed a
 
 336 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 vassal's duty to one or other of them. Placed on the 
 borders of France and the Empire, some of his territories 
 were held of the Empire and some of the French crown. 
 Charles, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders and Artois, 
 was a vassal of France ; but Charles, Duke of Brabant, 
 Count of Burgundy, Holland, and a dozen other duchies 
 and counties, held his dominions as a vassal of Csesar. 
 His dominions were large in positive extent, and they were 
 valuable out of all proportion to their extent. No other 
 prince in Europe was the direct sovereign of so many rich 
 and flourishing cities, rendered still more rich and flourish- 
 ing through the long and, in the main, peaceful adminis- 
 tration of his father. The cities of the Netherlands were 
 incomparably greater and more prosperous than those of 
 France or England ; and, though they enjoyed large 
 municipal privileges, they were not, like those of Germany, 
 independent commonwealths, acknowledging only an ex- 
 ternal superior in their nominal lord. Other parts of his 
 dominions, the duchy of Burgundy especially, were as rich 
 in men as Flanders was rich in money. So far the Duke 
 of Burgundy had some great advantages over every other 
 prince of his time. But, on the other hand, his dominions 
 were further removed than those of any prince in Europe 
 from forming a compact whole. He was not king of one 
 kingdom, but duke, count, and lord of innumerable duchies, 
 counties, and lordships, acquired by different means, held 
 by diflerent titles and of different overlords, speaking- 
 different languages, subject to different laws, transmitted 
 according to diflerent rules of succession, and each subject 
 to possible escheat to its own lord. These various terri- 
 tories moreover had as little geographical as they had 
 political connexion. They lay in two large masses, the two 
 Burgundies forming one and the Low Countries forming 
 the other, so that their common master could not go from 
 one of his capitals to another without passing through a 
 foreign territory. And, even within these two great 
 masses, there were portions of territory intersecting the
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 337 
 
 ducal dominions which there was no hope of annexing by 
 fair means. The dominions of a neighbouring duke or 
 count might be acquired by marriage, by purchase, by 
 exchange, by various means short of open robbery. But 
 the dominions of the free cities and of the ecclesiastical 
 princes were in their own nature exempt from any such 
 processes. If the Duke of Burgundy became also Duke of 
 Brabant, the inhabitants simply passed from one line of 
 princes to another ; no change was involved in their laws or 
 in their form of government. But, as Mr. Kirk well points 
 out, the bishopric of Llittich could never pass by marriage, 
 inheritance, forfeiture, or purchase. Just as little could 
 the free Imperial city of Besangon. The duke whose 
 dominions hemmed them in could win them only by sheer 
 undisguised conquest, a conquest too which must necessarily 
 change the whole framework of their government. The 
 rights of princely government were in no way affected by 
 the transfer, even the violent transfer, of a duchy from one 
 duke to another; but the rights of the Church in one case, 
 and the rights of civic freedom in the other, would have 
 been utterly trampled under foot by the annexation of a 
 bishopric or a free city. Charles too, lord of so many 
 lordships, was also closely connected with many royal 
 houses. In France he was not only the first feudatory of 
 the kingdom, the Dean of the Peers of France ; he was 
 also a prince of the blood royal, with no great number of 
 lives between him and the crown. On his mother's side 
 he claimed descent from the royal houses of England and 
 Portugal: he closely identified himself with England; he 
 spoke our language ; he played an active part in our 
 politics : he seems to have cherished a hope, one perhaps 
 not wholly unreasonable, that, among the revolutions and 
 disputed successions of our country, the extinction of both 
 the contending houses might at last place the island crown 
 upon his own brow. Looking to his eastern frontier, to the 
 states which he held of the Empire, he was beyond all 
 comparison the most powerful of the Imperial feudatories. 
 
 z
 
 338 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 The next election might place him upon the throne of the 
 Caesars, where he would be able to rei^n after a very 
 different sort from the feeble Austrian whom he aspired to 
 succeed or to displace. Or, failing of any existing crown, 
 he might dream of having a crown called out of oblivion 
 for his special benefit. Burgundy might again give its 
 name to a kingdom, and his scattered duchies and lord- 
 ships might be firmly welded together under a royal 
 sceptre. Perhaps no man ever had so many dreams, dreams 
 which in any one else would have been extravagant, 
 naturally suggested to him by the position in which he 
 found himself by inheritance. 
 
 And now what sort of man was he who inherited so 
 much, and whose inheritance prompted him to strive after 
 so much more 1 We wish to speak of him as he was in his 
 better days ; towards the end of his life the effect of un- 
 expected misfortunes darkened all his faults, even if it did 
 not actually touch his reason. Mr. Kirk is a biographer, 
 and, as such, he is bound by a sort of feudal tenure to " re- 
 habilitate," as the cant word is, the lord under whom he 
 takes service. We do not at all blame him for trying to 
 make out the best case he can for his hero ; indeed we can 
 go much further, and say that, in a great degree, he success- 
 fully makes out his case. Though he is zealous, he is by 
 no means extravagant, on behalf of Charles. Though he 
 holds, and we think with reason, that Charles has com- 
 monly had less than justice done to him, he by no means 
 sets him up as a perfect model. He rates both his 
 abilities and his character higher than they are commonly 
 rated, but he does not claim for him any exalted genius, 
 neither does he undertake to be the apologist of all his 
 actions. He is satisfied with showing that a man who 
 played an important part in an important time was neither 
 the brute nor the fool that he has been described both by 
 partizan chroniclers and by modern romance-writers. Even 
 in the point where we see most reason to differ from Mr. 
 Kirk, we have little to object to as far as regards Charles
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD, 339 
 
 himself. We shall presently see that, in estimating the 
 causes of the war between Charles and the Swiss, Mr. Kirk 
 lays the whole blame upon the Confederates, and represents 
 the Duke of Burgundy as something like an injured victim. 
 Allowing for a little natural exaggeration, we think Mr. 
 Kirk is fairly successful in his justification of Charles ; we 
 do not think him equally successful in his inculpation of 
 the Confederates. 
 
 Charles was perhaps unlucky in the age in which he 
 lived ; he was certainly unlucky in the predecessor whom 
 he succeeded and in the rival against whom he had to 
 struggle. It may be, as Mr. Kirk says, that he was 
 better fitted for an earlier age than that in which he 
 lived ; it is certain that he was quite unfit either to 
 succeed Philip the Good or to contend against Lewis the 
 Eleventh. One can have no hesitation in saying that 
 Charles was morally a better man than his father. He 
 had greater private virtues, and he was certainly not 
 stained with greater public crimes. Yet Philip passed 
 with unusual prosperity and reputation through a reign 
 of unusual length, while the career of Charles was short 
 and stormy, and he left an evil memory behind him. 
 Philip, profligate as a man and unprincipled as a ruler, 
 was still the Good Duke, who lived beloved and died 
 regretted by his subjects. Charles, chaste and temperate 
 in his private life, and with a nearer approach to justice 
 and good faith in his public dealings than most princes 
 of his time, was hated even by his own soldiers, and 
 died unlamented by any one.* As in many other men, 
 the virtues and the vices of Charles were closely linked 
 together. He knew no mercy either for himself or for 
 anybody else. Austere in his personal morals and a strict 
 
 * Charles, to say the least, never became a national hero anywhere. The 
 writers of the sixteenth century, who compiled their chronicles within his 
 dominions and inscribed them to his descendants, Oudegherst, Pontus Heute- 
 rus, his copyist Haiseus, and the like, speak of him without any sort of en- 
 thusiasm ; indeed, they are full of those views of his character and actions 
 which Mr. Kirk strongly, and often truly, denounces as popular errors. 
 
 Z %
 
 340 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 avenger of vice in others, he probably made himself 
 enemies by bis very virtues, where a little genial pro- 
 fligacy might have made him friends. His home govern- 
 ment was strictly just ; his ear was open to the meanest 
 petitioner, and he was ready to send the noblest offender 
 to the scaffold. But such stern justice was not the way 
 to make himself popular in those days. A justice which 
 knows not how to yield or to forgive is hardly suited 
 for fallible man in any age, and in that age Charges some- 
 times drew blame upon himself by acts which we should 
 now look on as crowning him with honour. His inex- 
 orable justice refused to listen to any entreaties for the 
 life of a gallant young noble* who had murdered a man 
 of lower degree. In this we look on him as simply dis- 
 charging the first duty of a sovereign ; in his own age 
 the execution seemed to men of all ranks to be an act 
 of remorseless cruelty. In short, Charles, as a civil ruler, 
 practised none of the arts by which much worse rulers 
 have often made themselves beloved. He was chary of 
 gifts, of praise, of common courtesy. No wonder then 
 that so many of his servants forsook him for a prince 
 who at least knew how to appreciate and to reward their 
 services. And what Charles was as a ruler he was even 
 more conspicuously as a captain. In warfare his discipline 
 was terrible ; he imposed indeed no hardship on the lowest 
 sentinel which he did not equally impose upon himself; 
 but the commander who had no kind word for any one, 
 and a heavy punishment for the slightest offence, did not 
 go the way to win the love of his soldiers. His cruelty 
 towards Dinant and Liittich did not greatly exceed — in 
 some respects it did not equal — the ordinary cruelty of 
 the age ; but the cold and ^?<a-v/-judicial severity with 
 which he planned the work of destruction is almost more 
 
 * See the story of the Bastard of Haniaide in Barante, Dncs de Bourgogne, 
 I. ii6 ; Kiik, i. ^62. Tlie better known tale told by Pontus Heuterus (Rerum 
 Burgundiacaruni, lib. v. cap. 5), and worked up into the story of Rliynsault and 
 Sapphira in the .Spectator, wlietlier true or false, is at least quite in character.
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 341 
 
 repulsive than the familiar horrors of the storm and the 
 sack. It was his utter want of sympathy with mankind 
 which made Charles the Bold hated, while really worse 
 men have been beloved. The ambition of Philip the Good 
 was more unprincipled than that of his son, but it was 
 more moderate, and kept more carefully within the bounds 
 of possibility. The means by which he gained large por- 
 tions of his dominions, Holland and Hennegau especially, 
 were perhaps more blameworthy than anything in the 
 career of Charles, and in particular acts of cruelty and 
 in violent outbursts of wrath there was little to choose 
 between father and son. But Philip's ambition was satis- 
 fied with now and then seizing a province or two which 
 came conveniently within his grasp ; he did not keep the 
 world constantly in commotion ; he had no longing after 
 royal or Imperial crowns, and indeed refused them when 
 they came in his way; his rule was on the whole peaceful 
 and beneficent, and his very annexations, when they were 
 once made, secured large districts from the horrors of border 
 warfare. But Charles was always planning something, 
 and the world was always wondering what he might be 
 planning. He attacked and annexed so widely that it 
 was no wonder if even those whom he had no mind to 
 attack deemed it necessary to stand ready for him. His 
 loftiest fliohts of ambition were far from beino- so wild 
 and reckless as they are commonly represented ; his dream 
 of a new Burgundian kingdom was far from irrational ; 
 still less was there anything monstrous either in a great 
 French prince aspiring to a paramount influence in France, 
 or in a great German prince aspiring to the crown of the 
 Empire. But the misfortune of Charles was that he was 
 always aspiring after something ; he was always grasping 
 at something which he had not, instead of enjoying what 
 he had. Neither his own subjects nor strangers were 
 allowed a moment's peace : wars with France, wars with 
 Liittich, Gelders annexed, Elsass purchased, Neuss besieged, 
 Lorraine conquered, Provence bargained for, were enough
 
 342 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 to keep the whole world in commotion. The ten years 
 of Charles's reign are as rich in events as the forty-eight 
 years of his father. 
 
 Mr. Kirk is fond of enlarging on Charles's good faith, 
 and, for a prince of the fifteenth century, the praise is 
 not wholly undeserved. As compared with the contem- 
 porary kings of England and France, the Duke of Burgundy 
 may fairly pass for a man of his word."^ He certainly did 
 not openly trample on oaths and obligations like Edward 
 the Fourth, nor did he carry on a systematic trade of secret 
 intrigue like Lewis the Eleventh. Even in the affair of 
 P^ronne, to which Mr. Kirk frequently points as an excep- 
 tion to Charles's general straightforwardness, there seems 
 to have been no deliberate treachery on Charles's part, 
 though there certainly was a breach in words of the safe- 
 conduct which he had given to Lewis. The King sought 
 an interview of his own accord ; it was to take place in 
 the then Burgundian town of Peronne. The Duke gave 
 the King a safe-conduct, notwithstanding anything which 
 had happened or might happen. While Lewis was at 
 Peronne, Charles discovered, or believed that he had 
 discovered, evidence that the King was plotting with the 
 revolted people of Luttich. Charles then kept him as a 
 prisoner till he had signed an unfavourable treaty, and 
 further obliged him to accompany him on his campaign 
 against Luttich, and to witness and take a part in the 
 utter overthrow of his allies. Here was undoubtedly a 
 breach of an engagement : according to the letter of the 
 bond, Charles should have taken Lewis safe back into 
 his own dominions, and should have declared war and 
 pursued him the moment he had crossed the frontier. But, 
 setting aside the literal breach of faith, to deal with Lewis 
 as he did, to humble him before all the world, to make 
 him follow where he was most unwilling to go, was quite 
 in character with the stern and ostentatious justice of 
 
 * "Quod nuinqiiam antea fecerat, nipta fide," says Heuter (liv. v. c. 12) 
 of the execution of the prisoners at Grauson.
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 343 
 
 Charles. As a mere breach of faith, it was a light matter 
 compared with the everyday career of Lewis himself. But 
 what shocked the feeling of the time was for a vassal to 
 put his suzerain lord under personal duress. To rebel 
 against such a lord and make war upon him was an 
 ordinary business ; but for a Duke of Burgundy to make 
 a King of France his prisoner was a breach of all feudal 
 reverence, a sacrilegious invasion of the sanctity of royalty, 
 which carried men's minds back to a deed of treason 
 more than five hundred years old.* We cannot look upon 
 this business at Peronne as being morally of so deep a 
 dye as the long course of insincerity pursued by Charles 
 with regard to the marriage of his daughter. It is clear 
 that he was possessed with a strong and not very in- 
 telligible dread of a son-in-law in any shape. Like many 
 other princes, he shrank from the notion of a successor ; 
 he shrank especially from a successor who would not be 
 one of his own blood, but the husband of his daughter, 
 one who most likely would seek in her marriage and his 
 affinity nothing but stepping-stones to the ducal or royal 
 crown of Burgundy. So far one can enter into the feeling ; 
 but it is clear that Charles first carried it to a morbid 
 extent, and then made use of it for a disingenuous political 
 purpose. He held out hopes of his daughter's hand to 
 every prince whom he wished for the moment to attach 
 to his interests, without the least serious intention of 
 bestowing her upon any of them. Mary was used as the 
 bait for Charles of Guienne, for Nicolas of Calabria, for 
 Maximilian of Austria. Now this, though it might serve 
 an immediate end, was a base and selfish policy, which 
 could not fail to leave, as in the end it did leave, both 
 his daughter and his dominions without any lawful or 
 acknowledged protector. The feelings alike of a father 
 
 * As Comines says (liv. ii. c. 7), " Le Roy se voyoit loge rasibus d'une 
 grosse tour, oti un Conite de Vermandoia fit mourir un sien predecesseur 
 Roy de France." The allusion is to the two imprisonments of Charles the 
 Simple at Peronne (928-9) by Count Hubert of Vermandois ; see Richer, 
 lib. i cc. 46, 54 ; Flodoard in anno ; Palgrave, Normandy and England, ii. 93.
 
 344 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 and of a sovereign should have made Charles overcome his 
 dread of an acknowledged successor, rather than run the 
 risk of leaving a young girl to grapple unprotected with 
 the turbulent people of Flanders and with such a neigh- 
 bour as Lewis the Eleventh. It is here, we think, rather 
 than in his formal breach of faith at Peronne, that we 
 should look for the most marked exception to that general 
 character for good faith and sincerity which is claimed 
 for Charles by his biographer. It is certain that he piqued 
 himself upon such a character, and that his conduct was 
 on the whole not inconsistent with it. The worst deeds 
 of his later career, his treatment of the princes of Lorraine 
 and Wlirtemburg, his unprovoked attack on Neuss, his 
 cruelties after the loss of Elsass, were deeds of open 
 violence rather than of bad faith. Through the whole 
 of his dealings with Austria and Switzerland there runs 
 a vein of conscious sincerity, a feeling that his own 
 straightforwardness was not met with equal straightfor- 
 wardness on the part of those with whom he had to deal. 
 
 Where then Charles failed was that he had neither the 
 moral nor the intellectual qualities which alone could have 
 enabled him to carry out the great schemes which he was 
 ever planning. Success has often been the lot of brave, 
 frank, and open-hearted princes, who have carried every- 
 thing before them, and who have won hearts as well as 
 cities by storm. Sometimes again it has fallen to the 
 lot of a cold, crafty, secret plotter, like Charles's own 
 rival and opposite. The gallant, genial, Ren^ of Lorraine 
 won the love of subjects and allies, and recovered the 
 dominions which Charles had stolen from him. Lewis, 
 from his den at Plessis, established his power over all 
 France ; he extended the bounds of France by two great 
 provinces, and permanently attached the stout pikes and 
 halberts of Switzerland to his interest. But Charles the 
 Bold, always planning schemes which needed the genius 
 and opportunities of Charles the Great, was doomed to 
 failure in the nature of things. A prince, just, it may be,
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 345 
 
 and truthful, but harsh and pitiless, who never made a 
 friend public or private, whose very virtues were more 
 repulsive than other men's vices, who displayed no single 
 sign of deep or enlarged policy, but whose whole career 
 was one simple embodiment of military force in its least 
 amiable form, — such a prince was not the man to found 
 an empire ; he was the very man to lose the dominions 
 which he had himself inherited and conquered. 
 
 And now we turn from the character of the man to the 
 events in which he was the actor or the instrument. The 
 history of Charles is a history of the highest and most 
 varied interest. The tale, as a mere tale, as a narrative of 
 personal adventure and a display of personal character, is 
 one of the most attractive in European history. As such 
 it has been chosen by Scott as the material for two of his 
 novels, one of which, if not absolutely one of his master- 
 pieces, at any rate ranks high among his writings. It is 
 probably from Quentin Durward that most English readers 
 have drawn their ideas of Lewis the Eleventh and of 
 Charles the Bold ; some may even have drawn their main 
 ideas of the fights of Granson, Morat, and Nancy from the 
 hurried narrative in Anne of Geierstein. In fact a nobler 
 subject, whether for romance or poetry or tragedy, can 
 hardly be conceived than the exaltation and the fall of the 
 renowned Burgundian Duke. But to the historian the fate 
 of Charles and his duchy has an interest which is far 
 higher and wider than this. Chronologically and geo- 
 graphically alike, Charles and his duchy form the great 
 barrier, or the great connecting link, whichever we choose 
 to call it, between the main divisions of European history 
 and European geography. The dukes of Burgundy of the 
 house of Valois form a sort of bridge between the latter 
 Middle Age and the period of the Renaissance and the 
 Reformation. They connect those two periods by forming 
 the kernel of the vast dominion of that Austrian house to 
 which their inheritance fell, and which, mainly by virtue
 
 346 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 of that inheritance, fills such a space in the history of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the dominions 
 of the Burgundian dukes hold a still higher historical 
 position. They may be said to bind together the whole of 
 European history for the last thousand years. From the 
 ninth century to the nineteenth, the politics of Europe have 
 largely gathered round the rivalry between the Eastern and 
 the Western kingdoms — in modern language, between Ger- 
 many and France. From the ninth century to the nine- 
 teenth, a succession of efforts have been made to establish, 
 in one shape or another, a middle state between the two. 
 Over and over again during that long period have men 
 striven to make the whole or some portion of the frontier 
 lands stretching from the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth 
 of the Rhone into an independent barrier state. The first 
 expression of the idea is to be seen in the kingdom of 
 Lothar, the grandson of Charles the Great, a kingdom of 
 which Provence and the Netherlands were ahke portions. 
 The neutralizations, or attempted neutralizations, of Swit- 
 zerland, Savoy, Belgium, and Liizelburg, have been the 
 feebler contributions of the nineteenth century to the same 
 work. Meanwhile various kingdoms and duchies of 
 Burgundy and Lorraine have risen and fallen, all of them, 
 knowingly or unknowingly, aiming at the same European 
 object. That object was never more distinctly aimed at, 
 and it never seemed nearer to its accomplishment, than 
 when Charles the Bold actually reigned from the Zuyder 
 Zee to the lake of NeufchcUel, and was not without hopes 
 of extending his frontier to the gulf of Lyons. 
 
 To understand his position, to understand the position of 
 the lands over which he ruled, it is not needful to go back 
 to any of the uses of the Burgundian name earlier than the 
 division of the Empire in 8(S8. The old Lotharingia of 
 forty years earlier, the narrow strip reaching from the 
 German Ocean to the Mediterranean, had then ceased to 
 exist as a separate state. Its northern portion had become 
 the later Lotharingia, that border land between the Eastern
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 347 
 
 and Western kingdoms, which for a hundred years formed 
 an endless subject of dispute between them. Its southern 
 portion had become what our Old-English Chroniclers 
 emphatically call the " middel-rice " — the Middle kingdom, 
 the state placed between France, Germany, and Italy. 
 This is that Burgundy, sometimes forming one kingdom, 
 sometimes two, which was at last annexed to the Empire, 
 and of which Aries was the capital, where those Emperors 
 who chose to go through a somewhat empty ceremony took 
 the crown of their Burgundian kingdom.* This kingdom 
 took in the County Palatine of Burgundy, better known as 
 Franche Comte, which, till the days of Lewis the Fourteenth, 
 remained a fief of the Empire. It did not take in the 
 Duchy of Burgundy, the duchy of which Dijon was the 
 capital, which was always a fief of the crown of France. 
 Now there can be no doubt that Charles, Duke of the 
 French Duchy, Count of the Imperial Palatinate, Duke, by 
 inheritance, of the Lower Lorraine (or Brabant), Duke, 
 by conquest, of the Upper Lorraine, had always before his 
 eyes the memory of these earlier Burgundian and Lothar- 
 ingian kingdoms. Holding, as he did, parts of old Lothar- 
 ingia and parts of old Burgundy, there can be no doubt that 
 he aimed at the re-establishment of a great Middle king- 
 dom, which should take in all that had ever been Burgundian 
 or Lotharinojian j^round. He aimed in short, as others have 
 aimed before and since, at the formation of a state which 
 should hold a central position between France, Germany, 
 and Italy — a state which should discharge, with infinitely 
 greater strength, all the duties which our own age has 
 endeavoured to throw on Switzerland, Belgium, and Savoy. 
 Now Mr. Kirk is by no means wholly blind to this 
 peculiar aspect of his hero, an aspect which brings him into 
 so remarkable a connexion with times long before him and 
 with times long after him. But it is not present to his 
 mind in any life-like way; it is not present as it would be 
 to one who was really master of European history as a 
 
 * See above, pp. 189, 271.
 
 348 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 whole. In our way of looking at it, the career of Charles 
 the Bold forms the central point in the history of a thousand 
 years, and it cannot be worthily treated without constantly 
 looking both forwards and backwards. There can be no 
 doubt that, through the whole latter part of Charles's reign, 
 his object was thus to extend his dominions, and to reign 
 as a Burgundian king, the peer of either of his two over- 
 lords to the right and left of him. This view seems to us 
 to explain the whole of his latter policy. It seems also to 
 explain the mixture of dread and wonder with which he 
 was looked on, and the restless apprehensions which never 
 ceased to work among all who felt that they were possibly 
 marked out for annexation. 
 
 This twofold position of Charles, as at once a French and 
 a German prince, forms the key to his history. When he 
 had turned away his thoughts from his schemes of pre- 
 eminence within the French kingdom, the creation of such 
 a middle state as we have spoken of was a natural form for 
 his ambition to take. His schemes of this kind form the 
 great subject of the second of the two great divisions of his 
 history. The second division then is undoubtedly the more 
 important, but the former is by far the better known. It 
 has the great advantage of being recorded by one of the 
 few mediaeval wiiters — if Philip of Comines is to count as 
 a mediaeval writer — who are familiar to many who are not 
 specially given to mediaeval studies. It is a plain straight- 
 forward tale, about which there is little difficulty or con- 
 troversy, and it is so constantly connected with the history 
 of our own country as to have special attractions for the 
 English student. The German career of (Jharles holds a 
 very different position. One or two facts in it, at least the 
 names of one or two great battles, are familiar to the whole 
 world. Every one can point the moral how the rash and 
 proud Duke was overthrown by the despised Switzer at 
 Granson, at Morat, and at Nancy. But the real character 
 and causes of the war are, for the most part, completely 
 unknown or utterly misrepresented. In fact^ no part of
 
 XT.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 349 
 
 history is more thoroughly perplexing than this: the 
 original sources are endless ; the inferences made from 
 them by later writers are utterly contradictory ; and neither 
 the original sources nor their modern commentators are at 
 all familiar to English students in general. We think then 
 that we shall be doing our readers more service if we pass 
 lightly over the earlier and better known years of Charles's 
 history, and give as much space as we can to the perplexing 
 story of his relations towards Switzerland, Austria, and the 
 Empire. 
 
 Each of the two positions which were held by Charles 
 assumes special importance in one of the two great divisions 
 of his career. He succeeded to the ducal crown in 1467; 
 but his practical reign may be dated from a point at least 
 two years earlier, when the old age and sickness of Philip 
 threw the chief management of affairs into his hands. 
 What we have called his French career lasts from this 
 point till 1472. In these years, both before and after the 
 death of his father, he appears mainly as a French prince. 
 His main policy is to maintain and increase that pre- 
 dominance in French politics which had been gained by 
 his father. During this period, with the single exception 
 of his wars with Liittich, his field of action lies almost 
 wholly within the kingdom of France ; and Liittich, 
 though it lay within the Empire, had at this time a closer 
 practical connexion with France than with Germany. 
 Charles's chief French dominions were the duchy of Bur- 
 gundy and the counties of Artois and Flanders, the last 
 being strictly a French fief, though circumstances have 
 always tended to unite that province, together with some 
 of its neighbours, into a system of their own, distinct alike 
 from France and from Germany. There was also that 
 fluctuating territory in Picardy, the towns on the Somme, 
 so often pledged, recovered, ceded, and conquered within 
 the space of so few years. These possessions made Charles 
 the most powerful of French princes, to say nothing of the 
 fiefs beyond the kingdom which helped to make him well
 
 350 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 nigh the most powerful of European princes. As a French 
 prince, he joined with other French princes to put limits 
 on the power of the crown, and to divide the kingdom into 
 great feudal holdings, as nearly independent as might be of 
 the common overlord. As a French prince, he played his 
 part in the War of the Public Weal, and insisted, as a 
 main object of his policy, on the establishment of the 
 King's brother as an all but independent Duke of Nor- 
 mandy. The object of Lewis was to make France a 
 compact monarchy ; the object of Charles and his fellows 
 was to keep France as nearly as might be in the same state 
 as Germany. But, when the other French princes had 
 been gradually conquered, won over, or got rid of in some 
 way or other, by the crafty policy of Lewis, Charles 
 remained no longer the chief of a coalition of French 
 princes, but the personal rival, the deadly enemy, of the 
 French King. 
 
 In the second part of his life his objects were wholly 
 different. His looks were now turned eastward and south- 
 ward, or, if they were turned westward, it was with quite 
 different aims from those with which he went forth to fight 
 at Montlhery, His object now was, not to gain a paramount 
 influence within the kingdom of France, not to weaken the 
 French monarchy, in the character of one of its vassals, 
 but to throw it into the shade, to dismember, perhaps 
 to conquer it. in the character of a foreign sovereign. For 
 this end probably, more than for any other, Charles sought 
 to be King of the Romans, King of Burgundy, King of 
 England. For this end he strove to gather together 
 province after province, so as to form his scattered territories 
 into a kingdom greater than that of France, a kingdom 
 external and antagonistic to France. As he had found 
 that the French monarchy was too strong for him in his 
 character of a French vassal, he would no longer be a 
 Frenchman at all. To curb and weaken the now hostile 
 and foreign realm, he would form a state which should 
 altogether hem it in from the North Sea to the Mediter-
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 351 
 
 ranean. That is to say, he would call again into being that 
 Middle kingdom, call it Burgundy or Lorraine"^ as we will, 
 which he had a better chance of calling into being than 
 any man before or since. And undoubtedly it would 
 have been for the permanent interest of Europe if he had 
 succeeded in his attempt. It would be one of the greatest 
 of political blessings if a Duke or King of Burgundy or 
 Lorraine could suddenly appear now.f A strong inde- 
 pendent power standing in the gap between France and 
 Germany J would release the world from many difficulties, 
 and would insure the world against many dangers. It 
 would in fact accomplish, in a much more thorough-going 
 way, the objects which modern statesmen have tried to 
 accomplish by guaranteeing the neutrality of the smaller 
 states on the same border. How vain such guaranties are 
 the experience of the last few years has taught us. But 
 the kingdom which Charles dreamed of, had it been held 
 together long enough to acquire any consistency, would 
 have needed no guaranty, but would have stood by its 
 own strenofth. Such a state would indeed have had two 
 great points of weakness, its enormous extent of frontier § 
 and the heterogeneous character of its population. But 
 German and Italian neighbours would hardly have been 
 more dangerous to Burgundy than they have been to 
 France, and such a Burgundy would have been far better 
 
 * Charles, of course, aimed at restoring a kingdom of BiirgiDuly, not of 
 Lorraine ; but the extent of the dominions which he either actually pos- 
 sessed, or is believed to have aimed at, would answer very nearly to the 
 ancient kingdom of Lorraine, while it would far surpass the extent of any 
 of the successive kingdoms of Burgundy, of none of which did the Nether- 
 lands form any part. In fact, the county of Burgundy is the only ground 
 common to Charles's actual dominions and to the later Burgundian kingdom. 
 His dominions in Picardy and Elsass lay beyond the limits of either Burgundy 
 or Lorraine in any sense. 
 
 •|- [In 1871 such a power would come too late, but it might have been 
 useful in 1870.] 
 
 J " Ut, inter Germanos Francosque medius imperans, utiisque terrorem 
 incuteret." — Heuter, lib. v. c. ii. 
 
 § On this point see Johannes von Mtiller, b. iv. c. 8, note 469. [The extent 
 of frontier would not have been greater than that of Prussia up to 1866 : but 
 this argument might be used in two opposite ways.] [1871.]
 
 352 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 able to resist the aggressions of France than Germany and 
 Italy have been.* The population would certainly have 
 been made up of very discordant elements, but they would 
 have been less discordant than the elements to be found in 
 the modern "empire" of Austria, and they would have had 
 a common interest in a way in which the subjects of 
 Austria have not. Perhaps indeed a common government 
 and a common interest might in course of time have fused 
 them together as closely as the equally discordant elements 
 in modern Switzerland have been fused together. Anyhow 
 the great dream of Charles, the formation of a barrier power 
 between France and Germany, is one which, if it only 
 could be carried out, would be most desirable for Europe to 
 have carried out. Statesmen of a much later age than 
 Charles the Bold have dreamed of the kingdom of Burgundy 
 as the needful counterpoise to the power of France. But 
 though the creation of such a state would be highly desir- 
 able now, it does not follow that it was desirable then, 
 still less does it follow that any prince or people of those 
 days could be expected to see that it was desirable. With 
 the map of Europe now before us, it seems madness in 
 Switzerland, or in any other small and independent state, 
 to league itself with France and Austria to destroy a 
 Duke of Burgundy. That is to say, it is very easy to be a 
 Prometheus after the fact. But neither princes nor com- 
 monwealths can be expected to look on so many centuries 
 before them. Austria was in those days the least threaten- 
 ing of all powers. Its sovereigns were small German 
 dukes, who had much ado to keep their own small 
 dominions together. In fact, the Duke of Austria with 
 whom we have to do was only a titular Duke of Austria ; 
 his capital was not Vienna, but Innsbruck ; his dominions 
 consisted of the county of Tyrol and the Swabian and 
 Alsatian lordships of his house. And it would have been 
 only by a miraculous foresight of which history gives few 
 examples that a citizen of Switzerland or of any other 
 
 * [In 1864 I did not foresee 1870.] [1871.]
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 353 
 
 country could have perceived that France was a power 
 more really dangerous to the liberties of Europe than 
 Burgundy was. Lewis seemed to have quite enough to 
 do to maintain his power in his own kingdom, while 
 Charles seemed to ride through the whole world, going 
 forth conquering and to conquer. In this case, as in 
 all others, we must try to throw ourselves into the 
 position of the times, and not to judge of everything 
 according to the notions of our own age. The warning is 
 important, because by some writers,* though not very 
 conspicuously by Mr. Kirk, it is made part of the case 
 against the Confederates that they helped to destroy a 
 power which was really useful to them as a check upon 
 France. This, as we have said, is perfectly true in a 
 modern European point of view ; but the Swiss of the 
 fifteenth century could not see with the eyes of the 
 nineteenth century. And, valuable as a kingdom of 
 Burgundy would have been in an European point of 
 view, it is by no means clear that it would have been 
 equally valuable in a Swiss point of view. Indeed, it 
 is hard to see how its existence could have been con- 
 sistent with the retention of Swiss independence in any 
 shape. 
 
 We have thus reached that later portion of Charles's life 
 which brings him mainly into contact wnth the Empire, 
 both in the person of its head and in those of many of its 
 members. His dealings now lie mainly with Lorraine and 
 Savoy, with Koln, Elsass, and Austria, with the Old League 
 of High Germany, and with Csesar Augustus himself. His 
 relations to his Imperial overlord were such as might be 
 looked for w^hen he had to deal with a prince who lived 
 politically from hand to mouthy like the Emperor Frederick 
 the Third. The Confederates were at one moment ordered, 
 at another moment they were forbidden, on theii* allegiance 
 as members of the Empire, to march against a prince who 
 
 * As, for instance, in the notes of De la Harpe in the French translation of 
 Miiller's History of Switzerland. 
 
 A a
 
 354 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 was at one moment proclaimed as the chief enemy of the 
 German nation, and who at another moment seemed 
 marked out as the destined chief of Germany and the 
 Empire. The unwise and dishonourable policy which 
 Charles followed with resfard to the marriao-e of his 
 daughter is one main feature of this period. The hand of 
 Mary of Burgundy was promised in succession to every 
 prince whom such a promise might make useful for a 
 moment, and seemingly without any serious purpose of ever 
 really bestowing it on any of them. But it was tow^ards 
 the formation of the Middle Kingdom that everything 
 tended throughout Chailes's later years. That kingdom 
 would no doubt have been, in Charles's hands, directly 
 designed as a rival and an enemy to France. Its relations 
 towards Germany were less certain. There is little doubt 
 that Charles at one time aimed at the Imperial crown ; 
 there is no doubt at all as to his expectations of receiving 
 a crown of some sort or other from the hands of the 
 Emperor. Among the many striking and awful pictures 
 which the history of Charles contains, among heavy blows 
 dealt and heavy blows received, the tale is relieved by at 
 least two remarkable touches of the ludicrous. We can 
 hardly help laughing over the field of Montlhdry, over the 
 two hosts, each of which fancied itself beaten, and over the 
 tall thistles which bore so terrible a likeness to hostile 
 spears. We laugh still more heartily when Charles has 
 got everything ready for his coronation at Trier, and when 
 the Lord of the World suddenly decamps in the night, 
 leaving the expectant king of Burgundy, or Lorraine, or 
 whatever his kingdom was to be, to go back a mere duke 
 as he came. One thing how^ever is shown by the willing- 
 ness of Charles to accept a crown at the hands of the 
 Emperor. A crown so received could only have been a 
 vassal crown. A King of Burgundy so crowned, more 
 than the rival of an Emperor in real power, w^ould still 
 have been, in formal rank, the peer only of a King of 
 Bohemia, not of a Kinjr of France or Enjjland. With such
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 355 
 
 a vassal crown Charles no doubt hoped some day to unite 
 the Imperial diadem itself. But it is plain that at this 
 stage of his life, vassalage to the Empire was less irksome 
 to Charles's mind than vassalage to France. Indeed, he 
 seems to have quite cast away the thought that he was not 
 only a vassal of France, but by descent a Frenchman. He 
 fell back on his ancestry by the female line, and instead of 
 being French he would rather be Portuguese on the 
 strength of his mother, or English on the strength of his 
 grandmother. In English affairs, we must always re- 
 member, Charles constantly took a deep and by no means 
 a disinterested or sentimental interest. By birth a de- 
 scendant of the house of Lancaster, by marriage a member of 
 the house of York, each English party looked to him in turn 
 as an ally, while he no doubt dreamed that he might one 
 day be called in as more than an ally. And, had not that 
 been an age when the first thing needed in a King of 
 England was to be an Englishman, the claims of Charles, 
 descended as he was from a legitimate daughter of John 
 of Gaunt, might have seemed stronger than those of 
 bastard Beauforts or Tudors. It would indeed have been 
 the highest consummation of Charles's hopes could he 
 have thus won a higher crown than that of Burgundy or 
 Lorraine, and could have gone on once more to attack his 
 old enemy in the new character of a King of England and 
 France. But though there is little doubt that such dreams 
 did flash across his mind, they had no serious results. 
 Charles probably knew England well enough to feel sure 
 that, except in some most strange conjunction of events, 
 a stranger had no chance of the island crown. It was to 
 aggrandizement eastward and southward, to the union of 
 the two detached masses of his dominions by the annex- 
 ation of Lorraine, that Charles's whole immediate policy 
 looked in his later days. But there can be little doubt 
 that all this had a further aim, that of turning round some 
 day to deal a blow at his Western rival at the head of an 
 irresistible power. Truces might be made and renewed, 
 
 A a 2
 
 356 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 but they were merely truces ; Charles and Lewis each 
 knew well enough what were the aims of the other. And 
 the wary King of France knew well how to throw the 
 most eftectual check in the way of his rival by raising up 
 against him the most terrible of enemies within the limits 
 of the Empire, partly within the ancient bounds of that 
 Buro^undian kingdom of which he dreamed. 
 
 With Mr. Kirk's way of looking at things it is not 
 wonderful that his treatment of the early part, what we 
 may call the French period, of Charles's career, is better 
 than his treatment of the later, what we may in some sort 
 call its German period. In the latter portion, just as in 
 the former, we have no charge to bring against Mr. Kirk 
 on the ground of research, none on the score of narrative 
 and descriptive power in ti-eating the main events of his 
 history. Still there is a distinct falling-off, both in style 
 and, in a certain sense, in matter. During the later years 
 of Charles the main interest of his story gathers round 
 his relations with the Swiss. And, though Mr. Kirk has 
 probably worked more diligently at the Swiss history and 
 the Swiss archives of that age than any man who is not a 
 native Switzer, still, after all, he does not seem fully to 
 grasp the relations between Charles and the Confederates. 
 And it is certain that it is during this latter part of Mr. 
 Kirk's labours that his way of writing begins to change for 
 the worse. He writes far more distinctly as a partizan, 
 with a strong feeling for Charles and against the Swiss. 
 In this there is nothing specially to quarrel with. English 
 readers are so apt to take up the Swiss side of the quarrel 
 too unreservedly, that it is no bad thing to have the story 
 told, fervidly and vigorously told, from the Burgundian 
 side. But there are signs that there is somewhere a screw 
 loose in Mr. Kirk's treatment of these events. He is evi- 
 dently less at his ease than before ; he is more palpably 
 influenced by the feeling that he has a cause to plead, a 
 case to make out, than in his story of Charles's doings 
 at Montlh^ry and Pdronne, at Dinant and Liittich. It is
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 357 
 
 from the beginning of the second period that Mr. Kirk 
 begins to disfigure his pages with those passages of forced 
 and extravacrant rhetoric which are the ffreat blemish 
 of his book, and which thicken through the third volume 
 till we reach the mere ravings with which the history 
 ends. 
 
 We have thus reached the great point of controversy, the 
 origin of the famous war between Charles the Bold and the 
 Swiss. The popular conception of this war is simply that 
 Charles, a powerful and encroaching prince, was over- 
 thrown in three great battles by the petty commonwealths 
 which he had expected easily to attach to his dominion. 
 Granson and Morat are placed side by side with Morgarten 
 and Sempach. Such a view as this implies complete 
 ignorance of the history; it implies ignorance of the fact 
 that it was the Swiss who made war upon Charles, and not 
 Charles who made war upon the Swiss ; it implies ignor- 
 ance of the fact that Charles's army never set foot on 
 proper Swiss territory at all, that Granson and Morat were 
 at the beginning of the war no part of the possessions of 
 the Confederation. That is to say, the war between 
 Charles and the Swiss, like most other events in history, 
 will always be misunderstood as long as people do not 
 thoroughly master the facts of historical geography. The 
 mere political accident that the country which formed the 
 chief seat of war now forms part of the Swiss Confederation 
 has been with many people enough to determine their 
 estimate of the quarrel. Granson and Morat are in Switzer- 
 land ; Burgundian troops appeared and were defeated at 
 Granson and Morat ; therefore Charles must have been an 
 invader of Switzerland, and the warfare on the Swiss side 
 must have been a warfare of purely defensive heroism. The 
 simple fact that it was only through the result of the 
 Burgundian war that Granson and Morat ever became 
 Swiss territory at once disposes of this line of argument. 
 This is just the sort of simple fact than which nothing can 
 be simpler, but on which the real aspect of whole pages of
 
 358 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 history sometimes turns. But it is also just the sort of 
 simple fact which people find so hard really to master and 
 carry about with them. The plain facts of the case are 
 that the Burgundian war was a war declared by Switzer- 
 land against Burgundy, not a war declared by Burgundy 
 against Switzerland, and that in the campaigns of Granson 
 and Morat the Duke of Burgundy was simply driving back 
 and avenging Swiss invasions of his own territory and the 
 territory of his allies. A Burgundian victory at Morat 
 would no doubt have been followed by a Burgundian 
 invasion of Switzerland ; but, as the Swiss were victorious 
 at Morat, no Burgundian invasion of Switzerland took 
 place. Mr. Kirk, we need hardly say, knows all this as 
 well as any man. He is the last of all men to need 
 teaching that Vaud was not Swiss ground in 1474. He is 
 no doubt doing good service by teaching many people in 
 Enofland and America that it was not so. Thus far he is 
 acting as an useful preacher of historical geography. Yet 
 the lack of a full grasp of historical geography atFects his 
 argument even here. I cannot think that he has fully 
 understood the light in which a possible restoration of the 
 Burgundian kingdom must have looked in the eyes of the 
 Old League of High Germany, 
 
 How then is the war between Charles and the Swiss 
 commonly looked at ? We fancy that to most of those 
 who go a little further into the matter than usual, to those 
 who, without having looked very deeply into details, still 
 have a knowledge of the history somewhat deeper than 
 mere popular talk, the aspect of the war is something of 
 this kind. It is held to have been, though not immediately 
 defensive, yet in every way justifiable in right and in 
 policy; it is held to have ])een provoked, though not by 
 actual invasion on the part of Charles, yet by various 
 wrongs and insults at the hands of his officers, and by the 
 cruellest oppression inflicted on a neighbouring and allied 
 people. In this view, the Swiss, in beginning the war, 
 simply took the bull by the horns, and attacked a power
 
 XI. J CHARLES THE BOLD. 359 
 
 which was on the very point of attacking them. The 
 agency of the King of France is too plain to be altogether 
 kept out of sight ; but his interference would be held to 
 have been shown simply in fomenting a quarrel which had 
 already arisen, and aiding — after his peculiar fashion — the 
 Confederates in a struggle in which he had the deepest 
 possible interest, but which would have taken place equally 
 had he not existed. Those who are used to look at the 
 matter in this light will certainly be somewhat amazed at 
 the way in which the story is told by Mr. Kirk. In his 
 view — a view not really new, though doubtless new to 
 most of his readers — Charles was wholly in the right, and 
 the Confederates were wholly in the wrong. Charles had 
 no hostile intentions towards the Confederates, but was 
 full of the most friendly dispositions towards them. The 
 mass of the Swiss people had as little wish to quarrel with 
 Charles as Charles had to quarrel with them. The alleged 
 grounds of complaint were either matters with which the 
 Swiss had no concern, or else mere trifles which the Duke 
 would at once have redressed on a frank understandins:. 
 The war was wholly the device of Lewis of France, who 
 thought that it would be more convenient to overthrow 
 his great adversary by the arms of the Swiss than by his 
 own. He bribed and cajoled certain citizens of Bern, 
 Nicolas von Diessbach at their head ; and they contrived 
 to entangle Bern and the whole Confederation in a war in 
 which they had no national interest. The Swiss patched 
 up a hurried alliance with an old enemy in order to attack 
 an old friend w^ho had neither done nor designed them any 
 wrong. The alleged grounds of provocation given by 
 Charles were utterly frivolous, and if the Confederates had 
 been as anxious for peace as the Duke, an understandincr 
 might easily have been come to. The execution of Peter 
 von Hagenbach, above all, was an act of directly illegal 
 violence on the part of the Swiss and their allies. The 
 war against Charles was so far from being defensive that it 
 was utterly unprovoked ; it was not even a war of policy;
 
 360 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 the Confederates were neither defending their own country 
 nor supporting the rights of an ally. They acted simply 
 as mercenaries, as the " hired bravos " of a power which 
 had corrupted thera. The victories of Granson, Morat, and 
 Nancy may be glorious as mere displays of valour, but 
 they were unrighteous triumphs won in a cause in which 
 the victors had no interest ; instead of being classed with 
 Sempach and Morgarten, they ought rightly to be classed 
 with the displays of Swiss mercenary valour in later times. 
 The Confederates carried a cruel and desolating war into 
 the dominions of Savoy, a country whose rulers and people 
 had given them no offence ; they hunted the Duke of 
 Burgundy to death, and broke the power of his house at a 
 moment when its preservation was a matter of European 
 interest. And all this they did simply in the interest of 
 their paymaster the King of France, who himself, as soon 
 as he had hopelessly involved them in the war, left them 
 to fight their battles for themselves. From that time 
 began the disgraceful system of foreign pensions and 
 mercenary service which permanently degraded the Swiss 
 character and made Swiss valour a mere article of mer- 
 chandize. The only section of the Confederates to whom 
 any sympathy is due in the matter are those, whether 
 states or individuals, who did their best to hinder the war, 
 and who joined in it only when it became a matter of 
 national duty to give help to those who were already 
 enofased in it. Such amonsj states was Unterwalden : such 
 among individuals was Hadrian von Bubenberg, the de- 
 fender of Morat. In the war itself and its great victories 
 those who take this line see nothing but successful strokes 
 of brigandage. And in those who brought about the war, 
 in the leading Bernese statesmen, above all in Nicolas 
 von Diessbach, Mr. Kirk sees nothing but traitors of the 
 blackest dye. 
 
 We believe that this is a fair exposition of the view 
 which Mr. Kirk now brings, for the first time, as far as we 
 know, before English and American readers. But it is a
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 361 
 
 view which is far from beingf unknown in Switzerland 
 itself. It was fully set forth by the late Baron Frederick 
 de Gingins-la-Sarraz, whose papers on the subject will be 
 found reprinted as an appendix to the sixth and seventh 
 volumes of M. Monnard's French translation — not a very 
 accurate translation, by the way — of Johannes von Miiller s 
 great History of the Swiss Confederation. De Gingins 
 was perhaps the only example in Europe of his own class. 
 He was essentially a Burgundian of the kingdom of Bur- 
 gundy. He had deliberately given his life to the study of 
 every phase of Burgundian history, and Charles, duke of 
 one Burgundy, count of another, and would-be king of all, 
 was naturally a character in whom he took a deep interest. 
 Add to this that De Gingins, though he probably cherished 
 no actual wish to be other than the Swiss citizen which 
 modern geography made him, was at heart a Burgundian 
 noble, like his forefathers four hundred years back. He had 
 not forgotten that those forefathers had swelled the armies 
 of Charles, and that their ancestral castle had been burned 
 by the Confederates. A scholar of unwearied research, he 
 worked manfully at this as at all other Burgundian sub- 
 jects, and he had evidently a special pleasure in bringing 
 forwa,rd those facts which tell for the Burgundian and 
 against the Swiss side. Considering how exclusively the 
 story had been hitherto looked upon from the Swiss side, 
 he was, in so doing;, doing a service to the cause of truth. 
 Mr. Kirk seems to have dived yet deeper into the same 
 stores, and distinctly with the same bias. But it was to be 
 borne in mind that, novel as his view of the case may seem 
 to an English reader, he is only working in the beat of 
 De Gingins, by whom his main facts and arguments have 
 been already strongly set forth. Our own views have been 
 mainly formed on those set forth by another Swiss scholar, 
 John Caspar Zellweger, the historian of Appenzell, in a 
 most elaborate essay "^j followed by a large collection of 
 
 * " Versuch die wahren Griinde des burgundischen Krieges aus den Quellen 
 darzustellen und die dariiber verbreiteten irrigen Ausichten zu bericlitigeii."
 
 362 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essat 
 
 hitherto unpublished documents, printed in the fifth volume 
 of the Arcliiv fur scliiveizerische Geschichte (Zurich, 1H47). It 
 is not for us to guess how many of Mr. Kirk's readers, 
 British or American, are likely to have read Zellweger or 
 De Gingins, or even Johannes von Midler himself. Swiss 
 historical works, both original authorities and modern 
 writers, are not very common in England, and cannot 
 always be got at a moment's notice. And the best autho- 
 rities for this period consist of documents, documents too, 
 as must always happen in a Confederation of small states, 
 scattered about in all manner of local archives. Each fresh 
 writer brings forth some paper which nobody had seen 
 before, and by its help be crows over the mistakes of those 
 who were unlucky enough to write without having seen it. 
 Zellweger has done a real service by printing his documents 
 at full length, while other writers merely give references 
 which are little better than a mockery, or extracts which 
 make us wish to see the context. But no reader probably 
 would wish us, even if we had the space, to go minutely 
 through every disputed point of detail. We will confine 
 ourselves to setting forth the general conclusions to which 
 we have come, and to pointing out a few considerations 
 which seem to have escaped Mr. Kirk's notice. 
 
 First of all, we must bear in mind at every moment the 
 real extent and position of Switzerland at that time. We 
 are accustomed to conceive Switzerland as including Geneva, 
 Basel, and Chur at its different corners, and as being a per- 
 fectly independent power, quite distinct from Germany. 
 We are also accustomed to point to Switzerland as the 
 most remarkable example of a country where diversity of 
 blood, language, and religion does not hinder the existence 
 of a common feeling of nationality. We are also accus- 
 tomed to look upon Switzerland as a power conservative 
 but not aggressive, and on the Swiss as a people who are 
 as ready as of old to defend themselves if attacked, but 
 who have neither the will nor the means to annex any of 
 the territory of their neighbours. Such is the Switzerland
 
 X[.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 363 
 
 of our own time, but such was not the Switzerland with 
 which Charles the Bold had to deal. In those days the 
 name of Switzerland, as a distinct nation or people, was 
 hardly known. The names Swite?ises, Stviizois, Suisses, were 
 indeed beginning to spread themselves from a single 
 Canton to the whole Confederation ; but the formal style 
 of that Confederation was still the " Great (or Old) League 
 of Upper Germany " — perhaps rather of " Upper Swabia." * 
 That Leasfue was much smaller than it is now^ and it was 
 purely German. It consisted of eight German districts and 
 cities, united, like many other groups of German cities, by 
 a lax federal tie, which tie, while other similar unions have 
 died away, has gi'adually developed into a perfect federal 
 government, and has extended itself over a large non- 
 German territory. The League then consisted of eight 
 Cantons only — Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unter- 
 walden, Zug, and Glarus. All these states were practically 
 independent commonwealths ; in theory they were im- 
 mediate subjects of the Emperor, holding certain large 
 franchises by ancient grant or prescription. Moreover the 
 League was looked on as an eminently advancing, not to 
 say an aggressive, power; it was always extending its 
 borders, always winning new allies and subjects which 
 stood in various relations to the older Cantons. Bern, 
 above all, was always conquering, purchasing, admitting 
 to citizenship, in a way which affords a close parallel to 
 old Rome. The League was feared, hated, or admired by 
 its neighbours according to circumstances ; but it was 
 a power which all its neighbours were glad to have as 
 a friend rather than as an enemy. But as yet, with all 
 its advances, the League itself had not set foot on WeUt — 
 that is, Romance-speaking — ground. Neufchatel, Geneva, 
 Vaud, even Freiburg, were not yet members or even allies 
 
 * Liga vetus Alemannise altae (Treaty with Chiirles the Seventh, ap. 
 Zellweger, 75). Domini de Liya Alamaniae (ibid. 130). Domini de Liga 
 magna Alamanite superioris (ibid. 132). "AUemannia" might either mean 
 Germany in general or Swabia in particular; in either case, " Upper AUe- 
 mannia " is opposed to the " Lower Union " of the cities on the Rhine.
 
 364 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 of the Confederation, though some of them stood in close 
 relations to the particular canton of Bern. All these are 
 points which must be carefully borne in mind, lest the 
 history be misconceived through being looked at through 
 too modern a medium. Above all, the strictly German 
 character of the League, and its close relation to the Empire, 
 must never be allowed to pass out of mind. The German 
 national spirit breathes strongly in all the chronicles which 
 record the great national war between Dutch and Welsh. 
 Under the former name the Confederate troops are constantly 
 joined with those of Austria and the free cities, in a way 
 which would certainly not be done by any Swiss writer 
 now. As to their relations to the Empire, there is the 
 manifest fact that the Imperial summons is put prominently 
 forward in the Swiss declaration of war against Burgundy. 
 The Confederates make war upon Duke Charles at the 
 bidding of their gracious lord the Emperor of the Romans. 
 Mr. Kirk rather sneers at this, and asks whether the Swiss 
 were on all other occasions equally obedient to the orders 
 of the chief of the Empire. Now we certainly do not 
 believe that mere loyalty to any Emperor, least of all to 
 such an Emperor as Frederick the Third, would have led 
 the Swiss into a war to which they were not prompted by 
 nearer interests. But it does not at all follow that the 
 prominence given to the Imperial summons was mere pre- 
 tence. The Swiss, like the other members of the Empire, 
 had little scruple in acting against the Emperor when it 
 suited him to do so ; still it was a great point to have the 
 Imperial name on their side whenever they could ; it gave 
 a formal legitimacy to their doings, and it doubtless really 
 satisfied the consciences of many who might otherwise have 
 hesitated as to the right course. And in truth the relations 
 of the Swiss to the Empire had commonly been very 
 friendly. Certain Emperors and kings of the Austrian 
 house, Frederick himself among them, had indeed been 
 guilty of wrongs against the Confederacy, but that had 
 been in pursuit, not of Imperial but of Austrian interests.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 365 
 
 But with Emperors of other lines the League had commonly 
 stood well ; the war of Charles the Fourth against Ziiiich 
 is the only important exception. The gi-eat Fredericks,''^ 
 Henry the Seventh, Lewis of Bavaria, and Sigismund, 
 had always been on the very best terms both with the 
 old Forest Cantons and with the more extended League. 
 There can be no doubt that the name of C«sar still com- 
 manded a deep reverence throughout the cantons, which 
 died away only as the Imperial title sank into little more 
 than one of the elements of greatness in the dangerous 
 house of Austria. It is evident that in the war with 
 Charles, the Swiss^ though they certainly never forgot 
 their own interests, sincerely felt that they were fighting 
 for German nationality and for the majesty of that Empire 
 with which German nationality was so closely identified. 
 That the Emperor himself, when he had once stirred them 
 up, disgracefully left them in the lurch proves nothing as 
 to the original feeling ; when their blood was once up, they 
 were not likely to turn back for King, Csesar, or Pontifi". 
 
 But feelings of German nationality and of loyalty to the 
 Empire, though they were elements in the case which must 
 not be left out, were certainly not the moving causes of the 
 war between Charles and the Confederates. They might 
 well turn the balance with those who were doubtful, but 
 they were not the things which stirred up mens minds in 
 the first instance. What then was the character of the war 1 
 We have seen that it was not a war of the Morgarten type, 
 a war of pure defensive heroism. Was it then, as De 
 Gingins and Mr. Kirk would have us believe, a war of 
 mere brigandage, an ungrateful attack upon an old friend 
 under the influence of the bribes of a concealed enemy? 
 Or shall we, with Zellweger, look upon it as a war which 
 was brought about by the corrupt intrigues of Lewis the 
 
 * Of course in their day the extended League did not exist. But the 
 three original cantons were doubtless already bound together by that 
 traditional tie which later written engagements only confirmed ; and the 
 Swabians of those cantons were among the most devoted suj'porters of the 
 Swabian Caesars.
 
 366 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 Eleventh with Nicolas von Diessbach, a war in which the 
 Confederates generally were taken in hy these crafty men, 
 but one in which they themselves could not be fairly looked 
 upon as wanton aggressors 1 
 
 This last view is one which seems to us to come much 
 nearer to the truth than Mr. Kirk's ; indeed, we are dis- 
 posed to go a little further on behalf of the Confederates 
 than Zellweger seemed disposed to do. It seems to us that 
 the war was no more a war of mere brigandage than it was 
 a war of pure defensive heroism. It was rather, like most 
 other wars, a war of policy — whether of good or of bad 
 policy is another question — a war which had something to 
 be said for it and something to be said against it, a war 
 which an honest man might advocate and which an honest 
 man might oppose. It seems to us, like most other wars, 
 to have had its ori2:in in a combination of causes, none of 
 which alone would have brought it about. The Swiss, as 
 a body, were taken in ; they were made the tool or play- 
 thing — the SpieJhall, as Zellweger expressively calls it — of 
 the contending powers and of crafty and dishonest men 
 among themselves. They were forsaken alike by the 
 Emperor who summoned them to the field on their alle- 
 giance to the Empire, and by the king whose policy and 
 whose gold were undoubtedly among the chief determin- 
 ing causes of the war. We say among the chief determining 
 causes, not the determining cause. We clearly see the 
 hand of Lewis throughout the matter, and we believe that 
 without his interference the war would most likely never 
 have broken out. It is certain that the Confederation had 
 no immediate interest in the war. Tnere can be no doubt 
 that territorial conquest was from the beginning one main 
 object in the eyes of Bern, and that in the later stages of the 
 war a mere eagerness for booty began gradually to mingle 
 itself with other motives. It is certain that large sums 
 were paid by Lewis to many leading men in Switzerland, 
 especially at Bern and Luzern ; and it is certain that from 
 this time the baneful practice of mercenary service took
 
 XT.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 3G7 
 
 a far wider developement, and the yet more baneful system 
 of pensions and of military capitulations with the states 
 themselves took its tirst beginning. It is hardly less certain 
 that of the men who took the gold of Lewis, some at least 
 took it as a bribe in the strictest sense, and were simply 
 dishonest traitors^ sold to the service of a foreign prince. 
 At their head we have as little hesitation as Mr. Kirk in 
 placing the name of Nicolas von Diessbach. In so doing 
 we are only following in the steps of Zellweger, and repeat- 
 ing a sentence which was before him pronounced by De la 
 Harpe. All this we readily admit ; but it does not follow 
 that the war was a war of pure brigandage. It was a war 
 very much like all other wars, except those few heroic 
 struggles in which men have simply fought to deliver their 
 country from an unprovoked invasion. Such a war, even 
 if, after weighing the arguments on both sides we pronounce 
 it to have been unjust, is quite a different thing from a war 
 of pure brigandage. Our Russian war fourteen years back* 
 was thoroughly needless and thoroughly unjust, a war 
 waged in a bad cause against a people who had not wronged 
 us; but there was quite enough to be said on its behalf to 
 take it out of the class of wars of pure brigandage. And 
 the Swiss had in the Burfjundian war, not indeed a case like 
 their own case at Morgarten and Sempach, but a better case 
 than England, France, and Sardinia had in the Russian war. 
 As for particular acts of cruelty, those may be found on 
 both sides, and there is nothing to excuse them on either 
 side except the ferocious customs of the age, customs far 
 more ferocious than the customs of some centuries earlier. 
 Swiss cruelty at Orbe and Estavayer was as blameworthy 
 as Burgundian cruelty at Dinant, Liittich, and Granson. 
 That it was more blameworthy we cannot see. 
 
 That there was a weak side to the Swiss cause is plain, if 
 only from the witness of their own historians. The most 
 important sources for this period are undoubtedly the 
 documents which have been worked with such good results 
 
 * [1865.]
 
 368 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 both by Zellweger and by Mr. Kirk. But the chroniclers 
 are in some sort better indexes of what was in men's minds 
 at the time. One most important authority, and one most 
 strongly anti-Eurgundian in its spirit, is the Chronicle of 
 Diebold Schilling of Bern.* Now throughout his story 
 there reigns a sort of uncomfortable, artificial, apologetic, 
 tone, as if the writer was trying, by dint of using the 
 strongest epithets and putting everything in the strongest 
 way, to justify in the eyes of his readers a course that he 
 himself knew could not be fully justified. No contrast can 
 be greater than between Diebold Schilling and Mr. Kirk's 
 favourite author, Valerius Anshelm. Anshelm wrote just 
 after the Reformation, full of all the zeal which awakened 
 that political and moral reformation which was a temporary 
 result of the religious change. f His righteous soul is 
 thoroughly vexed by the unlawful deeds of his own 
 generation and of the generation before him. He declaims 
 against the foreign pensions and everything that has to do 
 with them, with the fervour, the sarcasm, and somewhat of 
 the parabolic vein, of a Hebrew prophet. Lewis the 
 Eleventh, whom Diebold Schilling is rather inclined to 
 worship, is painted by Anshelm in the blackest colours. J 
 To be sure he paints Charles of Burgundy in colours 
 
 * This clii-unicle has long been known. It must not be confounded with 
 the contemporary chronicle of the otlier Diebold Schilling of Luzern, which 
 was printed only a few years back, and which is much less full. 
 
 + Not, I would say, as far as I can see, the result of the peculiar dogmas 
 of the Ileforination, but of that moral elevation and prritication which must 
 always accompany any great and sincere change in religion. Zwingli un- 
 doubtedly wrought a wonderful moral reformation at Ziirioh ; but Saint 
 Chaile.s Borronieo wrought an e(iually wonderful moral reformation at Luzern. 
 In neither case do I believe the reformation to have been the result of those 
 dogmas on which those two good men spoke different langua;^es, but rather of 
 those on which they spoke the same. And neither theological system proved 
 itself capable of setting up an earthly paradise for more than a short time. 
 
 + See vol. 1. p. lOD of his ' Berner Chronik.' The great point is the con- 
 trast between liCwis — " der eigensinnig, listig, frevel Delfin" and his father — 
 " von sinem milden, giitigen und wysen Vater, Kiing Karl, dem Sibenten." 
 But he gets just as elo(]uent over his comi)arison between Charles the Bold 
 and his father Philip the Good : Lewis and Charles alike are compared to 
 Turkish tyrants.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 369 
 
 equally black, and throughout his narrative of the time two 
 feelings seem to contend, a natural sympathy for the military 
 prowess of his countrymen, and a profound conviction 
 of the evils which followed on once touchino^ the gold of 
 France. But, like most rebukers of the vices of their time, 
 Anshelm's righteous zeal, as Zellweger thinks it needful to 
 warn us, sometimes carries him beyond the mark. We 
 have to strike the balance between ancient partizans of two 
 opposite sides as well as between their modern followers. 
 
 In striking this balance there are some points which Mr. 
 Kirk can hardly be said to keep steadily enough before him. 
 He insists on the facts that Charles had no hostile inten- 
 tions against the Confederation, and that it was very hard 
 to make the members of the Confederation agree to the war 
 against him, except those greater and more ambitious states 
 which lay nearest to the frontier, and which were most open 
 to the agency of France. Now let us think for a moment 
 what the interest of the Confederation really was. To us, 
 looking calmly at the matter from our distance of time, the 
 overthrow of Charles, the acrfrrandizement of Lewis, the 
 blighting of the best hope which had ever appeared for the 
 formation of a strong Middle Kingdom, seem a great and 
 lasting European calamity. But it is not fau* to expect the 
 Swiss of those days to look so many hundred years forwards 
 and so many hundred years backwards. Putting such 
 distant views out of sight, and putting also out of sight for 
 a moment the question of French influence in the business, 
 had the Old League of Upper Germany any good reason 
 for making war upon the Duke of Burgundy? It seems to 
 us that they had as good grounds for war as nations com- 
 monly have for wars which are not purely defensive ; but 
 it also seems to us that the quarrels which formed the 
 ostensible casus belli could easily have been made up by 
 a frank understanding between the parties, if it had not 
 been the interest of other powers to keep their differences 
 alive. 
 
 There is no reason to believe that Charles had any 
 
 Bb
 
 370 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 immediate intention of attacking the Swiss. Indeed, what- 
 ever were his ultimate intentions, it was clearly his interest 
 to keep on good terms with them while he w^as carrying on 
 his other conquests. It is also clear that the great mass 
 of the Confederates had no sort of wish to quarrel with 
 Charles. His father Philip had been an old friend and a 
 good neighbour ; and, whatever we say of Hagenbach, 
 Charles personally had certainly done the Confederates no 
 direct wrong. But it does not follow from this that peace 
 was the best policy, or that the war was without excuse. 
 Two questions have to be asked : — First, was the general 
 position of Charles really threatening to the Confederates, 
 so as to make it good policy to attack him while he could 
 still be attacked in concert with powerful allies, instead of 
 waiting merely to be devoured the last ? Secondly, were 
 there any particular acts on the part of Charles which, 
 apart from these more distant considerations, rendered 
 immediate hostilities justifiable ? 
 
 On the former ground the advocates of war could make 
 out at least a very plausible case. Charles was, by various 
 means, annexing province after province, in a way which 
 pointed to settled schemes of annexation which put all his 
 neighbours in jeopardy. He had annexed Gelders, he had 
 annexed Elsass ; he was clearly aiming at uniting his scat- 
 tered dominions by the annexation of Lorraine ; he was 
 besieging the German town of Neuss, in a quarrel with 
 which he had not the least concern, in a dispute about the 
 rightful possession of the archbishopric of Koln * — a ques- 
 tion surely to be judged at the tribunal of the Emperor or 
 the Pope, and not to be decided by the arms of the Duke of 
 Burgundy. All these were facts known to all the world. 
 
 * Charles's policy with regard to the Bee of Kijln seems to be the same as his 
 earlier pulicy towards Luttieh. As he could hardly annex the bishopric to his 
 dominions, his object was to convert the ecclesiastical sovereign into his instru- 
 ment. Charles, however, is said to have meditated the annexation by Imperial 
 authority of the four great ecclesiastical principalities which intersected hie 
 doniinions in tlje Netherlands — the bishoprics of Utrecht, Liittich, Cambray, 
 and Tournay. — Heuter, lib. v. c. 8.
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 371 
 
 All the world knew also how Charles had, in 1473, goi^e 
 to Trier, to be raised by the Emperor to the rank of king 
 of some kingdom or other, and how he had been left to 
 pack up his newly-made crown and sceptre and go home 
 again. More lately there had been rumours, true or false, 
 that the restoration of the kingdom was again designed, 
 that Charles was to be Imperial Vicar throughout the old 
 Burgundy, that the free Imperial city of Besangon was 
 to become his capital, that he was negotiating with good 
 King Ren^ for the cession or inheritance of Provence. All 
 these things were enough to frighten anybody, especially 
 those who dwelt within the limits which would naturally 
 be assigned to the revived kingdom. Even among the 
 original cantons, Schwyz and Uri indeed lay without the 
 borders of Burgundy in any meaning of the name, yet 
 among the endless fluctuations of those borders, Unter- 
 walden had sometimes been counted to lie within the 
 Lesser Burgundian duchy. And Bern and her allies of 
 Solothurn and Freiburg all stood on undoubted Burgundian 
 soil, and they were far from being forgetful of the fact."^ 
 The re-establishment of the Bursjundian kingdom would 
 thus, if it did not altogether destroy the Confederation, at 
 least dismember it ; it would despoil it of its greatest city, 
 and give the eastern cantons a powerful foreign king, 
 instead of one of their own Confederates, as their western 
 neighbour. Any serious prospect of such a change was 
 enough to alarm the whole Confederacy ; the least hint of 
 
 * " Als Krone iin Burgundenreich, 
 Als freier Stadte Krone, 
 Als reiner Spiegel, der zugleich 
 Ganz mal und mackel ohne : 
 Wird Bern geriihmt all iiberall 
 Von Jungen wie von Greisen, 
 Auch muss den grossen Heldensal 
 Das ganze Teutschland preisen." 
 Lied ilh^r Gugler, 1376, in Rocliholz's Eidgenoasische Lieder-Chronik 
 (Bern, 1842). It is much to be regretted tliat the compiler of this collection 
 should have modernized the language of the old songs in the way that he has 
 done. 
 
 B b 3
 
 372 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 the possibility of such a change was surely enough to 
 alarm Bern. This is a feeling which Mr. Kirk does not 
 enter into so much as an historian would to whom his- 
 torical geography was more of a living thing. But there 
 can be no doubt that the fear existed at the time, and that 
 it was far from being an unnatural fear. Bern then, more 
 directly threatened and better versed than her sisters in 
 the general politics of the world, naturally took the lead in 
 the movement. That the older cantons lagged behind is 
 nothing wonderful : Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were 
 far less directly threatened, and their position and manner 
 of life naturally hindered them from keeping so keen an 
 eye on the general politics of the world as the astute and 
 polished statesmen of Bern. That Bern therefore was eager 
 for war, while the other cantons somewhat unwillingly 
 followed her lead, was just what the circumstances of 
 the case would naturally lead us to expect. The alliance 
 with Austria was a necessary part of any scheme of hostility 
 against Burgundy. It of course offended all Swiss tra- 
 ditional sentiment. Austria had up to this moment always 
 been their enemy, while Burgundy had long been their 
 friend, and had only ceased to be so under Austrian influ- 
 ence. But such a feeling was purely sentimental. If Bur- 
 gundy was really dangerous, Austria was a natural ally. 
 Sigismund, far too weak to do the Swiss any mischief by 
 himself, was yet strong enough to give them valuable help 
 against a common enemy. 
 
 The case, in fact, is one in which what we may call the 
 policy of the moment agreed with the permanent policy of 
 Europe, while what we may call the policy of the age, the 
 policy which it needs a long-sighted statesman to reach 
 and which the most long-sighted of statesmen seldom get 
 beyond, suggested another course. The smaller and more 
 remote cantons, those which lay further from the scene of 
 action and which knew less of the general politics of the 
 world, those which had no hope of that territorial aggran- 
 dizement which the war opened to Bern and Freiburg,
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 373 
 
 naturally shrank from attacking a prince who had not 
 directly attacked them. This short-sighted policy acci- 
 dentally agrees with our judgement four hundred years after 
 that the overthrow of Charles and his power has proved a 
 great European evil. But, at the time, a more long-sighted 
 policy might argue that the part of wisdom was to meet 
 the blow before it came, and, as Charles had given real 
 provocation, not to wait till provocation grew into inva- 
 sion. The particular grievances alleged against Burgundy 
 were gi-ievances of that kind which can be easily got over 
 when both parties are so disposed, but which easily lead to 
 war when the mind of either side is exasperated on other 
 grounds. That the Swiss had real grievances cannot be 
 denied : their merchants had been seized, the Bernese terri- 
 tory had been violated, their allies of Miihlhausen had 
 been attacked. We cannot doubt that Peter von Hasen- 
 bach had used violent and insulting language towards the 
 Confederates. But, except the attack on Miihlhausen, none 
 of these were Charles's own acts. For the affair of Miihl- 
 hausen he had an excuse which might seem just to himself, 
 though it hardly would seem so to the Confederates ; for 
 the acts of Hagenbach and others he was quite ready to 
 make reasonable atonement. But it was not the interest 
 of France, it was not the interest of Bern, it was perhaps 
 not the more remote interest of the whole League, that such 
 atonement should be accepted. A little friendly mediation 
 might no doubt have easily brought both sides to a mo- 
 mentary good understanding. The question was whether 
 such a momentary good understanding was in harmony 
 with sound policy. And in weighing what was sound 
 policy at the time, it is not reasonable to expect men to 
 look forward for four or five hundred years. 
 
 As for Hagenbach, we freely grant to Mr. Kirk that his 
 execution was a breach of the law of nations. Whatever 
 were his crimes, neither the Duke of Austria, nor the Con- 
 federates, nor the Free Cities of the Rhine, had any right 
 to judge him. He was an officer of the Duke of Burgundy,
 
 374 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 in a country of which the Duke of Burgundy had a lawful, 
 though only a temporary, possession. His deeds, if left 
 unpunished, might form a casus hcUi against his master ; 
 we might be inclined to shut our eyes if he had perished 
 in a popular tumult ; but his solemn judicial trial was a 
 mere mockery of justice. But it is quite in vain that 
 Mr. Kirk attempts to whitewash the man himself His 
 resolute and Christian end, acknowledged by his bitterest 
 enemies,''^ proves very little. Men often die well who have 
 lived ill. And Hagenbach at least knew that he was dying 
 by an unjust sentence. But the genuine and bitter hatred 
 of all the Alsatian and Swabian towns could not have been 
 aroused for nothing. The whole people of Breisach were 
 not in the pay of King Lewis, nor had they all been led 
 astray by the eloquence of Nicolas von Diessbach. The 
 fact is plain ; they revolted against a cruel, lustful, and 
 insolent ruler. The particular stories in Konigshoven f 
 and elsewhere may perhaps be lies, or at any rate exagger- 
 ations ; but even slander commonly shows some regard to 
 probability. The real deeds of Hagenbach must have been 
 very bad before men could invent such stories about him. 
 The particular grounds of indignation were just those 
 which do most stir up men's indignation, namely, lustful 
 excess combined with violence and insult. It is quite in 
 vain for Mr. Kirk to solten down the stories of Hagenbach 
 into his being merely " a man of immoral life." People do 
 not rise up against mere immorality in a ruler ; it some- 
 times even makes a ruler more popular. Philip the Good, 
 Sigismund of Austria, Edward of England, the pious King 
 of France himself, were all men of immoral life, but we do 
 not find that anybody revolted against them on that ac- 
 count. X But then, whatever were their moral offences, 
 
 * See Schilling of Luzern, p. 65. 
 
 t Die Alteste Teutsche so wol allgemeine als insonderheit Elsassische 
 iind Strassburgische Chionicke, von Jacob von Konigshoven, Priestern in 
 Strassburg. (Strassburg, 1698.) 
 
 X Unless indeed we accept that version of the quarrel between Warwick 
 and Edward which attributes Warwick's bitternes;* against the King to an
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 375 
 
 they at least abstained from those specially galling forms 
 of vice which brought destruction on Peter von Hagenbach 
 and on the victims of the Sicilian vespers. 
 
 As we grant to Mr. Kirk the unlawfulness of the execu- 
 tion of Hagenbach, we can also grant to him another point. 
 The decisive moment of the struggle was when Sigismund 
 of Austria reclaimed the lands in Elsass which he had 
 pledged to Charles. We admit that the repayment of the 
 money — the PfandscJnlling, as the old chroniclers call it — 
 was made in a way not contemplated in the treaty, and 
 that Charles was therefore justified in treating the redemp- 
 tion as null and void. But we think that this admission 
 leaves the main case very much as it stood before. The 
 important point is the zeal with which the various towns 
 helped to raise the money, and their eagerness to have 
 Sigismund for their master or neighbour rather than 
 Charles. Mr. Kirk tells us — and we are ready to believe 
 it — that the Burgundian government was stricter and more 
 regular than the Austrian, and that the towns simply stood 
 out for franchises which were inconsistent with the general 
 good. So possibly they were, but it would have been 
 hard to make the citizens of those towns think so. At 
 any rate we may be quite sure that men did not mingle 
 their political cries with their Easter hymns without some 
 good reason.* 
 
 We hold then that, taking all these things together, — the 
 generally dangerous designs of Charles, the particular 
 wrongs done by Hagenbach and others, the oppression of 
 
 insult offered by him to the Earl's daughter or niece. If so, we are 
 approaching the same ground as the tales of Hagenbach. As a general 
 rule, Edward's gallantries seem rather to have made him popular than 
 otherwise. 
 
 * The Easter Song of 1474 ran thus : 
 
 " Clirist ist erstanden, der Landvogt ist gefangen ; 
 Des sollend wir fro syn. 
 Siegmund soil unser Ti'o^t syti, Kyrie eleison. 
 War er nit gefangen, so war's iibel gangen ; 
 Seyd er nun gefangen ist, hilft ihm niit syn bose List." 
 J. V. Mtiller, b. iv. c. vii. note 572. So Schilling of Luzem, p. 66.
 
 376 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 neighbouring and friendly commonwealths, the summons to 
 the Confederates in the name of the Emperor, — there was 
 quite enough to explain, perhaps enough to justify, the 
 Swiss declaration of war. And the peculiar position of 
 Bern fully explains and justifies her eagerness and the 
 backwardness of the other cantons. If the career of 
 Charles did not immediately threaten the Confederates, yet 
 it threatened them in the long run, and it had directly 
 touched their allies. German national feeling, and that 
 vague loyalty to the Empire which was by no means with- 
 out influence, called the Confederates, along with other 
 Germans, to withstand the threatening Welsh power against 
 whom Caesar had summoned all his liegemen. That Caesar 
 afterwards forsook the liegemen whom he had summoned 
 would count for very little when the die was once cast. 
 These were motives which would appeal to the sentiments 
 of the Confederates in general. They would be met by 
 strong motives on the other side. Mere sluggishness, mere 
 unwillingness to stir without manifest necessity, would count 
 for something. A powerful sentimental feeling would op- 
 pose itself to a war with Burgundy, an old friend, under- 
 taken in concert with Austria, the old enemy. There 
 would be the feeling of jealousy on the part of the small 
 cantons against Bern, when Bern was so sure to reap the 
 chief advantages of war. Motives would thus be pretty 
 evenly balanced. In the end the Confederation was hurried, 
 one might almost say cheated, into the war by French 
 intrigue and Bernese diplomacy. All that did happen 
 might possibly have happened, even though the gold and 
 the intrigues of King Lewis had played no important part 
 in the business. But we are far from denying that they 
 did play a very important part. They clinched, as it were, 
 the whole matter. They made that certain which otherwise 
 would have been only possible ; they hastened what other- 
 wise might have been delayed ; they made a quarrel irre- 
 concileable which otherwise might have been made up, at 
 least for a season. We do not doubt that the linger of
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 377 
 
 Lewis was to be traced everywhere, at Eern. at Innsbruck, 
 in the Alsatian towns, seizing opportunities, removing 
 difficulties, aggravating what needed to be aggravated 
 and sottening what needed to be softened. We do not 
 doubt that the Confedei-ates were made the tool of a policy 
 which few among them understood, except the special 
 agents of Lewis. All that we say is that Lewis's inter- 
 ference was not the sole explanation of the matter ; that, 
 though a very important influence, it was only one con- 
 spiring influence among several ; that the Confederates had 
 at least a plausible case against Charles, and that they 
 might even have acted as they did though Lewis had never 
 been born. So far as they were unduly or unworthily 
 influenced by the tempter, they had their fitting reward ; 
 when they were once committed to the struggle with the 
 power of Burgundy, their royal ally forsook them no less 
 basely than their Imperial lord, and the baneful habits 
 brought in by this first handling of French gold remained 
 the shame and cuise of the Swiss commonwealths till the 
 stain was wiped out in our own day. 
 
 How far then was the Bernese diplomacy corrupt 1 Was 
 Bern, were its statesmen, simply bought by Lewis ? Nicolas 
 von Diessbach most likely sold himself, soul and body, to 
 the French King. But did the whole commonwealth so sell 
 itself? To our thinking, Mr. Kirk does not make enough 
 of allowance for the wide difference between the feelings 
 of those days and the feelings of ours with regard to any 
 taking of money by public men. Our feeling on the sub- 
 ject is undoubtedly a much higher and better one, and it 
 is a safeguard against practices which, even in their most 
 harmless shape, are at least very dangerous. But we must 
 judge men according to the feelings of their own time. 
 Every man who took the King's money was not necessarily 
 acting corruptly. No doubt it would have been nobler to 
 refuse to touch a so^i of it in any case. The high-minded 
 refusal of Freiburg at the time of the King's first offers 
 reads like some of the noblest stories of the best days of
 
 378 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 old Rome. To take the money, whether for a common- 
 wealth or for an individual, was dangerous and degrading ; 
 but it was far from being so dangerous or so degrading as 
 the like conduct would be now. We have no right to say 
 that either a commonwealth or an individual was bribed 
 or bought, unless it can be shown that he or they were led 
 by gifts to adopt a line of conduct which their unbought 
 judgements condemned. Diessbach may have been a traitor 
 of this kind ; Zellweger demands his condemnation as well 
 as Mr. Kirk, and Bern and Switzerland can afford to give 
 him up. But we must not extend the same harsh measure 
 to every man who grasped a few gold pieces from the royal 
 storehouse. It might be a reward ; it might be a subven- 
 tion ; it was not necessarily a bribe, as we now count 
 bribes. We have a feeling nowadays about taking money 
 at all which had no sort of existence in the fifteenth 
 century. In those days men freely took what they could 
 get : judges took presents from suitors and ambassadors 
 took presents from the princes to whom they were sent ; 
 sovereigns and their councillors became the pensioners of 
 other sovereigns; kings on their pi ogresses did not scruple 
 to receive purses filled with gold as an earnest of the love 
 of their subjects. To sell ones country for money, to 
 change one's policy for money, was as shameful then as it 
 is now ; but simply to take money, either as a help or as 
 a reward, from a richer fellow- worker in the same cause 
 was not thou<J|;ht shameful at all. Kines with their ministers 
 and ambassadors, commonwealths and their leading citizens, 
 freely took money in such cases. Charles spent his money 
 in Switzerland as well as Lewis ; Englishmen took the 
 money of Lewis no less readily than Switzers. If Diess- 
 bach or any one else took French money in order to beguile 
 his country into a course which, had he not received 
 French money, he would not have counselled, he was a 
 corrupt traitor. But if Diessbach or any one else, be- 
 lieving a war with Burgundy to be just and politic, took 
 French money as a help towards the common cause, or
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 379 
 
 even as a reward for his services in promoting that cause, 
 the morality of the time did not condemn him. And many 
 of these practices long survived the days of Charles the 
 Bold. The English patriots of the reign of Charles the 
 Second took the money of Lewis the Fourteenth as freely 
 as Aratos in old times took the money of King Ptolemy. 
 But neither Aratos nor Algernon Sidney can fairly be 
 called corrupt ; the interest of the patriot was in either 
 case believed to be the same as the interest of the foreign 
 king, and the patriot did not disdain the foreign kings 
 money as help given to the common cause. The sub- 
 ventions publicly granted by Lewis the Eleventh to the 
 several cantons were really of much the same nature as 
 the subsidies in which England not so long ago dealt very 
 largely. In all these cases there is much of danger and 
 temptation in handling the seducing metal, but the mere 
 act is not of itself necessarily corrupt. The worst to be 
 said of the Swiss is that, in a not very scrupulous age, 
 they did not show themselves conspicuously better than 
 other people. The friends of France took the King's 
 money, and the friends of Burgundy took the Duke's ; for 
 Charles had his paid partizans also, though he was both 
 less bountiful and less discreet in the business than his 
 rival. In taking foreign money, as in serving as mer- 
 cenaries, the Swiss simply did like the rest of the world, 
 only various circumstances made these bad habits more 
 conspicuous and more permanent in them than in other 
 nations. The help of France, which took the ugly form of 
 receiving French money, had a great deal to do with fixing 
 the purpose both of Bern and of the other Confederates. 
 And it is pretty clear that, with some particular men, the 
 receiving of French money was simply the receiving of 
 French bribes. But as regards the state, the subsidy need 
 not have been more than a subsidy ; to receive French 
 money as a help against the common enemy was not neces- 
 sarily any more corrupt than to receive the help of French 
 troops. We do not deny the danger of such practices ; we
 
 380 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay 
 
 do not deny their evil eifects in this particular case, in 
 ■which they undoubtedly led, as Valerius Anshelm shows, 
 to the political demoralization of Switzerland. These 
 transactions with Lewis were the beginning of these evil 
 practices, practices which seriously lowered the dignity 
 and independence of the Swiss people down to the aboli- 
 tion of the military capitulations by the Constitution of 
 1848. The beginning of these degrading habits is to be 
 traced to the war of Burgundy ; but it is not fair to speak, 
 as De Gingins and Mr. Kirk do, of the war of Burgundy 
 itself as an instance of mercenary service. We believe that 
 in that war the Swiss were neither strictly fighting for 
 their hearths and homes nor yet basely shedding their blood 
 in an alien quarrel. They were fighting in a war of policy, 
 a war into which they had drifted, as the phrase is, through 
 a variety of influences. But we decline to look on French 
 gold and intrigues as the single cause of the war, of which 
 we hold them to have been only one cause among several. 
 We look on the war, like most other wars, as a war of 
 doubtful justice and expediency, a war which had much 
 to be said for it and much to be said against it. We 
 cannot look on it as a war of mere brigandage, or on the 
 Swiss who were engaged in it as mere mercenary butchers. 
 The Swiss then acted simply like other people, neither 
 better nor worse ; only there is a sort of disposition in 
 many minds specially to blame the Swiss if they did not 
 act better than other people. They were republicans, and 
 they ought to have set examples of all the republican 
 virtues. But in truth the Swiss of that age w^ere not 
 theoretical republicans at all. They had the strongest 
 possible attachment to the rights of their own cities and 
 districts, but they had no notion whatever of the rights of 
 man. They had no rhetorical horror of kings, such as 
 appears in some measure among the old Greeks and Romans, 
 and in a form of exaggerated caricature among the French 
 revolutionists. In truth they were subjects of a king ; true 
 they had no king but Caesar, but C?esar was their king,
 
 XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 381 
 
 though they had contrived to cut down his royal powers 
 to a vanishing point. Again, people often fancy that the 
 Swiss of that day were wholly a people of shepherds and 
 mountaineers, like the Swiss of a hundred and fifty years 
 earlier. They expect to find in every part of the Con- 
 federation the supposed simple virtues of the inhabitants 
 of the Forest Cantons. But the refined and skilful states- 
 men and diplomatists of the Bernese aristocracy were men 
 of quite another mould. They lived in the great world of 
 general politics, and they were neither better nor worse 
 than other people who lived in it. Their standard was 
 doubtless always higher than that of the mere slaves of 
 a court, but we have no right to expect from them an 
 impossible career of heroic virtue; it is enough if they 
 reach the contemporary standard of fairly honest men in 
 other countries. 
 
 There are then points in which we cannot unreservedly 
 follow Mr. Kirk, and points in which we think that his way 
 of looking at things is defective. There are also faults of 
 style, which are the more provoking because Mr. Kirk can 
 write thoroughly well whenever he chooses. But we must 
 not be thought to be blind to Mr. Kirk's real and great 
 merits. He is many degrees removed from that class of 
 historians who draw their facts and their inferences alike 
 from their imaginations, who blunder in every detail, and 
 who, when their blunders are pointed out, repeat them in 
 pamphlets or in new editions, as may be convenient. Mr. 
 Kirk belongs to the school of good, honest, hard work. 
 Such faults as he has clearly arise, not from any want of 
 due care in dealing with his immediate subject, but rather 
 from not fully grasping the position of his immediate 
 subject in the general history of the world. On one point 
 especially Mr. Kirk has done really good service ; that is, 
 with regard to the character of his own hero. It is, of 
 course, easy for a man whose studies have gathered round 
 one particular person to rate that person somewhat above
 
 382 CHARLES THE BOLD. [E?say 
 
 his merits, especially if he be one who has commonly been 
 rated below his merits. But it is just as easy to cry out 
 " hero- worship " whenever a man's studies have led him to 
 take a more favourable view of any historical character 
 than has commonly been taken. Mr. Kirk is very far 
 from being an undiscerning panegyrist or apologist of 
 Charles the Bold. But some ingenious hand might doubt- 
 less, by carefully bringing forward this passage and care- 
 fully leaving out the other, give the impression that he is 
 an undiscerning panegyrist. To us he certainly seems 
 somewhat to overrate Charles, but he does not overrate 
 him more than is almost unavoidable in one to whom 
 Charles must have been for many years the main subject 
 of his thoughts. And the overratinor of Charles is un- 
 doubtedly a fault on the right side. The novels of Scott 
 have led people in general to see nothing but an embodi- 
 ment of brute force in a man whose very mixed character 
 is a really instructive study of human nature. It would 
 be an abuse of words to call Charles either a great man or 
 a good man; but there were in his character strong ele- 
 ments both of greatness and goodness. To compare him 
 with a man who soars in all things far above him, we may 
 see in Charles the same inflexible will, the same stern and 
 unbending justice, many of the same personal virtues, 
 which mark the character of William the Great. We may 
 see in him too the same utter indifference to human 
 suffering ; but in both it is simple indifference, and never 
 grows into actual delight in oppression. But no man was 
 ever further than Charles from William's political skill; 
 he had no trace of that marvellous power by which William 
 knew how to make every man his instrument, how to 
 adapt the fitting means to every end, how to mark the 
 right time, the right way, the right place, for the accom- 
 plishment of every scheme. Hence, lacking the guidance 
 of that master intellect, those very qualities which made 
 William well nigh the master of destiny made Charles only 
 the sport of fortune. His later history is conceived in the
 
 XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 383 
 
 very spirit of iEschylean tragedy. And as far as the part 
 of the Messenger is concerned, one can hardly wish for any 
 improvement in Mr. Kirk's acting. It is then the more 
 pity that he should have failed so thoroughly, failed, so 
 to speak, by his own choice, as he has failed in the part 
 of Chorus. 
 
 On the whole then we welcome Mr. Kirk as a worthy 
 accession to the same company as his countrymen Prescott 
 and Motley. The subjects of the three are closely connected. 
 The historian of Philip the Second and the historian of 
 the United Netherlands do, in effect, carry on the story of 
 Charles, his family, and his dominions. Their tale tells 
 how one corner of those dominions rose for a short time 
 to the highest point of European glory, and how the great 
 work of the Middle kingdom, to act as the bulwark of 
 Germany and of Europe against the aggression of the 
 Western kingdom, was thrown on a few of the smallest 
 of the many states whose names served to swell the roll- 
 call of Charles's titles. And when we see other large 
 portions of those states now helping to swell the might of 
 the power which they once held in check, we cannot help 
 wishing, even without throwing ourselves on the other side 
 with all the zeal of Mr. Kirk, that the stout pikes and 
 halberts of Switzerland had never been wielded against one 
 who seemed marked out by destiny as the restorer of the 
 Middle kinsfdom.
 
 384 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 XII. 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Is planning a political constitution — an employment 
 which always has a slightly ludicrous side to it, but 
 which, in many conditions of a nation, is a sad necessity 
 — the makers of the new machine have to consider the 
 necessary partition of powers under a twofold aspect. 
 They have to decide both as to the number of depart- 
 ments among which authority is to be divided, and as 
 to the hands in which authority of each kind is to be 
 vested. Thus, the British Constitution in its legal theory, 
 the Federal Constitutions of America and Switzerland, 
 and the type of constitution common among the American 
 States, all agree in dividing the powers of government 
 between two Legislative Chambers and an executive power 
 distinct from both. The partition of powers, as far as the 
 number of departments goes, is much the same in all these 
 cases ; but the nature of the hands in which power is 
 placed differs widely in the different examples. There is 
 undoubtedly a considerable difference in the amount of 
 power which each of these constitutions gives to its exe- 
 cutive; but the difference in the amount of power is less 
 striking than the difference in the nature of the hands in 
 which that power is vested. England entrusts the exe- 
 cutive authority to an hereditary King ; the United States, 
 and the several States generally, entrust it to an elective 
 President or Governor; the Swiss Confederation entrusts 
 it to an elective Council. America, it is clear, here forms
 
 XIL] FRESIDESTIAL GUVERSMEXT. ^385 
 
 a mean between Switzerland and Eng^land. It agrees with 
 England — that is, with the legal theory of England — in 
 placing the executive power in the hands of a single 
 person, and not in those of a Council ; it agrees with 
 Switzerland in making the depository of executive power 
 elective and responsible instead of hereditary and irre- 
 sponsible. An almost infinite number of cross divisions 
 might be made by comparing any of these constitutions 
 with those which agree with them in some particular 
 points and differ in others. Thus the French constitution 
 of 1 79 1 had an hereditary King, and only a single Chamber ; 
 and the present kingdom of Greece, where the Senate was 
 abolished by the last-made constitution, has followed the 
 same model. These constitutions, so far as their executive 
 is single, approach to the English and American type ; so 
 far as their executive is hereditary, they approach to the 
 English type as distinguished from the American ; but so 
 far as they have only a single Legislative Chamber, they 
 forsake the models of England, America, and federal 
 Switzerland, and approach to the type of constitution 
 common among the Swiss cantons. Almost any number 
 of changes can be rung in this way. We thus see how 
 inadequate any one classification of governments is, if it 
 is sought to apply it to all purposes, and how almost every 
 topic of political disquisition calls for a classification of 
 its own. In the little way that we have gone, we find 
 monarchic and republican constitutions showing marks of 
 likeness or unlikeness to one another, quite independent of 
 their likeness or unlikeness as monarchies and republics. 
 And any questions between aristocracy and democracy 
 have not as yet come in at all. The aristocratic or demo- 
 cratic nature of a constitution depends much more on the 
 constitution of the Legislative Chambers than either on 
 their number or on their relation to the executive. No 
 doubt the purest forms of democracy and of aristocracy, 
 those in which all power is vested in an assembly of the 
 whole people or of the whole privileged class among the 
 
 c c
 
 386 PKESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 people, would be inconsistent with any of the forms of 
 executive which we have spoken of. But any of these 
 forms could co-exist with what is now generally under- 
 stood by aristocracy or democracy, namely, an aristocratic 
 or a democratic way of choosing the Legislative Chambers. 
 Of the many possible cross divisions the one which concerns 
 us for the purpose of the present essay is one which ar- 
 ranges constitutions accordino- to the nature of the hands 
 in which the executive power is vested ; according, for 
 instance, as that power is placed in the hands of a King, 
 a President, or a Council. 
 
 The distinction between an executive President and an 
 executive Council is obvious. Is there, or is there not, 
 some one person to whose sole hands the executive power 
 is committed in such a degree that whatever is done in 
 the executive department is his personal act, while any 
 other persons who may be concerned are merely his agents 
 or advisers 1 The American President is a President of 
 this kind ; every executive act is his act ; many things 
 depend wholly on his personal pleasure ; other acts of his 
 require the confirmation of the Senate ; still the Senate 
 merely confirms, and cannot act of itself ; the act is strictly 
 the act of the President. The President has his ministers ; 
 but they are strictly Jiis ministers, named by him, and 
 dependent on him ; they are his advisers and agents, not 
 his colleagues. The position of the Swiss President of the 
 Confederation [Btindesjyyasidenf), though his title is so 
 similar, is wholly different. He is simply chairman, with 
 the usual powers of a chairman, of the real executive body, 
 the Federal Council [Bumlesrafl/). The other members of 
 that Council are his colleagues, not his mere agents or 
 advisers ; executive acts are the acts of the Council as 
 a body, not of the President personally, and it is of course 
 possible that a majority of the Council may come to a 
 resolution of which the President does not approve. These 
 two systems may be taken as typical examples. Few 
 republican states have invested a single magistrate with
 
 XII.] PRESIDESTIAL GOVERyMEST. 387 
 
 such large powers as the American President, while few 
 commonwealths have given a nominal chief magistrate so 
 small a degree of power as belongs to the Swiss President. 
 In truth, the Swiss President is not a chief magistrate at 
 all ; he is simply chief of a board, which board, in its col- 
 lective character, acts as chief magistrate. It is not the 
 Federal President personally, but the Federal Council as 
 a body, which answers to the Presidents. Consuls, Doges, 
 and Cionfaloniers of other commonwealths. His title in 
 truth is a misleading one ; he is not President of the Con- 
 federation, but simply President of the Federal Council. 
 
 Between these two extreme t}-pes it is easy to imagine 
 several intermediate forms, some coming nearer to the 
 American and some to the Swiss type. Thus the General 
 of the Achaian League, whose position so wonderfully fore- 
 stalled that of the American President, differed from him 
 in his relation to what may be called his Cabinet, the 
 Council of (leiiiioitrrjoi. In most matters the General and 
 his Council seem to have acted together, while others 
 came within the distinct competence of the General alone 
 and of the Council alone. But, even where the General 
 and Council acted together, they acted as two distinct 
 authorities in the state ; the action of the General in such 
 a case was something between that of the American Presi- 
 dent asking the confirmation of the Senate to an executive 
 act and that of the Swiss President taking the chair at 
 a meeting of his colleagues. So again, many of the Ameri- 
 can States have, at different times, assisted or encumbered 
 their chief magistrate with a Council of State. For in- 
 stance, the Pennsylvanian Constitution of 1776 vested 
 executive power in a President and Council, the President 
 being apparently a mere chairman. This is hardly dis- 
 tinguishable from the Swiss Federal model. The Virginian 
 Constitution of the same year gave its Governor a Privy 
 Council, but allowed him a somewhat more independent 
 position. He was bound, in most cases, to act by the 
 advice of the Privy Council, but this is a different thing 
 
 c c a
 
 388 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 from being a mere chairman of that body. The Swiss 
 cantons again commit the executive power to Councils ; 
 there seems to be no canton where the chief magistrate 
 holds the independent position of an American Federal 
 President or an American State Governor. But here too 
 intermediate shades may be seen ; in many of the cantons 
 the chief magistrate, like the Federal President, is a mere 
 chairman of the Council, but in others he holds a decidedly 
 higher relative position. His official title, for instance, 
 often forms part of the style of the canton ; in the purely 
 democratic Cantons, the Landammann has the great ad- 
 vantage of presiding both in the executive Council and 
 in the Lamltsgemeinde or Assembly of the People ; in Inner- 
 Appenzell he even has large constitutional powers to be 
 exercised personally. In fact, in these cases where the 
 executive power belongs to a President and Council, it is 
 easy to conceive every possible shade between the two 
 types. There is manifestly a w^ide difference between 
 merely presiding in a Council, with a casting-vote in case 
 of necessity, and having to act by the advice of a Council. 
 If, in the latter case, the President retains the sole initi- 
 ative, his position will come very nearly to that of the 
 President of the United States with regard to the Senate. 
 
 Another type of executive, which may in some sort be 
 called intermediate between the Council and the inde- 
 pendent President, may be found in such a magistracy 
 as that of the Eoman Consuls. Here are two chief magis- 
 trates of equal power, whose number at once distinguishes 
 them alike from the Council and from the single President. 
 The Achaian League too, in its earlier da3's, placed two 
 Generals at the head of the state. The lirst impression 
 of a modern reader is that such a government must have 
 come to a perpetual dead-luck. Yet it is certain from 
 the Roman history that such was not the ordinary con- 
 dition of the Roman commonwealth. Interruptions to the 
 regular march of government arose much more commonly 
 from the clashing of the consular and tribunitian power
 
 XIL] PRESIDESTIAL GOVERXMEXT. 389 
 
 than from dissensions between the Consuls themselves. 
 But in truth, though the Consuls were the chief magistrates 
 of the commonwealth, it cannot be said that the executive 
 power was vested in them in the same sense in which it is 
 vested in the President of the United States The govern- 
 ment of Rome, in the modern sense of the word government, 
 was certainly vested in the Senate. The other magistrates 
 also, though inferior in rank* to the Consuls, were still 
 strictly co-ordinate with them, and were in no sense their 
 agents or delegates. We know so little of the Achaian 
 League during the days of the double generalship that we 
 cannot say from direct evidence how it worked. But the 
 fact that a single General was, after a few years, substi- 
 tuted for two, seems to show that it worked badly. 
 
 As a President is, on the one hand, clearly distinguished 
 from a Council, so he is, on the other hand, no less clearly 
 distinguished from a King. This distinction seems almost 
 more obvious than the former one ; yet intermediate forms 
 may be seen here also, and to define a King may not be 
 quite so easy as it seems at first sight. What, for instance, 
 was the King of Poland or the Doge of Venice'? What 
 were the two Kings of Sparta ? The Spartan case may be 
 easily set aside. Sparta was not a case either of regal or 
 of presidential government. The Kings were so far from 
 being Kings in the ordinary sense that they were not even 
 chief magistrates. The real executive was a Council, the 
 College of Ephors. The Kings were hereditary generals 
 and hereditary priests ; they were reverenced on account 
 of their divine ancestry, and were placed in a position 
 where an able king might attain to a commanding in- 
 fluence in the state ; but their constitutional powers were 
 of the very narrowest kind. The mere title of King proves 
 nothing ; it was kept on in other Greek commonwealths 
 
 * That is the regular permanent magistracies, all of which were inferior 
 to the consulship. The dictatorship was only an occasional office, and, 
 though Censors were appointed at regular intervals, their office was not a 
 permanent one.
 
 390 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 besides Sparta ; it was even the style of one of the annual 
 Arehons under the democracy of Athens. The two modern 
 cases are more difficult. Venice and Poland, though both 
 had princes, both bore the name of republics, and Venice 
 is universally classed among republican states. Poland 
 is less usually recognized as a republic. This is probably 
 because there is felt to be a contradiction in the notion of 
 a republic under a King, which is not felt in the notion 
 of a republic under a Doge. People do not fully grasp 
 that l)oge is simply the local form of Dnke, nor do they 
 fully grasp that other Italian dukes were, in all save a 
 barren precedence, the equals of kings. But the King of 
 Poland and the Duke of Venice were in the beginning as 
 truly sovereign as other kings and other dukes ; * only 
 their powers had been gradually cut down to a point 
 which seemed almost to remove them out of the class of 
 princes into that of mere magistrates. But, as having 
 once been really sovereigns, they still kept much of that 
 personal position which distinguishes the prince from the 
 magistrate. The King of Poland especially, though he 
 might not be of royal birth, though he was not in the 
 possession of ordinary royal powers, was still, in personal 
 rank and privilege, looked on as the peer of other kings. 
 The constitutional authority of both princes was far less 
 than that of the American President, but, being elected 
 for life, they enjoyed, like the Spartan Kings, far greater 
 opportunities of obtaining a permanent influence in the 
 state. Other instances might be found elsewhere, as the 
 hereditary Stadholder in the United Provinces, the Lord 
 Protector in England, the First Consul in France. But it 
 may be observed that this ambiguous kind of government 
 has seldom been lasting. Venice and Poland have been the 
 only countries where it could really be called permanent. 
 
 * [When I wrote this, I could hardly have taken in that the Venetian Duke 
 began as a magistrate under the Emperor reigning at Constantinoi)le. But the 
 saying is perhaps not far fmm the trutli as regards liis position towards the 
 Venetian state. iSS6.]
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT, 391 
 
 In France and England — we might perhaps add Holland — 
 it has either fallen to pieces or grown into undisguised 
 monarchy. 
 
 Setting aside these intermediate cases, and forbearing 
 also to speculate as to the exact nature of kingsliip, we may- 
 say that the main difference between a King and a Presi- 
 dent is that the President is distinctly responsible to the 
 laAV, that he may be judged and deposed by a legal process, 
 and that there is nothing about him of that mysterious 
 personal dignity which, in the minds of most people, still 
 hangs about a King. Whether the powers of a President 
 are great or small, he is simply a magistrate, who is to be 
 obeyed within the range of his powers, but who is liable to 
 legal punishment if he outsteps them. This would seem to 
 be the most essential difference between a President and a 
 King. A King, however limited his powers may be, is, in 
 all modern constitutions, personally ii-responsible. His 
 command is no justification of any illegal act done by 
 another, but no constitutional monarchy seems to supply 
 any regular means of punishing an illegal act done by the 
 King's own hands. If the King be deposed or set aside in 
 any way, it is clearly by some unusual — not necessarily 
 unjustifiable — stretch of authority on the part of some other 
 power in the state ; there is no court before which the King 
 can be arraigned in ordinary process of law. But the 
 President holds office only during good behaviour, and he 
 may be deposed by sentence of a competent court. This 
 responsibility of the President and irresponsibility of the 
 Kins: seems to be the main difference between them. It 
 seems indeed essential that the President should be elective, 
 but this is no necessary point of difference between the 
 President and the King. An elective King is none the less 
 a King, but an hereditary President would have made 
 a most important advance towards exchanging president- 
 ship for royalty. So, though it is essential to kingship that 
 the oflice should be held for life, this again is no necessary 
 distinction between a King and a President. A republican
 
 392 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 President may be elected for life, as the Florentine Gon- 
 falonier was in the latter days of that republic, and as the 
 President of the United States would have been according 
 to the first scheme of Alexander Hamilton. The one real 
 distinction lies in the President's responsibility. The 
 divinity which hedges in a King, and which does not 
 hedge in a President, is something which is of no small 
 practical importance, but it is hardly capable of political 
 definition. This special feeling about a King seems mainly 
 to arise from that vague religious character with which 
 most nations have loved to invest their princes. In most 
 heathen nations a supposed divine descent is held to be 
 essential to the royal office ; most Christian nations have 
 supplied an analogous kind of sanctity in the form of an 
 ecclesiastical consecration of the monarch. But even this is 
 not an essential distinction. Some modern kings dispense 
 with any ecclesiastical ceremony; and though no religious 
 character attaches to any modern republican ruler, such 
 has not been the case in all commonwealths. The official 
 sanctity of the Roman Kings clave in no small measure to 
 the republican magistrates among whom their powers were 
 divided ; and there is, to say the least, no contradiction in 
 terms in conceiving an ecclesiastical inauguration of a 
 responsible President as well as of an ii-responsible King. 
 
 We have thus reached our definition of a President. He 
 is a single, elective, responsible, magistrate to whom the 
 chief executive power in a commonwealth is entrusted. 
 His responsibility distinguishes him from a King ; his 
 numerical unity distinguishes him from an executive Coun- 
 cil. His elective character he shares with the Council ; he 
 may share it with the King. Whether he is elected for life 
 or for a term is a point of detail in the particular constitu- 
 tion under which he acts. It may be here remarked that 
 the examples of the several classes which have been chosen 
 have been taken indiscriminately from single common- 
 wealths and from Federations. For in a perfect Federal 
 government, one where the Federal and the State power
 
 XII.] PRESlDEyTIAL GOVERXMEyT. 393 
 
 are strictly co-ordinate, where the Federal power has direct 
 authority, within its own range, over every citizen, the 
 powers, executive, legislative, and judicial, to be distributed 
 among the Federal authorities will be precisely the same as 
 in a consolidated state. The form of government may be 
 exactly the same in a great confederation as in a single 
 small canton. The peculiar position of a Federal Govern- 
 ment, its special duties, relations, and dangers, may suggest 
 one form of legislature or of executive as preferable to 
 another, just as any other circumstances of the common- 
 wealth may do so. But there is nothing in the Federal 
 character of any particular state which directly affects the 
 distribution of the powers of government, or which hinders 
 its constitution from being fairly compared with other con- 
 stitutions which are not Federal. The President of the 
 Union and the Governor of the State are powers exactly 
 analogous within their several spheres ; that they both form 
 part of one greater political system in no way affects their 
 position as the heads of two distinct and parallel political 
 constitutions. 
 
 We have compared our President with a King and with 
 a Council, and we have distinguished him from both. But 
 it will at once be felt that the comparison between the 
 President and the constitutional King is not a very practical 
 one. In most limited or constitutional monarchies the 
 person really to be compared with the President is not the 
 King, the legal and apparent head of the state, but another 
 person of whose position as practical head of the state the 
 law in most cases knows nothing. That is to say, it is not 
 the King, but his First Minister, who fills the position 
 which is really analogous to that of the President of a 
 republic. At the same time it may be as well to remark 
 that this is by no means necessarily the case in all consti- 
 tutional monarchies. It is curious to see how people always 
 assume that "constitutional monarchy" must mean that 
 particular form of it where the royal power is practically 
 vested in the King's ministers. In like manner it is
 
 391 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Esfay 
 
 commonly assumed that "parliamentary government" must 
 mean that particular form of it where Parliament is assisted, 
 guided, or controlled by the same body, a body it may be, 
 as in our own country, wholly unknown to the law. That 
 is to say, by " constitutional monarchy" and " parliamentary 
 government" people understand exclusively that form of 
 government by which all the powers of the King and a 
 large portion of the powers of the Parliament are practically 
 transferred to the body known as a Cabinet or Ministry. 
 This mode of speech puts out of sight those states where the 
 powers of the King are distinctly limited by law, but where, 
 within the limits of his legal powers, he acts according to 
 his personal will. Such is the case with the constitutions 
 both of Sweden and of Norway. Both are constitutional 
 monarchies, both are parliamentary governments ; but the 
 device of a Cabinet to guide both King and Parliament till 
 Parliament prefers the guidance of some other Cabinet is 
 unknown to them. The Noi*wegian constitution is probably 
 the most democratic form of government that ever included 
 an hereditary king as one of its elements. The royal 
 authority is more narrowly limited than in any other king- 
 dom ; yet the personal will of a King of Norway counts for 
 more than the personal will of a King of England. That is 
 to say, small as is the degree of authority which the law 
 gives him, he is free to exercise it according to his personal 
 discretion. The constitution binds him to consult his State 
 Council, but it distinctly affirms that the final decision of 
 all matters within the range of his authority rests with 
 himself. He is personally u-responsible ; all responsibility 
 rests with his Councillors, but any Councillor who dissents 
 from the royal decision may escape all responsibility by 
 a formal protest against it. Here is a limited monarchy, 
 a constitutional monarchy, but a monarchy in which there 
 is no approach to a Ministry in our sense of the word. 
 King and Parliament have their distinct functions traced 
 out by law; but in case of differences between them, they 
 are brought face to face as opposing powers, in a way
 
 XIL] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 395 
 
 in which an Enghsh King and an English Parliament have 
 not been brought face to face for some generations. Here 
 then is a king who clearly may be personally compared 
 with a republican President. He is personally irrespon- 
 sible ; he succeeds by hereditary right and not by election ; 
 but his actual functions are as nearly as possible the same 
 as those of a President, and they are quite different from 
 those of an English King. In England it is not the King, 
 but his chief Minister, with whom the President should 
 really be compared. 
 
 The theory of cabinet government, of what is commonly 
 called constitutional or parliamentary government, is that 
 the legal functions of the King and a large portion of the 
 legal functions of Parliament are transferred to a body of 
 ministers. These ministers are appointed by the King, but 
 as they must be appointed out of the party which has the 
 upper hand in the House of Commons, they may be said to 
 be indirectly chosen by the House of Commons itself. They 
 exercise the executive functions of the Crown, and they 
 possess a practical initiative in all important points of legis- 
 lation. If their policy is censured, or even if any important 
 ministerial proposal is rejected, they resign office. They 
 may indeed escape for a season by dissolving Parliament, 
 but if the new House of Commons confirms the adverse 
 vote of its predecessor, there is no hope for them left. At 
 the head of this body stands one minister, the chief of the 
 Cabinet, the leader of one or other House of Parliament, 
 who is really the person to be compared with the President 
 under the other system. Now all this is purely conven- 
 tional ; the law knows nothing of the Ministry as a 
 Ministry ; it knows the several ministers as personal holders 
 of certain offices ; it knows them as Privy Councillors and 
 as members of one or other House of Parliament ; in all 
 these characters, if they come within the reach of the law, 
 the law can deal with them. A Minister who acts illegally 
 in his office, a Privy Councillor who gives the sovereign 
 illegal advice, can be touched by impeachment or other-
 
 396 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 wise ; his parliamentary conduct, like that of any other 
 member, is cognizable by that Honse of Parliament to 
 which he belongs. All this is matter of law ; but the doc- 
 trine of ministerial responsibility, the duty of a Ministry to 
 resign if the House of Commons disapprove of its policy, 
 the duty of the whole Ministry to stand together in Parlia- 
 ment, the consequent duty of a dissentient minister to 
 compromise or conceal his differences with his colleagues or 
 else to resign his office — all these doctrines, familiar as we 
 are with them, are mere customs Avhich have gradually, and 
 some of them very recently, grown up, and of which the 
 law of England knows nothing. The power of the Cabinet 
 has gradually increased during the last hundred years. The 
 names by which the persons actually in power have been 
 called at different times bear witness to their rapid increase 
 in importance. In George the Third's reign people spoke of 
 "Administration;" at the time of the Reform Bill it was 
 "Ministers," or "the Ministry;" it is only quite lately that 
 the word " Government," which once meant Kings, Lords, 
 and Commons, has come to be applied to this extra-legal 
 body. Yet we now habitually speak of "the Government," 
 of " Lord Palmerston s Government," of " Lord Derby's 
 Government," meaning thereby a certain knot of Privy 
 Councillors, of whom it would be impossible to give any 
 legal definition. The expression is so common that people 
 use it without in the least thinking how very modern it is, 
 and how singular is the state of things which it implies. 
 As Lord Macaulay says, the Cabinet seems to have been 
 unknown to writers like De Lolme and Blackstone, who 
 never mentioned it among the powers of the state. It is 
 more important to remark that the existence of the British 
 Cabinet seems to have attracted no attention among the 
 disputants for and against the American Constitution. The 
 opponents of the Constitution objected to the position and 
 powers of the President as being too near an approach to 
 kingship. Hamilton answered them by showing how much 
 greater were the restrictions placed upon the power of the
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERXMEXT. 397 
 
 President than those which were placed upon the power of 
 the King. But neither party seems to have paid any atten- 
 tion to the fact that the President can exercise his smaller 
 powers far more freely than the King can exercise his 
 greater powers. They speak as if the King of Great Britain 
 could act as independently within his own range as the 
 King of Sweden and Norway. The}^ recognize the re- 
 strictions imposed by the written law, but they pay no 
 attention to the further restrictions which were even then 
 imposed by the conventional " constitution." This shows 
 how widely the Cabinet system has developed since Hamil- 
 ton's time, and how complete is the recognition which, 
 without receiving any more legal sanction than before, it 
 has obtained in general opinion and in popular modes of 
 speech. No one now could fail to see the fallacy of com- 
 paring a President who acts for himself, or by the advice of 
 ministers chosen by himself personally and dependent on 
 him only, with a King who acts at ever}^ step by the advice 
 of ministers who may have been forced upon him in the 
 first instance, and whom he may, at any moment, be called 
 on to dismiss. Every one now would see that the real 
 comparison, for likeness and unlikeness, lies between the two 
 practical leaders of the state under the two systems, though 
 the chiefship of the one is a matter of positive legal enact- 
 ment, while the chiefship of the other is a matter of 
 unwritten constitutional tradition. 
 
 The main distinction between the President of a republic 
 and the First Minister of a constitutional kingdom seems 
 to be this. The President is elected for a definite time, 
 and, except in the case of some definite crime being judi- 
 cially proved against him, he cannot be constitutionally 
 got rid of before the end of that time. Be his rule never 
 so bad, still, if he does not break the letter of the law, 
 he must be endured till the end of his year or of his four 
 years ; be his rule never so good, the country must part 
 with him at the end of his term, or at any rate his further 
 existence in oflice must be put to the risk of a fresh
 
 398 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 election. But the First Minister, holding a purely con- 
 ventional office, holds it for no fixed term ; if his policy 
 be disapproved, a vote of the House of Commons can 
 get rid of him at any moment : if he continues to give 
 satisfaction, he may, without any formal vote about it, 
 be continued in office for the rest of his days. This seems 
 to be the one essential difference between a President and 
 a First Minister ; any other differences are not inherent 
 in the nature of the two offices, but depend on the cir- 
 cumstances of particular countries and on the provisions 
 of particular constitutions. It follows that there is an 
 important difference between the position of an English 
 Minister and that of an American President with regard 
 to the national Legislature. The English Minister and 
 all his colleagues in the Cabinet are necessarily members 
 of one or other House of Parliament ; they take the lead 
 in its debates, and have the chief management of its 
 business ; it is in the House, as members of the House, 
 and not as an external power, that they explain their 
 policy and defend it against objectors. In America, on 
 the other hand, neither the President nor his ministers 
 can be members of either House of Congress. The Presi- 
 dent indeed, under a representative constitution, can hardly 
 be conceived as being a member of either branch of the 
 legislature. He can communicate with Congress only by 
 formal messages and speeches like a king ; he cannot take 
 his place as a member and join in a debate.'^ But the 
 exclusion of the President's ministers is a mere point of 
 detail in the American Constitution, which mio-ht quite 
 well have been otherwise ordered. There is not indeed 
 the same necessity for the President's ministers to be 
 
 * [Tlie existing state of things ill France (.Tanuary, 1872) — one can hardly 
 dignify it hy the name of constitution — does give us a President who is also a 
 memlier of the Assendjly. 
 
 I ought perhaps to have mentioned, though it does not strictly bear on 
 the position of Presidents, that the members of the Swiss Federal Council 
 mjty attend and 8])eak in either House of the Federal Assembly, but witli- 
 out the right of voting.]
 
 XII.] PRESIDESTIAL GOVERNMENT. 399 
 
 members of the legislature as there is in a constitutional 
 monarchy ; but there seems no inherent cliiBculty in their 
 being so if it should so happen. Accordingly the Consti- 
 tution of the Confederate States has somewhat relaxed 
 the restriction."^ By that constitution no office-holder can 
 be a member of Congress, but Congress is empowered to 
 gi'ant by law to certain great officers a seat in either 
 House, with the right of discussing measures affecting 
 his own department. And in one class of republics it 
 is clear that neither the President nor any officer of the 
 state can be excluded from the legislative body. In a 
 pure democracy, transacting its affairs in a primary as- 
 sembly, the magistrates, as citizens of the commonwealth, 
 can be no more shut out of the assembly than any other 
 citizens. Thus in the purely democratic Cantons of Switzer- 
 land, the chief magistrate, the Landammann, is President 
 alike of the executive council and of the Landcsgeineinde 
 or general assembly of all citizens of full age. So in the 
 Achaian League, the General, being an Achaian citizen, 
 was necessarily a member of the Federal Assembly, and, 
 being a member of the Assembly and moreover not being 
 its President, he naturally took a place in it exactly 
 answering to that of our Leader of the House. In fact, 
 the constitution of the Achaian Assembly, as a primary 
 assembly, allowed the Achaian General to hold a position 
 much more nearly answering to that of an English First 
 Minister than the representative constitution of the Amer- 
 ican Congress allows to the American President. A Roman 
 Consul again, as being a Roman citizen, was necessarily a 
 member of the Roman popular Assembly, which he could 
 convoke and preside in at pleasure. And this same rule 
 equally applies to aristocratic commonwealths possessing 
 a primary assembly, one, that is, in which every member 
 
 * [I leave the references to American affairs as I wrote them in October, 
 1864. The Confederate constitution is just as well worth studying as a 
 piece of constitution-making as if the Southern Confeileration had lasted.] 
 [1871.]
 
 400 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 of the privileged order has a seat by right of birth without 
 any election. Thus the Duke of Venice could not be shut 
 out from the Great Council nor the Spartan Kings from 
 the Assembly of the Spartan citizens. It follows therefore 
 that this peculiarity of the American Constitution, by 
 which all executive officers are excluded from the legis- 
 lature, is by no means inherent in the nature of Presi- 
 dential Government. Still less is the mode of election, 
 or any other detail of the American Constitution. The 
 one real and essential difference between a President and 
 a First Minister is that given already, that a President 
 holds a legal position for a definite time, a First Minister 
 holds a conventional position for such a time as the legis- 
 lature, or one branch of it, may tacitly think fit. 
 
 And now for a few words as to the practical working 
 of Presidential Government, especially in its American 
 form, as compared with the working of constitutional 
 monarchy as it is understood among ourselves. In making 
 this comparison we must take care to confine it to the 
 points which really enter into the comparison ; for there 
 are many points of difference between the British and 
 American Constitutions which arise wholly from other 
 causes, and which have nothing to do with the diftereuce 
 in the form of the executive. Thus both Houses of Con- 
 gress are elective, while one House of our Parliament is 
 hereditary."^ But in other constitutional monarchies the 
 body answering to our House of Lords is often elective 
 or nominated, and an hereditary chamber in a republic, 
 though not at all -likely, is perfectly possible. So again, 
 the peculiar constitution of the American Senate arises 
 from the fact that the American constitution is a Federal 
 constitution, but it has nothing to do with the special 
 form of the American executive. The same constitution of 
 the Senate is, as we see in Switzerland, equally consistent 
 
 * [Mainly hereditary, I should have said. We are apt to forget the exist- 
 ence of one class of the immemorial official Witan, alongside of the greater 
 number of the comparatively modern hereditary class. i886.]
 
 XTL] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 401 
 
 with an executive Council ; it would be equally consistent 
 with a Federal monarchy, a form of government as yet 
 untried^ but perfectly possible in idea."^ But some of 
 the special functions of the Senate, the necessity of its 
 confirmation to certain acts of the President, are, in the 
 nature of the case, derived from the fact that there is a 
 President, and could hardly exist in a state governed by 
 a First Minister. f Again, the fact that the constitution 
 of the American House of Kepresentatives is much more 
 democratic than that of the English House of Commons J 
 has nothing whatever to do with the form of the American 
 Executive. A House of Commons chosen by universal 
 suffrage is perfectly consistent with hereditary kingship, 
 and a House chosen by as narrow a body of electors as 
 may be thought good is perfectly consistent with Presi- 
 dential Government. In fact, it is a mistake to look 
 upon the American constitution as one inherently demo- 
 cratic. The American Federal Constitution is in itself 
 neither aristocratic nor democratic, but it is capable of 
 being either, or any mixture of the two, according to the 
 nature of the State constitutions. § None of these points 
 
 * [It has at last arisen in the German Imperial Constitution of 1871.] 
 ■\ One can conceive the acts of an hereditary king, needing the confirmation 
 of one branch of his legislature, just like the acts of the American President. 
 Such an arrangement would be quite possible in a monarchy where the King, 
 as in Sweden and Norway, acts for himself within the legal limits of his 
 authority ; but it can hardly be conceived as existing, or at least as being 
 practically efficient, in a monarchy where the King is in the hands of a 
 ministry. 
 
 X [1864.] 
 
 § Speaking roughly, we may say that both the House of Representatives 
 and the electors of the President — that is, practically, the President himself — 
 are now chosen by universal suS'rage ; but the Constitution in no way orders 
 such a mode of election ; it is consistent with it, but it is equally consistent 
 with modes of election highly aristocratic. The House of Representatives is 
 to be chosen by those persons who have votes for the most numerous branch of 
 the Legislature of their own State, a provision perfectly consistent with an 
 aristocratic, or even with an oligarchic, constitution of the State Government ; 
 and it is well known that, though no State could ever be strictly called aristo- 
 cratic, yet most of the States at first required a higher or lower property quali- 
 fication in the electors. Again, the electors of the President in each State are 
 
 Dd
 
 402 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMEyT. [Essay 
 
 have any immediate connexion with the fact that the 
 head of the American commonwealth is neither a King 
 nor a Council, but a President. They may influence the 
 practical working of the executive, but they have nothing 
 to do with determining its form. We have now to look 
 only at those differences which arise immediately from 
 the special form of the American executive, again distin- 
 guishing those which are inherent in Presidential Govern- 
 ment as such from those which arise from special provisions 
 in the American Constitution. 
 
 The main differences between the two systems, the main 
 weaknesses, as Englishmen are apt to think them, of the 
 American system, are obvious enough, and they have been 
 set forth by many writers. But most English writers, 
 writing, as they commonly do, with some immediate party 
 aim, have not taken the needful pains to distinguish what 
 is essential in either system from what is incidental ; and 
 they have too often used the whole controversy merely 
 as a means of pointing declamations against federalism 
 or democracy or republican government in general. The 
 first difference which immediately flows from the nature 
 of Presidential Government, as distinguished from Cabinet 
 Government, has been already stated. It is this, that the 
 President's ofiice comes to an end at a fixed time, till 
 which time he cannot, save in very exceptional cases, be 
 removed, while the First Minister may be got rid of at 
 once or may be continued indefinitely. What we call 
 " a ministerial crisis " is, under the Presidential system, 
 necessarily brought on at some time fixed beforehand. 
 In England such a "crisis" occurs whenever the ministry 
 is not in harmony with a majority of the House of Com- 
 mons, and it can hardly happen at any other time. When 
 it does happen, the Minister either resigns or dissolves. 
 The Ministry and the House are thus brought into har- 
 
 appointed as the Legi.'lature of each State may determine, which of course is 
 not necessarily by a popular vote. The Legislature of South Carolina always 
 kept the nomination of the electors in its own hands.
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERyMEyT. 403 
 
 inony, either by the formation of a new Ministry in 
 harmony with the House or by the election of a new 
 House in harmony with the Ministry. But in America, 
 if the President and the Congress do not agree, neither 
 party has any means of getting rid of the other. The 
 President cannot dissolve Congress, and he is in no way 
 called on to resign his own office. Thus it is quite pos- 
 sible that the executive and legislative branches may be 
 in state of discord for four years.'^ On the other hand, 
 a President of whom Congress thoroughly approves, and 
 of whom the country thoroughly approves, may come to 
 the end of his term of office when nothing calls for any 
 change of men or of measures, and^ though he may be re- 
 elected, yet his continuance in office is at least jeoparded, 
 and the country is obliged to go through the excitement 
 and turmoil of a presidential election. This disadvantage 
 seems inherent in any sort of Presidential Government. 
 The Confederate constitution gives the President six years 
 instead of four, and makes him ineligible for re-election. 
 The difficulty is in no way avoided by this change. It 
 indeed enables a good President to be kept in office for 
 a longer time, but it also requires a bad President to be 
 endured for a longer time. By forbidding re-election, 
 it escapes certain evils which have been produced by the 
 possibility of re-election, but it does so only at the risk 
 of introducing at least an equal evil. It is possible, and 
 indeed probable, that the Confederate provision may de- 
 prive the commonwealth of the services of its best citizen 
 just when they are most wanted. In truth the evil is 
 one inherent in the form of government ; it may, by 
 judicious provisions, be made less baneful, but it cannot 
 be got rid of altogether. It is the weak point of Presi- 
 dential Government, a weak point to be fairly balanced 
 against its strong points and against the weak points of 
 other systems. 
 
 * [It will be remembered that this actually happened in the presidency which 
 followed that in which I \vrote. 1886.] 
 
 D d 2
 
 404 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 This weak point however would not have been so obvious, 
 nor would it have needed to be so much dwelled upon as 
 it has been, if it had not been aggravated rather than 
 diminished by certain provisions in the American Consti- 
 tution. If the President were elected by Congress, or 
 by some body chosen by or out of Congress, if his ministers 
 were allowed to be members of Congress or to appear and 
 speak in Congress, the evils of the system would be greatly 
 diminished, while the essential principles of Presidential 
 Government would remain untouched. The system of 
 election actually employed, one which most certainly was 
 not contemplated by the founders of the Union, carries the 
 evils of a great party struggle to their extreme point. The 
 founders of the Union doubtless hoped that the election of 
 electors would be a reality, that the primary electors would 
 choose those men to whom they could best confide so great 
 a trust, and that the electors thus chosen would elect inde- 
 pendently and fearlessly. There was nothing absurd in 
 such an expectation on the face of it. In some states of 
 society the election of electors seems a perfectly reasonable 
 system. It is the system adopted in the election of the 
 legislature under the highly democratic constitution of 
 Norway. But in Norway there are no political parties 
 answering to those of England or America. In such a 
 country the matters brought before the Storthing must be 
 mainly of two kinds. There may be questions touching 
 the national independence, about which there is only one 
 opinion in the country ; there may be questions of practical 
 improvement, not implying political differences, but requir- 
 ing practical knowledge or acuteness for their decision. A 
 Parliament which has to discharge such functions as these, 
 to decide questions where the only difference is as to means 
 and not as to ends, will most likely be better chosen by an 
 intermediate body of electors. But such an intermediate 
 body becomes a farce in any country where there are 
 strongly marked political parties. Whether it be a Parlia- 
 ment or a President which has to be elected, the only
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 405 
 
 question asked of the primary candidate will be, " For whom 
 will you vote ? " It is clear that, when it comes to this, the 
 popular vote had much better be given directly. The in- 
 termediate electors exercise no real choice ; their interposi- 
 tion does but serve to prolong the crisis of the election and 
 the time of unsettlement and no-government which it in- 
 volves. The presidential election, as it is now conducted, 
 is simply a party struggle on the most gigantic scale. The 
 founders of the constitution doubtless hoped that the local 
 question in each State or district would lie, not between 
 this or that candidate for the presidency, but between this 
 or that candidate for the electorship of the President. 
 But experience has shown this to be hopeless when the 
 elector is simply chosen to elect, and has no other duties. 
 As it is, the election of the President is a trial of strength 
 between national parties, intensified because the same 
 personal question, the same choice between two or three 
 candidates, is presented to a whole nation. It is a national 
 election by universal suffrage, in which, after all, the can- 
 didate elected may not have a numerical majority"^ of the 
 nation. This last possibility, whether it be reckoned as a 
 gain or a loss, is the only way in which the existence of 
 an intermediate body has any practical effect on the result 
 of the election. 
 
 The gradual falling off which has been often remarked in 
 the character of the American Presidents, so far as it is a 
 fact, is the natural result of the practical mode of election. 
 When each party selects its candidate in large conventions, 
 it is not likely that the best man of the party will be 
 chosen. An inferior man, who is less known, and who 
 therefore has fewer enemies, is found to be a safer card. 
 This is a great evil in itself, and it further tends to prevent 
 reaUy superior men from meddling with public affairs at 
 
 * If the majority of the presidential electors are chosen by small majori- 
 ties in their several States, while the minority are chosen by large majorities, 
 it may well happen that the person who is chosen President may not have 
 a numerical majority of the popular vote. [It has happened since this was 
 written. 1886.]
 
 406 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 all. Eut, after all, the fact must be taken with some 
 modifications, and other causes have contributed to the 
 result besides the mode of election. Great events bring 
 great men to the surface ; in quieter times the average is 
 lower, and there is less obvious need for choosing the 
 greatest even of those who are to be had. The history of 
 Rome shows this very plainly. In ordinary times the 
 people chose ordinary Consuls, who very often broke down 
 if any event occurred which required special ability. In 
 most of the later Roman wars, the early campaigns are 
 unsuccessful ; an average Consul was sent to discharge 
 duties which needed powers above the average ; defeat was 
 therefore the result, till the right man, Scipio or Flamininus 
 or iS^milius Paullus, was sent to retrieve the errors of his 
 predecessors. So, in America, the republic started under 
 the guidance of one of the very lirst of men, a man to 
 whom but a few parallels are supphed by the whole 
 history of the world. To expect a succession of Washing- 
 tons would have been chimerical on the face of it. But it 
 would have been hardly less unreasonable to look for a 
 perpetual supply of Presidents of the stamp of Washing- 
 ton's successors from the elder Adams to the younger. 
 That remarkable succession of able men of different parties 
 was the natural fruit of a great struggle like the War of 
 Independence. In another generation it was not to be ex- 
 pected either that men of equal power should appear in 
 equal abundance, or that they would be equally sure of 
 rising to the highest places if they did appear. The mode 
 of election into which that designed by Washington and 
 Hamilton gradually changed did but aggravate this natural 
 tendency, and made that a certain evil which was other- 
 wise only a probable danger. Yet it needs a good deal of 
 prejudice to refuse to see in late elections the beginnings 
 of better things. Mr. Buchanan, whatever were his actual 
 shortcomings, started from a previous career of much 
 greater promise than most of his recent predecessors. Few 
 Englishmen will be found to approve of all the doings of
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 407 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, still it is ridiculous to speak of him as the 
 mere drivelling idiot which it suits party prejudice to 
 call him."^ And Mr. Lincoln, it should be remembered, was 
 chosen before the crisis, as a mere average President in 
 ordinary times. The choice of General M'Clellan as his 
 opponent was a distinct return to the older and better 
 system. That the South, choosing after the crisis had 
 begun, and with infinitely more at stake than the North, 
 put its best men at its head, is universally allowed. But 
 the constitutional mode of election in the two confederations 
 was exactly the same. He therefore who admires the result 
 of the system in the one case has no right to decry it as 
 irretrievably corrupt in the other. 
 
 After' all, it may be fairly asked whether the average of 
 the American Presidents is not pretty much on a level with 
 the average of Ministers in the constitutional states of 
 Europe. We must look at their acts, not at their words ; 
 we must allow for the natural self-assertion of a people at 
 once young and powerful ; we must remember that America 
 has not, like the nations of Europe, the advantage of the 
 discipline provided by constant friendly or hostile inter- 
 course with surrounding neighbours on equal terms. 
 Looking fairly at the case, we must say that really great 
 men are the exception, both in Europe and in America. 
 And there is no more security in the one case than in the 
 other that the greatest man who can be had shall be put at 
 the head of affairs. Li any country it is hard to say how 
 much credit is due to the form of government, how much 
 to the personal character of rulers, how much to causes 
 over which Kings, Parliaments, and Presidents have no 
 control. But the American system has at least not been 
 inconsistent with a high degree of peace, freedom, and 
 prosperity. Most people indeed look only at the present 
 
 * [The time when this was written, when Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for 
 his second presidency, will be remembered.] [1871.] 
 
 [Later elections, specially the last of all, have gone a good way to set 
 aside much that is here said. 1886.]
 
 408 PRESIDENTIAL G0VERN3IENT. [Essay 
 
 moment, and think that whatever goes on before their own 
 e3"cs must needs be greater, for good or for evil, than any- 
 thing that ever happened before. Such people cry out at 
 the present American war as something horrible beyond all 
 comparison in past history. This feeling is generally 
 mingled with unreasonable abuse of the form of govern- 
 ment which is common to both the contending parties. 
 The fact that so large a mass of mankind never before 
 remained for so long a time in the enjoyment of so large a 
 portion at once of peace^ and of freedom, as the American 
 people enjoyed in the interval between the War of Indepen- 
 dence and the War of Secession, is altogether forgotten. No 
 one will say that this great blessing has been the personal 
 work of the successive Presidents. But at least neither 
 their personal character, nor the system of government 
 under which they were appointed, has proved any hindrance 
 to national prosperity. Few nations, whether monarchies 
 or republics, can say more of so long a succession of 
 rulers. 
 
 At the same time it is clear that the mode of presi- 
 dential election which is now in use in the United States 
 is essentially vicious. A system which was meant to be a 
 check upon party spirit has become its most effectual in- 
 strument. It may be hoped that some means may be 
 found for remedying this evil even in the American Union 
 itself ; at all events, the warning should not be lost on any 
 future States which may adopt the Presidential system. 
 For surely the Presidential system, with all its faults, is 
 far better, far more honest, far more stable, than those 
 mockeries of ministerial or " responsible " government 
 which are to be seen in our .still unemancipated colonies. 
 Our peculiar system, complicated and conventional as it 
 is, works well in England because it is the natural and 
 gradual growth of the circumstances of England. It is a 
 
 * Madison's war with England and the later Mexican war — neither of 
 them struggles on any very great scale — are the only serious exceptions to 
 seventy-eight years of jteace.
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 409 
 
 delicate and doubtful task to transfer it to other Euro- 
 pean kingdoms, but this has, in one or two cases, been 
 successfully done. But in any European kingdom there 
 is some groundwork to go upon. There are older titles, 
 institutions, traditions, which can be dexterously pressed 
 into the service, and can be clothed with new objects and 
 duties. But a conventional system of this kind is the 
 very last thing which ought to be set up in a perfectly 
 new commonwealth which supplies none of the elements 
 which are needed for its success. We do not feel the 
 unreal position of a constitutional King, because the un- 
 reality is at once veiled by the traditions of ages, and is 
 fully counterbalanced by its incidental advantages. But 
 the unreality, one might say the absurdity, of a Governor 
 and a "responsible Ministry" in Australia or New Zealand 
 stands out in all its nakedness. A President safe in power 
 for four years or for one year would be an element of 
 stability compared with the ephemeral ministers which 
 supplant one another almost daily. Any new states which 
 adopt the Presidential system will have to consider two 
 main points, the way of electing the President, and the 
 question whether he should or should not be capable of 
 immediate re-election. With regard to the election, the 
 American system as now practised is one extreme, the old 
 ducal elections at Venice were another. The strange mix- 
 ture of chance and selection, the repeated choosings and 
 drawings, by which the electors of the prince were finally 
 appointed, have in our eyes somewhat of the ludicrous. 
 No one probably would propose a system quite so com- 
 plicated ; still the Venetian mode of election must have 
 shut out the main evils of the American mode. The 
 electors, when at last appointed, may have chosen well or 
 ill, honestly or corruptly, but they really did choose. 
 Utterly unknown as it was beforehand who would finally 
 have to elect, they at least could never have elected at the 
 bidding of a party convention. If the choice were vested 
 in the legislature, or in some committee of it, or in some
 
 410 PEESIDESTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 class of persons previously existing and not appointed for 
 the special purpose of election, the election would doubtless 
 still be a struggle between two political parties in the 
 state ; indeed, within proper limits, it ought to be a 
 struggle between political parties, wherever political parties 
 exist. But, with such modes of election as have just been 
 hinted at, the election of the national chief magistrate 
 would not become a local struggle in every district, and 
 it would run a much fairer chance of being a struggle 
 between parties represented by the best men on each 
 side. 
 
 The other question, that of re-election, is, like most 
 other political questions, a balance of evils. The chief 
 reason for allowing re-election has been already stated ; if 
 it is forbidden, it may easily happen that the country may 
 be deprived of the services of its best statesman just when 
 they are most wanted. In many of the ancient common- 
 wealths re-election was forbidden ; in Achaia the General 
 could not serve for two successive years ; at Rome it was 
 at no time lawful for the same man to be Consul for two 
 years together, and at one time it was forbidden for a man 
 who had once been Consul ever to be Consul again. But 
 in those commonwealths there was a constant and not un- 
 reasonable dread lest a chief magistrate constantly re- 
 elected should grow into a tyrant. And, where magistrates 
 are annual, to shut a man out for a single year is a 
 diflferent thing from shutting him out for four years or for 
 six. And the extreme case, the law forbidding a Consul 
 to be chosen again after any lapse of time, was found, as 
 might have been looked for, to work badly, and it was 
 therefore repealed. Even the law which forbade two suc- 
 cessive consulships was dispensed with when Rome needed 
 the arm of Caius Marius against the Teutonic invader. 
 In the democratic Cantons of Switzerland, the re-election 
 of the Landammann has always been very common, both in 
 past times and in our own day. Sometimes the office, 
 though always filled by annual election, became almost
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 411 
 
 hereditary in a single family. But in Switzerland there 
 has never been the same fear of tyrants which there was 
 in Greece, and on the other hand it is hardly safe to 
 argue from such very small communities as the democratic 
 cantons to republics of the size of America or even of Achaia. 
 If there are strong arguments for re-eligibility, there are 
 strong arguments against it. And the controversy has 
 somewhat shifted its ground since the days when re- 
 eligibility was defended by Hamilton in the Federalist. 
 Men then professed the old Greek fear, lest a President 
 often re-elected should grow into a tyrant. Experience 
 has shown this fear to be quite groundless, and Jefferson, 
 its chief mouthpiece, lived himself to disprove it in his own 
 person. But other evils have arisen from the practice 
 which Hamilton could hardly foresee. His whole argu- 
 ment presupposes the possibility of a wicked President, 
 but it hardly presupposes the possibility of a weak Pre- 
 sident. In truth, the smaller man the President is, the 
 greater becomes the evil, not merely of his re-election, but 
 of his re-eligibility. In all cases where re-election is pos- 
 sible, the magistrate in office is placed in the position of a 
 candidate. He is tempted, especially as his term of office 
 draws near to its end, to direct his administration mainly 
 with a view to secure popular favour. It is clear that, the 
 smaller the man in office is, the greater will be the force of 
 this temptation, and the smaller will be the means to 
 which he will resort to secure his re-election. The real 
 evil of re-eligibility did not come out in the days of those 
 great Presidents who were actually re-elected, but in the 
 days of those small Presidents who wished to be re-elected 
 and were not. And now, for the first time since the days 
 of Jackson, there appears a real change of a presidential 
 re-election. And why ? Clearly because, however small 
 Mr. Lincoln may seem in our eyes, he does not seem small 
 in the eyes of a vast party of his countrymen. Probably 
 no one puts him on a level with any of the Presidents 
 down to Jackson ; but it is just because he is felt to be a
 
 412 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 man of a difterent mould from any of the Presidents since 
 Jackson, that one of the great parties in the common- 
 wealth is prepared to raise him a second time to the head 
 of the state. "^ 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the possibility of re-election 
 does lay a President under temptation to act in all things 
 with a view to re-election ; that it degrades him, in short, 
 from a ruler into a canvasser. With a weak or mediocre 
 President these temptations are greatly increased. They 
 are again so aggravated in America by the present mode 
 of election that, while that mode of election prevails, 
 we may safely say that the arguments against re-eli- 
 gibility overbalance the arguments for it. Yet, after 
 all, we may ask whether the evil, though undoubtedly 
 far more glaring, is practically very much worse than 
 much that we see at home. It is more glaring, because 
 an English First Minister can never be driven directly 
 to canvass the whole country for votes to keep him 
 in the place of First Minister.f But he does the same 
 thing indirectly. The Minister is tempted, no less than the 
 President, to act in the way by which he may catch most 
 votes, whether that way be the best way or not. If he 
 wishes to keep office, he must, just as much as the Presi- 
 dent who aims at re-election, keep both the House of 
 Commons and the nation in good humour. The only 
 difference is that our conventional constitution throws a 
 decorous veil over much which in the American system 
 stands out nakedly. The English Minister can often gain 
 a point by dexterous dealing in Parliament about which an 
 American President would have to make an open appeal to 
 the multitude. The homage thus paid to vntue may or 
 may not be a gain, but the inherent vice is the same in 
 
 * So now — January, 1872 — there seems every chance of the re-election of 
 General Grant. > 
 
 [Since then the possibility of a third presidential term, hitherto deemed 
 impossible, has been at last discussed. 1886.] 
 
 t [Sometiiing much more like doing so than was heard of in 1864 has 
 come to be usual now. 1886.]
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 413 
 
 both cases. A President of the Confederate States or a 
 King of Sweden and Norway has in this case the advantage 
 over either. The Confederate President is safe for six 
 years, and cannot be re-elected ; the Scandinavian King 
 is safe for hfe. Either of them can act far more freely 
 according to his own notion of the public interest than 
 is open either to a President of the United States or to an 
 English Minister. Whether it is a gain to allow either 
 King or President so wide a discretion is another matter. 
 Here, as ever, we can only balance the advantages each 
 way. So again the indirect power of deposing the Ministry, 
 which our conventional constitution vests in the House of 
 Commons, leads the House to abdicate many of its functions 
 in favour of the Ministry; it makes the possible fate of 
 a Ministry depend on the decision of questions which should 
 be judged on their own merits ; it affords a constant temp- 
 tation to members to vote this way or that, not because it 
 is the best way, but because it will help to keep in or turn 
 out such a Minister. The American system avoids all 
 this, but it avoids it, to mention no other disadvantages, 
 at the cost of too gi-eat an isolation of the executive and 
 legislative branches from one another. And our system, 
 though it tends to divert attention from real practical 
 interests to the maintenance of this or that man in power, 
 certainly does not thereby make party strife in England 
 any more bitter or any less personal than party strife in 
 America. 
 
 We have just compared the President with the constitu- 
 tional King acting at his own discretion within the limits 
 of the law and with the First Minister in constitutional 
 monarchies of another kind. It now only remains to con- 
 trast him with the other form of republican executive, the 
 Executive Council, as seen both in the Swiss Confederation 
 and in most of the several Cantons. The Swiss Federal 
 Constitution has several points of likeness with that of 
 America, and the constitution of the two Houses of the 
 Federal Legislature is clearly borrowed from the American
 
 4H PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 model.'^ But, in the nature of its Executive, the Swiss 
 Confederation has utterly departed from American prece- 
 dent, and has produced something at least as widely- 
 different from an American President as an American 
 President differs from an European King. In Switzerland 
 the executive power of the Confederation is vested in a 
 Board or Council of seven, as the Buvdesralh or Conseil 
 Federal. This Council is elected by the two Houses of the 
 Federal Assembly acting together. he Federal Assembly 
 itself is chosen for three years, and, when it comes together, 
 it chooses an Executive to last as long as itself. The Pre- 
 sident and Vice-President are chosen yearly by the Assembly 
 from among the members of the Council, and neither of those 
 offices can be held by the same man for two years together. 
 The Council apportions the different departments of state 
 among its own members, but it is expressly declared that 
 this is simply an arrangement of convenience, and that all 
 decisions must issue from the Council as a body. The 
 members of the Council have a right to speak and make 
 proposals in either House of the Federal Legislature, but 
 not to vote. 
 
 The fust thing that strikes one on considering this 
 system is that it at once hinders the commonwealth from 
 making the most of a great man, and secures the common- 
 wealth from being dragged through the dirt by a small 
 man. The pr^idency of Washington and the presidency 
 of Pierce are in Switzerland alike impossible. The state 
 has no personal chief; the so-called President of the 
 Confederation is only chairman of a board of seven. He 
 cannot do a single act or make a single nomination by his 
 own personal authority. It is clear that this hampering 
 of individual action may be a great evil in the case of a 
 man of genius checked by inferior colleagues ; but it may 
 also be a great good in the case of a presumptuous or 
 
 * [I speak of the Federal Constitution as it was fixed in 1848. Important 
 changes are now — December, 1871 — January, 1^72— under discussion by the 
 Federal Assembly.]
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 415 
 
 incompetent man rendered harmless by wiser colleagues. 
 America, with her personal chief, runs a risk which 
 Switzerland avoids. As in all cases of risk, the more 
 adventurous state sometimes reaps for itself advantages, 
 and sometimes brings on itself evils, from both of which 
 its less daring fellow is equally cut off. It may be that 
 each system better suits the position of the nation which 
 has adopted it. The people of America, a young, vigorous, 
 expanding people, with a whole continent lying open to 
 them, naturally preferred the energetic lead of a personal 
 head. They took their chance ; a bad President could 
 hardly do so much harm as a good President could do 
 good. In Switzerland, on the other hand, a good President 
 could hardly do so much good as a bad President could do 
 harm. Switzerland, though beyond all others a regenerate 
 nation, was still an old nation ; she was a small state 
 hemmed in by greater ones ; she lay between two of the 
 greatest powers of Europe, two of the bitterest and most 
 persevering enemies of right and freedom. Alike the 
 cradle and the refuge of continental liberty, she needed 
 above all things a system which should preserve every- 
 thing and jeopard nothing. She seized on a rare and 
 happy moment, when all the despots of Europe had enough 
 to do at home, to reform her constitution without foreign 
 intermeddling. And she formed a system which exactly 
 suits the position of a small, free, conservative, power ready 
 as ever to defend its own, but neither capable nor desirous 
 of aggrandizement at the expense of others. In such a 
 position as that of Switzerland, the first virtue in a govern- 
 ment is a certain dignified discretion. The League has to 
 hold its own, and sometimes to hold it with some difiiculty. 
 Anything like bravado and anything like servihty would 
 be alike out of place. An incompetent chief of the 
 commonwealth might do irretrievable mischief, and a man 
 of genius, unless genius were more than usually tempered 
 by discretion, might do fully as much mischief as a fool or 
 a traitor. It is then in a spirit of the truest wisdom that
 
 416 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay 
 
 Switzerland declines to place herself at the mercy of any- 
 single chief. Where moderation and discretion are the 
 virtues most to be prized, a well-chosen Council is better 
 to be trusted than any one man. The wisdom of the 
 Swiss Constitution in this respect has been amply tested 
 by experience. Among all the changes and complications 
 of late years, no government in Europe has displayed a 
 higher degree of practical wisdom than the Federal Council 
 of Switzerland. In every question with foreign powers 
 it has preserved that dignified moderation which best suits 
 the position of the country. In domestic affairs, in the 
 local disputes wdiich still often distract the several Cantons, 
 the action of the Federal power has been invariably such 
 as to command the general respect of the nation. The last 
 event in Swiss history, the late unhappy outrage at 
 Geneva,'^ has been as honourable to the Federal Council as 
 it has been discreditable to the authorities of the Canton. 
 No despot could have acted with greater energy ; no Judge 
 on the bench could have acted with greater impartiality. 
 We can hardly conceive that any single President or 
 succession 'of Presidents could have guided the Confedera- 
 tion with the like wisdom through all the difficulties 
 of the last sixteen years. A weak President might have 
 cringed ignobly before Prussia or Austria or France ; a 
 daring President might have entangled the Confederation 
 in enterprises beyond its strength. The tutelary wisdom 
 of the Federal Council has steered equally clear of both 
 forms of error. 
 
 The sort of negative wisdom which the Swiss Govern- 
 ment shows, and which is what the position of the country 
 specially needs, is displayed both in the theory and 
 the practice of the Swiss Federal system. The form of 
 Executive which is chosen, and the relations between the 
 executive and legislative branches, avoid most of the 
 positive evils which have been pointed out in other 
 systems. The Council is elective; but its election cannot 
 
 • [1864.]
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. All 
 
 be made the subject of strife throughout the whole land. 
 There is no opportunity for caucuses and conventions where 
 the election is made by the Legislature itself. No doubt 
 the election of the Federal Councillors will always be a 
 party business ; no doubt they will always represent the 
 party which has the majority in the Assembly ; but they 
 are not themselves the direct creation of a personal 
 struggle carried into every corner of the land. Elected by 
 the Legislature, coming into office along with the Legisla- 
 ture, there is every chance of their acting in harmony with 
 it. Their power of taking a share in the debates of the 
 Assembly at once enables the Assembly to be better in- 
 formed on public affairs, and also takes away that blot on 
 the American system by which a statesman who is ap- 
 pointed to any executive office is debarred, for the time at 
 the least, from any parliamentary career. Irremoveable by 
 the existing Assembly, with the question of their re- 
 election dependent on an Assembly which is not yet in 
 being, they have less need than either English or American 
 statesmen to adapt their policy to meet any momentary 
 cry. On the other hand, acting always as a board, the 
 Swiss Federal Councillors have not the same opportunities 
 of making themselves known in the world which fall to 
 the executive chiefs of other countries. No Swiss states- 
 man enjoys an European reputation. The Ministers of 
 other powers, even of other minor powers, are often well 
 known. Every one just now is familiar with the names of 
 certain statesmen, not only in Prussia and Austria, but in 
 Denmark and Saxony."^ But when the affairs of Neuf- 
 chatel, of Savoy, of the Valley of Dappes, drew the eyes of 
 all Europe upon Switzerland, it was not this or that Swiss 
 statesman who was heard of, but the Federal Council as a 
 bod\^. It is hardly needful to point out how exactly 
 contrary this is to the state of things in America. No one 
 in England ever doubts who is Prime Minister ; no one in 
 
 * [The Saxon statesman of 1S64 has since become famous on a wider field.] 
 [1871.I 
 
 E e
 
 418 PRESIDES TIAL GOVERXMEST. [Essay 
 
 the United States ever doubts who is President. But even 
 in Switzerland itself very well informed men cannot always 
 say off-hand who is the Bundesprdsident of the year. This 
 is by no means necessarily a fault ; perhaps it is just the 
 state of things which should be in a republic ; but it at 
 least strikes any one who is familiar with the personal 
 contests of England and America as a singular peculiarity. 
 We have thus contrasted Presidential Government with 
 Constitutional Monarchies on the one hand and with 
 Executive Councils on the other. Which system is the 
 best of the three is a question which can admit of no 
 general answer. The great lesson of political history is to 
 learn that no kind of government worthy to be called 
 government is universally good or bad in itself. All forms, 
 Kings, Presidents, Councils, anything in short except mere 
 tyranny and mere anarchy, may be the best, as they may 
 be the worst, in some particular age or country. Of the 
 three great systems whicli we have been considering, the 
 English, the American, and the Swiss, we may be sure that 
 each is, on the whole, the best suited to the country in 
 which it is found. None of the three countries would gain 
 by exchanging its own system for the system of either of 
 the others. But this does not show that any one of the 
 three may not profitably study the theory and practice of 
 the other two, and find therein either warnings or examples 
 for its own benefit. The Swiss system is, of all the three, 
 the least open to positive objection ; but it does not there- 
 fore follow that it is better in itself than that of England 
 or of America. Still its success within its own sphere 
 cannot fail to point it out as something worthy of the 
 attention and the admiration of both countries. The 
 American system, as we have seen, is open to objections 
 of the gravest kind, yet there can be little doubt that it will 
 bear transplanting bettor than either of the other two, and 
 that it is better suited than either of the other two to the 
 circumstances of those new commonwealths which are rising 
 in distant corners of the world. 1'hc attempt to transplant
 
 XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 419 
 
 the traditional English sj^stem to lands where its historical 
 and social groundwork does no: exist has proved a lament- 
 able failure. And for a young, pushing, commonwealth, with 
 the world before it, the dash and enterprise of a well- 
 chosen personal chief will probably be more valuable than 
 the calm defensive wisdom of the Councillors of the Ever- 
 lasting League. It is the American system, in its most 
 essential features, which forms the natural object for the 
 imitation of other communities of Englishmen beyond the 
 seas. It is for them to seize on the leading principles of 
 the immortal work of Washington and Hamilton, to alter 
 such of its general provisions as experience has shown to 
 be defective, to work in such changes in detail as may be 
 needed by any particular commonwealth. The American 
 Constitution, with its manifest defects, still remains one of 
 the most abiding monuments of human wisdom, and it has 
 received a tribute to its general excellence such as no other 
 political system was ever honoured with. The States 
 which have seceded from its government, the States which 
 look with the bitterest hatred on its actual administrators, 
 have re-enacted it for themselves in all its essential pro- 
 visions. Nothing but the inveterate blindness of party- 
 spirit can hinder this simple fact from at once stopping the 
 mouths of cavillers. Sneers at republics, at democracies, 
 at federal systems, are, wherever they are found, mere 
 proofs of ignorance and shallowness ; but there are no 
 mouths in which they are so utterly inconsistent, so utterly 
 self-condemning, as in the mouths of champions of the 
 Southern Confederation. 
 
 THE END.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■:t 
 
 
 - '*t T «> ^ ■^" 
 
 ^>- 
 

 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIUTr 
 
 AA 000 881 697 7 
 
 _^: 
 
 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 } DATE DUE 
 
 a — 
 
 < PTR OS 1Q7R 
 
 
 ^ r L P — vj u I u 
 
 MAK l;c RtC'O 
 
 
 HAR lem 
 
 
 1 ; : ;v -^ 
 
 
 'V' ' ■" 
 
 
 " ■' •/ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CI 39 
 
 UCSD Libr.