Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/573

TEE CAPETIAX KINGS.] FRANCE 537 life. The followers who came with, her from the south introduced new tastes and ideas into the ruder north, and were regarded with detestation by the clergy as effeminate and vicious foreigners. We note a national feeling spring ing up, for nationality is nowhere so marked as in its hatreds; to the barons and clergy of the Seine the people of the Garonne were aliens. The opposition also which existed between feudal nobles and churchmen, and the oppressed people struggling for some liberty of action and belief, expressed itself in the futile rising of the peasantry in Normandy (997), and in the slaughter of the Manichaean heretics of Orleans. The whole country was also vexed with civil strife ; the king had to contend with his masterful queen, backed by her rebellious sons Henry, heir to the throne, and Robert, duke of Burgundy; in Normandy Richard the Fearless died in 1027, leaving war between his sons ; the successful brother Robert secured the dukedom, and, thanks to dark suspicions as to his methods, went by the title of " the Devil." Robert I. died in 1031, to the great grief of his poor people, to whom, after his way, he had tried to be as a father. His son Henry, whom he had crowned as joiat-king in 1017, succeeding to the throne, had to face the bitter hostility of his mother and of the duke of Burgundy. The duke of Normandy, following the policy of his house, sided with the king, and, crushing the revolted barons on his flank and that of France, made his already terrible name a curse to central France. A peace was patched up by Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou ; Robert was confined in his duchy of Burgundy, and ere long Constance, by dying, smoothed the way to tranquillity; the weak king gave in before the strong nature of Robert le Diable, and Nor mandy became the most powerful state in France. The con dition of the whole country, scourged with incessant private war, and lacking all central authority, became so bad that the church at last intervened ; in 1036 the (t Peace of God " was proclaimed, and accepted in southern and eastern France ; the bishops of Burgundy also did their best for peace, and at last the bishops of the north also followed their example. In 1041 was proclaimed the famous " Treuga Dei," the Truce of God, in which all fighting was forbidden from Thursday evening to Monday morning, on all feast days, in Advent and in Lent ; religion thus endea voured to extend her protection over almost all the year, and greatly mitigated, if it did not abolish, the evils of private warfare. Many were the signs that some great change was coming. The terrors and hopes roused at the millennial year ; those feelings renewed and strengthened, only to be disappointed, at the date of the thousandth year from the crucifixion of our Lord ; the fearful contrast between the famine and misery desolating France and the brilliant dreams of the coming kingdom of the just ; the slow but real entry of Oriental learning into the west of Europe ; the steady set of a stream of pilgrims toward the Holy Land, pre-eminent among whom was Robert of Normandy ; the renewal of Norman adventure and conquest, specially in southern Italy ; the establishment of the ascendency of mouasticism with its champion Hildebrand at Rome, and its renewed vigour in both France and Germany, all the^e things mark the reign of Henry I. as a time of preparation for the world s struggle that was coming, for the terrible strife of Christian and Saracen over the holy places of Palestine. The conquest of Sicily and southern Italy, as well as that of England a few years later, made the Nor mans the foremost champions of the papacy, and the lead ing power in Europe. During these years the kingship of France was in very unworthy hands : Robert, weak and pious, had done nothing to strengthen his throne ; his son Henry, immersed in petty warfare, fared no better, and feeling his end to be drawing near, in 1059 had his son Philip crowned as joint-king ]0. r >9-9<>. with himself. He died in 1060, leaving his throne to a prince weaker even than himself. The contrast between these petty kings of France and the grim dukes of Normandy must strike every one : Richard the Fearless, Robert the Devil, William the Conqueror, colossal figures, strong and fierce, take all the sunlight from gentle Robert, weak Henry, dissolute Philip, kings of France. And, in Philip 1. fact, a history of France which should take account only of her kings and their reigns would be completely delusive ; the royal power is felt in this llth century over a very small part of the surface of the country ; the great lords are stronger by far than the king in their midst. Normandy rises to very great eminence ; Aquitaino is fairly consoli dated into a strong southern power ; though towards the east the more Germanic princes split the land into petty lordships, the two Lorraines are sometimes under one duke ; on the other side Brittany was entirely independent Across the whole northern frontier the German influence was supreme. Philip was little able to cope with these antagonists. He made an attempt, which failed, to secure Flanders; he withstood William the Bastard in 1076, and made peace with him ; and when, after the Conqueror s death, Norman and English interests were somewhat parted, the dangers of a Norman ascendency over France dim inished. Somewhat later (1094) Philip was involved in a contest with Rome, the church being now the champion of Fulk of Anjou, whom the king had wronged by carrying off his wife, a struggle as honourable for the papacy as it was discreditable to Philip. The church, however, was not now led by the mighty hand of Hildebrand. Gregory VII. had died in 1085, and in the reaction which followed it looked as if the papacy itself might fall. Germany, ever protesting, opposed its claims, often with an anti-pope of her own ;. the French king, a weak man with a wretched cause, was yet able to defy the pontiff ; William the Bastard, even in Hildebrand s days, had refused to acknowledge his claims ; the Normans in Italy were at best but turbulent friends ; the Saracen was still a threatening neighbour. In these dark, cloudy times the papacy, by a wise instinct, took for its motto the ancient " ex Oriente lux," and placed itself in the van of that general movement which led to the crusades. The pope who took the great step was Urban II. , The Cm- a Frenchman by birth ; it seemed to him that if he could sades. stir the warm blood of turbulent French nobles, and the sterner valour of the Norman character, he might head a holy enterprise, and so doing deliver the papacy from all its difficulties, and perhaps assert its lordship over the world. Urban crossed the Alps in 1095, and came to Clermont in Auvergne. There he was in a central position, within reach of both southern and northern France, and yet not within the domain of the excommunicated Philip, sitting sulkily at Paris. The pope s famous sermon at the council, though at the moment it seemed to fall flat on princely ears, set the crusades in motion, and was the prelude to great events, great changes in Asia and Europe. France took the foremost part in the movement ; she seemed to lead the half-formed nations of Europe in the common enterprise ; her great men are the heroes of the epoch ; " the crusades," says Michelet, " had their ideal in two Frenchmen ; they are begun by Godfrey of Bouillon [who, however, was not strictly a Frenchman], and Saint Louis closes them." The latent uneasiness and misery of the people needed only the call ; a countless multitude of the common folk flocked to the banner of Peter the Hermit. The excitement went on increasing throughout the year 1096, and as it slowly gathered force and form, bystanders must have looked with amazement at the strange materials out of which so great a movement grew. The first crusade was altogether popu- IX. 68