CHAP. IX.

LOUIS HUTIN PHILIP THE LONG

1314-1328.

CHARLES THE FAIR.

CHAP.

IX.

PHILIP the Fair had mingled little with the chivalry of his time. He forbade tournaments, and, after the fashion of oriental despots, kept his sons secluded. The eldest, known as Louis the Tenth, called Hutin or the Turbulent, was fond of rude pastimes. He had been crowned king of Navarre at Pampeluna, and succeeded at the same time to the county of Champagne. He also headed the troops which accomplished the reduction of Lyons; but it does not otherwise appear that he shared his father's confidence, being indeed but twenty-four years of age on ascending the throne. His uncle Charles, Count of Valois, had much influence over him, a prince who had shown eagerness, but not perseverance, to tread in the adventurous and ambitious path of Charles of Anjou. It would have been a relief to the age to have found in princes the habits and qualities of the soldier, which, through rude, are frank and generous. The sword, however, was not the weapon of the time. To charge a rival or a victim with the most infamous and even ludicrous crimes was the kind of weapon which had succeeded to chivalric defiance and feudal combat. The Church had set the example by its denunciations of heresy; Philip the Fair had adopted this mode of procedure against the Templars. Charles of Valois' ima

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gination was fraught with another crime; he either CHAP. believed or affected to believe in sorcery. By making a waxen image of a foe, which was pricked and tortured, the person represented was supposed to pine away and die. It was a belief of the age, and a fearful belief, for who could be secure against an act of malice that might be perpetrated in the most profound secrecy?

Charles entertained an aversion for all his brother's councillors. He accused his chancellor Latilli, Bishop of Chalons, with having caused the death of the king by means of such sorcery as has been described. Latilli's obvious interest had been to keep Philip alive; but Charles caused him, nevertheless, to be imprisoned and tortured under the accusation. Raoul de Presle, another of Philip's legists, was implicated in the same crime, and underwent similar persecution.

But Enguerrand De Marigni, Philip's prime minister, was the chief object of hatred to the king's uncle. He had been the most influential personage under the late king's reign, "a perfect Major Domus," according to the continuator of Nangis, all difficult matters being managed by his conduct, and all persons obedient to his nod. It is remarkable that a minister admitted to be so powerful should have kept himself so completely in the background as scarcely to be named, although his brother, the Archbishop of Sens, made himself conspicuous as the chief instrument of the condemnation of the Templars. Charles accused Marigni of the depreciation of the coin; but for this crime, even if considered guilty, Louis Hutin thought him not worthy of punishment more severe than banishment to the Isle of Cyprus. Charles seemed unable to bring against Marigni himself the accusation of sorcery; he, however, accused his wife of employing others to make the terrible images of All of those thus implicated were brought, not before parliament, but in the presence of the king, of Charles, and of some barons at Vincennes. The coun

wax.

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IX.

cillors of Philip had set the example of creating courts of justice in whatever way suited their convenience. The Templars had thus been sacrificed by the clergy and the legists. It was now the turn of the barons, and they condemned Marigni to be hanged on a gibbet, the king, on hearing of sorcery, abandoning his previous efforts to save him.

Another murder was that of Margaret, wife of Louis, who had been sent to seclusion in the Chateau Gaillard. One of the first acts of the king on his accession was to despatch an envoy to demand the hand of Clemence, daughter of Charles Martel of Naples, a descendant of Charles of Anjou, and wearing the title of King of Hungary. Louis had hoped to get a papal dispensation or divorce from Margaret; but the Papal election being delayed, it was necessary to get rid of Margaret more speedily, and she was accordingly smothered in prison. Clemence soon after arrived, after having suffered shipwreck so great was the poverty of the king that the marriage was obliged to be celebrated with little pomp.

The young king was beset with difficulties which required a wise head and an established authority to deal with. A war threatened him already. Count Robert, of Flanders, hesitated and refused to render the homage due to the King of France on his accession ; the Flemings, no doubt, alleging that their country had been unjustly shorn of Lille and the neighbouring towns. Philip would have avenged such frowardness by sequestrating the county of Nevers, held by the eldest son of the Count of Flanders. But the prince appeared at the French Court, and was well received. The war could only be carried on by feudal levies; when these were summoned, the noblesse of the different provinces sent in their grievances in lieu of their contingents. His legists would have counselled Philip the Fair to resist such demands; but his son had surrounded his person, not with legists, but with barons, and these

remained acquiescent with the demands of their brother nobles. Of course what was granted to one could not be refused to another. And under the date of this one year, 1315, the French statute book is filled with or donnances regranting their old privileges to the noblesse, and rescinding a large portion of the voluminous legislation of the French monarchs during the preceding century.

The most complete and extensive of these concessions -they might almost be called charters-were given to the nobles of Burgundy, who demanded to be guaranteed by royal ordonnances against the encroachments and arbitrary measures of the legists. The king was made to declare that no noble of Burgundy should be arrested on suspicion, nor proceeded against by enquête; that their chateaux should not be seized, nor fiefs taken from those that were noble; that if arraigned before their peers, they should not be removed out of the province, but be allowed trial by single combat. They were, moreover, to enjoy their old rights of haute et basse justice, judicial rights in cases of life and death, as well as in minor accusations, nor were the king's bailiffs to interfere with them. Moreover, the nobles were to be allowed the right of private war, and were not to be compelled to give asseurance against breaking the peace. With regard to military service, the king could only summon to the field the tenants who held immediately of him. Those who held of barons could only be summoned by their barons. Moreover the king bound himself not to levy more than sixty livres tournois in the way of fine upon nobles or person of less condition.

Although the immunities granted to the nobles of other provinces were not so extensive, still it is evident that the legislative reforms of St. Louis for the time in a great measure broke down, and were found incapable of general application. Trial by battle had begun to be allowed in cases where there was no testimony forth

CHAP.

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coming, or where conflicting testimony was impossible to reconcile. And private war was only forbidden during the continuance of the king's war. These immunities, granted to the noblesse, were also extended in a great measure to the clergy. The commons alone seemed to be forgotten, except in the provision against further adulteration of the coin, and in the order that provosts should not be allowed to purchase their offices for more than three years. These reforms were not preceded or accompanied by troubles except at Sens, of which the people rebelled against the archbishop, Marigni, and his court, which he had converted into such a scene of tyranny and extortion, that it could no longer be borne. The chroniclers draw a veil over the manner in which this sedition was put down.

Sismondi remarks the striking difference between the demands of the southerns and those of the northerns. The latter insisted on a resuscitation of feudal rights, the former merely demanding that none might be taken away from their natural judges-that accused persons might be liberated on bail-that town authorities be exempted from torture-that taxation be not arbitrary, but according to rule, and that in future the coin be not continually adulterated. The distinction, laid down by Sismondi, should not be between North and South, for the demands of the Normans more resembled the equable and legal desires of the people of Languedoc, than the feudal privileges asked and obtained by the Burgundians. The Normans beg the king to levy but his ordinary revenues, ask that causes be tried in their échiquier, and not brought to Paris, and that no man should be put to the torture. The feudal rudeness of the Normans was mitigated by intermixture with their brethren, the Anglo-Normans, whilst the absence of feudal privileges in Languedoc proceeded from southern civilisation.

Whilst the monarch made these large concessions to