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CHAP. agreed to appoint the second son of Philip of Valois, Philip of Orleans, as his future heir, in the event of his having no children.

This treaty, so advantageous to France, was concluded in 1343, and Humbert took his departure for Palestine. None ever expected to see the return of so witless a prince. The dauphin, however, did return, not only to resume the government of his paternal dominion, but to regret the reckless manner in which he had alienated the independence of Dauphiné. He began to seek to extricate himself from his engagements. Edward the Third tried to induce the Emperor of Germany to confer upon Humbert the title of King; but, surrounded by the power and the emissaries of France, the dauphin was not able to shake off his dependency. He was finally induced to transfer his adoption to Charles, son of John, Duke of Normandy, heir to the French throne. This was the future Charles the Fifth. Having accomplished this act, Humbert withdrew to a convent, whilst young Charles assumed the title of Dauphin, and the possession of that rich province.

The plague of this year had been peculiarly fatal to princesses. Edward lost a daughter, whom he was sending to be betrothed to a prince of Castille. The Queen of France, Jeanne of Burgundy, the Duchess of Normandy, wife of Prince John, and daughter of the King of Bohemia, the Queen of Navarre, daughter of Louis Hutin, perished under its influence. But no sooner had the pestilence disappeared, than marriage and its accompanying festivities became the order of the day. "The world," says the Chronicler, “was renewed, but, unfortunately, not bettered; the enemies of France and of the Church no fewer, or less powerful."

King Philip espoused a young wife, daughter of the Queen of Navarre, just deceased. This princess, Blanche by name, had been destined to the Duke of Normandy ; but the king, his father, found her beautiful, and married

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her himself. The Duke of Normandy married a Duchess CHAP. of Burgundy, and the Dauphin, Charles, espoused a daughter of the Duke of Bourbon. Thus were celebrated the marriages of three generations of princes.

Philip of Valois did not long survive his marriage with Blanche. He took ill, and expired at Nogent in August, 1350. The continuator of Nangis relates, that he called his sons, the Duke of Normandy, and Philip of Orleans, afterwards of Valois, to his bedside, and pointed out to them the validity of his right to the crown, and the necessity of defending it strenuously, and without any concession, against Edward of England, with whom the truce was about to expire.

Philip of Valois was the first prince of truly chivalrous spirit that ascended the throne of France. Unfortunately for him, he succeeded at a period when chivalry was insufficient either to illustrate the warrior or achieve great results in war. Unfortunately, too, he derived from his predecessors those unscrupulous habits of wreaking vengeance and spilling blood, which they were taught to consider their sovereign right. As if royal power and descent cancelled every crime, and consecrated even the basest treachery and felony. French kings are lauded by their countrymen for having considered themselves above feudalism. Feudalism, however, had its laws of honour and its sense of right; with these, unfortunately, French kings too soon and too completely dispensed.

CHAP. XI.

JOHN, TO THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY.

1350-1360.

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СНАР. THE monarchy of France achieved its two great objects in a surprisingly short space of time. These were the territorial expansion of the kingdom over the countries bounded by the ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, and the Pyrenees; and the establishment of a central authority and absolute sovereignty over all. These aims, conceived in the imagination of Suger, at the beginning of the twelfth century, became developed into a policy in the hands of Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip the Fair. At the commencement of the fourteenth century Philip of Valois ruled over a kingdom of France with frontiers very nearly identical with those of the realm to which Louis the Fourteenth succeeded. Nor was the authority of the great monarch of the seventeenth century over his subjects more complete or more uncontrolled, than that of Philip of Valois, or Philip the Fair.

But the goal thus reached so quickly had also been reached prematurely. What was obtained could not be kept, and that which had been momentarily and hastily accomplished, could not be consolidated. The absolute authority which Philip Augustus claimed, and which St. Louis sought to organise, was based altogether on the Byzantine principle, that either took no account of

a landed and hereditary aristocracy, with judicial and political rights connected with the soil, or which, in recognising these rights temporarily, looked to nothing short of their abolition. In order to effect this, it would have been necessary to have planned and perfected far more than judicial reforms. The military organisation, which it was proposed to abolish, it would have been necessary to replace, whilst the basis of this, as well as of all other departments of administrationthe fiscal system - should have been so ordered as to be able to meet the pressure of war as well as the exigences of peace. The attempts to crush the aristocracy, set aside its influence, and nullify its power, whilst, at the same time, the crown was obliged to have recourse to it for the military defence of the State, was but achieving half a purpose, and ensuring the abrogation of what had been done by that which had been left undone.

It has always been found far more easy to establish despotism than to endow it with institutions or with a machinery that will make it permanently work. Despotism has indeed never done this. Its most perfect, we may say its only system, that of Imperial Rome, lived and flourished by the laws, the institutions, and the organisation which it inherited from the republic, and which the free and wise spirit of that republic exerted during many centuries, could alone have created. But the Roman or the Byzantine system only suited the ancient or civic society for which it was formed, ignoring the rustic world, and not having any conception of a local lord of the soil, with tenants and peasants looking up to and supporting him. This characteristic element of modern Europe, the same whether feudal in the middle ages, or gentle in our time, is quite incompatible with the Byzantine plan of a merely functionary noblesse and a sacrosanct autocrat. The history of France consists of a series of attempts to graft the one

CHAP.

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CHAP. upon the other, all most lamentably unsuccessful, and of which perhaps the last experiment is now making, whilst we write, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The policy of establishing the absolute power of the monarch on the ruins or subjection of the feudal aristocracy ceased with Philip the Fair. In the reigns of his sons a reaction took place. The nobles reasserted their privileges: they insisted on enjoying once more their judicial power, their high and low justice, their rights of private war and trial by battle. Philip of Valois, considered the head of the aristocratic party and class, undertook to reconcile it with the crown, maintaining, at the same time, the crown's supremacy and uncontrolled authority,—no easy task. For this purpose, or rather from his character and nature, he surrounded his court and person with the noblesse, lived in a succession of fêtes, tournaments, ceremonies, and processions. The legists he reduced to the rank of subalterns; and if he at times consulted the good towns or their deputies, it was speedily to forget the promises made to them. In war he depended chiefly on his mailed knights, unequal as these had proved themselves to the defence of the kingdom. Philip seemed to think the safety of his crown depended on the fidelity of his noblesse; and he certainly had reason to know how fatal to him proved the defection of such nobles as Robert d'Artois and Geoffrey of Harcourt.

Philip and his son and successor, John, by no means pursued the policy best calculated to secure the attachment of their numerous nobles. Feeling it necessary to give back to them a considerable portion of their old privileges and independence, it would have been honest and expedient to have controlled them at the same time by feudal jurisdiction. No law punished treason more severely than the feudal. But the feudal law required, at the same time, a fair and open trial,-that by one's