it in 1352, when, in creating the order of the Chevaliers de Etoile, he gives the following motives: "John, by the grace of God, king of the French. Among the various solicitudes of our mind, we have often, more than twenty times, thought that in ancient times the chivalry of our kingdom shone forth throughout the whole world by its bravery, its nobleness, and its virtue; to such a degree that. with the aid of God, and with the support of the faithful servants of that chivalry, who sincerely and unanimously lent the strength of their arms, our predecessors gained the victory over all the enemies whom they thought fit to attack, that they led to the purity of the true catholic faith an immense number of people whom the perfidious enemy of the human race, by his artifices, had drawn into error, and that at last they established security and peace in the kingdom. But in the long course of time, some of the said knights, whether they have lost their skill in arms, or by other causes of which we are ignorant, are in our days more than usually addicted to idleness and vanities, and neglecting their honour and renown, have allowed themselves to be occupied only with their private interests. Therefore it is that we, recalling the ancient times, and the glorious deeds of the said faithful knights..... we have resolved to bring back our faithful of the present day and for the future..... to the glory of the ancient nobleness and chivalry. . . . . so that the flower of chivalry, which for sometime, and for the said causes, has languished and lost somewhat of its splendour, may arise and glitter anew for the glory of our kingdom,"1 &c., &c. And towards the end of the same century: "When Charles VII. conferred knighthood, at Saint Denis. in 1389, on the young king of Sicily, and on the count of Maine, these princes, who were brothers, presented themselves to watch the armour in an equipage as modest as it was extraordinary, in order to keep up the ancient customs at the reception of new knights, which obliged them to appear as young squires. This seemed strange to many people, because there were very few who knew that this was the ancient der of such knighthood." Ordon. of king John, Oct. 1352. Recueil des Ord., t. 1v., p. 116. Not that chivalry was dead; it had given birth to the reli gious military orders-the templars, the knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Teutonic knights. It began to give rise to the orders of the court, to the cordon, the knights of rank and parade. It was still long to figure in the life and language of French society; but the original chivalry, properly so called, the true feudal chivalry, had fallen to decay like eudalism itself. It is between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries that it must be looked for, and there it appears under the features which I have just described. SEVENTH LECTURE. The state of the agricultural population, or the feudal village-Its condition seemed for a long time stationary-Was it much changed by the invasion of the barbarians and the establishment of the feudal system?-Error of the common opinion upon this subject-Necessity for studying the state of the agricultural population in Gaul before the invasion, under the Roman administration-Source of the study-Distinction between coloni and slaves-Differences and resemblances of their condition-Relations of the bond-labourers, 1, with the proprietors; 2, with the government— How a man became a bond-labourer-Historical origin of the class of bond-labourers-Uncertainty of the ideas of M. de Savigny-Conjectures. WE have hitherto kept in the superior regions of feudal society. We have lived amidst the masters of the soil, the sovereigns of its inhabitants; and, although we have found great obstacles to the social movement, to the development of civilization, in their situation, in their kind of life; although documents have often been wanting to follow, step by step, and in their various degrees, the progressions which were painfully and slowly accomplished in those petty societies, so isolated and so difficult of access, still this progress has not escaped us. We have clearly seen that, in the very interior of the castle, people were not stationary, that important modifications, veritable revolutions took place in the relations and dispositions of its inhabitants. We have, if I do not deceive myself, unravelled the principal causes, their dominant charac ter, and, from time to time, have determined their course. We will now descend to the foot of the castle, into those miserable dwellings where the tributary population who cultivated its domains lived. Its situation bears no resemblance to that of the inhabitants of the castle-nothing defends it, nothing shelters it; it is exposed to all dangers, a prey to continua vicissitudes; upon it, and at its expense, burst forth all the storms which occupied the life of its masters. Never, perhaps, did any population live more utterly destitute of peace and security, abandoned to a more violent and incessantly renewed movement. At the same time, its con. dition appears stationary; for a long time we can see no general and notable change. Through all the commotions which constantly agitated it, we almost always find it the same—much more immovable, more foreign to social movement than the little society which lived above it, behind the ramparts and moats of the castle. There was nothing in all this but what was very natural and easily explained (as may be readily felt) by the very situation of the rural population, abandoned to all the chances of events and of force. The progress of civilization requires liberty and peace. Where these two conditions are wanting, men may live, but they do not advance; generations succeed each other; but it is upon the same place, without progressing. Still, must we here rely entirely on appearances? Documents are even more wanting to us upon the history of the agricultural and subject population, than upon that of the warlike and sovereign population. Is it because documents are wanting that it appears thus stationary? Or is its immobility real, and as great as it appears? I think it real, and even more enduring and of more ancient date than is thought. It is an opinion generally pervading and maintained in many writings, that the deplorable state of the rural population of our territory, its servitude, its misery, date from the invasion of the barbarians; that the conquest, and the progressive development of the feudal system, entirely changed its condition, plunged it into that in which we find it from the sixth to the twelfth century; that there resides the true cause of the immobility which characterises it. In vain has this opinion been disputed, even lately, by many persons, particularly by M. de Montlosier, in his Histoire de la Monarchie Française. Their reasoning, and not without motives, seemed partial, passionate, incomplete, tending to the interest of one class and one cause, and the old idea has remained predominant. People in general persist in believing that dating from the fifth century, the conquest over threw the condition of the rural districts of Gaul, and reduced their inhabitants to a degree of degradation and misery unknown before. I do not think that this opinion is well founded. According to my view, the invasions and conquest of the barbarians caused the agricultural population to suffer cruel and incessantly renewed evils, far more poignant than what it had suffered under the Roman administration; but at bottom, I think its social condition was very little changed. Before the invasion, and under the empire, it was almost the same as it appears to us in the following centuries. Its vices and its immobility date much farther back than the German conquest, and we must not impute to feudalism alone an evil which it has often aggravated, but which it did not create, and which, perhaps, even under the anterior system, would have continued still longer. To solve such a question, to appreciate truly what happened to the agricultural population upon our territory, from the fifth to the fourteenth century, it is indispensable to know what was its condition before the invasion, when the empire was still erect. We have, therefore, to study: 1, the state of the agricultural population in Gaul, under the Roman administration, in the fourth and fifth centuries; 2, the changes introduced into this state by the Germanic conquest and the feudal establishment, from the fifth to the fourteenth century. It is with the first question only that we shall occupy ourselves at present. It is one that has been greatly neglected, and for the following causes: The rural districts played but a small part in the Roman society. The preponderance of the cities was immense. Erudition and criticism have accordingly directed all their attention to the internal administration of cities, and the condition of the urban population, while the rural population obtained scarcely a glance. Even the men, the special nature of whose studies would seem to forbid their neglect of it, the jurisconsults, troubled themselves but little about it. The principal monuments of the Roman legislation, those which have been the object of the most numerous and most assiduous labours, the Institutes especially, do not speak of the agricultural population-at least, not of the class which formed the |