ration of your lands, they have become more and more severe regarding the execution of the law which forbids a farmer to take away the vine poles; to prevent too great a division of property, and at the same time to facilitate the improvement of it, they have made the exchange of your various inheritances more easy, by exempting you from the law of fines for alienation. Finally, still more has been done; .in some countries they have arrested the arm of justice, they have forbidden the seizure of the animals and instruments of labour." "In those countries," answered Antoine, who until then had said nothing, "they are very happy; the apparitor can take from you neither your horses, nor your plough, nor your spade: in this, they can take from me, if not my every day suit, at least my Sunday clothes." "Patience," answered I, "they will think by-and-by of your Sunday suit, but one thing must come after another." I

Moral truth, I repeat, will scarcely be found here; the language is not anything like that of the time; but the facts are correct, and ingeniously connected.

This general progress of the condition, and of the importance of the agricultural population, soon had the effect which was to be expected. I will read entire the famous ordonnance of Louis le Hutin upon the enfranchisement of the serfs, for it is spoken of much more generally than it is known. It is addressed to the reeve of Senlis.

"Louis, by the grace of God, king of France and Navarre, to our loved and trusty master Saince de Chaumont, and master Nicholas de Braye, health and love.

66

As, according to the law of nature each must be born free, and that by some usages or customs, which of great antiquity have been introduced and hitherto preserved in our kingdom, and peradventure, for the fault of their predecessors, many of our common people have fallen into servitude and divers corditions which very much displease us; we, considering that our kingdom is called and named the kingdom of the Franks, (free men) and wishing that the thing should truly be accordant with the name, and that the condition of the people should improve on the advent of our new government, upon deliberation with our great council, have ordered, and order,

Histoire des Français des divers Etats, toin. i. p. 195–197.

that, generally throughout our kingdom, so far as may belong to us and our successors, such servitudes be brought back to freedom, and that to all those who from origin or antiquity or recently from marriage or from residence in places of servile condition, are fallen, or may fall, into bonds of servitude, freedom be given upon good and fitting conditions. And especially that our common people, who in past times have thus been brought under villanage, be by the collectors, bailiffs, and other officers, no longer molested, nor aggrieved in these respects as they have hitherto been, whereat we are displeased, and to give an example to other seigneurs who have men in like tenure to give them freedom; we who have full confidence in your loyalty and approved discretion, do commit it to you, and command you, by the tenour of these letters, that you go forthwith throughout the bailiwick of Senlis and its jurisdiction, and with all such our men treat and grant to them, that upon certain composition, whereby sufficient compensation shall be made to us for the emoluments arising to us and our successors from their said servitudes, you give and grant unto them, as far as we and our successors are concerned, general and perpetual liberty, in the manner above set forth, and according to that which we have more fully declared and committed unto you by word of mouth; and we promise in good faith that we, for ourselves and successors will ratify and approve, will observe and cause to be observed and kept, all that you shall do and accord in these matters, and the letters which you shall give as treaties, compositions, and grants of freedom to towns, communities, or individual persons and properties, we will ratify them forthwith and confirm them again and again whenever we shall be so required. And we give it in command to all our justiciaries and subjects, that in all things they obey you, and diligently carry out your designs.

our

"Given at Paris, the 3rd day of July, in the year of grace, 1315."1

In our days the emperor Alexander would not have dared to publish in Russia such an ukase; he has laboured at the enfranchisement of the serfs in his states, he has enfranchised a considerable number of them in his own domains; but he

Ordonnances des Rois, &c., tom. i. p. 588.

would not have dared to proclaim that, "according to the law of nature, each must be born free, and that the thing should accord with the name." Such a principle, it is true, had not the same reverberation, the same moral power in the fourteenth century, as in our times; and it was not with disinterested views that Louis le Hutin proclaimed it; he did not intend to give freedom to the coloni, he sold it to them on good and adequate conditions; but it is not the less certain, in principle, that the king believed it his duty to sell it them, in fact, that they were capable of buying it. This is assuredly an immense difference, and an immense progress, between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.

This progress did not continue beyond the fourteenth century, with so much rapidity and extension as we might be led to presume. The movement of amelioration and enfranchisement of the agricultural population was stopped, or at least very much slackened, by a multitude of causes, of which I shall speak in treating of that epoch. It was not the less real and important in that which occupies us.

Such was the condition of the inhabitants of the feudal village, in its general features, from the sixth to the fourteenth century. You are now acquainted with the principal social vicissitudes which, within the simple fief, occurred in the destiny both of its possessors and of its cultivators. In our next lecture we shall leave this element of the feudal society, to examine the relations of possessors of fiefs among themselves, the general organization of feudalism.

NINTH LECTURE.

Relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves-Variety and com plexity of the feudal association considered in its whole-Necessity for reducing it to its proper and essential elements-Relations between the suzerain and his vassals-Character of these relations-Homage, the oath of fidelity, and investiture-Feudal duties-Feudal services-Military service-Judicial service-Aids-Some rights progressively acquired by the suzerains-Independence of vassals who had acquitted themselves of feudal services.

WE now begin to study the relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves,—that is to say, the feudal 30ciety,no longer in its simple and primitive element, but in its hierarchical organization and in its whole. We shall here encounter infinitely greater difficulties. We shall no longer have to do with well-determined questions, with well-circumscribed facts. We shall enter upon an immense field, and one which contains prodigiously complex facts. On the one hand, as you know, the variety of fiefs was very great; all kinds of things were given in fief; they were given with different views and upon different conditions. The dignity of fiefs varied like their nature. Open the Glossary of Du Cange at the word Feodum; you will there see the enumeration of eighty-eight kinds of fiefs. The difference, it is true, is sometimes very slight, almost nominal but most frequently it is real, more real perhaps than is indicated by the mere definition which distinguishes the various kinds of fiefs. On the other hand, the situation of the possessors of fiefs was very complex; a large number, the greater portion of them, were at the same time suzerains and vassals; suzerains of such an one, by reason of a fief which he had given them; vassals of the same, or of some other, by reason of an

other fief which they held of him. The same man possessed fiefs of a very different nature; here a fief was received upon condition of military service, there a fief was held by inferior services. To the variety, to the complexity arising from the nature of fiefs and of the situation of their possessors, were added those foreign elements, those two great facts, royalty and the commons, which, everywhere and incessantly in contact with all parts of the feudal society, were there everywhere a new source of complexity and variety. How could feudalism have developed itself under pure and simple forms? How were its peculiar, special principles otherwise than deeply affected? How could the relations of the possessors of fiefs among themselves be otherwise than continually disturbed, disfigured? In such a chaos, it is assuredly very difficult to distinguish the true principles, the constitutive characteristics of feudal society, what it was in itself, independently of all accident, of every foreign influence.

Still it is necessary to accomplish this; we shall comprehend it by no other means.

I see but one way; that is, to extricate it from all which thus complicates and alters it, to lead it back to its primitive base, to reduce it to itself, to its proper and fundamental nature. Let us take, then, a possessor of estates, a suzerain of eight, ten, twelve, fifteen vassals, likewise possessors of estates which they hold of him in fief, and let us seek to discover what passed among them, how their relation was formed, what principles. presided therein, what obligations were attached to it, &c. This is feudal society; this is the type, the microcosm, where we may learn to know the true nature of feudal relations. This study once accomplished, we shall restore to the relation of the possessors of fiefs among themselves, all the variety, all the complexity of which we shall have divested it, and see what changes it was subjected to by the foreign elements becoming associated with it. But it is indispensable first to consider them in themselves, and in a somewhat narrow sphere, under a form sufficiently simple to present them in clear outline.

I will once again recal to you the first origins of feudal relations. As you are aware, they go back to the Germanic warlike band; they are a consequence, a transformation of the relations between the barbarous chief and his companions.