effect at first. At the close of the tenth century, at the commencement of the feudal period, there were many more landed proprietors in Gaul than at the fall of the empire. The territory was divided into smaller lots, more especially into more varied lots; the fiefs were much more different, more unequal, than the domains of the great Gallo-Roman proprietors had been; in this respect, therefore, the aristocratical principle was a little weakened; but assuredly the distribution of landed property was still sufficiently unequal, the land concentrated into a sufficiently limited number of hands, to found a very aristocratic system.

You see, therefore, that while the system of free institutions and that of monarchical institutions were declining, the system of aristocratical institutions, on the contrary, saw its bases strengthen, its principles gain vigour. It had not acquired, it had not given to society in general, a regular form, unity, or entirety; it never will attain that. But, it evidently prevailed; it alone was likely to live, if I may use the expression, alone capable of subduing men, and of giving to other social principles time to regain breath, to reappear one day with better success.

Thus was feudal society prepared, thus was it progressively formed, from the fifth to the tenth century. We have attempted to discover its origins, to follow it in its earliest developments. It now subsists, it covers our land. We shal henceforward study it in itself, and in its maturity.

FIFTH LECTURE.

Method to be followed in the study of the feudal period-The s mple fief is the fundamental element, the integrant molecule of feudalism-The simple fief contains: 1, the castle and its proprietors; 2, the village and its inhabitants-Origin of feudal castles-Their multiplication in the 9th and 10th centuries-Causes of this-Efforts of the kings and powerful suzerains to oppose it-Futility of these efforts-Character of the castles of the 11th century-Interior life of the proprietors of fiefsTheir isolation-Their idleness-Their incessant wars, expeditions, and adventures-Influence of the material circumstances of feudal habitations upon the course of civilization-Development of domestic life, condition of women, and of the spirit of family in the interior of castles.

We

We now approach the special object of this course. are about to study feudal society in itself, during the period which especially belongs to it, from the time when it may be regarded as truly formed, down to the time when France escaped from it, and passed under the empire of other principles, of other institutions; that is, during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.

I desire to follow in their entirety the destinies of feudalism during these three centuries. I would wish not to parcel it out, but to keep it constantly entire under your eyes, and make you thus see its successive transformations at a single glance. This would be its true history, the only faithful image of the reality. Unfortunately, this cannot be. In order to study, the human mind is forced to divide, to analyze; it learns nothing unless it be successively and in parts. It is then the work of the imagination and of the reason to reconstruct the demolished edifice, to resuscitate the being destroyed by the scientific scalpel. But it is absolutely

necessary to pass through this dissection and its progress, the weakness of the human mind so orders it.

I have already pointed out the classification of our researches upon feudal society. I have said that on the one hand we shall study the social state, and on the other, the intellectual state: in the social state, the civil and the religious society; in the intellectual state, the learned literature, and the popular literature. It is, therefore, with the history of civil society in the feudal period, that we must commence.

Here also we have need to divide, to classify, to study separately; the matter is too vast and too complicated, to allow of it being comprehended all complete and at a single grasp.

Let us at least endeavour to discover and to follow out the least artificial method, that which will the least mutilate facts, which will best respect their integrity and concatenation; the most living method, as it were, the one most neighbouring on reality.

If I mistake not, it is the following:

At the end of the tenth century, feudal society was definitively formed; it had attained the plenitude of its existence; it covered and possessed our territory. What was its fundamental element, its political unity? What, so to speak (I have already made use of this expression), what was the pri mitive feudal molecule, that which could not be broken without the feudal character being abolished?

It is evidently the simple fief, the domain possessed by way of fief, by a lord who exercises over the inhabitants that Sovereignty inherent, as you know, to property.

It is therefore with the simple fief, considered in itself, that we shall commence our study. We shall first apply ourselves to the proper understanding of this fundamental element of feudalism.

What does the mere, simple fief contain, reduced to its last expression? What is there to study in its inclosure?

First, the possessor himself of the fief, his situation and his life, that is to say, the castle; then the inhabitant of the fief, not possessors, mere cultivators of the domain, and subject to the proprietor, that is to say, the village.

These are evidently the two objects to which our attention is called in the study of the simple fief. It is necessary that we should thoroughly know what was the condition and des

tiny, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century-1, of the feudal castle and its proprietors; 2, of the feudal village and its inhabitants. When we shall have actually lived in the interior of the fief, when we shall really have been present at what passed there, at the revolutions which were accomplished in it, we shall leave it in order to seek the ties which united together the fiefs disseminated throughout the territory; to be present at the relations, whether between suzerains and vassals, or between vassals among themselves. We shall then study the general association of the possessors of fiefs under the various relations which constitute the political order, that is, in its legislative, military, judicial, and other institutions. We shall endeavour thoroughly to discern: 1, what principles, what ideas presided at these institutions, what were the rational foundations, the political doctrines of feudalism; 2, what the feudal institutions really were, no longer in principle, and conceived systematically, but actually and in application; 3, finally, what results must have been produced, and in fact were produced, whether by the political doctrines, or by the practical institutions of feudalism, for the development of civilization in general.

There feudal society seems to stop. Do we not now know all its elements? is not all its organization unveiled to us? It essentially consists in the hierarchical association of the possessors of fiefs, and in their sovereignty over the inhabitants of their domains. This known, is not all known? have we not arrived at the term of the career which we had to go over?

Certainly not: feudal society, properly so called, even in its triumph, was not, at this epoch, the entire civil society. As I have already had occasion to observe, other elements are there encountered, of another origin and of another character; elements which took place in feudalism, but which* were never completely incorporated with it, which have always secretly combated it, and ended by triumphing over it: these are, royalty and the towns. Royalty was both within and without feudalism: feudal in certain points of its situation, in some of its rights, it borrowed from others, other principles, other social facts, not only foreign but hostile to feudalism. It was so also with towns; they reconstituted themselves within the bosom of feudal

society, to a certain degree assimilating themselves to it; but they were also attached to other principles, to other facts; and, upon the whole, the difference was greater than the assimilation, as the event has proved.

When, then, we shall have studied feudalism in itself, it will still remain for us to study two other elements of civil society at the same epoch, royalty and the towns. We shall study, on the one hand, what, in their feudal character, they had in common with feudalism; on the other, how they were sepa rated from it, in their peculiar and distinct character

All these elements of civil society thus properly known, we shall endeavour to bring them face to face, to unravel the play of their relations; to fix the true physiognomy, and the principal revolutions of the whole which they formed.

Such will be our progress in the study of civil society in France, during the feudal period. Let us immediately approach it, let us enter, and confine ourselves to the simple fief.

Let us first occupy ourselves with its possessor; let us study the situation and the life of the sovereign of this little state, the interior of the castle which contained him, and his people.

The single word castle awakes the idea of feudal society; it seems to rise up before us. Nothing can be more natural. These castles which covered our soil, and the ruins of which are still scattered about, it is feudalism which constructed them; their elevation was, so to speak, the declaration of its triumph. Nothing of the kind existed on the Gallo-Roman soil. Before the German invasion, the great proprietors lived either in cities, or in beautiful houses, agreeably situated near cities, or in rich plains upon the banks of rivers. In the country districts, properly so called, were dispersed the villa, a species of farms, great buildings serving for the improvement of estates, and for the dwelling of the labourers or serfs who cultivated them.

Such was the distribution and habitation of the various classes, which the Germanic nations found in Gaul at the time of the invasion.

It must not be supposed that they disliked and were eager to change it; that they immediately sought the mountains, steep and savage places, in order to construct new and entirely different dwellings. They first established them