Posts Tagged ‘France’

World War II in the West (1940-41)

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. Three days later, Hitler‘s troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Benito Mussolini of Italy put his Pact of Steel with Hitler into action, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10.

On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France’s hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was subsequently divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain’s government, installed at Vichy. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel. To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively throughout the summer of 1940, including night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage. The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade. With Britain’s defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early 1941.

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The War in the Air

Friday, October 12th, 2012

Aircraft technology was little over a decade old when ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand’sassassination in late June 1914 ultimately resulted in the outbreak of ‘The Great War‘ a month later.

Initially deemed of little use to the armed services other than in a reconnaissance role, aircraft development exploded during wartime (all too often literally).  For example, France had fewer than 140 aircraft when her war against Germany began; four years later that number had ballooned to approximately 4,500.

This section of the website examines the role of the aircraft and associated technologies during the First World War, viewed from all sides.  In addition to an exploration of aircraft innovations – such as deflector and interrupter gear – the planes themselves are summarised, from fighter aircraft to bombers to Zeppelins to naval aircraft; and biographies are available for a great many of the war’s air aces and commanders.

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Hitler’s speech in Munich SPEECH OF APRIL 13, 1923

Monday, August 13th, 2012

IN OUR view, the times when there was no ‘League of Nations‘ were far more honorable and more humane.. .. We ask: ‘Must there be wars?’ The pacifist answers ‘No!’ He proceeds to explain that disputes in the life of peoples are only the expression of the fact that a class has been oppressed by the ruling bourgeoisie. When there are in fact differences of opinion between peoples, then these should be brought before a ‘Peace Court’ for its decision. But he does not answer the question whether the judges of this court of arbitration would have the power to bring the parties before the bar of the court. I believe that an accused ordinarily only appears ‘voluntarily’ before a court because, if he did not, he would be fetched there.

I should like to see the nation which would allow itself to be brought before this League of Nations Court in the case of a disagreement without external force. In the life of nations, what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God. It may even happen that in case of a dispute between two peoples – both may be in the right. Thus Austria, a people of fifty millions, had most certainly the right to an outlet to the sea. But since in the strip of territory in question the Italian element of the population was in the majority, Italy claimed for herself the ‘right of self-determination.’ Who yields voluntarily? No one! So the strength which each people possesses decides the day. ALWAYS BEFORE GOD AND THE WORLD THE STRONGER HAS THE RIGHT TO CARRY THROUGH WHAT HE WILLS.

History proves: He who has not the strength – him the ‘right in itself’ profits not a whit. A world court without a world police would be a joke. And from what nations of the present League of Nations would then this force be recruited? Perhaps from the ranks of the old German Army? THE WHOLE WORLD OF NATURE IS A MIGHTY STRUGGLE BETWEEN STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS – AN ETERNAL VICTORY OF THE STRONG OVER THE WEAK. There would be nothing but decay in the whole of Nature if this were not so. States which should offend against the elementary law would fall into decay. You need not seek for long to find an example of such mortal decay: you can see it in the Reich of today….

. . . Before the war two States, Germany and France, had to live side by side but only under arms. It is true that the War of 1870-1 meant for Germany the close of an enmity which had endured for centuries, but in France a passionate hatred against Germany was fostered by every means by propaganda in the press, in school textbooks, in theaters, in the cinemas. . . . All the Jewish papers throughout France agitated against Berlin. Here again to seek and to exploit grounds for a conflict is the clearly recognizable effort of world Jewry.

The conflict of interests between Germany and England lay in the economic sphere. Up till 1850 England’s position as a World Power was undisputed. British engineers, British trade conquer the world. Germany, owing to greater industry and increased capacity, begins to be a dangerous rival. In a short time those firms which in Germany were in English hands pass into the possession of German industrialists. German industry expands vastly and the products of that industry even in the London market drive out British goods.

The protective measure, the stamp ‘Made in Germany,’ has the opposite effect from that desired: this ‘protective stamp’ becomes a highly effective advertisement. The German economic success was not created in Essen alone but by a man who knew that behind economics must stand power, for power alone makes an economic position secure. This power was born upon the battlefields of 1870-71, not in the atmosphere of parliamentary chatter. Forty thousand dead have rendered possible the life of forty millions. When England, in the face of such a Germany as this, threatened to be brought to her knees, then she bethought herself of the last weapon in the armory of international rivalry – violence. A press propaganda on an imposing scale was started as a preparatory measure.

But who is the chief of the whole British press concerned with world trade? One name crystallizes itself out of the rest: Northcliffe – a Jew! . . . A campaign of provocation is carried on with assertions, libels, and promises such as only a Jew can devise, such as only Jewish newspapers would have the effrontery to put before an Aryan people. And then at last 1914: they egg people on: ‘Ah, poor violated Belgium! Up! To the rescue of the small nations – for the honor of humanity!’ The same lies, the same provocation throughout the entire world! And the success of that provocation the German people can trace grievously enough!

WHAT CAUSE FINALLY HAD AMERICA TO ENTER THE WAR AGAINST GERMANY? WITH THE OUTBREAK OF THE WORLD WAR, WHICH JUDAH HAD DESIRED SO PASSIONATELY AND SO LONG, ALL THE LARGE

JEWISH FIRMS OF THE UNITED STATES BEGAN SUPPLYING AMMUNITIONS. They supplied the European ‘war-market’ to an extent which perhaps even they themselves had never dreamed of – a gigantic harvest! Yet nothing satisfied the insatiable greed of the Jew. And so the venal press which depended upon the Stock Exchange kings began an unparalleled propaganda campaign. A GIGANTIC ORGANIZATION FOR NEWSPAPER LYING WAS BUILT UP. AND ONCE MORE IT IS A JEWISH CONCERN, THE HEARST PRESS, WHICH SET THE TONE OF THE AGITATION AGAINST GERMANY.

The hatred of these ‘Americans’ was not directed solely against commercial Germany or against military Germany. It was directed specially against social Germany, because this Germany had up to that time kept itself outside of the principles which governed the world trusts. The old Reich had at least made an honorable attempt to be socially-minded. We had to show for ourselves such an initiative in social institutions as no other country in the wide world could boast. . . . This explains why, even in Germany itself, the ‘comrades’ under Jewish leadership fought against their own vital interests. This explains the agitation carried on throughout the world under the same watchword.

For this reason the Jewish-democratic press of America had to accomplish its masterpiece – that is to say, it had to drive into the most horrible of all wars a great peace-loving people which was as little concerned in European struggles as it was in the North Pole: America was to intervene ‘in defense of civilization,’ and the Americans were persuaded so to do by an atrocity propaganda conducted in the name of civilization which from A to Z was a scandalous invention the like of which has never yet been seen – a farrago of lies and forgeries. Because this last State in the world where social aims were being realized had to be destroyed, therefore twenty-six peoples were incited one against the other by this press which is exclusively in the possession of one and the same world people, of one and the same race, and that race on principle the deadly foe of all national States.

Who could have prevented the World War? Not the Kul- tursolidarität, the ‘solidarity of civilization,’ in whose name the Jews carried on their propaganda: not the so-called World Pacifism – again an exclusively Jewish invention. Could the so-called ‘Solidarity of the Proletariat?’ . . . All the wheels stand silent, still, If that be your strong arm’s will…. The German wheel on November 9, 1918, was indeed brought to a standstill. The Social Democratic party in its principal organ, Vorwärts, declared in so many words that it was not in the interest of the workers that Germany should win the war. . .

Could the Freemasons perhaps stop the war? – this most noble of philanthropic institutions who foretold the good fortune of the people louder than anyone and who at the same time was the principal leader in promoting the war. Who, after all, are the Freemasons? You have to distinguish two grades. To the lower grade in Germany belong the ordinary citizens who through the claptrap which is served up to them can feel themselves to be ‘somebodies,’ but the responsible authorities are those many-sided folk who can stand any climate, those 300 Rathenaus who all know each other, who guide the history of the world over the heads of Kings and Presidents, those who will undertake any office without scruples, who know how brutally to enslave all peoples – once more the Jews!

Why have the Jews been against Germany? That is made quite clear today – proved by countless facts. They use the age-old tactics of the hyena – when fighters are tired out, then go for them! Then make your harvest! In war and revolutions the Jew attained the unattainable. Hundreds of thousands of escaped Orientals become modern ‘Europeans.’ Times of unrest produce miracles. Before 1914 how long would it have taken, for instance, in Bavaria before a Galician Jew became – Prime Minister? – Or in Russia before an anarchist from the New York Ghetto, Bronstein (Trotsky), became – Dictator? Only a few wars and revolutions – that was enough to put the Jewish people into possession of the red gold and thereby to make them masters of the world.

Before 1914 there were two States above all, Germany and Russia, which prevented the Jew from reaching his goal – the mastery of the world. Here not everything which they already possessed in the Western democracies had fallen to the Jews. Here they were not the sole lords alike in the intellectual and economic life. Here, too, the Parliaments were not yet exclusively instruments of Jewish capital and of the will of the Jew. The German and the genuine Russian had still preserved a certain aloofness from the Jew. In both peoples there still lived the healthy instinct of scorn for the Jew, and there was a real danger that in these monarchies there might one day arise a Frederick the Great, a William I, and that democracy and a parliamentary regime might be sent to the devil.

So the Jews became revolutionaries! The Republic should bring them to wealth and to power. This aim they disguised: they cried ‘Down with the monarchies!’ ‘Enthrone the sovereign people!’ I do not know whether today one could venture to call the German or the Russian people ‘sovereign.’ At least one cannot see any trace of it! What the German people can trace, however, what every day stands in the most crass form before its eyes, is debauchery, gluttony, speculation ruling unchecked, the open mockery of the Jew….

So Russia and Germany had to be overthrown in order that the ancient prophecy might be fulfilled. So the whole world was lashed into fury. So every lie and propaganda agency was brutally set in action against the State of the last – the German – idealists! AND THUS IT WAS THAT JUDAH WON THE WORLD WAR. OR WOULD YOU WISH TO MAINTAIN THAT THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, OR THE AMERICAN ‘PEOPLE’ WON THE WAR? THEY, ONE AND ALL, VICTORS AND VANQUISHED ARE ALIKE DEFEATED: one thing raises itself above them all: the World Stock Exchange which has become the master of the people.

WHAT GUILT HAD GERMANY HERSELF FOR THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR? HER GUILT CONSISTED IN THIS: THAT AT THE MOMENT WHEN THE RING CLOSED ABOUT HER EXISTENCE GERMANY NEGLECTED TO ORGANIZE HER DEFENSE WITH SUCH VIGOR THAT THROUGH THIS DEMONSTRATION OF HER POWER EITHER THE OTHERS, DESPITE THEIR ABOMINABLE PURPOSES, WOULD HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR WILL TO STRIKE, OR ELSE THE VICTORY OF THE REICH WOULD HAVE BEEN ASSURED.

The guilt of the German people lies in this: that when in 1912 a criminal Reichstag in its unfathomable baseness and folly had refused to allow the raising of three army corps the people did not create for itself those army corps in the Reichstag’s despite. With these additional 120,000 men the Battle of the Marne would have been won and the issue of the war decided. Two million fewer German heroes would have sunk into their graves. Who was it who in 1912 as in 1918 struck its weapons from the hands of the German people? Who was it that in 1912, as in the last year of the war, infatuated the German people with his theory that if Germany throws down her arms the whole world will follow her example – who? – the democratic-Marxist Jew, who at the same hour incited and still today incites the others to arm and to subjugate ‘barbarous’ Germany.

But someone may perhaps yet raise the question whether it is expedient today to talk about the guilt for the war. Most assuredly we have the duty to talk about it! For the murderers of our Fatherland who all the years through have betrayed and sold Germany, they are the same men who, as the November criminals, have plunged us into the depths of misfortune. We have the duty to speak since in the near future, when we have gained power, we shall have the further duty of taking these creators of ruin, these clouts, these traitors to their State and of hanging them on the gallows to which they belong. Only let no one think that in them there has come a change of heart. On the contrary, these November scoundrels who still are free to go as they will in our midst, they are, even today, going against us. From the recognition of the facts comes the will to rise again. Two millions have remained on the field of battle. They, too, have their rights and not we, the survivors, alone. There are millions of orphans, of cripples, of widows in our midst. They, too, have rights. For the Germany of today not one of them died, not one of them became a cripple, an orphan, or a widow. We owe it to these millions that we build a new Germany!

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Madonna Explains Swastika Appearance on ‘MDNA’ Tour

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

broke her silence on why she incorporated the swastika in a segment of her “MDNA” tour. During an interview on Brazilian television, the singer reasoned out that there was a purpose for the appearance of the symbol.

“That film that was created is about the intolerance that we human beings have for one another and how much we judge people before knowing them,” she said. “There seems to be a growing intolerance around the world. In Greece, France, everywhere people are trying to kick out all the immigrants, make people cover up and not show what their religious affiliation is.”

The film she spoke of served as the backdrop of the pop superstar’s performance of the song, “Nobody Knows Me.” The video backdrop also showed the swastika on the forehead of French National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen took notice of the image after the tour’s stop in Tel Aviv, Israel and threatened the queen of pop with a lawsuit if she showed the same image in France. Madonna refused to edit the video and used it during her concert in Paris. She is reportedly going to be sued by the French National Front party.

“Art is there to track what’s going on in the world, to make social commentary,” she explained. “I think you’re not an artist if you’re not dissecting and deconstructing ideas.”

Her usage of the symbol that has long been recognized as the Nazi symbol and used by white supremacists is not the only thing that kept Madge’s tour in the headlines. Just recently, on Saturday, July 21, Madonna held a gun onstage in Edinburgh despite being warned against it. She also exposed her breast at a show in Istanbul and her rear end at a show in Rome.

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Islamists Attack a Conference on Immigration in Britanny

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

04/06/2012 – 09 h45 VANNES/GWENED (NOVOpress Breizh) [Translation from the French by AR staff.] One hundred fifty people from all over Brittany gathered in Vannes Saturday afternoon for a conference on immigration that was streamed live over the Internet. This was the first meeting of its kind that united three different and often conflicting strands of the movement: supporters of Breton independence, partisans of a strong French state, and those who want a united Europe. As we will also see, the conference was attacked by a band of Islamists.

Jean-Claude Empereur, one of the speakers, reminded the audience that for the first time in history, Europeans are faced with a policy of demographic substitution. “The primary role of the sovereign,” he said, “is to protect the people,” adding, “the word ‘protection’ has disappeared from the political vocabulary but is now returning.”

Christine Tasin, head of Republican Resistance and a supporter of the traditional strong French state, argued that only the state has the means to enforce a coherent and effective policy on immigration. This view was not shared by Padrig Montauzier, editor of War Raok: the Voice of the Breton Nation, and a strong partisan of an independent Brittany. “Only those deeply rooted peoples with a strong ethnic sense can be the true ramparts against this invasion,” he said. “Only they will recognize the danger and take the necessary action.”

Philippe Milliau, who organized the meeting, concluded with reflections on the demographic reality that is at the heart of the migration problem. He noted that by 2050, Europe will account for only 5 percent of the world population, whereas Africa and especially sub-Saharan Africa will have doubled or tripled in population. Today’s 767 million black Africans will have become nearly 2 billion by 2050. For Mr. Milliau, this inescapable reality should lead to serious reflection on the most appropriate policies for dealing with what will be the major challenge of this century.

In the late afternoon, during a spirited debate between partisans of the traditional French state and Breton independence, some 40 Islamists and “youths” armed with rocks and tear gas grenades attacked the hotel where the meeting was being held. They managed to injure a participant before the forces of order arrived, but three of the aggressors were also injured. The police of Vannes (population 135,000) were able to send only five officers, but they quickly persuaded the thugs to decamp. The defeat of the Islamists was welcomed by the tourists at the hotel who had discovered an aspect of Brittany not normally advertized in tourist brochures.

Although ultra-leftist supporters of immigration often attack meetings organized by the identitarian movement—mostly to the satisfaction of the ultra-liberal system—this appears to be the first time Islamists have taken direct action against a meeting of this kind. This attack certainly showed the participants at the meeting—who have different and even opposing perspectives on some matters—that the themes raised during the conference are far from theoretical. As Paul Le Poulpe noted later on the website Riposte Laïque:

The Islamists were the very best glue to bring together differing points of view. Everyone at the conference saw clearly what the Islamists want: to act in France as they act everywhere in the world as soon as the balance of power is in their favor. They leave conquered populations just two choices: dhimmitude or conversion. As we saw yesterday in Brittany, the Islamists were met by Breton nationalists, French statists, identitarians, and other patriots who love their country and their values too much to permit them to be destroyed.

At Vannes, dhimmitude is clearly not on the agenda.

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Panzer II

Monday, May 14th, 2012

A light tank (10 tons) with a crew of three, developed in the mid 1930s as an interim until the arrival of the Panzer III and Panzer IV medium tanks. Despite being primarily intended as a training tank, it was the main tank in the Blitzkrieg invasions of Poland and France, where about 1000 Panzer IIs participated. It also participated in the invasion of Russia in 1941, although it was already obsolete, and lacked armor and firepower. It was armed with a 20mm gun (with 180 rounds) and a coaxial 0.3″ machine gun.

The Panzer II was also the basis for several special tank types: a fast recon tank, an amphibious tank, equipped with a propeller, developed for the intended invasion of England in 1940, and a flamethrower tank ( called Flammpanzer II ) equipped with two flamethrowers (100 were in service by 1942).

 

When the Panzer II tank became obsolete, it was converted to a self-propelled anti-tank gun, using captured Russian 76mm guns ( called Marder I ) and German 75mm guns ( Marder II ). A self-propelled 105mm artillery gun version ( called Wespe ) was produced in occupied Poland.


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BLUM, LEON

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

(9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950) The first Popular Front premier of France whose socialist policies and Jewish descent caused many in France and throughout Europe to mistrust his leadership. The Popular Front introduced many reforms, including the 40-hour week.

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Marine Le Pen’s success reveals populists’ appeal to European voters

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

Leading France’s Front National to its best ever first-round result in her first presidential campaign, Marine Le Pen counts herself as the big winner even if she vanishes from the ballot papers in a fortnight.

As elsewhere in Europe – Austria, the Netherlands or Switzerland – the populist parties, which are usually dubbed the extreme right, frequently perform much better than predicted. That may be because voters are ashamed of telling the pollsters they are voting for maverick rabblerousers, but cast their ballots for them nonetheless.

In any case, there is nothing new about the Front National’s pivotal position in French politics. The FN has been well-established for 30 years and Le Pen’s 18% of the vote on Sunday confirms that, if anything, its influence is growing.

Far or extreme right is a bit of a misnomer for the assorted rebels, mavericks and tub-thumpers usually grouped with the party.

From Hungary to Sweden, Finland to Greece, sundry extremists, racists, neo-Nazis, or simply deep conservatives occupy the ground held by what we call the far right. There are huge differences between, say, the militant street activists of Hungary’s Jobbik movement and the besuited business lobby of the Swiss People’s party.

But what the assorted leaders and parties have in common is a deep rightwing cultural conservatism suffused with nostalgia for an always better and often imaginary national past – the era before mass immigration, globalisation, Europe, and international finance destroyed, they believe, the old, white, illiberal, homogeneous nation states of Europe.

On economics, however, the populists tend to be anything but rightwing. They are further to the left of European social democracy in supporting generous welfare states, early retirement ages, pensions – a strong state munificent in its public spending.

Le Pen’s Dutch equivalent, Geert Wilders, for example, has just brought down the government in The Hague over a budget crisis and his refusal to toe Brussels’ line in cutting welfare benefits and pensions.

Le Pen already looks a more formidable and cannier leader of the movement in France than her father, Jean-Marie, whose crude antisemitism, racism, and second world war revisionism made him the object of mockery as well as fear. People do not laugh at Marine Le Pen as they did at her father.

She has been fortunate in her timing, with the two big contemporary issues fuelling the rise of illiberal populism everywhere in Europe except Germany and the Iberian peninsula – the eurozone crisis and Muslim immigration.

Islamophobia has become the new antisemitism for the current generation of rebels, while the age of austerity decided by Europe’s leaders as the answer to runaway debt, soaring deficits, and a failing euro supplies fertile ground for the populist campaigners.

Hence Le Pen’s and Wilders’s calls to return to national currencies and halt immigration. Although they do not achieve their maximalist demands, these campaigns are successful in setting the agendas in national politics and forcing the mainstream parties to accommodate the extremists by meeting them halfway.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy sounded tough on immigration, Islam, and passport-free travel in Europe to try to lure Le Pen’s voters. He failed. In the Netherlands, Wilders has propped up a rightwing government for almost two years by extracting policy concessions, and has now triggered its collapse. In Austria, first the late Jörg Haider and now his heir, Heinz-Christian Strache, forced the political mainstream in his direction.

As the eurozone crisis drags on, things will get worse for ordinary folk, impacting on the real lives and economies of Europe in the form of unemployment, slashed benefits, credit crunches, banking crises and company closures. The populists are well-placed to benefit from the perceived failures of the mainstream parties and the EU governing elite.

Tomorrow, Le Pen, Wilders and the rest may be tempted to think, belongs to us.

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Put To Death Without Trial

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

For a few months after taking power, Bolshevik leaders considered bringing “Nicholas Romanov” before a “Revolutionary Tribunal” that would publicize his “crimes against the people” before sentencing him to death. Historical precedent existed for this. Two European monarchs had lost their lives as a consequence of revolutionary upheaval: England’s Charles I was beheaded in 1649, and France’s Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793.

In these cases, the king was put to death after a lengthy public trial, during which he was allowed to present arguments in his defense. Nicholas II, though, was neither charged nor tried. He was secretly put to death – along with his family and staff — in the dead of night, in an act that resembled more a gangster-style massacre than a formal execution.

Why did Lenin and Sverdlov abandon plans for a show trial of the former Tsar? In Wilton’s view, Nicholas and his family were murdered because the Bolshevik rulers knew quite well that they lacked genuine popular support, and rightly feared that the Russian people would never approve killing the Tsar, regardless of pretexts and legalistic formalities.

For his part, Trotsky defended the massacre as a useful and even necesssary measure. He wrote:

The decision [to kill the imperial family] was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar’s family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and instill a sense of hopelessness in the enemy but also to shake up our own ranks, to show that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either total victory or total doom This Lenin sensed well.

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Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth And English Development Part Four

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Analysis of the Feudal System – Its local Extent – View of the different

Orders of Society during the Feudal Ages – Nobility – Their Ranks and

Privileges – Clergy – Freemen – Serfs or Villeins – Comparative State of

France and Germany – Privileges enjoyed by the French Vassals – Right of

Coining Money – And of private War – Immunity from Taxation – Historical View

of the Royal Revenue in France – Methods Adopted to Augment it by Depreciation

of the Coin, etc. – Legislative Power – Its State under the Merovingian Kings

and Charlemagne – His Councils – Suspension of any General Legislative

Authority during the Prevalence of Feudal Principles – The King’s Council -

Means adopted to supply the Want of a National Assembly – Gradual Progress of

the King’s Legislative Power – Philip IV. assembles the States-General – Their

Powers limited to Taxation – States under the Sons of Philip IV. – States of

1355 and 1356 – They nearly effect an entire Revolution – The Crown recovers

its Vigor – States of 1380, under Charles VI. – Subsequent Assemblies under

Charles VI. and Charles becomes more and more absolute – Louis XI. – States of

Tours in 1484 – Historical View of Jurisdiction in France – Its earliest Stage

under the first Race of Kings and Charlemagne – Territorial Jurisdiction -

Feudal Courts of Justice – Trial by Combat – Code of St. Louis – The

Territorial Jurisdictions give way – Progress of the Judicial Power of the

Crown – Parliament of Paris – Peers of France – Increased Authority of the

Parliament – Registration of Edicts – Causes of the Decline of the Feudal

System – Acquisitions of Domain by the Crown – Charters of Incorporation

granted to Towns – Their previous Condition – First Charters in the Twelfth

Century – Privileges contained in them – Military Service of Feudal Tenants

commuted for Money – Hired Troops – Change in the Military System of Europe -

General View of the Advantages and Disadvantages attending the Feudal System.

 

     The advocates of a Roman origin for most of the institutions which we

find in the kingdoms erected on the ruins of the empire are naturally prone to

magnify the analogies to feudal tenure which Rome presents to us, and even to

deduce it either from the ancient relation of patron and client, and that of

personal commendation, which was its representative in a later age, or from

the frontier lands granted in the third century to the Laeti, or barbarian

soldiers, who held them, doubtless, subject to a condition of military

service.  The usage of commendation especially, so frequent in the fifth

century, before the conquest of Gaul, as well as afterwards, does certainly

bear a strong analogy to vassalage, and I have already pointed it out as one

of its sources.  It wanted, however, that definite relation to the tenure of

land which distinguished the latter. The royal Antrustio (whether the word

commendatus were applied to him or not) stood bound by gratitude and loyalty

to his sovereign, and in a very different degree from a common subject; but he

was not perhaps strictly a vassal till he had received a territorial benefice.

^a The complexity of subinfeudation could have no analogy in commendation.

 

[Footnote a: This word "vassal" is used very indefinitely; it means, in its

original sense, only a servant or dependant. But in the continental records of

histories we commonly find it applied to feudal tenants.]

 

     The grants to veterans and to the Laeti are so far only analogous to

fiefs that they established the principle of holding lands on a condition of

military service.  But this service was no more than what, both under

Charlemagne and in England, if not in other times and places, the allodial

freeholder was bound to render for the defence of the realm; it was more

commonly required, because the lands were on a barbarian frontier; but the

duty was not even very analogous to that of a feudal tenant. ^b The essence of

a fief seems to be, that its tenant owed fealty to a lord, and not to the

state or the sovereign; the lord might be the latter, but it was not, feudally

speaking, as a sovereign that he was obeyed.  This is, therefore, sufficient

to warrant us in tracing the real theory of feuds no higher than the

Merovingian history in France; their full establishment, as has been seen, is

considerably later.  But the preparatory steps in the constitutions of the

declining empire are of considerable importance, not merely as analogies, but

as predisposing circumstances, and even germs to be subsequently developed.

The beneficiary tenure of lands could not well be brought by the conquerors

from Germany; but the donatives of arms or precious metals bestowed by the

chiefs on their followers were also analogous to fiefs; and, as the Roman

institutions were one source of the law of tenure, so these were another.

 

[Footnote b: If Gothofred is right in his construction of the tenure of these

Laeti, they were not even generally liable to this part of our trinoda

necessitas, but only to conscription for the legions.  Et ea tamen conditione

terras illis excolendas Laeti consequebantur, ut delectibus quoque ob noxii

essent et legionibus insererentur (Not. ad Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. 20, c.

12).  Sir Francis Palgrave, however, says, - "The duty of bearing arms was

inseparably connected with the property." (English Commonwealth, i. 354.) This

is too equivocal; but he certainly means more than Gothofred; he supposes a

permanent universal obligation to render service in all public warfare.]

 

     It is of great importance to be on our guard against seeming analogies

which vanish when they are closely observed.  We should speak inaccurately if

we were to use the word feudal for the service of the Irish or Highland clans

to their chieftain; their tie was that of imagined kindred and respect for

birth, not the spontaneous compact of vassalage. Much less can we extend the

name of feud, though it is sometimes strangely misapplied, to the polity of

Poland and Russia.  All the Polish nobles were equal in rights, and

independent of each other; all who were less than noble were in servitude.  No

government can be more opposite to the long gradations and mutual duties of

the feudal system. ^c

 

[Footnote c: In civil history many instances might be found of feudal

ceremonies in countries not regulated by the feudal law.  Thus Selden has

published an infeudation of a vayvod of Moldavia by the King of Poland, A.D.

1485, in the regular forms, vol. iii. p. 514.  But these political fiefs have

hardly any connection with the general system, and merely denote the

subordination of one prince or people to another.]

 

     The regular machinery and systematic establishment of feuds, in fact, may

be considered as almost confined to the dominions of Charlemagne, and to those

countries which afterwards derived it from thence.  In England it can hardly

be thought to have existed in a complete state before the Conquest.  Scotland,

it is supposed, borrowed it soon after from her neighbor.  The Lombards of

Benevento had introduced feudal customs into the Neapolitan provinces, which

the Norman conquerors afterwards perfected.  Feudal tenures were so general in

the kingdom of Aragon, that I reckon it among the monarchies which were

founded upon that basis. ^d Charlemagne’s empire, it must be remembered,

extended as far as the Ebro. But in Castile ^e and Portugal they were very

rare, and certainly could produce no political effect.  Benefices for life

were sometimes granted in the kingdoms of Denmark and Bohemia. ^f Neither of

these, however, nor Sweden, nor Hungary, come under the description of

countries influenced by the feudal system. ^g That system, however, after all

these limitations, was so extensively diffused, that it might produce

confusion as well as prolixity to pursue collateral branches of its history in

all the countries where it prevailed.  But this embarrassment may be avoided

without any loss, I trust, of important information.  The English constitution

will find its place in another portion of these volumes; and the political

condition of Italy, after the eleventh century, was not much affected, except

in the kingdom of Naples, by the laws of feudal tenure. I shall confine

myself, therefore, chiefly to France and Germany; and far more to the former

than the latter country.  But it may be expedient first to contemplate the

state of society in its various classes during the prevalence of feudal

principles, before we trace their influence upon the national government.

 

[Footnote d: It is probable that feudal tenure was as ancient in the north of

Spain as in the contiguous provinces of France.  But it seems to have chiefly

prevailed in Aragon about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the Moors

south of the Ebro were subdued by the enterprise of private nobles, who, after

conquering estates for themselves, did homage for them to the king.  James I.,

upon the reduction of Valencia, granted lands by way of fief, on condition of

defending that kingdom against the Moors, and residing personally upon the

estate.  Many did not perform this engagement, and were deprived of the lands

in consequence.  It appears by the testament of this monarch that feudal

tenures subsisted in every part of his dominions. - Martenne, Thesaurus

Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 1141, 1155. An edict of Peter II. in 1210 prohibits the

alienation of emphyteuses without the lord's consent.  It is hard to say

whether regular fiefs are meant by this word. - De Marca, Marca Hispanica, p.

1396.  This author says that there were no arriere-fiefs in Catalonia.

 

     The Aragonese fiefs appear, however, to have differed from those of other

countries in some respects.  Zurita mentions fiefs according to the custom of

Italy, which he explains to be such as were liable to the usual feudal aids

for marrying the lord's daughter, and other occasions.  We may infer,

therefore, that these prestations were not customary in Aragon. - Anales de

Aragon, t. ii. p. 62.]

 

[Footnote e: What is said of vassalage in Alfonzo X.'s code, Las siete

partidas, is short and obscure; nor am I certain that it meant anything more

than voluntary commendation, the custom mentioned in the former part of this

chapter, from which the vassal might depart at pleasure.  See, however, Du

Cange, v. Honor, where authorities are given for the existence of Castilian

fiefs; and I have met with occasional mention of them in history.  I believe

that tenures of this kind were introduced in the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries; but not to any great extent. - Marina, Teoria de las Cortes, t.

iii. p. 14. Tenures of a feudal nature, as I collect from Freirii Institut.

Juris Lusitani, tom. ii. t. 1 and 3, existed in Portugal, though the jealousy

of the crown prevented the system from being established.  There were even

territorial jurisdictions in that kingdom, though not, at least originally, in

Castile.]

 

[Footnote f: Daniae regni politicus status.  Elzevir, 1629.  Stransky,

Respublica Bohemica, ib.  In one of the oldest Danish historians, Sweno, I

have noticed this expression: Waldemarus, patris tunc potitus feodo. Langebek,

Scrip. Rerum Danic. t. i. p. 62.  By this he means the duchy of Sleswic, not a

fief, but an honor or government possessed by Waldemar. Saxo Grammaticus calls

it more classically, paternae praefecturae dignitas.  Sleswic was, in later

times, sometimes held as a fief; but this does not in the least imply that

lands in Denmark proper were feudal, of which I find no evidence.]

 

[Footnote g: Though there were no feudal tenures in Sweden, yet the nobility

and others were exempt from taxes on condition of serving the king with a

horse and arms at their own expense; and a distinction was taken between liber

and tributarius.  But any one of the latter might become of the former class,

or vice versa. - Sueciae descriptio.  Elzevir, 1631, p. 92.]

 

     It has been laid down already was most probable that no proper

aristocracy, except that of wealth, was known under the early kings of France;

and it was hinted that hereditary benefices, or, in other words, fiefs, might

supply the link that was wanting between personal privileges and those of

descent.  The possessors of beneficiary estates were usually the richest and

most conspicuous individuals in the state.  They were immediately connected

with the crown, and partakers in the exercise of justice and royal counsels.

Their sons now came to inherit this eminence; and, as fiefs were either

inalienable, or at least not very frequently alienated, rich families were

kept long in sight; and, whether engaged in public affairs or living with

magnificence and hospitality at home, naturally drew to themselves popular

estimation.  The dukes and counts, who had changed their quality of governors

into that of lords over the provinces intrusted to them, were at the head of

this noble class.  And in imitation of them, their own vassals, as well as

those of the crown, and even rich allodialists, assumed titles from their

towns or castles, and thus arose a number of petty counts, barons, and

viscounts.  This distinct class of nobility became coextensive with the feudal

tenures. ^h For the military tenant, however poor, was subject to no tribute;

no prestation, but service in the field; he was the companion of his lord in

the sports and feasting of his castle, the peer of his court; he fought on

horseback, he was clad in the coat of mail, while the commonalty, if summoned

at all to war, came on foot, and with no armor of defence.  As everything in

the habits of society conspired with that prejudice which, in spite of moral

philosophers, will constantly raise the profession of arms above all others,

it was a natural consequence that a new species of aristocracy, founded upon

the mixed considerations of birth, tenure, and occupation, sprang out of the

feudal system.  Every possessor of a fief was a gentleman, though he owned but

a few acres of land, and furnished his slender contribution towards the

equipment of a knight.  In the Libri Feudorum, indeed, those who were three

degrees removed from the emperor in order to tenancy are considered as

ignoble; ^i but this is restrained to modern investitures; and in France,

where subinfeudation was carried the farthest, no such distinction has met my

observation. ^j

 

[Footnote h: M. Guerard observes that in the Chartulary of Chartres,

exhibiting the usages of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth centuries,

"La noblesse s'y montre completement constitutee; c'est a dire, privilegiee et

hereditaire.  Elle peut etre divisee en haute, moyenne, et basse." By the

first he understands those who held immediately of the crown; the middle

nobility were mediate vassals, but had rights of jurisdiction, which the lower

had not.  (Prolegomenes a la Cartulaire de Chartres, p. 30.)]

 

[Footnote i: L. ii. t. 10.]

 

[Footnote j: The nobility of an allodial possession, in France, depended upon

its right to territorial jurisdiction.  Hence there were franc-aleux nobles

and franc-aleux roturiers; the latter of which were subject to the

jurisdiction of the neighboring lord.  Loiseau, Traite des Seigneuries, p. 76.

Denisart, Dictionnaire des Decisions, art. Franc-aleu.]

 

     There still, however, wanted something to ascertain gentility of blood

where it was not marked by the actual tenure of land.  This was supplied by

two innovations devised in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – the adoption

of surnames and of armorial bearings.  The first are commonly referred to the

former age, when the nobility began to add the names of their estates to their

own, or, having any way acquired a distinctive appellation, transmitted it to

their posterity. ^k As to armorial bearings, there is no doubt that emblems

somewhat similar have been immemorially used both in war and peace.  The

shields of ancient warriors, and devices upon coins or seals, bear no distant

resemblance to modern blazonry.  But the general introduction of such

bearings, as hereditary distinctions, has been sometimes attributed to

tournaments, wherein the champions were distinguished by fanciful devices;

sometimes to the crusades, where a multitude of all nations and languages

stood in need of some visible token to denote the banners of their respective

chiefs. In fact, the peculiar symbols of heraldry point to both these sources,

and have been borrowed in part from each. ^l Hereditary arms were perhaps

scarcely used by private families before the beginning of the thirteenth

century. ^m From that time, however, they became very general, and have

contributed to elucidate that branch of history which regards the descent of

illustrious families.

 

[Footnote k: Mabillon, Traite de Diplomatique, l. ii. c. 7.  The authors of

the Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. ii. p. 563, trace the use of surnames

in a few instances even to the beginning of the tenth century; but they did

not become general, according to them, till the thirteenth.

 

     M. Guerard finds a few hereditary surnames in the eleventh century and

many that were personal.  (Cartulaire de Chartres, p. 93.) The latter are not

surnames at all, in our usual sense.  A good many may be found in Domesday, as

that of Burdet in Leicestershire, Malet in Suffolk, Corbet in Shropshire,

Colville in Yorkshire, besides those with de, which of course is a local

designation, but became hereditary.]

 

[Footnote l: Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xx. p. 579.]

 

[Footnote m: I should be unwilling to make a negative assertion peremptorily

in a matter of mere antiquarian research; but I am not aware of any decisive

evidence that hereditary arms were borne in the twelfth century, except by a

very few royal or almost royal families.  Mabillon, Traite de Diplomatique, l.

ii. c. 18.  Those of Geoffrey the Fair, Count of Anjou, who died in 1150, are

extant on his shield; azure, four lions rampant or.  Hist. Litteraire de la

France, t. ix. p. 165.  If arms had been considered as hereditary at that

time, this should be the bearing of England, which, as we all know, differs

considerably.  Louis VII. sprinkled his seal and coin with fleurs-de-lys, a

very ancient device, or rather ornament, and the same as what are sometimes

called bees.  The golden ornaments found in the tomb of Childeric I. at

Tournay, which may be seen in the library of Paris, may pass either for

fleurs-de-lys or bees.  Charles V. reduced the number to three, and thus fixed

the arms of France.  The counts of Toulouse used their cross in the twelfth

age; but no other arms, Vaissette tells us, can be traced in Languedoc so far

back. T. iii. p. 514.

 

     Armorial bearings were in use among the Saracens during the later

crusades; as appears by a passage in Joinville, t. i. p. 88 (Collect. des

Memoires), and Du Cange's note upon it.  Perhaps, however, they may have been

adopted in imitation of the Franks, like the ceremonies of knighthood.

Villaret ingeniously conjectures that the separation of different branches of

the same family by their settlements in Palestine led to the use of hereditary

arms, in order to preserve the connection. T. xi. p. 113.

 

     M. Sismondi, I observe, seems to entertain no doubt that the noble

families of Pisa, including that whose name he bears, had their armorial

distinctions in the beginning of the twelfth century.  Hist. des Repub. Ital.

t. i. p. 373.  It is at least probable that the heraldic devices were as

ancient in Italy as in any part of Europe.  And the authors of Nouveau Traite

de Diplomatique, t. iv. p. 388, incline to refer hereditary arms even in

France to the beginning of the twelfth century, though without producing any

evidence for this.]

 

     When the privileges of birth had thus been rendered capable of legitimate

proof, they were enhanced in a great degree, and a line drawn between the

high-born and ignoble classes, almost as broad as that which separated liberty

from servitude.  All offices of trust and power were conferred on the former;

those excepted which appertain to the legal profession.  A plebeian could not

possess a fief. ^n Such at least was the original strictness; but as the

aristocratic principle grew weaker, an indulgence was extended to heirs, and

afterwards to purchasers. ^o They were even permitted to become noble by the

acquisition, or at least by its possession for three generations. ^p But

notwithstanding this ennobling quality of the land, which seems rather of an

equivocal description, it became an established right of the crown to take,

every twenty years, and on every change of the vassal, a fine, known by the

name of franc-fief, from plebeians in possession of land held by a noble

tenure. ^q A gentleman in France or Germany could not exercise any trade

without derogating, that is, losing, the advantages of his rank.  A few

exceptions were made, at least in the former country, in favor of some liberal

arts, and of foreign commerce. ^r But in nothing does the feudal haughtiness

of birth more show itself than in the disgrace which attended unequal

marriages.  No children could inherit a territory held immediately of the

empire unless both their parents belonged to the higher class of nobility. In

France the offspring of a gentleman by a plebeian mother were reputed noble

for the purposes of inheritance and of exemption from tribute. ^s But they

could not be received into any order of chivalry, though capable of simple

knighthood; nor were they considered as any better than a bastard class deeply

tainted with the alloy of their maternal extraction. Many instances occur

where letters of nobility have been granted to reinstate them in their rank.

^t For several purposes it was necessary to prove four, eight, sixteen, or a

greater number of quarters, that is, of coats borne by paternal and maternal

ancestors, and the same practice still subsists in Germany. ^u

 

[Footnote n: We have no English word that conveys the full sense of roturier.

How glorious is this deficiency in our political language, and how different

are the ideas suggested by commoner!  Roturier according to Du Cange, is

derived from rupturarius, a peasant, ab agrum rumpendo.]

 

[Footnote o: The Establishements of St. Louis forbid this innovation, but

Beaumanoir contends that the prohibition does not extend to descent of

marraige, c. 48.  The roturier who acquired a fief, if he challenged any one,

fought with ignoble arms; but in all other respects was treated as a

gentleman.  Ibid.  Yet a knight was not obliged to do homage to the roturier

who became his superior by the acquisition of a fief on which he depended.

Carpentier, Supplement. ad Du Cange, voc. Homagium.]

 

[Footnote p. Establissemens de St. Louis, c. 143, and note, in Ordonnances des

Rois, t. i.  See also preface to the same volume, p. xii.  According to Mably,

the possession of a fief did not cease to confer nobility (analogous to our

barony by tenure) till the Ordonnances des Blois in 1579.  Observations sur

l'Hist. de France, l. iii. c. 1 note 6.  But Lauriere, author of the preface

above cited, refers to Bouteiller, a writer of the fourteenth century, to

prove that no one could become noble without the king's authority.  The

contradiction will not much perplex us, when we reflect on the disposition of

lawyers to ascribe all prerogatives to the crown, at the expense of

territorial proprietors and of ancient customary law.]

 

[Footnote q: The right, originally perhaps usurpation, called franc-fief,

began under Philip the Fair.  Ordonnances de Rois, t. i. p. 324; Denisart,

art. Franc-fief.]

 

[Footnote r: Houard, Dict. du Droit Normand Encyclopedie, art. Noblesse,

Argou, l. ii. c. 2.]

 

[Footnote s: Nobility, to a certain degree, was communicated through the

mother alone, not only by the custom of Champagne, but in all parts of France;

that is, the issue were "gentilhommes du fait de leur corps." and could

possess fiefs; but, says Beaumanoir, "la gentilesse par laquelle on devient

chevalier doit venir de par le pere," c. 45.  There was a proverbial maxim in

French law, rather emphatic than decent, to express the derivation of

gentility from the father, and of freedom from the mother.]

 

Carpentier voc. Nobilitatio.]

 

[Footnote u: [Note Note XII.]]

 

     It appears, therefore, that the original nobility of the Continent were

what we may call self-created, and did not derive their rank from any such

concessions of their respective sovereigns as have been necessary in

subsequent ages.  In England the baronies by tenure might belong to the same

class, if the lands upon which they depended had not been granted by the

crown.  But the kings of France, before the end of the thirteenth century,

began to assume a privilege of creating nobles by their own authority, and

without regard to the tenure of land.  Philip the Hardy, in 1271, was the

first French king who granted letters of nobility; under the reigns of Philip

the Fair and his children they gradually became frequent. ^v This effected a

change in the character of nobility, and had as obvious a moral, as other

events of the same age had a political, influence in diminishing the power and

independence of the territorial aristocracy. The privileges originally

connected with ancient lineage and extensive domains became common to the

low-born creatures of a court, and lost consequently part of their title to

respect.  The lawyers, as I have observed above, pretended that nobility could

not exist without a royal concession.  They acquired themselves, in return for

their exaltation of prerogative, an official nobility by the exercise of

magistracy.  The institutions of chivalry again gave rise to a vast increase

of gentlemen, knighthood, on whomsoever conferred by the sovereign, being a

sufficient passport to noble privileges.  It was usual, perhaps, to grant

previous letters of nobility to a plebeian for whom the honor of knighthood

was designed.

 

[Footnote v: Velly, t. vi. p. 432; Du Cange and Carpentier, voce Nobilitaire,

&c.; Boulainvilliers, Hist. de l'Ancien Gouvernement de France, t. i. p. 317.]

 

     In this noble or gentle class there were several gradations.  All those

in France who held lands immediately depending upon the crown, whatever titles

they might bear, were comprised in the order of barons. These were originally

the peers of the king’s court; they possessed the higher territorial

jurisdiction, and had the right of carrying their own banner into the field.

^w To these corresponded the Valvassores majores and Capitanei of the empire.

In a subordinate class were the vassals of this high nobility, who, upon the

Continent, were usually termed Vavassors – an appellation not unknown, though

rare, in England. ^x The Chatelains belonged to the order of Vavassors, as

they held only arriere fiefs; but, having fortified houses, from which they

derived their name (a distinction very important in those times), and

possessing ampler rights of territorial justice, they rose above the level of

their fellows in the scale of tenure. ^y But after the personal nobility of

chivalry became the object of pride, the Vavassors who obtained knighthood

were commonly styled bachelors; those who had not received that honor fell

into the class of squires, ^z or damoiseaux.

 

[Footnote w: Beaumanoir, c. 34; Du Cange, v. Baro; Etablissemens de St. Louis,

l. i. c. 24, l. ii. c. 36.  The vassals of inferior lords were, however,

called, improperly, Barons, both in France and England.  Recueil des

Historiens, t. xi. p. 300; Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 133.  In perfect

strictness, those only whose immediate tenure of the crown was older than the

accession of Hugh Capet were barons of France; namely, Bourbon, Coucy, and

Beaujeu, or Beaujolois.  It appears, however, by a register in the reign of

Philip Augustus, that fifty-nine were reckoned in that class; the feudatories

of the Capetian fiefs, Paris and Orleans being confounded with the original

vassals of the crown.  Du Cange, voc. Baro.]

 

[Footnote x: Du Cange, v. Vavassor; Velly, t. vi. p. 151; Madox, Baronia

Anglica, p. 135.  There is, perhaps, hardly any word more loosely used than

Vavassor.  Bracton says, Sunt etiam Vavassores, magnae dignitatis viri.  In

France and Germany they are sometimes named with much less honor.  Je suis un

chevalier ne de cest part, de vavasseurs et de basse gent, says a romance.

This is to be explained by the poverty to which the subdivision of fiefs

reduced idle gentlemen.

 

     Chaucer concludes his picturesque description of the franklin, in the

prologue to the Canterbury Tales, thus: - "Was never such a worthy vavassor."

This has perplexed some of our commentators, who, not knowing well what was

meant by a franklin or by a vavassor, fancied the latter to be of much higher

quality than the former.  The poet, however, was strictly correct; his

acquaintance with French manners showed him that the country squire, for his

franklin is no other, precisely corresponded to the vavassor in France.  Those

who, having been deceived, by comparatively modern law-books, into a notion

that the word franklin denoted but a stout yeoman, in spite of the wealth and

rank which Chaucer assigns to him, and believing also, on the authority of the

loose phrase in Bracton, that all vavassors were "magnae dignitatis viri,"

might well be puzzled at seeing the words employed as synonyms.  See Todd's

Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer for an instance.]

 

[Footnote y: Du Cange, v. Castellanus; Coutumes de Poitou, tit. iii.; Loiseau

Traite des Seigneuries, p. 160.  Whoever had a right to a castle had la haute

justice; this being so incident to the castle that it was transferred along

with it.  There might, however, be a Seigneur haut-justicier below the

Chatelain; and a ridiculous distinction was made as to the number of posts by

which their gallows might be supported.  A baron's instrument of execution

stood on four posts; a chatelain's on three; while the inferior lord who

happened to possess la haute justice was forced to hang his subjects on a

two-legged machine.  Coutumes de Poitou; Du Cange, v. Furca.

 

     Lauriere quotes from an old manuscript the following short scale of

ranks: Duc est la premiere dignite, puis comtes, puis viscomtes, et puis

baron, et puis chatelain, et puis vavasseur, et puis citaen, et puis villain.

l Ordonnances des Rois, t. i. p. 277.]

 

[Footnote z: The sons of knights, and gentlemen not yet knighted, took the

appellation of squires in the twelfth century.  Vaissette, Hist. de Lang. t.

ii. p. 513.  That of Damoiseau came into use in the thirteenth.  Id. t. iii.

p. 529.  The latter was, I think, more usual in France.  Du Cange gives little

information as to the word squire.  (Scutifer.) "Apud Anglos," he says,

"penultima est nobilitatis descriptio, inter Equitem et Generosum.  Quod et

alibi in usu fuit." Squire was not used as a title of distinction in England

till the reign of Edward III., and then but sparingly.  Though by Henry VI.'s

time it was grown more common, yet none assumed it but the sons and heirs of

knights and some military men; except officers in courts of justice, who, by

patent or prescription, had obtained that addition.  Spelman's Posthumous

Works, p. 234.]

 

     It will be needless to dwell upon the condition of the inferior clergy,

whether secular or professed, as it bears little upon the general scheme of

polity.  The prelates and abbots, however, it must be understood, were

completely feudal nobles.  They swore fealty for their lands to the king or

other superior, received the homage of their vassals, enjoyed the same

immunities, exercised the same jurisdiction, maintained the same authority, as

the lay lords among whom they dwelt.  l Military service does not appear to

have been reserved in the beneficiary grants made to cathedrals and

monasteries.  But when other vassals of the crown were called upon to repay

the bounty of their sovereign by personal attendance in war, the

ecclesiastical tenants were supposed to fall within the scope of this feudal

duty, which men little less uneducated and violent than their compatriots were

not reluctant to fulfil.  Charlemagne exempted or rather prohibited them from

personal service by several capitularies. ^a The practice, however, as

everyone who has some knowledge of history will be aware, prevailed in

succeeding ages.  Both in national and private warfare we find very frequent

mention of martial prelates. ^b But, contrary as this actual service might be

to the civil as well as ecclesiastical laws, the clergy who held military

fiefs were of course bound to fulfil the chief obligation of that tenure and

send their vassals into the field.  We have many instances of their

accompanying the army, though not mixing in the conflict; and even the parish

priests headed the militia of their villages. ^c The prelates, however,

sometimes contrived to avoid this military service, and the payments

introduced in commutation for it, by holding lands in frank-almoigne, a tenure

which exempted them from every species of obligation except that of saying

masses for the benefit of the grantor’s family. ^d But, notwithstanding the

warlike disposition of some ecclesiastics, their more usual inability to

protect the estates of their churches against rapacious neighbors suggested a

new species of feudal relation and tenure.  The rich abbeys elected an

advocate, whose business it was to defend their interests both in secular

courts and, if necessary, in the field.  Pepin and Charlemagne are styled

Advocates of the Roman church.  This, indeed, was on a magnificent scale; but

in ordinary practice the advocate of a monastery was some neighboring lord,

who, in return for his protection, possessed many lucrative privileges, and

very frequently considerable estates by way of fief from his ecclesiastical

clients.  Some of these advocates are reproached with violating their

obligation, and becoming the plunderers of those whom they had been retained

to defend. ^e

 

[Footnote a: Mably, l. i. c. 5; Baluze, t. i. pp. 410, 932, 987.  Any bishop,

priest, deacon, or subdeacon bearing arms was to be degraded and not even

admitted to lay communion.  Id. p. 932.]

 

[Footnote b: One of the latest instances probably of a fighting bishop is Jean

Montaigu, archbishop of Sens, who was killed at Azincourt. Monstrelet says

that he was "non pas en estat pontifical, car au lieu de mitre il portoit une

bacinet, pour dalmatique portoit un haubergeon, pour chasuble la piece

d'acier; et au lieu de crosse, portoit une hache." Fol. 132.] [Footnote c:

Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, t. i. p. 88.]

 

[Footnote d: Du Cange, Eleesmosyna Libera; Madox, Baronia Angl. p. 115; Coke

on Littleton, and other English law-books.]

 

[Footnote e: Du Cange, v. Advocatus; a full and useful article.  Recueil des

Historiens, t. xi. preface, p. 184.]

 

     The classes below the gentry may be divided into freemen and villeins.

Of the first were the inhabitants of chartered towns, the citizens and

burghers, of whom more will be said presently.  As to those who dwelt in the

country, we can have no difficulty in recognizing, so far as England is

concerned, the socagers, whose tenure was free, though not so noble as

knight’s service, and a numerous body of tenants for term of life, who formed

that ancient basis of our strength, the English yeomanry. But the mere freemen

are not at first sight so distinguishable in other countries.  In French

records and law-books of feudal times, all besides the gentry are usually

confounded under the names of villeins or hommes de pooste (gens potestatis).

^f This proves the slight estimation in which all persons of ignoble birth

were considered.  For undoubtedly there existed a great many proprietors of

land and others, as free, though not as privileged, as the nobility.  In the

south of France, and especially Provence, the number of freemen is remarked to

have been greater than in the parts on the right bank of the Loire, where the

feudal tenures were almost universal. ^g I shall quote part of a passage in

Beaumanoir which points out this distinction of ranks pretty fully.  “It

should be known,” he says, ^h “that there are three conditions of men in this

world; the first is that of gentlemen; and the second is that of such as are

naturally free, being born of a free mother.  All who have a right to be

called gentlemen are free, but all who are free are not gentlemen. Gentility

comes by the father, and not by the mother; but freedom is derived from the

mother only; and whoever is born of a free mother is himself free, and has

free power to do anything that is lawful.” ^i

 

[Footnote f: Homo potestatis, non nobilis - Ita nuncupantur, quod in potestate

domini sunt – Opponuntur viris nobilibus; apud Butilerium Consuetudinarii

vocantur, Coustumiers, prestationibus scilicet obnoxii et operis.  Du Cange,

v. Potestas.  As all these freemen were obliged, by the ancient laws of

France, to live under the protection of some particular lord, and found great

difficulty in choosing a new place of residence, as they were subject to many

tributes and oppressive claims on the part of their territorial superiors, we

cannot be surprised that they are confounded, at thi

[Footnote t: Beaumanoir, c. 45; Du Cange, Dissert. 10, sur Joinville;


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