unpopular. Philip took advantage of this hatred of the lower classes and the cowardice of his creature, Pope Clement V., to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order (1307–1313) was a remarkable example of the use of the religious tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was a dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the crusades. A general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the sequestration of their property, examination under torture, the falsifying of procedure, extortion of money from the pope, the auto-da-fé of innocent victims, the dishonest pillaging of their goods by the joint action of the king and the pope: such was the outcome of this vast process of secularization, which foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th centuries.
External policy had the same litigious character. Philip the Fair instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king of England and the count of Flanders, foreign princes holding possessions within his kingdom; and against the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and Philip the Fair and Edward I. kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between Germany and France. Philip began by interfering in the affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his father’s inheritance; after which, on the pretext of a quarrel between French and English sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a citation of the king of England before the parlement of Paris, and in case of default a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by execution—that is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce arranged by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him the hand of Philip’s sister for himself and that of the king’s daughter for his son (1298).
A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt of Philip the Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish fief like the English one (1300–1326), thus coming into conflict with proud and turbulent republics composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers, Philip the Fair and Flanders. fullers and powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre, count of Namur, who had become count of Flanders on the death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279—an ambitious, greedy and avaricious man—was arrested at the Louvre on account of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.’s eldest son without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two years, he sided definitely with the king of England when the latter was in arms against Philip; and being only weakly supported by Edward, he was betrayed by the nobles who favoured France, and forced to yield up not only his personal liberty but the whole of Flanders (1300). The Flemings, however, soon wearying of the oppressive administration of the French governor, Jacques de Châtillon, and the recrudescence of patrician domination, rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at Courtrai (1302)—a prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years’ War. Philip’s double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at Mons-en-Pévèle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge (1305).
The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his kingdom on the eastern border were more fortunate. His marriage had gained him Champagne; and he afterwards extended his influence over Franche Comté, Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also Eastern policy of Philip the Fair. Viviers and the important town of Lyons—all this less by force of arms than by the expenditure of money. Disdaining the illusory dream of the imperial crown, still cherished by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards that fluctuating eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which would have yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate interruption of the Hundred Years’ War.
His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV., continued his work. They increased the power of the monarchy politically by destroying the feudal reaction excited in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct of the jurists, like Enguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing financial The sons of Philip the Fair (1314–1328). extortions of their father; and they also—notably Philip V., one of the most hard-working of the Capets—increased it on the administrative side by specializing the services of justice and of finance, which were separated from the king’s council. Under these mute self-effacing kings the progress of royal power was only the more striking. With them the senior male line of the house of Capet became extinct.
During three centuries and a half they had effected great
things: they had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil
institutions. The land subject to Hugh Capet in
987, barely representing two of the modern departments
of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine
The royal house
of Capet.
of them. The political unity of the kingdom was only
fettered by the existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanders
on the north, Brittany on the west, Burgundy on the east and
Guienne on the south. The capital, which for long had been
movable, was now established in the Louvre at Paris, fortified
by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions at large
had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the
will of the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching
of Roman law—the law of servitude, not of liberty—and already
proclaimed by the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superior
to the customs, had been of immense support to the interest of
the state and the views of the monarchs; and finally the Capets,
so humble of origin, had created organs of general administration
common to all in order to effect an administrative centralization.
In their grand council and their domains they would have none
but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents. The royal
exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the chambre
des comptes, and the treasury of the crown lands at the Louvre,
together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more complicated
and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by
the parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by
means of cas royaux (royal suits), and at the same time the royal
coinage became obligatory. Against this exaltation of their
power two adversaries might have been formidable; but one,
the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and the second, the
people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it had
abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the
declared will of the king. This well-established authority was
also supported by the revered memory of “Monseigneur Saint
Louis”; and it is this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior
to all other, that explains how the royal prerogative came to
survive the mistakes and misfortunes of the Hundred Years’
War.
On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown passed to a younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven representatives (1328–1498) were on the whole very inferior to the Capets, and, with the exception of Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their Advent of the Valois. political sense nor even their good common sense; they cost France the loss of her great advantage over all other countries. During this century and a half France passed through two very severe crises; under the first five Valois the Hundred Years’ War imperilled the kingdom’s independence; and under Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established with such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.
Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the
nation’s rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained.
An assembly of peers and barons, relying on two
precedents under Philip V. and Charles IV., declared
that “no woman, nor therefore her son, could in
Philip VI.
(1328–1350).
accordance with custom succeed to the monarchy of
France.” This definite decision, to which the name of the Salic
law was given much later, set aside Edward III., king of England,
grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the late kings and son of
their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to the feudal
chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of Philip
the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies,
English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted
for a hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were
two periods, both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably:
one lasted from 1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453,
thirty-three years of distress and folly coming in between.
