person and the delegate of his authority, during his frequent absences, was the chate laine. In his warlike expeditions and hunting excursions, his crusadings and his captivities, she directed his affairs, and governed his people with a power equal to his own. No importance comparable to this, no position equally calculated to call forth the human faculties, had fallen to the lot of women before, nor, it may be added, since. And the fruits are seen in the many examples of heroic women which the feudal annals present to us; women who fully equalled, in every masculine virtue, the bravest of the men with whom they were associated; -often greatly surpassed them in prudence, and fell short of them only in ferocity.

mentary molecule (as M. Guizot calls it) of feudal society-a single possessor of a fief with his family and dependents-and proceeding to consider the nature of the larger society, or state, which was formed by the aggregation of these small societies, we find the feudal régime to be absolutely incompatible with any real national existence. No doubt the obligations of service on the one hand, and protection on the other, theoretically attached to the concession of a fief, kept alive some faint notions of a general government, some feelings of social duty. But, in the whole duration of the system, it was never found practicable to attach to these rights and obligations any efficient sanction. A central government, with power adequate to enforce even the recognized duties of the feudal relation, or to keep the peace between the different members of the confederacy, did not and could not exist consistently with feudalism. 'In any social situation which lasts a certain The length of time, there inevitably arises between very essence of feudality was (to borthose whom it brings into contact, under what- row M. Guizot's definition) the fusion of ever conditions, a certain moral tie-certain property and sovereignty. The lord of the feelings of protection, of benevolence, of affec- soil was not only the master of all who dwelt tion. It was thus in the feudal society: one upon it, but he was their only superior, cannot doubt, that in process of time there were their sovereign. Taxation, military proformed between the cultivators and their seign-tection, judicial administration, were his eur some moral relations, some habits of sym

M. Guizot now turns from the seigneurial abode to the dependent population surrounding it. Here all things present a far worse aspect.

* *

pathy. But this happened in spite of their rel- alone; for all offices of a ruler, the people ative position, and nowise from its influence. looked to him, and could look to no other. Considered in itself, the situation was radical- The king was absolute, like all other feudal ly vicious. There was nothing morally in lords, within his own domain, and only common between the feudal superior and the there. He could neither compel obedience cultivators; they were part of his domain, they from his feudatories, nor impose his mediawere his property. * * Between the seign- tion as an arbitrator between them. Among eur and those who tilled the ground which belonged to him, there were (as far as this can such petty potentates, the only union comever be said when human beings are brought patible with the nature of the case was a together) no laws, no protection, no society. federal union-the most difficult to mainHence, I conceive, that truly prodigious and in- tain of all political organizations; one vincible detestation which the rural population which, resting almost entirely on moral sanchas entertained in all ages for the feudal ré- tions, and an enlightened sense of distant gime. Theocratic and monarchical desinterests, requires, more than any other sopotism have more than once obtained the acquiescence, and almost the affection, of the cial system, an advanced state of civilizapopulation subject to them. The reason is, tion. The middle age was nowise ripe for theocracy and monarchy exercise their domin- it; the sword, therefore, remained the uniion in virtue of some belief common to the mas-versal umpire; all questions were decided ter with his subjects; he is the representative either by private war, or by that judicial and minister of another power superior to all combat which was the first attempt of socihuman powers; he speaks and acts in the name of the Deity, or of some general idea, not ety (as the modern duel is the last) to subin the name of the man himself, of a mere ject the prosecution of a quarrel by force man. Feudal despotism is a different thing; of arms to the moderating influence of fixed it is the mere power of one individual over an- customs and ordinances." other, the domination and capricious will of a human being. * * Such was the real, the distinctive character of the feudal dominion, and such the origin of the antipathy it never ceased to inspire.'

The following is M. Guizot's summary of the influences of feudalism on the progress of the European nations.

Feudality must have exercised a considerable, and on the whole a salutary, influence Leaving the contemplation of the ele- on the internal development of the individual;

it raised up in the human mind some moral confidence in themselves. Men assent to a notions and moral wants, some energetic sen- prevailing opinion, obey a general impulse, timents; it produced some noble developments yield to an external necessity. Whether for of character and passion. Considered in a resistance or for action, each has but a mean social point of view, it was not capable of es- idea of his own strength, a feeble reliance on tablishing legal order or political securities; his own judgment. Individuality, the inward but it was indispensable as a recommencement and personal energy of man, is weak and timid. of European society, which had been so broken Amidst the progress of public liberty, many up by barbarism as to be unable to assume any seem to have lost the proud and invigorating more enlarged or more regular form. But the sentiment of their own personal liberty. feudal form, radically bad in itself, admitted 'Such was not the Middle Age. The conneither of being expanded nor regularized. dition of society was deplorable, the morality The only political right which feudalism has of mankind much inferior to what is often planted deeply in European society, is the asserted, much inferior to that of our own right of resistance. I do not mean legal re- time. But in many persons, individuality was sistance: that was out of the question in a so- strong, will was energetic. There were then ciety so little advanced. The right of resist- few ideas which ruled all minds, few outward ance which feudal society asserted and exer-forces which, in all situations and in all places, cised, was the right of personal resistance-a weighed upon men's characters. The indifearful, an anti-social right, since it is an appeal vidual unfolded himself in his own way, with to force, to war, the direct antithesis of society; an irregular freedom: the moral nature of but a right which never ought to perish from man shone forth here and there in all its amthe breast of man, since its abrogation is sim-bitious aspirations, with all its energy. A ply equivalent to submission to slavery. The contemplation not only dramatic and attachsentiment of this right had been lost in the de-ing, but instructive and useful; which offers generacy of Roman society, from the ruins of us nothing to regret, nothing to imitate, but which it could not again arise; as little, in my much to learn; were it only by awakening opinion, was it a natural emanation from the our attention to what is wanting in ourselves principles of Christian society. Feudality re- by showing to us of what a human being is introduced it into European life. It is the capable when he will.** glory of civilization to render this right for ever useless and inactive; it is the glory of the feudal society to have constantly asserted and

held fast to it.'

There is yet another aspect, and far from an unimportant one, in which feudal life has bequeathed, to the times which followed, a lesson worthy to be studied. Imperfect as the world still remains in justice and humanity, the feudal world was far inferior to it in those attributes, but greatly superior in individual strength of will, and decision of character.

The third period of modern history, which is emphatically the modern period, is more complex and more difficult to interpret than the two preceding. Of this period, M. Guizot had only begun to treat; and we must not expect to find his explanations as satisfactory as in the earlier portions of his subject. The origin of feudalism, its character, its place in the history of civilization, he has discussed, as has been seen, in a manner which leaves little to be desired: but we cannot extend the same praise to his account of its decline, which (it is but fair 'No reasonable person will deny the immensity of the social reform which has been accomto consider) is not completed; but which, plished in our times. Never have human re- so far as it has gone, appears to us to bear lations been regulated with more justice, nor few marks of that piercing insight into the produced a more general well-being as the re-heart of a question, that determination not sult. Not only this, but, I am convinced, a to be paid with a mere show of explanation, corresponding moral reform has also been ac- which are the characteristic excellences of complished; at no epoch perhaps has there the speculations thus far brought to nobeen, all things considered, so much honesty in human life, so many human beings living in an orderly manner; never has so small an amount of public force been necessary to reindividual wrong-doing. But in another respect we have, I think, much to gain. We have lived for half a century under the empire of general ideas, more and more accredited and powerful; under the pressure of formida ble, almost irresistible events.

press

There has re

sulted a certain weakness, a certain effeminacy,

in our minds and characters. Individual convictions and will are wanting in energy and

tice.

M. Guizot ascribes the fall of feudality mainly to its imperfections. It did not, he says, contain in itself the elements of durability. It was a first step out of barbarism, but too near the verge of the former anarchy to admit of becoming a permanent social organization. The independence of the possessors of fiefs was evidently exces

* Vol. v. p. 29-31.

state.

He then sets forth how, in the absence of any common superior, of any central authority capable of protecting the feudal chiefs against one another, they were content to seek protection where they could find it-namely, from the most powerful among themselves; how, from this natural tendency, those who were already strong, ever became stronger; the larger fiefs went on aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the weaker. A prodigious inequality soon arose among the possessors of fiefs,' and inequality of strength led, as it usually does, to inequality of claims, and at last, of recognized rights.

sive, and too little removed from the savage are unable to recognize in this theory of 'Accordingly, independently of all the decay of feudality, the philosopher who foreign causes, feudal society, by its own so clearly demonstrated its origin; who nature and tendencies, was always in ques- pointed out that the feudal polity establishtion, always on the brink of dissolution; ed itself, not because it was a good form of incapable at least of subsisting regularly or society, but because society was incapable of developing itself, without altering its of a better; because the rarity of communinature.'* cations, the limited range of men's ideas and of their social relations, and their want of skill to work political machinery of a delicate or complicated construction, disqualified them from being either chiefs or members of any organized association extending beyond their immediate neighborhood. If feudality was a product of this condition of the human mind, and the only form of polity which it admitted of, no evils inherent in feudality could have hindered it from continuing so long as that cause subsisted. The anarchy which existed as between one feudal chief and another-the inequality of their talents, and the accidents of their perpetual warfare-would have led to continual changes in the state of territorial possession, and large governments would have been often formed by the agglomeration of smaller ones, occasionally perhaps a great empire like that of Charlemagne; but both the one and the other would have crumbled again to fragments as that did, if the general situation of society had continued to be what it was when the feudal system orignated. Is not this the very history of society in a great part of the East, from the earliest record of events? Between the time when masses could not help dissolving into particles, and the time when those particles spontaneously reassembled themselves into masses, a great change must have taken place in the molecular properties of the atoms. Inasmuch as the petty district sovereignties of the first age of feudality coalesced into larger provincial sovereignties, which, instead of obeying the original tendency to decomposition, tended in the very contrary direction, towards ultimate aggregation into one national government; it is clear that the state of society had become compatible with extensive governments; the unfavorable circumstances which M. Guizot commemorated in the former period, had in some manner ceased to exist; a great progress in civilization had been accomplished, under the dominion and auspices of the feudal system; and the fall of the system was not really owing to its vices, but to its good qualities, to the + Vol. v. pp. 370-71. | improvement which had been found possible

Thus, from the mere fact that social tics were wanting to feudality, the feudal liberties themselves rapidly perished; the excesses of individual independence were perpetually compromising society itself; it found in the relations of the possessors of fiefs, neither the means of regular maintenance, nor of ulterior development; it sought in other institutions the conditions which were needful to it for becoming permanent, regular, and progressive. The tendency towards centralization, towards the formation of a power superior to the local powers, was rapid. Long before the royal government had begun to intervene at every point of the country, there had grown up, under the name of duchies, counties, viscounties, &c., many smaller royalties, invested with the central government of this or that province, and to whom the rights of the possessors of fiefs, that is, of the local sovereignties, became more and more subordinate.'t

This sketch of the progressive decompoposition of the feudal organization, is, no doubt, historically correct; but we desiderate in it any approach to a scientific explanation of the phenomenon. That is an easy solution which accounts for the destruction of institutions from their own defects; but experience proves, that forms of government and social arrangements do not fall, merely because they deserve to fall. The more backward and the more degraded any form of society is, the stronger is the tendency to remain stagnating in that state, simply because it is an existing state. We

· Vol. v. pp. 364-6.
VOL. VI.-No. IV.

33

under it, and by which mankind had become desirous of obtaining, and capable of realizing, a better form of society than it afforded.

What this change was, and how it came to pass, M. Guizot has left us to seek. Considerable light is, no doubt, incidentally thrown upon it by the course of his investigations, and the sequel of his work would probably have illustrated it still more. At present, the philosophic interpreter of historical phenomena is indebted to him, on this portion of the subject, for little besides materials.

parts of the earth which were much earlier civilized, is far too difficult an inquiry to be entered upon in this place. We have already seen what M. Guizot has contributed to its elucidation in the way of general reflection. About the matter of fact, in respect to the feudal period, there can be no doubt. When the history of what are called the dark ages, because they had not yet a vernacular literature, and did not write a correct Latin style, shall be written as it deserves to be, that will be seen by all, which is already recognized by the great historical inquirers of the present time-that at no period of history was human intellect more active, or society more unmistakeably in a state of rapid advance. From the very commencement of the so much vilified feudal period, every generation overflows with evidences of increasing security, growing industry, and expanding intelligence. But to dwell further on this topic, would be inappropri ate to the nature and limits of the present article.

M. Guizot's detailed analysis of the history of European life, is, as we before remarked, only completed for the period preceding the feudal. For the five cen

He

It was under the combined assaults of two powers-royalty from above, the emancipated commons from below--that the independence of the great vassals finally succumbed. M. Guizot has delineated with great force and perspicuity the rise of both these powers. His review of the origin and emancipation of the communes, and growth of the tiers-état, is one of the best executed portions of the book; and should be read, with M. Thierry's Letters on the History of France, as the moral of the tale. In his sixth volume, M. Guizot traces, with considerable minuteness, the progress of the royal authority, from its slumbering infancy in the time turies which extended from Clovis to the of the earlier Capetians, through its suc- last of the Carlovingians, he has given a cessive stages of growth-now by the finished delineation, not only of outward energy and craft of Philippe Auguste, now life and political society, but of the progress by the justice and enlightened policy of and vicissitudes of what was then the chief Saint Louis-to its attainment, not indeed refuge and hope of oppressed humanity, of recognized despotism, but of almost the religious society-the Church. unlimited power of actual tyranny, in the makes his readers acquainted with the reign of Philippe le Bel. But upon legislation of the period, with the little it all these imputed causes of the fall of possessed of literature or philosophy, and feudalism, the question recurs, what caused with that which formed, as ought to be rethe causes themselves? Why was that membered, the real and serious occupation possible to the successors of Capet, which of its speculative faculties-its religious had been impossible to those of Charle-labors, whether in the elaboration or in magne? How, under the detested feudal the propagation of the Christian doctrine. tyranny, had a set of fugitive serfs, who His analysis and historical exposition of congregated for mutual protection at a the Pelagian controversy-his examination few scattered points, and called them of the religious literature of the period, its towns, became industrious, rich, and powerful? There can be but one answer; the feudal system, with all its deficiencies, was sufficiently a government, contained within itself a sufficient mixture of authority and liberty, afforded sufficient protection to industry, and encouragement and scope to the development of the human faculties, to enable the natural causes of social improvement to resume their course. What these causes were, and why they have been so much more active in Europe than in

sermons and legends-are models of their kind; and he does not, like the old school of historians, treat these things as matters insulated and abstract, of no interest save what belongs to them intrinsically, but invariably looks at them as component parts of the general life of the age.

Of the feudal period, M. Guizot had not time to complete a similar delineation.His analysis even of the political society of the period is not concluded; and we are entirely without that review of its ecclesi

astical history, and its intellectual and with hardly a social tie or any action or moral life, whereby the deficiency of ex- influence beyond; every thing, in short, in planation would probably have been in some one narrow spot, and nothing in any other degree supplied, which we have complained place. Now, of this picture, we look in of in regard to the remarkable progress vain for the original in our own history.— of human nature and events during these English feudalism knew nothing of this ages. For the strictly modern period of independence and isolation of the individhistory he has done still less. The rapid sketch which occupies the concluding lectures of the first volume, does little towards resolving any of the problems in which there is real difficulty.

ual feudatory in his fief. It could show no single vassal exempt from the habitual control of government, no one so strong that the king's arm could not reach him. Early English history is made up of the We shall therefore pass over the many acts of the barons, not the acts of this and topics on which he has touched cursorily, that and the other baron. The cause of and without doing justice to his own pow- this is to be found in the circumstances of ers of thought; and shall only further ad- the Conquest. The Normans did not, like vert to one question, which is the subject the Goths and Franks, overrun and subdue of a detailed examination in the Essay in an unresisting population. They encamped his earlier volume, 'the origin of repre- in the midst of a people of spirit and enersentative institutions in England'-a ques-gy, many times more numerous, and altion not only of special interest to an Eng- most as warlike as themselves. That they lish reader, but of much moment in the prevailed over them at all, was but the estimation of M. Guizot's general theory result of superior union. That union once of modern history. For if the natural broken, they would have been lost. They course of European events was such as that could not parcel out the country among theory represents it, the history of Eng- them, spread themselves over it, and be each land is an anomalous deviation from that king in his own little domain, with nothing course; and the exception must either to fear save from the other petty kings who prove, or go far to subvert, the rule. In surrounded him. They were an army, and England, as in other European countries, in an enemy's country; and an army supthe basis of the social arrangement was, poses a commander, and military discipline. for several centuries, the feudal system; in Organization of any kind implies power in England, as elsewhere, that system perished the chief who presides over it, and holds it by the growth of the Crown, and of the together. Add to this, what various writemancipated commonalty. Whence came ers have remarked-that the dispossession it, that amidst general circumstances so of the Saxon proprietors being effected not similar, the immediate and apparent con- at once, but gradually, and the spoils not sequences were so strikingly contrasted? being seized upon by unconnected bands, How happened it, that in the continental but systematically portioned out by the nations absolute monarchy was at least the head of the conquering expedition among proximate result, while in England repre- his followers-the territorial possessions of sentative institutions, and an aristocratic even the most powerful Norman chief were government, with an admixture of demo- not concentrated in one place, but dispersed cratic elements, were the consequence? in various parts of the kingdom; and, M. Guizot's explanation of the anomaly whatever might be their total extent, he is just and conclusive. The feudal polity was never powerful enough in any given in England was from the first a less bar- locality to make head against the king.barous thing-had more in it of the ele- From these causes, royalty was from the ments from which a government might in beginning much more powerful among the time be constructed-than in the other Anglo-Normans than it ever became in countries of Europe. We have seen M. France while feudality remained in vigor. Guizot's lively picture of the isolated posi- But the same circumstances which rendertion and solitary existence of the seigneur, ed it impossible for the barons to hold their ruling from his inaccessible height, with ground against regal encroachments exsovereign power, over a scanty population; cept by combination, had kept up the having no superior above him, no equals power and the habit of combination among around him, no communion or co-operation them. In French history, we never, until with any, save his family and dependents; a late period, hear of confederacies among absolute master within a small circle, and the nobles; English history is full of them.