The Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks

by Basil Edward Hammond

During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three of the distinguishing features of nations: for each of them was of large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men well suited for living together and under one government: but all of them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large political communities were built up.

The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who went to Britain established themselves at first in a number of small settlements on its southern and eastern coasts. From these settlements they gradually pushed their way inland, and by 577 A.D. they had conquered nearly all the richest and most fertile regions in Britain. The many political communities formed by settlement and conquest were soon afterwards engaged in strife with one another: in the beginning of the ninth century the West Saxons overpowered all their opponents and the West Saxon king received the submission of all the German settlers in the island. The conquering West Saxons and the conquered Angles and Jutes showed the same genius for amalgamation as had been shown by their forefathers in Germany long before: and by the middle of the ninth century all the Germans in Britain (we may now call them the English) had combined into a single large political community. Three times over, in 867-878, 988-1016, and 1066-1070, the English were disturbed by invasions of fresh immigrants from the continent of Europe: but on each occasion the new comers were successfully united in a single political community with the older settlers, and by the year 1174 or at any rate by 1215 the English people had been for the last time fashioned into one kindred under one government.

The German peoples who invaded Spain were the Vandals, the Alans, the Suevi and the Visigoths. The Visigoths proved to be the strongest of the four, and by the early years of the sixth century they had occupied nearly all the peninsula except the north east corner, which they left to the Suevi. In the enjoyment of the luxuries afforded by Roman civilisation, and in the fancied security of their position, they neglected the arts of war in which they had once so greatly excelled. In 710 A.D. their country was invaded and in the three following years was conquered by Moors from Africa, so that none of it was left to the Goths, the Suevi and some other tribes who were neither Germans nor Moors, except some valleys among the Pyrenees and a narrow strip of land about twenty miles broad and two hundred miles long between the shore of the Bay of Biscay and the mountain range of Cantabria and Asturias[10].

During the five centuries which followed the Moorish conquest of Spain the Goths who lived on the shores of the Bay of Biscay and the inhabitants of the southern valleys of the Pyrenees gradually expanded by reconquering territory from the Moors, and before the middle of the twelfth century had formed the two large political communities of Castile and Arragon[11]. Each of these communities during its long contest with the Moors had acquired habits, thoughts and institutions of its own, and they were but little inclined to join themselves together into a single nation. The marriage of Ferdinand of Arragon with Isabella of Castile in 1469 produced as its result some time later that both Castile and Arragon were ruled by the same government: but differences and jealousies between the two peoples continued to exist long afterwards, even so late as the War of the Spanish Succession in the eighteenth century[12], and it may well be doubted whether the two were ever welded together into a single Spanish nation until after the terrible misfortunes which they endured and the great efforts which they made in a common cause during their war against Napoleon.

In Gaul the formation of a large political community was delayed till late in the middle ages; in Germany, the original home of the Germans, no large political community of great importance was established till late in the seventeenth century. In both countries the same hindrances stood in the way of the making of great communities. The two countries were included in the heterogeneous empires founded between 687 A.D. and 800 A.D. by the house of Pepin, especially by Charlemagne, the greatest man of the house of Pepin: in that empire, as in all heterogeneous empires, it was found necessary that the central ruler should delegate very great powers to the officials who governed provinces or districts: and under the circumstances of the time it was also found convenient for him to grant large estates of land to men who had been useful to him and could be trusted to serve him well in the future. In 843 Gaul (or the land of the West Franks) was severed from the empire, and set up a king of its own, who pretended to have the same powers as Charlemagne had exercised. But the kings of the West Franks could not control the local officials and landowners: by the eleventh century the local officials and the landowners had converted themselves into independent sovereigns, each ruling his own lands and the men who lived on his lands: that particular landowner who still enjoyed the title of king had no authority (or at any rate no authority which he could habitually exercise) except within the lands which specially belonged to him: and even within his own lands he, like the other landowners in Gaul, found that his authority was often disputed in arms by his tenants.

In the early years of the twelfth century Louis VI., owning or claiming to own an estate or demesne of land which had Paris as its centre and measured about 140 miles from north to south and about 50 miles from east to west, set himself to establish order and government within his demesne by force of arms. The inhabitants of the demesne valued the good government and the order that was maintained among them by Louis VI. and his grandson Philip II., and when the twelfth century ended they may be counted as forming a small political community or a body of men, possessing not only a common government, but also common interests habits and wishes[13]. In the thirteenth century the king's demesne was increased by the acquisition of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, Champagne in the north of Gaul, and by the distant region of Languedoc in the south. The new parts of the demesne were placed under the same government with the old, and no doubt those of them which lay together in the north of Gaul constantly tended to unite themselves into a single political community. But the work of unification was greatly impeded by causes all closely connected with the independence which the different parts of Gaul had possessed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and it had not made very great progress in 1415 when France was invaded by the armies of the English. After the expulsion of the invaders the work was taken up again and carried on with better success by Charles VII., Louis XI. and the later kings of France.

In Germany events followed much the same course as in Gaul; but they occurred later. The extinction of the Emperor's authority and the rise of the local governors and landowners to independence did not come to pass in Germany till the middle of the thirteenth century; and none of the princes who then gained their independence succeeded during the middle ages in rising to preeminence above the rest.

In order to complete our survey of the chief political communities of the middle ages we must glance at northern Italy and Switzerland. Northern Italy contained many important towns which had been founded by the Romans: during the early part of the middle ages it became the commercial centre of Europe: the towns grew in wealth and influence, and before the year 1200 they succeeded in making themselves independent, and constituted themselves as city states, resembling the city states of ancient Greece. In Switzerland three tribes of mountaineers in Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, in 1291, agreed to form a league or permanent alliance, which was afterwards joined by many of their neighbours, though no steps towards forming a federal state were taken till about the year 1500[14].

It has been remarked already that the large political communities of the middle ages were not thoroughly coherent or consolidated. A want of coherence was exhibited both in France and in England by the frequent recurrence of rebellions or civil strife, in France under John II. and Charles VI., in England under Edward II., Richard II. and Henry VI.; still more clearly was it made visible in France in 1356-1360 and 1415-1422 by the inability of the French to act unitedly in resistance to an invading enemy, and by the ease with which portions of French territory were detached from the dominions of the French king and transferred to the victorious invaders. The danger of civil discord was great enough in the fifteenth century when it arose mainly from the armies of retainers kept by ambitious noblemen: but it became still greater in the sixteenth, when differences of creed divided each people into two hostile camps. The disruptive forces at length became so strong that both France and England seemed to be in danger of losing the character of political communities and of lapsing into masses of heterogeneous elements; and accordingly each country adopted that kind of government which is best suited to hold heterogeneous elements together, namely, a monarchy with almost unlimited power. The subsequent histories of the two countries, though dissimilar in general character, were in one respect alike: in both countries civil war actually occurred, in France in the sixteenth century, in England in the seventeenth; and in each country experience of the miseries of war brought a love for the blessings of peace, with the result that France from 1700 to 1789 and England from 1745 to this day present very perfect examples of united nations.

Besides the nations of France, England, Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark which grew up directly from the large political communities of the middle ages, others have been founded in more recent times, some of them having only a single government, and being therefore called unitary states, and others having one government for some purposes and many governments for other purposes, and being known as federal states. Among the unitary or non-federal nations we must notice Brandenburg-Prussia 1700-1866, Italy since 1859, Belgium, Holland, Greece, and the Balkan States: among the federal nations the United States of America and modern Switzerland stand out conspicuously. The German Empire founded in 1871 is a federal nation, though it differs from other federal nations because Prussia, one of its component states, is larger than all the other component states put together: Austria Hungary was for centuries a mere heterogeneous empire, but in recent times its parts have been held together by the possession of common interests and not by force, so that it has acquired some of the characters of a federation, though it cannot be said that it has grown together into a single nation.