PART II.
CHAPTER I.
THE APOCALYPTIC FRENZY.
Two months after the poisoning of Louis the Do-nothing in 987, Hugh the Capet, Count of Paris and Anjou, Duke of Isle-de-France, and Abbot of St. Martin of Tours and St. Germain-des-Pres, had himself proclaimed King by his bands of warriors, and was promptly consecrated by the Church. By his ascension to the throne, Hugh usurped the crown of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Blanche's deceased husband. Hugh's usurpation led to bloody civil strifes between the Duke of Lorraine and Hugh the Capet. The latter died in 996 leaving as his successor his son Rothbert, an imbecile and pious prince. Rothbert's long reign was disturbed by the furious feuds among the seigneurs; counts, dukes, abbots and bishops, entrenched in their fortified castles, desolated the country with their brigandage. Rothbert, Hugh's son, died in 1031 and was succeeded by his son Henry I. His advent to the throne was the signal for fresh civil strife, caused by his own brother, who was incited thereto by his mother. Another Rothbert, surnamed the Devil, Duke of Normandy, a descendant of old Rolf the pirate, took a hand in these strifes and made himself master of Gisors, Chaumont and Pontoise. It was under the reign of Hugh the Capet's grandson, Henry I, that the year 1033 arrived, and with it unheard-of, even incredible events—a spectacle without its equal until then—which was the culmination of the prevalent myth regarding the end of the world with the year 1000.
The Church had fixed the last day of the year 1000 as the final term for the world's existence. Thanks to the deception, the clergy came into possession of the property of a large number of seigneurs. During the last months of that year an immense saturnalia was on foot. The wildest passions, the most insensate, the drollest and the most atrocious acts seemed then unchained.
"The end of the world approaches!" exclaimed the clergy. "Did not St. John the Divine prophesy it in the Apocalypse saying: 'When the thousand years are expired, Satan will be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth; the book of life will be opened; the sea will give up the dead which were in it; death and hell will deliver up the dead which were in them; they will be judged every man according to his works; they will be judged by Him who is seated upon a brilliant throne, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.'—Tremble, ye peoples!" the clergy repeated everywhere, "the one thousand years, announced by St. John, will run out with the end of this year! Satan, the anti-Christ is to arrive! Tremble! The trumpet of the day of judgment is about to sound; the dead are about to arise from their tombs; in the midst of thunder and lightning, and surrounded by archangels carrying flaming swords, the Eternal is about to pass judgment upon us all! Tremble, ye mighty ones of the earth: in order to conjure away the implacable anger of the All-Mighty, give your goods to the Church! It is still time! It is still time! Give your goods and your treasures to the priests of the Lord! Give all you possess to the Church!"
The seigneurs, themselves no less brutified than their serfs by ignorance and by the fear of the devil, and hoping to be able to conjure away the vengeance of the Eternal, assigned to the clergy by means of authentic documents, executed in all the forms of terrestrial law, lands, houses, castles, serfs, their harems, their herds of cattle, their valuable plate, their rich armors, their pictures, their statues, their sumptuous robes.
Some of the shrewder ones said: "We have barely a year, a month, a week to live! We are full of youth, of desires, of ardor! Let us put the short period to profit! Let us stave-in our wine casks, let us indulge ourselves freely in wine and women!"
"The end of the world is approaching!" exclaimed with delirious joy millions of serfs of the domains of the King, of the lay and of the ecclesiastical seigneurs. "Our poor bodies, broken with toil, will at last take rest in the eternal night that is to emancipate us. A blessing on the end of the world! It is the end of our miseries and our sufferings!"