And those poor serfs, having nothing to spend and nothing to assign away, sought to anticipate the expected eternal repose. The larger number dropped their plows, their hoes and their spades so soon as autumn set in. "What is the use," said they, "of cultivating a field that, long before harvest time, will have been swallowed up in chaos?"
As a consequence of this universal panic, the last days of the year 999 presented a spectacle never before seen; it was even fabulous! Light-headed indulgence and groans; peals of laughter and lamentations; maudlin songs and death dirges. Here the shouts and the frantic dances of supposed last and supreme orgies; yonder the lamentations of pious canticles. And finally, floating above this vast mass of terror, rose the formidable popular curiosity to see the spectacle of the destruction of the world. It came at last, that day said to have been prophesied by St. John the Divine! The last hour arrived, the last minute of that fated year of 999! "Tremble, ye sinners!" the warning redoubled; "tremble, ye peoples of the earth! the terrible moment foretold in the holy books is here!" One more second, one more instant, midnight sounds—and the year 1000 begins.
In the expectation of that fatal instant, the most hardened hearts, the souls most certain of salvation, the dullest and also the most rebellious minds experienced a sensation that never had and never will have a name in any language—
Midnight sounded!... The solemn hour.... Midnight!
The year 1000 began!
Oh, wonder and surprise!... The dead did not leave their tombs, the bowels of the earth did not open, the waters of the ocean remained within their basins, the stars of heaven were not hurled out of their orbits and were not striking against one another in space. Aye, there was not even a tame flash of lightning! No thunder rolled! No trace of the cloud of fire in the midst of which the Eternal was to appear. Jehovah remained invisible. Not one of the frightful prodigies foretold by St. John the Divine for midnight of the year 1000 was verified. The night was calm and serene; the moon and stars shone brilliantly in the azure sky, not a breath of wind agitated the tops of the trees, and the people, in the silence of their stupor, could hear the slightest ripple of the mountain streams gliding under the grass. Dawn came ... and day ... and the sun poured upon creation the torrents of its light! As to miracles, not a trace of any!
Impossible to describe the revulsion of feeling at the universal disappointment. It was an explosion of regret, of remorse, of astonishment, of recrimination and of rage. The devout people who believed themselves cheated out of a Paradise that they had paid for to the Church in advance with hard cash and other property; others, who had squandered their treasures, contemplated their ruin with trembling. The millions of serfs who had relied upon slumbering in the restfulness of an eternal night saw rising anew before their eyes the ghastly dawn of that long day of misery and sufferings, of which their birth was the morning and only their death the evening. It now began to be realized that, left uncultivated in the expectation of the end of the world, the land would not furnish sustenance to the people, and the horrors of famine were foreseen. A towering clamor rose against the clergy; the clergy, however, knew how to bring public opinion back to its side. It did so by a new and fraudulent set of prophecies.
"Oh, these wretched people of little faith," thus now ran the amended prophecy and invocation; "they dare to doubt the word of the All-powerful who spoke to them through the voice of His prophet! Oh, these wretched blind people, who close their eyes to divine light! The prophets have announced the end of time; the Holy Writ foretold that the day of the last judgment would come a thousand years after the Saviour of the world!... But although Christ was born a thousand years before the year 1000, he did not reveal himself as God until his death, that is thirty-two years after his birth. Accordingly it will be in the year 1032 that the end of time will come!"
Such was the general state of besottedness that many of the faithful blissfully accepted the new prediction. Several seigneurs, however, rushed at the "men of God" to take back by force the property they had bequeathed to them. The "men of God," however, well entrenched behind fortified walls, defended themselves stoutly against the dispossessed claimants. Hence a series of bloody wars between the scheming bishops, on the one hand, and the despoiled seigneurs, on the other, to which disasters were now superadded the religious massacres instigated by the clergy. The Church had urged Clovis centuries ago to the extermination of the then Arian heretics; now the Church preached the extermination of the Orleans Manichæans and the Jews. A conception of these abominable excesses may be gathered from the following passages in the account left by Raoul Glaber, a monk and eye-witness. He wrote:
"A short time after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 1010, it was learned from unquestionable sources that the calamity had to be charged to the perverseness of Jews of all countries. When the secret leaked out throughout the world, the Christians decided with a common accord that they would expel all the Jews, down to the last, from their territories and towns. The Jews thereby became the objects of universal execration. Some were chased from the towns, others massacred with iron, or thrown into the rivers, or put to death in some other manner. This drove many to voluntary death. And thus, after the just vengeance wreaked upon them, there were but very few of them left in the Roman Catholic world."