General History of Civilisation in Europe, From the Fall of the Roman Empire Till the French Revolution. A Treatise on Death Punishments.

by François Guizot

But, on the other hand, they acquired and displayed a degree of energy, devotedness, perseverance, and patient zeal, in the strenuous maintenance of the local interests intrusted to them upon their narrow stage, which has never been surpassed. The difficulty of accomplishing that task was so great, and they had to struggle against so many perils, that an unexampled deployment of courage was required. A very false idea of the life of a burgher of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is entertained at this day. Sir Walter Scott has given in one of his novels, Quentin Durward, a description of the burgomaster of Liege, whom he has represented as a true burgher of comedy, fat, sluggish, ignorant, and cowardly, solely occupied in passing his life comfortably. But the burghers of those times had always their coats of mail on their breasts, and their pikes in their hands; their course of life was almost as disturbed, as warlike, and as rough, as that of the lords with whom they fought. It was in their constant danger, and in their bearing up against all the hardships of military life, that they acquired that strong determination and stubborn energy which have become somewhat mitigated in the softer activity of modern times.

None of these social or moral effects of the enfranchisement of the boroughs had taken its full development in the twelfth century; it is in the following ages that they incontestably appear, and give opportunity for their clear discernment. Yet it is just as sure that their seed was sown in the original position of the boroughs, in the mode of their enfranchisement, and the place or station which the burghers thereafter took in the general society. Therefore I am justified in anticipating them at present. We will, in consequence, penetrate into the very interior of the borough of the twelfth century, and will see how it was governed, and what principles and facts predominated in the mutual relations of the burghers amongst themselves.

It will be recollected that, in speaking of the municipal system bequeathed by the Roman Empire to the modern world, I stated that the Roman Empire was a great coalition of municipalities, which had formerly been sovereign powers like Rome herself. Each of those towns had had originally the same existence as Rome, and had been a small independent republic, making peace and war, and governing itself at its own pleasure. In proportion as they were incorporated into the Roman Empire, the rights which constitute sovereignty, the rights of peace and war, of legislation, taxation, &c. were taken from each town, and concentred in Rome. Then there remained but one sovereign municipality, Rome, reigning over a great number of municipalities, which no longer preserved anything but a civil existence. The municipal system changed its character, and instead of being a political government, invested with sovereignty, it became a mere mode of administering affairs. This was the great revolution consummated under the Roman Empire. The municipal system, having become a mode of administration, was reduced to the government of local affairs, and the civil interests of the city. The fall of the Roman Empire left the towns and their institutions in this state. In the midst of the barbaric chaos, ideas were jumbled in as much confusion as facts; the attributes of sovereignty, and those of mere administration, were confounded. These distinctions were no longer attended to, and affairs were abandoned to the course of necessity. Each locality had its sovereign or its administrator, according to events or immediate wants. When the towns rose in insurgency to secure themselves from arbitrary spoliation, they assumed the sovereignty. This was not owing in the slightest degree to any respect for political theory, or to any sentiment of their own dignity. But in order to have the best means of resisting the lords against whom they rebelled, they appropriated to themselves the right of making militia levies, of self-taxation for supporting war, of making their own chiefs and magistrates—in a word, of governing themselves. Government administered in the interior of the towns was essential to defence and security. Thus sovereignty returned to the municipal system, from which it had departed in consequence of the Roman conquests. The boroughs became again independent and self-governing. Such is the political characteristic of their enfranchisement.

It is of course not to be inferred that this sovereignty was complete. There always remained some trace of external sovereignty; sometimes the lord preserved a right to send an officer into the town, who took the borough magistrates for his assessors; sometimes he had a right to collect certain revenues, or a tribute was in some instances secured to him. Occasionally the outward sovereignty of the borough passed into the hands of the king.

The boroughs themselves, having entered into the folds of feudalism, had vassals, and became suzerains, or superior lords, and under this title they possessed all that portion of sovereignty which belonged inherently to feudal lordship. A confusion ensued between the rights with which they were invested by their feudal position, and those which they had conquered by their insurrection; but under this twofold title sovereignty appertained to them.

The description of what took place, and how the government was carried on in the interior of a borough in the first ages, may be drawn as follows from the very incomplete monuments left for our guidance. The entirety of the inhabitants formed the borough assemblies; all those who had been sworn in burgesses (and whoever lived within the walls, was obliged to take the oaths) were called together to general assembly by the sound of the clock. There the magistrates were nominated. The number and form of magisterial offices were very variable. The magistrates being named, the assembly was dissolved. They governed almost alone with a considerable degree of arbitrariness, and without any other check or responsibility than what might arise from new elections, or rather popular risings, which were the grand method of calling to account in use at that day.

Thus the internal organisation of the boroughs was reduced to two simple elements—the general assembly of the inhabitants, and a government invested with a nearly arbitrary power, under the check of insurrection or risings. It was impossible, chiefly from the state of manners, to establish a regular government and veritable guarantees for order and stability. The greatest part of the borough population was in such a condition of ignorance, brutality, and ferociousness, as rendered it very difficult to govern. In a short time, there was almost as little security in the interior of a borough, as there existed formerly in the relations of the burghers with the superior lord. Still, a higher class of burghers was rather speedily formed, the cause of which may be easily divined. The state of ideas and of social relations produced the establishment and legal constitution of industrial professions into companies or corporations. The system of privilege or monopoly was thus introduced into the interior of the boroughs, and, as a consequence, great inequality. There was shortly in all of them a certain number of important and wealthy burghers, and a labouring population more or less numerous, which, in spite of its inferiority, had a considerable share of influence in the affairs of the borough. Therefore the boroughs were divided into two classes—the higher burghers, and a population prone to all the errors and vices of a mob. The superior burghers were trammelled by the enormous difficulty of governing this lower population on the one hand, and by the continual efforts of the old lord of the borough to re-usurp his power on the other. This was their situation not only in France, but in all Europe, up till the sixteenth century, and this was perhaps the principal cause which prevented the boroughs from obtaining all the political importance which they might otherwise have had in several countries of Europe, and especially in France. Two principles were in constant strife within them: among the inferior population, a blind, reckless, and ferocious democratic spirit; and thence among the superior population, a spirit of timidity and management, inducing an extreme facility to make accommodations either with the king or with the ancient lords, in order to re-establish order and docility in the interior of the community. These two tendencies, by their separate action, effectually prevented the boroughs from assuming an important station in the general state.

All these consequences had not broken out in the twelfth century; yet we are enabled to anticipate them from the very character of the insurrection, from the manner in which it had commenced, and from the condition of the different component parts of the borough population.