Thence sprang a new evil, which served as an effectual barrier to the farther spread of the attempt at republican organisation. It brought down interference from without, and thenceforth the greatest danger incurred by Italy arose from foreign sovereigns. Yet this peril never succeeded in reconciling the different republics, and making them act in common. Thus several of the most enlightened and patriotic Italians of the present time, deplore the republican system of Italy in the middle ages as the true cause of hindrance to its becoming a nation. It was parcelled out, say they, into a multitude of petty states, so bent on the gratification of their several momentary designs, as to be incapable of confederating together and constituting a united people. It is to them a subject of regret that their country has not passed, like the rest of Europe, through a despotic centralisation, which would have formed it into one nation, and rendered it independent of the stranger. It therefore appears that the republican organisation, even in the most favourable circumstances, did not contain at that era the principle of advancement, of durability, or of extension, and that it was deficient in what regarded futurity. The organisation of Italy in the middle ages may be compared to a certain extent with that of ancient Greece. Greece was likewise a country strewed with small republics, always rivals, often enemies, and occasionally uniting in a common object. The advantage of the comparison rests entirely with Greece. There was undoubtedly much more order, security, and justice in the interior of Athens, Sparta, or Thebes, although history presents us with many instances of iniquity, than in the republics of Italy. Yet we see how short was the political existence of Greece, and how surely weakness followed its minute subdivisions of territory and power. Whenever Greece came in contact with powerful neighbours—Macedonia and Rome, for instance—she yielded at once. Those small republics, so glorious, and still so flourishing, were unable to coalesce for a common resistance. How much more, then, was the same result sure to happen in Italy, where society and intellect were far less developed, and infinitely weaker, than amongst the Greeks!
If the attempt at republican organisation had so few chances of stability in Italy, where it had originally triumphed, and where the feudal system had been vanquished, it may be readily conceived that in other parts of Europe it was destined to meet a yet more speedy overthrow.
I will take a rapid glance at its fate in various places.
There was a portion of Europe which greatly resembled Italy; namely, the south of France, and the provinces of Spain adjoining it—Catalonia, Navarre, and Biscay. The towns had there likewise gained considerable development, importance, and wealth. Several petty feudal chiefs had allied themselves with the burghers, and a part of the clergy had also embraced their cause, so that the country was actually in a situation very analogous to that of Italy. We therefore find that in the course of the eleventh, and at the commencement of the twelfth century, the towns of Provence, Languedoc, and Aquitaine were disposed to try a political essay, and form themselves into independent republics, upon the model of those beyond the Alps. But the south of France was in contact with a very powerful feudalism, predominant in the north. And upon the occasion of the heresy of the Albigenses, war broke out between feudal and municipal France. The history of the crusade against the Albigenses, commanded by Simon do Montfort, is well known. It was an attack by northern feudalism upon the southern attempt at democratic organisation. In spite of the heroism of southern patriotism, the north carried the victory. It was promoted by the want of political unity, and civilisation was not sufficiently advanced for men to be aware that the deficiency might be remedied by skilful concert. The experiment at republican organisation was therefore put down, and a crusade re-established the feudal system in the south of France.
At a later date, the republican movement succeeded better on the mountains of Switzerland. There the theatre was very contracted, and it had to struggle only against a foreign sovereign who, although possessing superior strength to the Swiss, was not one of the most formidable monarchs of Europe. The contest was maintained with infinite courage. The Swiss feudal nobility also joined in a great measure with the towns; bringing certainly powerful aid, but altering the nature of the revolution which they supported, and imparting to it a more aristocratical and stationary character than it seemed destined to bear. [Footnote 14]
[Footnote 14: M. Guizot has allowed himself to be carried away by his speculative deduction from history in this description of the early attempts of the Swiss to establish their independence. The movement began in the most rural part of Switzerland, in the three forest cantons of Schweiz, Uri, and Underwalden, and not in towns, and was almost throughout conducted by peasants. It was only in a portion of Switzerland that feudalism prevailed. Besides, the Swiss cantons are only partially aristocratic—See Muller's Hist. de la Suisse.]
I pass to the north of France, to the boroughs of Flanders, to those on the banks of the Rhine, and to the Hanseatic League. There the democratic organisation completely triumphed within the walls of the town; but we can discern from its commencement that it was not destined to extend or to take possession of all society. The boroughs of the north were surrounded and hemmed in by feudalism, by chiefs and sovereigns, so that they were constantly put upon the defensive. They were not calculated to make conquests; their great object was to protect themselves. In this they succeeded; they maintained their privileges, but they were confined to their own precincts. Thus the democratic organisation was shut up and stopped; it never spread over the face of the country.
Such, then, was the state of the republican experiment; triumphant in Italy, but with few chances of durability and expansion; suppressed in the south of France; victorious, on a small stage, in the Swiss mountains; and restricted to the walls of the towns in the north, in Flanders, on the Rhine, and in the Hanseatic League. Nevertheless, whilst in this state, so palpably inferior in strength to the other elements of society, it inspired the feudal nobility with prodigious alarm. The barons were not only envious of the wealth of the boroughs, but they were afraid of their power; the democratic spirit penetrated into the rural districts, and insurrections among the peasants became more frequent and stubborn. Hence a great coalition was formed by the feudal nobility, throughout almost all Europe, against the boroughs. The contest was not at all equal, for the boroughs were isolated, and had no understanding or intercourse amongst themselves. Doubtless there existed a certain sympathy between the burghers of different countries; the successes or the reverses of the Flemish towns, at war with the Dukes of Burgundy, excited a lively sensation in the French towns, but it was an emotion transitory, and without result; no veritable bond or union was established amongst the different boroughs, nor did they lend any strength to each other. Feudalism, therefore, had an immense advantage over them; but it was itself divided and irreflective, and was far from succeeding in destroying them. When the contest had lasted a certain time, and it had become clear that a complete victory was impossible, there arose a necessity for consenting to recognise these small burgher republics, to negotiate with them, and to receive them as members of the state. Then commenced a new order of things, and a new attempt at political organisation—to wit, the attempt at a mixed organisation, which had for its object the reconciling the different elements of society, the feudal nobility, the boroughs, the clergy, and the sovereigns, and, notwithstanding their mutual deep-rooted antipathy, bringing them to live and act together. This branch of the subject remains to be investigated.
The purposes of the states-general in France, the cortes in Spain and Portugal, the parliament in England, and the diets in Germany, are sufficiently well known. The elements of these different assemblies were the feudal nobility, the clergy, and the burghers, who collected together with the view of uniting themselves into one single society, into one and the same state, and under an identical law and power. This was the tendency and design of them all, under different names.
I will take as the type of this attempt at organisation the states-general of France, as being the most familiarly known. I say familiarly known, and yet the name of the states-general calls up none but vague and imperfect ideas. There is no one who can state with any precision what was fixed or regular in the states-general of France, what was the number of their members, what the subjects of deliberation, or what the periods of convocation, and the duration of their sessions. We know nothing of all these things; it is impossible to draw from history any clear and general results on tins subject. When we inquire into the character of these assemblies in the history of France, they appear to have been purely accidental, a sort of political shift, on the part of the people as well as on that of the kings: a last shift to the kings when they had no money, and were at their wits' ends for expedients; and a last shift to the people, when evil became so intolerable, that the usual remedies for alleviation were exhausted in vain. The nobility and the clergy each took part in the states-general, but they came there with reluctance, and distrustfully, as they were well aware that it was not in them their best means of action lay, or that they could thereby promote their real participation in the government. The burghers themselves were not more eager for the sitting; it was not a right which they exercised with alacrity, but rather a necessity to which they submitted. We find these facts exemplified in the character of the political actions of those assemblies. They were sometimes perfectly insignificant, and sometimes vastly terrible. If the king was the strongest, their humility and docility were extreme; if the situation of the crown was disastrous, if it had an absolute occasion for the assistance of the states, they fell into factious opposition, and became the instruments either of some aristocratic intrigue, or of some ambitious schemers. In a word, they were sometimes mere assemblies of notables, and sometimes veritable conventions. Thus their labours seldom or ever survived them; they promised and attempted much, but did nothing. Not one of the great measures which have really acted on society in France, not one important reform in government, legislation, or administration, has emanated from the states-general. We must not, however, too rashly conclude that they have been without utility or effect. They have served a moral purpose, which has been generally overlooked, by operating, from time to time, as a protestation against political servitude, and distinctly proclaiming certain tutelary principles; such, for example, as that the country has the right to impose taxes, to interfere in affairs, and to make the agents of power responsible. That these maxims have never perished in France, is chiefly owing to the states-general; and it is certainly not a small service to render to a nation, the keeping up in its manners, and reviving in its recollection, the name and dues of liberty. The states-general effected that good, but they never were a means of government, nor ever entered into a political organisation. They never attained the object for which they were formed—namely, the fusion into one single body of the different societies which subdivided the country.