History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe

by François Guizot

Decay Of National Assemblies.

After the death of Charlemagne, and under Louis the Débonnair, national assemblies were still frequently held. The movement which Charlemagne had begun, had not yet entirely ceased. Unable to create, Louis the Débonnair sought to imitate; at the spring or autumn assemblies, he passed several useful rules, amongst others the capitulary which summoned the scabini, or royal judges, to the Champs de Mai. But the government, even with this sanction, was lifeless and inefficient. The assemblies had been nothing but an instrument of the monarch, and the monarch was now no longer able to make use of them. Their decay was complete under Charles the Bald. They began again to be nothing more than meetings of the bishops and the great lay landowners. There were forty-six assemblies held under Charles the Bald; but they were almost all confined to the negotiations of the great nobles with the king, respecting their private interests. Such was the progress made by feudalism that the central aristocracy of the great landowners, beneficiaries, and others, dissolved of itself. They isolated themselves from one another in order to exercise, each in his own domains, the almost absolute sovereignty which they had acquired. The fall of the Carlovingians was the work of Hugh Capet alone, and not of an aristocratic coalition. An assembly did not meet, as at the fall of the Merovingians, to elect a new king. Hugh Capet made himself king, and was acknowledged as such, first by the vassals whom he possessed as Duke of France, and afterwards, successively, by the great lords of the kingdom, who remained, nevertheless, almost his equals in power. Then the assemblies almost entirely disappeared, together with every national and central institution; and nearly three centuries elapsed before anything analogous to them was established.

Retrospect Of Five Centuries.

Thus, at the end of the tenth century, of the three systems of institutions which we characterized at the outset, viz.: free institutions, monarchical institutions, and feudal institutions, the last had completely prevailed; the first had perished early, and Charlemagne had vainly attempted to establish the second. The hierarchical organization of the proprietors of estates, and the dislocation of France into as many petty sovereignties as there were proprietors sufficiently strong to be almost independent and absolute masters in their own domains,—such was the natural result of the settlement of the Franks in Gaul.

During the five centuries which we have now briefly examined, institutions, customs, and powers appear to be in a constant state of disorder and conflict. The ancient liberties of the Franks, the primitive independence of the warriors, royal authority, the first rudiments of the feudal system,—all these different elements present themselves to our view as obscure, incoherent, and in opposition. We pass incessantly from one system to another, from one tendency to another. At the end of the tenth century, the struggle has almost ceased; the mass of the population have fallen into a state of serfage, or become tributary colonists; the possession of fiefs confers a real sovereignty, more or less complete according to the power of the possessor; these petty sovereigns are hierarchically united and constituted by the bonds of suzerainty and vassalage. Nowhere is this bond weaker than between the king and his vassals; for there the pretensions to authority on the one hand, and to independence on the other, are most earnestly contested.

The fundamental characteristics of this state of things are the destruction of all centrality, both national and monarchic; the hierarchical constitution of landed property; the distribution of sovereignty according to the various degrees of this hierarchy; and the servitude or quasi-servitude of the mass of the inhabitants of the country.

Attacks On The Feudal System.

I have said that this system was the natural result of the condition of the Franks in Gaul after the conquest; its definitive success is proof of this. Another circumstance, also, may be adduced in evidence. Before the tenth century, we witness the constant struggle and alternating success of free, monarchical, and feudal institutions. The efforts made in favour of the first two systems, although some were supported by the ancient independence of the Franks, and others by the ability of great kings, were unsuccessful,—a more powerful tendency frustrated and overcame them. When the struggle ceased, when the feudal system had fully prevailed, a new conflict almost immediately commenced; the victorious system was attacked: in the inferior classes of society, by the mass of the inhabitants, citizens, colonists, or serfs, who strove to regain some rights, some property, and some liberty; in the superior class, by royalty, which laboured to resume some general sway, and to become once more the centre of the nation. These new efforts were made, not, as during the period from the fifth to the tenth century, in the midst of the confusion arising from the conflict of opposing systems, but in the very interior of a single system, of the system which had prevailed over, and taken possession of, the whole of society. The combatants are no longer free men, uncertain of their position and their rights, who feebly defend the wreck of their ancient existence against the overpowering invasion of the feudal system; they are citizens, colonists, serfs, whose condition is clear and determined, who become in their turn aggressors, and labour to free themselves from the yoke of feudalism. We no longer behold the king uncertain of his authority, and subject to have it unceasingly attacked, not knowing whether he is king or lord, and defending his power against the Leudes, or great landowners, who attempt sometimes to infringe it, and sometimes to set it aside altogether; now it is the chief of the nobles labouring to make himself the king of all, and to convert suzerainty into sovereignty. From the fifth to the tenth century, the feudal system had been in progress, in development, and in aggression. From the eleventh century onwards, this system had to defend itself against the people and the king. The struggle was long, difficult, and terrible; but the results altered with the position of the combatants. In spite of the servitude into which the people fell in the tenth century, from that time forth the enfranchisement of the people made progress. Notwithstanding the impotence of the royal power at the same period, thenceforward the royal power gained ground. No effort was vain, no step was retrograde. That monarchical system which the genius of Charlemagne had been unable to establish, was gradually founded by kings far inferior to Charlemagne. Those ancient liberties, which neither Franks nor Gauls had been able to preserve, were regained piecemeal by the commons and the third estate. During the first period, monarchy and liberty had failed to establish their position; it was destined that monarchy should issue out of feudalism itself, and that emancipation should spring from the bosom of servitude.