History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves

by J. N. Larned

"The federal is one of the oldest forms of government known,
and its adaptability to the largest as well as to the smallest
states is shown in all political formations of late years.
States in the New and in the Old World, all in their
aggregation, alike show ever a stronger tendency to adopt it.
Already all the central states of Europe are
federal--Switzerland, Germany, Austria [see AUSTRIA: A. D.
1866-1867, and 1866-1887]; and if ever the various Sclav
principalities in south-eastern Europe--the Serb, the
Albanian, the Rouman, the Bulgar, and the Czech--are to
combine, it will probably be (as Mr. Freeman so long ago as
1862 remarked) under a federal form,--though whether under
Russian or Austrian auspices, or neither, remains to be seen.
... In the German lands from early ages there has existed an
aggregation of tribes and states, some of them even of
non-German race, each of which preserved for domestic purposes
its own arrangements and laws, but was united with the rest
under one supreme head and central authority as regards its
relation to all external powers. Since 1871 all the states of
Germany 'form an eternal union for the protection of the realm
and the care of the welfare of the German people.' For
legislative purposes, under the Emperor as head, are the two
Houses of Assembly; first, the Upper House of the Federated
States, consisting of 62 members, who represent the individual
States, and thus as the guardian of State rights, answers very
closely to the Senate of the American Union, except that the
number of members coming from each state is not uniform, but
apportioned. ... Each German state has its own local
constitution and home rule for its internal affairs. Generally
there are two chambers, except in some of the smallest states,
the population of which does not much exceed in some cases
that of our larger towns. ... Since 1867 the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy has been a political Siamese twin, of which Austria
is the one body, and Hungary the other; the population of the
Austrian half is 24 millions, and that of Hungary about 16
millions. Each of the two has its own parliament; the
connecting link is the sovereign (whose civil list is raised
half by one and half by the other) and a common army, navy,
and diplomatic service, and another Over-parliament of 120
members, one-half chosen by the legislature of Hungary, and
the other half by the legislature of Austria (the Upper House
of each twin returns twenty, and the Lower of each forty
delegates from their own number, who thus form a kind of Joint
Committee of the Four Houses). The jurisdiction of this
Over-parliament is limited to foreign affairs and war. ... The
western or Austrian part of the twin ... is a federal
government in itself. ... Federated Austria consists of
seventeen distinct states. The German element constitutes 36
per cent. of the inhabitants of these, and the Sclav 57 per
cent. There are a few Magyars, Italians, and Roumanians. Each
of these seventeen states has its own provincial parliament of
one House, partly composed of ex-officio members (the bishops and
archbishops of the Latin and Greek Churches, and the
chancellors of the universities), but chiefly of
representatives chosen by all the inhabitants who pay direct
taxation. Some of these are elected by the landowners, others
by the towns, others by the trade-guilds and boards of
commerce; the representatives of the rural communes, however,
are elected by delegates, as in Prussia. They legislate
concerning all local matters, county taxation, land laws and
farming, education, public worship, and public works. ...
Turning next to the oldest federation in Europe, that of
Switzerland, which with various changes has survived from
1308, though its present constitution dates only from 1874, we
find it now embraces three nationalities--German, French,
Italian. The original nucleus of the State, however, was
German, and even now three-fourths of the population are
German. The twenty-two distinct states are federated under one
president elected annually, and the Federal Assembly of two
chambers. ... Each of the cantons is sovereign and
independent, and has its own local parliament, scarcely any
two being the same, but all based on universal suffrage. Each
canton has its own budget of revenue and expenditure, and its
own public debt."
J. N. Dalton,
The Federal States of the World
(Nineteenth Century, July, 1884).
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
Canadian Federation.
"A convention of thirty-three representative men was held in
the autumn of 1864 in the historic city of Quebec, and after a
deliberation of several weeks the result was the unanimous
adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions embodying the
terms and conditions on which the provinces through their
delegates agreed to a federal union in many respects similar
in its general features to that of the United States
federation, and in accordance with the principles of the
English constitution. These resolutions had to be laid before
the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses
to the queen whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes
of the provinces in an imperial statute. ... In the early part
of 1867 the imperial parliament, without a division, passed
the statute known as the 'British North America Act, 1867,'
which united in the first instance the province of Canada, now
divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick and made provisions for the coming in of the other
provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British
Columbia, and the admission of Rupert's Land and the great
North-west. Between 1867 and 1873 the provinces just named,
with the exception of Newfoundland, which has persistently
remained out of the federation, became parts of the Dominion
and the vast Northwest Territory was at last acquired on terms
eminently satisfactory to Canada and a new province of great
promise formed out of that immense region, with a complete
system of parliamentary government. ... When the terms of the
Union came to be arranged between the provinces in 1864, their
conflicting interest had to be carefully considered and a system
adopted which would always enable the Dominion to expand its
limits and bring in new sections until it should embrace the
northern half of the continent, which, as we have just shown,
now constitutes the Dominion. It was soon found, after due
deliberation, that the most feasible plan was a confederation
resting on those principles which experience of the working of
the federation of the United States showed was likely to give
guarantees of elasticity and permanency. The maritime
provinces had been in the enjoyment of an excellent system of
laws and representative institutions for many years, and were
not willing to yield their local autonomy in its entirety. The
people of the province of Quebec, after experience of a union
that lasted from 1841 to 1867, saw decidedly great advantages
to themselves and their institutions in having a provincial
government under their own control. The people of Ontario
recognized equal advantages in having a measure of local
government, apart from French Canadian influences and
interference. The consequence was the adoption of the federal
system, which now, after twenty-six years' experience, we can
truly say appears on the whole well devised and equal to the
local and national requirements of the people."
J. G. Bourinot,
Federal Government in Canada
(Johns Hopkins University Studies, 7th Series,
numbers 10-13), lectures 1-2.
{1112}
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
Britannic Federation, Proposed.
"The great change which has taken place in the public mind in
recent years upon the importance to the Empire of maintaining
the colonial connection found expression at a meeting held at
the Westminster Palace Hotel in July 1884, under the guidance
of the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, who occupied the chair. At
that meeting--which was attended by a large number of members
of Parliament of both parties, and representatives of the
colonies--it was moved by the Right Hon. W. H. Smith: 'That,
in order to secure the permanent unity of the Empire, some
form of federation is essential.' That resolution was seconded
by the Earl of Rosebery, and passed unanimously. In November
of the same year the Imperial Federation League was formed to
carry out the objects of that resolution; and the subject has
received considerable attention since. ... I believe all are
agreed that the leading objects of the Imperial Federation
League are to find means by which the colonies, the outlying
portions of the Empire, may have a certain voice and weight
and influence in reference to the foreign policy of this
country, in which they are all deeply interested, and
sometimes more deeply interested than the United Kingdom
itself. In the next place, that measures may be taken by which
all the power and weight and influence that these great
British communities in Australasia, in South Africa, and in
Canada possess shall be brought into operation for the
strengthening and defence of the Empire. The discussion of
these questions has led to a great deal of progress. We have
got rid of a number of fallacies that obtained in the minds of
a good many persons in relation to the means by which those
objects are to be attained. Most people have come to the
conclusion stated by Lord Rosebery at the Mansion House, that
a Parliamentary Federation, if practicable, is so remote, that
during the coming century it is not likely to make any very great
advance. We have also got rid of the fallacy that it was
practicable to have a common tariff throughout the Empire. It
is not, in my opinion, consistent with the constitution either
of England or of the autonomous colonies. The tariff of a
country must rest of necessity mainly with the Government of
the day, and involves such continual change and alteration as
to make uniformity impracticable. ... I regard the time as
near at hand when the great provinces of Australasia will be
confederated under one Government. ... When that has been done
it will be followed, I doubt not, at a very early day, by a
similar course on the part of South Africa, and then we shall
stand in the position of having three great dominions,
commonwealths, or realms, or whatever name is found most
desirable on the part of the people who adopt them--three
great British communities, each under one central and strong
Government. When that is accomplished, the measure which the
Marquis of Lorne has suggested, of having the representatives
of these colonies during the term of their office here in
London, practically Cabinet Ministers, will give to the
Government of England an opportunity of learning in the most
direct and complete manner the views and sentiments of each of
those great British communities in regard to all questions of
foreign policy affecting the colonies. I would suggest that
the representatives of those three great British communities
here in London should be leading members of the Cabinet of the
day of the country they represent, going out of office when
their Government is changed. In that way they would always
represent the country, and necessarily the views of the party
in power in Canada, in Australasia, and in South Africa. That
would involve no constitutional change; it would simply
require that whoever represented those dominions in London
should have a seat in their own Parliament, and be a member of
the Administration."
C. Tupper,
Federating the Empire (Nineteenth Century,
October, 1891).
"Recent expensive wars at the Cape, annexations of groups of
islands in the neighbourhood of Australia, the Fishery and
other questions that have arisen, and may arise, on the North
American continent, have all compelled us to take a review of
our responsibilities in connection with our Colonies and to
consider how far, in the event of trouble, we may rely upon
their assistance to adequately support the commercial
interests of our scattered Empire. It is remarkable that,
although the matters here indicated are slowly coming to the
surface, and have provoked discussion, they have not been
forced upon the public attention suddenly, or by any violent
injury or catastrophe. The review men are taking of our
position, and the debates as to how best we can make our
relationships of standing value, have been the natural outcome
of slowly developing causes and effects. Politicians belonging
to both of the great parties in the State have joined the
Federation League. The leaders have expressly declared that
they do not desire at the present moment to propound any
definite theories, or to push any premature scheme for closer
union of the Empire. The society has been formed for the
purpose of discussing any plans proposed for such objects. The
suggestions actually made have varied in importance from
comprehensive projects of universal commercial union and
common contributions for a world-wide military and naval
organization, to such a trivial proposal as the personal
recognition of distinguished colonists by a nomination to the
peerage."
The Marquis of Lorne,
Imperial Federation,
chapter 1.
{1113}
"Many schemes of federation have been propounded, and many
degrees of federal union are possible. Lord Rosebery has not
gone further, as yet, than the enunciation of a general
principle. 'The federation we aim at (he has said) is the
closest possible union of the various self-governing States
ruled by the British Crown, consistently with that free
development which is the birthright of British subjects all
over the world--the closest union in sympathy, in external
action, and in defence.' ... The representation of the
Colonies in the Privy Council has been viewed with favour,
both by statesmen and by theoretical writers. Earl Grey has
proposed the appointment of a Federal Committee, selected from
the Privy Council, to advise with the Secretary of State for
the Colonies. The idea thus shadowed forth has been worked out
with greater amplitude of detail by Mr. Creswell, in an essay to
which the prize offered by the London Chamber of Commerce was
awarded. 'The Imperial assembly which we want,' says Mr.
Creswell, 'must be an independent body, constitutional in its
origin, representative in its character, and supreme in its
decisions. Such a body we have already in existence in the
Privy Council. Its members are chosen, irrespective of party
considerations, from among the most eminent of those who have
done service to the State. To this body colonists of
distinguished public service could be elected. In constituting
the Imperial Committee of the Privy Council, representation
might be given to every part of the empire, in proportion to
the several contributions to expenditure for Imperial
defence.' The constitution of a great Council of the Empire,
with similar functions in relation to foreign affairs to those
which are exercised in the United States by a Committee of the
Senate, is a step for which public opinion is not yet
prepared. In the meanwhile the utmost consideration is being
paid at the Foreign Office to Colonial feelings and interests.
No commitments or engagements are taken which would not be
approved by Colonial opinion. Another proposal which has been
warmly advocated, especially by the Protectionists, is that
for a customs-union between the Mother-country and the
Colonies. It cannot be said that at the present time proposals
for a customs-union are ripe for settlement, or even for
discussion, at a conference of representatives from all parts
of the empire. The Mother-country has been committed for more
than a generation to the principle of Free-trade. By our
policy of free imports of food and raw materials we have so
cheapened production that we are able to compete successfully
with all comers in the neutral markets of the world. ... It
would be impossible to entertain the idea of a reversal of our
fiscal policy, in however restricted a sense, without careful and
exhaustive inquiry. ... Lord Rosebery has recently declared
that in his opinion it is impracticable to devise a scheme of
representation for the Colonies in the House of Commons and
House of Lords, or in the Privy Council. The scheme of an
Imperial customs-union, ably put forward by Mr. Hoffmeyer at
the last Colonial Conference, he equally rejects. Lord
Rosebery would limit the direct action of the Imperial
Government for the present to conferences, summoned at
frequent intervals. Our first conference was summoned by the
Government at the instance of the Imperial Federation League.
It was attended by men of the highest distinction in the
Colonies. Its deliberations were guided by Lord Knutsford with
admirable tact and judgment; it considered many important
questions of common interest to the different countries of the
empire; it arrived at several important decisions, and it
cleared the air of not a few doubts and delusions. The most
tangible, the most important, and the most satisfactory result
of that conference was the recognition by the Australian
colonies of the necessity for making provision for the naval
defence of their own waters by means of ships, provided by the
Government of the United Kingdom, but maintained by the
Australian Governments. Lord Rosebery holds that the question
of Imperial Federation depends for the present on frequent
conferences. In his speech at the Mansion House he laid down
the conditions essential to the success of conferences in the
future. They must be held periodically and at stated
intervals. The Colonies must send the best men to represent
them. The Government of the Mother-country must invest these
periodical congresses with all the authority and splendour
which it is in their power to give. The task to be
accomplished will not be the production of statutes, but the
production of recommendations. Those who think that a congress
that only meets to report and recommend has but a neutral task
before it, have a very inadequate idea of the influence which
would be exercised by a conference representing a quarter of
the human race, and the immeasurable opulence and power that
have been garnered up by the past centuries of our history. If
we have these conferences, if they are allowed to discuss, as
they must be allowed to discuss, all topics which any parties
to these conferences should recommend to be discussed, Lord
Rosebery cannot apprehend that they would be wanting in
authority or in weight. Lord Salisbury, in his speeches
recently delivered in reply to the Earl of Dunraven in the
House of Lords, and in reply to the deputation of the Imperial
Federation League at the Foreign Office, has properly insisted
on the chief practical obstacle to a policy of frequent
conferences. Attendance at conferences involves grave
inconvenience to Colonial statesmen. ... In appealing to the
Imperial Federation League for some practical suggestions as
to the means by which the several parts of the British Empire
may be more closely knit together, Lord Salisbury threw out
some pregnant hints. To make a united empire both a Zollverein
and a Kriegsverein must be formed. In the existing state of
feeling in the Mother-country a Zollverein would be a serious
difficulty. The reasons have been already stated. A
Kriegsverein was, perhaps, more practicable, and certainly
more, urgent. The space which separates the Colonies from
possible enemies was becoming every year less and less a
protection. We may take concerted action for defence without
the necessity for constitutional changes which it would be
difficult to carry out."
Lord Brassey,
Imperial Federation: An English View
(Nineteenth Century, September., 1891).
"The late Mr. Forster launched under the high-sounding title
of the 'Imperial Federation League,' a scheme by which its
authors proposed to solve all the problems attending the
administration of our colonial empire. From first to last the
authors of this scheme have never condescended on particulars.
'Imperial federation,' we were always told, was the only
specific against the disintegration of the Empire, but as to
what this specific really was, no information was vouchsafed.
... It is very natural that the citizens of a vast but
fragmentary empire, whose territorial atoms (instead of
forming, like those of the United States, a 'ring-fence'
domain) are scattered over the surface of the globe, should
cast about for some artificial links to bind together the
colonies we have planted, and 'the thousand tribes nourished
on strange religions and lawless slaveries' which we have
gathered under our rule.
{1114}
This anxiety has been naturally augmented by a chronic
agitation for the abandonment of all colonies as expensive and
useless. For though there may be little to boast of in the
fact that Great Britain has in the course of less than three
centuries contrived by war, diplomacy, and adventure, to annex
about a fifth of the globe, it can hardly be expected that she
should relinquish without an effort even the nominal sway she
still holds over her colonial empire. Hence it comes to pass
that any scheme which seems to supply the needed links is
caught up by those who, possessing slight acquaintance with
the past history or the present aspirations of our colonists,
are simply looking out for some new contrivance by which they
may hope that an enduring bond of union may be provided.
'Imperial federation' is the last new 'notion' which has
cropped up in pursuance of this object. ... Some clue ... to
its objects and aims may be gained by a reference to the
earliest exposition by Mr. Forster of his motives contained in
his answer five years ago to the question, 'Why was the League
formed at all?' 'For this reason,' says Mr. Forster, 'because
in giving self-government to our colonies we have introduced a
principle which must eventually shake off from Great Britain,
Greater Britain, and divide it into separate states, which
must, in short, dissolve the union unless counteracting
measures be taken to preserve it.' Believing, as we do, that
it has only been by conceding to our larger groups of colonies
absolute powers of self-government that we have retained them
at all, and that the secret of our protracted empire lies in
the fact of this abandonment of central arbitrary power, the
retention of which has caused the collapse of all the European
empires which preceded us in the path of colonisation, we are
bound to enter our emphatic protest against an assumption so
utterly erroneous as that propounded by Mr. Forster. So far
from believing that the permanent union of the British Empire
is to be secured by 'measures which may counteract the
workings of colonial self-government,' we are convinced that
the only safety for our Empire lies in the unfettered action
of that self-government which we have ourselves granted to our
colonies. It would almost seem that for Lord Rosebery and his
fellow workers the history of the colonial empires of
Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France had been written in vain.
For if we ask why these colonial empires have dwindled and
decayed, the answer is simply because that self-government
which is the life of British colonies was never granted to
their dependencies. There was a time when one hundred and
fifty sovereign princes paid tribute to the treasury of
Lisbon. For two hundred years, more than half the South
American continent was an appanage of Spain. Ceylon, the Cape,
Guiana, and a vast cluster of trade factories in the East were
at the close of the seventeenth century colonies of Holland;
while half North America, comprising the vast and fertile
valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Ohio,
obeyed, a little more than a century ago, the sceptre of
France. Neither Portugal, nor Spain, nor Holland, nor France,
has lacked able rulers or statesmen, but the colonial empire
of all these states has crumbled and decayed. The exceptional
position of Great Britain in this respect can only be ascribed
to the relinquishment of all the advantages, political and
commercial, ordinarily presumed to result to dominant states
from the possession of dependencies. ... The romantic dreams
of the Imperial Federation League were in fact dissipated
beforehand by the irrevocable grant of independent
legislatures to all our most important colonies, and Lord
Rosebery may rest assured that, charm he never so wisely, they
will not listen to his blandishments at the cost of one iota
of the political privileges already conferred on them."
Imperial Federation
(Edinburgh Review, July, 1889).
"'Britannic Confederation' is defined to be an union of 'the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British North
America, 'British South Africa, and Australasia.' The West
Indies and one or two other British Dependencies seem here to
be shut out; but, at any rate, with this definition we at
least know where we are. The terms of the union we are not
told; but, as the word 'confederation' is used, I conceive
that they are meant to be strictly federal. That is to say,
first of all, the Parliament of the United Kingdom will give
up its right to legislate for British North America, British
South Africa, and Australasia. Then the United Kingdom,
British North America, British South Africa and Australasia
will enter into a federal relation with one another. They may
enter either as single members (States or Cantons) 'or as
groups of members. That is, Great Britain and Ireland might
enter as a single State of the Confederation, or England,
Scotland, Ireland, Wales--or possibly smaller divisions
again--might enter as separate States. Or Great Britain,
Australia, Canada, &c., might enter as themselves Leagues,
members of a greater League, as in the old state of things in
Graubünden. I am not arguing for or against any of these
arrangements. I am only stating them as possible. But whatever
the units are to be--Great Britain and Australia, England and
Victoria, or anything larger or smaller--if the confederation
is to be a real one, each State must keep some powers to
itself, and must yield some powers to a central body. That
Central body, in which all the States must be represented in
some way or other, will naturally deal with all international
matters, all matters that concern the Britannic Confederation
as a whole. The legislatures of Great Britain and Australia,
England and Victoria, or whatever the units fixed on may be,
will deal only with the internal affairs of those several
cantons. Now such a scheme as this is theoretically possible.
That is, it involves no contradiction in terms, as the talk
about Imperial Federation does. It is purely federal; there is
nothing 'imperial' about it. It is simply applying to certain
political communities a process which has been actually gone
through by certain other political communities. It is
proposing to reconstruct a certain political constitution
after the model of certain other political constitutions which
are in actual working. It is therefore something better than
mere talk and theory. But, because it is theoretically
possible, it does not follow that it is practically possible,
that is, that it is possible in this particular case. ... Of
the federations existing at this time the two chief are
Switzerland and the United States of America. They differ in
this point, that one is very large and the other very small;
they agree in this, that the territory of both is continuous.
But the proposed Britannic Confederation will be scattered,
scattered over every part of the world.
{1115}
I know of no example in any age of a scattered confederation,
a scattered Bundesstaat. The Hanse Towns were not a
Bundesstaat; they were hardly a Staatenbund. Of the probable
working of such a body as that which is now proposed the
experience of history can teach us nothing; we can only guess
what may be likely. The Britannic Confederation will have its
federal congress sitting somewhere, perhaps at Westminster,
perhaps at Melbourne, perhaps at some Washington called
specially into being at some point more central than either.
... For a while their representatives will think it grand to
sit at Westminster; presently, as the spirit of equality
grows, they are not unlikely to ask for some more central
place; they may even refuse to stir out of their own
territory. That is to say, they will find that the sentiment
of national unity, which they undoubtedly have in no small
measure, needs some physical and some political basis to stand
on. It is hard to believe that States which are united only by
a sentiment, which have so much, both political and physical,
to keep them asunder, will be kept together for ever by a
sentiment only. And we must further remember that that
sentiment is a sentiment for the mother-country, and not for
one another. ... Canada and Australia care a great deal for
Great Britain; we may doubt whether, apart from Great Britain,
Canada and Australia care very much for one another. There may
be American States which care yet less for one another; but in
their case mere continuity produces a crowd of interests and
relations common to all. We may doubt whether the
confederation of States so distant as the existing colonies of
Great Britain, whether the bringing them into closer relations
with one another as well as with Great Britain, will at all tend
to the advance of a common national unity among them. We may
doubt whether it will not be likely to bring out some hidden
tendencies to disunion among them. ... In the scattered
confederation all questions and parties are likely to be
local. It is hard to see what will be the materials for the
formation of great national parties among such scattered
elements."
E. A. Freeman,
The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity
(Britannic Confederation, edited by A. S. White).
"I have the greatest respect for the aspirations of the
Imperial Federationists, and myself most earnestly desire the
moral unity of our race and its partnership in achievement and
grandeur. But an attempt at formal Federation, such as is now
proposed, would in the first place exclude the people of the
United States, who form the largest portion of the
English-speaking race, and in the second place it would split
us all to pieces. It would, I am persuaded, call into play
centrifugal forces against which the centripetal forces could
not contend for an hour. What interests of the class with
which a Federal Parliament would deal have Australia and
Canada in common? What enemy has either of them whom the other
would be inclined to fight? Australia, it seems, looks forward
to a struggle with the Chinese for ascendency in that quarter
of the globe. Canada cares no more about a struggle between
the Australians and the Chinese at the other extremity of the
globe than the Australians would care about a dispute between
Canada and her neighbours in the United States respecting
Canadian boundaries or the Fisheries Question. The
circumstances of the two groups of colonies, to which their
policy must conform, are totally different. Australia lies in
an ocean by herself: Canada is territorially interlocked and
commercially bound up, as well as socially almost fused, with
the great mass of English-speaking population which occupies
the larger portion of her continent. Australia again is
entirely British. Canada has in her midst a great block of
French population, constituting a distinct nationality, which
instead of being absorbed is daily growing in intensity; and
she would practically be unable to take part in any enterprise
or support any policy, especially any policy entailing an
increase of taxation, to which the French Canadians were
opposed. Of getting Canada to contribute out of her own
resources to wars or to the maintenance of armaments, for the
objects of British diplomacy in Europe or in the East, no one
who knows the Canadians can imagine that there would be the
slightest hope. The very suggestion, at the time of the Soudan
Expedition, called forth emphatic protests on all sides. The
only results of an experiment in formal Federation, I repeat,
would be repudiation of Federal demands, estrangement and
dissolution."
Goldwin Smith,
Straining the Silken Thread
(Macmillan's Magazine. August, 1888).
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
European Federation.
"While it is obvious that Imperial Federation of the British
Empire would cover many of the defects in our relationship
with the colonies, it is equally apparent that it is open to
the fatal objection of merely making us a more formidable
factor in the field of international anarchy. Suppose the
colonies undertook to share equitably the great cost of
imperial defence in the present state of things throughout
Europe--and that is a very large assumption--England would be
entirely dependent, in case of war, for the supply of food on
the fleet, any accident to which would place us at the enemy's
mercy. Even without actual hostilities, however, our
additional strength would cause another increase of foreign
armaments to meet the case of war with us. This process has
taken place invariably on the increase of armaments of any
European state, and may be taken to be as certain as that the
sun will rise to-morrow. But all the benefits accruing from
Imperial Federation may be secured by European Federation,
plus a reduction of military liability, which Imperial
Federation would not only not reduce, but increase. There is
nothing to prevent the self-governing colonies from joining in
a European Federation, and thus enlarging the basis of that
institution enormously, and cutting off in a corresponding
degree the chance of an outbreak of violence in another
direction, which could not fail to have serious consequences
to the colonies at any rate."
C. D. Farquharson,
Federation, the Polity of the Future
(Westminster Review, December, 1891),
pages 602-603.
----------FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: End----------
FEDERALIST, The.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787-1789.
FEDERALISTS; The party of the.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1789-1792;
also 1812; and 1814 (DECEMBER): THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.
FEDS.--CONFEDS.
See BOYS IN BLUE.
FEE.
See FEUDALISM.
FEHDERECHT.
The right of private warfare, or diffidation,
exercised in mediæval Germany.
See LANDDFRIEDE.
{1116}
FEHRBELLIN, Battle of (1675).
See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688;
and SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1644-1697.
FEIS OF TARA.
See TARA.
FELICIAN HERESY.
See ADOPTIANISM.
FELIX V., Pope, A. D. 1439-1449
Elected by the Council of Basle.
FENIAN MOVEMENT, The.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1858-1867;
and CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871.
FENIAN: Origin of the Name.
An Irish poem of the ninth century called the Duan Eireannach,
or Poem of Ireland, preserves a mythical story of the origin
of the Irish people, according to which they sprang from one
Fenius Farsaidh who came out of Scythia. Nel, or Niul, the son
of Fenius, travelled into Egypt and married Scota, a daughter
of Forann (Pharaoh). "Niul had a son named Gaedhuil Glas, or
Green Gael; and we are told that it is from him the Irish are
called Gaedhil (Gael) or Gadelians, while from his mother is
derived the name of Scoti, or Scots, and from Fenius that of
Feni or Fenians."
M. Haverty,
History of Ireland,
page 10.
From this legend was derived the name of the Fenian
Brotherhood, organized in Ireland and America for the
liberation of the former from British rule, and which played a
disturbing but unsuccessful part in Irish affairs from about
1865 to 1871.
FEODORE.
See THEODORE.
FEODUM.
See FEUDALISM.
FEOF.
See FEUDALISM.
FEORM FULTUM.
See FERM.
FERDINAND,
King of Portugal, A. D. 1367-1383.
Ferdinand 1., Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and
Bohemia, 1835-1848.
Ferdinand I.,
Germanic Emperor, 1558-1564;
Archduke of Austria,
and King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1526-1564;
King of the Romans, 1531-1558.
Ferdinand I., King of Aragon and Sicily, 1412-1416.
Ferdinand I.,
King of Castile, 1035-1065;
King of Leon, 1037-1065.
Ferdinand I., King of Naples, 1458-1494.
Ferdinand II., Germanic Emperor and King of Bohemia and
Hungary, 1619-1637.
Ferdinand II.,
King of Aragon, 1479-1516;
V. of Castile (King-Consort of Isabella of Castile and
Regent), 1474-1516;
II. of Sicily, 1479-1516; and III. of Naples, 1503-1516.
Ferdinand II., King of Leon, 1157-1188.
Ferdinand II., King of Naples, 1495-1496.
Ferdinand II., called Bomba,
King of the Two Sicilies, 1830-1859.
Ferdinand III., Germanic Emperor, and King of Hungary and
Bohemia, 1637-1657.
Ferdinand III.,
King of Castile, 1217-1230;
King of Leon and Castile, united, 1230-1252.
Ferdinand IV., King of Leon and Castile, 1295-1312.
Ferdinand IV.,
King of Naples,
and I. of the Two Sicilies, 1759-1806;
and 1815-1825.
Ferdinand VI., King of Spain, 1746-1759.
Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 1808; and 1814-1833.
FERIÆ.
See LUDI.
FERM.--FIRMA.--FARM.
"A sort of composition for all the profits arising to the king
[in England, Norman period] from his ancient claims on the
land and from the judicial proceedings of the shire-moot; the
rent of detached pieces of demesne land, the remnants of the
ancient folk-land; the payments due from corporate bodies and
individuals for the primitive gifts, the offerings made in
kind, or the hospitality--the feorm-fultum--which the kings
had a right to exact from their subjects, and which were
before the time of Domesday generally commuted for money; the
fines, or a portion of the fines, paid in the ordinary process
of the county courts, and other small miscellaneous incidents.
These had been, soon after the composition of Domesday,
estimated at a fixed sum, which was regarded as a sort of rent
or composition at which the county was let to the sheriff and
recorded in the 'Rotulus Exactorious'; for this, under the
name of ferm, he answered annually; if his receipts were in
excess, he retained the balance as his lawful profit, the
wages of his service; if the proceeds fell below the ferm, he
had to pay the difference from his own purse. ... The farm,
ferm, or firma, the rent or composition for the ancient
feorm-fultum, or provision payable in kind to the Anglo-Saxon
kings. The history of the word in its French form would be
interesting. The use of the word for a pecuniary payment is
traced long before the Norman Conquest."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 11, section 126, and note.
FERNANDO.
See FERDINAND.
FEROZESHUR, Battle of (1845)
See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849.
FERRARA: The House of Este.
See ESTE.
FERRARA: A. D. 1275.
Sovereignty of the Pope confirmed by Rodolph of Hapsburg.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.
FERRARA: A. D. 1597.
Annexation to the states of the Church.
End of the house of Este.
Decay of the city and duchy.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1597.
FERRARA: A. D. 1797.
Joined to the Cispadine Republic.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).
----------FERRARA: End----------
FERRY BRIDGE, Battle of (1461).
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471,
FETIALES.--FECIALES.
"The duties of the feciales, or fetiales [among the Romans].
extended over every branch of international law. They gave
advice on all matters of peace or war, and the conclusion of
treaties and alliances. ... They fulfilled the same functions
as heralds, and, as such, were frequently entrusted with
important communications. They were also sent on regular
embassies. To them was entrusted the reception and
entertainment of foreign envoys. They were required to decide
on the justice of a war about to commence, and to proclaim and
consecrate it according to certain established formalities.
... The College of Feciales consisted of nearly twenty
members, with a president, who was called Pater Patratus,
because it was necessary that he should have both father and
children living, that he might be supposed to take greater
interest in the welfare of the State, and look backwards as
well as forwards. ... The name of Feciales ... still existed
under the emperors, as well as that of Pater Patratus, though
only as a title of honour, while the institution itself was
for ever annihilated; and, after the reign of Tiberius, we
cannot find any trace of it."
E. C. G. Murray,
Embassies and Foreign Courts,
pages 8-10.
See, also, AUGURS.
{1117}
FEUDAL TENURES.
"After the feudal system of tenure had been fully established,
all lands were held subject to certain additional obligations,
which were due either to the King (not as sovereign, but as
feudal lord) from the original grantees, called
tenants-in-chief (tenentes in capite), or to the
tenants-in-chief themselves from their under tenants. Of these
obligations the most honourable was that of knight-service.
This was the tenure by which the King granted out fiefs to his
followers, and by which they in turn provided for their own
military retainers. The lands of the bishops and dignified
ecclesiastics, and of most of the religious foundations, were
also held by this tenure. A few exceptions only were made in
favour of lands which had been immemorially held in
frankalmoign, or free-alms. On the grant of a fief, the tenant
was publicly invested with the land by a symbolical or actual
delivery, termed livery of seisin. He then did homage, so
called from the words used in the ceremony: 'Je deveigne votre
homme' ['I become your man']. ... In the case of a sub-tenant
(vavassor), his oath of fealty was guarded by a reservation of
the faith due to his sovereign lord the King. For every
portion of land of the annual value of £20, which constituted
a knight's fee [in England], the tenant was bound, whenever
required, to render the services of a knight properly armed
and accoutred, to serve in the field forty days at his own
expense. ... Tenure by knight-service was also subject to
several other incidents of a burdensome character. ... There
was a species of tenancy in chief by Grand Serjeanty, ...
whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the King
generally in his wars, to do some special service in his own
proper person, as to carry the King's banner or lance, or to
be his champion, butler, or other officer at his coronation.
... Grants of land were also made by the King to his inferior
followers and personal attendants, to be held by meaner
services. ... Hence, probably, arose tenure by Petit
Serjeanty, though later on we find that term restricted to
tenure 'in capite' by the service of rendering yearly some
implement of war to the King. ... Tenure in Free Socage (which
still subsists under the modern denomination of Freehold, and
may be regarded as the representative of the primitive alodial
ownership) denotes, in its most general and extensive
signification, a tenure by any certain and determinate
service, as to pay a fixed money rent, or to plough the lord's
land for a fixed number of days in the year. ... Tenure in
Burgage was a kind of town socage. It applied to tenements in
any ancient borough, held by the burgesses, of the King or
other lord, by fixed rents or services. ... This tenure, which
still subsists, is subject to a variety of local customs, the
most remarkable of which is that of borough-English, by which
the burgage tenement descends to the youngest instead of to
the eldest son. Gavelkind is almost confined to the county of
Kent. ... The lands are held by suit of court and fealty, a
service in its nature certain. The tenant in Gavelkind
retained many of the properties of alodial ownership: his
lands were devisable by will; in case of intestacy they
descended to all his sons equally; they were not liable to
escheat for felony ... and they could be aliened by the tenant
at the age of fifteen. Below Free Socage was the tenure in
Villeinage, by which the agricultural labourers, both free and
servile, held the land which was to them in lieu of money
wages."
T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
pages 58-65.
FEUDALISM.
"Feudalism, the comprehensive idea which includes the whole
governmental policy of the French kingdom, was of distinctly
Frank growth. The principle which underlies it may be
universal; but the historic development of it with which the
constitutional history of Europe is concerned may be traced
step by step under Frank influence, from its first appearance
on the conquered soil of Roman Gaul to its full development in
the jurisprudence of the Middle Ages. In the form which it has
reached at the Norman Conquest, it may be described as a
complete organisation of society through the medium of land
tenure, in which from the king down to the lowest landowner
all are bound together by obligation of service and defence:
the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to
his lord; the defence and service being based on and regulated
by the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the
other. In those states which have reached the territorial
stage of development, the rights of defence and service are
supplemented by the right of jurisdiction. The lord judges as
well as defends his vassal; the vassal does suit as well as
service to his lord. In states in which feudal government has
reached its utmost growth, the political, financial, judicial,
every branch of public administration, is regulated by the
same conditions. The central authority is a mere shadow of a
name. This institution had grown up from two great
sources--the beneficium, and the practice of
commendation,--and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil
by the existence of a subject population which admitted of any
amount of extension in the methods of dependence. The
beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by
the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and
servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in
the surrender by landowners of their estates to churches or
powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as
tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the
weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who
felt himself insecure placed his title under the defence of
the church. By the practice of commendation, on the other
hand, the inferior put himself under the personal care of a
lord, but without altering his title or divesting himself of
his right to his estate; he became a vassal and did homage.
... The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation
completed the idea of feudal obligation; the two-fold hold on
the land, that of the lord and that of the vassal, was
supplemented by the two-fold engagement, that of the lord to
defend, and that of the vassal to be faithful. A third
ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which in
the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of land was
united with the right of judicature: the dwellers on a feudal
property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the
rights which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head
were devolved upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of
the system thus originated, and the assimilation of all other
tenures to it, may be regarded as the work of the tenth
century; but as early as A. D. 877 Charles the Bald recognised
the hereditary character of all benefices; and from that year
the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be held to
date. The system testifies to the country and causes of its
birth.
{1118}
The beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin.
... Commendation on the other hand may have had a Gallic or
Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship.
... The word feudum, fief, or fee, is derived from the German
word for cattle (Gothic 'faihu'; Old High German 'fihu'; Old
Saxon 'fehu'; Anglo-Saxon 'feoh'); the secondary meaning being
goods, especially money: hence property in general. The letter
d is perhaps a mere insertion for sound's sake; but it
has been interpreted as part of a second root, od, also
meaning property, in which case the first syllable has a third
meaning, that of fee or reward, and the whole word means
property given by way of reward for service. But this is
improbable. ... The word feodum is not found earlier than the
close of the ninth century."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 9, section 93, and notes (volume 1).
"The regular machinery and systematic establishment of feuds,
in fact, may be considered as almost confined to the dominions
of Charlemagne, and to those countries which afterwards
derived it from thence. In England it can hardly be thought to
have existed in a complete state, before the Conquest.
Scotland, it is supposed, borrowed it soon after from her
neighbour. The Lombards of Benevento had introduced feudal
customs into the Neapolitan provinces, which the Norman
conquerors afterwards perfected. Feudal tenures were so
general in the kingdom of Aragon, that I reckon it among the
monarchies which were founded upon that basis. Charlemagne's
empire, it must be remembered, extended as far as the Ebro.
But in Castile and Portugal they were very rare, and certainly
could produce no political effect. Benefices for life were
sometimes granted in the kingdoms of Denmark and Bohemia.
Neither of these, however, nor Sweden, nor Hungary, come under
the description of countries influenced by the feudal system."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 2.
"Hardly any point in the whole history of European
institutions has been the subject of so violent controversy as
this of the origin of Feudalism. It was formerly supposed that
Feudalism was only a somewhat more developed form of the
ancient Germanic 'following' transplanted to Roman soil, but a
more critical examination of the documents of the early period
soon showed that there was more to it than this. It became
evident that Feudalism was not so simple as had at first
appeared. ... When, however, scholars had come to see this,
they then found themselves at variance upon the details of the
process by which the popular monarchical arrangements of the
early Franks were converted into the aristocratic forms of the
later Feudalism. While they agreed upon the essential fact
that the Germans, at the time of their emergence from their
original seats and their occupation of the Roman lands, were
not mere wandering groups of freebooters, as the earlier
school had represented them, but well-organized nations, with
a very distinct sense of political organization, they found
themselves hopelessly divided on the question how this
national life had, in the course of time, come to assume forms
so very different from those of the primitive German. The
first person to represent what we may call the modern view of
the feudal system was Georg Waitz, in the first edition of his
History of the German Constitution, in the years 1844-47.
Waitz presented the thing as a gradual growth during several
centuries, the various elements of which it was composed
growing up side by side without definite chronological
sequence. This view was met by Paul Roth in his History of the
Institution of the Benefice, in the year 1850. He maintained that
royal benefices were unknown to the Merovingian Franks, and
that they were an innovation of the earliest Carolingians.
They were, so he believed, made possible by a grand
confiscation of the lands of the Church, not by Charles
Martel, as the earlier writers had believed, but by his sons,
Pippin and Karlmann. The first book of Roth was followed in
the year 1863 by another on Feudalism and the Relation of the
Subject to the State, (Feudalität und Unterthanenverband), in
which he attempted to show that the direct subjection of the
individual to the government was not a strange idea to the
early German, but that it pervaded all forms of Germanic life
down to the Carolingian times, and that therefore the feudal
relation was a something entirely new, a break in the practice
of the Germans. In the years 1880-1885 appeared a new edition
of Waitz's History of the German Constitution, in which, after
acknowledging the great services rendered by Roth to the cause of
learning, he declares himself unable to give up his former
point of view, and brings new evidence in support of it. Thus
for more than thirty years this question has been before the
world of scholars, and may be regarded as being quite as far
from a settlement as ever."
E. Emerton,
An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages,
page 236 (foot-note).
ALSO IN:
F. P. Guizot,
History of Civilization:
Second Course, lecture 2.
See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.

FEUILLANTS, Club and Party of the.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1790, and 1791 (OCTOBER).
FEZ:
Founding of the city and kingdom.
See EDRISITES.
FIANNA EIRINN.
The ancient militia of Erin,
famous in old Irish romance and song.
T. Moore,
History of Ireland,
volume 1, chapter 7.
FIDENÆ.
An ancient city on the left bank of the Tiber, only five miles
from Rome, originally Latin, but afterwards containing a mixed
Latin and Etruscan population. It was at war with Rome until
the latter destroyed it, B. C. 426.
W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 2, chapter 15.
FIEFS.
See FEUDAL TENURES;
and FEUDALISM.
FIELD OF LIES, The.
Ludwig, or Louis, the Pious, son and successor of Charlemagne,
was a man of gentle character, and good intentions--too
amiable and too honest in his virtues for the commanding of a
great empire in times so rude. He lost the control of his
state, and his family, alike. His own sons headed a succession
of revolts against his authority. The second of these
insurrections occurred in the year 833. Father and sons
confronted one another with hostile armies, on the plain of
Rothfeld, not far from Colmar in Alsace. Intrigue instead of
battle settled the controversy, for the time being. The
adherents of the old emperor were all enticed away from him,
and he found himself wholly deserted and alone. To signify the
treacherous methods by which this defection was brought about,
the "Rothfeld" (Red-field) on which it occurred received the
name of "Lügenfeld," or Field of Lies.
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
The French under the Carlovingians;
translated by Bellingham, chapter 7.
{1119}
FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, The.
The place of the famous meeting of Henry VIII. of England with
Francis I. of France, which took place in the summer of 1520
[see FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523], is notable in history, from the
magnificence of the preparations made for it, as The Field of
the Cloth of Gold. It was at Guisnes, or between Guisnes and
Arde, near Calais (then English territory). "Guisnes and its
castle offered little attraction, and if possible less
accommodation, to the gay throng now to be gathered within its
walls. ... But on the castle green, within the limits of a few
weeks, and in the face of great difficulties, the English
artists of that day contrived a summer palace, more like a
vision of romance, the creation of some fairy dream (if the
accounts of eye-witnesses of all classes may be trusted), than
the dull every-day reality of clay-born bricks and mortar. No
'palace of art' in these beclouded climates of the West ever
so truly deserved its name. ... The palace was an exact square
of 328 feet. It was pierced on every side with oriel windows
and clerestories curiously glazed, the mullions and posts of
which were overlaid with gold. An embattled gate, ornamented
on both sides with statues representing men in various
attitudes of war, and flanked by an embattled tower, guarded
the entrance. From this gate to the entrance of the palace
arose in long ascent a sloping daïs or hall-pace, along which
were grouped 'images of sore and terrible countenances,' in
armour of argentine or bright metal. At the entrance, under an
embowed landing place, facing the great doors, stood 'antique'
(classical) figures girt with olive branches. The passages,
the roofs of the galleries from place to place and from
chamber to chamber, were ceiled and covered with white silk,
fluted and embowed with silken hanging of divers colours and
braided cloths, 'which showed like bullions of fine burnished
gold.' The roofs of the chambers were studded with roses, set
in lozenges, and diapered on a ground of fine gold. Panels
enriched with antique carving and gilt bosses covered the
spaces between the windows; whilst all along the corridors and
from every window hung tapestry of silk and gold, embroidered
with figures. ... To the palace was attached a spacious
chapel, still more sumptuously adorned. Its altars were hung
with cloth of gold tissue embroidered with pearls; cloth of
gold covered the walls and desks. ... Outside the palace gate,
on the greensward, stood a gilt fountain, of antique
workmanship, with a statue of Bacchus 'birlying the wine.'
Three runlets, fed by secret conduits hid beneath the earth,
spouted claret, hypocras, and water into as many silver cups,
to quench the thirst of all comers. ... In long array, in the
plain beyond, 2,800 tents stretched their white canvas before
the eyes of the spectator, gay with the pennons, badges, and
devices of the various occupants; whilst miscellaneous
followers, in tens of thousands, attracted by profit or the
novelty of the scene, camped on the grass and filled the
surrounding slopes, in spite of the severity of
provost-marshal and reiterated threats of mutilation and
chastisement. ... From the 4th of June, when Henry first
entered Guisnes, the festivities continued with unabated
splendour for twenty days. ... The two kings parted on the
best of terms, as the world thought."
J. S. Brewer,
Reign of Henry VIII.,
chapter 12.
ALSO IN:
Lady Jackson,
The Court of France in the 16th Century,
volume 1, chapters 11-12.
Miss Pardoe,
The Court and Reign of Francis I.,
volume 1, chapter 14.
FIESCO, Conspiracy of.
See GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559.
FIESOLE.
See FLORENCE: ORIGIN AND NAME.
FIFTEEN, The (Jacobite Rebellion),
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715.
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, The.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1869-1870.
FIFTH MONARCHY MEN.
One of the most extremely fanatical of the politico-religious
sects or factions which rose in England during the
commonwealth and the Protectoral reign of Cromwell, was that
of the so-called Fifth Monarchy Men, of whom Major-General
Harrison was the chief. Their belief is thus described by
Carlyle: "The common mode of treating Universal History, ...
not yet entirely fallen obsolete in this country, though it
has been abandoned with much ridicule everywhere else for half
a century now, was to group the Aggregate Transactions of the
Human Species into Four Monarchies: the Assyrian Monarchy of
Nebuchadnezzar and Company; the Persian of Cyrus and ditto;
the Greek of Alexander; and lastly the Roman. These I think
were they; but am no great authority on the subject. Under the
dregs of this last, or Roman Empire, which is maintained yet by
express name in Germany, 'Das heilige Römische Reich,' we poor
moderns still live. But now say Major-General Harrison and a
number of men, founding on Bible Prophecies, Now shall be a
Fifth Monarchy, by far the blessedest and the only real
one,--the Monarchy of Jesus Christ, his Saints reigning for
Him here on Earth,--if not He himself, which is probable or
possible,--for a thousand years, &c., &c.--O Heavens, there
are tears for human destiny; and immortal Hope itself is
beautiful because it is steeped in Sorrow, and foolish Desire
lies vanquished under its feet! They who merely laugh at
Harrison take but a small portion of his meaning with them."
T. Carlyle,
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,
part 8, speech 2.
The Fifth Monarchy fanaticism, sternly repressed by Oliver
Cromwell, gave some signs of turbulence during Richard
Cromwell's protectorate, and broke out in a mad way the year
after the Restoration. The attempted insurrection in London
was headed by one Venner, and was called Venner's
Insurrection. It was easily put down. "It came as the expiring
flash of a fanatical creed, which had blended itself with
Puritanism, greatly to the detriment of the latter; and, dying
out rather slowly, it left behind the quiet element of
Millenarianism."
J. Stoughton,
History of Religion in England,
volume 3, chapter 4.
ALSO IN:
D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
volume 5, page 16.
"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT."
See OREGON: A. D. 1844-1846.
FILI.
A class of poets among the early Irish, who practiced
originally certain rites of incantation. Their art was called
Filidecht. "The bards, who recited poems and stories, formed
at first a distinct branch from the Fili. According as the
true Filidecht fell into desuetude, and the Fili became simply
a poet, the two orders practically coalesced and the names
Fili and bard became synonymous. ... In Pagan times and during
the Middle Ages the Irish bards, like the Gaulish ones,
accompanied their recitation of poems on a stringed instrument
called a crut. ... The bard was therefore to the Fili, or
poet, what the Jogler was to the Troubadour."
W. K. Sullivan,
Article, Celtic Literature,
Encyclopedia Brittanica.
{1120}
FILIBUSTER.
"The difference between a filibuster and a freebooter is one
of ends rather than of means. Some authorities say that the
words have a common etymology; but others, including
Charlevoix, maintain that the filibuster derived his name from
his original occupation, that of a cruiser in a 'flibote,' or
'Vly-boat,' first used on the river Vly, in Holland. Yet
another writer says that the name was first given to the
gallant followers of Dominique de Gourgues, who sailed from
Finisterre, or Finibuster, in France, on the famous expedition
against Fort Caroline in 1567 [see FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568].
The name, whatever its origin, was long current in the Spanish
as 'filibustero' before it became adopted into the English. So
adopted, it has been used to describe a type of adventurer who
occupied a curious place in American history during the decade
from 1850 to 1860."
J. J. Roche,
The Story of the Filibusters,
chapter 1.
See, also,
AMERICA: A: D. 1639-1700.
FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITIONS OF LOPEZ AND WALKER.
See CUBA: A. D. 1845-1860;
and NICARAGUA: A. D. 1855-1860.
FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY, The.
"The Council of Toledo, held under King Reccared, A. D. 589,
at which the Visigothic Church of Spain formally abjured
Arianism and adopted the orthodox faith, put forth a version
of the great creed of Nicæa in which they had interpolated an
additional clause, which stated that the Holy Ghost proceeded
from the Father 'and from the Son' (Filioque). Under what
influence the council took upon itself to make an addition to
the creed of the universal Church is unknown. It is probable
that the motive of the addition was to make a stronger protest
against the Arian denial of the co-equal Godhead of the Son.
The Spanish Church naturally took a special interest in the
addition it had made to the symbol of Nicæa, and sustained it
in subsequent councils. ... The Frankish Church seems to have
early adopted it from their Spanish neighbours. ... The
question was brought before a council held at Aix in A. D.
809. ... The council formally approved of the addition to the
creed, and Charles [Charlemagne] sent two bishops and the
abbot of Corbie to Rome to request the pope's concurrence in
the decision. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, expressed
his agreement with the doctrine, but strongly opposed its
insertion into the creed. ... Notwithstanding the pope's
protest, the addition was adopted throughout the Frankish
Empire. When the Emperor Henry V. was crowned at Rome, A. D.
1014, he induced Pope Benedict VIII. to allow the creed with
the filioque to be chanted after the Gospel at High Mass; so
it came to be generally used in Rome; and at length Pope
Nicholas I. insisted on its adoption throughout the West. At a
later period the controversy was revived, and it became the
ostensible ground of the final breach (A. D. 1054) between the
Churches of the West and those of the East."
E. L. Cutts,
Charlemagne,
chapter 23.
"The Filioque controversy relates to the eternal procession of
the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation of the trinitarian
controversies of the Nicene age. It marks the chief and almost
the only important dogmatic difference between the Greek and
Latin churches, ... and has occasioned, deepened, and
perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom. The single
word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest and most nearly
related churches divided since the ninth century, and still
forbids a reunion."
P. Schaff,
History of the Christian Church,
volume 4, chapter 11, section 107.
ALSO IN:
G. B. Howard,
The Schism between the Oriental and Western Churches.
See, CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 330-1054.
FILIPPO MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1412-1447.
FILLMORE, Millard.
Vice-Presidential Election.
Succession to the Presidency.
Administration.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1848 to 1852.
FINÉ, The.
A clan or sept division of the tribe in ancient Ireland.
FINGALL.
See NORMANS.
NORTHMEN: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES;
also, IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.
FINLAND: A. D. 1808-1810.
Conquest by and peculiar annexation to Russia.
Constitutional independence of the Finnish grand
duchy confirmed by the Czar.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.
FINN GALLS.
See IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.
FINNS.
See HUNGARIANS.
FIODH-INIS.
See IRELAND, THE NAME.
FIRBOLGS, The.
One of the races to which Irish legend ascribes the settlement
of Ireland; said to have come from Thrace.
See NEMEDIANS,
and IRELAND: THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS.
FIRE LANDS, The.
See OHIO: A. D. 1786-1796.
FIRMA.
See FERM.
FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE, The.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).
FIRST EMPIRE (FRENCH), The.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805, to 1815.
FIRST-FRUITS.
See ANNATES.
FIRST REPUBLIC (FRENCH), The.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER), to 1804-1805.
FISCALINI.
See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE.
FISCUS, The.
"The treasury of the senate [in the early period of the Roman
empire] retained the old republican name of the ærarium; that
of the emperor was denominated the fiscus, a term which
ordinarily signified the private property of an individual.
Hence the notion rapidly grew up, that the provincial
resources constituted the emperor's private purse, and when in
process of time the control of the senate over the taxes gave
way to their direct administration by the emperor himself, the
national treasury received the designation of fiscus, and the
idea of the empire being nothing else than Cæsar's patrimony
became fixed ineradicably in men's minds."
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 32.
FISHER, Fort, The capture of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864-1865
(DECEMBER-JANUARY: NORTH CAROLINA).
FISHERIES, North American: A. D. 1501-1578.
The Portuguese, Norman, Breton and Basque fishermen on the
Newfoundland Banks.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578.
{1121}
FISHERIES: A. D. 1610-1655.
Growth of the English interest.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1620.
Monopoly granted to the Council for New England.
See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1620-1623.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1660-1688.
The French gain their footing in Newfoundland.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1660-1688.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1713.
Newfoundland relinquished to England, with fishing rights
reserved to France, by the Treaty of Utrecht.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1713.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1720-1745.
French interests protected by the fortification of Louisbourg.
See CAPE BRETON: A. D. 1720-1745.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1748.
St. Pierre and Michelon islands on the Newfoundland coast
ceded to France.
See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1748.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1763.
Rights secured to France on the island of Newfoundland and in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence by the Treaty of Paris.
Articles V. and VI. of the Treaty of Paris (1763), which
transferred Canada and all its islands from France to England,
are in the following language:
"The subjects of France shall have the liberty of fishing and
drying, on a part of the coasts of the island of Newfoundland,
such as it is specified in the 13th Article of the Treaty of
Utrecht; which article is renewed and confirmed by the present
treaty (except what relates to the island of Cape Breton, as
well as to the other islands and coasts, in the mouth and in
the gulph of St. Laurence): and his Britannic majesty consents
to leave to the subjects of the most Christian king the
liberty of fishing in the gulph of St. Laurence, on condition
that the subjects of France do not exercise the said fishery,
but at the distance of three leagues from all the coasts
belonging to Great Britain, as well those of the continent, as
those of the islands situated in the said gulph of St.
Laurence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the coasts
of the island of Cape Breton out of the said gulph, the
subjects of the most Christian king shall not be permitted to
exercise the said fishery, but at the distance of 15 leagues
from the coasts of the island of Cape Breton; and the fishery
on the coasts of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and everywhere else
out of the said gulph, shall remain on the foot of former
treaties.
Article VI. The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of St.
Peter and Miquelon, in full right, to his most Christian
majesty, to serve as a shelter to the French fishermen: and
his said most Christian majesty engages not to fortify the
said islands; to erect no buildings upon them, but merely for
the convenience of the fishery; and to keep upon them a guard
of 50 men only for the police."
Text of the Treaty (Parliamentary History,
volume 15, page 1295).
FISHERIES: A. D. 1778.
French fishery rights recognized in the treaty between France
and the United States.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778 (FEBRUARY).
FISHERIES: A. D. 1783.
Rights secured to the United States by the Treaty of Paris.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783 (SEPTEMBER).
FISHERIES: A. D. 1814-1818.
Disputed rights of American fishermen after the War of 1812.
Silence of the Treaty of Ghent.
The Convention of 1818.
Under the Treaty of Paris (1783) "we claimed that the liberty
which was secured to the inhabitants of the United States to
take fish on the coasts of Newfoundland, under the limitation
of not drying or curing the same on that island, and also on
the other coasts, bays, and creeks, together with the limited
rights of drying or curing fish on the coasts of Nova Scotia,
Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, were not created or conferred
by that treaty, but were simply recognized by it as already
existing. They had been enjoyed before the Revolution by the
Americans in common with other subjects of Great Britain, and
had, indeed, been conquered, from the French chiefly, through
the valor and sacrifices of the colonies of New England and
New York. The treaty was therefore considered analogous to a
deed of partition. It defined the boundaries between the two
countries and all the rights and privileges belonging to them.
We insisted that the article respecting fisheries was
therefore to be regarded as identical with the possession of
land or the demarcation of boundary. We also claimed that the
treaty, being one that recognized independence, conceded
territory, and defined boundaries, belonged to that class
which is permanent in its nature and is not affected by
subsequent suspension of friendly relations. The English,
however, insisted that this treaty was not a unity; that while
some of its provisions were permanent, other stipulations were
temporary and could be abrogated, and that, in fact, they were
abrogated by the war of 1812; that the very difference of the
language used showed that while the rights of deep-sea fishing
were permanent, the liberties of fishing were created and
conferred by that treaty, and had therefore been taken away by
the war. These were the two opposite views of the respective
governments at the conferences which ended in the treaty of
Ghent, of 1814." No compromise appearing to be practicable,
the commissioners agreed, at length, to drop the subject from
consideration. "For that reason the treaty of Ghent is
entirely silent as to the fishery question.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).
In consequence of conflicts arising between our fishermen and
the British authorities, our point of view was very strongly
maintained by Mr. Adams in his correspondence with the British
Foreign Office, and finally, on October 20, 1818, Mr. Rush,
then our minister at London, assisted by Mr. Gallatin,
succeeded in signing a treaty, which among other things
settled our rights and privileges by the first article, as
follows: ... 'It is agreed between the high contracting
parties that the inhabitants of the said United States shall
have forever, in common with the subjects of his Britannic
Majesty, the liberty of taking fish of any kind on that part
of the southern coast of Newfoundland which extends from Cape
Ray to the Rameau Islands; on the western and northern coasts
of Newfoundland from the said Cape Ray to the Qurpon Islands;
on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on the coasts,
bays, harbors, and creeks from Mont Joly, on the southern
coast of Labrador, to and through the straits of Belle Isle,
and thence northwardly indefinitely along the coast. And that
the American fishermen shall have liberty forever to dry and
cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks in
the southern part of Newfoundland herein-before described, and
of the coasts of Labrador; but as soon as the same, or any
portion thereof, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for
said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such portion, so
settled, without previous agreement for such purpose with the
inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground.
{1122}
And the United States hereby renounces forever any liberty
heretofore enjoyed, claimed by the inhabitants thereof to
take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any
of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of his Britannic
Majesty's dominions in America not included in the
above-mentioned limits. Provided, however, That the American
fishermen shall be permitted to enter such bays or harbors for
the purpose of shelter, of repairing damages therein, of
purchasing wood, and obtaining water, and for no other purpose
whatever. But they shall be under such restrictions as shall
be necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish
therein, or in any other manner whatever abusing the
privileges hereby secured to them.' The American
plenipotentiaries evidently labored to obtain as extensive a
district of territory as possible for in-shore fishing, and
were willing to give up privileges, then apparently of small
amount, but now much more important, than of using other bays
and harbors for shelter and kindred purposes. For that reason
they acquiesced in omitting the word 'bait' in the first
sentence of the proviso after water.' ... The power of
obtaining bait for use in the deep-sea fisheries is one which
our fishermen were afterward very anxious to secure. But the
mackerel fisheries in those waters did not begin until several
years later. The only contention then was about the cod
fisheries."
E. Schuyler,
American Diplomacy,
chapter 8.
Treaties and Conventions between the United States
and other Powers (edition of 1889), pages 415-418.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1854-1866.
Privileges defined under the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty.
See TARIFF LEGISLATION (UNITED STATES AND CANADA):
A. D. 1854-1866.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1871.
Reciprocal privileges adjusted between Great Britain and the
United States by the Treaty of Washington.
See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1871.
FISHERIES: A. D. 1877-1888.
The Halifax award.
Termination of the Fishery articles of the Treaty of
Washington.
The rejected Treaty of 1888.
In accordance with the terms of articles 22 and 23 of the
Treaty of Washington (see ALABAMA CLAIMS: A.. D. 1871), a
Commission appointed to award compensation to Great Britain
for the superior value of the fishery privileges conceded to
the citizens of the United States by that treaty, met at
Halifax on the 5th of June, 1877. The United States was
represented on the Commission by Hon. E. H. Kellogg, of
Massachusetts, and Great Britain by Sir Alexander F. Gault, of
Canada. The two governments having failed to agree in the
selection of the third Commissioner, the latter was named, as
the Treaty provided, by the Austrian Ambassador at London, who
designated M. Maurice Delfosse, Belgian Minister at
Washington. The award was made November 27, 1877, when, "by a
vote of two to one, the Commissioners decided that the United
States was to pay $5,500,000 for the use of the fishing
privileges for 12 years. The decision produced profound
astonishment in the United States." Dissatisfaction with the
Halifax award, and generally with the main provisions of the
Treaty of Washington relating to the fisheries, was so great
in the United States that, when, in 1878, Congress
appropriated money for the payment of the award, it inserted
in the bill a clause to the effect that "Articles 18 and 21 of
the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain
concluded on the 8th of May, 1871, ought to be terminated at
the earliest period consistent with the provisions of Article
33 of the same Treaty." "It is a curious fact that during the
time intervening between the signing of the treaty of
Washington and the Halifax award an almost complete change
took place in the character of the fisheries. The method of
taking mackerel was completely revolutionized by the
introduction of the purse-seine, by means of which vast
quantities of the fish were captured far out in the open sea
by enclosing them in huge nets. ... This change in the method
of fishing brought about a change in the fishing grounds. ...
The result of this change was very greatly to diminish the
value of the North-eastern Fisheries to the United States
fishermen." On the 1st of July, 1883, "in pursuance of
instructions from Congress, the President gave the required
notice of the desire of the United States to terminate the
Fishery Articles of the Treaty of Washington, which
consequently came to an end the 1st of July, 1885. The
termination of the treaty fell in the midst of the fishing
season, and, at the suggestion of the British Minister,
Secretary Bayard entered into a temporary arrangement whereby
the American fishermen were allowed the privileges of the
treaty during the remainder of the season, with the
understanding that the President should bring the question
before Congress at its next session and recommend a joint
Commission by the Governments of the United States and Great
Britain." This was done; but Congress disapproved the
recommendation. The question of rights under former treaties,
especially that of 1818, remained open, and became a subject
of much irritation between the United States and the
neighboring British American provinces. The local regulations
of the latter were enforced with stringency and harshness
against American fishermen; the latter solicited and procured
retaliatory legislation from Congress. To end this
unsatisfactory state of affairs, a treaty was negotiated at
Washington in February, 1888, by Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary
of State, William L. Putnam and James B. Angell,
plenipotentiaries on the part of the United States, and Joseph
Chamberlain, M. P., Sir L. S. Sackville West and Sir Charles
Tupper, plenipotentiaries on the part of Great Britain, which
treaty was approved by the President and sent to the Senate,
but rejected by that body on the 21st of August, by a negative
vote of 30, against 27 in its favor.
C. B. Elliott,
The United States and the North-eastern Fisheries,
pages 79-100.
ALSO IN:
E. Schuyler,
American Diplomacy,
chapter 8.
J. H. De Ricci,
The Fisheries Dispute (1888).
Annual Cyclopedia,
volume 13 (1888), pages 217-226.
Annual Report of United States Commission of Fish and
Fisheries for 1886.
Correspondence relative to proposed Fisheries Treaty
(Senate Ex. Doc., Number 113, 50th Congress, 1st Session).
Documents and Proceedings of Halifax Commission (H. R. Ex.
Doc., Number 89, 45th. Congress, 2d Session).
----------FISHERIES: End----------
FISHER'S HILL, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (AUGUST-OCTOBER: VIRGINIA).
FISHING CREEK, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862
(JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).
{1123}
FITCH, John, and the beginnings of steam navigation.
See STEAM NAVIGATION.
FITZGERALD'S (LORD THOMAS) REBELLION IN IRELAND.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.
FIVE ARTICLES OF PERTH, The.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1618.
FIVE BLOODS, The.
See IRELAND; 13TH-14TH CENTURIES.
FIVE BOROUGHS, The.
A confederation of towns occupied by the Danes in England,
including Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham and Stamford,
which played a part in the events of the tenth and eleventh
centuries. It afterwards became Seven Boroughs by addition of
York and Chester.
FIVE FORKS, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865
(MARCH-APRIL: VIRGINIA).
FIVE HUNDRED, The French Council of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).
FIVE HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.
See ATHENS: B. C. 510-507.
FIVE MEMBERS, King Charles' attempt against the.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY).
FIVE MILE ACT, The.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1662-1665.
FIVE NATIONS OF INDIANS, The.
The five original tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy,--the
Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas,--were
commonly called by the English the Five Nations. Subsequently,
in 1715, a sixth tribe, the Tuscaroras, belonging to the same
stock, was admitted to the confederacy, and its members were
then known as the Six Nations.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY, and IROQUOIS
TRIBES OF THE SOUTH.
FIVE THOUSAND, The
See ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.
FIVE YEARS' TRUCE, The.
The hostilities between Athens and Sparta which preceded the
Peloponnesian War, being opened by the battle of Tanagra, B.
C. 457, were suspended B. C. 451, by a truce called the Five
Years' Truce, arranged through the influence of the
soldier-statesman Cimon.
Thucydides,
History,
book 1, section 112.
ALSO IN:
E. Curtius,
History of Greece,
book 3, chapter 2.
FLAGELLANTS.
"Although the Church's forgiveness for sin might now [14th
century] be easily obtained in other ways: Still Flagellation
was not only greatly admired among the religious, but was also
held in such high estimation by the common people, that in
case of any calamity or plague, they thought they could
propitiate the supposed wrath of God in no more effectual
manner than by scourging, and processions of scourgers; just
as though the Church's ordinary means of atonement were
insufficient for extraordinary cases. A decided mistrust of
the Church's intercession, and the clergy who dispensed it,
prevailed among the societies of Flagellants; roused to action
by the plague that past over from Asia into Europe in the year
1348, and spread devastation everywhere, ever since the
beginning of the year 1349 they diffused themselves from the
Hungarian frontier over the whole of Germany, and found
entrance even into the neighbouring countries. ... They
practised this penance according to a fixed rule, without the
co-operation of the clergy, under the guidance of Masters,
Magistri, and made no secret of the fact, that they held the
Church's way of salvation in much lower estimation than the
penance by the scourge. Clement VI. put an end to the public
processions of Flagellants, which were already widely
prevalent: but penance by the scourge was only thus forced
into concealment. In Thuringia, Conrad Schmidt, one of their
masters, gave the form of a connected system of heretical
doctrine to their dislike of the Church. ... Thus there now
rose heretical Flagellants, called also by the common name of
Beghards; they existed down to the time of the Reformation,
especially in Thuringia, as an heretical sect very dangerous
to the Church. This warning example, as well as the mistrust
natural to the Hierarchy of all spiritual impulses which did
not originate from itself, decided the destiny of the later
societies of Flagellants. When the Whitemen (Bianchi) [see
WHITE PENITENTS], scourging themselves as they went, descended
from the Alps into Italy, they were received almost everywhere
with enthusiasm by the clergy and the people; but in the Papal
territory death was prepared for their leader, and the rest
accordingly dispersed themselves."
J. C. L. Gieseler,
Compendium of Ecclesiastical History,
section 123 (volume 4).
"Divided into companies of male and female devotees, under a
leader and two masters, they stripped themselves naked to the
waist, and publicly scourged themselves, or each other, till
their shoulders were covered with blood. This expiatory
ceremony was repeated every morning and afternoon for
thirty-three days, equal in number to the years which Christ
is thought to have lived upon earth; after which they returned
to their former employments, cleansed from sin by the baptism
of blood.' The flagellants appeared first in Hungary; but
missionary societies were soon formed, and they hastened to
impart the knowledge of the new gospel to foreign nations.
They spread with rapidity over Poland, Germany and the Low
Countries. From France they were excluded at the request of
the pope, who had issued a severe constitution against them;
but a colony reached England, and landed in London, to the
number of 120 men and women. ... The missionaries made not a
single proselyte."
J. Lingard,
History of England,
volume 4, chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
W. M. Cooper,
Flagellation and the Flagellants.
G. Waddington,
History of the Church,
note appendix to chapter 23.
FLAMENS.--FLAMINES.
"The pontifices, like several other priestly brotherhoods [of
ancient Rome] ... had sacrificial priests (flamines) attached
to them, whose name was derived from 'flare' (to blow the
fire). The number of flamines attached to the pontifices was
fifteen, the three highest of whom, ... viz., the Flamen
Dialis, Martialis, and Quirinalis, were always chosen from old
patrician families. ... Free from all civil duties, the Flamen
Dialis, with his wife and children, exclusively devoted
himself to the service of the deity. His house ... lay on the
Palatine hill. His marriage was dissoluble by death only; he
was not allowed to take an oath, mount a horse, or look at an
army. He was forbidden to remain a night away from his house,
and his hand touched nothing unclean, for which reason he
never approached a corpse or a burial-place. ... In the
daytime the Flamen Dialis was not allowed to take off his
head-dress, and he was obliged to resign his office in case it
fell off by accident. In his belt he carried the sacrificial
knife, and in his hand he held a rod, in order to keep off the
people on his way to the sacrifice. For the same purpose he
was preceded by a lictor, who compelled everybody on the way
to lay down his work, the flamen not being allowed to see the
business of daily life."
E. Guhl and W. Koner,
Life of the Greeks and Romans,
section 103.
See AUGURS.
{1124}
FLAMINIAN WAY.
See ROME: B. C. 295-191.
FLAMINIUS, The defeat of.
See PUNIC WAR, THE SECOND.
FLANDERS: A. D. 863.
Creation of the County.
Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, of France (not yet
called France), and a twice widowed queen of England, though
hardly yet out of her girlhood (she had wedded Ethelwulf and
Ethelbald, father and son, in succession), took a mate, at
last, more to her liking, by a runaway match with one of her
father's foresters, named Baudouin, or Baldwin, Bras-de-fer.
This was in 862. King Charles, in his wrath, caused the
impudent forester to be outlawed and excommunicated, both; but
after a year of intercession and mediation he forgave the pair
and established them in a suitable fief. Baudouin was made
Count or Marquis of Flanders. "Previously to Baudouin's era,
Flanders or 'Flandria' is a designation belonging, as learned
men conjecture, to a Gau or Pagus, afterwards known as the
Franc de Bruges, and noticed only in a single charter.
Popularly, the name of Flanders had obtained with respect to a
much larger surrounding Belgic country. ... The name of
'Flanders' was thus given to the wide, and in a degree
indefinite tract, of which the Forester Baudouin and his
predecessors had the official range or care. According to the
idiom of the Middle Ages, the term 'Forest' did not exactly
convey the idea which the word now suggests, not being applied
exclusively to wood-land, but to any wild and unreclaimed
region. ... Any etymology of the name of Flamingia, or
Flanders, which we can guess at, seems intended to designate
that the land was so called from being half-drowned.
Thirty-five inundations, which afflicted the country at
various intervals from the tenth to the sixteenth century,
have entirely altered the coast-line; and the interior
features of the country, though less affected, have been much
changed by the diversions which the river-courses have
sustained. ... Whatever had been the original amplitude of the
districts over which Baudouin had any control or authority,
the boundaries were now enlarged and defined. Kneeling before
Charles-le-Chauve, placing his hands between the hands of the
Sovereign, he received his 'honour':--the Forester of Flanders
was created Count or Marquis. All the countries between the
Scheldt, the Somme and the sea, became his benefice; so that
only a narrow and contested tract divided Baudouin's Flanders
from Normandy. According to an antient nomenclature, ten
counties, to wit, Theerenburch, Arras, Boulogne, Guisnes,
Saint-Paul, Hesdin, Blandemont, Bruges, Harlebec, and Tournay,
were comprehended in the noble grant which Baudouin obtained
from his father-in-law."
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and of England,
book 1, chapter 4.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1096.
The Crusade of Count Robert.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1201-1204.
The diverted Crusade of Count Baldwin and the imperial crown
he won at Constantinople.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203;
and BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1204-1205.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1214.
Humbled at the battle of Bouvines.
See BOUVINES.
FLANDERS: 13th Century.
The industry, commerce and wealth of the Flemings.
"In the 13th century, Flanders was the most populous and the
richest country in Europe. She owed the fact to the briskness
of her manufacturing and commercial undertakings, not only
amongst her neighbours, but throughout Southern and Eastern
Europe. ... Cloth, and all manner of woolen stuffs, were the
principal articles of Flemish production, and it was chiefly
from England that Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw
material of her industry. Thence arose between the two
countries commercial relations which could not fail to acquire
political importance. As early as the middle of the 12th
century, several Flemish towns formed a society for founding
in England a commercial exchange, which obtained great
privileges, and, under the name of the Flemish hanse of
London, reached rapid development. The merchants of Bruges had
taken the initiative in it; but soon all the towns of
Flanders--and Flanders was covered with towns--Ghent, Lille,
Ypres, Courtrai, Furnes, Alost, St. Omer, and Douai, entered
the confederation, and made unity as well as extension of
liberties in respect of Flemish commerce the object of their
joint efforts. Their prosperity became celebrated; and its
celebrity gave it increase. It was a burgher of Bruges who was
governor of the hanse of London, and he was called the Count
of the Hanse. The fair of Bruges, held in the month of May,
brought together traders from the whole world. 'Thither came
for exchange,' says the most modern and most enlightened
historian of Flanders (Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, 'Histoire
de Flandre,' t. ii., page 300), 'the produce of the North and
the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages to
Novgorod, and those brought over by the caravans from
Samarcand and Bagdad, the pitch of Norway and the oils of
Andalusia, the furs of Russia and the dates from the Atlas,
the metals of Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the
honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco, and the spice of Egypt;
whereby, says an ancient manuscript, no land is to be compared
in merchandise to the land of Flanders.' ... So much
prosperity made the Counts of Flanders very puissant lords.
'Marguerite II., called "the Black," Countess of Flanders and
Hainault, from 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich,' says a
chronicler, 'not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels, and
money; ... insomuch that she kept up the state of queen rather
than countess.' Nearly all the Flemish towns were strongly
organised communes, in which prosperity had won liberty, and
which became before long small republics, sufficiently
powerful not only for the defence of their municipal rights
against the Counts of Flanders, their lords, but for offering
an armed resistance to such of the sovereigns their neighbours
as attempted to conquer them or to trammel them in their
commercial relations, or to draw upon their wealth by forced
contributions or by plunder."
F. P. Guizot,
Popular History of France,
chapter 18.
ALSO IN:
J. Hutton,
James and Philip Van Arteveld,
part 1, chapter 2.
{1125}
FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.
The war with Philip the Fair.
As the Flemings advanced in wealth and consequence, the feudal
dependence of their country upon the French crown grew
increasingly irksome and oppressive to them, and their
attitude towards France became one of confirmed hostility. At
the same time, they were drawn to a friendly leaning towards
England by common commercial interests. This showed itself
decisively on the occasion of the quarrel that arose (A. D.
1295) between Philip IV., called the Fair, and Edward I. of
England, concerning the rule of the latter in Aquitaine or
Guienne. The French king found allies in Scotland; the English
king found allies in Flanders. An alliance of marriage, in
fact, had been arranged to take place between king Edward and
the daughter of Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders; but
Philip contrived treacherously to get possession of the
persons of the count and his daughter and imprisoned them both
at Paris, declaring the states of the count to be forfeited.
In 1299 the two kings settled their quarrel and abandoned
their allies on both sides--Scotland to the tender mercies of
Edward, and Flanders to the vengeance of the malignant king
Philip the Fair. The territory of the Flemings was annexed to
the crown of France, and Jacques de Châtillon, uncle of the
queen, was appointed governor. Before two years had passed the
impatient Flemings were in furious revolt. The insurrection
began at Bruges, May 18, 1302, and more than 3,000 Frenchmen
in that city were massacred in the first rage of the
insurgents. This massacre was called the Bruges Matins. A
French army entered Flanders to put down the rising and was
confronted at Courtrai (July 11, A. D. 1302) by the Flemish
militia. The latter were led by young Guy of Dampierre and, a
few knights, who dismounted to fight on equal terms with their
fellows. "About 20,000 militia, armed only with pikes, which
they employed also as implements of husbandry, resolved to
abide the onset of 8,000 Knights of gentle blood, 10,000
archers, and 30,000 foot-soldiers, animated by the presence
and directed by the military skill of Robert Count of Artois,
and of Raoul de Nesle, Constable of France. Courtrai was the
object of attack, and the Flemings, anxious for its safety,
arranged themselves on a plain before the town, covered in
front by a canal." An altercation which occurred between the
two French commanders led to the making of a blind and furious
charge on the part of the French horsemen, ignorant and
heedless of the canal, into which they plunged, horses and
riders together, in one inextricable mass, and where, in their
helplessness, they were slain without scruple by the Flemings.
"Philip had lost his most experienced Generals, and the flower
of his troops; but his obstinacy was unbending." In repeated
campaigns during the next two years, Philip strove hard to
retrieve the disaster of Courtrai. He succeeded, at last (A.
D. 1304), in achieving, with the help of the Genoese, a naval
victory in the Zuruck-Zee, followed by a victory, personally
his own, at Mons-en-Puelle, in September of the same year.
Then, finding the Flemings as dauntlessly ready as ever to
renew the fight, he gave up to their obstinacy and
acknowledged the independence of the county. A treaty was
signed, in which "the independence of Flanders was
acknowledged under its Count, Robert de Bethune (the eldest
son of Guy de Dampierre), who, together with his brothers and
all the other Flemish prisoners, was to be restored to
liberty. The Flemings, on the other hand, consented to
surrender those districts beyond the Lys in which the French
language was vernacularly spoken; and to this territory were
added the cities of Douai, Lille, and their dependencies. They
engaged, moreover, to furnish by instalments 200,000 livres in
order to cover the expenses which Philip had incurred by their
invasion."
E. Smedley,
History of France,
part 1, chapter 7.
ALSO IN:
J. Hutton,
James and Philip Van Arteveld,
part 1, chapters 2-3.
J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 5, chapter 2.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1314.
Dishonesty of Philip of France.
Philip was one of the most treacherous of princes, and his
treaty with the Flemings did not secure them against him. "The
Flemings, who had paid the whole of the money stipulated by
the treaty of 1305, demanded the restitution of that part of
Flanders which had been given up as a pledge; but Philippe
refused to restore it on the plea that it had been given to
him absolutely and not conditionally. He commenced hostilities
[A. D. 1314] by seizing upon the counties of Nevers and
Réthel, belonging to the count of Flanders and his eldest son,
who replied by laying siege to Lille." Philippe was making
great exertions to raise money for a vigorous prosecution of
the war, when he died suddenly, Nov. 25, 1314, as the result
of an accident in hunting.
T. Wright,
History of France,
volume 1, book 2, chapter 2.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1328.
The Battle of Cassel.
The first act of Philip of Valois, King of France, after his
coronation in 1328, was to take up the cause of his cousin,
Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders, who had been driven from
his territories by the independent burghers of Bruges, Ypres,
and other cities, and who had left to him no town save Ghent,
in which he dared to appear. The French king "gathered a great
host of feudal lords, who rejoiced in the thought of Flemish
spoil, and marched to Arras, and thence onwards into Flanders.
He pitched his tent under the hill of Cassel, 'with the
fairest and greatest host in the world' around him. The
Flemish, under Claus Dennequin, lay on the hill-top: thence
they came down all unawares in three columns on the French
camp in the evening, and surprised the King at supper and all
but took him. The French soon recovered from the surprise;
'for God would not consent that lords should be discomfitted
by such riffraff': they slew the Flemish Captain Dennequin,
and of the rest but few escaped; 'for they deigned not to
flee,' so stubborn were those despised weavers of Flanders.
This little battle, with its great carnage of Flemish,
sufficed to lay all Flanders at the feet of its count."
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
book 4, chapter 1.
"Sixteen thousand Flemings had marched to the attack in three
divisions. Three heaps of slain were counted on the morrow in
the French lines, amounting altogether to 13,000 corpses; and
it is said that Louis ... inflicted death upon 10,000 more of
the rebels."
E. Smedley,
History of France,
part 1, chapter 8.
ALSO IN:
Froissart (Johnes),
Chronicles,
book 1, chapters 21-22.
{1126}
FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.
The revolt under Jacques Van Arteveld.
The alliance with England.
The most important measure by which Edward III. of England
prepared himself for the invasion of France, as a claimant of
the French crown [See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339] was the
securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers. This was
made easy for him by his enemies. "The Flemings happened to
have a count who was wholly French--Louis de Nevers--who was
only count through the battle of Cassel and the humiliation of
his country, and who resided at Paris, at the court of
Philippe de Valois. Without consulting his subjects, he
ordered a general arrest of all the English throughout
Flanders; on which Edward had all the Flemings in England
arrested. The commerce, which was the life-blood of each
country, was thus suddenly broken off. To attack the English

through Guyenne and Flanders was to wound them in their most
sensible parts, to deprive them of cloth and wine. They sold
their wool at Bruges, in order to buy wine at Bordeaux. On the
other hand, without English wool, the Flemings were at a
stand-still. Edward prohibited the exportation of wool,
reduced Flanders to despair, and forced her to fling herself
into his arms. At first, a crowd of Flemish workmen emigrated
into England, whither they were allured at any cost, and by
every kind of flattery and caress. ... I take it that the
English character has been seriously modified by these
emigrations, which went on during the whole of the fourteenth
century. Previously, we find no indications of that patient
industry which now distinguishes the English. By endeavouring
to separate Flanders and England the French king only
stimulated Flemish emigration, and laid the foundation of
England's manufactures. Meanwhile, Flanders did not resign
herself. The towns burst into insurrection. They had long
hated the count, either because he supported the country
against the monopoly of the towns, or because he admitted the
foreigners, the Frenchmen, to a share of their commerce. The
men of Ghent, who undoubtedly repented of having withheld
their aid from those of Ypres and of Bruges at the battle of
Cassel, chose, in 1337, as their leader, the brewer,
Jacquemart Artaveld. Supported by the guilds, and, in
particular, by the fullers and clothiers, Artaveld organized a
vigorous tyranny. He assembled at Ghent the men of the three
great cities, 'and showed them that they could not live
without the king of England; for all Flanders depended on
cloth-making, and, without wool, one could not make cloth;
therefore he recommended them to keep the English king their
friend.'"
J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 6, chapter 1.
ALSO IN
F. P. Guizot,
Popular History of France,
chapter 20.
J. Hutton,
James and Philip Van Altevelde,
part 3.
J. Froissart,
Chronicles
(Johnes's translation),
book 1, chapter 29.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1345.
The end of Jacques Van Artaveld.
"Jacob von Artaveld, the citizen of Ghent that was so much
attached to the king of England, still maintained the same
despotic power over all Flanders. He had promised the king of
England, that he would give him the inheritance of Flanders,
invest his son the prince of Wales with it, and make it a
duchy instead of an earldom. Upon which account the king was,
at this period, about St. John the Baptist's day, 1345, come
to Sluys, with a numerous attendance of barons and knights. He
had brought the prince of Wales with him, in order that Jacob
von Artaveld's promises might be realized. The king remained
on board his fleet in the harbour of Sluys, where he kept his
court. His friends in Flanders came thither to see and visit
him; and there were many conferences between the king and
Jacob Von Artaveld on one side, and the councils from the
different capital towns on the other, relative to the
agreement before mentioned. ... When on his return he [Van
Artaveld] came to Ghent about midday, the townsmen who were
informed of the hour he was expected, had assembled in the
street that he was to pass through; as soon as they saw him,
they began to murmur, and put their heads close together,
saying, 'Here comes one who is too much the master, and wants
to order in Flanders according to his will and pleasure, which
must not be longer borne.' With this they had also spread a
rumour through the town, that Jacob von Artaveld had collected
all the revenues of Flanders, for nine years and more. ... Of
this great treasure he had sent part into England. This
information inflamed those of Ghent with rage; and, as he was
riding up the streets, he perceived that there was something
in agitation against him; for those who were wont to salute
him very respectfully, now turned their backs, and went into
their houses. He began therefore to suspect all was not as
usual; and as soon as he had dismounted, and entered his
hotel, he ordered the doors and windows to be shut and
fastened. Scarcely had his servants done this, when the street
which he inhabited was filled from one end to the other with
all sorts of people, but especially by the lowest of the
mechanics. His mansion was surrounded on every side, attacked
and broken into by force. Those within did all they could to
defend it, and killed and wounded many: but at last they could
not hold out against such vigorous attacks, for three parts of
the town were there. When Jacob von Artaveld saw what efforts
were making, and how hardly he was pushed, he came to a
window; and, with his head uncovered, began to use humble and
fine language. ... When Jacob von Artaveld saw that he could
not appease or calm them, he shut the window, and intended
getting out of his house the back way, to take shelter in a
church adjoining; but his hotel was already broke into on that
side, and upwards of four hundred were there calling out for him.
At last he was seized by them, and slain without mercy: his
death-stroke was given him by a sadler, called Thomas Denys.
In this manner did Jacob von Artaveld end his days, who in his
time had been complete master of Flanders. Poor men first
raised him, and wicked men slew him."
J. Froissart (Johnes),
Chronicles,
book 1, chapter 115 (volume 1).
{1127}
FLANDERS: A. D. 1379-1381.
The revolt of the White Hoods.
"We will ... speak of the war in Flanders, which began about
this time [A. D. 1379]. The people were very murderous and
cruel, and multitudes were slain or driven out of the country.
The country itself was so much ruined, that it was said a
hundred years would not restore it to the situation it was in
before the war. Before the commencement of these wars in
Flanders, the country was so fertile, and everything in such
abundance, that it was marvellous to see; and the inhabitants
of the principal towns lived in very grand state. You must
know that this war originated in the pride and hatred that
several of the chief towns bore to each other: those of Ghent
against Bruges, and others, in like manner, vying with each
other through envy. However, this could not have created a war
without the consent of their lord, the earl of Flanders, who
was so much loved and feared that no one dared anger him." It
is in these words that the old court chronicler, Froissart,
begins his fully detailed and graphic narrative of the
miserable years, from 1379 to 1384, during which the communes
of Flanders were at war with one another and at war with their
worthless and oppressive count, Luis de Maele. The picturesque
chronicle is colored with the prejudices of Froissart against
the Flemish burghers and in favor of their lord; but no one
can doubt that the always turbulent citizens were jealous of
rights which the always rapacious lord never ceased to
encroach upon. As Froissart tells the story, the outbreak of
war began with an attempt on the part of the men of Bruges, to
dig a canal which would divert the waters of the river Lys.
When those of Ghent had news of this unfriendly undertaking,
they took counsel of one John Yoens, or John Lyon, a burgher
of much cunning, who had formerly been in favor with the
count, but whom his enemies had supplanted. "When he [John
Lyon] was prevailed on to speak, he said: 'Gentlemen, if you
wish to risk this business, and put an end to it, you must
renew an ancient custom that formerly subsisted in the town of
Ghent: I mean, you must first put on white-hoods, and choose a
leader, to whom everyone may look, and rally at his signal.'
This harangue was eagerly listened to, and they all cried out,
'We will have it so, we will have it so! now let us put on
white-hoods.' White-hoods were directly made, and given out to
those among them who loved war better than peace, and had
nothing to lose. John Lyon was elected chief of the White
Hoods. He very willingly accepted of this office, to avenge
himself on his enemies, to embroil the towns of Ghent and
Bruges with each other and with the earl their lord. He was
ordered, as their chief, to march against the pioneers and
diggers from Bruges, and had with him 200 such people as
preferred rioting to quiet."
Froissart (Johnes),
Chronicles,
book 2, chapters 36-102.
When the White Hoods had driven the ditchers of Bruges from
their canal, they returned to Ghent, but not to disband.
Presently the jealous count required them to lay aside the
peculiar badge of their association, which they declined to
do. Then Count Louis sent his bailiff into Ghent with 200
horsemen, to arrest John Lyon, and some others of his band.
The White Hoods rallied, slew the bailiff and drove his posse
from the town; after which unmistakable deed Ghent and the
count were distinctly at war. The city of the White Hoods took
prompt measures to secure the alliance and support of its
neighbors. Some nine or ten thousand of its citizens marched
to Bruges, and partly by persuasion, partly by force, partly
by the help of the popular party in the town, they effected a
treaty of friendship and alliance--which did not endure,
however, very long. Courtray, Damme, Ypres and other cities
joined the league and it soon presented a formidable array.
Oudenarde, strongly fortified, by the count, became the key of
the situation, and was besieged by the citizen-militia. In the
midst of the siege, the Duke of Burgundy, son-in-law of the
count, made successful efforts to bring about a peace
(December 1379). "The count promised to forget the past and
return to his residence in Ghent. This peace, however, was of
short duration; and the count, after passing only two or three
days in Ghent, alleged some cause of dissatisfaction and
returned to Lille, to recommence hostilities, in the course of
which, with the assistance of the richer citizens, he made
himself master of Bruges. Another peace was signed in the
August of 1380, which was no more durable than the former, and
the count reduced Ypres; and, at the head of an army of 60,000
men, laid siege to Ghent itself, the chief and soul of the
popular confederacy, in the month of September. But the
citizens of Ghent defended themselves so well that he was
obliged to raise the siege in the middle of November, and
agree to a truce. This truce also was broken by the count's
party, the war renewed in the beginning of the year 1381, and
the men of Ghent experienced a disastrous defeat in the battle
of Nevelle towards the middle of May. It was a war of
extermination, and was carried on with extreme ferocity. ...
Ghent itself, now closely blockaded by the count's troops, was
only saved by the great qualities of Philip Van Artevelde [son
of Jacques Van Arteveld, of the revolution of 1337], who, by a
sort of peaceful revolution, was placed at the head of affairs
[January 25, 1381]. The victory of Beverholt, in which the
count was defeated with great slaughter, and only escaped with
difficulty, made the town of Ghent again master of Flanders."
T. Wright,
History of France,
book 2, chapter 8.
ALSO IN
J. Hutton,
James and Philip Van Arteveld,
chapters 14-16.
W. C. Taylor,
Revolutions, Insurrections and Conspiracies of Europe,
volume 2, chapters 7-9.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1382.
The rebellion crushed.
By the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, to the daughter
and heiress of the Count of Flanders, that powerful French
prince had become interested in the suppression of the revolt
of the Flemish burghers and the restoration of the count to
his lordship. His nephew, the young king of France, Charles
VI., was easily persuaded to undertake a campaign to that end,
and an army of considerable magnitude was personally led
northwards by the monarch of fourteen years. "The object of
the expedition was not only to restore to the Count of
Flanders his authority, but to punish the turbulent commons,
who stirred up those of France to imitate their example.
Froissart avows it to have been a war between the commons and
the aristocracy. The Flemings were commanded by Artaveldt, son
of the famous brewer, the ally of Edward III. The town of Ghent
had been reduced to the extreme of distress and famine by the
count and the people of Bruges, who supported him. Artaveldt
led the people of Ghent in a forlorn hope against Bruges,
defeated the army of the count, and broke into the rival town,
which he took and plundered. After this disaster, the count
had recourse to France. The passage of the river Lys, which
defended Flanders, was courageously undertaken, and effected
with some hazard by the French.
{1128}
The Flemings were rather dispirited by this first success:
nevertheless, they assembled their forces; and the two armies
of French knights and Flemish citizens met at Rosebecque [or
Roosebeck], between Ypres and Courtray. The 27th of November,
1382, was the day of battle. Artaveldt had stationed his army
on a height, to await the attack of the French, but their
impatience forced him to commence. Forming his troops into one
solid square, Artaveldt led them against the French centre.
Froissart compares their charge to the headlong rush of a wild
boar. It broke the opposite line, penetrating into its ranks:
but the wings of the French turned upon the flank of the
Flemings, which, not having the advantage of a charge or
impulse, were beaten by the French men at arms. Pressed upon
one another, the Flemings had not room to fight: they were
hemmed in, surrounded, and slaughtered: no quarter was asked
or given; nearly 30,000 perished. The 9,000 Ghentois that had
marched under their banner were counted, to a man, amongst the
slain: Artaveldt, their general, was among the foremost who
had fallen. Charles ordered his body to be hung upon a tree.
It was at Courtray, very near to the field where this battle
was fought, that Robert of Artois, with a French army, had
perished beneath the swords of the Flemings, nearly a century
previous. The gilded spurs of the French knights still adorned
the walls of the cathedral of Courtray. The victory of Rosebecque
in the eyes of Charles had not sufficiently repaid the former
defeat: the town of Courtray was pillaged and burnt; its
famous clock was removed to Dijon, and formed the third wonder
of this kind in France, Paris and Sens alone possessing
similar ornaments. The battle of Rosebecque proved more
unfortunate for the communes of France than for those of
Flanders. Ghent, notwithstanding her loss of 9,000 slain, did
not yield to the conqueror, but held out the war for two years
longer; and did not finally submit until the Duke of Burgundy,
at the death of their count, guaranteed to the burghers the
full enjoyment of their privileges. The king avenged himself
on the mutinous city of Paris; entered it as a conqueror; took
the chains from the streets and unhinged the gates: one hundred
of the citizens were sent to the scaffold; the property of the
rich was confiscated; and all the ancient and most onerous
taxes, the gabelle, the duty on sales, as well as that of
entry, were declared by royal ordinance to be established
anew. The principal towns of the kingdom were visited with the
same punishments and exactions. The victory of Rosebecque
overthrew the commons of France, which were crushed under the
feet of the young monarch and his nobles."
E. E. Crowe,
History of France,
chapter 4.
ALSO IN
Sir J. Froissart (Johnes),
Chronicles,
book 2, chapters 111-130.
J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 7, chapter 1 (volume 2).
F. P. Guizot,
Popular History of France,
chapter 23 (volume 3).
FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.
The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade.
The crushing defeat of the Flemings at Roosebeke produced
alarm in England, where the triumph of the French was quickly
felt to be threatening. "English merchants were expelled from
Bruges, and their property was confiscated. Calais even was in
danger. The French were at Dunkirk and Gravelines, and might
by a sudden dash on Calais drive the English out." There had
been aid from England promised to Van Artevelde, but the
promise had only helped on the ruin of the Ghent patriot by
misleading him. No help had come when he needed it. Now, when
it was too late, the English bestirred themselves. For some
months there had been on foot among them a Crusade, which Pope
Urban VI. had proclaimed against the supporters of the rival
Pope Clement VII.--the "Schismatics." France took the side of
the latter and was counted among the Schismatics. Accordingly,
Pope Urban's Crusade, so far as the English people could be moved
to engage in it, was now directed against the French in
Flanders. It was led by the Bishop of Norwich, who succeeded
in rousing a very considerable degree of enthusiasm in the
country for the movement, despite the earnest opposition of
Wyclif and his followers. The crusading army assembled at
Calais in the spring of 1383, professedly for a campaign in
France; but the Bishop found excuses for leading it into
Flanders. Gravelines was first attacked, carried by storm, and
its male defenders slaughtered to a man. An army of French and
Flemings, encountered near Dunkirk, was routed, with fearful
carnage, and the whole coast, including Dunkirk, fell into the
hands of the English. Then they laid siege to Ypres, and there
their disasters began. The city held out with stubbornness
from the 9th of June until the 10th of August, when the
baffled besiegers--repulsed in a last desperate assault which
they had made on the 8th--marched away. "Ypres might rejoice,
but the disasters of the long siege proved final. Her stately
faubourgs were not rebuilt, and she has never again taken her
former rank among the cities of Flanders." In September a
powerful French army entered Flanders, and the English
crusaders could do nothing but retreat before it, giving up
Cassel (which the French burned), then Bergues, then
Bourbourg, after a siege, and, finally, setting fire to
Gravelines and abandoning that place. "Gravelines was utterly
destroyed, but the French soon began to rebuild it. It was
repeopled from the surrounding country, and fortified strongly
as a menace to Calais." The Crusaders returned to England
"'dripping with blood and disgracing their country. Blessed be
God who confounds the proud,' says one sharp critic, who
appears to have been a monk of Canterbury."
G. M. Wrong,
The Crusade of MCCCLXXXIII.
ALSO IN
Sir J. Froissart, (Johnes),
Chronicles
book 2, chapters 130-145 (volumes 1-2).
FLANDERS: A. D. 1383
Joined to the Dominions of the Duke of Burgundy.
"Charles V. [of France] had formed the design of obtaining
Flanders for his brother Philip, Duke of Burgundy, afterwards
known as Philip the Bold--by marrying him to Margaret
[daughter and heiress of Louis de Maele, count of Flanders].
To gain the good will of the Communes, he engaged to restore
the three bailiwicks of Lille, Douai, and Orchies as a
substitute for the 10,000 livres a year promised to Louis de
Maele and his successors in 1351, as well as the towns of
Peronne, Crèvecœur, Arleux and Château-Chinon, assigned to him
in 1358. ... On the 13th May, 1369, the 'Lion of Flanders'
once more floated, after an interval of half a century, over
the walls of Lille, Douai, and Orchies, and at the same time
Flemish garrisons marched into St. Omer, Aire, Bethune and
Hesdin. The marriage ceremony took place at Ghent on the 19th
of June." The Duke of Burgundy waited fourteen years for the
heritage of his wife. In January, 1383, Count Louis died, and
Flanders was added to the great and growing dominion of the
new Burgundian house.
J. Hutton,
James and Philip van Arteveld,
chapters 14 and 18.
See BURGUNDY (THE FRENCH DUKEDOM): A. D. 1364.
{1129}
FLANDERS: A. D. 1451-1453.
Revolt against the Burgundian Gabelle.
See GHENT: A. D. 1451-1453.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1477.
Severance from Burgundy.
Transference to the Austrian House by marriage of Mary of
Burgundy.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1482-1488.
Resistance to Maximilian.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1482-1493.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1494-1588.
The Austro-Spanish sovereignty and its oppressions.
The great revolt and its failure in the Flemish provinces.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1494-1519, and after.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1529.
Pretensions of the king of France to Suzerainty resigned.
See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1539-1540.
The unsupported revolt of Ghent.
See GHENT: A. D. 1539-1540.
FLANDERS: A. D. 1594-1884.
Later history.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1609, to 1830-1884.
----------FLANDERS: End----------
FLATHEAD INDIANS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: FLATHEADS.
FLAVIA CÆSARIENSIS.
See BRITAIN: A. D. 323-337.
FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE, The.
See COLOSSEUM.
FLAVIAN FAMILY, The.
"We have designated the second period of the [Roman] Empire by
the name of the Flavian family--the family of Vespasian [Titus
Flavius Vespasian]. The nine Emperors who were successively
invested with the purple, in the space of the 123 years from
his accession, were not all, however, of Flavian race, even by
the rites of adoption, which in Rome was become a second
nature; but the respect of the world for the virtues of
Flavius Vespasian induced them all to assume his name, and
most of them showed themselves worthy of such an affiliation.
Vespasian had been invested with the purple at Alexandria, on
the 1st of July, A. D. 69; he died in 79. His two sons reigned
in succession after him; Titus, from 79 to 81; Domitian, from 81
to 96. The latter having been assassinated, Nerva, then an old
man, was raised to the throne by the Senate (A. D. 96-98). He
adopted Trajan (98-117); who adopted Adrian (117-138). Adrian
adopted Antoninus Pius (138-161); who adopted Marcus Aurelius
(161-180); and Commodus succeeded his father, Marcus Aurelius
(180-192). No period in history presents such a succession of
good and great men upon any throne: two monsters, Domitian and
Commodus, interrupt and terminate it."
J. C. L. Sismondi,
Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 2.
FLEETWOOD, OR BRANDY STATION, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (JUNE: VIRGINIA).
FLEIX, The Peace of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1578-1580.
FLEMINGS.--FLEMISH.
See FLANDERS.
FLEMISH GUILDS.
See GUILDS OF FLANDERS.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1622).
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1621-1633.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1690).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1794).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY).
FLODDEN, Battle of (A. D. 1513).
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1513.
FLORALIA, The.
See LUDI.
FLORÉAL, The month.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).
FLORENCE:
Origin and Name:
"Fæsulre was situated on a hill above Florence. Florentine
traditions call it the metropolis of Florence, which would
accordingly be a colony of Fæsulre; but a statement in
Machiavelli and others describes Florence as a colony of
Sulla, and this statement must have been derived from some
local chronicle. Fæsulre was no doubt an ancient Etruscan
town, probably one of the twelve. It was taken in the war of
Sulla [B. C. 82-81]. ... My conjecture is, that Sulla not only
built a strong fort on the top of the hill of Fæsulre, but
also the new colony of Florentia below, and gave to it the
'ager Fæsulanus.'"
B. G. Niebuhr,
Lectures on Ancient Ethnography and Geography.
volume 2, page 228.
"We can reasonably suppose that the ancient trading nations
may have pushed their small craft up the Arno to the present
site of Florence, and thus have gained a more immediate
communication with the flourishing city of Fiesole than they
could through other ports of Etruria, from whatever race its
people might have sprung. Admitting the high antiquity of
Fiesole, the imagined work of Atlas, and the tomb of his
celestial daughter, we may easily believe that a market was
from very early times established in the plain, where both by
land and water the rural produce could be brought for sale
without ascending the steep on which that city stood. Such
arrangements would naturally result from the common course of
events, and a more convenient spot could scarcely be found
than the present site of Florence, to which the Arno is still
navigable by boats from its mouth, and at that time perhaps by
two branches. ... 'There were,' says Villani, 'inhabitants
round San Giovanni, because the people of Fiesole held their
market there one day in the week, and it was called the Field
of Mars, the ancient name: however it was always, from the
first, the market of the Fiesolines, and thus it was called
before Florence existed.'
{1130}
And again: 'The Pæetor Florinus, with a Roman army, encamped
beyond the Arno towards Fiesole and had two small villages
there, ... where the people of Fiesole one day in the week
held a general market with the neighbouring towns and
villages. ... On the site of this camp, as we are also assured
by Villani, was erected the city of Florence, after the
capture of Fiesole by Pompey, Cæsar, and Martius; but Leonardo
Aretino, following Malespini, asserts that it was the work of
Sylla's legions, who were already in possession of Fiesole.
... The variety of opinions almost equals the number of
authors. ... It may be reasonably concluded that Florence,
springing originally from Fiesole, finally rose to the rank of
a Roman colony and the seat of provincial government; a
miniature of Rome, with its Campus Martius, its Capitol,
Forum, temple of Mars, aqueducts, baths, theatre and
amphitheatre, all erected in imitation of the 'Eternal City;'
for vestiges of all these are still existing either in name or
substance. The name of Florence is as dark as its origin, and
a thousand derivations have confused the brains of
antiquarians and their readers without much enlightening them,
while the beautiful Giagiolo or Iris, the city's emblem, still
clings to her old grey walls, as if to assert its right to be
considered as the genuine source of her poetic appellation.
From the profusion of these flowers that formerly decorated
the meads between the rivers Mugnone and Arno, has sprung one
of the most popular opinions on the subject; for a white plant
of the same species having shown itself amongst the rising
fabrics, the incident was poetically seized upon and the Lily
then first assumed its station in the crimson banner of
Florence."
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
book 1, chapter 1.
FLORENCE: A. D. 406.
Siege by Radagaisus.
Deliverance by Stilicho.
See ROME: A. D. 404-408.
FLORENCE: 12th Century.
Acquisition of republican independence.
"There is ... an assertion by Villani, that Florence contained
twenty-two thousand fighting men, without counting the old men
and children,' about the middle of the sixth century; and
modern statisticians have based on this statement an estimate
which would make the population of the city at that period
about sixty-one thousand. There are reasons too for believing
that very little difference in the population took place
during several centuries after that time. Then came the sudden
increase arising from the destruction, more or less entire, of
Fiesole, and the incorporation of its inhabitants with those
of the newer city, which led to the building of the second
walls. ... An estimate taking the inhabitants of the city at
something between seventy and eighty thousand at the period
respecting which we are inquiring [beginning of the 12th
century] would in all probability be not very wide of the
mark. The government of the city was at that time lodged in
the hands of magistrates exercising both legislative and
administrative authority, called Consuls, assisted by a senate
composed of a hundred citizens of worth--buoni uomini. These
Consuls 'guided everything, and governed the city, and decided
causes, and administered justice.' They remained in office for
one year. How long this form of government had been
established in Florence is uncertain. It was not in existence
in the year 897; but it was in activity in 1102. From 1138 we
have a nearly complete roll of the names of the consuls for
each year down to 1219. ... The first recorded deeds of the
young community thus governed, and beginning to feel conscious
and proud of its increasing strength, were characteristic
enough of the tone of opinion and sentiment which prevailed
within its walls, and of the career on which it was entering.
'In the year 1107,' says Malispini, 'the city of Florence
being much increased, the Florentines, wishing to extend their
territory, determined to make war against any castle or
fortress which would not be obedient to them. And in that year
they took by force Monte Orlando, which belonged to certain
gentlemen who would not be obedient to the city. And they were
defeated, and the castle was destroyed.' These 'gentlemen,' so
styled by the civic historian who thus curtly records the
destruction of their home, in contradistinction to the
citizens who by no means considered themselves such, were the
descendants or representatives of those knights and captains,
mostly of German race, to whom the Emperors had made grants of
the soil according to the feudal practice and system. They
held directly of the Empire, and in no wise owed allegiance or
obedience of any sort to the community of Florence. But they
occupied almost all the country around the rising city; and
the citizens' wanted to extend their territory.' Besides,
these territorial lords were, as has been said, gentlemen, and
lived as such, stopping wayfarers on the highways, levying tolls
in the neighbourhood of their strongholds, and in many ways
making themselves disagreeable neighbours to peaceable folks.
... The next incident on the record, however, would seem to
show that peaceful townsfolk as well as marauding nobles were
liable to be overrun by the car of manifest destiny, if they
came in the way of it. 'In the same year,' says the curt old
historian, 'the men of Prato rebelled against the Florentines;
wherefore they went out in battle against it, and took it by
siege and destroyed it.' Prato rebelled against Florence! It
is a very singular statement; for there is not the shadow of a
pretence put forward, or the smallest ground for imagining
that Florence had or could have claimed any sort of suzerainty
over Prato. ... The territorial nobles, however, who held
castles in the district around Florence were the principal
objects of the early prowess of the citizens; and of course
offence against them was offence against the Emperor. ... In
1113, accordingly, we find an Imperial vicar residing in
Tuscany at St. Miniato; not the convent-topped hill of that
name in the immediate neighbourhood of Florence, but a little
mountain city of the same name, overlooking the lower
Valdarno, about half way between Florence and Pisa. ... There
the Imperial Vicars perched themselves hawk-like, with their
Imperial troops, and swooped down from time to time to
chastise and bring back such cities of the plain as too
audaciously set at naught the authority of the Emperor. And
really these upstart Florentines were taking the bit between
their teeth, and going on in a way that no Imperial Vicar
could tolerate. ... So the indignant cry of the harried Counts
Cadolingi, and of several other nobles holding of the Empire,
whose houses had been burned over their heads by these
audacious citizens, went up to the ears of 'Messer Ruberto,'
the Vicar, in San Miniato.
{1131}
Whereupon that noble knight, indignant at the wrong done to
his fellow nobles, as well as at the offence against the
authority of his master the Emperor, forthwith put lance in
rest, called out his men, and descended from his mountain
fortress to take summary vengeance on the audacious city. On
his way thither he had to pass through that very gorge where
the castle of Monte Orlando had stood, and under the ruins of
the house from which the noble vassals of the Empire had been
harried. ... There were the leathern-jerkined citizens on the
very scene of their late misdeed, come out to oppose the
further progress of the Emperor's Vicar and his soldiers. And
there, as the historian writes, with curiously impassible
brevity, 'the said Messer Ruberto was discomfited and killed.'
And nothing further is heard of him, or of any after
consequences resulting from the deed. Learned legal
antiquaries insist much on the fact, that the independence of
Florence and the other Communes was never 'recognised' by the
Emperors; and they are no doubt perfectly accurate in saying
so. One would think, however, that that unlucky Vicar of
theirs, Messer Ruberto, must have 'recognised' the fact,
though somewhat tardily."
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 1, chapter 1 (volume 1).
Countess Matilda, the famous friend of Pope Gregory VII.,
whose wide dominion included Tuscany, died in 1115,
bequeathing her vast possessions to the Church.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1077-1102.
"In reality she was only entitled thus to bequeath her
allodial lands, the remainder being imperial fiefs. But as it
was not always easy to distinguish between the two sorts, and
the popes were naturally anxious to get as much as they could,
a fresh source of contention was added to the constant
quarrels between the Empire and the Church. 'Henry IV.
immediately despatched a representative into Tuscany, who
under the title of Marchio, Judex, or Praeses, was to govern
the Marquisate in his name.' 'Nobody,' says Professor Villari,
'could legally dispute his right to do this: but the
opposition of the Pope, the attitude of the towns which now
considered themselves independent and the universal confusion
rendered the Marquis's authority illusory. The imperial
representatives had no choice but to put themselves at the
head of the feudal nobility of the contado and unite it into a
Germanic party hostile to the cities. In the documents of the
period the members of this party are continually described as
Teutonici.' By throwing herself in this juncture on the side
of the Pope, and thus becoming the declared opponent of the
empire and the feudal lords, Florence practically proclaimed
her independence. The grandi, having the same interests with
the working classes, identified themselves with these; became
their leaders, their consuls in fact if not yet in name. Thus
was the consular commune born, or, rather, thus did it
recognize itself on reaching manhood; for born, in reality, it
had already been for some time, only so quietly and
unconsciously that nobody had marked its origin or, until now,
its growth. The first direct consequence of this
self-recognition was that the rulers were chosen out of a
larger number of families. As long as Matilda had chosen the
officers to whom the government of the town was entrusted, the
Uberti and a few others who formed their clan, their kinsmen, and
their connections had been selected, to the exclusion of the
mass of the citizens. Now more people were admitted to a share
in the administration: the offices were of shorter duration,
and out of those selected to govern each family had its turn.
But those who had formerly been privileged--the Uberti and
others of the same tendencies and influence--were necessarily
discontented with this state of things, and there are
indications in Villani of burnings and of tumults such as
later, when the era of faction fights had fairly begun, so
often desolated the streets of Florence."
B. Duffy,
The Tuscan Republics,
chapter 6.
See ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1215-1250.
The beginning, the causes and the meaning of the strife of the
Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Nearly from the beginning of the 13th century, all Italy, and
Florence more than other Italian communities, became
distracted and convulsed by a contest of raging factions. "The
main distinction was that between Ghibellines and Guelphs--two
names in their origin far removed from Italy. They were first
heard in Germany in 1140, when at Winsberg in Suabia a battle
was fought between two contending claimants of the Empire; the
one, Conrad of Hohenstauffen, Duke of Franconia, chose for his
battle-cry 'Waiblingen,' the name of his patrimonial castle in
Würtemburg; the other, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, chose
his own family name of 'Welf,' or 'Wölf.' Conrad proved
victorious, and his kindred to the fourth ensuing generation
occupied the imperial throne; yet both war-cries survived the
contest which gave them birth, lingering on in Germany as
equivalents of Imperialist and anti-Imperialist. By a process
perfectly clear to philologists, they were modified in Italy
into the forms Ghibellino and Guelfo; and the Popes being
there the great opponents of the Emperors, an Italian Guelph
was a Papalist. The cities were mainly Guelph; the nobles most
frequently Ghibelline. A private feud had been the means of
involving Florence in the contest."
M. F. Rossetti,
A Shadow of Dante,
chapter 3.
"The Florentines kept themselves united till the year 1215,
rendering obedience to the ruling power, and anxious only to
preserve their own safety. But, as the diseases which attack
our bodies are more dangerous and mortal in proportion as they
are delayed, so Florence, though late to take part in the
sects of Italy, was afterwards the more afflicted by them. The
cause of her first division is well known, having been
recorded by Dante and many other writers; I shall, however,
briefly notice it. Amongst the most powerful families of
Florence were the Buondelmonti and the Uberti; next to these
were the Amidei and the Donati. Of the Donati family there was
a rich widow who had a daughter of exquisite beauty, for whom, in
her own mind, she had fixed upon Buondelmonti, a young
gentleman, the head of the Buondelmonti family, as her
husband; but either from negligence, or because she thought it
might be accomplished at any time, she had not made known her
intention, when it happened that the cavalier betrothed
himself to a maiden of the Amidei family. This grieved the
Donati widow exceedingly; but she hoped, with her daughter's
beauty, to disturb the arrangement before the celebration of
the marriage; and from an upper apartment, seeing Buondelmonti
approach her house alone, she descended, and as he was passing
she said to him, 'I am glad to learn you have chosen a wife,
although I had reserved my daughter for you'; and, pushing the
door open, presented her to his view.
{1132}
The cavalier, seeing the beauty of the girl, ... became
inflamed with such an ardent desire to possess her, that, not
thinking of the promise given, or the injury he committed in
breaking it, or of the evils which his breach of faith might
bring upon himself, said, 'Since you have reserved her for me,
I should be very ungrateful indeed to refuse her, being yet at
liberty to choose'; and without any delay married her. As soon
as the fact became known, the Amidei and the Uberti, whose
families were allied, were filled with rage," and some of
them, lying in wait for him, assassinated him as he was riding
through the streets. "This murder divided the whole city; one
party espousing the cause of the Buondelmonti, the other that
of the Uberti; and ... they contended with each other for many
years, without one being able to destroy the other. Florence
continued in these troubles till the time of Frederick II.,
who, being king of Naples, endeavoured to strengthen himself
against the church; and, to give greater stability to his
power in Tuscany, favoured the Uberti and their followers,
who, with his assistance, expelled the Buondelmonti; thus our
city, as all the rest of Italy had long time been, became
divided into Guelphs and Ghibellines."
N. Machiavelli,
History of Florence,
book 2, chapter 1.
"Speaking generally, the Ghibellines were the party of the
emperor, and the Guelphs the party of the Pope; the
Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or sometimes of
oppression, the Guelphs were on the side of liberty and
self-government. Again, the Ghibellines were the supporters of
an universal empire of which Italy was to be the head, the
Guelphs were on the side of national life and national
individuality. ... If these definitions could be considered as
exhaustive, there would be little doubt as to the side to
which our sympathies should be given. ... We should ... expect
all patriots to be Guelphs, and the Ghibelline party to be
composed of men who were too spiritless to resist despotic
power, or too selfish to surrender it. But, on the other hand,
we must never forget that Dante was a Ghibelline."
O. Browning,
Guelphs and Ghibellines,
chapter 2.
See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1215.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1248-1278.
The wars of a generation of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.
In 1248, the Ghibellines, at the instigation of Frederick II.,
and with help from his German soldiery, expelled the Guelfs
from the city, after desperate fighting for several days, and
destroyed the mansions of their chiefs, to the number of 38.
In 1250 there was a rising of the people--of the under-stratum
which the cleavage of parties hardly penetrated--and a popular
constitution of government was brought into force. At the same
time, the high towers, which were the strongholds of the
contending nobles, were thrown down. An attempt was then made
by the leaders of the people to restore peace between the
Ghibellines and the Guelfs, but the effort was vain; whereupon
the Guelfs (in January, 1251) came back to the city, and the
Ghibellines were either driven away or were shut up in their
city castles, to which they had retired when the people rose.
In 1258 the restless Ghibellines plotted with Manfred, King of
the Two Sicilies, to regain possession of Florence. The plot
was discovered, and the enraged people drove the last
lingerers of the faction from their midst and pulled down
their palaces. The great palace of the Uberti family, most
obnoxious of all, was not only razed, but a decree was made
that no building should ever stand again on its accursed site.
The exiled Ghibellines took refuge at Siena, and there plotted
again with King Manfred, who sent troops to aid them. The
Florentines did not wait to be attacked, but marched out to
meet them on Sienese territory, and suffered a terrible defeat
at Montaperti (September 4, 1260), in the battle that Dante
refers to, "which coloured the river Arbia red." "'On that
day,' says Villani, ... 'was broken and destroyed the old
popular government of Florence, which had existed for ten
years with so great power and dignity, and had won so many
victories.' Few events have ever left a more endurable
impression on the memory of a people than this great battle
between two cities and parties animated both of them by the
most unquenchable hatred. The memory of that day has lasted
through 600 years, more freshly perhaps in Siena than in
Florence." As a natural consequence of their defeat at
Montaperti, the Guelfs were again forced to fly into exile
from Florence, and this expatriation included a large number
of even the commoner people. "So thorough had been the defeat,
so complete the Ghibelline ascendency resulting from it, that
in every city the same scene on a lesser scale was taking
place. Many of the smaller towns, which had always been Guelph
in their sympathies, were now subjected to Ghibelline
despotism. One refuge alone remained in Tuscany--Lucca. ...
And thither the whole body of the expatriated Guelphs betook
themselves. ... The Ghibellines entered Florence in triumph on
the 16th of September, three days after their enemies had left
it. ... The city seemed like a desert. The gates were standing
open and unguarded; the streets were empty; the comparatively
few inhabitants who remained, almost entirely of the lowest
class of the populace, were shut up in their obscure
dwellings, or were on their knees in the churches. And what
was worse, the conquerors did not come back alone. They had
invited a foreign despot to restore order;" and so King
Manfred's general, Giordano da Anglona, established Count
Guido Novello in Florence as Manfred's vicar. "All the
constitutional authorities established by the people, and the
whole frame-work of the former government, were destroyed, and
the city was ruled entirely by direction transmitted from the
King's Sicilian court." There were serious proposals, even,
that Florence itself should be destroyed, and the saving of
the noble city from that untimely fate is credited to one
patriotic noble, of the Uberti family, who withstood the
proposition, alone. "The Ghibelline army marched on Lucca, and
had not much more difficulty in reducing that city. The
government was put into Ghibelline hands, and Lucca became a
Ghibelline city like all the rest of Tuscany. The Lucchese
were not required by the victors to turn their own Guelphs out
of the city. But it was imperatively insisted on that every
Guelph not a native citizen should be thrust forth from the
gates." The unfortunate Florentines, thus made homeless again,
now found shelter at Bologna, and presently helped their friends
at Modena and Reggio to overcome the Ghibellines in those
cities and recover control. But for five years their condition
was one of wretchedness. Then Charles of Anjou was brought
into Italy (1265) by the Pope, to snatch the crown of the Two
Sicilies from King Manfred, and succeeded in his undertaking.
See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.
{1133}
The prop of the Ghibellines was broken. Guido Novello and his
troopers rode away from Florence; 800 French horsemen, sent by
the new Angevine king, under Guy de Montfort, took their
places; the Guelfs swarmed in again--the Ghibellines swarmed
out; the popular constitution was restored, with new features
more popular than before. In 1273 there was a great attempt
made by Pope Gregory X. in person, to reconcile the factions
in Florence; but it had so little success that the Holy Father
left the city in disgust and pronounced it under interdict for
three years. In 1278 the attempt was renewed with somewhat
better success. "'And now, says Villani, 'the Ghibellines were
at liberty to return to Florence, they and their families. ...
And the said Ghibellines had back again their goods and
possessions; except that certain of the leading families were
ordered, for the safety of the city, to remain for a certain
time beyond the boundaries of the Florentine territory.' In
fact, little more is heard henceforward of the Ghibellines as
a faction within the walls of Florence. The old name, as a
rallying cry for the Tory or Imperialist party, was still
raised here and there in Tuscany; and Pisa still called
herself Ghibelline. But the stream of progress had run past
them and left them stranded."
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 1, chapters 4-5,
and book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).
ALSO IN
N. Machiavelli,
Florentine Histories,
book 1.
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 4.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1250-1293.
Development of the popular constitution of the Commonwealth.
When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself
henceforth untrammelled by imperial interference, the people
[in 1250] divided themselves into six districts, and chose for
each district two Ancients, who administered the government in
concert with the Potestà and the Captain of the People. The
Ancients were a relic of the old Roman municipal organization.
... The body of the citizens, or the popolo, were ultimately
sovereigns in the State. Assembled under the banners of their
several companies, they formed a parlamento for delegating
their own power to each successive government. Their
representatives, again, arranged in two councils, called the
Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, under
the presidency of the Captain of the People and the Potestà,
ratified the measures which had previously been proposed and
carried by the executive authority or signoria. Under this
simple State system the Florentines placed themselves at the
head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles of the Church,
asserted their sovereignty by issuing the golden florin of the
republic, and flourished until 1266. In that year an important
change was effected in the Constitution. The whole population
of Florence consisted, on the one hand, of nobles or Grandi,
as they were called in Tuscany, and on the other hand of
working people. The latter, divided into traders and
handicraftsmen, were distributed in guilds called Arti; and at
that time there were seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most
influential of all being the Guild of the Wool Merchants.
These guilds had their halls for meeting, their colleges of
chief officers, their heads, called Consoli or Priors, and
their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the administration of
the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly in the
hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial
companies became the lords or Signory of Florence. No
inhabitant of the city who had not enrolled himself as a
craftsman in one of the guilds could exercise any function of
burghership. To be scioperato, or without industry, was to be
without power, without rank or place of honour in the State.
The revolution which placed the Arts at the head of the
republic had the practical effect of excluding the Grandi
altogether from the government. ... In 1293, after the
Ghibellines had been defeated in the great battle of
Campaldino, a series of severe enactments, called the
Ordinances of Justice, were decreed against the unruly Grandi.
All civic rights were taken from them; the severest penalties
were attached to their slightest infringement of municipal
law; their titles to land were limited; the privilege of
living within the city walls was allowed them only under
galling restrictions; and last not least, a supreme
magistrate, named the Gonfalonier of Justice, was created for
the special purpose of watching them and carrying out the
penal code against them. Henceforward Florence was governed
exclusively by merchants and artisans. The Grandi hastened to
enroll themselves in the guilds, exchanging their former
titles and dignities for the solid privilege of burghership.
The exact parallel to this industrial constitution for a
commonwealth, carrying on wars with emperors and princes,
holding haughty captains in its pay, and dictating laws to
subject cities, cannot, I think, be elsewhere found in
history. It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and Giotto
is unique."
J. A. Symonds,
Florence and the Medici
(Sketches and Studies in Italy, chapter 5).
ALSO IN
C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
volume 1, Introduction.
A. Von Reumont,
Lorenzo de Medici,
book 1, chapter 1.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1284-1293.
War with Pisa.
See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1289.
The victory of Campaldino, and the jealousy among its heroes.
In 1289 the Ghibellines of Arezzo having expelled the Guelfs
from that city, the Florentines made war in the cause of the
latter and won a great victory at Campaldino. This "raised the
renown and the military spirit of the Guelf party, for the
fame of the battle was very great; the hosts contained the
choicest chivalry of either side, armed and appointed with
emulous splendour. The fighting was hard, there was brilliant
and conspicuous gallantry, and the victory was complete. It
sealed Guelf ascendency. The Ghibelline warrior-bishop of
Arezzo fell, with three of the Uberti, and other Ghibelline
chiefs. ... In this battle the Guelf leaders had won great
glory. The hero of the day was the proudest, handsomest,
craftiest, most winning, most ambitious, most unscrupulous
Guelf noble in Florence--one of a family who inherited the
spirit and recklessness of the proscribed Uberti, and did not
refuse the popular epithet of 'Malefami'--Corso Donati.
{1134}
He did not come back from the field of Campaldino, where he
had won the battle by disobeying orders, with any increased
disposition to yield to rivals, or court the populace, or
respect other men's rights. Those rivals, too--and they also
had fought gallantly in the post of honour at Campaldino--were
such as he hated from his soul--rivals whom he despised, and
who yet were too strong for him [the family of the Cerchi].
His blood was ancient, they were upstarts; he was a soldier,
they were traders; he was poor, they the richest men in
Florence. ... They had crossed him in marriages, bargains,
inheritances. ... The glories of Campaldino were not as oil on
these troubled waters. The conquerors flouted each other all
the more fiercely in the streets on their return, and
ill-treated the lower people with less scruple."

R. W. Church,
Dante and Other Essays,
pages 27-31.
ALSO IN
C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
part 1, chapter 6 (volume 1).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1295-1300.
New factions in the city, and Dante's relations to them.
The Bianchi and the Neri (Whites and Blacks).
Among the Nobles "who resisted the oppression of the people,
Corso Donati must have been the chief, but he did not at first
come forward; with one of his usual stratagems, however, he
was the cause of a new revolution [January, 1295], which drove
Giano della Bella, the leader of the people, from the city.
... Notwithstanding the fall of Giano, the Nobles did not
return into power. He was succeeded as a popular leader by one
much his inferior, one Pecora, surnamed, from his trade, the
Butcher. New disputes arose between the nobles and the people,
and between the upper and lower ranks of the people itself.
Villani tells us that, in the year 1295, 'many families, who
were neither tyrannical nor powerful, withdrew from the order
of the nobles, and enrolled themselves among the people,
diminishing the power of the nobles and increasing that of the
people.' Dante must have been precisely one of those nobles 'who
were neither tyrannical nor powerful;' and ... it is certain
that he was among those who passed over from their own order
to that of the Popolani, by being matriculated in one of the
Arts. In a register from 1297 to 1300, of the Art of the
physicians and druggists, the fifth of the seven major Arts,
he is found matriculated in these words: 'Dante d'Aldighiero
degli Aldighieri poeta fiorentino.' ... Dante, by this means,
obtained office under the popular government. ... The new
factions that arose in Florence, in almost all Tuscany, and in
some of the cities in other parts of Italy, were merely
subdivisions of the Guelf party; merely what, in time, happens
to every faction after a period of prosperity, a division of
the ultras and of the moderates, or of those who hold more or
less extravagant views. ... All this happened to the Guelf
party in a very few years, and the Neri and Bianchi, the names
'Of the two divisions of that party, which had arisen in 1300,
were no longer mentioned ten years afterwards, but were again
lost in the primitive appellations of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Thus this episode would possess little interest, and would be
scarcely mentioned in the history of Italy, or even of
Florence, had not the name of our sublime Poet been involved
in it; and, after his love, it is the most important
circumstance of his life, and the one to which he most
frequently alludes in his Commedia. It thus becomes a subject
worthy of history. ... Florentine historians attribute Corso
Donati's hatred towards Vieri de Cerchi to envy. ... This envy
arose to such a height between Dante's neighbours in Florence
that he has rendered it immortal. 'Through envy,' says
Villani, 'the citizens began to divide into factions, and one
of the principal feuds began in the Sesto dello Scandalo, near
the gate of St. Pietro, between the families of the Cerchi and
the Donati [from which latter family came Dante's wife]. ...
Messer Vieri was the head of the House of the Cerchi, and he
and his house were powerful in affairs, possessing a numerous
kindred; they were very rich merchants, for their company was
one of the greatest in the world.'" The state of animosity
between these two families "was existing in Florence in the
beginning of 1300, when it was increased by another rather
similar family quarrel that had arisen in Pistoia. . . .
'There was in Pistoia a family which amounted to more than 100
men capable of bearing arms; it was not of great antiquity,
but was powerful, wealthy, and numerous; it was descended from
one Cancellieri Notaio, and from him they had preserved
Cancellieri as their family name. From the children of the two
wives of this man were descended the 107 men of arms that have
been enumerated; one of the wives having been named Madonna
Bianca, her descendants were called Cancellieri Bianchi (White
Cancellieri); and the descendants of the other wife, in
opposition, were called Cancellieri Neri (Black
Cancellieri).'" Between these two branches of the family of
the Cancellieri there arose, some time near the end of the
thirteenth century, an implacable feud. "Florence ...
exercised a supremacy over Pistoia ... and fearing that these
internal dissensions might do injury to the Guelf party, she
took upon herself the lordship or supremacy of that city. The
principal Cancellieri, both Bianchi and Neri, were banished to
Florence itself; 'the Neri took up their abode in the house of
the Frescobaldi, beyond the Arno; the Bianchi at the house of
the Cerchi, in the Garbo, from being connected with them by
kindred. But as one sick sheep infects another, and is
injurious to the flock, so this cursed seed of discord, that
had departed from Pistoia and had now entered Florence,
corrupted all the Florentines, and divided them into two
parties.' ... The Cerchi, formerly called the Forest party
(parte selvaggia), now assumed the name of Bianchi; and those
who followed the Donati were now called Neri. ... 'There sided
with [the Bianchi, says Villani] the families of the Popolani
and petty artisans, and all the Ghibellines, whether Nobles or
Popolani.' ... Thus the usual position in which the two
parties stood was altered; for hitherto the Nobles had almost
always been Ghibellines, and the Popolani Guelfs; but now, if
the Popolani were not Ghibellines, they were at least not such
strong Guelfs as the nobles. Sometimes these parties are
referred to as White Guelfs and Black Guelfs."
C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
chapter 10.
ALSO IN
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
book 1, chapter 14 (volume l).
N. Machiavelli,
The Florentine Histories,
book 2.
{1135}
FLORENCE: A. D. 1301-1313.
Triumph of the Neri.
Banishment of Dante and his party.
Downfall and death of Corso Donati.
"In the year 1301, a serious affray took place between the two
parties [the Bianchi and the Neri]; the whole city was in
arms; the law, and the authority of the Signoria, among whom
was the poet Dante Alighieri, was set at naught by the great
men of each side, while the best citizens looked on with fear
and trembling. The Donati, fearing that unaided they would not
be a match for their adversaries, proposed that they should
put themselves under a ruler of the family of the king of
France. Such a direct attack on the independence of the state
was not to be borne by the Signoria, among whom the poet had
great influence. At his instigation they armed the populace,
and with their assistance compelled the heads of the
contending parties to lay down their arms, and sent into exile
Messer Donati and others who had proposed the calling in of
foreigners. A sentence of banishment was also pronounced
against the most violent men of the party of the Bianchi, most
of whom, however, were allowed, under various pretences, to
return to their country. The party of the Donati in their
exile carried on those intrigues which they had commenced
while at home. They derived considerable assistance from the
king of France's brother, Charles of Valois, whom Pope
Boniface had brought into Italy. That prince managed, by means
of promises, which he subsequently violated, to get admission
for himself, together with several of the Neri, and the legate
of the pope, into Florence. He then produced letters,
generally suspected to be forgeries, charging the leaders of
the Bianchi with conspiracy. The popularity of the accused
party had already been on the wane, and after a violent
tumult, the chief men among them, including Dante, were
obliged to leave the city; their goods were confiscated, and
their houses destroyed. ... From this time Corso Donati, the
head of the faction of the Neri, became the chief man at
Florence. The accounts of its state at this period, taken from
the most credible historians, warrant us in thinking that the
severe invectives of Dante are not to be ascribed merely to
indignation or resentment at the harsh treatment he had
received. ... The city was rent by more violent dissensions
than ever. There were now three distinct sources of
contention--the jealousy between the people and the nobles,
the disputes between the Bianchi and the Neri, and those
between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs. It was in vain that
the legate of Pope Benedict, a man of great piety, went
thither for the sake of trying to restore order. The
inhabitants showed how little they respected him by exhibiting
a scandalous representation of hell on the river Arno; and,
after renewing his efforts without success, he cursed the city
and departed [1302]. The reign of Corso Donati ended like that
of most of those who have succeeded to power by popular violence.
Six years after the banishment of his adversaries he was
suspected, not without reason, of endeavouring to make himself
independent of constitutional restraints. The Signori declared
him guilty of rebellion. After a protracted resistance he made
his escape from the city, but was pursued and taken at Rovesca
[1308]. When he was led captive by those among whom his
authority had lately been paramount, he threw himself under
his horse, and, after having been dragged some distance, he
was dispatched by one of the captors. ... The party that had
been raised by Corso Donati continued to hold the chief power
at Florence even after the death of their chief. The exiled
faction, in the words of one of their leaders, ... had not
learned the art of returning to their country as well as their
adversaries. Four years after the events alluded to, the
Emperor, Henry VII., made some negotiations in their favour,
which but imperfectly succeeded. The Florentines, however,
were awed when he approached their city at the head of his
army; and in the extremity of their danger they implored the
assistance of King Robert of Naples, and made him Lord of
their city for the space of five years. The Emperor's
mysterious death [August 24, 1313], at Buonconvento freed them
from their alarm."
W. P. Urquhart,
Life and Times of Francesco Sforza,
book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).
ALSO IN
Mrs. Oliphant,
The Makers of Florence,
chapter 2.
B. Duffy,
The Tuscan Republics,
chapter 12.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1310-1313.
Resistance to the Emperor, Henry VII.
Siege by the imperial army.
See ITALY: A. D, 1310-1313,
FLORENCE: A. D. 1313-1328.
Wars with Pisa and with Castruccio Castracani, of Lucca.
Disastrous battles of Montecatini and Altopascio.
See ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1336-1338.
Alliance with Venice against Mastino della Scala.
See VERONA: A. D. 1260-1338.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1341-1343.
Defeat by the Pisans before Lucca.
The brief tyranny of the Duke of Athens.
In 1341, Mastino della Scala, of Verona, who had become master
of Lucca in 1335 by treachery, offered to sell that town to
the Florentines. The bargain was concluded; "but it appeared
to the Pisans the signal of their own servitude, for it cut
off all communication between them and the Ghibelines of
Lombardy. They immediately advanced their militia into the
Lucchese states to prevent the Florentines from taking
possession of the town; vanquished them in battle, on the 2d
of October, 1341, under the walls of Lucca; and, on the 6th of
July following, took possession of that city for themselves.
The people of Florence attributed this train of disasters to
the incapacity of their magistrates. ... At this period,
Gauttier [Walter] de Brienne, duke of Athens, a French noble,
but born in Greece, passed through Florence on his way from
Naples to France; The duchy of Athens had remained in his
family from the conquest of Constantinople till it was taken
from his father in 1312. ... It was for this man the
Florentines, after their defeat at Lucca, took a sudden fancy.
... On the 1st of August, 1342, they obliged the signoria to
confer on him the title of captain of justice, and to give him
the command of their militia." A month later, the duke, by his
arts, had worked such a ferment among the lower classes of the
population that they "proclaimed him sovereign lord of
Florence for his life, forced the public palace, drove from it
the gonfalonier and the priori, and installed him there in
their place. ... Happily, Florence was not ripe for slavery:
ten months sufficed for the duke of Athens to draw from it
400,000 golden florins, which he sent either to France or
Naples; but ten months sufficed also to undeceive all parties
who had placed any confidence in him," and by a universal
rising, in July, 1343, he was driven from the city.
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 6.
ALSO IN:
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2).
{1136}
FLORENCE: 14th Century.
Industrial Prosperity of the City.
"John Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the
state of Florence in the earlier part of the 14th century. The
revenue of the Republic amounted to 300,000 florins, a sum
which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals,
was at least equivalent to 600,000 pounds sterling; a larger
sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded
annually to Elizabeth--a larger sum than, according to any
computation which we have seen, the Grand Duke of Tuscany now
derives from a territory of much greater extent. The
manufacture of wool alone employed 200 factories and 30,000
workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for
1,200,000 florins; a sum fairly equal, in exchangeable value,
to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand
florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the
commercial operations, not of Florence only, but of all
Europe. The transactions of these establishments were
sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the
contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses
advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of 300,000
marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than 50
shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was
more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its
environs contained 170,000 inhabitants. In the various schools
about 10,000 children were taught to read; 1,200 studied
arithmetic; 600 received a learned education. The progress of
elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to
that of the public prosperity. ... Early in the 14th century
came forth the Divine Comedy, beyond comparison the greatest
work of imagination which had appeared since the poems of
Homer. The following generation produced indeed no second
Dante: but it was eminently distinguished by general
intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had
never been wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced
a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship; and
communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the
literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which
divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid
Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and
graceful models of Greece."
Lord Macaulay,
Machiavelli
(Essays, volume 1).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1348.
The Plague.
"In the year then of our Lord 1348, there happened at
Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible
plague; which, whether owing to the influence of the planets,
or that it was sent from God as a just punishment for our
sins, had broken out some years before in the Levant, and
after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc
all the way, had now reached the west. There, spite of all the
means that art and human foresight could suggest, such as
keeping the city clear from filth, the exclusion of all
suspected persons, and the publication of copious instructions
for the preservation of health; and notwithstanding manifold
humble supplications offered to God in processions and
otherwise; it began to show itself in the spring of the
aforesaid year, in a sad and wonderful manner. Unlike what had
been seen in the east, where bleeding from the nose is the
fatal prognostic, here there appeared certain tumours in the
groin or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple,
others as an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of
the body; in some cases large and but few in number, in others
smaller and more numerous--both sorts the usual messengers of
death. To the cure of this malady, neither medical knowledge
nor the power of drugs was of any effect. ... Nearly all died
the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, some
sooner, some later, without any fever or other accessory
symptoms. What gave the more virulence to this plague, was
that, by being communicated from the sick to the hale, it
spread daily, like fire when it comes in contact with large
masses of combustibles. Nor was it caught only by conversing
with, or coming near the sick, but even by touching their
clothes, or anything that they had before touched. ... These
facts, and others of the like sort, occasioned various fears
and devices amongst those who survived, all tending to the
same uncharitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid the sick,
and everything that had been near them, expecting by that
means to save themselves. And some holding it best to live
temperately, and to avoid excesses of all kinds, made parties,
and shut themselves up from the rest of the world. ... Others
maintained free living to be a better preservative, and would
baulk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking
and revelling incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private
houses (which were frequently found deserted by the owners,
and therefore common to everyone), yet strenuously avoiding,
with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected.
And such, at that time, was the public distress, that the
laws, human and divine, were no more regarded; for the
officers to put them in force being either dead, sick, or in
want of persons to assist them, everyone did just as he
pleased. ... I pass over the little regard that citizens and
relations showed to each other; for their terror was such that
a brother even fled from a brother, a wife from her husband,
and, what is more uncommon, a parent from his own child. ...
Such was the cruelty of Heaven, and perhaps of men, that
between March and July following, according to authentic
reckonings, upwards of 100,000 souls perished in the city
only; whereas, before that calamity, it was not supposed to
have continued so many inhabitants. What magnificent
dwellings, what noble palaces, were then depopulated to the
last inhabitant!"
G. Boccaccio,
The Decameron,
introd.
See, also, BLACK DEATH.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1358.
The captains of the Guelf Party and the "Ammoniti."
"The magistracy called the 'Capitani di Parte Guelfa,'--the
Captains of the Guelph party,--was instituted in the year
1267; and it was remarked, when the institution of it was
recorded, that the conception of a magistracy avowedly formed
to govern a community, not only by the authority of, but in
the interest of one section only of its members, was an
extraordinary proof of the unfitness of the Florentines for
self-government, and a forewarning of the infallible certainty
that the attempt to rule the Commonwealth on such principles
would come to a bad ending. In the year 1358, a little less
than a century after the first establishment of this strange
magistracy, it began to develop the mischievous capabilities
inherent in the nature of it, in a very alarming manner. ...
{1137}
In 1358 this magistracy consisted of four members. ... These
men, 'born,' says Ammirato, 'for the public ruin, under
pretext of zeal for the Guelph cause' ... caused a law to be
passed, according to which any citizen or Florentine subject
who had ever held, or should thereafter hold, any office in
the Commonwealth, might be either openly or secretly accused
before the tribunal of the Captains of the Guelph Party of
being Ghibelline, or not genuine Guelph. If the accusation was
supported by six witnesses worthy of belief, the accused might
be condemned to death or to fine at the discretion of the
Captains. ... It will be readily conceived that the passing of
such a law, in a city bristling with party hatreds and feuds,
was the signal for the commencement of a reign of terror." The
citizens proscribed were "said to be 'admonished'; and the
condemnations were called 'admonitions'; and henceforward for
many years the 'ammonizioni' [or 'ammoniti'] play a large part
in the domestic history and political struggles of Florence."
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 3, chapter 7 (volume 2).
ALSO IN:
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
chapter 23 (volume 2).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1359-1391.
The Free Company of Sir John Hawkwood and the wars with Pisa,
with Milan, and with the Pope.
See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1375-1378.
War with the Pope in support of the oppressed States of the
Church.
The Eight Saints of War.
A terrible excommunication.
In 1375, the Florentines became engaged in war with Pope
Gregory XI., supporting a revolt of the States of the Church,
which were heavily oppressed by the representatives of their
papal sovereign
See PAPACY: A. D. 1352-1378.
"Nevertheless, so profoundly reverenced was the church that
even the sound of war against a pope appeared to many little
less than blasphemy: numbers opposed on this pretence, but
really from party motives alone." But "a general council
assembled and declared the cause of liberty paramount to every
other consideration; the war was affirmed to be rather against
the injustice and tyranny of foreign governors than the church
itself. ... All the ecclesiastical cities then groaning under
French oppression were to be invited to revolt and boldly
achieve their independence. These spirited resolutions were
instantly executed, and on the 8th of August 1375 Alessandro
de' Bardi [and seven other citizens] ... were formed into a
supreme council of war called 'Gli Otto della Guerra'; and
afterwards, from their able conduct, 'Gli Otto Santi della
Guerra' [The Eight Saints of War]; armed with the concentrated
power of the whole Florentine nation in what regarded war." A
terrible sentence of excommunication was launched against the
Florentines by the Pope. "Their souls were solemnly condemned
to the pains of hell; fire and water were interdicted; their
persons and property outlawed in every Christian land, and
they were finally declared lawful prey for all who chose to
sell, plunder, or kill them as though they were mere slaves or
infidels."
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
book 1, chapter 26 (volume 2).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1378-1427.
Complete democratizing of the commonwealth.
The Tumult of the Ciompi.
First appearance of the Medici in Florentine history.
Though the reign of the Duke of Athens lasted rather less than
a year, "it bore important fruits; for the tyrant, seeking to
support himself upon the favour of the common people, gave
political power to the Lesser Arts at the expense of the
Greater, and confused the old State-system by enlarging the
democracy. The net result of these events for Florence was,
first, that the city became habituated to rancorous
party-strife, involving exiles and proscriptions, and,
secondly, that it lost its primitive social hierarchy of
classes. ... Civil strife now declared itself as a conflict
between labour and capital. The members of the Lesser Arts,
craftsmen who plied trades subordinate to those of the Greater
Arts, rose up against their social and political superiors,
demanding a larger share in the government, a more equal
distribution of profits, higher wages, and privileges that
should place them on an absolute equality with the wealthy
merchants. It was in the year 1378 that the proletariate broke
out into rebellion. Previous events had prepared the way for
this revolt. First of all, the republic had been democratised
through the destruction of the Grandi and through the popular
policy pursued to gain his own ends by the Duke of Athens.
Secondly, society had been shaken to its very foundation by
the great plague of 1348 ... nor had 30 years sufficed to
restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded
by an overwhelming calamity. ... Rising in a mass to claim
their privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from the
Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the
mob. It is worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is
scarcely known before this epoch, now come for one moment to
the front. Salvestro de' Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at
the time when the tumult first broke out. He followed the
faction of the handicraftsmen, and became the hero of the day.
I cannot discover that he did more than extend a sort of
passive protection to their cause. Yet there is no doubt that
the attachment of the working classes to the house of Medici
dates from this period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in
Florentine history as the Tumult of the Ciompi. The name
Ciompi strictly means the Wool-Carders. One set of operatives
in the city, and that the largest, gave its title to the whole
body of the labourers. For some months these craftsmen
governed the republic, appointing their own Signory and
passing laws in their own interest; but, as is usual, the
proletariate found itself incapable of sustained government.
The ambition and discontent of the Ciompi foamed themselves
away, and industrious workingmen began to see that trade was
languishing and credit on the wane. By their own act at last
they restored the government to the Priors of the Greater
Arti. Still the movement had not been without grave
consequences. It completed the levelling of classes, which had
been steadily advancing from the first in Florence. After the
Ciompi riot there was no longer not only any distinction
between noble and burgher, but the distinction between greater
and lesser guilds was practically swept away. ... The proper
political conditions had been formed for unscrupulous
adventurers. Florence had become a democracy without social
organisation. ... The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt
an oligarchy, and for the Medici to begin the enslavement of the
State.
{1138}
The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weakness
to the attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was
in its origin not a political but an industrial
organisation--a simple group of guilds invested with the
sovereign authority. ... It had no permanent head, like the
Doge of Venice, no fixed senate like the Venetian Grand
Council; its chief magistrates, the Signory, were elected for
short periods of two months, and their mode of election was
open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be chosen by lot,
they were really selected from lists drawn up by the factions
in power from time to time. These factions contrived to
exclude the names of all but their adherents from the bags, or
'borse,' in which the burghers eligible for election had to be
inscribed. Furthermore, it was not possible for this shifting
Signory to conduct affairs requiring sustained effort and
secret deliberation; therefore recourse was being continually
had to dictatorial Commissions. The people, summoned in
parliament upon the Great Square, were asked to confer
plenipotentiary authority upon a committee called Balia [see
BALIA OF FLORENCE], who proceeded to do what they chose in the
State; and who retained power after the emergency for which
they were created passed away. ... It was through these [and
other specified] defects that the democracy merged gradually
into a despotism. The art of the Medici consisted in a
scientific comprehension of these very imperfections, a
methodic use of them for their own purposes, and a steady
opposition to any attempts made to substitute a stricter
system. ... Florence, in the middle of the 14th century, was a
vast beehive of industry. Distinctions of rank among burghers,
qualified to vote and hold office, were theoretically unknown.
Highly educated men, of more than princely wealth, spent their
time in shops and counting-houses, and trained their sons to
follow trades. Military service at this period was abandoned
by the citizens; they preferred to pay mercenary troops for
the conduct of their wars. Nor was there, as in Venice, any
outlet for their energies upon the seas. Florence had no navy,
no great port--she only kept a small fleet for the protection
of her commerce. Thus the vigour of the commonwealth was
concentrated on itself; while the influence of citizens,
through their affiliated trading-houses, correspondents, and
agents, extended like a network over Europe. ... Accordingly
we find that out of the very bosom of the people a new
plutocratic aristocracy begins to rise. ... These nobles of
the purse obtained the name of 'Popolani Nobili'; and it was
they who now began to play at high stakes for the supreme
power. ... The opening of the second half of the 14th century
had been signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both
risen from the people. These were the Albizzi and the Ricci."
The Albizzi triumphed, in the conflict of the two houses, and
became all-powerful for a time in Florence; but the wars with
the Visconti, of Milan, in which they engaged the city, made
necessary a heavy burden of taxation, which they rendered more
grievous by distributing it unfairly. "This imprudent
financial policy began the ruin of the Albizzi. It caused a
clamour in the city for a new system of more just taxation,
which was too powerful to be resisted. The voice of the people
made itself loudly heard; and with the people on this occasion
sided Giovanni de' Medici. This was in 1427. It is here that
the Medici appear upon that memorable scene where in the
future they are to play the first part. Giovanni de' Medici
did not belong to the same branch of his family as the
Salvestro who favoured the people at the time of the Ciompi
Tumult. But he adopted the same popular policy. To his sons
Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed on his death-bed the rule
that they should invariably adhere to the cause of the
multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the arts
of factious and ambitious leaders."
J. A. Symonds,
Florence and the Medici
(Sketches and Studies in Italy, chapter 5).
ALSO IN:
A. von Reumont,
Lorenzo de' Medici,
book 1, chapter 2 (volume l).
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
books 4-5 (volume 2).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1390-1402.
War with Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan.
"Already in 1386, the growing power of Giangaleazzo Visconti,
the tenth duke of Milan of that family, began to give umbrage,
not only to all the sovereign princes: his neighbours, but
also to Florence [see MILAN: A. D. 1277-1447]. ... Florence
... had cause enough to feel uneasy at the progress of such a
man in his career of successful invasion and
usurpation;--Florence, no more specially than other of the
free towns around her, save that Florence seems always to have
thought that she had more to lose from the loss of her liberty
than any of the other cities ... and felt always called upon to
take upon herself the duty of standing forward as the champion
and supporter of the principles of republicanism and free
government. ... The Pope, Urban VI., added another element of
disturbance to the condition of Italy. For in his anxiety to
recover sundry cities mainly in Umbria and Romagna ... he was
exceedingly unscrupulous of means, and might at any moment be
found allying himself with the enemies of free government and
of the old Guelph cause in Italy. Venice, also, having most
improvidently and unwisely allied herself with Visconti,
constituted another element of danger, and an additional cause
of uneasiness and watchfulness to the Florentine government.
In the spring of 1388, therefore, a board of ten, 'Dieci di
Balia,' was elected for the general management of 'all those
measures concerning war and peace which should be adopted by
the entire Florentine people.'" The first war with Visconti
was declared by the republic in May, 1390, and was so
successfully conducted for the Florentines by Sir John
Hawkwood that it terminated in a treaty signed January 26,
1392, which bound the Duke of Milan not to meddle in any way
with the affairs of Tuscany. For ten years this agreement
seems to have been tolerably well adhered to; but in 1402 the
rapacious Duke entered upon new encroachments, which forced
the Florentines to take up arms again. Their only allies were
Bologna and Padua (or Francesco Carrara of Padua), and the
armies of the three states were defeated in a terribly bloody
battle fought near Bologna on the 26th of June. "Bologna fell
into the hands of Visconti. Great was the dismay and terror in
Florence when the news ... reached the city. It was neither
more nor less than the fall, as the historian says, of the
fortress which was the bulwark of Florence. Now she lay
absolutely open to the invader." But the invader did not come.
He was stricken with the plague and died, in September, and
Florence and Italy were saved from the tyranny which he had
seemed able to extend over the whole.
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 4, chapters 4-5 (volume 2).
{1139}
FLORENCE: 14th-15th Centuries.
Commercial enterprise, industrial energy,
wealth and culture of the city.
"During the 14th and 15th centuries Florentine wealth
increased in an extraordinary degree. Earlier generations had
compelled the powerful barons of the district to live in the
city; and even yet the exercise of the rights of citizenship
was dependent on having a residence there. The influx of
outsiders was, however, much more owing to the attractions
offered by the city, whether in business, profession, or
pleasure, than to compulsion. ... The situation of the city is
not favorable to the natural growth of commerce, especially
under the conditions which preceded the building of railroads.
At a considerable distance from the sea, on a river navigable
only for very small craft, and surrounded by hills which
rendered difficult the construction of good roads,--the fact
that the city did prosper so marvellously is in itself proof
of the remarkable energy and ability of its people. They
needed above all things a sea-port, and to obtain a good one
they waged some of their most exhausting wars. Their principal
wealth, however, came through their financial operations,
which extended throughout Europe, and penetrated even to
Morocco and the Orient. Their manufactures also, especially of
wool and silk, brought in enormous returns, and made not only
the fortunes but also, in one famous case at least, the name
of the families engaged in them. Their superiority over the
rest of Christendom in these pursuits was but one side of that
remarkable, universal talent which is the most astonishing
feature of the Florentine life of that age. With the hardihood
of youth, they were not only ready but eager to engage in new
enterprises, whether at home or abroad. ... As a result of
their energy and ability, riches poured into their coffers,--a
mighty stream of gold, in the use of which they showed so much
judgment, that the after world has feasted to our day, and for
centuries to come, will probably continue to feast without
satiety on the good things which they caused to be made, and
left behind them. Of all the legacies for which we have to
thank Florence, none are so well known and so universally
recognized as the treasures of art created by her sons, many
of which yet remain within her walls, the marvel and delight
of all who behold them. As the Florentines were ready to try
experiments in politics, manufactures, and commerce, so also
in all branches of the fine arts they tried experiments, left
the old, beaten paths of their forefathers, and created
something original, useful, and beautiful for themselves.
Christian art from the time of the Roman Empire to Cimabue had
made comparatively little progress; but a son of the
Florentine fields was to start a revolution which should lead
to the production of some of the most marvellous works which
have proceeded from the hand of man. The idea that the fine
arts are more successfully cultivated under the patronage of
princes than under republican rule is very widespread, and is
occasionally accepted almost as a dogma; but the history of
Athens and of Florence teaches us without any doubt that the
two most artistic epochs in the history of the world have had
their rise in republics. ... Some writers, dazzled by the
splendors of the Medici, entirely lose sight of the fact that
both Dante and Petrarch were dead before the Medici were even
heard of, and that the greatest works, at least in
architecture, were all begun long before they were leaders in
Florentine affairs. That family did much, yes very much, for
the advancement of art and letters; but they did not do all or
nearly all that was done in Florence. ... Though civil discord
and foreign war were very frequent, Florentine life is
nevertheless an illustration rather of what Herbert Spencer
calls the commercial stage of civilization, than of the
war-like period. Her citizens were above all things merchants,
and were generally much more willing to pay to avoid a war than
to conduct one. They strove for glory, not in feats of arms,
but in literary contests and in peaceful emulation in the
encouragement of learning and the fine arts."
W. B. Scaife,
Florentine Life during the Renaissance,
pages 16-19.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1405-1406.
Purchase and conquest of Pisa.
See ITALY: A. D. 1402-1406.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1409-1411.
League against and war with Ladislas, King of Naples.
See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1386-1414.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1423-1447.
War with the Duke of Milan.
League with Venice, Naples, and other States.
See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1433-1464.
The ascendancy of Cosimo de' Medici.
In 1433, Cosmo, or Cosimo de' Medici, the son of Giovanni de'
Medici, was the recognized leader of the opposition to the
oligarchy controlled by Rinaldo de' Albizzi. Cosmo inherited
from his father a large fortune and a business as a merchant
and banker which he maintained and increased. "He lived
splendidly; he was a great supporter of all literary men, and
spent and distributed his great wealth amongst his fellow
citizens. He was courteous and liberal, and was looked upon
with almost unbounded respect and affection by a large party
in the state. Rinaldo was bent upon his ruin, and in 1433,
when he had a Signoria devoted to his party, he cited Cosmo
before the Council, and shut him up in a tower of the Public
Palace. Great excitement was caused by this violent step, and
two days after the Signoria held a parliament of the people.
The great bell of the city was tolled, and the people gathered
round the Palace. Then the gates of the Palace were thrown
open, and the Signoria, the Colleges of Arts, and the
Gonfaloniere came forth, and asked the people if they would
have a Balia. So a Balia was appointed, the names being
proposed by the Signoria, to decide on the fate of Cosmo. At
first it was proposed to kill him, but he was only banished,
much against the will of Rinaldo, who knew that, if he lived,
he would some day come back again. The next year the Signoria
was favourable to him; another Balia was appointed; the party
of the Albizzi was banished, and Cosmo was recalled. He was
received with a greeting such as men give to a conqueror, and
was hailed as the 'Father of his Country.' This triumphant
return gave the Medici a power in the Republic which they
never afterwards lost. The banished party fled to the court of
the Duke of Milan, and stirred him up to war against the city."
W. Hunt,
History of Italy,
chapter 6, section 5.
{1140}
"Cosimo de' Medici did not content himself with rendering his
old opponents harmless; he took care also that none of his
adherents should become too powerful and dangerous to him.
Therefore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, he retained the
Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand, in order to be
able to promote or oppress individuals at will. In other
things the citizens enjoyed greater freedom and acted more
according to their own pleasure than later, in the days of his
grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he was only sure
of his own position. It was just in this that his great art
lay, to guide things according to his will, and yet to make
his partisans believe that he shared his authority with them.
... 'It is well known' remarks [Guicciardini] ... 'how much
nobility and wealth were destroyed by Cosimo and his
descendants by taxation. The Medici never allowed a fixed
method and legal distribution, but always reserved to
themselves the power of bearing heavily upon individuals
according to their pleasure. ... He [Cosimo] maintained great
reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter of a
century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but
he never assumed the show of his dignity. ... The ruler of the
Florentine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and
merchant. In his appearance and bearing there was nothing
which distinguished him from others. ... He ruled the money
market, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe. He had banks
in all the western countries, and his experience and the
excellent memory which never failed him, with his strong love
of order, enabled him to guide everything from Florence, which
he never quitted after 1438." The death of Cosimo occurred on
the 1st day of August, 1464.
A. von Reumont,
Lorenzo de' Medici,
book. 1, chapters 6 and 8 (volume 1).
"The last troubled days of the Florentine democracy had not
proved quite unproductive of art. It was the time of Giotto's
undisputed sway. Many works of which the 15th century gets the
glory because it finished them were ordered and begun amidst
the confusion and terrible agitation of the demagogy. ...
Under the oligarchy, in the relative calm that came with
oppression, a taste for art as well as for letters began to
develop in Florence as elsewhere." But "Cosimo de' Medicis had
rare good fortune. In his time, and under his rule, capricious
chance united at Florence talents as numerous as they were
diverse--the universal Brunelleschi, the polished and elegant
Ghiberti, the rough and powerful Donatello, the suave
Angelico, the masculine Masaccio. ... Cosimo lived long enough
to see the collapse of the admirable talent which flourished
upon the banks of the Arno, and soon spread throughout Italy,
and to feel the void left by it. It is true his grandson saw a
new harvest, but as inferior to that which preceded it, as it
was to that which followed it."
F. T. Perrens,
History of Florence, 1434-1531,
book 1, chapter 6.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1450-1454.
Alliance with Francesco Sforza, of Milan, and war with
Venice, Naples, Savoy, and other States.
See MILAN: A. D. 1447-1454.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1458-1469.
Lucas Pitti, and the building of the Pitti Palace.
Piero de' Medici and the five agents of his tyranny.
Until 1455, Cosmo de' Medici shared the government of Florence
in some degree with Neri Capponi, an able statesman, who had
taken an eminent part in public affairs for many years--during
the domination of the Albizzi, as well as afterwards.
"When Neri Capponi died, the council refused to call a new
parliament to replace the balia, whose power expired on the
1st of July, 1455. ... The election of the signoria was again
made fairly by lot, ... the contributions were again equitably
apportioned,--the tribunals ceased to listen to the
recommendations of those who, till then, had made a traffic of
distributive justice." This recovery of freedom in Florence
was enjoyed for about three years; but when, in 1458, Lucas
Pitti, "rich, powerful, and bold," was named gonfalonier,
Cosmo conspired with him to reimpose the yoke. "Pitti
assembled the parliament; but not till he had filled all the
avenues of the public square with soldiers or armed peasants.
The people, menaced and trembling within this circle,
consented to name a new balia, more violent and tyrannical
than any of the preceding. It was composed of 352 persons, to
whom was delegated all the power of the republic. They exiled
a great number of the citizens who had shown the most
attachment to liberty, and they even put some to death." When,
in 1463, Cosmo's second son, Giovanni, on whom his hopes were
centered, died, Lucas Pitti "looked on himself henceforth as
the only chief of the state. It was about this time that he
undertook the building of that magnificent palace which now
[1832] forms the residence of the grand-dukes. The republican
equality was not only offended by the splendour of this regal
dwelling; but the construction of it afforded Pitti an
occasion for marking his contempt of liberty and the laws. He
made of this building an asylum for all fugitives from
justice, whom no public officer dared pursue when once he
[they?] took part in the labour. At the same time individuals,
as well as communities, who would obtain some favour from the
republic, knew that the only means of being heard was to offer
Lucas Pitti some precious wood or marble to be employed in the
construction of his palace. When Cosmo de' Medici died, at his
country-house of Careggi, on the 1st of August, 1464, Lucas
Pitti felt himself released from the control imposed by the
virtue and moderation of that great citizen. ... His [Cosmo's]
son, Pietro de' Medici, then 48 years of age, supposed that he
should succeed to the administration of the republic, as he
had succeeded to the wealth of his father, by hereditary
right: but the state of his health did not admit of his
attending regularly to business, or of his inspiring his
rivals with much fear. To diminish the weight of affairs which
oppressed him, he resolved on withdrawing a part of his immense
fortune from commerce; recalling all his loans made in
partnership with other merchants; and laying out this money in
land. But this unexpected demand of considerable capital
occasioned a fatal shock to the commerce of Florence; at the
same time that it alienated all the debtors of the house of
Medici, and deprived it of much of its popularity. The death
of Sforza, also, which took place on the 8th of March, 1466,
deprived the Medicean party of its firmest support abroad. ...
The friends of liberty at Florence soon perceived that Lucas
Pitti and Pietro de' Medici no longer agreed together; and
they recovered courage when the latter proposed to the council
the calling of a parliament, in order to renew the balia, the
power of which expired on the 1st of September, 1465; his
proposition was rejected.
{1141}
The magistracy began again to be drawn by lot from among the
members of the party victorious in 1434. This return of
liberty, however, was but of short duration. Pitti and Medici
were reconciled: they agreed to call a parliament, and to
direct it in concert; to intimidate it, they surrounded it
with foreign troops. But Medici, on the nomination of the
balia, on the 2d of September, 1466, found means of admitting
his own partisans only, and excluding all those of Lucas
Pitti. The citizens who had shown any zeal for liberty were
all exiled. ... Lucas Pitti ruined himself in building his
palace. His talents were judged to bear no proportion to his
ambition: the friends of liberty, as well as those of Medici,
equally detested him; and he remained deprived of all power in
a city which he had so largely contributed to enslave. Italy
became filled with Florentine emigrants: every revolution,
even every convocation of parliament, was followed by the
exile of many citizens. ... At Florence, the citizens who
escaped proscription trembled to see despotism established in
their republic; but the lower orders were in general
contented, and made no attempt to second Bartolomeo Coleoni,
when he entered Tuscany, in 1467, at the head of the
Florentine emigrants, who had taken him into their pay.
Commerce prospered; manufactures were carried on with great
activity; high wages supported in comfort all who lived by
their labour; and the Medici entertained them with shows and
festivals, keeping them in a sort of perpetual carnival,
amidst which the people soon lost all thought of liberty.
Pietro de' Medici was always in too bad a state of health to
exercise in person the sovereignty he had usurped over his
country; he left it to five or six citizens, who reigned in
his name. ... They not only transacted all business, but
appropriated to themselves all the profit; they sold their
influence and credit; they gratified their cupidity or their
vengeance; but they took care not to act in their own names,
or to pledge their own responsibility; they left that to the
house of Medici. Pietro, during the latter months of his life,
perceived the disorder and corruption of his agents. He was
afflicted to see his memory thus stained, and he addressed
them the severest reprimands; he even entered into
correspondence with the emigrants, whom he thought of
recalling, when he died, on the 2d of December, 1469. His two
sons, Lorenzo and Giuliano, the elder of whom was not 21 years
of age, ... given up to all the pleasures of their age, had
yet no ambition. The power of the state remained in the hands
of the five citizens who had exercised it under Pietro."
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 11.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1469-1492.
The conspiracy of the Pazzi.
The government of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The death of liberty.
The golden age of letters and art.
"Lorenzo inherited his grandfather's political sagacity and
far surpassed him in talent and literary culture. In many
respects too he was a very different man. Cosimo never left
his business office; Lorenzo neglected it, and had so little
commercial aptitude that he was obliged to retire from
business, in order not to lose his abundant patrimony. Cosimo
was frugal in his personal expenses and lent freely to others;
Lorenzo loved splendid living, and thus gained the title of
the Magnificent; he spent immoderately for the advancement of
literary men; he gave himself up to dissipation which ruined
his health and shortened his days. His manner of living
reduced him to such straits, that he had to sell some of his
possessions and obtain money from his friends. Nor did this
suffice; for he even meddled with the public money, a thing
that had never happened in Cosimo's time. Very often, in his
greed of unlawful gain, he had the Florentine armies paid by
his own bank; he also appropriated the sums collected in the
Monte Comune or treasury of the public debt, and those in the
Monte delle Fanciulle where were marriage portions accumulated
by private savings--money hitherto held sacred by all.
Stimulated by the same greed, he, in the year 1472 joined the
Florentine contractors for the wealthy alum mines of Volterra,
at the moment in which that city was on the verge of rebellion
in order to free itself from a contract which it deemed
unjust. And Lorenzo, with the weight of his authority, pushed
matters to such a point that war broke out, soon to be
followed by a most cruel sack of the unhappy city, a very
unusual event in Tuscany. For all this he was universally
blamed. But he was excessively haughty and cared for no man;
he would tolerate no equals, would be first in
everything--even in games. He interfered in all matters, even
in private concerns and in marriages: nothing could take place
without his consent. In overthrowing the powerful and exalting
men of low condition, he showed none of the care and
precaution so uniformly observed by Cosimo. It is not then
surprising if his enemies increased so fast that the
formidable conspiracy of the Pazzi broke out on the 26th April
1478. In this plot, hatched in the Vatican itself where Sixtus
IV. was Lorenzo's determined enemy, many of the mightiest
Florentine families took part. In the cathedral, at the moment
of the elevation of the Host, the conspirators' daggers were
unsheathed. Giuliano dei Medici was stabbed to death, but
Lorenzo defended himself with his sword and saved his own
life. The tumult was so great that it seemed as though the
walls of the church were shaken. The populace rose to the cry
of 'Palle! Palle!' the Medici watchword, and the enemies of
the Medici were slaughtered in the streets or hung from the
windows of the Palazzo Veechio. There, among others, were seen
the dangling corpses of Archbishop Salviati and of Francesco
Pazzi, who in their last struggles had gripped each other with
their teeth and remained thus for some time. More than seventy
persons perished on that day, and Lorenzo, taking advantage of
the opportunity, pushed matters to extremity by his
confiscations, banishments, and sentences of death. Thereby
his power would have been infinitely increased if Pope Sixtus
IV., blinded by rage, had not been induced to excommunicate
Florence, and make war against it, in conjunction with
Ferdinand of Aragon. On this Lorenzo, without losing a moment,
went straight to Naples, and made the king understand how much
better it served his interests that Florence should have but
one ruler instead of a republican government, always liable to
change and certainly never friendly to Naples. So he returned
with peace re-established and boundless authority and
popularity. Now indeed he might have called himself lord of
the city, and it must have seemed easy to him to destroy the
republican government altogether.
{1142}
With his pride and ambition it is certain that he had an
intense desire to stand on the same level with the other
princes and tyrants of Italy; the more so as at that moment
success seemed entirely within his grasp. But Lorenzo showed
that his political shrewdness was not to be blinded by

prosperity, and knowing Florence well, he remained firm to the
traditional policy of his house, that of dominating the
Republic, while apparently respecting it. He was well
determined to render his power solid and durable; but to that
end he had recourse to a most ingenious reform, by means of
which, without abandoning the old road, he thoroughly
succeeded in his object. In place of the usual five-yearly
Balia, he instituted, in 1480, the Council of Seventy, which
renewed itself and was like a permanent Balia with still wider
power. This, composed of men entirely devoted to his cause,
secured the government to him forever. By this Council, say
the chroniclers of the time, liberty was wholly buried and
undone, but certainly the most important affairs of the State
were carried on in it by intelligent and cultivated men, who
largely promoted its material prosperity. Florence still
called itself a republic, nominally the old institutions were
still in existence, but all this seemed and was nothing but an
empty mockery. Lorenzo, absolute lord of all, might certainly be
called a tyrant, surrounded by lackeys and courtiers. ... Yet
he dazzled all men by the splendour of his rule, so that
[Guicciardini] observes, that though Lorenzo was a tyrant, 'it
would be impossible to imagine a better and more pleasing
tyrant.' Industry, commerce, public works had all received a
mighty impulse. In no city in the world had the civil equality
of modern States reached the degree to which it had attained
not merely in Florence itself, but in its whole territory and
throughout all Tuscany. Administration and secular justice
proceeded regularly enough in ordinary cases, crime was
diminished, and, above all, literary culture had become a
substantial element of the new State. Learned men were
employed in public offices, and from Florence spread a light
that illuminated the world. ... But Lorenzo's policy could
found nothing that was permanent. Unrivalled as a model of
sagacity and prudence, it promoted in Florence the development
of all the new elements of which modern society was to be the
outcome, without succeeding in fusing them together; for his
was a policy of equivocation and deceit, directed by a man of
much genius, who had no higher aim than his own interest and
that of his family, to which he never hesitated to sacrifice
the interests of his people."
P. Villari,
Machiavelli and his Times,
chapter 2, section 2 (volume 1).
"The state of Florence at this period was very remarkable. The
most independent and tumultuous of towns was spellbound under
the sway of Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Cosimo who
built San Marco; and scarcely seemed even to recollect its
freedom, so absorbed was it in the present advantages
conferred by 'a strong government,' and solaced by shows,
entertainments, festivals, pomp, and display of all kinds. It
was the very height of that classic revival so famous in the
later history of the world, and the higher classes of society,
having shaken themselves apart with graceful contempt from the
lower, had begun to frame their lives according to a pagan
model, leaving the other and much bigger half of the world to
pursue its superstitions undisturbed. Florence was as near a
pagan city as it was possible for its rulers to make it. Its
intellectual existence was entirely given up to the past; its
days were spent in that worship of antiquity which has no
power of discrimination, and deifies not only the wisdom but
the trivialities of its golden epoch. Lorenzo reigned in the
midst of a lettered crowd of classic parasites and flatterers,
writing poems which his courtiers found better than
Alighieri's, and surrounding himself with those eloquent
slaves who make a prince's name more famous than arms or
victories, and who have still left a prejudice in the minds of
all literature-loving people in favour of their patron. A man
of superb health and physical power, who can give himself up
to debauch all night without interfering with his power of
working all day, and whose mind is so versatile that he can
sack a town one morning and discourse upon the beauties of
Plato the next, and weave joyous ballads through both
occupations--gives his flatterers reason when they applaud
him. The few righteous men in the city, the citizens who still
thought of Florence above all, kept apart, overwhelmed by the
tide which ran in favour of that leading citizen of Florence,
who had gained the control of the once high-spirited and
freedom-loving people. Society had never been more dissolute,
more selfish, or more utterly deprived of any higher aim.
Barren scholarship, busy over grammatical questions, and
elegant philosophy, snipping and piecing its logical systems,
formed the top dressing to that half-brutal,
half-superstitious ignorance which in such communities is the
general portion of the poor. The dilettante world dreamed
hazily of a restoration of the worship of the pagan gods;
Cardinal Bembo bade his friend beware of reading St. Paul's
epistles, lest their barbarous style should corrupt his taste;
and even such a man as Pico della Mirandola declared the
'Divina Commedia' to be inferior to the 'Canti
Carnascialeschi' of Lorenzo de' Medici. ... Thus limited
intellectually, the age of Lorenzo was still more hopeless
morally, full of debauchery, cruelty, and corruption,
violating oaths, betraying trusts, believing in nothing but
Greek manuscripts, coins, and statues, caring for nothing but
pleasure. This was the world in which Savonarola found
himself."
Mrs. Oliphant,
The Makers of Florence,
chapter 9.
"Terrible municipal enmities had produced so much evil as to
relax ancient republican energy. After so much destruction
repose was necessary. To antique sobriety and gravity succeed
love of pleasure and the quest of luxury. The belligerent
class of great nobles were expelled and the energetic class of
artisans crushed. Bourgeois rulers were to rule, and to rule
tranquilly. Like the Medicis, their chiefs, they manufacture,
trade, bank and make fortunes in order to expend them in
intellectual fashion. War no longer fastens its cares upon
them, as formerly, with a bitter and tragic grasp; they manage
it through the paid bands of condottieri, and these as cunning
traffickers, reduce it to cavalcades; when they slaughter each
other it is by mistake; historians cite battles in which
three, and sometimes only one soldier remains on the field.
Diplomacy takes the place of force, and the mind expands as
character weakens. Through this mitigation of war and through
the establishment of principalities or of local tyrannies, it
seems that Italy, like the great European monarchies, had just
attained to its equilibrium.
{1143}
Peace is partially established and the useful arts germinate
in all directions upon an improved social soil like a good
harvest on a cleared and well-ploughed field. The peasant is
no longer a serf of the glebe, but a metayer; he nominates his
own municipal magistrates, possesses arms and a communal
treasury; he lives in enclosed bourgs, the houses of which,
built of stone and cement, are large, convenient, and often
elegant. Near Florence he erects walls, and near Lucca he
constructs turf terraces in order to favor cultivation.
Lombardy has its irrigations and rotation of crops; entire
districts, now so many deserts around Lombardy and Rome, are
still inhabited and richly productive. In the upper class the
bourgeois and the noble labor since the chiefs of Florence are
hereditary bankers and commercial interests are not
endangered. Marble quarries are worked at Carrara, and foundry
fires are lighted in the Maremmes. We find in the cities
manufactories of silk, glass, paper, books, flax, wool and
hemp; Italy alone produces as much as all Europe and furnishes
to it all its luxuries. Thus diffused commerce and industry
are not servile occupations tending to narrow or debase the
mind. A great merchant is a pacific general, whose mind
expands in contact with men and things. Like a military
chieftain he organizes expeditions and enterprises and makes
discoveries. ... The Medicis possess sixteen banking-houses in
Europe; they bind together through their business Russia and
Spain, Scotland and Syria; they possess mines of alum
throughout Italy, paying to the Pope for one of them a hundred
thousand florins per annum; they entertain at their court
representatives of all the powers of Europe and become the
councillors and moderators of all Italy. In a small state like
Florence, and in a country without a national army like Italy,
such an influence becomes ascendant in and through itself; a
control over private fortunes leads to a management of the
public funds, and without striking a blow or using violence, a
private individual finds himself director of the state. ...
These banking magistrates are liberal as well as capable. In
thirty-seven years the ancestors of Lorenzo expend six hundred
and sixty thousand florins in works of charity and of public
utility. Lorenzo himself is a citizen of the antique stamp,
almost a Pericles, capable of rushing into the arms of his
enemy, the king of Naples, in order to avert, through personal
seductions and eloquence, a war which menaces the safety of
his country. His private fortune is a sort of public treasury,
and his palace a second hotel-de-ville. He entertains the
learned, aids them with his purse, makes friends of them,
corresponds with them, defrays the expenses of editions of
their works, purchases manuscripts, statues and medals,
patronizes promising young artists, opens to them his gardens,
his collections, his house and his table, and with that
cordial familiarity and that openness, sincerity and
simplicity of heart which place the protected on a footing of
equality with the protector as man to man and not as an
inferior in relation to a superior. This is the representative
man whom his contemporaries all accept as the accomplished man of
the century, no longer a Farinata or an Alighieri of ancient
Florence, a spirit rigid, exalted and militant to its utmost
capacity, but a balanced, moderate and cultivated genius, one
who, through the genial sway of his serene and beneficent
intellect, binds up into one sheaf all talents and all
beauties. It is a pleasure to see them expanding around him.
On the one hand writers are restoring and, on the other,
constructing. From the time of Petrarch Greek and Latin
manuscripts are sought for, and now they are to be exhumed in
the convents of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France. They
are deciphered and restored with the aid of the savants of
Constantinople. A decade of Livy or a treatise by Cicero, is a
precious gift solicited by princes; some learned man passes
ten years of travel in ransacking distant libraries in order
to find a lost book of Tacitus, while the sixteen authors
rescued from oblivion by the Poggios are counted as so many
titles to immortal fame. ... Style again becomes noble and at
the same time clear, and the health, joy and serenity diffused
through antique life re-enters the human mind with the
harmonious proportions of language and the measured graces of
diction. From refined language they pass to vulgar language,
and the Italian is born by the side of the Latin. ... Here in
the restored paganism, shines out Epicurean gaiety, a
determination to enjoy at any and all hours, and that instinct
for pleasure which a grave philosophy and political sobriety
had thus far tempered and restrained. With Pulci, Berni,
Bibiena, Ariosto, Bandelli, Aretino, and so many others, we
soon see the advent of voluptuous debauchery and open
skepticism, and later a cynical unbounded licentiousness.
These joyous and refined civilizations based on a worship of
pleasure and intellectuality--Greece of the fourth century,
Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth--were not
enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden
outbursts of genius and creativeness he wanders away in the
direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and
thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilettant. But in
this transient brilliancy his beauty was charming. ... It is
in this world, again become pagan, that painting revives, and
the new tastes she is to gratify show beforehand the road she
is to follow; henceforth she is to decorate the houses of rich
merchants who love antiquity and who desire to live daintily."
H. Taine, Italy,
Florence and Venice,
book 3, chapter 2.
ALSO IN:
A. von Reumont,
Lorenzo de' Medici.
W. Roscoe,
Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.
F. T. Perrens,
History of Florence, 1434-1531,
book 2, chapters 2-6.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1490-1498.
The preaching of Savonarola.
The coming of Charles VII. of France,
and expulsion of the Medici.
The great religious revival and Christianization of
the Commonwealth.
Conflict with the Church and fall of Savonarola.
Girolamo, or Jerome Savonarola, a Dominican monk, born at
Ferrara in 1452, educated to be a physician, but led by early
disgust with the world to renounce his intended profession and
give himself to the religious life, was sent to the convent of
St. Mark, in Florence, in 1490, when he had reached the age of
37. "He began his career as a reader and lecturer, and his
lectures, though only intended for novices, drew a large
audience. He then lectured in the garden of the cloister,
under a large rosebush, where many intellectual men came from
the city to hear him.
{1144}
At length he began to preach in the Church of St. Mark's, and
his subject was the Apocalypse, out of which he predicted the
restoration of the Church in Italy, which he declared God
would bring about by a severe visitation. Its influence upon
his hearers was overpowering; there was no room in the church
for the brethren; his fame spread abroad, and he was next
appointed to preach the sermons in the cathedral. ... Amid the
luxurious, æsthetic, semi-pagan life of Florence, in the ears
of the rich citizens, the licentious youth, the learned
Platonists, he denounced the revival of paganism, the
corruptions of the Church; the ignorance and consequent
slavery of the people, and declared that God would visit Italy
with some terrible punishment, and that it would soon come. He
spoke severe words about the priests, declared to the people
that the Scriptures were the only guides to salvation; that
salvation did not come from external works, as the Church
taught, but from faith in Christ, from giving up the heart to
Him, and if He forgave sin, there was no need for any other
absolution. Scarcely had he been a year in Florence when he
was made prior of the monastery. There was a custom in vogue,
a relic of the old times, for every new prior to go to the
king or ruler and ask his favour. This homage was then due to
Lorenzo di Medici, but Savonarola declared he would never
submit to it, saying--'From whom have I received my office,
from God or Lorenzo? Let us pray for grace to the Highest.'
Lorenzo passed over this slight, being anxious to acquire the
friendship of one whom he clearly saw would exert great
influence over the Florentines. Burlamachi, his contemporary
biographer, tells us that Lorenzo tried all kinds of plans to
win the friendship of Savonarola: he attended the church of
St. Mark; listened to his sermons; gave large sums of money to
him for the poor; loitered in the garden to attract his
attention--but with little success. Savonarola treated him
with respect, gave his money away to the poor, but avoided him
and denounced him. Another plan was tried: five distinguished men
waited on Savonarola, and begged him to spare such elevated
persons in his sermons, to treat more of generalities; and not
to foretell the future. They received a prophetic answer: 'Go
tell your master, Lorenzo, to repent of his sins, or God will
punish him and his. Does he threaten me with banishment? Well,
I am but a stranger, and he is the first citizen in Florence,
but let him know that I shall remain and he must soon depart!'
What happened shortly after caused the people to begin to
regard Savonarola as a prophet, and won him that terrible fame
which caused his downfall. ... Lorenzo died on the 8th April,
1492, and from that time Savonarola becomes more prominent. He
directed his exertions to the accomplishment of three
objects--the reformation of his monastery, the reformation of
the Florentine State, and the reformation of the Church. He
changed the whole character of his monastery. ... Then he
proceeded to State matters, and in this step we come to the
problem of his life--was he a prophet or a fanatic? Let the
facts speak for themselves. Lorenzo was succeeded by his son
Pietro, who was vastly inferior to his father in learning and
statesmanship. His only idea appears to have been a desire to
unite Florence and Naples into one principality; this created
for him many enemies, and men began to fancy that the great
house of Medici would terminate with him. So, it appears,
thought Savonarola, and announced the fact at first privately
amongst his friends; in a short time, however, he began to
prophecy their downfall publicly. During the years 1492 and
1494, he was actively engaged in preaching. In Advent of the
former year, he began his thirteen sermons upon Noah's Ark. In
1493 he preached the Lent sermons at Bologna, and upon his return
he began preaching in the cathedral. In these sermons he
predicted the approaching fall of the State to the
astonishment of all his hearers, who had not the slightest
apprehension of danger: 'The Lord has declared that His sword
shall come upon the land swiftly and soon.' This was the
burden of a sermon preached on Advent Sunday, 1492. At the
close of 1493, and as the new year approached, he spoke out
more plainly and definitely. He declared that one should come
over the Alps who was called, like Cyrus, of whom Jeremiah
wrote; and he should, sword in hand, wreak vengeance upon the
tyrants of Italy. ... His preaching had always exerted a
marvellous influence upon people, as we shall hereafter note,
but they could not understand the cause of these predictions.
The city was at peace; gay and joyous as usual, and no fear
was entertained; but towards the end of the year came the
fulfilment. Charles VIII., King of France, called into Italy
by Duke Ludovico of Milan, came over the Alps with an immense
army, took Naples, and advanced on Florence. The expulsion of
the Medici from Florence soon followed: Pietro, being
captured, signed an agreement to deliver up all his
strongholds to Charles VIII., and to pay him 200,000 ducats.
See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.
The utmost indignation seized the Florentines when they heard
of this treaty. The Signori sent heralds to Charles, to
negotiate for milder terms, and their chief was Savonarola,
who addressed the King like a prophet, begged him to take pity
on Italy, and save her. His words had the desired effect.
Charles made more easy terms, and left it to the Florentine
people to settle their own State. In the meantime Pietro
returned, but he found Florence in the greatest
excitement--the royal palace was closed; stones were thrown at
him; he summoned his guards, but the people took to arms, and
he was compelled to fly to his brothers Giovanni and Giuliano.
The Signori declared them to be traitors, and set a price upon
their heads. Their palace and its treasures fell into the hands
of the people. The friends of the Medici, however, were not
all extinct; and as a discussion arose which was likely to
lead to a struggle, Savonarola summoned the people to meet
under the dome of St. Mark. ... In fact, the formation of the
new State fell upon Savonarola, for the people looked up to
him as an inspired prophet. He proposed that 3,200 citizens
should form themselves into a general council. Then they drew
lots for a third part, who for six months were to act together
as an executive body and represent the general council,
another one-third for the next three months, and so on; so
that every citizen had his turn in the council every eighteen
months. They ultimately found it convenient to reduce the
number to 80--in fact, Savonarola's Democracy was rapidly
becoming oligarchic. Each of these 80 representatives was to
be 40 years of age; they voted with black and white beans, six
being a legal majority.
{1145}
But the Chief of the State was to be Christ; He was to be the
new monarch. His next step was to induce them to proclaim a
general amnesty, in which he succeeded only through vigorously
preaching to them that forgiveness was sweeter than
vengeance--that freedom and peace were more loving than strife
and hatred. ... He was now at the height of his power; his
voice ruled the State; he is the only instance in Europe of a
monk openly leading a republic. The people regarded him as
something more than human: they knew of his nights spent in
prayer; of his long fasts; of his unbounded charity. ... Few
preachers ever exerted such influence upon the minds of
crowds, such a vitalizing influence; he changed the whole
character of Florentine society. Libertines abandoned their
vices; the theatres and taverns were empty; there was no card
playing, nor dice throwing; the love of fasting grew so
general, that meat could not be sold; the city of Florence was
God's city, and its government a Theocracy. There was a custom in
Florence, during Carnival time, for the children to go from
house to house and bid people give up their cherished
pleasures; and so great was the enthusiasm at this period that
people gave up their cards, their dice and backgammon boards,
the ladies their perfumed waters, veils, paint-pots, false
hair, musical instruments, harps, lutes, licentious tales,
especially those of Boccaccio, dream books, romances, and
popular songs. All this booty was gathered together in a heap
in the market place, the people assembled, the Signori took
their places, and children clothed in white, with olive
branches on their heads, received from them the burning
torches, and set fire to the pile amid the blast of trumpets
and chant of psalms, which were continued till the whole was
consumed. ... His fame had now reached other countries;
foreigners visited Florence solely for the purpose of seeing
and hearing him. The Sultan of Turkey allowed his sermons to
be translated and circulated in his dominions. But in the
midst of his prosperity his enemies were not idle: as he
progressed their jealousy increased: his preaching displeased
them, terrified them, and amongst these the most bitter and
virulent were the young sons of the upper classes: they called
his followers 'howlers' (piagnoni), and so raged against him
that they gained the name, now immortalised in history, of the
Arrabiati (the furies): this party was increased by the old
friends of the Medici, who called him a rebel and leader of
the lower classes. Dolfo Spini, a young man of position and
wealth, commanded this party, and used every effort to destroy
the reputation of Savonarola, to incite the people against him,
and to ruin him. They bore the name of 'Compagnacci'; they
wrote satires about the Piagnoni; they circulated slanders
about the monk who was making Florence the laughing stock of
Europe: but Savonarola went on his way indifferent to the
signs already manifesting themselves amongst his countrymen,
ever most sensitive to ridicule. He also strove to reform the
Church: he delineated the Apostolic Church as a model upon
which he would build up that of Florence. ... By this time,
the intelligence of his doings, and the gist of his preaching
and writing, which had been carefully transmitted to Rome by
his enemies, began to attract the attention of the Pope,
Alexander VI., who tried what had frequently proved an
infallible remedy, and offered Savonarola a Cardinal's hat,
which he at once refused. He was then invited to Rome, but
thought it prudent to excuse himself. When the controversy
between him and the Pope appeared to approach a crisis,
Savonarola took a step which somewhat hurried the catastrophe.
He wrote to the Kings of France and Spain, and the Emperor of
Germany, to call a General Council to take into consideration
the Reform of the Church. One of these letters reached the
Pope, through a spy of Duke Ludovico Moro, of Milan, whom
Savonarola had denounced. The result was the issue of a Breve
(October, 1496), which forbade him to preach. The Pope then
ordered the Congregation of St. Mark to be broken up and
amalgamated with another. For a time Savonarola, at the advice
of his friends, remained quiet; but at this last step, to
break up the institution he had established, he was aroused to
action. He denounced Rome as the source of all the poison
which was undermining the constitution of the Church; declared
that its evil fame stunk in men's nostrils. The Pope then
applied to the Signori to deliver up this enemy of the Church,
but to no purpose. The Franciscans were ordered to preach
against him, but they made no impression. Then came the last
thunderbolt: a Bann was issued (12th May, 1497), which was
announced by the Franciscans. During the time of his
suspension and his excommunication, many things happened which
tended to his downfall, although his friends gathered round him,
the rapid change of ministry brought in turn friends of the
Medici to the helm; they introduced the young, Compagnacci
into the Council, and gradually his enemies were increasing in
the Government to a strong party." The fickle Florentine mob
now took sides with them against the monk whom it had recently
adored, and on the 7th of April, 1498, in the midst of a
raging tumult, Savonarola was taken into custody by the
Signori of the city. With the assent of the Pope, he was
subjected seven times to torture upon the rack, to force from
him a recantation of all that he had taught and preached, and
on the 23d of May he was hanged and burned, in company with
two of his disciples.
O. T. Hill,
Introduction to Savonarola's "Triumph of the Cross."
ALSO IN:
P. Villari,
History of Savonarola and his times.
Mrs. Oliphant,
The Makers of Florence.
H. H. Milman,
Savonarola, Erasmus, and other Essays.
George Eliot,
Romola.
H. Grimm,
Life of Michael Angelo,
volume 1, chapters 3-4.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1494-1509.
The French deliverance of Pisa and the long war of reconquest.
See PISA: A. D. 1404-1509.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1498-1500.
Threatened by the Medici, on one side,
and Cæsar Borgia on the other.
A new division of parties.
"After the death of Savonarola things changed with such a
degree of rapidity that the Arrabbiati had not time to
consider in what manner they could restrict the government;
but they soon became convinced that the only salvation for the
Republic was to adopt the course which had been recommended by
the Friar. Piero and Giuliano dei Medici were in fact already
in the neighbourhood of Florence, supported by a powerful
Venetian army. It became, therefore, absolutely necessary for
the Arrabbiati to unite with the Piagnoni, in order to defend
themselves against so many dangers and so many enemies.
{1146}
By great good fortune, the Duke of Milan, from jealousy of the
Venetians, came to their assistance to ward off the danger;
but who could trust to his friendship--who could place any
reliance on his fidelity? As to Alexander Borgia, he who had
held out such great hopes, and had made so many promises, in
order to get Savonarola put to death, no sooner was his object
attained than he gave full sway to his unbridled passions. It
seemed as if the death of the poor Friar had released both the
Pope and his son, Duke Valentino, from all restraints upon
their lusts and ambition. The Pope formed intimate alliances
with Turks and Jews, a thing hitherto unheard of. He, in one
year, set up twelve cardinals' hats for sale. The history of
the incests and murders of the family of Borgia is too well
known to render it necessary for us to enter into any detailed
account of them here. The great object of the Pope was to form
a State for his son in the Romagna; and so great was the
ambition of Duke Valentino, that he contemplated extending his
power over the whole of Italy, Tuscany being the first part he
meant to seize upon. With that view he was always endeavouring
to create new dangers to the Republic; at one time he caused
Arezzo to rise against it; at another time he threatened to
bring back Piero de' Medici; and he was continually ravaging
their territory. The consequence was, that the Florentines
were obliged to grant him an annual subsidy of 36,000 ducats,
under the name of condotta (military pay); but even that did
not restrain him from every now and then, under various
pretexts, overrunning and laying waste their territory. Thus
did Alexander Borgia fulfil those promises to the Republic by
which they had been induced to murder Savonarola. The
Arrabbiati were at length convinced that to defend themselves
against the Medici and Borgia, their only course was to
cultivate the alliance with France, and unite in good faith
with the Piagnoni. Thus they completely adopted the line of
policy which Savonarola had advised; and the consequence was,
that their affairs got order and their exertions were attended
with a success far beyond what could have been anticipated."
P. Villari,
History of Savonarola and of his Times,
volume 2, conclusion.
"A new division of parties may be said to have taken place
under the three denominations of 'Palleschi' from the watchword of the Mediceans, 'palle, palle,' which
alluded to the well-known balls in the coat of arms of the
Medici family], 'Ottimati,' and 'Popolani.' The first ... were
for the Medici and themselves. ... The 'Ottomati' were in
eager search for a sort of visionary government where a few of
the noblest blood, the most illustrious connexions and the
greatest riches, were to rule Florence without any regard to
the Medici. ... The Popolani, who formed the great majority,
loved civic liberty, therefore were constantly watching the
Medici and other potent and ambitious men."
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
book. 2, chapter 8 (volume 4).
FLORENCE: A. D. 1502-1569.
Ten years under Piero Soderini.
Restoration of the Medici and their second expulsion.
Siege of the city by the imperial army.
Final surrender to Medicean tyranny.
Creation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
"In 1502, it was decreed that the Gonfalonier should hold
office for life--should be in fact a Doge. To this important
post of permanent president Piero Soderini was appointed; and
in his hands were placed the chief affairs of the republic.
... During the ten years which elapsed between 1502 and 1512,
Piero Soderini administered Florence with an outward show of
great prosperity. He regained Pisa, and maintained an
honourable foreign policy in the midst of the wars stirred up
by the League of Cambray. Meanwhile the young princes of the
house of Medici had grown to manhood in exile. The Cardinal
Giovanni was 37 in 1512. His brother Giuliano was 33. Both of
these men were better fitted than their brother Piero to fight
the battles of the family. Giovanni, in particular, had
inherited no small portion of the Medicean craft. During the
troubled reign of Julius II. he kept very quiet, cementing his
connection with powerful men in Rome, but making no effort to
regain his hold on Florence. Now the moment for striking a
decisive blow had come. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512,
the French were driven out of Italy, and the Sforzas returned
to Milan [see ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513]; the Spanish troops,
under the Viceroy Cardona, remained masters of the country.
Following the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici
entered Tuscany in August, and caused the restoration of the
Medici to be announced in Florence. The people, assembled by
Soderini, resolved to resist to the uttermost. ... Yet their
courage failed on August 29th, when news reached them of the
capture and the sack of Prato. Prato is a sunny little city a
few miles distant from the walls of Florence, famous for the
beauty of its women, the richness of its gardens, and the
grace of its buildings. Into this gem of cities the savage
soldiery of Spain marched in the bright autumnal weather, and
turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now impossible to
read of what they did in Prato without shuddering. Cruelty and
lust, sordid greed for gold, and cold delight in bloodshed,
could go no further. Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild and
voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds, had to smile
approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked thus with mailed
hand for him at the door of Florence. The Florentines were
paralysed with terror. They deposed Soderini and received the
Medici. Giovanni and Giuliano entered their devastated palace
in the Via Larga, abolished the Grand Council, and dealt with
the republic as they listed. ... It is not likely that they
would have succeeded in maintaining their authority--for they
were poor and ill-supported by friends outside the
city--except for one most lucky circumstance: that was the
election of Giovanni de' Medici to the Papacy in 1513. The
creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction throughout Italy. ...
Florence shared in the general rejoicing. ... It seemed as
though the Republic, swayed by him, might make herself the
first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her Guelf
ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft. There
was now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence. How to
govern the city from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of
his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo (Piero's son, a
young man of 21), occupied the Pope's most serious attention.
For Lorenzo, Leo obtained the Duchy of Urbino and the hand of
a French princess. Giuliano was named Gonfalonier of the
Church. He also received the French title of Duke of Nemours
and the hand of Filiberta, Princess of Savoy. ...
{1147}
Giulio, the Pope's bastard cousin, was made cardinal. ... To
Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the family, was
committed the government of Florence. ... Florence now for the
first time saw a regular court established in her midst, with
a prince, who, though he bore a foreign title, was in fact her
master. The joyous days of Lorenzo the Magnificent returned.
... But this prosperity was no less brief than it was
brilliant. A few years sufficed to sweep off all the chiefs of
the great house. Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a bastard
son, Ippolito. Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son,
Alessandro, and a daughter, six days old, who lived to be the
Queen of France. Leo died in 1521. There remained now no
legitimate male descendants from the stock of Cosimo. The
honours and pretensions of the Medici devolved upon three
bastards,--on the Cardinal Giulio, and the two boys,
Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a mulatto,
his mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of
Urbino; and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a
base groom, was not known for certain. To such extremities
were the Medici reduced. ... Giulio de' Medici was left in
1521 to administer the State of Florence single-handed. He was
archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding it with the
grasp of an absolute ruler. ... In 1523, the Pope, Adrian VI.,
expired after a short papacy, from which he gained no honour
and Italy no profit. Giulio hurried to Rome, and, by the
clever use of his large influence, caused himself to be
elected with the title of Clement VII." Then followed the
strife of France and Spain--of Francis I. and Charles V.--for
the possession of Italy, and the barbarous sack of Rome in
1527.
See ITALY: A. D. 1523-1527, 1527, and 1527-1529.
"When the Florentines knew what was happening in Rome, they
rose and forced the Cardinal Passerini [whom the Pope had
appointed to act as his vicegerent in the government of
Florence] to depart with the Medicean bastards from the city.
... The whole male population was enrolled in a militia. The
Grand Council was reformed, and the republic was restored upon
the basis of 1495. Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier.
The name of Christ was again registered as chief of the
commonwealth--to such an extent did the memory of Savonarola
still sway the popular imagination. The new State hastened to
form an alliance with France, and Malatesta Baglioni was
chosen as military Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile the city
armed itself for siege--Michel Angelo Buonarroti and
Francesco da San Gallo undertaking the construction of new
forts and ramparts. These measures were adopted with sudden
decision, because it was soon known that Clement had made
peace with the Emperor, and that the army which had sacked
Rome was going to be marched on Florence. ... On September 4
[1529], the Prince of Orange appeared before the walls, and
opened the memorable siege. It lasted eight months, at the end
of which time, betrayed by their generals, divided among
themselves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines
capitulated. ... The long yoke of the Medici had undermined
the character of the Florentines. This, their last glorious
struggle for liberty, was but a flash in the pan--a final
flare up of the dying lamp. ... What remains of Florentine
history may be briefly told. Clement, now the undisputed
arbiter of power and honour in the city, chose Alessandro de'
Medici to be prince. Alessandro was created Duke of Cività di
Penna, and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.
Ippolito was made a cardinal." Ippolito was subsequently
poisoned by Alessandro, and Alessandro was murdered by another
kinsman, who suffered assassination in his turn. "When
Alessandro was killed in 1539, Clement had himself been dead
five years. Thus the whole posterity of Cosimo de' Medici,
with the exception of Catherine, Queen of France [daughter of
Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the son of Piero de' Medici], was
utterly extinguished. But the Medici had struck root so firmly
in the State, and had so remodelled it upon the type of
tyranny, that the Florentines were no longer able to do
without them. The chiefs of the Ottimati selected Cosimo," a
descendant from Lorenzo, brother of the Cosimo who founded the
power of the House. "He it was who obtained [1569] the title
of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope--a title confirmed by
the Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and transmitted
through his heirs to the present century."
J. A. Symonds,
Sketches and studies in Italy,
chapter 5 (Florence and the Medici).
ALSO IN:
H. Grimm,
Life of Michael Angelo,
chapters 8-15 (volumes 1-2).
T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 9, chapter 10, book 10 (volume 4).
H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
volumes 4-5.
W. Roscoe,
Life and Pontificate of Leo X,
chapters 9-23 (volumes 1-2).
P. Villari,
Machiavelli and his Times,
volumes 3-4.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1803.
Becomes the capital of the kingdom of Etruria.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1865.
Made temporarily the capital of the kingdom of Italy.
See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.
----------FLORENCE: End----------
FLORIANUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 276.
FLORIDA: The aboriginal inhabitants.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES;
MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY; SEMINOLES; TIMUQUANAN FAMILY.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1512.
Discovery and Naming by Ponce de Leon.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1512.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.
The expeditions of Narvaez and Hernando de Soto.
Wide Spanish application of the name Florida.
"The voyages of Garay [1519-1523] and Vasquez de Ayllon
[1520-1526] threw new light on the discoveries of Ponce, and
the general outline of the coasts of Florida became known to
the Spaniards. Meanwhile, Cortes had conquered Mexico, and the
fame of that iniquitous but magnificent exploit rang through
all Spain. Many an impatient cavalier burned to achieve a
kindred fortune. To the excited fancy of the Spaniards the
unknown land of Florida seemed the seat of surpassing wealth,
and Pamphilo de Narvaez essayed to possess himself of its
fancied treasures. Landing on its shores [1528], and
proclaiming destruction to the Indians unless they
acknowledged the sovereignty of the Pope and the Emperor, he
advanced into the forests with 300 men. Nothing could exceed
their sufferings. Nowhere could they find the gold they came
to seek. The village of Appalache, where they hoped to gain a
rich booty, offered nothing but a few mean wigwams. The horses
gave out and the famished soldiers fed upon their flesh.
{1148}
The men sickened, and the Indians unceasingly harassed their
march. At length, after 280 leagues of wandering, they found
themselves on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and
desperately put to sea in such crazy boats as their skill and
means could construct. Cold, disease, famine, thirst, and the
fury of the waves, melted them away. Narvaez himself perished,
and of his wretched followers no more than four escaped,
reaching by land, after years of vicissitude, the Christian
settlements of New Spain. ... Cabeça de Vaca was one of the
four who escaped, and, after living for years among the tribes
of Mississippi, crossed the River Mississippi near Memphis,
journeyed westward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red River
to New Mexico and Chihuahua, thence to Cinaloa on the Gulf of
California, and thence to Mexico. The narrative is one of the
most remarkable of the early relations. ... The interior of
the vast country then comprehended under the name of Florida
still remained unexplored. ... Hernando de Soto ... companion
of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru ... asked and obtained
permission [1537] to conquer Florida. While this design was in
agitation, Cabeça de Vaca, one of those who had survived the
expedition of Narvaez, appeared in Spain, and for purposes of
his own spread abroad the mischievous falsehood that Florida
was the richest country yet discovered. De Soto's plans were
embraced with enthusiasm. Nobles and gentlemen contended for
the privilege of joining his standard; and, setting sail with
an ample armament, he landed [May, 1539] at the Bay of
Espiritu Santo, now Tampa Bay, in Florida, with 620 chosen
men, a band as gallant and well appointed, as eager in purpose
and audacious in hope, as ever trod the shores of the New
World. ... The adventurers began their march. Their story has
been often told. For month after month and year after year,
the procession of priests and cavaliers, cross-bowmen,
arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the baggage,
still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured
hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of their hopes. They
traversed great portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
everywhere inflicting and enduring misery, but never
approaching their phantom El Dorado. At length, in the third
year of their journeying, they reached the banks of the
Mississippi, 132 years before its second [or third?] discovery
by Marquette. ... The Spaniards crossed over at a point above
the mouth of the Arkansas. They advanced westward, but found
no treasures,--nothing indeed but hardships, and an Indian
enemy, furious, writes one of their officers, 'as mad dogs.'
They heard of a country towards the north where maize could
not be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle
devoured it. They penetrated so far that they entered the
range of the roving prairie-tribes. ... Finding neither gold
nor the South Sea, for both of which they had hoped, they
returned to the banks of the Mississippi. De Soto ... fell
into deep dejection, followed by an attack of fever, and soon
after died miserably [May 21, 1542]. To preserve his body from
the Indians his followers sunk it at midnight in the river,
and the sullen waters of the Mississippi buried his ambition
and his hopes. The adventurers were now, with few exceptions,
disgusted with the enterprise, and longed only to escape from
the scene of their miseries. After a vain attempt to reach
Mexico by land, they again turned back to the Mississippi, and
labored, with all the resources which their desperate
necessity could suggest, to construct vessels in which they
might make their way to some Christian settlement. ... Seven
brigantines were finished and launched; and, trusting their
lives on board these frail vessels, they descended the
Mississippi, running the gauntlet between hostile tribes who
fiercely attacked them. Reaching the Gulf, though not without
the loss of eleven of their number, they made sail for the
Spanish settlement on the River Panuco, where they arrived
safely, and where the inhabitants met them with a cordial
welcome. Three hundred and eleven men thus escaped with life,
leaving behind them the bones of their comrades, strewn
broadcast through the wilderness. De Soto's fate proved an
insufficient warning, for those were still found who begged a
fresh commission for the conquest of Florida; but the Emperor
would not hear them. A more pacific enterprise was undertaken
by Cancello [or Cancer], a Dominican monk, who with several
brother-ecclesiastics undertook to convert the natives to the
true faith, but was murdered in the attempt. ... Not a
Spaniard had yet gained foothold in Florida. That name, as the
Spaniards of that day understood it, comprehended the whole
country extending from the Atlantic on the east to the
longitude of New Mexico on the west, and from the Gulf of
Mexico and the River of Palms indefinitely northward towards
the polar Sea. This vast territory was claimed by Spain in
right of the discoveries of Columbus, the grant of the Pope,
and the various expeditions mentioned above. England claimed
it in light of the discoveries of Cabot, while France could
advance no better title than might be derived from the voyage
of Verrazano and vague traditions of earlier visits of Breton
adventurers."
F. Parkman,
Pioneers of France in the New World,
chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
T. Irving,
Conquest of Florida by De Soto.
Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida;
written by a Gentleman of Elvas (Hakluyt Society).
J. W. Monette,
Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley,
chapters 1-4.
J. G. Shea,
Ancient Florida (Narrative and Critical
History of America,
volume 2, chapter 4).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1562-1563.
First colonizing attempt of the French Huguenots.
About the middle of the 16th century, certain of the
Protestants of France began to turn their thoughts to the New
World as a possible place of refuge from the persecutions they
were suffering at home. "Some of the French sea-ports became
strong-holds of the Huguenots. Their most prominent supporter,
Coligny, was high admiral of France. These Huguenots looked
toward the new countries as the proper field in which to
secure a retreat from persecution, and to found a new
religious commonwealth. Probably many of the French
'corsarios' following the track of the Portuguese and
Spaniards to the West Indies and the coasts of Brazil, were
Huguenots. ... The first scheme for a Protestant colony in the
new world was suggested by Admiral Coligny in 1554, and intended
for the coast of Brazil, to which an expedition, under Durand
de Villegagnon, was sent with ships and colonists. This
expedition arrived at the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in 1555,
and founded there the first European settlement.
{1149}
It was followed the next year by another expedition. But the
whole enterprise came to an end by divisions among the
colonists, occasioned by the treacherous, despotic, and cruel
proceedings of its commander, a reputed Catholic. The colony
was finally subverted by the Portuguese, who, in 1560, sent
out an armament against it, and took possession of the Bay of
Rio de Janeiro. ... After the unfortunate end of the French
enterprise to South America, Admiral Coligny, who may be
styled the Raleigh of France, turned his attention to the
eastern shores of North America; the whole of which had become
known in France from the voyage of Verrazano, and the French
expeditions to Canada and the Banks of Newfoundland." In
February, 1562, an expedition, fitted out by Coligny, sailed
from Havre de Grace, under Jean Ribault, with Réné de
Laudonnière forming one of the company. Ribault arrived on the
Florida coast in the neighborhood of the present harbor of St.
Augustine, and thence sailed north. "At last, in about 32° 30'
North he found an excellent broad and deep harbor, which he
named Port Royal, which probably is the present Broad River,
or Port Royal entrance. ... He found this port and the
surrounding country so advantageous and of such 'singular
beauty,' that he resolved to leave here a part of his men in a
small fort. ... A pillar with the arms of France was therefore
erected, and a fort constructed, furnished with cannon,
ammunition, and provisions, and named 'Charlesfort.' Thirty
volunteers were placed in it, and it became the second
European settlement ever attempted upon the east coast of the
United States. Its position was probably not far from the site
of the present town of Beaufort, on Port Royal River. Having
accomplished this, and made a certain captain, Albert de la
Pieria, 'a soldier of great experience,' commander of
Charlesfort, he took leave of his countrymen, and left Port
Royal on the 11th day of June," arriving in France on the 20th
of July. "On his arrival in France, Ribault found the country
in a state of great commotion. The civil war between the
Huguenots and the Catholics was raging, and neither the king
nor the admiral had time to listen to Ribault's solicitations,
to send relief to the settlers left in 'French Florida.' Those
colonists remained, therefore, during the remainder of 1562,
and the following winter, without assistance from France; and
after many trials and sufferings, they were at last forced, in
1563, to abandon their settlement and the new country." Having
constructed a ship, with great difficulty, they put to sea;
but suffered horribly on the tedious voyage, from want of food
and water, until they were rescued by an English vessel and
taken to England.
J. G. Kohl,
History of the Discovery of Maine
(Maine Historical Society Collection,
2d series, volume 1), chapter 11.
ALSO IN:
F. Parkman,
Pioneers of France in the New World,
chapter 3.
Father Charlevoix,
History of New France;
translated by J. G. Shea,
book 3 (volume 1).
T. E. V. Smith,
Villegaignon
(American Society of Church History, volume 3).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1564-1565.
The second Huguenot colony, and the cry in Spain against it.
"After the treacherous peace between Charles IX. and the
Huguenots, Coligny renewed his solicitations for the
colonization of Florida. The king gave consent; in 1564 three
ships were conceded for the service; and Laudonnière, who, in
the former voyage, had been upon the American coast, a man of
great intelligence, though a seaman rather than a soldier, was
appointed to lead forth the colony. ... A voyage of 60 days
brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and the
Antilles, to the shores of Florida in June. The harbor of Port
Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was
avoided; and, after searching the coast, and discovering
places which were so full of amenity that melancholy itself
could not but change its humor as it gazed, the followers of
Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May [now
called the St. John's], near St. John's bluff. They sung a
psalm of thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of
devotion. The fort now erected was called Carolina. ... The
French were hospitably welcomed by the natives; a monument,
bearing the arms of France, was crowned with laurels, and its
base encircled with baskets of corn. What need is there of
minutely relating the simple manners of the red men, the
dissensions of rival tribes, the largesses offered to the
strangers to secure their protection or their alliance, the
improvident prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted
the supplies of food; the certain approach of scarcity; the
gifts and the tribute levied from the Indians by entreaty,
menace or force? By degrees the confidence of the red men was
exhausted; they had welcomed powerful guests, who promised to
become their benefactors, and who now robbed their humble
granaries. But the worst evil in the new settlement was the
character of the emigrants. Though patriotism and religious
enthusiasm had prompted the expedition, the inferior class of
the colonists was a motley group of dissolute men. Mutinies
were frequent. The men were mad with the passion for sudden
wealth; and in December a party, under the pretence of
desiring to escape from famine, compelled Laudonnière to sign
an order permitting their embarkation for New Spain. No sooner
were they possessed of this apparent sanction of the chief
than they began a career of piracy against the Spaniards. The
act of crime and temerity was soon avenged. The pirate vessel
was taken, and most of the men disposed of as prisoners or
slaves. The few that escaped in a boat sought shelter at Fort
Carolina, where Laudonnière sentenced the ringleaders to
death. During these events the scarcity became extreme; and
the friendship of the natives was forfeited by unprofitable
severity. March of 1565 was gone, and there were no supplies
from France; April passed away, and the expected recruits had
not arrived; May brought nothing to sustain the hopes of the
exiles, and they resolved to attempt a return to Europe. In
August, Sir John Hawkins, the slave merchant, arrived from the
West Indies. He came fresh from the sale of a cargo of
Africans, whom he had kidnapped with signal ruthlessness; and
he now displayed the most generous sympathy, not only
furnishing a liberal supply of provisions, but relinquishing a
vessel from his own fleet. The colony was on the point of
embarking when sails were descried. Ribault had arrived to
assume the command, bringing with him supplies of every kind,
emigrants with their families, garden-seeds, implements of
husbandry, and the various kinds of domestic animals. The
French, now wild with joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and
Calvinism to become fixed in the inviting regions of Florida.
{1150}
But Spain had never abandoned her claim to that territory,
where, if she had not planted colonies, she had buried many
hundreds of her bravest sons. ... There had appeared at the
Spanish court a commander well fitted for reckless acts. Pedro
Melendez [or Menendez] de Aviles ... had acquired wealth in
Spanish America, which was no school of benevolence, and his
conduct there had provoked an inquiry, which, after a long
arrest, ended in his conviction. ... Philip II. suggested the

conquest and colonization of Florida; and in May, 1565, a
compact was framed and confirmed by which Melendez, who
desired an opportunity to retrieve his honor, was constituted
the hereditary governor of a territory of almost unlimited
extent. On his part he stipulated, at his own cost, in the
following May, to invade Florida with 500 men; to complete its
conquest within three years; to explore its currents and
channels, the dangers of its coasts, and the depth of its
havens; to establish a colony of at least 500 persons, of whom
100 should be married men; with 12 ecclesiastics, besides four
Jesuits. ... Meantime, news arrived, as the French writers
assert through the treachery of the court of France, that the
Huguenots had made a plantation in Florida, and that Ribault
was preparing to set sail with re-enforcements. The cry was
raised that the heretics must be extirpated; and Melendez
readily obtained the forces which he required."
G. Bancroft,
History of the United States
(author's last revision), part 1, chapter 4.
ALSO IN:
G. R. Fairbanks,
History of Florida,
chapters 7-8.
W. G. Simms,
History of South Carolina,
book 1.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1565.
The Spanish capture of Fort Caroline and
massacre of the Huguenots.
Founding of St. Augustine.
"The expedition under Menendez consisted of an army of 2,600
soldiers and officers. He sailed straight for Florida,
intending to attack Fort Caroline with no delay. In fact he
sighted the mouth of the port [Sept. 4, 1565] two months after
starting; but, considering the position occupied by the French
ships, he judged it prudent to defer the attack, and make it,
if possible, from the land. A council of war was held in Fort
Caroline, presided over by Ribaut. Laudonnière proposed that,
while Ribaut held the fort with the ships, he, with his old
soldiers, who knew the country well, aided by the Floridans as
auxiliaries, should engage the Spaniards in the woods, and
harass them by perpetual combats in labyrinths to which they
were wholly unaccustomed. The advice was good, but it was not
followed. Ribaut proposed to follow the Spanish fleet with his
own--lighter and more easily handled--fall on the enemy when
the soldiers were all disembarked, and, after taking and
burning the ships, to attack the army. In the face of
remonstrances from all the officers, he persisted in this
project. Disaster followed the attempt. A violent gale arose.
The French ships were wrecked upon the Floridan coast; the men
lost their arms, their powder, and their clothes; they escaped
with their bare lives. There was no longer the question of
conquering the Spaniards, but of saving themselves. The
garrison of Caroline consisted of 150 soldiers, of whom 40
were sick. The rest of the colony was composed of sick and
wounded Protestant ministers, workmen, royal commissioners,'
and so forth. Laudonnière was in command. They awaited the
attack for several days, yet the Spaniards came not. They were
wading miserably through the marshes in the forests, under
tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart." But when, at
length, the exhausted and despairing Spaniards, toiling
through the marshes, from St. Augustine, where they had landed
and established their settlement, reached the French fort
(Sept. 20), "there was actually no watch on the ramparts.
Three companies of Spaniards simultaneously rushed from the
forest, and attacked the fortress on the south, the west and
the south-west. There was but little resistance from the
surprised garrison. There was hardly time to grasp a sword.
About 20 escaped by flight, including the Captain,
Laudonnière; the rest were every one massacred. None were
spared except women and children under fifteen; and, in the
first rage of the onslaught, even these were murdered with the
rest. There still lay in the port three ships, commanded by
Jacques Ribaut, brother [son] of the unfortunate Governor. One
of these was quickly sent to the bottom by the cannon of the
fort; the other two cut their cables, and slipped out of reach
into the roadstead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable
wind, for three days. They picked up the fugitives who had
been wandering half-starved in the woods, and then set sail
from this unlucky land. ... There remained, however, the
little army, under Ribaut, which had lost most of its arms in
the wreck, and was now wandering along the Floridan shore."
When Ribaut and his men reached Fort Caroline and saw the
Spanish flag flying, they turned and retreated southward. Not
many days later, they were intercepted by Menendez, near St.
Augustine, to which post he had returned. The first party of
the French who came up, 200 in number, and who were in a
starving state, surrendered to the Spaniard, and laid down
their arms. "They were brought across the river in small
companies, and their hands tied behind their backs. On
landing, they were asked if they were Catholics. Eight out of
the 200 professed allegiance to that religion; the rest were
all Protestants.' Menendez traced out a line on the ground
with his cane. The prisoners were marched up one by one to the
line; on reaching it, they were stabbed. Next day, Ribaut
arrived with the rest of the army. The same pourparlers began.
But this time a blacker treachery was adopted." An officer,
sent by Menendez, pledged his honor to the French that the
lives of all should be spared if they laid down their arms.
"It is not clear how many of the French accepted the
conditions. A certain number refused them, and escaped into
the woods. What is certain is, that Ribaut, with nearly all
his men, were tied back to back, four together. Those who said
they were Catholics, were set on one side; the rest were all
massacred as they stood. ... Outside the circle of the
slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest, Mendoza,
encouraging, approving, exhorting the butchers."
W. Besant,
Gaspard de Coligny,
chapter 7.
The long dispatch in which Menendez reported his fiendish work
to the Spanish king has been brought to light in the archives
at Seville, and there is this endorsement on it, in the
hand-writing of Philip II.: "Say to him that, as to those he
has killed, he has done well; and as to those he has saved,
they shall be sent to the galleys."
F. Parkman,
Pioneers of France in the New World,
chapters 7-8.
{1151}
ALSO IN:
C. W. Baird,
History of the Huguenot Emigration to America,
volume 1, introduction.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568.
The vengeance of Dominic de Gourgues.
"As might have been expected, all attempts to rouse the French
court into demanding redress were vain. Spain, above all other
nations, knew the arts by which a corrupt court might be
swayed, and the same intrigues which, fifty years later, sent
Raleigh to the block and well-nigh ended the young colony of
Virginia, now kept France quiet. But though the court refused
to move, an avenger was not wanting. Dominic de Gourgues had
already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish
galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in
France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the
religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the
feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more
reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now
undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three
small ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred
men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver on the
coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With
these paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement
which had already destroyed a force of twenty times his
number, and which might have been strengthened in the
interval. ... To the mass of his followers he did not reveal
the true secret of his voyage till he had reached the West
Indies. Then he disclosed his real purpose. His men were of
the same spirit as their leader. Desperate though the
enterprise seemed, De Gourgues' only difficulty was to
restrain his followers from undue haste. Happily for their
attempt, they had allies on whom they had not reckoned. The
fickle savages had at first welcomed the Spaniards, but the
tyranny of the new comers soon wrought a change, and the
Spaniards in Florida, like the Spaniards in every part of the
New World, were looked on as hateful tyrants. So when De
Gourgues landed he at once found a ready body of allies. ...
Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues,
with a hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies,
marched against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the
Indians, the Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution
against a sudden attack. Menendez himself had left the colony.
The Spanish force was divided between three forts, and no proper
precautions were taken for keeping up the communications
between them. Each was successively seized, the garrison slain
or made prisoners, and, as each fort fell, those in the next
could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger.
Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered
that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would
have counted for little against men with fire arms and behind
walls. But after the downfall of the first fort a panic seemed
to seize the Spaniards, and the French achieved an almost
bloodless victory. After the death of Ribault and his
followers nothing could be looked for but merciless
retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not
the perfidy of his enemies. The very details of Menendez' act
were imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung
bore the inscription: 'Not as Spaniards, but as traitors,
robbers, and murderers.' Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored
under the walls of Rochelle. ... His attack did not wholly
extirpate the Spanish power in Florida. Menendez received the
blessing of the Pope as a chosen instrument for the conversion
of the Indians, returned to America and restored his
settlement. As before, he soon made the Indians his deadly
enemies. The Spanish settlement held on, but it was not till
two centuries later that its existence made itself remembered
by one brief but glorious episode in the history of the
English colonies."
J. A. Doyle,
The English in America: Virginia, &c.,
chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
W. W. Dewhurst,
History of St. Augustine, Florida,
chapter 9.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1628.
Claimed by France, and placed, with New France, under the
control of the Company of the Hundred Associates.
See CANADA: A. D. 1616-1628.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1629.
Claimed in part by England and embraced in the Carolina grant
to Sir Robert Heath.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1680.
Attack on the English of Carolina.
See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1680.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1702.
Adjustment of western boundary with the French of Louisiana.
See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1740.
Unsuccessful attack on St. Augustine by the English of Georgia
and Carolina.
See GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (February).
Ceded to Great Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Paris.
See SEVEN YEARS WAR.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (July).
Possession taken by the English.
"When, in July [1763], possession was taken of Florida, its
inhabitants, of every age and sex, men, women, children, and
servants, numbered but 3,000; and, of these, the men were
nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of
it had cost him nearly $230,000 annually; and now it was
accepted by England as a compensation for Havana. Most of the
people, receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity for
their losses, had migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones
of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead. The
western province of Florida extended to the Mississippi, on
the line of latitude of 31°. On the 20th of October, the
French surrendered the post of Mobile, with its brick fort,
which was fast crumbling to ruins. A month later, the slight
stockade at Tombigbee, in the west of the Chocta country, was
delivered up. In a congress of the Catawbas, Cherokees,
Creeks, Chicasas, and Choctas, held on the 10th of November,
at Augusta, the governors of Virginia and the colonies south
of it were present, and the peace with the Indians of the
South and South-west was ratified."
G. Bancroft,
History of the United States
(Author's last revision.),
volume 3, page 64.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (October).
English provinces, East and West, constituted by the King's
proclamation.
See NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA: A. D. 1763.
{1152}
FLORIDA: A. D. 1779-1781.
Reconquest of West Florida by the Spanish commander at New
Orleans.
"In the summer of 1779 Spain had declared war against Great
Britain. Galvez [the Spanish commander at New Orleans]
discovered that the British were planning the surprise of New
Orleans, and, under cover of preparations for defense, made
haste to take the offensive. Four days before the time he had
appointed to move, a hurricane destroyed a large number of
houses in the town, and spread ruin to crops and, dwellings up
and down the 'coast,' and sunk his gun flotilla. ... Repairing
his disasters as best he could, and hastening his ostensibly
defensive preparations, he marched, on the 22d of August,
1779, against the British forts on the Mississippi. His ...
little army of 1,434 men was without tents, other military
furniture, or a single engineer. The gun fleet followed in the
river abreast of their line of march along its shores,
carrying one 24-pounder, five 18-pounders, and four
4-pounders. With this force, in the space of about three
weeks, Fort Bute on bayou Manchac, Baton Rouge and Fort
Panmure. 8 vessels, 556 regulars, and a number of sailors,
militia-men, and free blacks, fell into the hands of the
Spaniards. The next year, 1780, re-enforced from Havana,
Galvez again left New Orleans by way of the Balize with 2,000
men, regulars, militia, and free blacks, and on the 15th of
March took Fort Charlotte on Mobile river. Galvez next
conceived the much larger project of taking Pensacola. Failing
to secure re-enforcements from Havana by writing for them, he
sailed to that place in October, to make his application in
person, intending to move with them directly on the enemy.
After many delays and disappointments he succeeded, and early
in March, 1781, appeared before Pensacola with a ship of the
line, two frigates, and transports containing 1,400 soldiers
well furnished with artillery and ammunition. Here he was
joined by such troops as could be spared from Mobile, and by
Don Estevan Mirò from New Orleans, at the head of the
Louisiana forces, and on the afternoon of the 16th of March,
though practically unsupported by the naval fleet, until
dishonor was staring its jealous commanders in the face, moved
under hot fire, through a passage of great peril, and took up
a besieging position. ... It is only necessary to state that,
on the 9th of May, 1781, Pensacola, with a garrison of 800
men, and the whole of West Florida, were surrendered to
Galvez. Louisiana had heretofore been included under one
domination with Cuba, but now one of the several rewards
bestowed upon her governor was the captain-generalship of
Louisiana and West Florida."
G. E. Waring, Jr., and G. W. Cable,
History of New Orleans
(United States Tenth Census, volume 19).
ALSO IN:
C. Gayarré,
History of Louisiana: Spanish Domination,
chapter 3.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1783-1787.
The question of boundaries between Spain and the United
States, and the question of the navigation of the Mississippi.
"By the treaty of 1783 between Great Britain on the one part
and the United States and her allies, France and Spain, on the
other, Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the
colonies, and recognized as a part of their southern boundary
a line drawn due east from a point in the Mississippi River,
in latitude 31° north, to the middle of the Appalachicola; and
at the same time she ceded to Spain by a separate agreement
the two Floridas, but without defining their northern
boundaries. This omission gave rise to a dispute between Spain
and the United States as to their respective limits. On the
part of Spain it was contended that by the act of Great
Britain, of 1764, the northern boundary of West Florida had
been fixed at the line running due east from the mouth of the
Yazoo to the Chattahoochee, and that all south of that line
had been ceded to her; whilst on the other hand, the United
States as strenuously maintained that the act fixing and
enlarging the limits of West Florida was superseded by the
recent treaty, which extended their southern boundary to the
31st degree of north latitude, a hundred and ten miles further
south than the line claimed by Spain. Spain, however, had
possession of the disputed territory by right of conquest, and
evidently had no intention of giving it up. She strengthened
her garrisons at Baton Rouge and Natchez, and built a fort at
Vicksburg, and subsequently one at New Madrid, on the Missouri
side of the Mississippi, just below the mouth of the Ohio; and
of the latter she made a port of entry where vessels from the
Ohio were obliged to land and declare their cargoes. She even
denied the right of the United States to the region between
the Mississippi and the Alleghany Mountains, which had been
ceded to them by Great Britain, on the ground that the
conquests made by Governor Galvez, of West Florida, and by Don
Eugenio Pierre, of Fort St. Joseph, 'near the sources of the
Illinois,' had vested the title to all this country in her;
and she insisted that what she did not own was possessed by
the Indians, and could not therefore belong to the United
States. Even as late as 1795, she claimed to have bought from
the Chickasaws the bluffs which bear their name, and which are
situated on the east bank of the Mississippi some distance
north of the most northerly boundary ever assigned by Great
Britain to West Florida. Here, then, was cause for 'a very
pretty quarrel,' and to add to the ill feeling which grew out
of it, Spain denied the right of the people of the United
States to the 'free navigation of the Mississippi,'--a right
which had been conceded to them by Great Britain with all the
formalities with which she had received it from France. ...
What was needed to make the right of any value to the people
of the Ohio valley was the additional right to take their
produce into a Spanish port, New Orleans, and either sell it
then and there, or else store it, subject to certain
conditions, until such time as it suited them to transfer it
to sea-going vessels. This right Spain would not concede; and
as the people of the Ohio valley were determined to have it,
cost what it might, it brought on a series of intrigues
between the Spanish governors of Louisiana and certain
influential citizens west of the Alleghanies which threatened
the stability of the American Union almost before it was
formed."
L. Carr,
Missouri,
chapter 4.
ALSO IN:
E. Schuyler,
American Diplomacy,
chapter 6.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1810-1813.
Continued occupation of West Florida by the Spaniards.
Revolt of the inhabitants.
Possession taken by the Americans from the Mississippi to the
Perdido.
"The success of the French in Spain, and the probability of
that kingdom being obliged to succumb, had given occasion to
revolutionary movements in several of the Spanish American
provinces. This example ... had been followed also in that
portion of the Spanish province of West Florida bordering on
the Mississippi. The inhabitants, most of whom were of British
or American birth, had seized the fort at Baton Rouge, had met
in convention, and had proclaimed themselves independent,
adopting a single star for their flag, the same symbol
afterward assumed by the republic of Texas.
{1153}
Some struggles took place between the adherents of the Spanish
connection and these revolutionists, who were also threatened
with attack from Mobile, still held by a Spanish garrison. In
this emergency they applied, through Holmes, governor of the
Mississippi Territory, for aid and recognition by the United
States. ... The president, however, preferred to issue a
proclamation, taking possession of the east bank of the
Mississippi, occupation of which, under the Louisiana treaty,
had been so long delayed, not, it was said, from any defect of
title, but out of conciliatory views toward Spain. ...
Claiborne, governor of the Orleans Territory, then at
Washington, was dispatched post-haste to take possession." The
following January Congress passed an act in secret session
"authorizing the president to take possession as well of East
as of West Florida, under any arrangement which had been or
might be entered into with the local authorities; or, in case
of any attempted occupation by any foreign government, to take
and to maintain possession by force. Previously to the passage
of this act, the occupation of the east bank of the
Mississippi had been already completed by Governor Claiborne;
not, however, without some show of resistance. ... Captain
Gaines presently appeared before Mobile with a small
detachment of American regulars, and demanded its surrender.
Colonel Cushing soon arrived from New Orleans with several
gun-boats, artillery, and a body of troops. The boats were
permitted to ascend the river toward Fort Stoddard without
opposition. But the Spanish commandant refused to give up
Mobile, and no attempt was made to compel him." By an act of
Congress passed in April, 1812, "that part of Florida recently
taken possession of, as far east as Pearl River, was annexed to
the new state [of Louisiana]. The remaining territory, as far
as the Perdido, though Mobile still remained in the hands of
the Spaniards, was annexed, by another act, to the Mississippi
Territory." A year later, in April, 1813, General Wilkinson
was instructed to take possession of Mobile, and to occupy all
the territory claimed, to the Perdido, which he accordingly
did, without bloodshed.
R. Hildreth,
History of the United States, 2d series,
chapters 23, 24, 26 (volume 3).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.
The fugitive negroes and the first Seminole War.
Jackson's campaign.
"The tranquillity of Monroe's administration was soon
seriously threatened by the renewal of trouble with the
Southern Indians [the Seminoles, and the refugee Creeks]. ...
The origin of the difficulty was twofold: first, the injustice
which has always marked the treatment of Indian tribes whose
lands were coveted by the whites; and secondly, the revival of
the old grievance, that Florida was a refuge for the fugitive
slaves of Georgia and South Carolina. ... The Seminoles had
never withheld a welcome to the Georgia negro who preferred
their wild freedom to the lash of an overseer on a cotton or
rice plantation. The Georgians could never forget that the
grand-children of their grandfathers' fugitive slaves were
roaming about the Everglades of Florida. ... So long as there
were Seminoles in Florida, and so long as Florida belonged to
Spain, just so long would the negroes of Georgia find an
asylum in Florida with the Seminoles. ... A war with the
Indians of Florida, therefore, was always literally and
emphatically a slave-hunt. A reclamation for fugitives was
always repulsed by the Seminoles and the Spaniards, and, as
they could be redeemed in no other way, Georgia was always
urging the Federal Government to war."
W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay,
Popular History of the United States,
volume 4, chapter 10.
During the War of 1812-14, the English, who were permitted by
Spain to make use of Florida with considerable freedom, and
who received no little assistance from the refugee negroes and
Creek Indians, "had built a fort on the Appalachicola River,
about 15 miles from its mouth, and had collected there an
immense amount of arms and ammunition. ... When the war ended,
the English left the arms and ammunition in the fort. The
negroes seized the fort, and it became known as the 'Negro
Fort.' The authorities of the United States sent General
Gaines to the Florida frontier with troops, to establish peace
on the border. The Negro Fort was a source of anxiety both to
the military authorities and to the slave-owners of Georgia,"
and a pretext was soon found--whether valid or not seems
uncertain--for attacking it. "A hot shot penetrated one of the
magazines, and the whole fort was blown to pieces, July 27, 1816.
There were 300 negro men, women and children, and 20 Choctaws
in the fort; 270 were killed. Only three came out unhurt, and
these were killed by the allied Indians. ... During 1817 there
were frequent collisions on the frontiers between Whites and
Indians. ... On the 20th of November, General Gaines sent a
force of 250 men to Fowltown, the headquarters of the chief of
the 'Redsticks,' or hostile Creeks. They approached the town
in the early morning, and were fired on. An engagement
followed. The town was taken and burned. ... The Indians of
that section, after this, began general hostilities, attacked
the boats which were ascending the Appalachicola, and
massacred the persons in them. ... In December, on receipt of
intelligence of the battle at Fowltown and the attack on the
boats, Jackson was ordered to take command in Georgia. He
wrote to President Monroe: 'Let it be signified to me through
any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the
Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty
days it will be accomplished.' Much was afterwards made to
depend on this letter. Monroe was ill when it reached
Washington, and he did not see or read it until a year
afterwards, when some reference was made to it. Jackson
construed the orders which he received from Calhoun with
reference to this letter. ... He certainly supposed, however,
that he had the secret concurrence of the administration in
conquering Florida. ... He advanced through Georgia with great
haste and was on the Florida frontier in March, 1818. He ...
immediately advanced to St. Mark's, which place he captured.
On his way down the Appalachicola he found the Indians and
negroes at work in the fields, and unconscious of any
impending attack. Some of them fled to St. Mark's. His theory,
in which he supposed that he was supported by the
administration, was that he was to pursue the Indians until he
caught them, wherever they might go; that he was to respect
Spanish rights as far as he could consistently with that
purpose; and that the excuse for his proceedings was that
Spain could not police her own territory, or restrain the
Indians.
{1154}
Jackson's proceedings were based on two positive but arbitrary
assumptions: (1) That the Indians got aid and encouragement
from St. Mark's and Pensacola. (This the Spaniards always
denied, but perhaps a third assumption of Jackson might be
mentioned: that the word of a Spanish official was of no
value.) (2) That Great Britain kept paid emissaries employed
in Florida to stir up trouble for the United States. This
latter assumption was a matter of profound belief generally in
the United States." Acting upon it with no hesitation, Jackson
caused a Scotch trader named Arbuthnot, whom he found at St.
Mark's, and an English ex-lieutenant of marines, Ambrister by
name, who was taken prisoner among the Seminoles, to be
condemned by court martial and executed, although no
substantial evidence of their being in any way answerable for
Indian hostilities was adduced. "It was as a mere incident of
his homeward march that Jackson turned aside and captured
Pensacola, May 24, 1818, because he was told that some Indians
had taken refuge there. He deposed the Spanish government, set
up a new one, and established a garrison. He then continued
his march homewards. "Jackson's performances in Florida were
the cause of grave perplexities to his government, which
finally determined "that Pensacola and St. Mark's should be
restored to Spain, but that Jackson's course should be
approved and defended on the grounds that he pursued his enemy
to his refuge, and that Spain could not do the duty which
devolved on her."
W. G. Sumner,
Andrew Jackson as a public man,
chapter 3.
ALSO IN:
J. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson,
volume 2, chapters 31-39.
J. R. Giddings,
The Exiles of Florida,
chapters 1-4.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1819-1821.
Cession by Spain to the United States.
"Jackson's vigorous proceedings in Florida would seem not to
have been without effect. Pending the discussion in Congress
on his conduct, the Spanish minister, under new instructions
from home, signed a treaty for the cession of Florida, in
extinction of the various American claims, for the
satisfaction of which the United States agreed to pay to the
claimants $5,000,000. The Louisiana boundary, as fixed by this
treaty, was a compromise between the respective offers
heretofore made, though leaning a good deal to the American
side: the Sabine to the 32d degree of north latitude; thence a
north meridian line to the Red River; the course of that river
to the 100th degree of longitude east [? west] from Greenwich;
thence north by that meridian to the Arkansas; up that river
to its head, and to the 42d degree of north latitude; and
along that degree to the Pacific. This treaty was immediately
ratified by the Senate," but it was not until February, 1821,
that the ratification of the Spanish government was received.
R. Hildreth,
History of the United States,
2d series, chapters 31-32 (volume 3).
ALSO IN:
J. T. Morse,
John Quincy Adams,
pages 109-125.
Treaties and Conventions between the United States and
other countries (edition of 1880), pages 1016-1022.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1835-1843.
The Second Seminole War.
"The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left
by Jackson to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the
Revolutionary War, cost thirty millions of dollars, and
baffled the efforts of several generals and numerous troops,
who had previously shown themselves equal to any in the world.
... As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been wrong
done by each side; but in this instance we were the more to
blame, although the Indians themselves were far from being
merely harmless and suffering innocents. The Seminoles were
being deprived of their lands in pursuance of the general
policy of removing all the Indians [to] west of the
Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and
influenced, probably, by fraudulent representations; but they
declined to fulfill their agreement. If they had been treated
wisely and firmly they might probably have been allowed to
remain without serious injury to the surrounding whites. But
no such treatment was attempted, and as a result we were
plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever
waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown
and untrodden recesses of the everglades, the Indians found a
secure asylum; and they issued from their haunts to burn and
ravage almost all the settled parts of Florida, fairly
depopulating five counties. ... The great Seminole leader,
Osceola, was captured only by deliberate treachery and breach
of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out rather
than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable
capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature
of their territory. Our troops generally fought with great
bravery; but there is very little else in the struggle, either
as regards its origin or the manner in which it was carried
on, to which an American can look back with any satisfaction."
T. Roosevelt,
Life of Thomas H. Benton,
chapter 10.
ALSO IN:
J. R. Giddings,
The Exiles of Florida,
chapters 7-21.
J. T. Sprague,
The Florida War.
See also,
AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SEMINOLES.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1845.
Admission into the Union.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845.
FLORIDA: A. D. 1861 (JANUARY).
Secession from the Union.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1862 (February-April).
Temporary Union conquests and occupation.
Discouragement of Unionists.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA--FLORIDA).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1864.
Unsuccessful National attempt to occupy the State.
Battle of Olustee.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: FLORIDA).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1865 (JULY).
Provisional government set up under President Johnson's plan
of Reconstruction.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY).
FLORIDA: A. D. 1865-1868.
Reconstruction.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.
----------FLORIDA: End----------
FLORIN, The.
"The Republic of Florence, in the year 1252, coined its golden
florin, of 24 carats fine, and of the weight of one drachm. It
placed the value under the guarantee of publicity, and of
commercial good faith; and that coin remained unaltered, as
the standard for all other values, as long as the republic
itself endured."
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 4.
FLOTA, The.
See PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.
FLOYD, JOHN B., Treachery of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1860 (DECEMBER).
FLUSHING: A. D. 1807.
Ceded to France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).
{1155}
FLUSHING: A. D. 1809.
Taken and abandoned by the English.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER).
FOCKSHANI, Battle of (1789).
See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.
FODHLA.
See IRELAND: THE NAME.
FŒDERATI OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The bodies of barbarians who were taken in the military
service of the Roman empire, during the period of its decline,
serving "under their hereditary chiefs, using the arms which
were proper to them, from preserving their language, their
manners and their customs, were designated by the name of
frederati" (confederates or allies).
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
The French under the Merovingians,
chapter 2.
ALSO IN:
T. Hodgkin, The dynasty of Theodosius,
chapter 4.
FOIX, Rise of the Counts of.
See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1032.
FOIX, The house in Navarre.
See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521.
FOLCLAND.--FOLKLAND.
Public land, among the early English. "It comprised the whole
area that was not at the original allotment assigned to
individuals or communities, and that was not subsequently
divided into estates of bookland [bocland]. The folkland was
the standing treasury of the country; no alienation of any
part of it could be made without the consent of the national
council; but it might be allowed to individuals to hold
portions of it subject to rents and other services to the
state."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 5, section 36.
The theory here stated is questioned by Prof. Vinogradoff, who
says: "I venture to suggest that folkland need not mean the
land owned by the people. Bookland is land that is held by
bookright; folkland is land that is held by folkright. The
folkland is what our scholars have called ethel, and alod, and
family-land, and yrfeland; it is land held under the old
restrictive common-law, the law which keeps land in families,
as contrasted with land which is held under a book, under a
'privilegium,' modelled on Roman precedents, expressed in
Latin words, armed with ecclesiastical sanctions, and making
for free alienation and individualism."
P. Vinogradoff,
Folkland
(English History Rev., January, 1893).
ALSO IN:
J. M. Kemble,
The Saxons in England,
book 1, chapter 11.
See, also, ALOD.
FOLIGNO, Treaty of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (JUNE-FEBRUARY).
FOLKLAND.
See FOLCLAND.
FOLKMOOT.
See HUNDRED:
also SHIRE;
also WITENAGEMOT;
also TOWNSHIP AND TOWN-MEETING, THE NEW ENGLAND.
FOLKTHING.--FOLKETING, The.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES
(DENMARK--ICELAND): A. D. 1849-1874.
FOLKUNGAS, The.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1018-1397.
FOMORIANS, OR FORMORIANS, The.
A people mentioned in Irish legends as sea-rovers. Mr.
Sullivan, in his article on "Celtic Literature" in the
Encyclopædia Britannica advances the opinion that the Romans
were the people alluded to; but the general view is quite
different.
See IRELAND: THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS;
also, NEMEDIANS.
FONTAINE FRANĆAISE, Battle of (1595).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.
FONTAINEBLEAU: A. D. 1812-1814.
Residence of the captive Pope.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.
FONTAINEBLEAU,
Treaties of (1807).
See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807,
and SPAIN: A. D.1807-1808.
FONTAINEBLEAU,
Treaties of (1814).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (MARCH-APRIL).
FONTAINEBLEAU DECREE, The.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.
FONTARABIA, Siege and Battle (1638).
See SPAIN: A. D. 1637-1640.
FONTENAILLES, OR FONTENAY,
Battle of, A. D. 841.
In the civil war between the three grandsons of Charlemagne,
which resulted in the partition of his empire and the definite
separation of Germany and France, the decisive battle was
fought, June 25, 841, at Fontenailles, or Fontenay
(Fontanetum), near Auxerre. It was one of the fiercest and
bloodiest fights of mediæval times, and 80,000 men are said to
have died on the field.
Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England,
book 1, chapter 2.
See FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.
FONTENOY, Battle of(1745).
See NETHERLANDS (AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745.
FOOT, The Roman.
"The unit of lineal measure [with the Romans] was the Pes,
which occupied the same place in the Roman system as the Foot
does in our own. According to the most accurate researches,
the Pes was equal to, about 11.64 inches imperial measure, or
.97 of an English foot. The Pes being supposed to represent
the length of the foot in a well proportioned man, various
divisions and multiples of the Pes were named after standards
derived from the human frame. Thus: Pes=16 Digiti, i. e.
finger-breadths, [or] 4 Palmi, i. e. hand-breadths;
Sesquipes=l cubitus, i. e. length from elbow to extremity of
middle finger. The Pes was also divided into 12 Pollices, i.
e. thumb-joint-lengths, otherwise called Unciae (whence our
word 'inch')."
W. Ramsay,
Manual of Roman Antiquity,
chapter 13.
FOOTE, Commodore.
Gun-boat campaign on the western rivers.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE);
(MARCH-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).
FORBACH, OR SPICHERN, Battle of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JULY-AUGUST).
FORCE BILL, The.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).
FORESTS, Charter of.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.
FORLI, Battle of (1423).
See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.
FORMORIANS.
See FOMORIANS.
FORMOSUS, Pope, A. D. 891-896.
FORNUOVA, Battle of (1495).
See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.
FORT EDWARD.--FORT ERIE.--FORT FISHER, ETC.
See EDWARD, FORT; ERIE, FORT, ETC.
FORTRENN, Men of.
A Pictish people who figure in early Scottish history, and
whom Mr. Rhys derives from the tribe known to the Romans as
Verturiones. The western part of Fife was embraced in their
kingdom.
J. Rhys,
Celtic Britain,
pages 158-159.
FORTUNATE ISLANDS.
See CANARY ISLANDS, DISCOVERY OF.
{1156}
FORTY-FIVE, The.
The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 is often referred to as "the
Forty-five."
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745.
FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.
FORUM, The Julian, and its extensions.
"From the entrance of the Suburra branched out the long
streets which penetrated the hollows between the Quirinal,
Viminal, and Esquiline to the gates pierced in the mound of
Servius. It was in this direction that Cæsar effected the
first extension of the Forum, by converting the site of
certain streets into an open space which he surrounded with
arcades, and in the centre of which he erected his temple of
Venus. By the side of the Julian Forum, or perhaps in its
rear, Augustus constructed a still ampler inclosure, which he
adorned with the temple of Mars the Avenger. Succeeding
emperors ... continued to work out the same idea, till the
Argiletum on the one hand, and the saddle of the Capitoline
and Quirinal, excavated for the purpose, on the other, were
both occupied by these constructions, the dwellings of the
populace being swept away before them; and a space running
nearly parallel to the length of the Roman Forum, and
exceeding it in size, was thus devoted to public use,
extending from the pillar of Trajan to the basilica of
Constantine."
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 40.
FORUM BOARIUM AND VELABRUM OF ANCIENT ROME, The.
"The Velabrum, the Forum Boarium, the Vicus Tuscus, and the
Circus Maximus are names rich in reminiscences of the romantic
youth and warlike manhood of the Roman people. The earliest
dawn of Roman history begins with the union of the Capitoline
and Palatine hills into one city. In those far-distant times,
however, no population was settled in the Velabrum or Circus
valley; for, as we have seen, until the drainage was
permanently provided for by the cloacæ, these districts were
uninhabited swamps; and the name Velabrum itself is said to
have been derived from the boats used in crossing from one
hill to the other. Perhaps such may not have been the case
with the Forum Boarium, which lay between the Velabrum and the
river. ... The limits of the Forum Boarium can be clearly
defined. It was separated from the Velabrum at the Arch of the
Goldsmiths. ... On the south-eastern side the Carceres of the
Circus, and the adjoining temple on the site of S. Maria in
Cosmedin, bounded the district, on the western the Tiber, and
on the north western the wall of Servius. ... The immediate
neighbourhood of the river, the Forum, the Campus Martius, and
the Palace of the Cæsars would naturally render this quarter
one of the most crowded thoroughfares of Rome. ... The Forum
itself, which gave the name to the district, was probably an
open space surrounded by shops and public buildings, like the
Forum Romanum, but on a smaller scale. In the centre stood the
bronze figure of a bull, brought from Ægina, either as a
symbol of the trade in cattle to which the place owed its
name, or, as Tacitus observes, to mark the supposed spot
whence the plough of Romulus, drawn by a bull and a cow, first
started in tracing out the Palatine pomœrium."
R. Burn,
Rome and the Campagna,
chapter 12.
FORUM GALLORUM, Battle of (B. C. 43).
See ROME: B. C. 44-42.
FORUM JULII.
A Roman colony and naval station (modern Frejus) founded on
the Mediterranean coast of Gaul by Augustus.
FORUM ROMANUM, The.
"The older Forum, or Forum Romanum, as it was called, to
distinguish it from the later Fora, which were named after
their respective builders [Forum of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus,
of Nerva, of Vespasian, of Trajan, etc.], was an open space of
an oblong shape, which extended in a south-easterly direction
from near the depression or intermontium between the two
summits of the Capitoline hill to a point opposite the still
extant temple of Antoninus and Faustina. ... Round this
confined space were grouped the most important buildings of
Republican Rome."
R. Burn,
Rome and the Campagna,
chapter 6, part 1.
"Forum, in the literal sense of the word merely a marketplace,
derives its name 'á ferendo,' (from bringing, getting,
purchasing). ... Narrow is the arena on which so great a drama
was enacted in the Republican and Imperial City! the
ascertainable measurements of this region, according to good
authorities, being 671 English feet in the extreme length; 202
in the extreme breadth, and 117 feet at the narrower, the
south-eastern, side. A wildly picturesque marshy vale,
overshadowed by primæval forests, and shut in by rugged
heights, was that low ground between the Palatine and
Capitoline hills when the 'Roma Quadrata,' ascribed to
Romulus, was founded about seven centuries and a half before
our era. After the wars and finally confirmed alliance between
Romans and Sabines ... the colonists agreed to unite under the
same government, and to surround the two cities and two hills
with a wider cincture of fortifying walls than those the still
extant ruins of which are before us on the Palatine. Now was
the swampy waste rendered serviceable for civic purposes; the
forest was cut down; the stagnant marshes were drained, the
clayey hollows filled up; the wild valley became the appointed
arena for popular assemblage; though Dionysius tells us it was
for some time on a spot sacred to Vulcan (the 'Vulcanale'),
probably a terrace on the slope of the Palatine overlooking
the Forum, that the people used to meet for political affairs,
elections, etc. During many ages there were, it appears, no
habitations save on the hills. ... The Forum, as an enclosed
public place amidst buildings, and surrounded by graceful
porticos, may be said to have owed its origin to Tarquinius
Priscus, between the years 616 and 578 B. C. That king (Livius
tells us) was the first who erected porticos around this area,
and also divided the ground into lots, where private citizens
might build for their own uses. Booths, probably wooden (the
'tabernæ veteres'), were the first rude description of shops
here seen. ... Uncertain is the original place of the 'Rostra
Veteres'--the ancient tribunal for orators. No permanent
tribunal for such purpose is known to have been placed in the
Forum till the year of the city 417. ... In the year 336 B.
C., the Romans having gained a naval victory over the
citizens' of Antium, several of those enemies' ships were
burnt, others transported to the Roman docks, and the bronzed
prows of the latter were used to decorate a pulpit, now raised
for public speaking, probably near the centre of the Forum."
C. I. Hemans,
Historic and Monumental Rome,
chapter 6.
ALSO IN:
R. Lanciani,
Ancient Rome,
pages 75-82.
{1157}
FORUM TREBONII, Battle of (A. D. 251).
See GOTHS, FIRST INVASIONS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
FOSI, The.
See CHAUCI.
FOSSA.
See CASTRA.
FOSSE, The.
One of the great Roman roads in Britain, which ran from
Lincoln southwestwardly into Cornwall.
See ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.
FOSTAT.
The original name of Cairo, Egypt, signifying "the
Encampment."
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 640-646.
FOTHERINGAY CASTLE, Mary Stuart's execution at.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568;
and ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, Ponce de Leon's quest of the.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1512.
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND AT ATHENS.
See ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.
FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.
See ATHENS: B. C. 594.
FOUR MASTERS, The.
Four Irish antiquaries of 17th century, who compiled the mixed
collection of legend and history called the "Annals of the
Kingdom of Ireland," are commonly known as the Four Masters.
They were Michael O'Clery, a lay brother of the order of St.
Francis; Conaire O'Clery, brother of Michael; Cucogry or
Peregrine O'Clery, head of the Tirconnell sept of the
O'Clerys, to which Michael and Conaire belonged; and Ferfeasa
O'Mulconry, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a
native of the county of Roscommon. The "Annals" of the Four
Masters have been translated into English from the Irish
tongue by John O'Donovan.
J. O'Donovan,
Introduction to Annals of the Kingdom of
Ireland by the Four Masters.
FOUR MILE STRIP, Cession of the.
See PONTIAC'S WAR.
FOURMIGNY, Battle of (1449).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453.
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1865-1866 (DECEMBER-APRIL);
1866 (JUNE);
1866-1867 (OCTOBER-MARCH).
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT:
The enforcement of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).
----------FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: End----------
FOURTH OF JULY.
The anniversary of the adoption of the American Declaration of
Independence.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JULY).
FOWEY, Essex's surrender at.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
FOWLTOWN, Battle of (1817).
See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.
FOX AND NORTH COALITION, The.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1782; 1783;

and 1783-1787.
FOX INDIANS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY,
and SACS, &c.
For an account of the massacre of Fox Indians
at Detroit in 1712,
See CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.
For an account of the Black Hawk War,
See ILLINOIS: A.. D. 1832.
FRANCE:
Gallic and Roman.
See GAUL. A. D. 481-843.
FRANCE:
Under the Franks, to the division of the Empire of
Charlemagne.
See FRANKS.
FRANCE: A. D. 841-911.
Ravages and settlements of the Northmen.
See NORMANS: A. D. 841 to 876-911.
FRANCE: 9th Century.
Introduction of the modern name.
At the time of the division of the empire of Charlemagne
between his three grand-sons, which was made a definite and
lasting political separation by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D.
843, "the people of the West [western Europe] had come to be
divided, with more and more distinctness, into two classes,
those composed of Franks and Germans, who still adhered to the
Teutonic dialects, and those, composed of Franks,
Gallo-Romans, and Aquitanians, who used the Romance dialects,
or the patois which had grown out of a corrupted Latin. The
former clung to the name of Germans, while the latter, not to
lose all share in the glory of the Frankish name, began to
call themselves Franci, and their country Francia Nova, or New
France. ... Francia was the Latin name of Frankenland, and had
long before been applied to the dominions of the Franks on
both sides of the Rhine. Their country was then divided into
East and West Francia; but in the time of Karl the Great
[Charlemagne] and Ludwig Pious, we find the monk of St. Gall
using the terms Francia Nova, in opposition to the Francia,
'quæ dicitur antiqua.'"
P. Godwin,
History of France: Ancient Gaul,
chapter 18, with note.
"As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the
kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the
wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many
such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name
for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides.
There are the Teutonic or Austrian [or Austrasian] Francia,
part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia,
and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various
annexations has grown into modern France."
E. A. Freeman,
Historical Geography of Europe,
volume 1, page 121.
"As late as the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the name of
Frank was still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as
equivalent to the name of German. The Kings and kingdoms of
this age had indeed no fixed titles, because all were still
looked on as mere portions of the great Frankish realm.
Another step has now been taken towards the creation of modern
France; but the older state of things has not yet wholly
passed away. Germany has no definite name; for a long time it
is 'Francia Orientalis,' 'Francia Teutonica'; then it becomes
'Regnum Teutonicum,' 'Regnum Teutonicorum.' But it is equally
clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin France,
Francia and Francus were fast getting their modern meanings of
France and Frenchmen, as distinguished from Frank or German."
E. A. Freeman,
The Franks and the Gauls
(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).
{1158}
FRANCE: A. D. 843.
The kingdom of Charles the Bald.
The first actual kingdom of France (Francia Nova--Francia
Occidentalis), was formed in the partition of the empire of
Charlemagne between his three grandsons, by the Treaty of
Verdun, A. D. 843. It was assigned to Charles, called "the
Bald," and comprised the Neustria of the older Frank
divisions, together with Aquitaine. It "had for its eastern
boundary, the Meuse, the Saône and the Rhone; which,
nevertheless, can only be understood of the Upper Meuse, since
Brabant was certainly not comprised in it"; and it extended
southwards beyond the Pyrenees to the Ebro.
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part 1, footnote.
"Charles and his successors have some claim to be accounted
French. They rule over a large part of France, and are cut
away from their older connexion with Germany. Still, in
reality they are Germans and Franks. They speak German, they
yearn after the old imperial name, they have no national
feeling at all. On the other hand, the great lords of
Neustria, as it used to be called, are ready to move in that
direction, and to take the first steps towards a new national
life. They cease to look back to the Rhine, and occupy
themselves in a continual struggle with their kings. Feudal
power is founded, and with it the claims of the bishops rise
to their highest point. But we have not yet come to a kingdom
of France. ... It was no proper French kingdom; but a dying
branch of the Empire of Charles the Great. ... Charles the
Bald, entering on his part of the Caroling Empire, found three
large districts which refused to recognise him. These were
Aquitaine, whose king was Pippin II.; Septimania, in the hands
of Bernard; and Brittany under Nominoë. He attempted to reduce
them; but Brittany and Septimania defied him, while over
Aquitaine he was little more than a nominal suzerain."
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
Historical Geography of Europe,
chapter 6, section 1.
See, also,
FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.
----------------------------------------
A Logical Outline of French History
(Red) Physical or material.
(Blue) Ethnologilcal.
(Green) Social and political.
(Brown) Intellectual, moral and religious.
(Black) Foreign.
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND
INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
The country known anciently as Gaul, and in modern times as
France, is distinguished by no physical characteristics that
will go far towards explaining its history. Lying within the
middle degrees of the northern temperate zone, greatly
diversified in its superficial features, and varied in the
qualities of its soil, it represents a fair average of the
more favorable conditions of human life.
The Gauls.
The inhabitants of the land when the Romans subdued it were a
Celtic people, belonging to the race which has survived to the
present day with least admixture or modification in the
Bretons, the Welsh, the Celtic Irish and the Highland Scotch.
The peculiar traits of the race in mind and temper are so
visible in French history as to show that the nation has never
ceased to be essentially Gallic in blood.
B. C. 51-A. D. 406; Roman Gaul.
Under the control and the teaching of Rome for four centuries
and a half, the Gauls were perfected in her civilization and
corrupted by the vices of her decay.
5th Century; Frank Conquest.
When the invasion of Teutonic barbarism broke the barrier of
the Rhine, they were easily but not quickly overwhelmed, and
sank under a conquest more complete than that from Rome had
been; since the whole body of the conquerors came to dwell
within the land, and to be neighbors and masters, at once. For
the most part, these invaders preferred country to town, and
carved estates for themselves in all the districts that were
fertile and fair. The Gallo-Romans, or Romanized Gauls, were
left to more freedom in their cities than outside; but their
cities were blighted in industry and in trade by the common
ruin around them. In the rural districts, few liberties or
rights were preserved for the subjugated race.
Feudalism.
The form of society which the German conquerors brought with
them into Gaul was broken by the change of circumstance, quite
as much as the form of society which they overthrew. The camp
gave place to the castle; the wandering war-chief acquired the
firmer superiority of a great land-proprietor and lord; his
warriors slipped in station from free followers to dependents,
in divers degrees; the greater chiefs won the title of kings;
the fiercer kings destroyed their rivals; and four or five
centuries shaped, by slow processes that are traceable,
indistinctly, the military structure of society called Feudal,
which organized lawlessness with picturesque and destructive
effects.
A. D. 481-752. Merovingian monarchy.
A. D. 768-814. Empire of Charlemagne.
All authority withered, except the spiritual authority of the
Church, which steadily grew. The royalty that had thrived for
a time upon the distribution of lands, dignities and powers,
lost prestige when it had expended the domains at its
disposal, and when offices and estates were clutched in
hereditary possession. Before it actually expired, there arose
a family of remarkable men--great in four successive
generations--who put its crown upon their own heads and made
it powerful again. The last and greatest of these expanded the
Frank kingdom into a new Roman Empire; but the energy of the
achievement was wholly his own, and his empire fell to pieces
when he died.
A. D. 987. Kingdom of Hugh Capet.
11th-12th centuries. Enfranchisement of the Communes.
In the part which became France, royalty dwindled once more;
the great dukes and counts nominally subject to it, in the
feudal sense, renewed and increased their power; until one of
their number took the throne, and bequeathed it to his heirs.
This new line of kings won back by degrees the ascendancy of
the crown. The small actual dominion, surrounding Paris, with
which they began, was widened slowly by the strong,
authoritative arm. They made themselves, in rude fashion, the
champions of order and law. They took the people of the towns
into alliance with them; for the towns were beginning to
catch the spirit of the free cities of Italy, and the sturdy
temper of the Flemish burghers, and to assume the name of
"communes," or commons, casting off the feudal yoke that had
been laid upon them. The kings lent their countenance to the
communes, and the communes strengthened the hands of the
kings. Between them and much helped by the stir of the
Crusades, they loosened the roots of feudalism, until its
decay set in. The king's courts and the king's officers pushed
their jurisdiction into a widening realm, until the king's
authority had become supreme, in fact as well as in name.
Even the measureless misery of a hundred years of war with
English kings brought power, in the end, to the crown, by
weakening the greater lords, and by bringing into existence a
fixed military force.
A. D. 1337-1453. Hundred Years War.
Happy accidents, shrewd marriages, and cunning intrigues
gathered the great dukedoms, one by one, into the royal
domain, and the solidarity of modern France was attained.
16th-17th centuries. Aggrandisement of the Monarchy.
But People and King stood no longer side by side. The league
of King and Commons against the Lords had proved less happy
than the alliance in England of Commons and Lords against the
King. Royalty emerged from the patient struggle alone in
possession of sovereign power. It had used the communes and
then abused them, breaking their charters--their
liberties--their courage--their hopes--and widening the
distance between class and class. The "estates" of the realm
became a memory and a name. During five hundred years, while
the Parliament of England grew in majesty and might, the
States-General of France were assembled but thirteen times.
The Court.
When royalty, at last, invented the fatal enchantments of a
"Court," then the blighting of all other powers was soon
complete. It drew within its spell, from all the provinces of
France, their nobles, their men of genius, their aspiring
spirits, and assembled them to corrupt and debase them
together--to make them its pensioners and hirelings, its
sycophants, its jesters, its knaves.
Suppression of the Huguenots.
Neither Renaissance nor Reformation could undo the spell.
Ideas from the one and a great faith from the other joined in
league for the liberty of both, and the thoughtful among the
people were rallied to them with craving eagerness. But
bigotry and frivolity ruled the Court, and the Court proved
stronger than France. Freedom of conscience, and every species
of freedom with it, were destroyed; by massacre, by civil war,
by oppressive government, by banishment, by corrupting bribes.
18th century. The "Ancien Régime."
And always the grandeur of the monarchy increased; its rule
grew more absolute; its Court sucked the life-blood of the
State more remorselessly. The People starved, that the King
might be magnificent; they perished in a thousand battles,
that his name might be "glorious;" they went into exile,
carrying away the arts of France, that the piety of the King
might not be shocked by their heresies. But always, too, there
was growing in the world, around France and in France, a
knowledge,--an understanding,--a modern spirit,--that rebelled
against these infamies.
A. D. 1789-1799. Revolution.
A. D. 1799-1815. Napoleon.
In due time there came an end. Court, and King, and Church,
and all that even seemed to be a part of the evil old regime,
were whirled into a red gulf of Revolution and disappeared.
The people, unused to Liberty, were made drunken by it, and
went mad. In breaking the gyves of feudalism they broke every
other restraint, and wrecked society in all its forms. Then,
in the stupor of their debauch, they gave themselves to a new
despot--mean, conscienceless, detestable, but transcendent in
the genius and the energy of his selfishness--who devoured
them like a dragon, in the hunger of his insatiate ambition,
and persuaded them to be proud of their fate.
A. D. 1815-1830. Bourbon Restoration.
A. D. 1830-1848. Louis Phillippe
A. D. 1848-1851. Second Republic.
A. D. 1852-1870. Second Empire.
A. D. 1870-. Third Republic.
Europe suppressed the intolerable adventurer, and France, for
three-fourths of a century since, has been under an
apprenticeship of experience, slowly learning the art of
self-government by constitutional modes. Two monarchies, one
republic, and a sham empire are the spoiled samples of her
work. A third republic, now in hand, is promising better
success. It rests with seeming stability on the support of the
great class of peasant landowners, which the very miseries of her
misgoverned past have created for France. Trained to pinching
frugality by the hard conditions of the old regime; unspoiled
by any ruinous philanthropy, like that of the English
poor-laws; stimulated to land-buying by opportunities which
came, first, from the impoverishment of extravagant nobles,
and, later, from revolutionary confiscations; encouraged to
the same acquisition by favorable laws of transfer and equal
inheritance,--the landowning peasants of France constitute a
Class powerful in numbers, invincible in conservatism, an
profoundly interested in the preservation of social order.
--------End: A Logical Outline of French History-----------
FRANCE: A. D. 861.
Origin of the duchy and of the house of Capet.
In 861, Charles the Bald, king of that part of the dismembered
empire of Charlemagne which grew into the kingdom of France,
was struggling with many difficulties: defending himself
against the hostile ambition of his brother, Louis the German;
striving to establish his authority in Brittany and Aquitaine;
harried and harassed by Norse pirates; surrounded by domestic
treachery and feudal restiveness. All of his many foes were
more or less in league against him, and the soul of their
combination appears to have been a certain bold adventurer--a
stranger of uncertain origin, a Saxon, as some say--who bore
the name of Robert the Strong. In this alien enemy, King
Charles, who never lacked shrewdness, discovered a possible
friend. He opened negotiations with Robert the Strong, and a
bargain was soon made which transferred the sword and the
energy of the potent mercenary to the service of the king.
"Soon after, a Placitum or Great Council was held at
Compiègne. In this assembly, and by the assent of the
Optimates, the Seine and its islands, and that most important
island Paris, and all the country between Seine and Loire,
were granted to Robert, the Duchy of France, though not yet so
called, moreover the Angevine Marches, or County of
Outre-Maine, all to be held by Robert-le-Fort as barriers
against Northmen and Bretons, and by which cessions the realm
was to be defended. Only a portion of this dominion owned the
obedience of Charles: the Bretons were in their own country,
the Northmen in the country they were making their own; the
grant therefore was a license to Robert to win as much as he
could, and to keep his acquisitions should he succeed. ...
Robert kept the Northmen in check, yet only by incessant
exertion. He inured the future kings of France, his two young
sons, Eudes and Robert, to the tug of war, making them his
companions in his enterprises. The banks of the Loire were
particularly guarded by him, for here the principal attacks
were directed." Robert the Strong fought valiantly, as he had
contracted to do, for five years, or more, and then, in an
unlucky battle with the Danes, one summer day in 866, he fell.
"Thus died the first of the Capets." All the honors and
possessions which he had received from the king were then
transferred, not to his sons, but to one Hugh, Count of
Burgundy, who became also Duke or Marquis of France and Count
of Anjou. Twenty years later, however, the older son of
Robert, Eudes, turns up in history again as Count of Paris,
and nothing is known of the means by which the family, soon to
become royal, had recovered its footing and its importance.
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).
FRANCE: A. D. 877-987.
The end of the Carolingian monarchy and the rise of the
Capetian.
Charles the Bald died in 877 and was succeeded by his son
Louis, called "the Stammerer," who reigned only two years. His
two sons, Louis and Carloman, were joint kings for a short
space, struggling with the Northmen and losing the provinces
out of which Duke Boson of Provence, brother-in-law of Charles
the Bald, formed the kingdom of Arles. Louis died in 882 and
Carloman two years afterwards; thereupon Charles, surnamed
"the Fat," king of Lombardy and Germany, and also emperor
(nephew of Charles the Bald), became likewise king of France,
and briefly reunited under his feebly handled sceptre the
greater part of the old empire of Charlemagne: When he died,
in 888, a party of the nobles, tired of his race, met and
elected Count Eudes (or Odo), the valiant Count of Paris, who
had just defended his city with obstinate courage against the
Northmen, to be their king. The sovereignty of Eudes was not
acknowledged by the nation at large. His opponents found a
Carling to set up against him, in the person of the boy
Charles,--youngest son of Louis "the Stammerer," born after
his father's death,--who appears in history as Charles "the
Simple." Eudes, after some years of war, gave up to Charles a
small domain, between the Seine and the Meuse, acknowledged
his feudal superiority and agreed that the whole kingdom
should be surrendered to him on his (Eudes') death. In
accordance with this agreement, Charles the Simple became sole
king in 898, when Eudes died, and the country which
acknowledged his nominal sovereignty fell into a more
distracted state than ever. The Northmen established
themselves in permanent occupation of the country on the lower
Seine, and Charles, in 911, made a formal cession of it to
their duke, Rollo, thus creating the great duchy of Normandy.
In 922 the nobles grew once more disgusted with the feebleness
of their king and crowned Duke Robert, brother of the late king
Eudes, driving Charles into his stronghold of Laon. The
Normans came to Charles' help and his rival Robert was killed
in a battle.
{1159}
But Charles was defeated, was inveigled into the hands of one
of the rebel Lords.--Herbert of Venmandois--and kept a
prisoner until he died, in 929. One Rodolf of Burgundy had
been chosen king, meantime, and reigned until his death, in
936. Then legitimacy triumphed again, and a young son of
Charles the Simple, who had been reared in England, was sent
for and crowned. This king--Louis IV.--his son, Lothair, and
his grandson, Louis V., kept possession of the shaking throne
for half-a-century; but their actual kingdom was much of the
time reduced to little more than the royal city of Laon and
its immediate territories. When Louis died, in 987, leaving no
nearer heir than his uncle, Charles, Duke of Lorraine, there
was no longer any serious attempt to keep up the Carolingian
line. Hugh, Duke of France--whose grandfather Robert, and
whose grand-uncle Eudes had been crowned kings, before him,
and whose father, "Hugh the Great," had been the king-maker of
the period since--was now called to the throne and settled
himself firmly in the seat which a long line of his
descendants would hold. He was known as Hugh Capet to his
contemporaries, and it is thought that he got the name from
his wearing of the hood, cap, or cape of St. Martin--he being
the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, in addition to his other
high dignities.
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5;
book 3, chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
book 1, chapter 5 (volume l).
C. F. Keary,
The Vikings in Western Christendom,
chapters 11 and 13-15.
See, also, LAON.
FRANCE: A. D. 987.
Accession of Hugh Capet.
The kingdom of the early Capetians.
"On the accession of the third race [the Capetians], France,
properly so called, only comprised the territory between the
Somme and the Loire; it was bounded by the counties of
Flanders and Vermandois on the north; by Normandy and Brittany
on the west; by the Champagne on the east; by the duchy of
Aquitaine on the south. The territory within these bounds was
the duchy of France, the patrimonial possession of the Capets,
and constituted the royal domain. The great fiefs of the
crown, in addition to the duchy of France, were the duchy of
Normandy, the duchy of Burgundy, nearly the whole of Flanders,
formed into a county, the county of Champagne, the duchy of
Aquitaine, and the county of Toulouse. ... The sovereigns of
these various states were the great vassals of the crown and
peers of France; Lorraine and a portion of Flanders were
dependent on the Germanic crown, while Brittany was a fief of
the duchy of Normandy. ... The county of Barcelona beyond the
Alps was also one of the great fiefs of the crown of France."
E. de Bonnechose,
History of France: second epoch,
book 1, chapter 2.
"With the exception of the Spanish March and of part of
Flanders, all these states have long been fully incorporated
with the French monarchy. But we must remember that, under the
earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces
with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion
of the German princes after the Peace of Westphalia with the
Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent
within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria,
and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of
any kind, to bring him into contact either with his liege lord
or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse ... seem
almost to have forgotten that there was any King of the French
at all, or at all events that they had anything to do with him.
They did not often even pay him the compliment of waging war
upon him, a mode of recognition of his existence which was
constantly indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and
Flanders."
E. A. Freeman,
The Franks and the Gauls
(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).
"When France was detached from the Empire in the ninth
century, of all three imperial regions she was the one which
seemed least likely to form a nation. There was no unity in
the country west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhone.
Various principalities, duchies, or counties were here formed,
but each of them was divided into secular fiefs and
ecclesiastical territories. Over these fiefs and territories
the authority of the duke or the count, which was supposed to
represent that of the king, was exercised only in case these
seigneurs had sufficient power, derived from their own
personal estates. Destitute of domains and almost starving,
the king, in official documents, asked what means he might
find on which to live with some degree of decency. From time
to time, amid this chaos, he discussed the theory of his
authority. He was a lean and solemn phantom, straying about
among living men who were very rude and energetic. The phantom
kept constantly growing leaner, but royalty did not vanish.
People were accustomed to its existence, and the men of those
days could not conceive of a revolution. By the election of
Hugh Capet, in 987, royalty became a reality, because the
king, as Duke of Francia, had lands, money, and followers. It
would be out of place to seek a plan of conduct and a
methodical line of policy in the actions of the Capetians, for
they employed simultaneously every sort of expedient. During
more than three centuries they had male offspring; thus the
chief merit of the dynasty was that it endured. As always
happens, out of the practice developed a law; and this happy
accident produced a lawful hereditary succession, which was a
great element of strength. Moreover the king had a whole
arsenal of rights: old rights of Carolingian royalty,
preserving, the remembrance of imperial power, which the study
of the Roman law was soon to resuscitate, transforming these
apparitions into formidable realities; old rights conferred by
the coronation, which were impossible to define, and hence
incontestable; and rights of suzerainty, newer and more real,
which were definitely determined and codified as feudalism
developed and which, joined to the other rights mentioned
above, made the king proprietor of France. These are the
elements that Capetian royalty contributed to the play of
fortuitous circumstances."
E. Lavisse,
General View of the Political History of Europe,
chapter 3.
See, also, TWELVE PEERS OF FRANCE.
{1160}
FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.
The Feudal Period.
"The period in the history of France, of which we are about to
write, began with the consecration of Hugues Capet, at Reims,
the 3rd of July, 987, but it is a period which would but
improperly take its name from the Capetians; for throughout
this time royalty was, as it were, annihilated in France; the
social bond was broken, and the country which extends from the
Rhine to the Pyrenees, and from the English Channel to the
Gulf of Lyon, was governed by a confederation of princes
rarely under the influence of a common will, and united only
by the Feudal System. While France was confederated under
feudal administration, the legislative power was suspended.
Hugues Capet and his successors, until the accession of St.
Louis, had not the right of making laws; the nation had no
diet, no regularly constituted assemblies whose authority it
acknowledged. The Feudal System, tacitly adopted, and
developed by custom, was solely acknowledged by the numerous
sovereigns who divided the provinces among themselves. It
replaced the social bond, the monarch, and the legislator. ...
The period ... is therefore like a long interregnum, during
which the royal authority was suspended, although the name of
king was always preserved. He who bore this title in the midst
of a republic of princes was only distinguished from them by
some honorary prerogative, and he exercised over them scarcely
any authority. Until very near the end of the 11th century,
these princes were scarcely less numerous than the castles
which covered France. No authority was acknowledged at a
distance, and every fortress gave its lord rank among the
sovereigns. The conquest of England by the Normans broke the
equilibrium between the feudal lords; one of the confederate
princes, become a king in 1066, gradually extended, until
1179, his domination over more than half of France; and
although it was not he who bore the title of king of the
French, it may be imagined that in time the rest of the
country would also pass under his yoke. Philip the August and
his son, during the forty-six last years of the same period,
reconquered almost all the fiefs which the English kings had
united, brought the other great vassals back to obedience, and
changed the feudal confederation which had ruled France into a
monarchy, which incorporated the Feudal System in its
constitution."
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
France Under the Feudal System
(translated by W. Bellingham), chapter 1.
"The feudal period, that is, the period when the feudal system
was the dominant fact of our country, ... is comprehended
between Hugh Capet and Philippe de Valois, that is, it
embraces the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. ... At the end of
the 10th century, royalty and the commons were not visible, or
at all events scarcely visible. At the commencement of the
14th century, royalty was the head of the state, the commons
were the body of the nation. The two forces to which the
feudal system was to succumb had then attained, not, indeed,
their entire development, but a decided preponderance. ...
With the 14th century, the character of war changed. Then
began the foreign wars; no longer a vassal against suzerain,
or vassal against vassal, but nation against nation,
government against government. On the accession of Philippe de
Valois, the great wars between the French and the English
broke out--the claims of the kings of England, not upon any
particular fief, but upon the whole land, and upon the throne
of France--and they continued up to Louis XI. They were no
longer feudal, but national wars; a certain proof that the
feudal period stopped at this limit, that another society had
already commenced."
F. P. Guizot,
History of Civilization,
2d course, lecture 1.
FRANCE: A. D. 996.
Accession of King Robert II.
FRANCE: A. D. 1031.
Accession of King Henry I.
FRANCE: A. D. 1060.
Accession of King Philip I.
FRANCE: A. D. 1070-1125.
Enfranchisement of Communes.
"The establishment of the commune of Mans, towards the year
1070, was not a fact, isolated, and without respect to what
passed in the rest of France; it was, on the contrary, a
symptom of the great revolution which was working in the
opinions, the manners, and the condition of the mass of the
people; a symptom which, bearing a certain date, must serve to
establish the epoch of a crowd of analogous efforts made in
the other towns of France. History has not preserved the
memory of these different efforts, but it has shown us the
results. During the two following centuries, the cities ceased
not to obtain charters, to found or secure by legitimate
authority, the immunities and franchises which constituted the
communal rights. ... All, or nearly all had, however, already
conquered liberty; they had experienced how advantageous it
was to be governed by themselves, and the high price which
they put upon the favor they solicited, bears witness to their
experience. The enfranchisement of the communes is almost
universally reported in the ... reign ... of Louis the Fat;
and the honor of this great revolution, which created the
third estate [tiers-état], and liberty in France, has been
given either to the generosity or the wise policy of that
prince. There is doubtless some truth in this opinion, since
we find in France no communal charter anterior to the reign of
Louis VI., and he is also the first king who was seen to ally
himself with the burgesses, to make war on the nobility.
However, the idea which is formed of this event, when one
attributes it to the act of the monarch's will, or the effect
of his system, is completely erroneous. The French people owed
whatever degree of liberty it enjoyed in the middle ages, to
its own valor; it acquired it as liberty must always be
acquired, at the sword's point; it profitted by the divisions,
the imprudence, the weakness, or the crimes of its lords, lay
or ecclesiastic, to seize it from and in spite of them. ...
The origin of every commune was, as indicated by the different
names by which they are designated, a communion, a conjuration,
or confederation, of the inhabitants of a town who were
mutually engaged to defend each other. The first act of the
commune was the occupation of a tower in which was set up a
clock or belfry; and the first clause of the oath of all the
communers, was to repair in arms, when the bell sounded, at
the place assigned them, to defend each other. From this first
engagement resulted that of submitting to magistrates named by
the communers: it was the mayors, echevins, and juries, in
northern France, and consuls or syndics in southern France, to
whom the consent of all abandoned the sole right of directing
the common efforts. Thus the militia was first created; the
magistracy came afterwards. ... The reign of Phillip I. had
been but a long anarchy. During those forty-eight years the
royal government had not existed, and no other had
efficaciously taken its place. At the same time, greatly
differing from the other feudal monarchies, all legislative
power was suspended in France. There were no diets like those
of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, no parliament like that
of England, no cortes like those of Spain, no field of March
like that of the antient Frankish kings, no assemblages, in
fine, which bound by their acts the great vassals and their
subjects, and which could submit them to common laws.
{1161}
The French had not desired a participation in the sovereignty
which they could only acquire by sacrificing their
independence. Thus, two great vassals, or the subjects of two
great vassals, could scarcely believe themselves compatriots.
... The anarchy which was found in the great state of the
French monarchy, because all the relations between the king
and the count were relaxed, was found also in the petty state
of the county of Paris, or of the duchy of France; for the
lords and barons of the crown's domains no better obeyed or
respected more the prerogatives of their lord, than the great
vassals those of the suzerain. The anarchy was complete, the
disorder seemed carried to its height, and never had the
social bond in France been nearer to being broken: yet never
had France made so real a progress as during these forty-eight
years. Phillip, at his death, left his son quite another
people to that which he had received from his father: the most
active monarch would never have done so much for France as she
had without him done for herself during his sleep. The towns
were more numerous, more populous, more opulent, and more
industrious; property had acquired a security unknown in the
preceding centuries; justice was distributed between equals,
and by equals; and the liberty of the burgesses, conquered by
arms, was defended with energy."
J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,
France under the Feudal System,
chapters 9 and 12.
"Liberty ... was to have its beginning in the towns, in the
towns of the centre of France, which were to be called
privileged towns, or communes, and which would either receive
or extort their franchises. ... All coveted a few franchises
or privileges, and offered to purchase them; for, needy and
wretched as they were, poor artisans, smiths and weavers,
suffered to cluster for shelter at the foot of a castle, or
fugitive serfs crowding round a church, they could manage to
find money; and men of this stamp were the founders of our
liberties. They willingly starved themselves to procure the
means of purchase; and king and barons rivalled each other in
selling charters which fetched so high a price. This
revolution took place all over the kingdom under a thousand
different forms, and with but little disturbance; so that it
has only attracted notice with regard to some towns of the
Oise and the Somme, which, placed in less favorable
circumstances, and belonging to two different lords, one a
layman, the other ecclesiastical, resorted to the king for a
solemn guarantee of concessions often violated, and maintained
a precarious liberty at the cost of several centuries of civil
war. To these towns the name of communes has been more
particularly applied; and the wars they had to wage form a
slight but dramatic incident in this great revolution, which
was operating silently and under different forms in all the
towns of the north of France. 'Twas in brave and choleric
Picardy, whose commons had so soundly beaten the Normans--in
the country of Calvin, and of so many other revolutionary
spirits--that these explosions took place. Noyon, Beauvais,
Laon, three ecclesiastical lordships, were the first communes;
to these may be added St. Quentin. Here the Church had laid
the foundations of a powerful democracy. ... The king has been
said to be the founder of the communes; but the reverse is
rather the truth: it is the communes that established the
king. Without them, he could not have beaten off the Normans;
and these conquerors of England and the Two Sicilies would
probably have conquered France. It was the communes, or, to
use a more general and exact term, the bourgeoisies, which,
under the banner of the saint of the parish, enforced the
common peace between the Oise and the Loire; while the king,
on horseback, bore in front the banner of the abbey of St.
Denys."
M. Michelet,
History of France,
book 4, chapter 4.
See, also, COMMUNES.
The following comments on the passages quoted above are made
by a good authority: "The general view taken of this subject
of the enfranchisement of the communes by historians who wrote
at the middle of the century is now being seriously modified.
The studies of Luchaire have shown, I think, that such
statements as Sismondi's, which attribute everything to the
people, are exaggerations. 'Liberty,' as it existed in the
communes, was only corporate or aristocratic privilege. As for
the national assemblages, there were great councils held, such
as those which existed under the Norman monarchs in England,
and they issued the 'assizes,' which was a common form of
legislation in the Middle Ages. It was not, of course,
legislation, in its modern sense. Michelet is quite too
flowery, poetical, democratic, to be safely followed."
FRANCE: A. D. 1096.
Departure of the First Crusaders.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.
FRANCE: A. D. 1100.
The extent of the kingdom.
"When Louis [VI.] was adopted by his father in 1100, the crown
had as its own domain only the county of Paris, Hurepoix, the
Gatinais, the Orléanis, half the county of Sens, the French
Vexin, and Bourges, together with some ill-defined rights over
the episcopal cities of Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, Noyon,
Soissons, Amiens. And even within these narrow limits the
royal power was but thinly spread over the surface. The barons
in their castles were in fact independent, and oppressed the
merchants and poor folk as they would. The king had also
acknowledged rights of suzerainty over Champagne, Burgundy,
Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, and Boulogne; but, in most
cases, the only obedience the feudal lords stooped to was that
of duly performing the act of homage to the king on first
succession to a fief. He also claimed suzerainty, which was
not conceded, over the South of France; over Provence and
Lorraine he did not even put forth a claim of lordship."
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 3, chapter 5.
FRANCE: A. D. 1101.
Disastrous Crusade of French princes and knights.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1101-1102.
FRANCE: A. D. 1106-1119.
War with Henry I. of England and Normandy.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.
{1162}
FRANCE: A. D. 1108-1180.
The reigns of Louis VI., Louis VII. and
accession of Philip II.
Gain and loss of Aquitaine.
"Louis VI., or 'the Fat' was the first able man whom the line
of Hugh Capet had produced since it mounted the throne. He
made the first attempt at curbing the nobles, assisted by
Suger, the Abbot of St. Denys. The only possibility of doing
this was to obtain the aid of one party of nobles against
another; and when any unusually flagrant offence had been
committed, Louis called together the nobles, bishops, and
abbots of his domain, and obtained their consent and
assistance in making war on the guilty man, and overthrowing
his castle, thus, in some degree, lessening the sense of utter
impunity which had caused so many violences and such savage
recklessness. He also permitted a few of the cities to
purchase the right of self-government. ... The royal authority
had begun to be respected by 1137, when Louis VI. died, having
just effected the marriage of his son, Louis VII., with
Eleanor, the heiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine--thus hoping to
make the crown really more powerful than the great princes who
owed it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard,
Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence over men's
minds. ... Bernard roused the young king Louis VII., to go on
the second crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1147-1149], which was
undertaken by the Emperor and the other princes of Europe to
relieve the distress of the kingdom of Palestine. ... Though
Louis did reach Palestine, it was with weakened forces; he
could effect nothing by his campaign, and Eleanor, who had
accompanied him, seems to have been entirely corrupted by the
evil habits of the Franks settled in the East. Soon after his
return, Louis dissolved his marriage; and Eleanor became the
wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, who soon after inherited the
kingdom of England as our Henry II., as well as the duchy of
Normandy, and betrothed his third son to the heiress of
Brittany [see AQUITAINE: A. D. 1137-1152]. Eleanor's marriage
seemed to undo all that Louis VI. had done in raising the
royal power; for Henry completely overshadowed Louis, whose
only resource was in feeble endeavours to take part against
him in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the
Young, the title that adhered to him on account of his simple,
childish nature, is only a record of weakness and disaster,
till he died in 1180. ... Powerful in fact as Henry II. was,
it was his gathering so large a part of France under his rule
which was, in the end, to build up the greatness of the French
kings. What had held them in check was the existence of the
great fiefs or provinces, each with its own line of dukes or
counts, and all practically independent of the king. But now
nearly all the provinces of southern and western France were
gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was a
Frenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler
seemed to his French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner.
They began therefore to look to the French king to free them
from a foreign ruler; and the son of Louis VII., called Philip
Augustus, was ready to take advantage of their disposition."
C. M. Yonge,
History of France
(History Primers), chapter 1, sections 6-7.
FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.
The kingdom extended by Philip Augustus.
Normandy, Maine and Anjou recovered from the English kings.
"Louis VII. ascended the throne [A. D. 1137] with better
prospects than his father. He had married Eleanor, heiress of
the great duchy of Guienne [or Aquitaine]. But this union,
which promised an immense accession of strength to the crown,
was rendered unhappy by the levities of that princess.
Repudiated by Louis, who felt rather as a husband than a king,
Eleanor immediately married Henry II. of England, who, already
inheriting Normandy from his mother and Anjou from Ins father,
became possessed of more than one-half of France, and an
over-match for Louis, even if the great vassals of the crown
had been always ready to maintain its supremacy. One might
venture perhaps to conjecture that the sceptre of France would
eventually have passed from the Capets to the Plantagenets, if
the vexatious quarrel with Becket at one time, and the
successive rebellions fomented by Louis at a later period, had
not embarrassed the great talents and ambitious spirit of
Henry. But the scene quite changed when Philip Augustus, son
of Louis VII., came upon the stage [A. D. 1180]. No prince
comparable to him in systematic ambition and military
enterprise had reigned in France since Charlemagne. From his
reign the French monarchy dates the recovery of its lustre. He
wrested from the count of Flanders the Vermandois (that part
of Picardy which borders on the Isle of France and Champagne),
and, subsequently, the County of Artois. But the most
important conquests of Philip were obtained against the kings
of England. Even Richard I., with all his prowess, lost ground
in struggling against an adversary not less active, and more
politic, than himself: But when John not only took possession
of his brother's dominions, but confirmed his usurpation by
the murder, as was very probably surmised, of the heir,
Philip, artfully taking advantage of the general indignation,
summoned him as his vassal to the court of his peers. John
demanded a safe-conduct. Willingly, said Philip; let him come
unmolested. And return? inquired the English envoy. If the
judgment of his peers permit him, replied the king. By all the
saints of France, he exclaimed, when further pressed, he shall
not return unless acquitted. The bishop of Ely still
remonstrated that the duke of Normandy could not come without
the king of England; nor would the barons of that country
permit their sovereign to run the risk of death or
imprisonment. What of that, my lord bishop? cried Philip. It
is well known that my vassal the duke of Normandy acquired
England by force. But if a subject obtains any accession of
dignity, shall his paramount lord therefore lose his rights?
... John, not appearing at his summons, was declared guilty of
felony, and his fiefs confiscated. The execution of this
sentence was not intrusted to a dilatory arm. Philip poured
his troops into Normandy, and took town after town, while the
king of England, infatuated by his own wickedness and
cowardice, made hardly an attempt at defence. In two years
[A. D. 1203-1204] Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were
irrecoverably lost. Poitou and Guienne resisted longer; but
the conquest of the first was completed [A. D. 1224] by Louis
VIII., successor of Philip."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part 1.
ALSO IN:
K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings,
volume 2, chapter 9.
See, also,
ENGLAND: A. D. 1205;
and ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.
FRANCE: A. D. 1188-1190.
Crusade of Philip Augustus.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192.
FRANCE: A. D. 1201-1203.
The Fifth Crusade, and its diversion against Constantinople.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203.
A. D. 1209-1229.
The Albigensian wars and their effects.
See ALBIGENSES.
FRANCE: A. D. 1212.
The Children's Crusade.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.
FRANCE: A. D. 1214.
Nationalizing effects of the Battle of Bouvines.
See BOUVINES.
FRANCE: A. D. 1223.
Accession of King Louis VIII.
{1163}
FRANCE: A. D. 1226-1270.
Reign and character of Louis IX. (Saint Louis).
His great civilizing work and influence.
"Of the forty-four years of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen,
with a long interval of separation, pertained to the
government of Queen Blanche of Castille, rather than that of
the king her son. Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only
eleven; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty-one,
in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was
not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years
Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly
asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as
guardian of the king her son. With a good sense really
admirable in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that
official power was ill suited to her woman's condition, and
would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she screened
herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in [1236],
wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consecration;
he it was who reigned and commanded; and his name alone
appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until
twenty-two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on starting
for the crusade, officially delegated to his mother the kingly
authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really
governed with the title of regent. ... During the first period
of his government, and so long as her son's minority lasted,
Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots,
insurrections, and open war; and, what was still worse for
her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great
vassals, burning to seize once more, under a woman's
government, the independence and power which had been
effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche
resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering
energy, at another dexterously with all the tact, address, and
allurements of a woman. Though she was now forty years of age
she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources and
of grace. ... The malcontents spread the most odious scandals
about her. ... Neither in the events nor in the writings of
the period is it easy to find anything which can authorize the
accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. ... She
continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations
of the crown's great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she
carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of all, the
extension of the domains and the power of the kingship. We
observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic
charitableness, or of religious scrupulousness; that is, none
of those grand moral impulses which are characteristic of
Christian piety and which were predominant in St. Louis.
Blanche was essentially politic and concerned with her
temporal interests and successes; and it was not from her
teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and
disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and
the rarest on the roll of glorious kings. What St. Louis really
owed to his mother, and it was a great deal, was the steady
triumph which, whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche
gained over the great vassals, and the preponderance which,
amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she secured for the
kingship of her son in his minority. ... When Louis reached
his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of the
kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public
affairs. ... The kingship of the son was a continuance of the
mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the
preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;
succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent count of
Brittany; wrung from Theobald IV., count of Champagne, the
rights of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and
Sancerre, and the viscountship of Châteaudun; and purchased
the fertile countship of Mâcon from its possessor. It was
almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations ably
conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he
accomplished these increments of the kingly domain; and when
he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein
only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of
his crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he
had shown before entering upon the struggle. ... When war was
not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant
knight, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace
rather than war. The successes he had gained in his campaign
of 1242 [against the count of La Marche and Henry III., of
England, whose mother had become the wife of La Marche] were
not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and
conquest; he was anxious only to consolidate them whilst
securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his
adversaries as well as for his own, the benefits of peace. He
entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la
Marche, the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king
of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who
had been more or less engaged in the war; and in January,
1243, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers
[M. Felix Faure], 'the treaty of Lorris marked the end of
feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis' reign. He

drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the
Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Mussulmans.'"
G. Masson,
Saint Louis and the Thirteenth Century,
pages 44-56.
"St. Louis ... by this war of 1242 finished those contests for
the crown with its vassals which had been going on since the
time of his ancestor, Louis the Fat. But it was not by warfare
that he was to aid in breaking down the strongholds of
feudalism. The vassals might have been beaten time and again,
and yet the spirit of feudalism, still surviving, would have
raised up new champions to contend against the crown. St.
Louis struck at the spirit of the Middle Age, and therein
insured the downfall of its forms and whole embodiment. He
fought the last battles against feudalism, because, by a surer
means than battling, he took, and unconsciously, the
life-blood from the opposition to the royal authority.
Unconsciously, we say; he did not look on the old order of
things as evil, and try to introduce a better; he did not
selfishly contend for the extension of his own power; he was
neither a great reformer, nor a (so-called) wise king. He
undermined feudalism, because he hated injustice; he warred
with the Middle Age, because he could not tolerate its
disregard of human rights; and he paved the way for
Philip-le-bel's struggle with the papacy, because he looked
upon religion and the church as instruments for man's
salvation, not as tools for worldly aggrandizement.
{1164}
He is, perhaps, the only monarch on record who failed in most
of what he undertook of active enterprise, who was under the
control of the prejudices of his age, who was a true
conservative, who never dreamed of effecting great social
changes,--and who yet, by his mere virtues, his sense of duty,
his power of conscience, made the mightiest and most vital
reforms. One of these reforms was the abolition of the trial
by combat. ... It is not our purpose to follow Louis either in
his first or second crusade. If the great work of his life was
not to be done by fighting at home, still less was it to be
accomplished by battles in Egypt or Tunis. His mission was
other and greater than he dreamed of, and his service to
Christendom was wholly unlike that which he proposed to
himself. ... In November, 1244, he took the cross; but it was
June of 1248 before he was able to leave Paris to embark upon
his cherished undertaking. ...
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.
On the fifth of June, 1249, he landed in Egypt, which was
to be conquered before Palestine could be safely attacked. On
the seventh of June, Damietta was entered, and there the
French slept and feasted, wasting time, strength, and money,
until the twentieth of the following November. Then came the
march southward; the encampment upon the Nile; the terrors of
the Greek fire; the skirmishes which covered the plain with
dead; the air heavy with putridity and pestilence; the putrid
water; the fish fat with the flesh of the dead; sickness,
weakness, retreat, defeat, captivity. On the sixth of April,
1250, Louis and his followers were prisoners to the
Mussulmans; Louis might have saved himself, but would not quit
his followers; he had been faithful thus far, and would be
till death. ... On the eighth of May, 1250, Louis was a
freeman, and it was not until the twenty-fifth of April, 1254,
that he set sail to return to his native shores, where
Blanche, who had been regent during his absence, had some
months since yielded up her breath. On the seventh of
September, he entered Paris, sad and worn. ... And scarce had
he landed, before he began that course of legislation which
continued until once more he embarked upon the crusade. ... In
his first legislative action, Louis proposed to himself these
objects,--to put an end to judicial partiality, to prevent
needless and oppressive imprisonment for debt, to stop
unfounded criminal prosecutions, and to mitigate the horrors
of legalized torture. In connection with these general topics,
he made laws to bear oppressively upon the Jews, to punish
prostitution and gambling, and to diminish intemperance. And
it is worthy of remark, that this last point was to be
attained by forbidding innkeepers to sell to any others than
travellers,--a measure now (six hundred years later) under
discussion in some parts of our Union, with a view to the same
end. But the wish which this rare monarch had to recompense
all who had been wronged by himself and forefathers was the
uppermost wish of his soul. He felt that to do justice himself
was the surest way to make others willing to do it. Commissioners
were sent into every province of the kingdom to examine each
alleged case of royal injustice, and with power in most
instances to make instant restitution. He himself went forth
to hear and judge in the neighborhood of his capital, and as
far north as Normandy. ... As he grew yet older, the spirit of
generosity grew stronger daily in his bosom. He would have no
hand in the affairs of Europe, save to act, wherever he could,
as peacemaker. Many occasions occurred where all urged him to
profit by power and a show of right, a naked legal title, to
possess himself of valuable fiefs; but Louis shook his head
sorrowfully and sternly, and did as his inmost soul told him
the law of God directed. ... There had been for some reigns
back a growing disposition to refer certain questions to the
king's tribunals, as being regal, not baronial, questions.
Louis the Ninth gave to this disposition distinct form and
value, and, under the influence of the baron-hating legists,
he so ordained, in conformity with the Roman law, that, under
given circumstances, almost any case might be referred to his
tribunal. This, of course, gave to the king's judgment-seat
and to him more of influence than any other step ever taken
had done. It was, in substance, an appeal of the people from
the nobles to the king, and it threw at once the balance of
power into the royal hands. ... It became necessary to make
the occasional sitting of the king's council or parliament,
which exercised certain judicial functions, permanent; and to
change its composition, by diminishing the feudal and
increasing the legal or legist element. Thus everywhere, in
the barons' courts, the king's court, and the central
parliament, the Roman, legal, organized element began to
predominate over the German, feudal, barbaric tendencies, and
the foundation-stones of modern society were laid. But the
just soul of Louis and the prejudices of his Romanized
counsellors were not arrayed against the old Teutonic
barbarism alone, with its endless private wars and judicial
duels; they stood equally opposed to the extravagant claims of
the Roman hierarchy. ... The first calm, deliberate,
consistent opposition to the centralizing power of the great
see was that offered by its truest friend and most honest
ally, Louis of France. From 1260 to 1268, step by step was
taken by the defender of the liberties of the Gallican church,
until, in the year last named, he published his 'Pragmatic
Sanction' [see below], his response, by advice of his wise
men, to the voice of the nation, the Magna Charta of the
freedom of the church of France, upon whose vague articles,
the champions of that freedom could write commentaries, and
found claims, innumerable. ... But the legislation of Louis
did not stop with antagonism to the feudal system and to the
unauthorized claims of the church; it provided for another
great grievance of the Middle Age, that lying and unequal
system of coinage which was a poison to honest industry and
commercial intercourse. ... And now the great work of Louis
was completed; the barons were conquered, the people
protected, quiet prevailed through the kingdom, the national
church was secured in her liberties. The invalid of Egypt, the
sojourner of Syria, had realized his dreams and purposes of
good to his own subjects, and once again the early vision of
his manhood, the recovery of Palestine, haunted his slumbering
and his waking hours. ... On the sixteenth of March, 1270, he
left Paris for the seashore; on the first of July, he sailed
from France. The sad, sad story of this his last earthly doing
need not be here repeated."
See CRUSADES: A.. D. 1270-1271.
Saint Louis of France
(North American Review, April, 1846).
On the part performed by Louis IX. in the founding of
absolutism in France,
See PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.
{1165}
FRANCE: A. D. 1252.
The Crusading movement of the Pastors.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1252.
FRANCE: A. D. 1266.
Acquisition of the kingdom of Naples or the Two Sicilies by
Charles of Anjou, the king's brother.
See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.
FRANCE: A. D. 1268.
The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.
Assertion of the rights of the Gallican Church.
"The continual usurpations of the popes produced the
celebrated Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis [about A.. D.
1268]. This edict, the authority of which, though probably
without cause, has been sometimes disputed, contains three
important provisions; namely, that all prelates and other
patrons shall enjoy their full rights as to the collation of
benefices, according to the canons; that churches shall
possess freely their rights of election; and that no tax or
pecuniary exaction shall be levied by the pope, without
consent of the king and of the national church. We do not
find, however, that the French government acted up to the
spirit of this ordinance."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 7, part 2.
"This Edict appeared either during the last year of Clement
IV., ... or during the vacancy in the Pontificate. ... It
became the barrier against which the encroachments of the
ecclesiastical power were destined to break; nor was it swept
away till a stronger barrier had arisen in the unlimited power
of the French crown." It "became a great Charter of
Independence to the Gallican Church."
H. H. Milman,
History of Latin Christianity,
book 11, chapter 4 (volume 5).
FRANCE: A. D. 1270-1285.
The sons of St. Louis.
Origin of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon.
St. Louis left several sons, the elder of whom succeeded him
as Philippe III., and his youngest son was Robert, Count of
Clermont and Lord of Bourbon, the ancestor of all the branches
of the House of Bourbon. Philippe III. died in 1285, when he
was succeeded by his son, Philippe IV. A younger son, Charles,
Count of Valois, was the ancestor of the Valois branch of the
royal family.
FRANCE: A. D. 1285-1314.
Reign of Philip IV.
His conflict with the Pope and his destruction of the
Templars.
Philippe IV., called "le Bel" (the Handsome), came to the
throne on the death of his father, Philippe "le Hardi," in
1285. He was presently involved in war with Edward I. of
England, who crossed to Flanders in 1297, intending to invade
France, but was recalled by the revolt in Scotland, under
Wallace, and peace was made in 1303. The Flemings, who had
provoked Philippe by their alliance with the English, were
thus left to suffer his resentment. They bore themselves
valiantly in a war which lasted several years, and inflicted
upon the knights of France a fearful defeat at Courtrai, in
1302. In the end, the French king substantially failed in his
designs upon Flanders.
See FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.
"It is probable that this long struggle would have been still
protracted, but for a general quarrel which had sprung up some
time before its close, between the French king and Pope
Boniface VIII., concerning the [taxation of the clergy and
the] right of nomination to vacant bishoprics within the
dominions of Philippe. The latter, on seeing Bernard Saissetti
thrust into the Bishopric of Pamiers by the pontiff's sole
authority, caused the Bishop to be arrested by night, and,
after subjecting him to various indignities, consigned him to
prison on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy. Boniface
remonstrated against this outrage and violence in a bull known
in history, by its opening words 'Ausculta, fili,' in which he
asserted his power 'over nations and kingdoms, to root out and
to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to
plant,' and concluded by informing Philippe that he had
summoned all the superior clergy of France to an assembly at
Rome on the 1st of the following November, in order to
deliberate on the remedies for such abuses as those of which
the king had been guilty. Philippe, by no means intimidated by
this measure, convoked a full and early assembly of the three
estates of his kingdom, to decide upon the conduct of him whom
the orthodox, up to that time, had been in the habit of deeming
infallible. This (10th April 1302) was the first meeting of a
Parliament, properly so called, in France. ... The chambers
unanimously approved and applauded the conduct of the king,
and resolved to maintain the honour of the crown and the
nation from foreign insult or domination; and to mark their
decision more conclusively, they concurred with the sovereign
in prohibiting the clergy from attending the Pope's summons to
Rome. The papal bull was burned as publicly as possible. ...
The Pope, alarmed at these novel and bold proceedings, sought
instantly to avert their consequences by soothing
explanations; but Philippe would not now be turned aside from
his course. He summoned a convocation of the Gallican
prelates, in which by the mouth of William de Nogaret, his
chancellor, he represented the occupier of St. Peter's chair
as the father of lies and an evil-doer; and he demanded the
seizure of this pseudo-pope, and his imprisonment until he
could be brought before a legitimate tribunal to receive the
punishment due to his numerous crimes. Boniface now declared
that the French king was excommunicated, and cited him by his
confessor to appear in the papal court at Rome within three
months, to make submission and atonement for his contumacy.
... While this unseemly quarrel ... seemed to be growing
interminable in its complexities, the daring of a few men
opened a shorter path to its end than could have been
anticipated. William of Nogaret associating to him Sciarra
Colonna, a noble Roman, who, having been driven from his
native city by Boniface and subjected to various hardships,
had found refuge in Paris, passed, with a train of three
hundred horsemen, and a much larger body of picked infantry,
secretly into Italy, with the intention of surprising the Pope
at his summer residence in his native town of Anagni. ... The
papal palace was captured after a feeble resistance, and the
cardinals and personal attendants of the Pontiff fled for
their lives. ... The Condottieri ... dragged the Pope from his
throne, and conveying him into the street, mounted him upon a
lean horse without saddle or bridle, with his head to the
animal's tail, and thus conducted him in a sort of pilgrimage
through the town. He was then consigned prisoner to one of the
chambers of his palace and placed under guard; while the body
of his captors dispersed themselves through the splendid
apartments in eager pursuit of plunder. Three days were thus
occupied; but at the end of that time the ... people of Anagni
... took arms in behalf of their fellow-townsman and spiritual
father, and falling upon the French while still indulging in
the licence of the sack, drove Nogaret and Colonna from their
quarters, and either expelled or massacred the whole of their
followers."
{1166}
The Pope returned to Rome in so great a rage that his reason
gave way, and soon afterwards he was found dead in his bed.
"The scandal of these proceedings throughout Christendom was
immense; and Philippe adopted every precaution to avert evil
consequences from himself by paying court to Benedict XI. who
succeeded to the tiara. This Pope, however, though he for some
time temporised, could not be long deaf to the loud voices of
the clergy which called for punishment upon the oppressors of
the church. Ere he had reigned nine months he found himself
compelled to excommunicate the plunderers of Anagni; and a few
days afterwards he perished, under circumstances which leave
little doubt of his having been poisoned. ... The king of
France profitted largely by the crime; since, besides gaining
time for the subsidence of excitement, he was subsequently
enabled, by his intrigues, to procure the election of a person
pledged not only to grant him absolution for all past
offences, but to stigmatise the memory of Boniface, to restore
the deposed Colonna to his honours and estates, to nominate
several French ecclesiastics to the college of cardinals, and
to grant to the king the tenths of the Gallican church for a
term of five years. The pontiff who thus seems to have been
the first of his race to lower the pretensions of his office,
was Bertrand de Goth, originally a private gentleman of
Bazadors, and subsequently promoted to the Archiepiscopal See
of Bordeaux. He assumed the title of Clement V., and after
receiving investiture at Lyons, fixed the apostolic residence
at Avignon, where it continued, under successive occupants,
for a period, the length of which caused it to be denominated
by the Italians the Babylonian captivity. This quarrel
settled, Philippe engaged in another undertaking, the
safe-conduct of which required all his skill and
unscrupulousness. This important enterprise was no less than
the destruction and plunder of the military order of Knights
Templars. ... Public discontent ... had, by a variety of
circumstances, been excited throughout the realm. Among the
number of exactions, the coin had been debased to meet the
exigencies of the state, and this obstructing the operations
of commerce, and inflicting wrongs to a greater or less extent
upon all classes, everyone loudly complained of injustice,
robbery and oppression, and in the end several tumults
occurred, in which the residence of the king himself was
attacked, and the whole population were with difficulty
restrained from insurrection. In Burgundy, Champagne, Artois
and Forez, indeed, the nobles, and burgess class having for
the first time made common cause of their grievances, spoke
openly of revolt against the royal authority, unless the
administration should be reformed, and equity be substituted
in the king's courts for the frauds, extortions and
malversations, which prevailed. The sudden death of
Philippe--owing to a fall from his horse while hunting the
wild boar in the forest of Fontainebleau--on the 29th of
November, 1314, delivered the people from their tyrant, and
the crown from the consequences of a general rebellion. Pope
Clement, the king's firm friend, had gone to his last account
on the 20th of the preceding April. Louis X., le Hutin (the
Quarrelsome), ascended the throne at the mature age of
twenty-five."
G. M. Bussey and T. Gaspey,
Pictorial History of France,
volume 1, chapter 4.
See, also, PAPACY: A.D. 1294-1348,
and TEMPLARS: A.D. 1307-1314.
FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1328.
Louis X., Philip V., Charles IV.
Feudal reaction.
Philip-le-Bel died in 1314. "With the accession of his son,
Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder, tumult), comes a
violent reaction of the feudal, local, provincial spirit,
which seeks to dash in pieces the still feeble fabric of
unity, demands dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of
Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without appeal; so
does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens will not have the king's
sergeants subpœna before the barons, or his provosts remove
any prisoner from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and Nevers
require the king to respect the privileges of feudal justice.
... The common demand of the barons is that the king shall
renounce all intermeddling with their men. ... The young
monarch grants and signs all; there are only three points to
which he demurs, and which he seeks to defer. The Burgundian
barons contest with him the jurisdiction over the rivers,
roads, and consecrated places. The nobles of Champagne doubt
the king's right to lead them to war out of their own
province. Those of Amiens, with true Picard impetuosity,
require without any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war
upon each other, and not enter into securities, but ride, go,
come, and be armed for war, and pay forfeit to one another.
... The king's reply to these absurd and insolent demands is
merely: 'We will order examination of the registers of my lord
St. Louis, and give to the said nobles two trustworthy
persons, to be nominated by our council, to verify and inquire
diligently into the truth of the said article.' The reply was
adroit enough. The general cry was for a return to the good
customs of St. Louis: it being forgotten that St. Louis had
done his utmost to put a stop to private wars. But by thus
invoking the name of St. Louis, they meant to express their
wish for the old feudal independence--for the opposite of the
quasi-legal, the venal, and pettifogging government of
Philippe-le-Bel. The barons set about destroying, bit by bit,
all the changes introduced by the late king. But they could
not believe him dead so long as there survived his Alter Ego,
his mayor of the palace, Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the
latter years of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of
the kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be raised in
the palace by the side of the king's. His real name was Le
Portier; but along with the estates he bought the name of
Marigny. ... It was in the Temple, in the very spot where
Marigny had installed his master for the spoliation of the
Templars, that the young king Louis repaired to hear the
solemn accusation brought against him. His accuser was
Philippe-le-Bel's brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a
busy man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at the head
of the barons. ... To effect his destruction, Charles of
Valois had recourse to the grand accusation of the day, which
none could surmount.
{1167}
It was discovered, or presumed, that Marigny's wife or sister,
in order to effect his acquittal, or bewitch the king, had
caused one Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures: 'The
said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs himself in despair,
and then his wife, and Enguerrand's sisters are thrown into
prison, and Enguerrand himself, condemned before the knights
... is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' ... Marigny's
best vengeance was that the crown, so strong in his care, sank
after him into the most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin,
needing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal with
equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles of Champagne and
Picardy hastened to take advantage of the right of private war
which they had just reacquired, and made war on the countess of
Artois, without troubling themselves about the judgment
rendered by the king, who had awarded this fief to her. All
the barons had resumed the privilege of coining; Charles of
Valois, the king's uncle, setting them the example. But
instead of coining for their own domains only, conformably to
the ordinances of Philippe-le-Hardi and Philippe-le-Bel, they
minted coin by wholesale, and gave it currency throughout the
kingdom. On this, the king had perforce to arouse himself, and
return to the administration of Marigny and of
Philippe-le-Bel. He denounced the coinage of the barons,
(November the 19th, 1315;) ordained that it should pass
current on their own lands only; and fixed the value of the
royal coin relatively to thirteen different coinages, which
thirty-one bishops or barons had the right of minting on their
own territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles had enjoyed
this right. The young feudal king, humanized by the want of
money, did not disdain to treat with serfs and with Jews. ...
It is curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admitting
serfs to liberty [see SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE]; but it is
trouble lost. The merchant vainly swells his voice and
enlarges on the worth of his merchandise; the poor serfs will
have none of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad piece
of money, they took care not to dig it up to buy a bit of
parchment. In vain does the king wax wroth at seeing them dull
to the value of the boon offered. At last, he directs the
commissioners deputed to superintend the enfranchisement, to
value the property of such serfs as preferred 'remaining in
the sorriness (chétiveté) of slavery,' and to tax them 'as
sufficiently and to such extent as the condition and wealth of
the individuals may conveniently allow, and as the necessity of
our war requires.' But with all this it is a grand spectacle
to see proclamation made from the throne itself of the
imprescriptible right of every man to liberty. The serfs do
not buy this right, but they will remember both the royal
lesson, and the dangerous appeal to which it instigates
against the barons. The short and obscure reign of
Philippe-le-Long [Philip V., 1316-1322] is scarcely less
important as regards the public law of France, than even that
of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his accession to the
throne decides a great question. As Louis Hutin left his queen
pregnant, his brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the
future infant. This child dies soon after its birth, and
Philippe proclaims himself king to the prejudice of a daughter
of his brother's; a step which was the more surprising from
the fact that Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of
female succession in regard to Franche-Comté and Artois. The
barons were desirous that daughters should be excluded from
inheriting fiefs, but that they should succeed to the throne
of France; and their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his
grand-niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe assembled
the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good,
by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law
of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land;
and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief
to fall into hands used to the distaff ('pour tomber en
quenouille')--a feudal argument, the effect of which was to
ruin feudality. ... By thus rejecting the right of the
daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over
the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving
always without ever giving; and a bold revocation, at this
time, of an donations made since St. Louis's day, seems to
contain the principle of the inalienableness of the royal
domain. Unfortunately, the feudal spirit which resumed
strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to
fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of
the different branches of the royal family, a princely
feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI. and Louis XI., as the
other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. This contested succession
and disaffection of the barons force Philippe-le-Long into the
paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flatters the cities, Paris, and,
above all, the University,--the grand power of Paris. He
causes his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in
presence of the masters of the university, and with their
approval. He wishes his good cities to be provided with
armories; their citizens to keep their arms in a sure place;
and appoints them a captain in each bailiwick or district,
(March the 12th, 1316). ... Praiseworthy beginnings of order
and of government brought no relief to the sufferings of the
people. During the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality
had swept off, it was said, the third of the population of the
North. The Flemish war had exhausted the last resources of the
country. ... Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great
movement took place among the people. As in the days of St.
Louis, a multitude of poor people, of peasants, of shepherds
or pastoureaux, as they were called, flock together and say
that they seek to go beyond the sea, that they are destined to
recover the Holy Land. ... They wended their way towards the
South, everywhere massacring the Jews; whom the king's
officers vainly tried to protect. At last, troops were got
together at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastoureaux, and
hanging them up by twenties and thirties the rest dispersed.
... Philippe-le-Long ... was seized with fever in the course
of the same year, (A. D. 1321,) in the month of August,
without his physicians being able to guess its cause. He
languished five months, and died. ... His brother Charles
[Charles IV., 1322-1328] succeeded him, without bestowing a
thought more on the rights of Philippe's daughter; than
Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter. The period of
Charles's reign is as barren of facts with regard to France,
as it is rich in them respecting Germany, England, and
Flanders. The Flemings imprison their count. The Germans are
divided between Frederick of Austria and Lewis of Bavaria, who
takes his rival prisoner at Muhldorf. In the midst of the
universal divisions, France seems strong from the circumstance
of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in favor of the
count of Flanders.
{1168}
He attempts, with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor; and
his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual queen of England by
the murder of Edward II. ... Charles-le-Bel ... died almost at
the same time as Edward, leaving only a daughter; so that he
was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that fine family of
princes who had sat near their father at the Council of Vienne
was extinct. In the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had
taken effect. ... This memorable epoch, which depresses
England so low, and in proportion, raises France so high,
presents, nevertheless, in the two countries two analogous
events: In England, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In
France, the feudal party places on the throne the feudal
branch of the Valois."
J. Michelet,
History of France,
books 5-6 (volume l).
See, also, VALOIS, THE HOUSE OF.
FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1347.
The king's control of the Papacy in its contest with the
emperor.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
The extent of the royal domain.
The great vassals.
The possessions of foreign princes in France.
On the accession of the House of Valois to the French throne,
in the person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1328), the royal domain had
acquired a great increase of extent. In the two centuries
since Philip I. it had gained, "by conquest, by confiscation,
or by inheritance, Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges,
Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the
counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of Champagne and
Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois, Marche, nearly the whole of
Languedoc, and, lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which
belonging in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the last
three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre and
of the counties of Champagne and Brie, was married to Philip
IV., and was the mother of Louis X., Philip V. and Charles
IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But the custom among
the kings of giving apanages or estates to the princes of
their house detached afresh from the domain a great part of
the reunited territories, and created powerful princely
houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves formidable
to the monarchs. Among these great houses of the Capetian
race, the most formidable were: the house of Burgundy, which
traced back to king Robert; the house of Dreux, issue of a son
of Louis the Big, and which added by a marriage the duchy of
Brittany to the county of that name; the house of Anjou, issue
of Charles, brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1290
with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, descending from
Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of Saint Louis; and the
house of Alençon, which traced back to Philip III., and
possessed the duchy of Alençon and Perche. Besides these great
princely houses of Capetian stock, which owed their grandeur
and their origin to their apanages, there were many others
which held considerable rank in France, and of which the
possessions were transmissible to women; while the apanages
were all masculine fiefs. The most powerful of these houses
were those of Flanders, Penthièvre, Châtillon, Montmorency,
Brienne, Coucy, Vendôme, Auvergne, Foix, and Armagnac. The
vast possessions of the two last houses were in the country of
the Langue d'Oc. The counts of Foix were also masters of
Bearn, and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac, Rouergue, and
other large seigniories. Many foreign princes, besides, had
possessions in France at the accession of the Valois. The king
of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of Saintonge, and
of the duchy of Aquitaine; the king of Navarre was count of
Evreux, and possessor of many other towns in Normandy; the
king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory of
Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of the German
empire, paid homage to the king of France for many fiefs that
he held in Champagne; and, lastly, the Pope possessed the
county Venaissin, detached from Provence."
E. de Bonnechose,
History of France,
volume 1, page 224.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
Accession of King Philip VI.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
The splendor of the Monarchy on the eve of the calamitous
wars.
"Indisputably, the king of France [Philip VI., or Philip de
Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328] a great king. He had
just reinstated Flanders in its state of dependence on him.
The king of England had done him homage for his French
provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in Hungary. He
was protector of the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by a
court of kings--by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and
the Scottish monarch was often one of the circle. The famous
John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, and father to the
emperor Charles IV., declared that he could not live out of
Paris, 'the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He
fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to the court of
the great king of France--where was kept up one constant
festival, where jousts and tournaments ever went on, and the
romances of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table, were
realized."
J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 6, chapter 1.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339.
The claim of Edward III. of England to the French crown.
"History tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the
Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daughter Isabella,
married to the king of England [Edward II.]. These three sons
were very handsome. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during
the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin [Louis X.];
the second was named Philip the Great, or the Long [Philip
V.]; and the third, Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were
kings of France, after their father Philip, by legitimate
succession, one after the other, without having by marriage
any male heirs; yet, on the death of the last king, Charles,
the twelve peers and barons of France did not give the kingdom
to Isabella, the sister, who was queen of England, because
they said and maintained, and still do insist, that the
kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a
woman; consequently neither to Isabella, nor to her son, the
king of England [Edward III.]; for they hold that the son of a
woman cannot claim any right of succession, where that woman
has none herself. For these reasons the twelve peers and
barons of France unanimously gave the kingdom of France to the
lord Philip of Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put
aside the queen of England, who was sister to Charles, the
late king of France, and her son. Thus, as it seemed to many
people, the succession went out of the right line; which has
been the occasion of the most destructive wars and
devastations of countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as
you will learn hereafter; the real object of this history
being to relate the great enterprises and deeds of arms
achieved in these wars, for from the time of good Charlemagne,
king of France, never were such feats performed."
J. Froissart, Chronicles (Johnes'),
book 1, chapter 4.