37. Moustaches,—Mr. Gibbon means, I imagine: and I take leave also to suppose that the nobles, and noble ladies, might wear such tress and ringlet as became them. But again, we receive unexpectedly embarrassing light on the democratic institutions of the Franks, in being told that "the various trades, the labours of agriculture, and the arts of hunting and fishing, were exercised by servile hands for the emolument of the Sovereign."
'Servile' and 'Emolument,' however, though at first they sound very dreadful and very wrong, are only Miltonic-Gibbonian expressions of the general fact that the Frankish Kings had ploughmen in their fields, employed weavers and smiths to make their robes and swords, hunted with huntsmen, hawked with falconers, and were in other respects tyrannical to the ordinary extent that an English Master of Hounds may be. "The mansion of the long-haired Kings was surrounded with convenient yards and stables for poultry and cattle; the garden was planted with useful vegetables; the magazines filled with corn and wine either for sale or consumption; and the whole administration conducted by the strictest rules of private economy."
38. I have collected these imperfect, and not always extremely consistent, notices of the aspect and temper of the Franks out of Mr. Gibbon's casual references to them during a period of more than two centuries,—and the last passage quoted, which he accompanies with the statement that "one hundred and sixty of these rural palaces were [Pg 46] scattered through the provinces of their kingdom," without telling us what kingdom, or at what period, must I think be held descriptive of the general manner and system of their monarchy after the victories of Clovis. But, from the first hour you hear of him, the Frank, closely considered, is always an extremely ingenious, well meaning, and industrious personage;—if eagerly acquisitive, also intelligently conservative and constructive; an element of order and crystalline edification, which is to consummate itself one day, in the aisles of Amiens; and things generally insuperable and impregnable, if the inhabitants of them had been as sound-hearted as their builders, for many a day beyond.
39. But for the present, we must retrace our ground a little; for indeed I have lately observed with compunction, in rereading some of my books for revised issue, that if ever I promise, in one number or chapter, careful consideration of any particular point in the next, the next never does touch upon the promised point at all, but is sure to fix itself passionately on some antithetic, antipathic, or antipodic, point in the opposite hemisphere. This manner of conducting a treatise I find indeed extremely conducive to impartiality and largeness of view; but can conceive it to be—to the general reader—not only disappointing, (if indeed I may flatter myself that I ever interest enough to disappoint), but even liable to confirm in his mind some of the fallacious and extremely absurd insinuations of adverse critics respecting my inconsistency, vacillation, and liability to be affected by changes of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, therefore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope partly to correct myself in this fault of promise breaking, and at whatever sacrifice of my variously fluent or re-fluent humour, to tell in each successive chapter in some measure what the reader justifiably expects to be told.
40. I left, merely glanced at, in my opening chapter, the story of the vase of Soissons. It may be found (and it is very nearly the only thing that is to be found respecting the personal life or character [Pg 47] of the first Louis) in every cheap popular history of France; with cheap popular moralities engrafted thereon. Had I time to trace it to its first sources, perhaps it might take another aspect. But I give it as you may anywhere find it—asking you only to consider whether even as so read—it may not properly bear a somewhat different moral.
41. The story is, then, that after the battle of Soissons, in the division of Roman, or Gallic spoil, the king wished to have a beautifully wrought silver vase for—'himself,' I was going to write—and in my last chapter did mistakenly infer that he wanted it for his better self,—his Queen. But he wanted it for neither;—it was to restore to St. Remy, that it might remain among the consecrated treasures of Rheims. That is the first point on which the popular histories do not insist, and which one of his warriors claiming equal division of treasure, chose also to ignore. The vase was asked by the King in addition to his own portion, and the Frank knights, while they rendered true obedience to their king as a leader, had not the smallest notion of allowing him what more recent kings call 'Royalties'—taxes on everything they touch. And one of these Frank knights or Counts—a little franker than the rest—and as incredulous of St. Remy's saintship as a Protestant Bishop, or Positivist Philosopher—took upon him to dispute the King's and the Church's claim, in the manner, suppose, of a Liberal opposition in the House of Commons; and disputed it with such security of support by the public opinion of the fifth century, that—the king persisting in his request—the fearless soldier dashed the vase to pieces with his war-axe, exclaiming "Thou shalt have no more than thy portion by lot."
42. It is the first clear assertion of French 'Liberté, Fraternité and Egalité,' supported, then, as now, by the destruction, which is the only possible active operation of "free" personages, on the art they cannot produce.
The king did not continue the quarrel. Cowards will think that he paused in cowardice, and malicious persons, that he paused in malignity. He did pause in anger assuredly; but biding its time, [Pg 48] which the anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians being told not to let the sun go down upon it. Precept which Christians now-a-days are perfectly ready to obey, if it is somebody else who has been injured; and indeed, the difficulty in such cases is usually to get them to think of the injury even while the Sun rises on their wrath. [2-9]
43. The sequel is very shocking indeed—to modern sensibility. I give it in the, if not polished, at least delicately varnished, language of the Pictorial History.
"About a year afterwards, on reviewing his troops, he went to the man who had struck the vase, and examining his arms, complained that they were in bad condition!" (Italics mine) "and threw them" (What? shield and sword?) on the ground. The soldier stooped to recover them; and at that moment the King struck him on the head with his battle-axe, crying 'Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons.' The Moral modern historian proceeds to reflect that "this—as an evidence of the condition of the Franks, and of the ties by which they were united, gives but the idea of a band of Robbers and their chief." Which is, indeed, so far as I can myself look into and decipher the nature of things, the Primary idea to be entertained respecting most of the kingly and military organizations in this world, down to our own day; and, (unless perchance it be the Afghans and Zulus who are stealing our lands in England—instead of we theirs, in their several countries.) But concerning the manner of this piece of military execution, I must for the present leave the reader to consider with himself, whether indeed it be less Kingly, or more savage, to strike an uncivil soldier on the head with one's own battle-axe, than, for instance, to strike a person like Sir Thomas More on the neck with an executioner's,—using for the mechanism, and as it were guillotine bar and rope to the blow—the manageable forms of National Law, and the gracefully twined intervention of a polite group of noblemen and bishops.