Philip’s relations with the Papacy have been already alluded to (v. p. [29]). In his quarrel with Boniface VIII. he had substantial justice on his side, and the national development of France necessitated an energetic resistance to the exorbitant pretensions of the mediæval Papacy. But these considerations do not justify the brutality of the French soldiery at Anagni, nor the vindictiveness with which Philip persisted in blackening the character of Boniface after the latter’s death. Equally inexcusable was his treatment of the ill-fated Benedict XI., though there is no reasonable ground for believing the charge that Philip’s agents poisoned the Pope in consequence of his excommunication of Boniface’s assailants. In Clement V. the king was face to face with a Pope upon whose subservience he had reasonable claims, and who was fully his match in diplomatic subtlety and in the want of scruples. The hold which Philip obtained upon the Papacy at this time enabled him to effect the blackest action of his reign, the destruction of the Templars. The crusades in the East had come to an |Suppression of the Templars.| end with the fall of Acre in 1291, and the Orders which had been formed for the defence or conquest of Palestine must inevitably fall victims to the jealousy which their wealth and independence excited in Europe, or they must undertake some new task which would justify their existence and give them a renewed hold on the public opinion of Europe. The Knights of St. John and of the German Order of St. Mary chose the latter course, and secured a prolongation of their corporate existence—the one in Prussia, and the other in the island of Rhodes. The Templars, who had been the most prominent in the wars of Palestine, were the least prepared to find a new occupation, and their inaction impaled them on the other horn of the dilemma. It is needless to go through the long catalogue of charges, some horrible and some absurd, which were brought by the king’s agents against the Order. It was inevitable that a celibate society of warriors should give occasion for the belief that the vow of chastity was not always observed. It is credible that in their intercourse with the Saracens many of the knights may have been led into unbelief, or even to adopt a contemptuous and irreverent attitude towards Christianity. But it is not credible that the whole Order was guilty of the obscenity, blasphemy, and irreligion that were charged against its members. Confessions extorted under horrible tortures and recanted when health and sanity were restored, do not constitute evidence from which any reasonable conclusions can be drawn. But Philip IV. was deaf to all considerations of justice or of clemency, and his iron will extorted a condemnation from judicial tribunals and from the Pope. In 1310, after the trial had lasted for two years, fifty-four knights were burned in Paris, and many other executions followed. In 1312 the Order was formally suppressed, and its possessions transferred to the Knights of St. John. This last provision was only imperfectly fulfilled, and much of the Templars’ hoarded wealth never passed from the hands of the king. In 1314 the last grand master, Jacques de Molai, after a solemn retractation of all extorted confessions, and a denial of the truth of all charges against the Order, perished at the stake on an island in the Seine.
Philip’s last success was an encroachment on those border territories between France and Germany which constituted |Encroachments in Arles.| the obsolete kingdom of Arles. The first step towards their annexation to France had been taken when Philip III. inherited the marquisate of Provence (see above, p. [47]). In 1291 Philip IV. had arranged a marriage between his second son, Philip, and Jeanne, daughter and heiress of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy. This marriage brought Franche-Comté under French influence, but did not result in the final annexation of the province, which was not accomplished till the treaty of Nymegen in 1678. For a long time the city of Lyons and the adjacent territory had been objects of French covetousness, and constant quarrels between the archbishop and the citizens offered frequent pretexts for intervention. At last, in 1312, taking advantage of the Emperor Henry VII.’s absence in Italy, Philip IV. ventured to take the final step, and Lyons was incorporated with France.
We must now turn to Philip IV.’s domestic government, |Domestic Government.| which constitutes his sole claim to a place among the great kings of history. His aims were those of his predecessors—those, in fact, of all kings in the later Middle Ages who wished to extend their power. He had to destroy feudalism as a basis of government, or, in the words of a great historian, to ‘eliminate the doctrine of tenure from political life.’ The essential vice of the feudal system was that every man was directly bound only to the immediate lord of whom he held his land; the connection with that lord’s suzerain was purely indirect. Hence came an inevitable tendency to disruption; the tie between vassal and lord was stronger than the indirect tie between the sub-tenant and the king; if a great noble rebelled he could compel his tenants to follow him even against his suzerain. For this system, which had many merits, but was inconsistent with either national unity or a strong government, Philip desired to substitute an organisation in which all Frenchmen, whether tenants-in-chief or sub-tenants, should stand in equal subjection to the law and to the king as the source and guardian of the law.
To accomplish this end, an efficient administrative machinery was necessary, and of this the foundations had been laid by Philip’s predecessors. The country was divided into bailliages in the north and sénéchaussées in the south. Philip IV. regulated and extended the functions of the bailiffs and seneschals, and employed them not only to carry out his edicts in the provinces, but also to supply him with that accurate local information without which centralisation is useless and incompetent. Besides these local officials, he |The King’s Court.| had the cour du roi which attended his person. This body, the earliest institution of Capetian France, was originally merely the court of the king’s domain, and consisted of the household officers and the immediate domain tenants. From time to time, however, the king must have had to decide questions concerning the great tenants-in-chief, and by the essential principle of feudalism such questions must be referred to their equals. Hence arose the court of peers, the creation of which is assigned by tradition to Philip Augustus when he summoned John of England to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Whether this court ever had a separate existence from the domain court is difficult to decide, but if it had, it soon lost it. In the reign of Louis IX. the domain court was transformed, when necessary, into a court of peers by the addition to it of some of the great vassals. At the same time, the court was made more efficient by the introduction of trained lawyers. Under Philip IV. these lawyers became the real managers of the work of justice and administration; and the nobles, though retaining the right of attendance, preferred as a rule to absent themselves from business in which their want of legal training placed them at a conspicuous disadvantage. The work of the court included all departments of government: the advising of the king, the management of finance, and the administration of justice. And the judicial work was enormously increased, partly by the compulsion of the nobles to allow appeals from their local courts to that of the suzerain, and partly by the reservation of an increasing number of cas royaux—i.e. cases which had to be brought in the first instance before the king. It was impossible for one body of men to discharge such a vast mass of business, and the court was gradually split up into three great departments, which continued, with modifications in detail, to conduct the routine administration of France till the Revolution.
(1) The first of these divisions was the conseil du roi, which corresponds roughly to the Privy Council in England. It consisted of the great officers of the household with fifteen councillors of state and two or more secretaries. Its chief business was to advise the king in all affairs of government. Ordinary jurisdiction was delegated to the Parliament, but the council continued to exercise judicial power. Appeals could in the last instance be made to the king in council, and he could evoke cases to it from other courts.
(2) The chambre des comptes was the financial division of the royal court, and resembles the English Exchequer. It received and audited the accounts of the bailiffs and seneschals; it had jurisdiction in all financial suits, and it registered all edicts and deeds which concerned the domain.
(3) The most famous of the three bodies was the great law-court of France, the Parliament of Paris. Its functions correspond to those of the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England, but its peculiar history arises from the maintenance of a corporate unity and authority which the English judges never possessed. Philip IV. not only gave to the Parliament a separate existence, he also fixed its sessions in Paris, and organised its three earliest sub-divisions. The chambre des requêtes decided the lesser cases of first instance brought directly before the Parliament. The chambre des enquêtes received and prepared for further consideration all appeals from lower courts. The grande chambre was the largest and most important of the sub-divisions, and is often called the Parliament by itself. In it the peers retained the right of sitting down to the Revolution, but they only appeared on formal occasions. The grande chambre decided all important appeals, and cases of first instance concerning the peers, the royal officers, and the members of the sovereign courts. At first the Parliament only met twice a year, at Easter and All Saints. But the two sessions proved insufficient to discharge the growing business of the court, and, later in the century, it was made a permanent court, and its members were appointed for life or during the royal pleasure. In addition to its judicial work, the Parliament had to register all royal edicts, treaties of peace, and other formal documents. This was originally a duty rather than a right; and it was not till much later that the Parliament based upon this practice a claim to remonstrate against, or even to veto, the edicts of the king.
The organisation of this administrative machinery is the greatest achievement of Philip IV.’s domestic government. |The States-General.| But his reign is also noteworthy for the origin of the States-General, which at one time promised to become the basis of a constitutional system of government such as was our Parliament established in England, but was ultimately crushed into insignificance by the crown which had created it as a mere instrument to serve its own ends. The first meeting was held in 1302, when Philip wished to parade the unanimity of his subjects in opposing the pretensions of Boniface VIII. They were summoned again in 1308 to condemn the Templars, and in 1314 to support the king in a renewed war with Flanders. Philip may have found a model for these assemblies either in the provincial estates of Languedoc and Brittany, or in the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, but it is more than probable that he was inspired by the example of his great contemporary, Edward I. of England, who in 1295 had summoned the famous ‘model parliament,’ and had himself in 1301 obtained a protest against the papal claims from a parliament at Lincoln.
The States-General under Philip IV. are especially remarkable for their numbers. All tenants-in-chief, whether clerical or lay, were invited to attend in person, and those who were prevented by any unavoidable cause might send proxies. The cathedral chapters and monasteries sent representatives; and so did all the towns of any size in the kingdom. There was no attempt to determine the condition which entitled a man either to vote or to be elected. The only class which was unrepresented was the peasantry. When the States met, they were divided into three estates: clergy, nobles, and citizens. The meeting only lasted a day, and there was no general discussion. The royal spokesman explained the object for which they were summoned, and then each estate separately drew up a document in accordance with the wishes of the king.
It is obvious that the summons of the States-General was not in any way forced upon the king by external pressure, but was a mere expedient to strengthen his hands. The assembly never got rid of this taint on their origin. If a French king thought his end could be best attained by summoning the States-General, he summoned them: but if, on the contrary, he thought it advisable to treat separately with the various provinces, he did so. Later in the century an attempt was made to secure regular assemblies with definite authority, but the attempt was a failure, and parliamentary government was never established in France until the nineteenth century.