At the extreme north-east of Paris the Rue du Crimée leads to a group of once barren hills, part of which is now made into the Park of the Buttes Chaumont. Here, by the Mount of the Falcon (Montfaucon[36]) in 892 King Eudes fell upon an army of Northmen, who had come against Paris, and utterly routed them. Antheric, the noble pastor, with his virgin-like face, led three hundred footmen into the fight and slew six hundred of the acephali. But Abbo’s muse now fails him. Eudes, noble Eudes, is no more worthy of his office, and Christ’s sheep are perishing. Where is the ancient prowess of France? Three vices are working her destruction: pride, the sinful charms of Venus (fœda venustas veneris) and love of sumptuous garments. Her people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones. Monk Abbo wearies not of singing, but the deeds of noble Eudes are wanting. All the poet craves is another victory to rejoice Heaven; another defeat of the black host of the enemy.
But the noble Eudes was now a king with rebellious vassals. Paris was never captured again, but the acephali were devouring the land. The grim spectres of Famine and Plague made a charnel-house of whole regions of France, while Eudes was fighting the Count of Flanders, a rival king, and the ineffectual emperor, Charles the Simple. He it was who after Eudes’ death, by the treaty of St. Claire-sur-Epte in 902, surrendered to the barbarians the fair province, subsequently to be known as Normandy. The new prayer in the Litany, “From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us,” was heard. The dread name of Rollo now vanishes from history to live again in song, and under the title of Robert, assumed from his god-father, he reappears to win a dukedom and a king’s daughter. The Normans are broken in to Christianity, law and order; their land becomes one of the most civilized regions of France; the fiercest of church levellers are known as the greatest of church builders in Christendom. They gave their name to a style of Christian architecture in Europe and a line of kings to England,[37] Naples and Sicily.
The new empire of Charlemagne had endured less than three generations; from its wreck were formed the seven kingdoms of France, Navarre, the two Burgundies, Lorraine, Italy and Germany. The people of France never forgot the lesson of the dark century of the invasions. A subtle change had been operating. The empire had decomposed into kingdoms; the kingdoms were segregating into lordships. Men in their need were attracted to the few strong and dominant lords whose courage and resource afforded them a rallying point and shelter against disintegrating forces: the poor and defenceless huddled for protection to the seigneurs of strongholds which had withstood the floods of barbarians that were devastating the land. The seeds of feudalism were sown in the long winter of the Norman terror.
CHAPTER IV
THE RISE OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS AND THE GROWTH OF PARIS
FROM 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers of France were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[38] grandson and great-grandson of Robert the Strong. Lay abbots of St. Martin of Tours, St. Denis, and St. Germain, Counts of Paris and Dukes of France, they pursued the policy of the mayors of the palace in Merovingian times, accepting the nominal kingship of the degenerate Carlovingians—Louis from overseas, Lothaire, and Louis the Lazy—until the time was ripe to pick up the fallen sceptre. They founded a new line of kings of France which stretches onward through history for a thousand years until the guillotine of the Revolution cut it in twain. It is Hugh Capet whom Dante, following a legend of his time, calls the son of a butcher of Paris, and whom he hears among the weeping souls cleaving to the dust and purging their avarice in the fifth cornice of Purgatory.
Their patrimony was a small one—the provinces of the Isle de France, La Brie, La Beauce, Beauvais and Valois; but their sway extended over the land of the Langue d’oil, with its strenuous northern life, le doux royaume de la France, the sweet realm of France, cradle of the great French Monarchy and home of art, learning and chivalry. The globe of the earth, symbol of universal empire, gives way to the hand of justice as the emblem of kingship. They were, it is true, little more than seigneurs over other seigneurs, some of whom were almost as powerful as they; but that little, the drop of holy chrism by which they were consecrated of the Church, contained within it a potency of future grandeur. They were the Lord’s anointed, supported by the Lord’s Vicar on earth: to disobey them was to disobey God. Tribal sovereignty had now given way to territorial sovereignty. Feudal lords and abbots were supreme within their own domains. The people, long forsaken by their emperors, had in their turn forsaken them. In order “not to be at the mercy of all the great ones they surrendered themselves to one of the great ones” and in exchange for protection gave troth and service. Cities, churches and monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had demonstrated the value of a walled city, for the dread Rollo himself had three times assaulted it in vain. During the latter part of the Norman terror, from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had brought their holy relics within its walls as to a city of refuge. Gone were the lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into the country. Fortifications were everywhere raised around the dwelling-places of men. The ample spaces within cities were soon to give place to crowded houses and narrow streets. The might of the archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the councils of kings and dominated the administration of justice; the moral, social and political life of the country centred around them. Armed with the sword and the cross they held almost absolute sway over their little republics; coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small armies and went to the chase in almost regal state. The land bristled with castles and fortified towns and abbeys, and was parcelled out into territories of varying extent, from great duchies equal to a dozen modern departments, to the small domain just enough to maintain a single knight.