In the year 1300 a jubilee was celebrated at Rome, when remission of sins and other spiritual indulgences were offered to all visitors by the liberal hand of Pope Boniface the Eighth. And for the thirty days of the solemn ceremonial, the crowds who poured in from all parts of Europe, and pursued their way from church to church and kissed with reverential lips the relics of the saints and martyrs, gave an appearance of strength and universality to the Roman Church which had long departed from it. Yet the downward course had been so slow, and each defection or defeat had been so covered from observation in a cloud of magnificent boasts, that the real weakness of the Papacy was only known to the wise and politic. Even in the splendours and apparent triumph of the jubilee processions it was perceived by the eyes of hostile statesmen that the day of faith was past.

Dante, the great poet of Italy, was there, piercing with his Ithuriel spear the false forms under which the spiritual tyranny concealed itself. Countless multitudes deployed before him without blinding him for a moment to the unreality of all he saw. Others were there, not deriving their conclusions, like Dante, from the intuitive insight into truth with which the highest imaginations are gifted, but from the calmer premises of reason and observation. Even while the pÆans were loudest and the triumph at its height, thoughts were entering into many hearts which had never been harboured before, but which in no long space bore their fruits, not only in opposition to the actual proceedings of Rome, but in undisguised contempt and ridicule of all its claims. Boniface himself, however, was ignorant of all these secret feelings. He was now past eighty years of age, and burning with a wilder personal ambition and more presumptuous ostentation than would have been pardonable at twenty. He appeared in the processions of the jubilee, dressed in the robes of the Empire, with two swords, and the globe of sovereignty carried before him. A herald cried, at the same time, “Peter, behold thy successor! Christ, behold thy vicar upon earth!” But the high looks of the proud were soon to be brought low. The King of France at that time was Philip the Handsome, the most unprincipled and obstinate of men, who stuck at no baseness or atrocity to gain his ends,—who debased the Crown, pillaged the Church, oppressed the people, tortured the Jews, and impoverished the nobility,—a self-willed, strong-handed, evil-hearted despot, and glowing with an intense desire to humble and spoil the Holy Father himself. If he could get the Pope to be his tax-gatherer, and, instead of emptying the land of all its wealth for the benefit of the Roman exchequer, pour Roman, German, English, European contributions into his private treasury, the object of his life would be gained. His coffers would be overflowing, and his principal opponent disgraced. A wonderful and apparently impossible scheme, but which nevertheless succeeded. The combatants at first seemed very equally matched. When Boniface made an extravagant demand, Philip sent him a contemptuous reply. When Boniface turned for alliances to the Emperor or to England, Philip threw himself on the sympathy of his lords and the inhabitants of the towns; for the parts formerly played by Pope and King were now reversed. The Papacy, instead of recurring to the people and strengthening itself by contact with the masses who had looked to the Church as their natural guard from the aggressions of their lords, now had recourse to the more dangerous expedient of exciting one sovereign against another, and weakened its power as much by concessions to its friends as by the hostility of its foes. The king, on the other hand, flung himself on the support of his subjects, including both the Church and Parliament, and thus raised a feeling of national independence which was more fatal to Roman preponderance than the most active personal enmity could have been. Accordingly, we find Boniface offending the population of France by his intemperate attacks on the worst of kings, and that worst of kings attracting the admiration of his people by standing up for the dignity of the Crown against the presumption of the Pope. The fact of this national spirit is shown by the very curious circumstance that while Philip and his advisers, in their quarrels with Boniface, kept within the bounds of respectful language in the letters they actually sent to Rome, other answers were disseminated among the people as having been forwarded to the Pope, outraging all the feelings of courtesy and respect. It was like the conduct of the Chinese mandarins, who publish vainglorious and triumphant bulletins among their people, while they write in very different language to the enemy at their gates. Thus, in reply to a very insulting brief of Boniface, beginning, “Ausculta, fili,” (Listen, son,) and containing a catalogue of all his complaints against the French king, Philip published a version of it, omitting all the verbiage in which the insolent meaning was involved, and accompanied it in the same way with a copy of the unadorned eloquence which constituted his reply. In this he descended to very plain speaking. “Philip,” he says, “by the grace of God, King of the French, to Boniface, calling himself Pope, little or no salutation. Be it known to your Fatuity that we are subject in temporals to no man alive; that the collation of churches and vacant prebends is inherent in our Crown; that their ‘fruits’ belong to us; that all presentations made or to be made by us are valid; that we will maintain our presentees in possession of them with all our power; and that we hold for fools and idiots whosoever believes otherwise.” This strange address received the support of the great majority of the nation, and was meant as a translation into the vulgar tongue of the real intentions of the irritated monarch, which were concealed in the letter really despatched in a mist of polite circumlocutions. Boniface perceived the animus of his foe, but bore himself as loftily as ever. When a meeting of the barons, held in the Louvre, had appealed to a General Council and had passed a vote of condemnation against the Pope as guilty of many crimes, not exclusive of heresy itself, he answered, haughtily, that the summoning of a council was a prerogative of the Pope, and that already the King had incurred the danger of excommunication for the steps he had taken against the Holy Chair. To prevent the publication of the sentence, which might have been made a powerful weapon against France in the hands of Albert of Germany or Edward of England, it was necessary to give notice of an appeal to a General Council into the hands of the Pope in person. He had retired to Anagni, his native town, where he found himself more secure among his friends and relations than in the capital of his See. Colonna, a discontented Roman and sworn enemy of Boniface, and Supino, a military adventurer, whom Philip bought over with a bribe of ten thousand florins, introduced Nogaret, the French chancellor and chief adviser of the king, into Anagni, with cries from their armed attendants of “Death to the Pope!” “Long live the King of France!” The cardinals fled in dismay. The inhabitants, not being able to prevent their visitors from pillaging the shops, joined them in that occupation, and every thing was in confusion. The Pope was in despair. His own nephew had abandoned his cause and made terms for himself. Accounts vary as to his behaviour in these extremities. Perhaps they are all true at different periods of the scene. At first, overwhelmed with the treachery of his friends, he is said to have burst into tears. Then he gathered his ancient courage, and, when commanded to abdicate, offered his neck to the assailants; and at last, to strike them with awe, or at least to die with dignity, he bore on his shoulders the mantle of St. Peter, placed the crown of Constantine on his head, and grasped the keys and cross in his hands. Colonna, they say, struck him on the cheek with his iron gauntlet till the blood came. Let us hope that this is an invention of the enemy; for the Pope was eighty-six years old, and Colonna was a Roman soldier. There is always a tendency to elevate the sufferer in the cause we favour, by the introduction of ennobling circumstances. In this and other instances of the same kind there is the further temptation in orthodox historians to make the most they can of the martyrdom of one of their chiefs, and in a peculiar manner to glorify the wrongs of their hero by their resemblance to the sufferings of Christ. But the rest of the story is melancholy enough without the aggravation of personal pain. The pontiff abstained from food for three whole days. He consumed his grief in secret, and was only relieved at last from fears of the dagger or poison by an insurrection of the people. They fell upon the French escort when they perceived how weak it was, and carried the Pope into the market-place. He said, “Good people, you have seen how our enemies have spoiled me of my goods. Behold me as poor as Job. I tell you truly, I have nothing to eat or drink. If there is any good woman who will charitably bestow on me a little bread and wine, or even a little water, I will give her God’s blessing and mine. Whoever will bring me the smallest thing in this my necessity, I will give him remission of all his sins.” All the people cried, “Long live the Holy Father!” They ran and brought him bread and wine, and any thing they had. Everybody would enter and speak to him, just as to any other of the poor. In a short time after this he proceeded to Rome, and felt once more in safety. But his heart was tortured by anger and a thirst for vengeance. He became insane; and when he tried to escape from the restraints his state demanded, and found his way barred by the Orsini, his insanity became madness. He foamed at the mouth and ground his teeth when he was spoken to. He repelled the offers of his friends with curses and violence, and died without the sacraments or consolations of the Church. "A.D. 1303."The people remembered the prophecy made of him by his predecessor Celestin:—“You mounted like a fox; you will reign like a lion; you will die like a dog.”

But the degradation of the papal chair was not yet complete, and Philip was far from satisfied. Merely to have harassed to death an old man of eighty-six was not sufficient for a monarch who wanted a servant in the Pope more than a victim. To try his power over Benedict the Eleventh, the successor of Boniface, he began a process in the Roman court against the memory of his late antagonist. Benedict replied by an anathema in general terms on the murderers of Boniface, and all Philip’s crimes and schemings seemed of no avail. But one day the sister of a religious order presented His Holiness with a basket of figs, and in a short time the pontifical throne was vacant.

Now was the time for the triumph of the king. He had devoted much time and money to win over a number of cardinals to his cause, and obtained a promise under their hands and seals that they would vote for whatever candidate he chose to name. He was not long in fixing on a certain Bernard de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, the most greedy and unprincipled of the prelates of France, and appointed a meeting with him to settle the terms of a bargain. They met in a forest, they heard mass together, and took mutual oaths of secrecy, and then the business began. “See, archbishop,” said the king: “I have it in my power to make you Pope if I choose; and if you promise me six favours which I will ask of you, I will assure you that dignity, and give you evidence of the truth of what I say.” So saying, he showed the letters and delegation of both the electoral colleges. The archbishop, filled with covetousness, and seeing at once how entirely the popedom depended on the king, threw himself trembling with joy at Philip’s feet. “My lord,” he said, “I now perceive you love me more than any man alive, and that you render me good for evil. It is for you to command,—for me to obey; and I shall always be ready to do so.” The king lifted him up, kissed him on the mouth, and said to him, “The six special favours I have to ask of you are these. First, that you will reconcile me entirely with the Church, and get me pardoned for my misdeed in arresting Pope Boniface. Second, that you will give the communion to me and all my supporters. Third, that you will give me tithes of the clergy of my realm for five years, to supply the expenses of the war in Flanders. Fourth, that you will destroy and annul the memory of Boniface the Eighth. Fifth, that you will give the dignity of Cardinal to Messer Jacopo, and Messer Piero de la Colonna, along with certain others of my friends. As for the sixth favour and promise, I reserve it for the proper time and place, for it is a great and secret thing.” The archbishop promised all by oath on the Corpus Domini, and gave his brother and two nephews as hostages. The king, on the other hand, made oath to have him elected Pope.

His Holiness Clement the Fifth was therefore the thrall and servant of Philip le Bel. No office was too lowly, or sacrifice too large, for the grateful pontiff. He carried his subserviency so far as to cross the Alps and receive the wages of his obedience, the papal tiara, at Lyons. He became in fact a citizen of France, and subject of the crown. He delivered over the clergy to the relentless hands of the king. He gave him tithes of all their livings; and as the Count of Flanders owed money to Philip which he had no means of paying, the generosity of the Pope came to the rescue, and he gave the tithes of the Flemish clergy to the bankrupt count in order to enable him to pay his debt to the exacting monarch. But the gift of these taxes was not a transfer from the Pope to the king or count: His Holiness did not reduce his own demands in consideration of the subsidies given to those powers. He completed, indeed, the ruin the royal tax-gatherers began; for he travelled in more than imperial state from end to end of France, and ate bishop and abbot, and prior and prebendary, out of house and home. Wherever he rested for a night or two, the land became impoverished; and all this wealth was poured into the lap of a certain Brunissende de PÉrigord, who cost the Church, it was popularly said, more than the Holy Land. But the capacity of Christian contribution was soon exhausted; and yet the interminable avarice of Pope and King went on. The honourable pair hit upon an excellent expedient, and the Jews were offered as a fresh pasture for the unimpaired appetite of the Father of Christendom and the eldest son of the Church. Philip hated their religion, but seems to have had a great respect for the accuracy of their proceedings in trade. So, to gratify the first, he stripped them of all they had, and, to prove the second, confiscated the money he found entered in their books as lent on interest to Christians. He was found to be a far more difficult creditor to deal with than the original lenders had been, and many a baron and needy knight had to refund to Philip the sums, with interest at twenty per cent., which they might have held indefinitely from the sons of Abraham and repudiated in an access of religious fervour at last.

But worse calamities were hanging over the heads of knights and barons than the avarice of Philip and the dishonesty of Clement. Knighthood itself, and feudalism, were about to die,—knighthood, which had offered at all events an ideal of nobleness and virtue, and feudalism, which had replaced the expiring civilization of Rome founded on the centralization of power in one man’s hands, and the degradation of all the rest, with a new form of society which derived its vitality from independent action and individual self-respect. It was by a still wider expansion of power and influence that feudalism was to be superseded. Other elements besides the possession of land were to come into the constitution of the new state of human affairs. The man henceforth was not to be the mere representative of so many acres of ground. His individuality was to be still further defined, and learning, wealth, knowledge, arts, and sciences were from this time forth to have as much weight in the commonwealth as the hoisted pennon and strong-armed followers of the steel-clad warrior.

We have already seen the prosperity of the towns, and have even heard the contemptuous laughter with which the high-fed burghers of Ghent or Bruges received the caracollings of their ponderous suzerain as, armed cap-À-pied, he rode up to their impregnable walls. Not less barricaded than the contemptuous city behind the steel fortifications with which he protected his person, the knight had nothing to fear so long as he bestrode his war-horse and managed to get breath enough through the openings of his cross-barred visor. He was as safe in his iron coating as a turtle in its shell; but he was nearly as unwieldy as he was safe. When galloping forward against a line of infantry, nothing could resist his weight. With heavy mace or sweeping sword he cleared his ground on either side, and the unarmoured adversary had no means of repelling his assault. A hundred knights, therefore, we may readily believe, very often have put their thousands or tens of thousands to flight. We read, indeed, of immense slaughters of the common people, accompanied with the loss of one single knight; and this must be attributed to the perfection which the armourer’s art had attained, by which no opening for arrow or spear-point was left in the whole suit. But military instruments had for some time been invented, which, by projecting large stones with enormous force, flattened the solid cuirass or crushed the glittering helm. Once get the stunned or wounded warrior on the ground, there was no further danger to be apprehended. He lay in his iron prison unable to get up, unable to breathe, and with the additional misfortune of being so admirably protected that his enemies had difficulty in putting him out of his pain. This, however, was counterbalanced by the ample time he possessed, during their futile efforts to reach a vital part, to bargain for his life; and this was another element in the safety of knightly war. A ransom could at all times preserve his throat, whereas the disabled foot-soldier was pierced with relentless point or trodden down by the infuriated horse. The knight’s position, therefore, was more like that of a fighter behind walls, only that he carried his wall with him wherever he went, and even when a breach was made could stop up the gap with a sum of money. Nobody had ever believed it possible for footmen to stand up against a charge of cavalry. No manoeuvres were learned like the hollow squares of modern times, which, at Waterloo and elsewhere, have stood unmoved against the best swordsmen of the world. But once, at the beginning of this century, in 1302, a dreadful event happened, which gave a different view of the capabilities of determined infantry in making head against their assailants, and commenced the lesson of the resistibility of mounted warriors which was completed by Bannockburn in Scotland, and Crecy and Poictiers.

The dreadful event was the entire overthrow of the knights and gentlemen of France by the citizens of a Flemish manufacturing town at the battle of Courtrai. Impetuous valour, and contempt for smiths and weavers, blinded the fiery nobles. They rushed forward with loose bridles, and, as they had disdained to reconnoitre the scene of the display, they fell headlong, one after another, horse and plume, sword and spur, into one enormous ditch which lay between them and their enemies. On they came, an avalanche of steel and horseflesh, and floundered into the muddy hole. Hundreds, thousands, unable to check their steeds, or afraid to appear irresolute, or goggling in vain through the deep holes left for their eyes, fell, struggled, writhed, and choked, till the ditch was filled with trampled knights and tumbling horses, and the burghers on the opposite bank beat in the helmets of those who tried to climb up, with jagged clubs, and hacked their naked heads. And when the whole army was annihilated, and the spoils were gathered, it was found there were princes and lords in almost incredible numbers, and four thousand golden spurs to mark the extent of the knightly slaughter and give name to the engagement. It is called the Battle of the Spurs,—for a nobler cause than another engagement of the same name, which we shall meet with in a future century, and which derived its appellation from the fact that spurs were more in requisition than swords.

Philip was at this moment in the middle of his quarrel with Boniface. He determined to compensate himself for the loss he had sustained in military fame at Courtrai by fiercer exactions on his clergy and bitterer enmity to the Pope. We have seen how he pursued the wretched Boniface to the grave, and persisted in trying to force the obsequious Clement to blacken his memory after he was dead. Clement was unwilling to expose the vices and crimes of his predecessor, and yet he had given a promise in that strange meeting in the forest to work his master’s will; he was also resident in France, and knew how unscrupulous his protector was. Philip availed himself of the discredit brought on knighthood by the loss of all those golden spurs, and compounded for leaving the deceased pontiff alone, by exacting the consent of Clement to his assault on the order of the Templars, the wealthiest institution in the world, who held thousands of the best manors in France, and whose spoils would make him the richest king in Christendom. Yet the Templars were no contemptible foes. In number they were but fourteen thousand, but their castles were over all the land; they were every one of them of noble blood, and strong in the relationship of all the great houses in Europe. If they had united with their brethren, the Knights Hospitallers, no sovereign could have resisted their demands; but, fortunately for Philip, they were rivals to the death, and gave no assistance to each other when oppressed. Both, in fact, had outlived the causes of their institution, and had forfeited the respect of the masses of the people by their ostentatious abnegation of all the rules by which they professed to be bound. Poverty, chastity, and brotherly kindness were the sworn duties of the most rich, sensual, and unpitying society which ever lived. When Richard of England was dying, he made an imaginary will, and said, “I leave my avarice to the Citeaux, my luxury to the Grey Friars, and my pride to the Templars.” And the Templars took possession of the bequest. When driven from the Holy Land, they settled in all the Christian kingdoms from Denmark to the south of Italy, and everywhere presented the same spectacle of selfishness and debauchery. In Paris they had got possession of a tract of ground equal to one-third of the whole city, and had covered it with towers and battlements, and within the unapproachable fortress lived a life of the most luxurious self-indulgence. Strange rumours got abroad of the unholy rites with which their initiations were accompanied. Their receptions into the order were so mysterious and sacred that an interloper (if it had been the King of France) would have been put to death for his intrusion. Frightful stories were told of their blasphemies and hideous ceremonials. Reports came even from over the sea, that while in Jerusalem they had conformed to the Mohammedan faith and had exchanged visits and friendly offices with the chiefs of the unbelievers. Against so dark and haughty an association it was easy to stir up the popular dislike. Nobody could take their part, they lived so entirely to themselves and shunned sympathy and society with so cold a disdain. They were men of religious vows without the humility of that condition, so they were hated by the nobles, who looked on priests as their natural inferiors; they were nobles without the individual riches of the barons and counts, and they were hated by the priests, who were at all times the foes of the aristocracy. Hated, therefore, by priest and noble, their policy would have been to make friends of the lower orders, rising citizens, and the great masses of the people. But they saw no necessity for altering their lofty course. They bore right onward in their haughty disregard of all the rest of the world, and were condemned by the universal feeling before any definite accusation was raised against them.

Clement yielded a faint consent to the proceedings of Philip, and that honourable champion of the faith gave full loose to his covetousness and hatred. First of all he prayed meekly for admission as a brother of the order. He would wear the red cross upon his shoulder and obey their godly laws. If he had obtained his object, he would have procured the grand-mastership for himself and disposed of their wealth at his own discretion. The order might have survived, but their possessions would have been Philip’s. They perhaps perceived his aim, and declined to admit him into their ranks. A rejected candidate soon changes his opinion of the former object of his ambition. He now reversed his plan, and declared they were unworthy, not only to wallow in the wealth and splendour of their commanderies, but to live in a Christian land. He said they were guilty of all the crimes and enormities by which human nature was ever disgraced. James de Molay, the grand-master, and all the knights of the order throughout France, were seized and thrown into prison. Letters were written to all other kings and princes, inciting them to similar conduct, and denouncing the doomed fraternity in the harshest terms. The promise of the spoil was tempting to the European sovereigns, but all of them resisted the inducement, or at least took gentler methods of attaining the same end. But Philip was as much pleased with the pursuit as with the catching of the game. He summoned a council of the realm, and obtained at the same time a commission of inquiry from the Pope. With these two courts to back him, it was impossible to fail. The knights were kept in noisome dungeons. They were scantily fed, and tormented with alternate promises and threats. When physically weak and mentally depressed, they were tortured in their secret cells, and under the pressure of fear and desperation confessed to whatever was laid to their charge. Relieved from their torments for a moment, they retracted their confessions; but the written words remained. "A.D. 1312."And in one day, before the public had been prepared for such extremity of wrong, fifty-four of these Christian soldiers—now old, and fallen from their high estate—were publicly burned in the place of execution, and no further limit was placed to the rapacity of the king. Still the odious process crept on with the appearance of law, for already the forms of perverted justice were found safer and more certain than either sword or fagot; and at last, in 1314, the ruined brotherhood were allowed to join themselves to other fraternities. The name of Templar was blotted out from the knightly roll-call of all Europe; and in every nation, in England and Scotland particularly, the order was despoiled of all its possessions. Clement, however, was furious at seeing the moderation of rulers like Edward II., who merely stripped the Templars of their houses and lands, and did not dabble, as his patron Philip had done, in their blood, and rebuked them in angry missives for their coldness in the cause of religion.

Now, early in this century, a Pope had been personally ill used, and his successor had become the pensioner and prisoner of one of the basest of kings; a glorious brotherhood of Christian knights had been shamelessly and bloodily destroyed. Was there no outcry from outraged piety?—no burst of indignation against the perpetrator of so foul a wrong? Pity was at last excited by the sufferings and humiliations of the brothers of the Temple; but pity is not a feeling on which knighthood can depend for vitality or strength. Perhaps, indeed, the sympathy raised for the sad ending of that once-dreaded institution was more fatal to its revival, and more injurious to the credit of all surviving chivalry, than the greatest amount of odium would have been. Speculative discussions were held about the guilt or innocence of the Templars, but the worst of their crimes was the crime of being weak. If they had continued united and strong, nobody would have heard of the excesses laid to their charge. Passing over the impossible accusations brought against them by ignorance and hatred, the offence they were charged with which raised the greatest indignation, and was least capable of disproof, was that in their reception into the order they spat upon the crucifix and trampled on the sign of our salvation. Nothing can be plainer than that this, at the first formation of the order, had been a symbol, which in the course of years had lost its significance. At first introduced as an emblem of Peter’s denial and of worldly disbelief, to be exchanged, when once they were clothed with the Crusader’s mantle, for unflinching service and undoubting Faith,—a passage from death unto life,—it had been retained long after its intention had been forgotten; and nothing is so striking as the confession of some of the younger knights, of the reluctance, the shame and trembling, with which, at the request of their superior, they had gone through the repulsive ceremony. This is one of the dangers of a symbolic service. The symbol supersedes the fact. The imitation of Peter becomes a falling away from Christ. But a century before this time, who can doubt that all Christendom would have rushed to the rescue of the Pope if he had been seized in his own city and maltreated as Boniface had been, and that every gentleman in Europe would have drawn sword in behalf of the noble Templars?

But papacy, feudalism, and knighthood, as they had risen and flourished together, were enveloped in the same fall. The society of the Dark Ages had been perfect in its symmetry and compactness. Kings were but feudal leaders and chiefs in their own domains. Knighthood was but the countenance which feudalism turned to its enemies, while hospitality, protection, and alliance were its offerings to its friends. Over all, representative of the heavenly power which cared for the helpless multitudes, the serfs and villeins, those who had no other friend,—the Church extended its sheltering arms to the lowest of the low. Feudalism could take care of itself; knighthood made itself feared; but the multitudes could only listen and be obedient. All, therefore, who had no sword, and no broad acres, were natural subjects of the Pope. But with the rise of the masses the relations between them and the Church became changed. It was found that during the last two hundred years, since the awakening of mercantile enterprise by the Crusades and the commingling of the population in those wild and yet elevating expeditions, by the progress of the arts, by the privileges wrung from king and noble by flourishing towns or purchased from them with sterling coin, by the deterioration in the morals of priest and baron, and the rise in personal importance of burghers, who could fight like those of Courtrai or raise armies like those of Pisa and Genoa,—that the state of society had gradually been changed; that the commons were well able to defend their own interest; that the feudal proprietor had lost his relative rank; that the knight was no longer irresistible as a warrior; and that the Pope had become one of the most worldly and least scrupulous of rulers. Far from being the friend of the unprotected, the Church was the subject of all the ballads of every nation, wherein its exactions and debaucheries were sung at village fairs and conned over in chimney-corners. Cannon were first used in this century at the siege of Algesiras in 1343; and with the first discharge knighthood fell forever from the saddle. The Bible was first translated into a national tongue,[C] and Popery fell forever from its unopposed dominion. How, indeed, even without this incident, could the Papacy have retained its power? From 1305 till 1376 the wearers of the tiara were the mere puppets of the Kings of France. They lived in a nominal freedom at Avignon, but the college of electors was in the pay of the French sovereign, and the Pope was the creature of his hands. This was fatal to the notion of his independence. But a heavier blow was struck at the unity of the papal power when a double election, in 1378, established two supreme chiefs, one exacting the obedience of the faithful from his palace on the banks of the Rhone, and the other advancing the same claim from the banks of the Tiber. From this time the choice of the chief pontiff became a political struggle between the principal kings. There were French and German, and even English, parties in the conclave, and bribes were as freely administered as at a contested election or on a dubious question in the time of Sir Robert Walpole. Family interest also, from this time, had more effect on the policy of the Popes than the ambition to extend their spiritual authority. They sacrificed some portion of their claims to insure the elevation of their relations. Alliances were made, not for the benefit of the Roman chair, but for some kinsman’s establishment in a principality. Dukedoms became appanages of the papal name, and every new Pope left the mark of his beneficence in the riches and influence of the favourite nephew whom he had invested with sovereign rank. Italy became filled with new dynasties created by these means, and the politics of the papal court became complicated by this diversity of motive and influence. Yet feudalism struggled on in spite of cannon and the rise of the middle orders; and Popery struggled on in spite of the spread of information and the diffusion of wealth and freedom. For some time, indeed, the decline of both those institutions was hidden by a factitious brilliancy reflected on them by other causes. The increase of refinement gave rise to feelings of romance, which were unknown in the days of darkness and suffering through which Europe had passed. A reverence for antiquity softened the harsher features by which they had been actually distinguished, and knighthood became subtilized into chivalry. "A.D. 1350."As the hard and uninviting reality retreated into the past, the imagination clothed it in enchanting hues; and at the very time when the bowmen and yeomanry of England had shown at Crecy how unfounded were the “boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,” Edward III. had instituted the Order of the Garter,—a transmutation as it were of the rude shocks of knighthood into carpet pacings in the gilded halls of a palace; as in a former age the returned Crusaders had supplied the want of the pride and circumstance of the real charge against the Saracen by introducing the bloodless imitation of it afforded by the tournament. In the same way the personal disqualification of the Pope was supplied by an elevation of the ideal of his place and office. Religion became poetry and sentiment; and though henceforth the reigning pontiff was treated with the harshness and sometimes the contempt his personal character deserved, his throne was still acknowledged as the loftiest of earthly thrones. The plaything of the present was nevertheless an idol and representative of the past; and kings who drove him from his home, or locked him up in their prisons, pretended to tremble at his anger, and received his letters on their knees.

It must have been evident to any far-seeing observer that some great change was in progress during the whole of this century, not so much from the results of Courtrai, or Crecy, or Poictiers, or the migration of the Pope to Avignon, or the increasing riches of the trading and manufacturing towns, as from the great uprising of the human mind which was shown by the almost simultaneous appearance of such stars of literature as Dante, and Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and our English Chaucer. I suppose no single century since has been in possession of four such men. Great geniuses, indeed, and great discoveries, seem to come in crops, as if a certain period had been fixed for their bursting into flower; and we find the same grand ideas engaging the intellects of men widely dispersed, so that a novelty in art or science is generally disputed between contending nations. But this synchronous development of power is symptomatic of some wide-spread tendency, which alters the ordinary course of affairs; and we see in the Canterbury Tales the dawning of the Reformation; in Shakspeare and Bacon the inauguration of a new order of government and manners; in Locke and Milton a still further liberation from the chains of a worn-out philosophy; in Watt, and Fulton, and Cartwright, we see the spread of civilization and power. In Walter Scott and Wordsworth, and the wonderful galaxy of literary stars who illuminated the beginning of this century, we see Waterloo and Peace, a widening of national sympathies, and the opening of a great future career to all the nations of the world. For nothing is so true an index of the state and prospects of a people as the healthfulness and honest taste of its literature. It was in this sense that Fletcher of Saltoun said, (or quoted,) “Give me the making of the ballads of a people, and I don’t care who makes the laws.” While we have such pure and wholesome literature as is furnished us by Hallam, and Macaulay, and Alison, by Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, and the rest, philosophy like Hamilton’s, and science like Herschel’s and Faraday’s, we have no cause to look forward with doubt or apprehension.

But those pioneers of the Fourteenth Century had dangers and difficulties to encounter from which their successors have been free. It is a very different thing for authors to write for the applause of an appreciating public, and for them to create an appreciating public for themselves. Their audience must at first have been hostile. First, the critical and scholarly part of the world was offended with the bad taste of writing in the modern languages at all. Secondly, the pitch at which they struck the national note was too high for the ears of the vulgar. A correct and dignified use of the spoken tongue, the conveyance, in ordinary and familiar words, of lofty or poetical thoughts, filled both those classes with surprise. To the scholar it seemed good materials enveloped in a very unworthy covering. To “the general” it seemed an attempt to deprive them of their vernacular phrases and bring bad grammar and coarse expressions into disrepute. Petrarch was so conscious of this that he speaks apologetically of his sonnets in Italian, and founds his hope of future fame on his Latin verses. But more important than the poems of Dante and Chaucer, or the prose of Boccaccio, was the introduction of the new literature represented by Froissart. Hitherto chronicles had for the most part consisted of the record of such wandering rumours as reached a monastery or were gathered in the religious pilgrimages of holy men. Mingled, even the best of them, with the credulity of inexperienced and simple minds, their effect was lost on the contemporary generation by the isolation of the writers. Nobody beyond the convent-walls knew what the learned historians of the establishment had been doing. Their writings were not brought out into the light of universal day, and a knowledge of European society gathered point by point, by comparing, analyzing, and contrasting the various statements contained in those dispersed repositories. But at this time there came into notice the most inquiring, enterprising, picturesque, and entertaining chronicler that had ever appeared since Herodotus read the result of his personal travels and sagacious inquiries to the assembled multitudes of Greece.

John Froissart, called by the courtesy of the time Sir John, in honour of his being priest and chaplain, devoted a long life to the collection of the fullest and most trustworthy accounts of all the events and personages characteristic of his time. From 1326, when his labours commenced, to 1400, when his active pen stood still, nothing happened in any part of Europe that the Paul Pry of the period did not rush off to verify on the spot. If he heard of an assemblage of knights going on at the extremities of France or in the centre of Germany, of a tournament at Bordeaux, a court gala in Scotland, or a marriage festival at Milan, his travels began,—whether in the humble guise of a solitary horseman with his portmanteau behind his saddle and a single greyhound at his heels, as he jogged wearily across the Border, till he finally arrived in Edinburgh, or in his grander style of equipment, gallant steed, with hackney led beside him, and four dogs of high race gambolling round his horse, as he made his dignified journey from Ferrara to Rome. Wherever life was to be seen and painted, the indefatigable Froissart was to be found. Whatever he had gathered up on former expeditions, whatever he learned on his present tour, down it went in his own exquisite language, with his own poetical impression of the pomps and pageantries he beheld; and when at the end of his journey he reached the court of prince or potentate, no higher treat could be offered to the “noble lords and ladies bright” than to form a glittering circle round the enchanting chronicler and listen to what he had written. From palace to palace, from castle to castle, the unwearied “picker-up of unconsidered trifles” (which, however, were neither trifles nor unconsidered, when their true value became known, as giving life and reality to the annals of a whole period) pursued his happy way, certain of a friendly reception when he arrived, and certain of not losing his time by negligence or blindness on the road. If he overtakes a stately cavalier, attended by squires and men-at-arms, he enters into conversation, drawing out the experiences of the venerable warrior by relating to him all he knew of things and persons in which he took an interest. And when they put up at some hostelry on the road, and while the gallant knight was sound asleep on his straw-stuffed couch, and his followers were wallowing amid the rushes on the parlour floor, Froissart was busy with pen and note-book, scoring down all the old gentleman had told him, all the fights he had been present at, and the secret history (if any) of the councils of priests and kings. In this way knights in distant parts of the world became known to each other. The same voice which described to Douglas at Dalkeith the exploits of the Prince of Wales sounded the praises of Douglas in the ears of the Black Prince at Bordeaux. A community of sentiment was produced between the upper ranks of all nations by this common register of their acts and feelings; and knighthood received its most ennobling consummation in these imperishable descriptions, at the very time when its political and military influence came to a close. Froissart’s Chronicles are the epitaph of feudalism, written indeed while it was yet alive, but while its strength was only the convulsive energy of approaching death. The standard of knightly virtue became raised in proportion as knightly power decayed. In the same way as the increased civilization and elevating influences of the time clothed the Church in colours borrowed from the past, while its real influence was seriously impaired, the expiring embers of knighthood occasionally flashed up into something higher; and in this century we read of Du Guesclin of France, Walter Manny and Edward the Third of England, and many others, who illustrated the order with qualifications it had never possessed in its palmiest state.

Courtrai was fought and Amadis de Gaul written almost at the same time. Let us therefore mark, as a characteristic of the period we have reached, the decay of knighthood, or feudalism in its armour of proof, and the growth at the same time of a sense of honour and generosity, which contrasted strangely in its softened and sentimentalized refinement with the harshness and cruelty which still clung to the ordinary affairs of life. Thus the young conqueror of Poictiers led his captive John into London with the respectful attention of a grateful subject to a crowned king. He waited on him at table, and made him forget the humiliation of defeat and the griefs of imprisonment in the sympathy and reverence with which he was everywhere surrounded. This same prince was regardless of human life or suffering where the theatrical show of magnanimity was not within his reach, bloodthirsty and tyrannical, and is declared by the chronicler himself to be of “a high, overbearing spirit, and cruel in his hatred.” It shows, however, what an advance had already been made in the influence of public opinion, when we read how generally the treatment of the noble captive, John of France, was appreciated. In former ages, and even at present in nations of a lower state of feelings, the kind treatment of a fallen enemy, or the sparing of a helpless population, would be attributed to weakness or fear. Chivalry, which was an attempt to amalgamate the Christian virtues with the rougher requirements of the feudal code, taught the duty of being pitiful as well as brave. And though at this period that feeling only existed between knight and knight, and was not yet extended to their treatment of the common herd, the principle was asserted that war could be carried on without personal animosity, and that courage, endurance, and the other knightly qualities were to be admired as much in an enemy as a friend.

There was, however, another reason for this besides the natural admiration which great deeds are sure to call forth in natures capable of performing them; and that was, that Europe was divided into petty sovereignties, too weak to maintain their independence without foreign aid, too proud to submit to another government, and trusting to the support their money or influence could procure. In all countries, therefore, there existed bodies of mercenary soldiers—or Free Lances, as they were called—claiming the dignity and rank of knights and noblemen, who never knew whether the men they were fighting to-day might not be their comrades and followers to-morrow. In Italy, always a country of divisions and enmities, there were armed combatants secured on either side. Unconnected with the country they defended by any ties of kindred or allegiance, they found themselves opposed to a body, perhaps of their countrymen, certainly of their former companions; and, except so much as was required to earn their pay and preserve their reputation, they did nothing that might be injurious to their temporary foes. Battles accordingly were fought where feats of horsemanship and dexterity at their weapons were shown; where rushes were made into the vacant space between the armies by contending warriors, and horse and man acquitted themselves with the acclamations, and almost with the safety, of a charge in the amphitheatre at Astley’s. But no blood was spilt, no life was taken; and a long summer day has seen a confused mÊlÉe going on between the hired combatants of two cities or principalities, without a single casualty more serious than a cavalier thrown from his horse and unable to rise from the weight and tightness of his armour. Fights of this kind could scarcely be considered in earnest, and we are not surprised to find that the burden and heat of an engagement was thrown upon the light-armed foot: we gather, indeed, towards the end of Froissart’s Chronicles, that while the cavaliers persisted in endeavouring to distinguish their individual prowess, as at the battle of Navareta in Spain, and got into confusion in their eagerness of assault, “the sharpness of the English arrows began to be felt,” and the fate of the battle depended on the unflinching line and impregnable solidity of the archers and foot-soldiers. These latter took a deeper interest in the result than the more showy performers, and were not carried away by the vanities of personal display.

Look at the year 1300, with the jubilee of Boniface going on. Look at 1400, with the death of Chaucer and Froissart, and the enthroning of Henry the Fourth, and what an amount of incident, of change and improvement, has been crowded into the space! The rise of national literatures, the softening of feudalism, the decline of Church power,—these—illustrated by Dante and Chaucer, by the alteration in the art of war, and above all, perhaps, by the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue—were not only the fruits gained for the present, but the promise of greater things to come. There will be occasional backslidings after this time, but the onward progress is steady and irresistible: the regressions are but the reflux waves in an advancing tide, caused by the very force and vitality of the great sea beyond. And after this view of some of the main features of the century, we shall take a very cursory glance at some of the principal events on which the portraiture is founded.

It is a bad sign of the early part of this period that our great landmarks are still battles and invasions. "A.D. 1314."After Courtrai in 1302, where the nobility rushed blindfold into a natural ditch, we come upon Bannockburn in 1314, where Edward the Second, not comprehending the aim of his more politic father,—whose object was to counterpoise the growing power of the French monarchy by consolidating his influence at home,—had marched rather to revenge his outraged dignity than to establish his denied authority, and was signally defeated by Robert Bruce. Is it not possible that the stratagem by which the English chivalry suffered so much by means of the pits dug for their reception in the space in front of the Scottish lines was borrowed from Courtrai,—art supplying in that dry plain near Stirling what nature had furnished to the marshy Brabant? However this may be, the same fatal result ensued. Pennon and standard, waving plume and flashing sword, disappeared in those yawning gulfs, and at the present hour very rusty spurs and fragments of broken helmets are dug from beneath the soil to mark the greatness and the quality of the slaughter. Meantime, in compact phalanx—protected by the knights and gentlemen on the flanks, but left to its own free action—the Scottish array bore on. Strong spear and sharp sword did the rest, and the English army, shorn of its cavalry, disheartened by the loss of its leaders, and finally deserted by its pusillanimous king, retreated in confusion, and all hope of retaining the country by the right of conquest was forever laid aside. Poor Edward had, in appalling consciousness of his own imperfections, applied to the Pope for permission to rub himself with an ointment that would make him brave. Either the Pope refused his consent or the ointment failed of its purpose. Nothing could rouse a brave thought in the heart of the fallen Plantagenet. Sir Giles de Argentine might have been more effectual than all the unguents in the world. He led the king by the bridle till he saw him in a place of safety. He then stopped his horse and said, “It has never been my custom to fly, and here I must take my fortune.” Saying this, he put spurs to his horse, and, crying out, “An Argentine!” charged the squadron of Edward Bruce, and was borne down by the force of the Scottish spears. The fugitive king galloped in terror to the castle of Dunbar, and shipped off by sea to Berwick.

The next battle is so strongly corroborative of the failing supremacy of heavy armour, and the rising importance of the well-trained citizens, that it is worth mention, although at first sight it seems to controvert both these statements; for it was a fight in which certain courageous burghers were mercilessly exterminated by gorgeously-caparisoned knights. "A.D. 1328."The townsmen of Bruges and Ypres had grown so proud and pugnacious that in 1328 they advanced to Cassel to do battle with the young King of France, Philip of Valois, at the head of all his chivalry. There was a vast amount of mutual contempt in the two armies. The leader of the bold Flemings, who was known as Little Jack, entered the enemy’s camp in disguise, and found young lords in splendid gowns proceeding from point to point, gossiping, visiting, and interchanging their invitations. Making his way back, he ordered a charge at once. The rush was nearly successful, and was only checked within a few yards of the royal tent. But the check was tremendous. The bloated burghers, filled with pride and gorged with wealth, had thought proper to ensconce their unwieldy persons in cuirasses as brilliant and embarrassing as the armour of the knights. The knights, however, were on horseback, and the embattled townsfolk were on foot. Great was the slaughter, useless the attempt to escape, and thirteen thousand were overborne and smothered. Ten thousand more were executed by some form of law, and the Bourgeoisie taught to rely for its safety on its agility and compactness, and not on “helm or hauberk’s twisted mail.”

The crop of battles grows rich and plentiful, for Edward the Third and Philip of Valois are rival kings and warriors, and may be taken as the representatives of the two states of society which were brought at this time face to face. For Edward, though as true a knight as Amadis himself in his own person, in policy was a favourer of the new ideas. When the war broke out, Philip behaved as if no change had taken place in the seat of power and the world had still continued divided between the lords and their armed retainers. He threw himself for support on the military service of his tenants and the aristocratic spirit of his nobles. Edward, wiser but less romantic, turned for assistance to the Commons of England,—bought over their good will and copious contributions by privileges granted to their trades,—invited skilled workmen over from Flanders, which, with the freest spirit in Europe, was under the least improved of the feudal governments,—and established woollen-works at York, fustian-works at Norwich, serges at Colchester, and kerseys in Devonshire. Mills were whirling round in all the counties, and ships coming in untaxed at every harbour. Fortunately, as is always the case in this country, it was seen that the success of one class of the people was beneficial to every other class. The baron got more rent for his land and better cloth for his apparel by the prosperity of his manufacturing neighbours. Money was voted readily in support of a king who entered into alliance with their best customers, the men of Ghent and Bruges; and at the head of all the levies which the parliament’s liberality enabled him to raise were the knights and gentlemen of England, totally freed now from any bias towards the French or prejudice against the Saxon; for they spoke the English tongue, dressed in English broadcloth, sang English ballads, and astonished the men of Gascony and Guienne with the vehemence of their unmistakably English oaths. Yet some of them held lands in feudal subjection to the French king. Flanders itself confessed the same sovereignty; and men of delicate consciences might feel uneasy if they lifted the sword against their liege lord. To soothe their scruples, James Van Arteveldt, the Brewer of Ghent, suggested to Edward the propriety of his assuming the title of King of France. The rebellious freeholders would then be in their duty in supporting their liege’s claims. So Edward, founding upon the birth of his mother, the daughter of the last King, Philip le Bel,—who was excluded by the Salic law, or at least by French custom, from the throne,—made claim to the crown of St. Louis, and transmitted the barren title to all his successors till the reign of George the Fourth. As if in right of his property on both sides of the Channel, Edward converted it into his exclusive domain. "A.D. 1340."He so entirely exterminated the navy of France, and impressed that chivalrous nation with the danger of the seas by the victory of Helvoet Sluys, that for several centuries the command of the strait was left undisputed to England. Philip had endeavoured to obtain the mastery of it with a fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, mounted by forty thousand men. The Genoese had furnished an auxiliary squadron, and also a commander-in-chief, of the name of Barbavara. But the French admiral was a civilian of the name of Bahuchet, who thought the safest plan was the best, and kept his whole force huddled up in the commodious harbour. Edward collected a fleet of scarcely inferior strength, and fell upon the enemy as they lay within the port. It was in fact a fight on the land, for they ranged so close that they almost touched each other, and the gallant Bahuchet preserved himself from sea-sickness at the expense of all their lives. For the English archers made an incredible havoc on their crowded decks, and the pike-men boarded with irresistible power. Twenty thousand were slain in that fearful mÊlÉe; and Edward, to show how sincere he was in his claim upon the throne of France, hanged the unfortunate Bahuchet as a traitor. The man deserved his fate as a coward: so we need not waste much sympathy on the manner of his death. This success with his ships was soon followed by the better-known victory of Crecy, 1346, and the capture of Calais. "A.D. 1356."In ten years afterwards, the crowning triumph of Poictiers completed the destruction of the military power of France, by a slaughter nearly as great as that at Sluys and Crecy. In addition to the loss of lives in these three engagements, amounting to upwards of ninety thousand men, we are to consider the impoverishment of the country by the exorbitant ransoms claimed for the release of prisoners. John, the French king, was valued at three million crowns of gold,—an immense sum, which it would have exhausted the kingdom to raise; and, in addition to those destructive fights and crushing exactions, France was further weakened by the insurrection of the peasantry and the frightful massacres by which it was put down. If to these causes of weakness we add the depopulation produced by the unequalled pestilence, called the Plague of Florence, which spread all over the world, and in the space of a year carried off nearly a third of the inhabitants of Europe, we shall be justified in believing that France was reduced to the lowest condition she has ever reached, and that only the dotage of Edward, the death of the Black Prince, and the accession of a king like Richard II., saved that noble country from being, for a while at least, tributary and subordinate to her island-conqueror.