pctfator c $uppltintitt.

NOVEMBER 6, 1858.

BOOKS.

cic0wI'S HISTORY OF FRANCE..

gauss readers will be disappointed who expected from Mr. Crowe a history after the modern aspiration ; that is to say, a narrative which aims at painting manners and the people as well as de- scribing great events and more or less depicting historical person- ages. This first volume, exhibitive of French history from Clovis to the death of Edward the Third of England, 1377, and of Charles the Fifth of France three years afterwards, is written in the more abstract manner of the old school. The essential nature of events and actions,—so far as the writer can reach to the es- sential,—the characteristics of the actors, and the influence of all upon the government, people, and future fortunes of the country, are drawn out, but the living forms in which they were embodied are left behind, like the cc net mortuuaes of a chemical analysis. We hear, for example, of the doings or crimes of the Merovin- gian and other races, and of the disorganized, or more properly isolated, state of society under feudalism. The different classes of men—nobles, monks, poor, oppressed, mutinous citizens, as well as enslaved peasants—are presented to the reader, and with some of their leading traits ; wars are mentioned, and with their military characteristics ; and the changes in government, opinion, and the condition of men, are noted. All, however, is done ab- stractedly, something like a mathematician working a problem, or an astronomer's observations of a planet. The criminality of Bruneheld and Fredegonde, for instance, whose details oc- cupy so large, and perhaps so unduly large, a space in some accounts, are slightly alluded to ; and Nvhen these or other atroci- ties of those barbarous times are mentioned it is without colour or circumstances to mark the conditions which account for them. NI far as the mode of telling is in question, they might as well have been perpetrated in our own times, or any other period. It is not meant that Mr. Crowe's narrative is lifeless, but too essential in its nature. Neither is it altogether devoid of traits or anec- dotes that distinguish a particular age. When the soldier of Clovis at a distribution of plunder refused to allow the chieftain a golden vase which he wanted to restore to the cathedral, and in- solently struck the precious article with his axe, we see at once a rudely independent state of society ; although Clovis did eventu- ally contrive to have the offender's life under a pretext connected with discipline. Such illustrations, however, drop in by the by, as if Mr. Crowe disregarded them unless they actually came in his way. Even when they do, he does not appear to trouble him- self to bring them out. Compare his account of the behaviour of the Black Prince after the victory of Poitiers with that of Hume ; although Hume belonged to the epic or abstract school, which aimed at presenting the essential properties of history and not the forms of the age.

Mr. Crowe's narrative is succinct and clear • but narration is not his forte. As in his history of the French Restoration from the downfall of Napoleon to the expulsion of Charles the Tenth, disquisition is the most advantageous feature of the volume. Leading actions are told, principal actors are delineated ; but the author gladly leaves them to note the political or other principles they contain, and to call the reader's attention to the changes they indicate or herald. As in his former work too a prevading fea- ture runs through this history ; at least till the suspension of civil and political progress by the English wars of Edward the Third. And this feature, when borne in mind, imparts a purpose and unity- to his work. Mr. Crowe looks upon French history as a collection

of data for tracing the formation of what he calls the French nation. And no doubt the rise and progress of French nationality may underlie the whole of his story. But what he has really undertaken to do in this volume, is to trace the origin and growth of the French monarchy, and the power of the monarch. Accord- ing to his theory, which he certainly supports, there is no truth whatever in the old notion that the kingdom of France began with Clovis. France was then non-existent. Gaul and Germany were an aggregation of independent states, of varying strength and importance, which a man like Charlemagne might reduceto a no- minal submission, but which flew asunder from their inherent re- pulsiveness as soon as the repressive power was withdrawn ; and which power itself dominated rather than ruled. The modern opinion that Hugh Capet established the French monarchy is equally unfounded. Hugh and his immediate successors were only ostensibly the head or suzerain of various French feudatories ; Most of these vassals being as powerful as their lord. The Dukes of Normandy indeed were more powerful ; and the only mode the nominal French king had to hold even his own, was to balance one feudatory against another, or to ally him- sell with Flanders or Germany. This state of things con- putlhe. b History of France. By Eyre E‘aus Crowe. In five volumes. Volume I. ed by Unmans and Co.

[MONTHLY SGEELEMENT.]

tinned. for upwards of a century 9S7-1108. It was first per- ceived, and means employed to overcome it by Louis, " the wide- awake," as he was called in his younger days, though the so- briquet of his advanced years, the Fat, is that by which he is known in history. The work was really completed, as regards the nationality and monarchy of France, by Philip le Bel, though the absolute authority of the crown which he exercised was afterwards reduced, and the feudatories iu the distracted times of the English wars regained some of their old power. This consum- mation was attained not by strength or fortune but persistent po- licy. Louis the Fat began with protecting the Church, and as- sociating churchmen and their tenants or vassals with his own force, to break the power of the different great feudatories. He also encouraged the townsmen, protecting his own burghers in a fashion by his own authority ; but granting charters to cities of the feudatories. He was likewise able for the first time in history to evoke that national spirit of Frenchmen which still continues the chief if not the only patriotism of the country. This he did by calling out a national army, not a feu- dal force, to resist the dangerous alliance of England and Ger- many. The policy of " the wide-awake" was continued, with, of course, changes of mode and varying success, till it culminated with Philip the Fair ; who, by gaining Guienne from the English, may be said to have become the first true king of France. Philip cannot, indeed, be called a friend of the Church, for the Papacy never recovered the blows he dealt it, or the degradation he in- flicted upon it. Mr. Crowe, however, conceives that his proceed- ings were not altogether the consequence of formed design. Neither policy nor dignity would allow of his submission to the arrogance of Boniface, and though the question in dispute, that of taxing the clergy, might have been settled, or at least discussed, in another style, Philip was not of a temper to submit to a Pope. When he had once openly and safely defied the Popedom, he quickly saw the uses to which a submissive Pontiff might be turned.

It is the development of this idea of the historian which gives both its interest and its value to the work. Sometimes this evo- lution is directly presented in commentary, or is perceptible in the narrative • often it is latent ; but the author never loses sight of his theory in some form. As a matter of course it is more conspicuous in discussion. Here is an attempt to trace the future of French history in part to the circumstances of the early external conditions of France under the early Capets compared with the rest of Europe.

" The French Capetian monarchy during two centuries was blessed with great internal calm, and with a remarkable absence of those stirring move- ments and causes of strife which convulsed other countries. Germany. and Italy were throughout those centuries in a continual turmoil of civil and religious war, Church contending against State, and Pope against Caesar, England and Normandy, during the same epoch, were torn by rival claim- ants. France scarcely felt these disturbances. It lay like a still lake in a mountain hollow—storms all around, itself slumbering in placidity. " The French monarchs did not experience the same necessities as their brethren of Germany or of England. In Germany, all the attributes of sovereignty had been appropriated by the dukes, princes, and prelates, leaving nothing for the sovereign to aim at but a kind of lofty supremacy, more to be exercised abroad than at home. As a German monarch, the Em- peror was nothing ; as a Caesar, lie was all. But this was a kind of European supremacy, opposed to the thoroughly local spirit of the age, and counter- acted by another great pretender to European supremacy, the Pope, whose purposed empire was equally an impracticability and an anachronism. The two monster claims took centuries to destroy.each other, which, in truth, they effectually did ; but, unfortunately, they at the same time split up, de- stroyed, and neutralized, as nations, the two countries engaged in the strife. Germany and Italy remain each a chaos and an anomaly to this day. " The Kings of England had other difficulties. They were lords of a con- querinp:, race, superposed upon another, which was indeed akin to them, and thus offered means of amalgamation, but which still increased a hundred- fold the perils of government. The situation, however, called forth the energies and talents of the Norman princes and their followers, and ren- dered it imperative that they should make use of all the resources and all the strength of their country. In England, accordingly, no class was neg- lected. The king summoned around him his noblesse [barons], to seek their council and demand their aid, both iu military service and money. Those who refused to attend or to comely were considered foes and traitors, and were visited with the strong hand; fined, if not powerful enough to resist ; Crushed, if they did so. The citizen class was also mulcted; but conciliated. Great liberties were allowed to burghers. Church and churchmen were, indeed, shorn of the privileges and immunities which they enjoyed in other countries; but still the church was prominent, and fought its battle. All these stormy elements and powers, struggling with each other, gave rise to a system of law, of judicial and Parliamentary liberty, of rights long con- flicting and at length adjusted, which ended by making the English a con- stitutional and free people.

" In France there was nothing of this struggle, this energy, or this life. The reason lay in there being no necessity or no cause to evoke them. The population was, notwithstanding what certain writers may pretend, of one

race, or of races long and completely amalgamated. There were few or no disputants to the throne, which itself at first was scarcely worth disputing. The duchy or kingdom of France was not a conquering or a conquered country. It was central out of the great lines of trade and adventure ; the great churchmen and the great feudatories were paramount in their dioceses or provinces ; and the early Capets lived on the best of terms with their pre-

lates, intermarried with the great princely families near them, and were, in truth, more ruled and supported by these nominally-subject princes dun accustomed to exercise predominance over them. " One great difference between France and England was the existence in the former country of a princely aristocracy, placed far too high above the provincial baronage to form with it one order or assembly. A Count of Champagne or a Duke of Normandy could not be brought to attend a king's court twice in the year ; whilst a decree or decision of lesser barons could scarcely be binding, except upon each other. Even such minor meetings seemed to have fallen into disuse ; kings, like Robert, relying upon ecclesias- tical synods. And though a king's court existed, there was nothing like a parliament in France, for either judicial or legislative purposes, throughout the eleventh century."

The animating purpose of Mr. Crowe tends to increase the in- dependence of an independent mind. His estimate of the cha- racter of St. Louis, as a monarch, is widely different from the re- ceived fashion ; but we suspect it is juster.

"No name in modern history has been the object of more profound reve- rence and more enthusiastic praise than that of St. Louis. Royalists re- garded and with justice, as the true founder of the monarchy, and liberals still laud him for having undermined feudalism, and shorn the aris- tocracy of those privileges which rendered them princes in the land. Here too, their gratitude is not misplaced ; if equality rather than liberty be the first of political boons, St. Louis certainly contributed to it. It was indeed the monarch's singular fate, in an age so early, to anticipate the predilec- tions and tendencies of his countrymen, at least those developed in the mid- dle of the nineteenth century, by largely contributing to found a monarchy after the Byzantine model.

" What St. Louis accomplished in this respect was far from being to the advantage of the classes who laud him. His efforts in destroying some of the worst privileges of feudalism, obliterated also some of its best and no- blest principles, those which contained the germs of modern freedom and re- presentative government. No laws had greater influence than those of St. Louis in excluding the French of all ranks from any participation in either judicial or political rights. He drew everything to the crown, to its admin- istration and its courts, and commenced that centralization which is the true machinery of despotism. When he curtailed seignorial privileges he by no means extended popular or municipal rights. To govern for the people not by them, and on the paternal rather than on the popular principle, was his view of the duties of a monarch ; and he thus introduced the political doc- trine of treating subjects as children, and converting a great country into an overgrown nursery, which has prevailed in France with such brief inter- ruptions ever since his time. The feudal system which this replaced, sup- posed, on the contrary, manhood and mature intellect to exist in every class with reciprocal rights, and, within certain limits, mutual independence. If the modern world of Europe was to be other than the ancient empire of Rome, this was destined to be its distinguishing feature, with a rustic or- ganization embracing all classes. and not sacrificing the peasant to the citi- zen. This system, which became developed in England, St. Louis, his gtandsire, and his grandson destroyed, or laboured to destroy, in France. The attempts to accomplish this may have been, in their age, premature. For after the death of Philip the Fair there took place a strong reaction to- wards freedom and local rights, to a resuscitation of aristocracy, and a decentralization of the powers of government. Still it was but the turbu- lent and anarchic portion of feudalism, its barren and unproductive ele- ments, which survived, or were then resuscitated, to perish later at the hands of monarchs and ministers, who revived the original and interrupted task of Philip Augustus and St. Louis."

There are some verbal blemishes in the volume, which, as in the case of "noblesse," applied to England, go further than to style, there are also errors of fact or, as we think, of deduction. These blots, however, are few and slight. The almost total want of references is a graver matter. The ostentatious display of trifling authorities may be a pedantic vanity, but it is better than their total disuse. In the future volumes, and in any future edition of this volume we should suggest their insertion ; for the argument of Mr. Crowe is insufficient for their omission.

Although no original narrative or document of these times has been left unconsulted by the author, he has still refrained from multiplying re- ferences at the bottom of each page. The materials of French history, or at least of its earlier centuries, have been formed into collections, for the most part in chronological order. Each volume is amply furnished with indexes and tables of contents. And nothing can be more easy than for the student to refer to any epoch, test any opinion, or verify any assertion, should he entertain a doubt of the correctness or good faith of the modern his- torian."

Let us have the collection, volume, and document at all events ; if we are to hunt out the page for ourselves.