The king, the clergy, and the lords raised regular
taxes, each on the bondmen of their respective demesnes. I prove it with
respect to the king, by the capitulary de Villis; with regard to the
clergy, by the codes of the laws of the Barbarians
[67]
and in relation
to the lords, by the regulations which Charlemagne made concerning this
subject.
[68]
These taxes were called census; they were economical and not fiscal
claims, entirely private dues and not public taxes.
I affirm that what they called census at that time was a tax raised
upon the bondmen. This I prove by a formulary of Marculfus containing a
permission from the king to enter into holy orders, provided the persons
be freeborn,
[69]
and not enrolled in the register of the census. I prove
it also by a commission from Charlemagne to a count
[70]
whom he had sent
into Saxony, which contains the enfranchisement of the Saxons for having
embraced Christianity, and is properly a charter of freedom.
[71]
This
prince restores them to their former civil liberty,
[72]
and exempts them
from paying the census, It was, therefore, the same thing to be a
bondman as to pay the census, to be free as not to pay it.
By a kind of letters patent of the same prince in favour of the
Spaniards,
[73]
who had been received into the monarchy, the counts are
forbidden to demand any census of them, or to deprive them of their
lands. That strangers upon their coming to France were treated as
bondmen is a thing well known; and Charlemagne being desirous they
should be considered as freemen, since he would have them be proprietors
of their lands, forbad the demanding any census of them.
A capitulary of Charles the Bald,
[74]
given in favour of those very
Spaniards, orders them to be treated like the other Franks, and forbids
the requiring any census of them; consequently this census was not paid
by freemen.
The thirtieth article of the edict of Pistes reforms the abuse by
which several of the husbandmen belonging to the king or to the church
sold the lands dependent on their manors to ecclesiastics or to people
of their condition, reserving only a small cottage to themselves; by
which means they avoided paying the census; and it ordains that things
should be restored to their primitive situation: the census was,
therefore, a tax peculiar to bondmen.
Thence also it follows that there was no general census in the
monarchy; and this is clear from a great number of passages. For what
could be the meaning of this capitulary?
[75]
"We ordain that the royal
census should be levied in all places where formerly it was lawfully
levied."
[76]
What could be the meaning of that in which Charlemagne
[77]
orders his commissaries in the provinces to make an exact inquiry into
all the census that belonged in former times to the king's demesne?
[78]
And of that
[79]
in which he disposes of the census paid by those
[80]
of whom they are demanded? What can that other capitulary mean
[81]
in which we read, "If any person has acquired a tributary land
[82]
on which we
were accustomed to levy the census?" And that other, in fine,
[83]
in
which Charles the Bald
[84]
makes mention of feudal lands whose census
had from time immemorial belonged to the king.
Observe .that there are some passages which seem at first sight to
be contrary to what I have said, and yet confirm it. We have already
seen that the freemen in the monarchy were obliged only to furnish
particular carriages; the capitulary just now cited gives to this the
name of census, and opposes it to the census paid by the bondmen.
Besides, the edict of Pistes
[85]
notices those freemen who are
obliged to pay the royal census for their head and for their
cottages,
[86]
and who had sold themselves during the famine. The king
orders them to be ransomed. This is because those who were manumitted by
the king's letters
[87]
did not, generally speaking, acquire a full and
perfect liberty.
[88]
but they paid censum in capite; and these are the
people here meant.
We must, therefore, waive the idea of a general and universal
census, derived from that of the Romans, from which the rights of the
lords are also supposed to have been derived by usurpation. What was
called census in the French monarchy, independently of the abuse made of
that word, was a particular tax imposed on the bondmen by their masters.
I beg the reader to excuse the trouble I must give him with such a
number of citations. I should be more concise did I not meet with the
Abbé du Bos' book on the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul,
continually in my way. Nothing is a greater obstacle to our progress in
knowledge than a bad performance of a celebrated author; because, before
we instruct, we must begin with undeceiving.
