The Abbé du Bos maintains that at the
commencement of our monarchy there was only one order of citizens among
the Franks. This assertion, so injurious to the noble blood of our
principal families, is equally affronting to the three great houses
which successively governed this realm. The origin of their grandeur
would not, therefore, have been lost in the obscurity of time. History
might point out the ages when they were plebeian families; and to make
Childeric, Pepin, and Hugh Capet gentlemen, we should be obliged to
trace their pedigree among the Romans or Saxons, that is, among the
conquered nations.
This author grounds his opinion on the Salic law.
[195]
By that law,
he says, it plainly appears that there were not two different orders of
citizens among the Franks: it allowed a composition of two hundred sous
for the murder of any Frank whatsoever;
[196]
but among the Romans it distinguished the king's guest, for whose death it gave a composition of
three hundred sous, from the Roman proprietor to whom it granted a
hundred, and from the Roman tributary to whom it gave only a composition
of forty-five. And as the difference of the compositions formed the
principal distinction, he concludes that there was but one order of
citizens among the Franks, and three among the Romans.
It is astonishing that his very mistake did not set him right. And,
indeed, it would have been very extraordinary that the Roman nobility
who lived under the domination of the Franks should have had a larger
composition, and been persons of much greater importance than the most
illustrious among the Franks, and their greatest generals. What
probability is there that the conquering nation should have so little
respect for themselves, and so great a regard for the conquered people?
Besides, our author quotes the laws of other barbarous nations which
prove that they had different orders of citizens. Now it would be a
matter of astonishment that this general rule should have failed only
among the Franks. Hence he ought to have concluded either that he did
not rightly understand or that he misapplied the passages of the Salic
law, which is actually the case.
Upon opening this law, we find that the composition for the death of
an Antrustio.
[197]
that is, of the king's vassal, was six hundred sous;
and that for the death of a Roman, who was the king's guest, was only
three hundred.
[198]
We find there likewise that the composition
[199]
for the death of an ordinary Frank was two hundred sous;
[200]
and for the
death of an ordinary Roman, was only one hundred.
[201]
For the death of a Roman tributary,
[202]
who was a kind of bondman or freedman, they paid
a composition of forty-five sous: but I shall take no notice of this,
any more than of the composition for the murder of a Frank bondman or of
a Frank freedman, because this third order of persons is out of the
question.
What does our author do? He is quite silent with respect to the
first order of persons among the Franks, that is the article relating to
the Antrustios; and afterwards upon comparing the ordinary Frank, for
whose death they paid a composition of two hundred sous, with those whom
he distinguishes under three orders among the Romans, and for whose
death they paid different compositions, he finds that there was only one
order of citizens among the Franks, and that there were three among the
Romans.
As the Abbé is of opinion that there was only one order of citizens
among the Franks, it would have been lucky for him that there had been
only one order also among the Burgundians, because their kingdom
constituted one of the principal branches of our monarchy. But in their
codes we find three sorts of compositions, one for the Burgundians or
Roman nobility, the other for the Burgundians or Romans of a middling
condition, and the third for those of a lower rank in both nations.
[203]
He has not quoted this law.
It is very extraordinary to see in what manner he evades those
passages which press him hard on all sides.
[204]
If you speak to him of
the grandees, lords, and the nobility, these, he says, are mere
distinctions of respect, and not of order; they are things of courtesy,
and not legal privileges; or else, he says, those people belonged to the
king's council; nay, they possibly might be Romans: but still there was
only one order of citizens among the Franks. On the other hand, if you
speak to him of some Franks of an inferior rank,
[205]
he says they are
bondmen; and thus he interprets the decree of Childebert. But I must
stop here a little, to inquire farther into this decree. Our author has
rendered it famous by availing himself of it in order to prove two
things: the one that all the compositions we meet with in the laws of
the Barbarians were only civil fines added to corporal punishments,
which entirely subverts all the ancient records;
[206]
the other, that
all freemen were judged directly and immediately by the king.
[207]
which is contradicted by an infinite number of passages and authorities
informing us of the judiciary order of those times.
[208]
This decree, which was made in an assembly of the nation,
[209]
says that, if the judge finds a notorious robber, he must command him to be
tied, in order to be carried before the king, si Francus fuerit; but if
he is a weaker person (debilior persona), he shall be hanged on the
spot. According to the Abbé du Bos, Francus is a freeman, debilior
persona is a bondman. I shall defer entering for a moment into the
signification of the word Francus, and begin with examining what can be
understood by these words, a weaker person, In all languages whatsoever,
every comparison necessarily supposes three terms, the greatest, the
less degree, and the least. If none were here meant but freemen and
bondmen, they would have said a bondman, and not a man of less power.
Therefore debilior persona does not signify a bondman, but a person of a
superior condition to a bondman. Upon this supposition, Francus cannot
mean a freeman, but a powerful man; and this word is taken here in that
acceptation, because among the Franks there were always men who had
greater power than others in the state, and it was more difficult for
the judge or count to chastise them. This construction agrees very well
with many capitularies
[210]
where we find the cases in which the
criminals were to be carried before the king, and those in which it was
otherwise.
It is mentioned in the Life of Louis the Debonnaire,
[211]
written by Tegan, that the bishops were the principal cause of the humiliation of
that emperor, especially those who had been bondmen and such as were
born among the Barbarians. Tegan thus addresses Hebo, whom this prince
had drawn from the state of servitude, and made Archbishop of Rheims:
"What recompense did the Emperor receive from you for so many benefits?
He made you a freeman, but did not ennoble you, because he could not
give you nobility after having given you your liberty."
[212]
This passage, which proves so strongly the two orders of citizens,
does not at all confound the Abbé du Bos. He answers thus:
[213]
"The meaning of this passage is not that Louis the Debonnaire was incapable
of introducing Hebo into the order of the nobility. Hebo, as Archbishop
of Rheims, must have been of the first order, superior to that of the
nobility." I leave the reader to judge whether this be not the meaning
of that passage; I leave him to judge whether there be any question here
concerning a precedence of the clergy over the nobility. "This passage
proves only," continues the same writer,
[214]
"that the free-born
subjects were qualified as noblemen; in the common acceptation, noblemen
and men who are free-born have for this long time signified the same
thing." What! because some of our burghers have lately assumed the
quality of noblemen, shall a passage of the Life of Louis the Debonnaire
be applied to this sort of people? "And perhaps," continues he
still,
[215]
"Hebo had not been a bondman among the Franks, but among the
Saxons, or some other German nation, where the people were divided into
several orders." Then, because of the Abbé du Bos' "perhaps," there must
have been no nobility among the nation of the Franks. But he never
applied a "perhaps" so badly. We have seen that Tegan distinguishes the
bishops,
[216]
who had opposed Louis the Debonnaire, some of whom had
been bondmen, and others of a barbarous nation. Hebo belonged to the
former and not to the latter. Besides, I do not see how a bondman, such
as Hebo, can be said to have been a Saxon or a German; a bondman has no
family, and consequently no nation. Louis the Debonnaire manumitted
Hebo; and as bondmen after their manumission embraced the law of their
master, Hebo had become a Frank, and not a Saxon or German.
I have been hitherto acting offensively; it is now time to defend
myself. It will be objected to me that indeed the body of the Antrustios
formed a distinct order in the state from that of the freemen; but as
the fiefs were at first precarious, and afterwards for life, this could
not form a nobleness of descent, since the privileges were not annexed
to an hereditary fief. This is the objection which induced M. de Valois
to think that there was only one order of citizens among the Franks; an
opinion which the Abbé du Bos has borrowed of him, and which he has
absolutely spoiled with so many bad arguments. Be that as it may, it is
not the Abbé du Bos that could make this objection. For after having
given three orders of Roman nobility, and the quality of the king's
guest for the first, he could not pretend to say that this title was a
greater mark of a noble descent than that of Antrustio. But I must give
a direct answer. The Antrustios or trusty men were not such because they
were possessed of a fief, but that they had a fief given them because
they were Antrustios or trusty men. The reader may please to recollect
what has been said in the beginning of this book. They had not at that
time, as they had afterwards, the same fief: but if they had not that,
they had another, because the fiefs were given at their birth, and
because they were often granted in the assemblies of the nation, and, in
fine, because as it was the interest of the nobility to receive them it
was likewise the king's interest to grant them. These families were
distinguished by their dignity of trusty men, and by the privilege of
being qualified to swear allegiance for a fief. In the following
book
[217]
I shall demonstrate how, from the circumstances of the time,
there were freemen who were permitted to enjoy this great privilege, and
consequently to enter into the order of nobility. This was not the case
at the time of Gontram, and his nephew Childebert; but so it was at the
time of Charlemagne. But though in that prince's reign the freemen were
not incapable of possessing fiefs, yet it appears, by the above-cited
passage of Tegan, that the emancipated serfs were absolutely excluded.
Will the Abbé du Bos, who carries us to Turkey to give us an idea of the
ancient French nobility;
[218]
will he, I say, pretend that they ever
complained among the Turks of the elevation of people of low birth to
the honours and dignities of the state, as they complained under Louis
the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald? There was no complaint of that kind
under Charlemagne, because this prince always distinguished the ancient
from the new families; which Louis the Debonnaire, and Charles the Bald
did not.
The public should not forget the obligation it owes to the Abbé du
Bos for several excellent performances. It is by these works, and not by
his history of the Establishment of the French Monarchy, we ought to
judge of his merit. He committed very great mistakes, because he had
more in view the Count of Boulainvilliers' work than his own subject.
From all these strictures I shall draw only one reflection: if so
great a man was mistaken, how cautiously ought I to tread?
