The counts at first were sent into their districts only for a year; but they soon purchased the
continuation of their offices. Of this we have an example in the reign
of Clovis' grandchildren. A person named Peonius was count in the city
of Auxerre;
[1]
he sent his son Mummolus with money to Gontram, to
prevail upon him to continue him in his employment; the son gave the
money for himself, and obtained the father's place. The kings had
already begun to spoil their own favours.
Though by the laws of the kingdom the fiefs were precarious, yet
they were neither given nor taken away in a capricious and arbitrary
manner: nay, they were generally one of the principal subjects debated
in the national assemblies. It is natural, however, to imagine that
corruption crept into this as well as the other case; and that the
possession of the fiefs, like that of the counties, was continued for
money.
I shall show in the course of this book,
[2]
that, independently of the grants which the princes made for a certain time, there were others
in perpetuity. The court wanted to revoke the former grants; this
occasioned a general discontent in the nation, and was soon followed by
that famous revolution in French history, whose first epoch was the
amazing spectacle of the execution of Brunehault.
That this queen, who was daughter, sister and mother of so many
kings, a queen to this very day celebrated for public monuments worthy
of a Roman dile or proconsul, born with an admirable genius for affairs,
and endowed with qualities so long respected, should see herself of a
sudden exposed to so slow, so ignominious and cruel a torture,
[3]
by a king whose authority was but indifferently established in the nation,
[4]
would appear very extraordinary, had she not incurred that nation's
displeasure for some particular cause. Clo-tharius reproached her with
the murder of ten kings; but two of them he had put to death himself;
the death of some of the others was owing to chance, or to the villainy
of another queen;
[5]
and a nation that had permitted Fredegunda to die in her bed,
[6]
that had even opposed the punishment of her flagitious
crimes, ought to have been very different with respect to those of
Brunehault.
She was put upon a camel, and led ignominiously through the army; a
certain sign that she had given great offence to those troops.
Fredegarius relates that Protarius,
[7]
Brunehault's favoureite, stripped
the lords of their property, and filled the exchequer with the plunder;
that he humbled the nobility, and that no person could be sure of
continuing in any office or employment. The army conspired against him,
and he was stabbed in his tent; but Brunehault, either by revenging his
death, or by pursuing the same plan,
[8]
became every day more odious to
the nation.
[9]
Clotharius, ambitious of reigning alone, inflamed moreover with the
most furious revenge, and sure of perishing if Brunehault's children got
the upper hand, entered into a conspiracy against himself; and whether
it was owing to ignorance, or to the necessity of his circumstances, he
became Brunehault's accuser, and made a terrible example of that
princess.
Warnacharius had been the very soul of the conspiracy formed against
Brunehault. Being at that time mayor of Burgundy, he made Clotharius
consent that he should not be displaced while he lived.
[10]
By this step the mayor could no longer be in the same case as the French lords before
that period; and this authority began to render itself independent of
the regal dignity.
It was Brunehault's unhappy regency which had exasperated the
nation. So long as the laws subsisted in their full force, no one could
grumble at having been deprived of a fief, since the law did not bestow
it upon him in perpetuity. But when fiefs came to be acquired by
avarice, by bad practices and corruption, they complained of being
divested, by irregular means, of things that had been irregularly
acquired. Perhaps if the public good had been the motive of the
revocation of those grants, nothing would have been said; but they
pretended a regard for order while they were openly abetting the
principles of corruption; the fiscal rights were claimed in order to
lavish the public treasure; and grants were no longer the reward or the
encouragement of services. Brunehault, from a corrupt spirit, wanted to
reform the abuses of the ancient corruption. Her caprices were not owing
to weakness; the vassals and the great officers, thinking themselves in
danger, prevented their own by her ruin.
We are far from having all the records of the transactions of those
days; and the writers of chronicles, who understood very nearly as much
of the history of their time as our peasants know of ours, are extremely
barren. Yet we have a constitution of Clotharius, given in the council
of Paris,
[11]
for the reformation of abuses,
[12]
which shows that this
prince put a stop to the complaints that had occasioned the revolution.
On the one hand, he confirms all the grants that had been made or
confirmed by the kings his predecessors;
[13]
and on the other, he
ordains that whatever had been taken from his vassals should be restored
to them.
[14]
This was not the only concession the king made in that council; he
enjoined that whatever had been innovated, in opposition to the
privileges of the clergy, should be redressed; and he moderated the
influence of the court in the election of bishops.
[15]
He even reformed
the fiscal affairs, ordaining that all the new censuses should be
abolished,
[16]
and that they should not levy any toll established since
the deaths of Gontram, Sigebert, and Chilperic;
[17]
that is, he
abolished whatever had been done during the regencies of Fredegunda and
Brunehault. He forbad the driving of his cattle to graze in private
people's grounds;
[18]
and we shall presently see that the reformation
was still more general, so as to extend even to civil affairs.
