five millions of livres, to be raised by a graduated capitation tax, the real origin of the taille, or rural income tax; but great concessions were made by the King for this aid. Purveyance was wholly abolished, and resistance by force to whoever should seize any provisions under this name was expressly authorised. The vexation exercised towards foreign money dealers was prohibited; all monopolies of the great officers and other courtiers were abolished; the currency was fixed permanently; the duty on sales of personal property was made applicable to the King and the royal family. But the most essential of all the changes introduced were these three :-that no resolution of two estates should bind the third, thus making their joint assent necessary in all cases-that each of the States General should appoint superintendents, and all the Provincial States officers, to regulate the levy of the taxes, as well as to prevent their produce from being diverted to purposes other than the charges of 1351. the war-and that the States General should be con voked the following November, beside meeting again in March without any new summons. 1351. This Ordinance, issued 22nd January, 1351, has often been likened to the Great Charter of England, and in one respect the resemblance is complete: the King John of France no more intended to stand by the concessions he had made than did his namesake of England. However, he was defeated and 19 Sept. taken prisoner at Poictiers before he had an opportunity of breaking his word; and when the States of the Langue d'Oil met to aid the Dauphin in carrying on the war, and paying his father's ransom, they compelled him to make still more ample surrenders of the royal authority-to dismiss his councillors, and even his domestics-to give the States the power of meeting without his summons-and of appointing deputies of their own who should reconstruct his Council, the Parliament of Paris, and the Chamber of Accounts. Nearly the same course was pursued by the States of the Langue d'Oc, assembled at Toulouse under Armagnac as the King's lieutenant. They granted 8000 men, with their pay; the States of the Langue d'Oil 30,000, in return for the large con cessions which had been extorted. But no sooner had this revolution (for such it was) been accomplished than the Dauphin found means to sow dissensions among the Three Estates, making the prelates and barons jealous of the towns, while he could trust to the pressure of the new taxes exciting general discontent; but above all he could rely on the alarm which now began to spread over the country at the great bodies of freebooters, reinforced with the disbanded soldiers during the truce. The prevalence of this alarm prevented the Dauphin's adversaries from opposing him in his resistance or contempt of the States; and after a short delay he dismissed them, with a declaration that he should henceforth exercise himself the royal authority until the King's liberation. But the adherents of Marcel and Lecocq, who had been the popular leaders in the late proceedings, were severely punished when the reaction took place, and when the Dauphin had the support of the barons against the commons and the towns. Marcel himself was killed in a tumult, and as many of his followers as could be seized met the same fate, though under the forms of a trial. It should seem that the jealousy now established among the Three Estates, and the dread in which all the community now lived of the armed bands spread over the country, deprived the States of the whole power which they had recently exercised against the Crown. The Dauphin several times convoked them without any apprehension of their again encroaching on his authority. He obtained but little aid from them in the conduct of the war, nevertheless they joined him in rejecting the 28 May, shameful treaty partitioning France between Edward 1359. and himself, which John had signed in London as the price of his liberation; and they also conferred upon him the title of Regent during his father's captivity. They were not asked to ratify the Treaty of Bretigny, by which the war was closed, and which was nearly as unfavourable to England as John's partition would have been to France; but there was no occasion for any such sanction, as the peace, had it been ever so disadvantageous to the country, was sure to diffuse universal joy 1 P. Dan., v. 471. among a people exhausted by the long and calamitous war which it seemed to terminate, and now suffering cruelly under the devastations of the " Compagnies," the armed bands to which it had given birth. The name of "Wise," which the Dauphin (afterwards Charles V.) owed to his love of reading (Note LXI., supra), and especially, it is said, to his taste for judicial astrology, belonged to him by a far higher title. History presents us with few examples of more distinguished talents for the conduct of affairs in seasons of the greatest difficulty than he displayed, without any considerable exception, during the whole of his regency and reign. The want of firmness which he had early shown made it be supposed that the defect extended from personal to moral courage, but this was certainly a mistake; for the hesitation which has been imputed to him on some occasions was only in appearance, and his temporary inaction, his yielding to circumstances, arose undoubtedly out of the often inextricable difficulties of his situation, from which he was sedulously providing the means of escaping, if he could not surmount them. In all his necessities he carefully avoided tampering with the coin; he never imposed taxes of his own mere authority; he protected the Jews, and obtained advances from them; he gained the favour of the clergy, who proved most useful allies against the English; and he steadily resisted the encroachments of the Pope, preventing effectually all appeals to Rome. After partly gaining over the States, partly freeing himself from their usurpation, he assembled them only when he required supplies, which he obtained to a larger amount than any of his predecessors, and when he was desirous of their concurrence in his opposing Edward, who had put an end to the peace of Bretigny. They heartily joined him; and with their aid, supported by the country, he was enabled to reconquer all the territory which the treaty had given up. By his wise and successful administration he had materially increased the power of the Crown. When he avoided calling the States, he took counsel with the Prelates and men of personal distinction; and he leant upon the Parliament as a body both less likely to control him and of more weight by its composition as well as its judicial functions. He made, by "the plenitude of his royal authority," as it purports to be, his Ordinance for fixing at fourteen the majority of the Sovereign. During the last eleven years of his reign the States-General were never convoked, but he frequently had recourse to those of the Provinces. The Ordinance respecting the King's majority was set aside on Charles VI.'s accession. A regency being formed under the Duc d'Anjou, the King was soon after crowned, and the government administered in his name (Note LXXII. infra). The Regent had possessed himself of the whole treasure left by his predecessor, and it became necessary to collect the taxes; but the Parisians revolted, and extorted an Ordinance abolishing all the imposts, without exception, laid on during the last sixty years, since the reign of Philip IV. (the Fair). The Nobles took the opportunity to raise a mob against the Jews, and rob them of the titledeeds and other securities which they had given for borrowed money. The confusion into which the finances of the country were flung made a meeting of the States-General necessary. It was held at Compiègne, but no supplies could be obtained. Notwithstanding the repeal of the taxes, the Government continued to levy them by force wherever they dared. After reigning eleven years with an authority which his uncles frequently shared in opposition to his will, his reason, always feeble, gave way, and for the remaining thirty years of his life he was, with some lucid intervals, in a state of incurable madness, ending in imbecility. The quarrels and intrigues of the pretenders to the regency greatly increased the miseries of the country, which became the theatre of civil war. During this dismal period there were no meetings of the States, but one or two assemblies were held of the nobles and other persons of rank, with a number of citizens of Paris, at one of which the King made an Ordinance revoking grants of places, and providing that the produce of taxes, as well as the profits of the royal domains, should be applied to the expenses of the war. However, one more meeting of the States-General-for such it 1410. appears to have been, though some have supposed it to be only an assembly of Notables-was held before Henry's inva- 1413. sion, in the expectation that the wretched condition of the country might not be imputed to the conduct of the Government alone, but might be made to appear in part the work of its representatives. The assembly was held at Paris, and consisted, as is said, only of the Prelates and Barons accustomed to attend the Court, with the Deputies of towns nearest the capital; for the country was so divided among the forces of the contending Princes, that communication between its different provinces was almost entirely interrupted by the soldiery and the bands of robbers who everywhere infested it. The application for supplies to prepare against the threatened invasion was refused. The grievances of the people were detailed by the few who took part in the proceedings; and a promise being given to take them into consideration, the meeting was dismissed. The Compagnies, NOTE LXVII.—pp. 343, 349, 453. During the period to which we have been referring in the last note, the condition of the peasantry was truly wretched. The rise of the towns into importance, from the emancipation of their inhabitants and their acquisition of wealth, had been slowly but steadily going on during the twelfth and still more during the thirteenth century; but very little change had taken place in the country, the inhabitants of which, for the most part, continued in a state of servitude. In France, however, as in other countries, manumissions became more frequent towards the end of the thirteenth century; and Philip the Fair, by one Ordinance, gave liberty to all the serfs in his domain of Languedoc, converting their services into a small money payment. His successor, Louis X., extended this to all the villeins of the Crown.' The 1 Robertson (Charles V., book i. note xx.) has not referred to these Ordinances with his wonted accuracy. He considers them as a general law |