other Lords appear to have followed this example, and before the middle of the fourteenth century a great proportion of the peasantry were no longer in a state of servitude. But the immediate consequences of the change were far from proving beneficial. The poor serfs had not any desire to exchange their dependent but protected condition for a state of freedom' strange to them, and entailing self-defence and self-support; while the owners of the soil, no longer regarding them as their property, felt neither the duty of assisting them nor the disposition to spare them. All the accounts which have reached us represent the condition of the peasants in that age as the most deplorable of which history affords any example. It had become a proverb that the peasant, Jacques Bonhomme, as he was called in derision of his spiritless nature, could not be too harshly treated, and that he could only be made to give up his wretched savings by blows. The English invasion added to the miseries of his lot; for first the ransoms of the Barons, if taken prisoners, must be paid by extortions from the peasantry, even when the ravages of war had not extended to the district; and then the end of each campaign set free, from both armies, bands of ferocious soldiers, who, driving the trade of freebooters, were the terror of the whole country. The villages were deserted, and the towns crowded with starving fugitives. Even the neighbourhood of Paris was not safer than more remote districts; and the greater part of the inhabitants of the Isle de France sought refuge within the walls of the capital.

The disasters of 1356 and the disbanding of soldiers on both sides had greatly increased the numbers of the freebooters, now

affecting all serfs in France, and states that no such law is to be found in our statute book. In fact, neither Philip nor Louis could do more than enfranchise their own serfs; and the latter in his Ordinance only expresses his hope that "other Lords will follow his example."

Not only serfs or villeins refused being emancipated, but free men often became serfs for the advantages of protection and support; in the same way as owners of allodial property, at an earlier period, obtained infeodation for the like benefit of defence which they derived from it.

called the "Companies," although the evil had existed in a considerable degree during the greater part of the war. They received further reinforcements when the civil war broke out in 1358, by the quarrel between the Dauphin and the King of Navarre. The peasants, driven to despair by the cruelty and pillage of these marauders, armed themselves in their own defence; but exasperated likewise by the oppressions of the Barons and the refusal of the Government to protect them from the Companies, they attacked and plundered their châteaux, and committed every kind of excess. This Jacquerie, as it was called from the name given to the peasants, after producing great mischief and many murders, was in a few weeks put down by the union of all parties, French, Navarrese, and English, against the unarmed insurgents, of whom above 10,000 were massacred almost without resistance; and the country which had chiefly been the scene of the insurrection, the Isle de France, was left almost unpeopled. The peace after John's return added greatly to the force of the Companies, now composed of Germans and Brabanters, as well as of French. Their numbers amounted to 16,000. They were joined by some gentlemen and not a few officers. Their devastations became more extensive; they were indeed the curse of the country, assailing all persons and all property. An army of 12,000 men sent against them, under Jacques de Bourbon, was defeated and their commander slain. They were then bribed by large gifts of money to go and serve in Lombardy, under the Marquis of Montferrat, against the Barons; but many of them returned, and, joining those who had refused to go, their numbers now amounted to 30,000. Their depredations were not confined to France: they attacked the dominions of the Emperor, who succeeded in repulsing them, but they then laid France waste; and, after an unsuccessful attempt, by the joint efforts of the Pope, the Emperor, and Charles V. of France, to make them serve the

Separate companies were called Malandrins; when several were united, sometimes as many as six or seven, they were called Grandes Compagnies.— Anc. Chron, de France. Malandrino, in Italian, meant robber.

King of Cyprus against the Turks, the latter prevailed on them to serve under Du Guesclin, in Spain. By their assistance, he succeeded in dethroning Pedro the Cruel, placing Henry of Trastamar in his stead.

The Black Prince then obtained their services in Pedro's behalf, whom he had undertaken to restore; nor is it easy to say whether the wickedness of the design, or the detestable agency which he employed in the execution of it, fixes a more indelible stain upon the memory of that Prince. The loss of the English conquests in the south of France could not, in all likelihood, have failed to punish their authors after no very long delay; but Edward's conduct in this enterprise is justly believed greatly to have hastened that event. Historians are agreed in ascribing it partly to this cause, and partly to the insolent arrogance of the English in their intercourse with their fellow subjects of France. The Companies were reduced in the Spanish campaign to 6000 men; and they resumed their vocation of plunder and massacre upon their return from the Peninsula. But Charles, now that their numbers were so much diminished, could 1367. take effectual steps to curb and to disperse them, and they appear no longer in his reign to have ravaged and alarmed the country.'

It must be observed that the general habit of plunder which characterised the age was not without its effect in producing this pest. The English expedition itself, both at first in the north and afterwards in the south, was undertaken wholly with the view of pillage, the absurd claim to the crown being only put forward as a cloak to cover the real object of the enterprise. The unexpected accident of Philip's cruelty in massacreing his Genoese auxiliaries at Crécy, and the panic of the Dauphin and his Court at Poictiers, alone gave the war a serious aspect, because these unforeseen incidents rendered it possible for the invaders to make conquests. Again, many of the persons who rose to the highest

2

Mez., i. 846. P. Dan., vi. 30, 160.

2 Mr. Hume takes this just view of both Edward's and Henry's wars (ch. xix.), though led away by the vulgar admiration of talents and success

ranks, both in the French and English armies, had begun their career as freebooters. The Constable Du Guesclin, as he became under Charles V., was originally a captain of Companies. It should seem that Sir Robert Knollys, who commanded against him on the side of Edward, at one time followed the same profession. The great body which spread desolation through France and parts of Germany was joined by gentlemen, who partook eagerly of their plunder. Even ecclesiastics of some rank took part in these shameful excesses, as in a preceding age bishops had been found commanding bands of robbers. The alliance of the Black Prince with the Companies betokens the entire relaxation of all principle and want of honourable feeling which prevailed, and shows the general impression on men's minds that robbery ceased to be a crime if it was attended with hazard-in other words, accompanied with bloodshed. A chronicler of those times, after relating that Charles's soldiers, when stationed to protect travellers, generally fell upon them like the freebooters, adds, that "knights, professing to be the King's friends, whose names he dares not mention, headed bands of those robbers, and were well known as such when they came to Paris, but no one ventured to denounce them;" and as for Du Guesclin, after his services had been rewarded with a grant of the county of Longueville, instead of driving the freebooters from the realm, as he had promised, he suffered his men to pillage the whole country, robbing also on the highway.' But perhaps there can be no better proof given of the systematic encouragement of robbery and violence than the clause which the States General insisted upon the Dauphin adding to the famous Ordinance which they extorted from him in 1357; full leave was given to all his subjects to take whatever booty they could seize from the enemy, without any control of the King's officers or any sharing of his troops, unless in so far as they had joined in the act of plunder.

2

so far as (ch. xvi.) to consider the Black Prince a perfect character even for humanity.

Contin. Gul. Nang., 154.

2 Thibaudeau, Hist. des Etats Généraux, i. 149. This work has the merit

Nothing could exceed the barbarity with which those desperate men carried on their warfare against all property, and indeed all life. The torments which they inflicted on their miserable victims to extort a confession where their effects were hid, or to make them ransom themselves, are described by all contemporary writers, as well as the wanton murders which they committed from the mere love of slaughter. Sauvages, in his notes to the Chroniques de Flandre (referred to in Note LXIX. infra), quotes an ancient poem, called Le Vou du Héron, in which one of the brigand chiefs, 1338, under Robert d'Artois, makes his knights. swear on a heron that in Edward III.'s service they will carry devastation into France, and neither spare ne monasterie, ne autel, femme grosse, ne enfant que je puisse trouver, ne parent, ne amies."

NOTE LXVIII.—p. 347.

Considerable embarrassment is experienced, if not error introduced, in consequence of the inaccurate and various use of terms in the French finance of former times. The same word is used in different senses, and different words in the same sense. Thus, aide is sometimes used for any tax, sometimes for a subsidy or voluntary gift-what in English history is termed a benevolence, and

of giving a fuller account of the Ordinances than M. Sismondi and others; but the want of particular reference to his authorities is a fatal defect; and the inaccuracy to be found in many places begets a natural distrust where no voucher is referred to. Thus we find a statement in one place (i. 115) that Normandy and Picardy formed the greater part of the provinces of the Langue d'Oil; and in another (i. 122) the author speaks of the Pays de Langue d'Oil and those of the Lois Coutumières as different, the form of the expression clearly showing that this is not an error of Langue d'Oil for Langue d'Oc, but that he considered the latter as Pays de Coutumes. It may be added that the work is evidently written to support certain opinions connected with the political controversies of the day. However considerable may be its merits, no one can compare it in point of interest to the same author's Mém. sur la Convention et le Directoire, though it was hardly possible that this should not also bear the marks of his unavoidable prejudices. It is nevertheless a valuable work.