Servitudes

CHAP. 11: Servitudes

The many servitudes in France towards the beginning of the third race led to the notion of a general regulation made at the time of the conquest

The continual progression of these servitudes was not attended to.

People imagined in an age of obscurity a general law which was nev= er framed.

Towards the commencement of the first race, we meet with an infinite number of freemen, both among the Franks and the Romans.

But the number of bondmen increased that at the = beginning of the third race, all the husbandmen and almost all the inhabitants of towns were bondmen.

Whereas at the first period there was very near th= e same administration in the cities as among the Romans; namely, a corporation, a senate, and courts of judicature; at the other we hardly meet with an= y thing but a lord and his bondmen.

When the Franks, Burgundians, and Goths, made their several invasions, they seized upon gold, silver, moveables, cloaths, men, women, boys, and whatever the army could carry.

The whole was brought to one place, and divided amongst the army.

History shews, that after the first s= ettlement, that is after the first devastations, they entered into an agree= ment with the inhabitants, and left them all their political and civil rights.

This was the law of nations in those days; they plundered every thing in time of war, and granted every thing in time of peace.

Were it not so, ho= w should we find both in the Salic and Burgundian laws such a number of reg= ulations absolutely contrary to a general servitude of the people?

The conquest did not immediately create servitude. But servitude arose nevertheless from the same law of nations which subsisted after the conquest.

Opposition, revolts, and the taking of towns, were followed by the slavery of the inhabitants.

And, not to mention the wars= which the conquering nations made against one another, as there was this p= articularity among the Franks, that the different partitions of the monarch= y gave rise continually to civil wars between brothers or nephews, in which= this law of nations was constantly practised, servitudes of course became = more general in Franee than in other countries:

This is one of the causes of the difference between our French laws and those of Italy= and Spain, in respect to the right of seignories.

The conquest was soon over. The law = of nations then in force was productive of some servile dependencies.

The custom of the same law of nations, which obtained for many ages, gave a prod= igious extent to those servitudes.

Theodoric imagining that the people of A= uvergne were not faithful to him, thus addressed the Franks of his division= : =E2=80=9CFollow me, and I will carry you into a country where you shall h= ave gold, silver, captives, clothes, and flocks in abundance; and you shall= remove all the people into your own country.=E2=80=9D

After the conclusion of the peace* between Gontram and Chilper= ic, the troops employed in the siege of Bourges having had orders to return= , carried such a considerable booty away with them, that they hardly left e= ither men or cattle in the country.

Theodoric, king of Italy, had a spirit and policy different from the other barbarian kings.

Upon sending an army into Gaul, he wrote to the General: I want the Roman laws to be followed, and that you restore the fugitive slaves to their right owners.

The defender of liberty should not encourage servants to desert their masters.

Let other kings delight in the plunder and devasta= tion of the towns which they have subdued; we are desirous to conquer in such a manner, that our subjects shall lament their having fallen too late un= der our government.

His intention was to cast an odium on the kings of the Franks and the Burgundians, and that = he alluded in the above passage to their particular law of nations.

Yet this law of nations continued in force under the second race.

King Pepin’s army penetrated into Aquitaine. It returned to France with an immense booty and many bondmen.

Here might I quote numberless=E2=80=A0 authorities; and as the= public compassion was raised at the sight of those miseries, as several ho= ly prelates, beholding the captives in chains, employed the treasure belong= ing to the church, and sold even the sacred utensils, to ransom as many as = they could; and as several holy monks exerted themselves on that occasion, = it is in the=E2=80=A1 = lives of the saints that we meet with the best eclaircissements on this sub= ject. And, although it may be objected to the authors of those lives, that = they have been sometimes a little too credulous in respect to things which = God has certainly performed, if they were in the order of his providence; y= et we draw considerable lights from thence, with regard to the manners and = usages of those times.

When we cast an eye upon the monuments o= f our history and laws, the whole seems to be an immense expanse,=E2=80=A1 or a boundless ocean: = all those frigid, dry, crude writings must be devoured in the same manner, = as Saturn is fabled to have devoured the stones.

A vast quantity of land which had been i= n the hands of freemen,= =C2=A7 was changed into mortmain, when the country was stripped of its = free inhabitants; those who had a great multitude of bondmen either took la= rge territories by force, or had them yielded by agreement, and built villa= ges, as may be seen in different charters. On the other hand, the freemen w= ho cultivated the arts, found themselves reduced to exercise those arts in = a state of servitude: thus the servitudes restored to the arts and to agric= ulture whatever they had lost.

It was a customary thing with the propri= etors of land, to give them to the churches, in order to hold them themselv= es by a quit-rent, thinking to partake by their servitude of the sanctity o= f the churches.

CHAP. 12: The lands belonging to the= division of the Barbarians paid no taxes.

A PEOPLE remarkable for their simplicity= and poverty, a free and martial people, who lived without any other indust= ry than that of tending their flocks, and who had nothing but rush cottages= to attach them to their lands; such a people, I say, must have followed their chiefs = for the sake of booty, and not to pay or to raise taxes. The art of tax-g= athering is generally invented too late, and when men begin to enjoy the fe= licity of other arts.

The transient* tax of a pitcher of wine for every acre, which = was one of the exactions of Chilperic and Fredegonda, related only to the R= omans. And indeed it was not the Franks that tore the rolls of those taxes,= but the clergy who in those days were all Romans. The burthen of this tax = lay chiefly on the inhabitants=E2=80=A0 of the towns; now these were almost all inhabited by Roma= ns.

Gregory of Tours=E2=80=A1 relates, that a certain judge was ob= liged after the death of Chilperic to take refuge in a church, for having u= nder the reign of that prince ordered taxes to be levied on several Franks,= who in the reign of Childebert were ingenui, o= r freeborn: =E2=80=9CMultos de Francis, qui tempore Childeberti regis ingen= ui fuerant, publico tributo subegit.=E2=80=9D Therefore the Franks who were= not bondmen paid no taxes.

There is not a grammarian but would be a= shamed to see how the Abb=C3=A9 du Bos=C2=A7 has interpreted this passage. He observes, that in t= hose days the freedmen were also called ingenui. Upon this supposition he renders the Latin word inge= nui, by freed from taxes; a phrase, whic= h we indeed may use, as freed from cares, freed from p= unishments; but in the Latin tongue, such expressions as ingenui a tributis, libertini a tributis, manumissi tributorum, would be quite monstrous.

Parthenius, says Gregory of Tours=E2=88=A5 had like to have be= en put to death by the Franks for subjecting Edition: current; Page: [375] them to taxes. The Abb=C3=A9= du Bos finding himself hard pressed by this passage* very coolly supposes the thing in question:= it was, he says, an extraordinary duty.

We find in the law of the Visigoths=E2=80=A0, that when a Barb= arian had seized upon the estate of a Roman, the judge obliged him to sell = it, to the end that this estate might continue to be tributary; consequentl= y the Barbarians paid no taxes=E2=80=A1.

The Abb=C3=A9 du Bos=C2=A7 who, to support his system, would f= ain have the Visigoths subject to taxes=E2=88=A5, quits the literal and spiritual sense of the la= w, and pretends upon no other indeed than an imaginary foundation, that bet= ween the establishment of the Goths and this law there had been an augmenta= tion of taxes which related only to the Romans. But none but father Harduin= are allowed thus to exercise an arbitrary power over facts.

This learned author** has rumaged Justinian=E2=80=99s code=E2=80=A0=E2=80=A0, in sea= rch of laws, to prove that among the Romans the military benefices were sub= ject to taxes. From whence he would infer that the same held good with rega= rd to fiefs or benefices among the Franks. But the opinion that our fiefs d= erive their origin from that institution of the Romans, is Edition: current; Page: [376] at present exp= loded; it obtained only at a time when the Roman history, but not ours, was= well understood, and our ancient records lay buried in obscurity and dust.=

But the Abb=C3=A9 is in the wrong to quo= te Cassiodorus, and to make use of what was transacting in Italy, and in th= e part of Gaul subject to Theodoric, in order to acquaint us with the pract= ice established among the Franks; these are things which must not be confou= nded. I propose shewing, some time or other, in a particular work, that the= plan of the monarchy of the Ostrogoths was intirely indifferent from that = of any other government founded in those days by the other Barbarian nation= s; and so far are we entitled to affirm that a practice obtained among the = Franks, because it was established among the Ostrogoths, that on the contra= ry we have just reason to think that a custom of the Ostrogoths was not in = force among the Franks.

The hardest task for persons of extensiv= e erudition, is to deduce their arguments from passages not foreign to the = subject, and to find, if we may be allowed to express ourselves in astronom= ical terms, the true place of the sun.

The same author makes a wrong use of the= capitularies, as well as of the historians and laws of the barbarous natio= ns. When he wants the Franks to pay taxes, he applies to freemen what can b= e understood only of* = bondmen; when he speaks of their military service, he applies to=E2=80=A0 bondmen what can never = relate but to freemen.

CHAP. 13: Taxes paid by the Romans and Gauls, in the m= onarchy of the Franks.

I MIGHT here examine whether after the G= auls and Romans were conquered, they continued to pay the taxes to which they were subject under the emperors. But, for the sake of brevity, I shall b= e satisfied with observing that if they paid them in the beginning, they we= re soon after exempted, and that those taxes were changed into a military s= ervice. For I confess I cannot conceive how the Franks should have been at = first such great friends, and afterwards such sudden and violent enemies, t= o taxes.

A capitulary* of Lewis the Debonnaire explains extremely well = the situation of the freemen in the monarchy of the Franks. Some troops=E2=80=A0 of Goths or Iber= ians, flying from the oppression of the Moors, were received into Lewis=E2= =80=99s dominions. The agreement made with them was, that like other freeme= n they should follow their count to the army; and that upon a march they sh= ould mount guard=E2=80=A1<= /a> and patrol under the command also of their count; and that they should = furnish horses and carriages for baggage to the king=E2=80=99s=E2=88=A5 commissaries and to the a= mbassadors in their way to and from court; and that they should not be comp= elled to pay any further acknowledgment, but should be treated as the other= freemen.

It cannot be said that these were new us= ages introduced towards the commencement of the second race. This must be r= eferred at least to the middle or to the end of the first. A capitulary of = the year* 864, says in= express terms, that it was the ancient custom for freemen to perform milit= ary service, and to furnish likewise the horses and carriages above mention= ed; duties particular to themselves, and from which those who possessed the= fiefs were exempt, as we shall prove hereafter.

This is not all; there was a regulation which hardly = permitted the imposing of taxes on those freemen. He who had sour manors=E2=80=A1 was always obli= ged to march against the enemy: he who had but three, was joined with a fre= eman that had only one; the latter bore the fourth part of the other=E2=80= =99s charges, and staid at home. In like manner, they joined two freemen wh= o had each two manors; he who went to the army had half his charges borne b= y him who staid at home.

There are so many cha= rters, in which the privileges of fiefs are granted to lands or districts p= ossessed by freemen, and of which I shall make farther mention hereafter=E2=88=A5. These lands ar= e exempted from all the duties or services, which were required of them by = the counts, and by the rest of the Edition: current; Page: [379] king=E2=80=99s officers: and as all th= ese services are particularly enumerated, without making any mention of tax= es, it is manifest that no taxes were imposed upon them.

It was very natural that the Roman art o= f tax-gathering should fall of itself in the monarchy of the Franks: it was= a most complicate art, far above the conception, and wide from the plan, o= f those simple people. Were the Tartars to over-run Europe, we should find = it very difficult to make them comprehend what is meant by our financiers.<= /p>

The* anonymous author of the life of Lewis the Debonnaire, spe= aking of the counts and other officers of the nation of the Franks, whom Ch= arlemaign established in Aquitania, says, that he intrusted them with the c= are of defending the frontiers, as also with the military power and the dir= ection of the demesnes belonging to the crown. This shews the state of the = royal revenues under the second race. The prince had kept his demesnes in h= is own hands, and employed his bondmen in improving them. But the indiction= s, the capitations, and other imposts raised at the time of the emperors on= the persons or goods of freemen, had been changed into an obligation of de= fending the frontiers, and marching against the enemy.

In the same history=E2=80=A0, we find that Lewis the Debonnair= e having been to wait upon his father in Germany, this prince asked him, wh= y he, who was a crowned head, came to be so poor: to which Lewis made answe= r, that he was only a nominal king, and that the great lords were possessed= of almost all his demesnes; that Charlemaign, being apprehensive lest this= young prince should forfeit their affection, if he attempted himself to re= sume what he had inconsiderately Edition: current; Page: [380] granted, appointed commissaries to resto= re things to their former situation.

The bishops writings=E2=80=A1 to Lewis brother to Charles the = Bald, use these words: =E2=80=9CTake care of your lands, that you may not b= e obliged to travel continually by the houses of the clergy, and to tire th= eir bondmen with carriages. Manage your affairs, continue they, in such a m= anner, that you may have enough to live upon, and to receive embassies.=E2= =80=9D It is evident, that the king=E2=80=99s revenues* in those days consisted of their demesnes= .