The Census

AFTER the Barbarians had quitted their own country, they wanted to have their deeds written.

But they found a difficulty in writing German words with Roman letters, so they published these laws in Latin.

In the rapidity of the conquest, most things changed their nature. In order to express them, they had to use old Latin words.

Thus whatever was likely to revive the idea of the ancient census of the Romans, they called by the name of census tributum.

When things had no relation at all to the Roman census, they expressed, as well as they could, the German words by Roman letters:

Thus they formed the word fredum, on which I shall have occasion to descant in the following chapters.

The words census and tributum having been employed in an arbitrary manner, this has thrown some obscurity on the signification in which these words were used under our princes of the first and second race.

And modern* authors who have adopted particular systems, having found these words in the writings of those days, imagined that what was then called census, was exactly the census of the Romans; and from thence they inferred this consequence, that ourkings of the two first races had put themselves in the place of the Roman emperors, and made no change in their administration.

Besides, as particular duties raised under the second race were by change and by certain restrictions converted into others, they inferred from thence that these duties were the census of the Roman’s; and, as since the modern regulations, they found that the crown demesneswere absolutely unalienable, they pretended that those duties which represented the Roman census, and did not form a part of the demesnes, were mere usurpation. I omit the other consequences.

To apply the ideas of the present time to distant ages, is a source of error. To these people who want to modernizeall the ancient ages, I shall say what the Egyptian priests said to Solon,=E2=80=9CO Athenians, you are mere children!=E2=80=9D

Chapter 15: What they called census was raised only on the bondmen, not freemen.

THE king, the clergy, and the lords raised regular taxes, each on the bondmen of their respective demesnes. I proveit with respect to the king, by the capitulary de Villis; with regard to the clergy, by the codes of the* laws of the Barbarians; and with relation to the lords, by the regulations which Charlemaign made concerning this subject.

These taxes were called census; they were economical and not fiscal duties, mere private services and not public obligations.

What they called census at that time, was a tax raised upon the bondmen.This I prove by a formulary of Marculfus containing a permission from the king to enter into holy orders, provided the persons be* free-born, and not enrolled in the register of the census.

I prove it also by a commission from Charlemaign to a count, whom he had sent into Saxony; which contains the infranchisement of the Saxons for having embraced Christianity, and is properly acharter of freedom.

This prince restores them to their former civil liberty, and exempts them from paying the census. It was therefore the same thing to be a bondman as to paythe census, to be free as not to pay it.

By a kind of letters patent* of the same prince in favour of the Spaniards, who had been received into the monarchy, the counts are forbid to demand any census of them, or to deprive them of their lands.

That strangers upon their coming to France were treated as bondmen, is a thing wellknown; and Charlemaign being desirous they should be considered as freemen, since he would have them be proprietors of their lands, forbade the demanding any census of them.

A capitulary of Charles the Bald=E2=80=A0, given in favour ofthose very Spaniards, orders them to be treated like the other Franks, andforbids the requiring any census of them: consequently this census was notpaid by freemen.

The thirtieth article of the edict of Pistes reforms the abuse, by which several of the husbandmen belonging to theking or to the church, sold the lands dependent on their manors to ecclesiastics or to people of their condition, reserving only a small cottage to themselves; by which means they avoided paying the census; and, it ordains, that things should be restored to their primitive situation: the census wastherefore a tax peculiar to bondmen.

From thence also it follows, that there was no general census in the monarchy; and this is clear from a great number of passages.

For what could be the meaning of this capitulary? =E2=80=9CWe ordain that the royal census should be levied in all places, where formerly it was lawfully levied.

What could be the meaning of that in which Charlemaign orders his commissaries in the provinces to make an exact enquiry into all the census that belonged in former times to the kings demesne?

And of that in which he disposes of the censuss paid by those of whom they are demanded?

What can that other capitulary reads: If any person has acquired a tributary land, on which we were accustomed to levy the census?

And that other in fine, in which Charles the Bald makes mention of the lands, whose census had from time immemorial belonged to the king.

Observe that there are some passages which seem at first sight to be contrary to what I have said, and yet confirm it. We have already seen that the freemen in the monarchy were obliged onlyto furnish particular carriages; the capitulary just now cited gives to this** the name of census, and opposes it to the census paid by the bondmen.

Besides, the edict of Pistes takes notice of those freemen who are obliged to pay the royal census for their head and fortheir cottages, and who had sold themselves during the famine. The king orders them to be ransomed.

This is because those who were manumitted by the kings letters, did not, generally speaking, acquire a full and perfect liberty, but they paidcensum in capite; and these are the people here meant.

We must therefore explode the idea of a general and universal census, in imitation of that of the Romans, from which census the rights of the lords are also supposed to have been derived by usurpation. What was called census in the French monarchy, independently of the abuse made of that word, was a particular tax imposed on the bondmen by their masters.

I beg the reader to excuse the trouble Imust give him with such a number of citations. I should be more concise, did I not meet with the Abbe du Boss book on the establishmentof the French monarchy in Gaul, continually in my way. Nothing is a greater obstacle to our progress in knowledge, than a bad performance of a celebrated author; because, before we instruct, we must begin with undeceiving.

Chapter 16: The Feudal Lords or Vassals

Those volunteers among the Germans followed their princes in their several expeditions. The same usage continued after the conquest.

Tacitus mentions them by the name of companions.

The Salic law by that of men who have vowed fealty to the king; the formularies of Marculfus by thatof the king’s Antrustios, the earliest French historians by that of Leudes, faithful and loyal;and those of later date by that of vassals and lords.

In the Salic and Ripuarian laws we meet with an infinite number of regulations in regard to the Franks, and only with a few for the Antrustios.

The regulations concerning the Antrustios are different from those which were made for the other Franks; they are full of what relates to the settling of the property of the Franks, but mention not a word concerning that of the Antrustios.

This is because the property ofthe latter was regulated rather by the political than by the civil law, and was the share that fell to an army, and not the patrimony of a family.

The goods reserved for the feudal lords were called fiscal=E2=80=A0=E2=80=A0 goods, benefices, honours, and fiefs, by different authors, and in different times.

The fiefs at first were at will. We find in Gregory of Tours, that Sunegisilus and Gallomanus were deprived of all they held of the exchequer, and no more was left them than their real property. When Gontram raised his nephew Childebert to the throne, he had a private conference with him, in which he named* the persons who ought to be honoured with, and those who ought to be deprived of, the fiefs.

In a formulary of Marculfus, the king gives in exchange not only the benefices held by his exchequer, butlikewise those which had been held by another.

The law of the Lombards opposes the benefices to property. In this our historians, the formularies, the codes of the different barbarous nations, and all the monuments of those days, are unanimous.

The writers of the book of fiefs inform us, that at first the lords could take them back when they pleased, that afterwards they granted them for the space of a year, and that at length they gave them for life.