Charlemagne was Laon, and here they usually resided, unless when obliged to take refuge at Rheims, under the protection of the archbishop, against the attacks of the surrounding nobles.

Of this dominant and independent aristocracy, the most fortunately placed, if not the most powerful, was the Count of Paris. The family had always distinguished itself. Robert the Strong, its supposed founder, had combated the Normans when every other Frank fled at their approach. Eudes had defended Paris against them during a year's siege; and such was the renown acquired by the feat, that he was crowned king during the minority of Charles the Simple. It seems as if this new dignity diminished rather than increased the power of the Counts of Paris, by the envy and enmity which it excited. For when Hugues, of the same family, might with equal ease have worn the crown, he preferred bestowing it upon Louis, surnamed Outre-mer, a boy of Carlovingian blood. In the next generation the family grew more powerful. The eldest brother possessed the duchy of Burgundy; the second, Hugh Capet, was Count of Paris and Orleans; whilst their sister, married to the Duke of Normandy, secured the friendship of that powerful prince. Louis V., or le Fainéant, held the title of king of Laon. He was without offspring; whilst his uncle, Charles, the sole heir of Carlovingian rights, held the duchy of Lorraine of the emperor, and might be supposed a stranger to France and to its succession. In 987, Louis died at Compiegne, poisoned, it is said, by his wife. As history is silent as to the cause, conjecture has attributed the crime to the ambition of Hugh Capet. That noble took advantage of the opportunity, assembled some of his compeers at Noyon, where the form of an election was gone through in his favour, and soon after Hugh caused himself to be crowned in the cathedral of Rheims.

Charles of Lorraine, though thus prevented of his rights, was neither friendless nor vanquished. He soon took forcible possession of Laon and of Rheims, from which

987.

HUGH CAPET.

27

Hugh Capet was unable to drive him by force of arms. He adroitly, however, contrived to attach to his interests Ascelin, bishop of Laon, whom Charles, somewhat mistrusting, kept with him at Rheims. A conspiracy, formed by Ascelin, was attended with complete success. Charles was seized in his bed, and, together with his nephew, the archbishop of Rheims, delivered over to Hugh Capet. That monarch placed his prisoners in confinement at Orleans, where his competitor, Charles of Lorraine, soon after died.

These, if we except a long quarrel respecting the archbishopric of Rheims, are the sole events of the reign of Hugh Capet, which is supposed to have occupied nine years. Some modern historians regard the founder of the third dynasty of French monarchs as a hero and a master spirit, whose talents won for him a crown. Others, amongst whom is Sismondi, represent him as a pious sluggard, indebted to fortune solely for his elevation. Both are in extreme. We see no proofs of his heroism. But his was an iron age, in which the exertions of individuals had slight power in changing the course of events. Nor does it follow that, because he was pious, he was pusillanimous. He made war on the Count of Montreuil, to recover the relics of St. Riquier, which that Count had stolen. Hugh Capet compelled him to surrender them, and bore himself the venerable remains on his royal shoulders to the abbey of the saint. Such is the account of the chroniclers. But if we observe that Hugh at the same time built and fortified Abbeville, the monarch will not seem altogether sunk in the superstitious votary.

"Who made thee Count? demanded Hugh Capet of a refractory noble, supposed by some to be Talleyrand, Count of Angoulême. "The same right that made thee king," was the bold reply. Such was the measure of the new monarch's authority. The great feudatories, in consenting to place the crown on one of their own body, thought less of his elevation than of humbling the throne. Their views were sound, if they

considered but themselves,-short-sighted, if they looked forward to posterity. Feudality ascended the throne with Hugh Capet; and, despite the precautions or intentions of the founders, the head of so powerful a system could not long remain powerless himself. Organised as society now was in regular and successive gradations of inferior and superior, a supreme chief became necessary to complete the whole.

to crown the structure.

There was something wanting

The nobles imagined to adorn

it with the lifeless image of royalty. But their statue, like Pygmalion's, took life as it became the object of veneration, and grew at length to wield its sceptre with a muscular arm.

Hugh Capet had taken the precaution to have his son crowned and consecrated during his own lifetime. Thus, on the demise of the former, Robert found himself the undisputed king of France. The young monarch was one of those soft, domestic tempers which fate so often misplaces on a throne. He had married Bertha, the widow of the Count of Blois, and was tenderly attached to her. The spouses had the misfortune to be distantly related, and Robert had been godfather to one of Bertha's children by her former husband. The pope considered these circumstances sufficient to render the marriage incestuous; and he accordingly issued a command to Robert, desiring him to put away Bertha, under pain of excommunication, The popes had erected themselves into the censors of princes, and they were especially rigid in prohibiting the marriage of cousins. Such unions, they said, drew down divine vengeance, and were to be avoided, lest they should produce national calamities. Nor was this mere superstition on their part: it had its policy. It was chiefly by intermarriages that the great aristocracy at this time increased their territories and influence. Every obstacle thrown in the way of these alliances consequently checked the growth of their exorbitant might; every difficulty or scruple, being in the power of the pontiff alone to remove, brought considerable advantage, both in revenue and respect, to the

1031.

ROBERT THE WISE.

29

holy see. Robert struggled for four or five years in behalf of his legitimate wife, against the terrors of excommunication; but he was at length compelled to yield, to chase poor Bertha from his presence, and to take another wife, Constance, the daughter of the Count of Toulouse. With her, a woman of more spirit than her predecessor, Robert was less happy. The monarch dreaded her, and was even obliged to do his alms in secret for fear of her reproof. His chief amusement was the singing and composing of psalms, to which the musical taste of that age was confined. In a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert left a sealed paper on the altar of the apostles. The priesthood expected it to contain a magnificent donation, and were not little surprised and disappointed to find it to contain but a hymn of the monarch's composition. The piety of Robert was most exemplary. He was anxious to save his subjects from the crime of perjury: the means he took were, to abstract privately the holy relics from the cases which contained them, and on which people were sworn. He substituted an ostrich's egg, as an innocent object, incapable of taking vengeance on the false swearer.

Such are the facts which we have to relate of a reign of nearly thirty-five years. The good king Robert slumbered on his throne, with a want of vigour and capacity, that would have caused a monarch of the first two races to totter from his seat, or at least would have transferred his authority to some minister or powerful duke. The Capetians as yet, however, unlike the Carlovingians, had neither power nor prerogative to tempt the ambition of an usurper. The very title of king was unenvied. And whilst the sovereign led the choir at St. Denis, France was not the less vigorously governed by its independent and feudal nobility.

The obstinacy of the pope in breaking the marriages of princes produced its natural consequences on the death of Robert. Henry, known as the First of France, was that monarch's son by Bertha, and had been crowned in the lifetime of his father. Constance, how

ever, attached to her own son Robert, made a league with Eudes, Count of Champagne, and offered him half the town of Sens for his assistance against Henry. The circumstance marks the limit of the duchy of France. Henry, unable to resist so powerful a noble, fled with only twelve companions to the protection of Robert, Duke of Normandy. The Duke furnished the young king with an army, which soon reduced Constance and her supporter to submit and make peace. Henry I. took possession of his circumscribed kingdom, ceding in fief to his brother Robert the duchy of Burgundy, and to the Duke of Normandy, as the price of his aid, a territory called the Vexin, comprised between the Oise and the Epte; thus bringing the Norman frontier within a few leagues of Paris. The Vexin proved afterwards the great subject of contention betwixt the Norman dukes and their sovereign.

Thus settled on his throne, Henry, like his father Robert, sunk into quiet and insignificance. The Count of Champagne, Eudes, eclipsed and overshaded the monarch, who was unable to drive him from Sens. Eudes sustained a long war with the emperor, as a pretender to the throne of Arles and Provence. And when the nobles of Lombardy came to France in search of a sovereign, they made offer of their crown, not to Henry, but to Eudes. Yet, despite of the feebleness both of their power and character, the French monarchs already drew to them a greater share of respect. Henry made war upon the Count of Champagne, and afterwards upon young William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. His warlike efforts could make no impression on those powerful feudatories: and yet Eudes never attempted to retaliate. The Norman duke, though he routed and slaughtered one of the royal armies, refrained from attacking that which the monarch commanded in person. The feudal system had grown to its full vigour : its laws were established in superstition as well as custom; and it was considered both impolitic and impious for a vassal to war, without flagrant cause of injustice, against