Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/471

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 449 title and honours of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long neglected and finally denied ; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the story of this second branch, 1. Of all the families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious is the house of France, which has occu- pied the same throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century.^^ In the age of the crusades it was already revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the mar- riage of Peter no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed ; and so precarious was their title that the eldest sons, as a necessary precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their fathers. The peers of France have long main- tained their precedency before the younger branches of the royal line ; nor had the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote candidates for the succession. 2. The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estima- tion, and in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange was often required and allowed ; but, as they continued to diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors ; and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honours of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3. The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople ; he rashly accepted the invita- "s In the beginning- of the xith century, after naming the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is obliged to add, cujus genus valde in-ante re- peritur obscurum. Yet we are assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong, count of Anjou (a.D. 863-873), a noble Frank of Neustria, Neustricus . . . generosse stirpis, who was slain in the defence of his country against the Normans, dum patriae fines tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a probable conjecture that the third race descended from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne (M^moires de I'Acaddmie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548-579). He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has neverfappeared, VOL. VI. 29