Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/572

 536 929-987. 929. Rodolf then became undisturbed king till he too died in 936. The barons under the guidance of Hugh &quot; the White&quot; or &quot; the Great,&quot; son of Robert, the greatest man of his age, sent over to England for Louis, son of Charles, who had been carried thither by his mother for safety. This is that &quot; Louis d Outremer,&quot; &quot; Louis from Over-sea,&quot; who now became king ; after showing unusual vigour in a struggle with Otho the Great of Germany, who claimed the kingship over France, he was recognized by all in 941. His reign could be nothing but the miserable record of a struggle against the great lords, Hugh the Great and Richard of Normandy. In this perpetual and wearisome strife he spent his latter days, and died, still a young man, in 954. He was the only man of energy among all the later Carolings, His son Lothair succeeded; his was a long and inglorious reign, ending in 98G. His son Louis followed, ruling for a single year. He died childless in 987; and the only heir to the throne if the feudal lords chose to recognize an heredi tary claim was his uncle Charles, duke of Lorraine. The barons did not choose to be so tied ; they set the Caroling prince aside, and elected Hugh, duke of France, to be king. He was afterwards solemnly crowned at Rheims by Arch bishop Adalberon. Thus did Hugh Capet, founder of a great dynasty, come to the throne. With him begins the true history of the kingdom of France; we have reached the epoch of the feudal monarchy. II. THE FEUDAL MONARCHY. Hugh Hugh Capet, eldest son of Hugh the Great, duke of Capet, France, was but a Neustrian noble when he was elected [n&amp;lt;r 0^ king- The house of the Carolings was entirely set aside, France, its claims and rights denied, by the new force now growing up, the force of feudalism. The head of the barony should be one of themselves ; he should stand clear of the imperial ideas and ambitions which had ruled the conduct of his pre decessors ; he should be a Frenchman in speech and birth and thought, and not a German ; but, above all, he must be strong enough to hold his own. And among the great lords of northern France, the representative of the house of Robert the Strong held the most central position, and united in himself most elements of strength. His lands lay between the Burgundians and the Normans, and stretched, north and south, from Flanders to Aquitaine. Not so long ago the duke of France had been the champion of the whole land against the invasions of the Northmen, and the successful defence of Paris had assured to the duke that position of protector of French interests which passed naturally into a kingship. The connexions of the house were also a great source of strength ; the duke was abbot of St Martin near Tours, the spiritual lord of the Loire, and abbot of St Denis near Paris, the spiritual lord of the Seine. And not only in connexion with the church was he strong ; his alliances with the lay-lords were equally fortu nate. The lesser barons looked up to him ; he was brother to Eudes Henry, duke of Burgundy, on the one side, and Richard the Fearless, duke of Normandy, on the other side, was his brother-in-law. Lastly, his was a compact and central territory : he was feudal lord of all Pi card y, and held a large part of Champagne ; Paris, Orleans, Chartres, the counties of Blois, Perche, Tours, Maine, were also his. The domains of the dukes of France formed a long and rather narrow strip ; the western border running nearly north and south touched the sea just above the mouth of the Sommo, and reached the Loire a little below Orleans. Paris was as nearly as might be the centre of this district, which was bounded to the north by Flanders and Hainault, to the east by Champagne and a corner of Burgundy, to the south by Aquitaine, to the west by [HISTORY. Normandy. The lords of these districts regarded them- 987- * selves as at least the equals of the new king ; the chief of them were the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, and the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Vermandois. The accession of Hugh to the throne was not undisputed. Charles of Lorraine, rightful heir to the Caroling throne, re sisted him for a time, and was upheld by a formidable party among the nobles and churchmen. Their head quarters were at Laon, on the northern frontier of Hugh s domain ; their strongest friend was William Fier-a-Bras, duke of Aquitaine, on its southern limit. The hearty sup port of the Normans alone secured the new king s throne. After a short, sharp struggle, in which clerical treachery was as prominent as knightly valour, Hugh got his rival into his hands, and imprisoned him at Orleans, where he died. In a short time all the princes north of the Loire had recognized his authority. The clergy of his domains and territories looked up to him as their friend and champion, and willingly, as an end of strife, deposed Archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who was nephew of the fallen Caroling prince, and elected in his room the famous Gerbert (afterwards pope as Sylvester II.), the most learned man of his age, who had dared to visit Saracenic Spain, and to bring thence to the north some of that science which gave him the fascinating reputation of being a sorcerer. He had been also in Italy, welcomed and rewarded by Otho the Great ; he had taken the lead in the election of Hugh Capet. His elevation to the archbishopric of Rheims placed Hugh in direct antagonism to the papacy, and added much to the troubles of the king s life. And in truth his reign was a constant struggle ; he won his kingly name with a life-time of anxious work, and with loss of much of his own domain, which he had to grant out as rewards to the faithfulness of his followers. At the time of his death in 996 it looked as if he was a weaker man than he had been nine years before. The Norman and Aquitanian dukes were stronger than he was, stronger than they themselves had been nine years before ; in Burgundy his brother s power was little more than a nominal lordship ; the eastern frontier of France seemed to be split up into a chain of in dependent principalities. On the Christmas day after his election in 987, Hugh He: Capet had called together his friends at Orleans, and had tar : persuaded them to elect his eldest son Robert as a joint- S! p king. Himself king by the will of his peers, he clearly desired to give the new kingship the hereditary impress, and to secure it to his family ; and it may be noticed that in no country has the strict law of hereditary succession been so potent as in France, overbearing, as it did in the extreme case of Henry IV., even the opposition which that prince aroused, and securing an unbroken male descent down to the Revolution. Robert succeeded as sole king in 996, not a good ex-Kol. change for the infant kingship. For if the vigorous Hugh was embarrassed by both friends and foes, Robert, with far more piety and far less force of character, seemed cer tain to be overwhelmed. For Robert &quot; the Pious &quot; or &quot; the Debonair, &quot; was an easy kindly man, the delight of monkish chroniclers, endowed with all the charming and dangerous virtues which commend themselves in the man, and often prove fatal to the king. His was a long inglorious reign of twenty -five years, a constant struggle, first with the church for his wife, afterwards with his barons for his ex istence. His first wife had been his distant cousin. The papacy, which could do nothing against his father, forced him to put her away ; and though he did so very reluctantly, he speedily took another wife, Constance of Aquitaine, politically an important alliance, though she led him but a wretched