Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/597

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 589 knowledge to put up claims on behalf of Germany as misleading as, or worse than, those now laid down by M. Flach. But something better was to be hoped for from French scholarship than M. Flach's rather gross tu quoque. It is only fair to M. Flach to add that these ideas were in no wise new to him, and were no mere result of recent events. Yet they do seem to have received a deeper and more unhistorical colour from the circumstances of the last few years. Their simplicity is rather in imagining that the men of the tenth century regarded themselves as fettered by any legal ties whatsoever, than in demonstrating that they were not bound by feudal obligations. But it is impossible to regard some parts of this volume otherwise than as a " war book ' of a regrettable sort. How does it help history to see in Otto I's ' agressions ' in Burgundy what M. Flach saw in them ? ' Nous retrouvons le procede habituel des Alle- mands de rejeter sur autrui les turpitudes dont ils se sont rendus coupables ' (p. 396). All through the book similar modern presuppositions come in from time to time. Thus on p. 35 we have Baldwin II of Flanders basing his monarchia ' sur une base nationale '. When in 1124 the ' Germans ' were preparing to invade France, ' sept corps d'armee ' assembled round Louis VI at Reims, as part of a ' mouvement national '. In the same spirit Bouvines ' a fonde I'unite de la France, comme I'a sauvee, sept siecles plus tard, la victoire de la Marne ' (p. xi). Again, in treating of Brittany the ' panceltique ' title gwledig is equally applicable from the sixth century to the sixteenth (p. 192). What is the use of reproaching historians for pushing back the period of feudal law for a century or two, when the modern doctrine of nationality is thus crudely discovered in the early middle ages ? M. Flach was proud to base his doctrines on definite texts. But there is something almost medieval in his arguments from isolated fragments of documents, after the same fashion in which a schoolman used his citations from the Bible and the Fathers. And there is the same tendency to see in these fragmentary justifications a higher or subtler meaning than the words themselves seem likely to carry. Little confidence can be placed in the argumentum a silentio in a period when texts are so rare and obscure. When some clear piece of evidence cannot be gainsaid, M. Flach sometimes cut the knot by questioning the authenticity of the awkward document. And what satisfied M. Flach in establishing a point he wished to prove, seems to him valueless when it tells against him. Thus on p. 370 the presence of Rudolf II of Burgundy at a great council at Worms in 926 is no evidence of ' German ' supremacy over Burgundy, though on p. 389 the appearance of Hugh of Aries at an assembly in the Autunois, held in 924 by King Raoul, has as its ' seule explication legitime ' that ' il devait reconnaitre, soit la preeminence carolingienne de Charles le Simple, soit la suprematie franque des rois Robertiens '. Apart from such a tendency to force the evidence in a sense favourable to his own views, M. Flach sees too clearly and too definitely things hidden in a mist of doubt. He forgot that he was dealing with a period of extreme obscurity, when texts are rare and ambiguous and when no final certainty can be hoped for. It is a matter of profound regret that it seems necessary to speak so bluntly as to the unhistorical character of the arguments of so learned and