Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/71

Rh we notice a sympathetic attitude in the nobility, which seems in absolute contrast with it. Whereas feudal satire goes on expressing hatred mixed with contempt and sometimes with fear, as in the Proverbes del Vilain and in the Kerelslied, the song of the Flemish villagers, the code of aristocratic ethics teaches, on the other hand, a sentimental compassion for the miseries of the oppressed and defenceless people. Despoiled by war, exploited by the officials, the people live in the greatest distress.

They suffer in patience. “The prince knows nothing of this.” If, at times, they murmur, “poor sheep, poor foolish people,” a word from the prince will suffice to appease them. The devastation and insecurity which in consequence of the Hundred Years’ War had finally spread over almost all France, gave these laments a sad actuality. From the year 1400 downwards there is no end to the complaints about the fate of the peasants, plundered, squeezed, maltreated by gangs of enemies or friends, robbed of their cattle, driven from their homes. They are expressed by the great Churchmen who favoured reform, such as Nicolas de Clemanges, in his Liber de lapsu et reparatione justitiæ, or Gerson in his political sermon Vivat rex, preached on November 7, 1405, in the queen’s palace at Paris, before the regents and the court. “The poor man”—said the brave chancellor—“will not have bread to eat, except perhaps a handful of rye or barley; his poor wife will lie in and they will have four or six little ones about the hearth or the oven, which perchance will be warm; they will ask for bread, they will scream, mad with hunger. The poor mother will but have a very little salted bread to put into their mouths.