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The Formation and Progress of the Tiers État - Volume II
The Formation and Progress of the Tiers État - Volume II
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. It is also searchable and contains
hyper-links to chapters.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
FIRST FRAGMENT OF THE COLLECTION OF UNPUBLISHED MEMORIALS OF THE HISTORY OF THE TIERS ÉTAT.
(A DESCRIPTION OF ANCIENT MUNICIPAL FRANCE.)
Summary: The actual Extent of France, divided with a view to the History of the Municipal System into Three Zones and Five Regions, viz.—1. The Northern Region; 2. The Southern; 3. The Central; 4. The Western; 5. The Eastern and South-eastern.—The Northern Region, comprising Picardy, Artois, Flanders, Lorraine, Champagne, Normandy, and the Ile-de-France—The Southern, comprising Provence, Comtat-Venaissin, Languedoc, Auvergne, Limousin and Marche, Guienne and Périgord, Gascony, Béarn and Basse-Navarre, Comté de Foix and Roussillon—The Central, comprising Orléanais and Gâtinais, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Berri, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Burgundy—The Western, comprising Britanny, Poitou, Angoumois, Aunis and Saintonge—The Eastern and South-eastern, comprising Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lyonnais, Bresse, and Dauphiny.
The municipal history of ancient France, which forms the foundation and principal part of the history of the Tiers Etat, has only lately obtained the high degree of importance and consideration which it deserved in public opinion. It was necessary for this purpose that modern revolutions, by displaying themselves before our eyes, should have taught us to observe and understand the revolutions of the middle ages. It is thus that a new historical meaning has been given to that which was called, by too modest a name, the enfranchisement of the communes; and that we have recognised all the characteristics of a real revolution in an event which had been hitherto classed among the administrative reforms of the French Crown. The complex question of the revival of the free municipalities in the twelfth century has from the first been treated in an imperfect, if not a partial, manner. There were different and, apparently, contradictory solutions—according to the point of view in which each author was placed by choice or chance—one considering, above all things, the uninterrupted duration of the municipal system, another, its sudden rejuvenescence, caused by a new spirit and by new constitutions; the latter, the act of concession or arrangement which emanated from the royal or seigneurial power; the former, the initiative taken by the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary tendency. Next, in proportion as the problem has been introduced into scientific discussion, these divergent views approached one another; a more enlarged and superior position was adopted, comprising them both, which, taking into consideration all the principles of the great municipal movement of the twelfth century, admits, at the same time, in order to explain it in its causes and its results, the traditional element and the inspiration that gave it new life, a spirit of wise liberality on the part of the rulers, and the exercise, irresistible when it is just, of the popular will.
The present state of our information enables us to consider two points in the communal revolution; on the one hand, the ground of this revolution or its spirit, on the other, the new forms of municipality which it has created. The ground is the same from one end of actual France to the other; it is, in the case of all the cities where it makes itself felt, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the need of progress and of a guarantee for civil liberty, a more or less ardent desire of substituting an elective magistracy for the feudal powers: as to the form, it varies according to the zones of the territory. As we have seen, in the Essay on the History of the Tiers Etat, a municipal constitution borrowed from Italy, in which the magistrates bore the title of consuls, spread itself from city to city in the south; in the north, there was extended in the same manner a constitution of a different origin, the commune, properly so called, or the municipality organised by an association and mutual assurance of the citizens under the guarantee of an oath. These two currents of constitutional propagandism, advancing, the one from south to north, the other from north to south, and stopping at certain distances, left neutral an intermediate zone, in which the urban administration preserved its ancient forms, either intact, or variously and slightly modified. Such is the picture of municipal France in the middle ages. Three great divisions are marked out in it by lines drawn from east to west,—the zone of the consular government, the zone of the communal government, and the zone of municipal towns left unreformed, and of cities governed...
hyper-links to chapters.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
FIRST FRAGMENT OF THE COLLECTION OF UNPUBLISHED MEMORIALS OF THE HISTORY OF THE TIERS ÉTAT.
(A DESCRIPTION OF ANCIENT MUNICIPAL FRANCE.)
Summary: The actual Extent of France, divided with a view to the History of the Municipal System into Three Zones and Five Regions, viz.—1. The Northern Region; 2. The Southern; 3. The Central; 4. The Western; 5. The Eastern and South-eastern.—The Northern Region, comprising Picardy, Artois, Flanders, Lorraine, Champagne, Normandy, and the Ile-de-France—The Southern, comprising Provence, Comtat-Venaissin, Languedoc, Auvergne, Limousin and Marche, Guienne and Périgord, Gascony, Béarn and Basse-Navarre, Comté de Foix and Roussillon—The Central, comprising Orléanais and Gâtinais, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Berri, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Burgundy—The Western, comprising Britanny, Poitou, Angoumois, Aunis and Saintonge—The Eastern and South-eastern, comprising Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lyonnais, Bresse, and Dauphiny.
The municipal history of ancient France, which forms the foundation and principal part of the history of the Tiers Etat, has only lately obtained the high degree of importance and consideration which it deserved in public opinion. It was necessary for this purpose that modern revolutions, by displaying themselves before our eyes, should have taught us to observe and understand the revolutions of the middle ages. It is thus that a new historical meaning has been given to that which was called, by too modest a name, the enfranchisement of the communes; and that we have recognised all the characteristics of a real revolution in an event which had been hitherto classed among the administrative reforms of the French Crown. The complex question of the revival of the free municipalities in the twelfth century has from the first been treated in an imperfect, if not a partial, manner. There were different and, apparently, contradictory solutions—according to the point of view in which each author was placed by choice or chance—one considering, above all things, the uninterrupted duration of the municipal system, another, its sudden rejuvenescence, caused by a new spirit and by new constitutions; the latter, the act of concession or arrangement which emanated from the royal or seigneurial power; the former, the initiative taken by the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary tendency. Next, in proportion as the problem has been introduced into scientific discussion, these divergent views approached one another; a more enlarged and superior position was adopted, comprising them both, which, taking into consideration all the principles of the great municipal movement of the twelfth century, admits, at the same time, in order to explain it in its causes and its results, the traditional element and the inspiration that gave it new life, a spirit of wise liberality on the part of the rulers, and the exercise, irresistible when it is just, of the popular will.
The present state of our information enables us to consider two points in the communal revolution; on the one hand, the ground of this revolution or its spirit, on the other, the new forms of municipality which it has created. The ground is the same from one end of actual France to the other; it is, in the case of all the cities where it makes itself felt, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the need of progress and of a guarantee for civil liberty, a more or less ardent desire of substituting an elective magistracy for the feudal powers: as to the form, it varies according to the zones of the territory. As we have seen, in the Essay on the History of the Tiers Etat, a municipal constitution borrowed from Italy, in which the magistrates bore the title of consuls, spread itself from city to city in the south; in the north, there was extended in the same manner a constitution of a different origin, the commune, properly so called, or the municipality organised by an association and mutual assurance of the citizens under the guarantee of an oath. These two currents of constitutional propagandism, advancing, the one from south to north, the other from north to south, and stopping at certain distances, left neutral an intermediate zone, in which the urban administration preserved its ancient forms, either intact, or variously and slightly modified. Such is the picture of municipal France in the middle ages. Three great divisions are marked out in it by lines drawn from east to west,—the zone of the consular government, the zone of the communal government, and the zone of municipal towns left unreformed, and of cities governed...
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