III. princes, and the gradual establishment under them of CHAP. a far larger number of counts and barons, who formed the true elements of the feudal system. The most powerful of the great princes was the Duke of Normandy, who had married Hugh Capet's sister. The county of Flanders was remote. To the north and east of the duchy of France extended the territories of the Beauvaisis, of Vermandois, and of Champagne, broken by recent succession, and fallen into the hands of the lesser noblesse; this was indeed also the case with Burgundy, the duke of which was a brother of Hugh. These accordingly gave the new monarch but little trouble. The chief who displayed most hostility towards him was William Count of Poitou. Hugh undertook a military expedition beyond the Loire, and even laid siege to Poictiers. In an encounter the French had the advantage over the Aquitans, but the superiority was not sufficient to reduce them. Subsequently the Count of Perigord took the lead beyond the Loire, humbled the Count of Poitou and captured Tours, which he gave in fief to the Count of Anjou. Hugh interfered, and indignantly asked the conqueror who had made him a count. "Who made you a king?" was the apt reply. In a few years this proud noble disappeared; a Count of Poictiers resumed the ascendancy of his house, and apparently was not challenged by Hugh. The king found a more formidable enemy in the Carlovingian prince whom he had dethroned. Hugh had won the clergy to his cause by conceding almost all their demands. The rich abbeys, hitherto sequestered in the hands of laymen, were restored; the church of Laon and Rheims were left all-powerful. The Bishop of Laon recovered a quantity of lands from the possession of the citizens. These had recourse, in consequence, to the dethroned Charles, and by the aid of Arnulph his kinsman, an ecclesiastic, attached to the Church, he got possession of Laon, a strong place. III. CHAP. Hugh laid siege to it, but could not dispossess his rival. On this occasion, in order to make head against his enemies both in north and south, the king associated with him his son Robert, who was crowned king, although Adalbero of Rheims, who consecrated the prince, was unwilling thus to sanction and secure the hereditary succession. Adalbero having died soon after, and the citizens and churchmen of the cathedral city expressing a wish to elect Arnulph, the same who had betrayed Laon, but who had since rallied to Hugh, and been recommended to him, the king thought it good policy to win such a partisan, and sanction his election. to the see of Rheims. Arnulph was no sooner in possession of this dignity, than he made use of it to put Charles in possession of Rheims, as he was already of Laon. The Carlovingian was thus able to raise an army and appear in the field with 4000 men. Hugh demanded aid, says Richer, from the Marne and the Garonne, that is, from those who lived beyond the duchy of France; but his strength was not sufficient to warrant an attack, and the armies separated. Hugh tried other means. He despatched the Bishop of Laon, another Adalbero, to Charles, affecting to have quitted Hugh in anger, in order to rally to his competitor. The bishop, being trusted in consequence, was able to plan and to execute a scheme for the seizure of Charles and Arnulph. It completely succeeded,. and Hugh Capet consigned his Carlovingian rival to the prison of Orleans. It is remarkable that the Carlovingian family should have fallen from the throne, and another dynasty slowly ascended it, without the Papal Power being invoked, or allowed to interfere in the revolution. But, during the tenth century, the Popes were under an eclipse. Distracted by civil war, crushed by the ascendancy of females such as Marozia, subjected to the tyranny of Alberic and Crescentius, and only rescued from them to fall under that of the German Otho, the Papacy can scarcely be said to have existed in an age, too, of great religious revival. For never was the cry of conscience more powerful, impelling the rude man of those days to undertake the most distant and dangerous pilgrimages, in order to obtain remission of his sins. The belief which prevailed, of an extinction of the world in the year 1000, was more the result than the cause of the universal religious fear, which had fallen upon the minds of men. It must have been produced, in some measure, by the isolation in which persons lived, and by the consequent increase of rustic superstition. The ideas of the convent penetrated into the castle and the palace, and religious reverence was far greater and more universal, than when prelates were uncontrolled lords, and when the Popes intervened and fulminated in every cause and in every society of Christendom. The resuscitation of the papal power in France took place on the occasion of Hugh Capet's deposition of Arnulph from the see of Rheims. The prelate had been false to two oaths, and in a solemn assembly of bishops he was deposed. Arnulph in defence appealed to Rome, and to the Pope as his only judge. But the plea was rebutted, and in language which would not have been misplaced in the mouth of Luther. After recapitulating the disgraceful history of the Pontiffs during the last century, an ecclesiastical orator exclaimed, "Whom do you consider that man to be, sitting on a lofty throne, clothed in purple and fine gold? If he want charity, and is merely puffed up by knowledge, it is Antichrist, enthroned in purple, and claiming to be God." "Are the immaculate priests of God throughout the earth," exclaimed again the orator, conspicuous in learning and in worth, to be subjected to such monsters of human ignominy as the Popes to whom I have alluded?" CHAP. III. CHAP. Such a challenge aroused the court of Rome, however sunken at the time, and a legate was sent to cancel the sentence and to nullify the doctrine of this synod. Arnulph had been deposed, and the celebrated Gerbert elected in his stead; but the Papal legate called another council at Chelles, reversed the sentence, and declared Gerbert not duly appointed. Hugh Capet, nevertheless, refused to release Arnulph from prison, and stoutly kept his resolve till his death in 996. His more pious son and successor, Robert, released the captive prelate in order to make his peace with the head of the Church. Gerbert was the Eginhard of his age, who sought in vain a Charlemagne in Hugh, but fortunately found one in the German Emperor, Otho. A native of Auvergne, bred in the convent of Aurillac, taken up by Borel, Count of Barcelona, who had frequently visited the Holy Land, Gerbert penetrated amongst the Saracens of Spain, and learned the secrets of their science. This, with his taste for mechanics, was sufficient to procure for him the character of a necromancer, and to make him a hero of magical romance. In this character, William of Malmesbury celebrates him in legends, which seem to have inspired the author of the "Monastery." Gerbert, patronized by Adalbero Archbishop of Rheims, became preceptor to Hugh Capet's son, the future King Robert. This brought about his elevation to Rheims, on the deposition of Arnulph. He had previously been Abbot of Bobbio, from which his letters gave no pleasing or contented portraiture of monastic life. When King Robert deserted his cause by liberating Arnulph, Gerbert proceeded to Germany, where he was warmly welcomed by the Emperor Otho, subsequently promoted by him to the archbishopric of Ravenna; and he finally mounted the pontifical chair as Silvester the Second. Robert, Hugh Capet's son and successor, was a monk upon the throne, who signalised his reign by submission III. to Papal injunctions and by a total absence of either CHAP. ambition or activity. Anxious to avenge the denunciations of Rome uttered at the Council of Rheims, the legates discovered that King Robert was related in some fourth or fifth degree to his Queen Bertha, whom he tenderly loved. The Pope, to show his authority, denounced the marriage as incestuous, and subjected the pious Robert to excommunication. For several years the king clung to his wife, but was at last obliged to divorce her; and he subsequently espoused Constance of Aquitaine. Robert's most troublesome neighbour was Odo, Count of Champagne as well as of Tours and Blois. This chief, wishing to connect his counties, seized upon Melun, which gave him passage over the Seine. Robert could not dislodge him without obtaining Norman aid. The death of the king's relative, the Duke of Burgundy, drove Robert into more distant war. The nobles of the duchy refused to recognise him. He brought an army of 30,000 Normans to enforce his sovereignty. With them he laid siege to Auxerre, defended by the Count of Nevers, but was unable to reduce it; and Robert gave his sister to the Count's son in marriage, in order to induce his submission. The Count acquired Franche Comté, as the county of Burgundy was then called, Robert obtaining the recognition of his son, Henry, as duke of the whole province. Robert's chief acquisition was the important town of Sens. The count was accused of fudaizing, favouring the wealthy Jews. The archbishop and his clergy, therefore, plotted to depose him, in which they succeeded; and the French kings, though for a time they acquired but half, eventually added the entire city to their domain. The great war of the period was not waged by King Robert, but by Foulques Nerra, Count of Anjou, aided by the Count of Lemans, against Odo, Count of Champagne. Its chief event was a battle fought at |