and both having deep cause of enmity against England.* In the mean time, between Philip of France and Edward of England there was enacted a series of feudal pedantries which were the farce to the tragedy going on in Scotland, Edward reversing his position, and acting the truculent vassal. Both affairs arose out of those curious conditions of the feudal system which made monarchs do homage to each other for the sake of little additions to their available territories. Thus had the King of the Scots done homage at Windsor for the fief of Huntingdon and several other benefices held within the kingdom of England; and so, when the opportunity came, the King of England called this homage-doing King his vassal. In like manner, Edward himself acknowledged the feudal superiority of the King of France in respect to his Continental possessions. So it came to pass that, as some English sailors committed acts of piracy against French subjects, Philip of France called on Edward of England to come to Paris and do homage, and stand trial for misconduct as a disobedient vassal to his liege lord, just as Edward himself had called on Baliol to come to Windsor. But the total disproportion between the demand and the power to enforce it made the

* In one of the monkish chronicles (Lanercost, 182) it is narrated that, when Edward had penetrated, in 1296, as far as Aberdeen, he there found emissaries from Philip of France, with letters to Baliol and to many leading men of Scotland.

summons of the French King ridiculous.

It would

have been a sight to behold the countenance of the fierce and determined long-legged Edward when he received it. The foolish bravado brought on the first English war in France, making way for those which followed it. The French were too glad to get out of the affair by the treaty of 1303; but, hard pressed as they then were, they tried to keep true faith with their friends of Scotland. Somewhat to

the surprise of Edward, they introduced the Scots, their good allies, as a party to the negotiations; and when Edward said that if there ever were an alliance of Scotland and France his vassal Baliol had freely resigned it, the French told him that Baliol, being then a prisoner of war, was no free agent, and could renounce nothing for the kingdom of Scotland. This time, however, the support of France availed nothing, for Scotland was speedily afterwards blotted for a time out of the list of independent nations.

It is under the year 1326-twelve years after the battle of Bannockburn-that in Rymer's great book of treaties we read the first articulate treaty between France and Scotland. There the French monarchs came under obligation to those of Scotland, "in good faith as loyal allies, whenever they shall have occasion for aid and advice, in time of peace or war, against the King of England and his subjects." On the part of the Scots kings it is stipulated that they shall be bound "to make war upon the kingdom of England with all their force, whensoever war is

waged between us and the King of England." In 1371, when the alliance was solemnly renewed, a hundred thousand gold nobles were advanced to Scotland on curious and shrewd conditions. The

money was to be employed for the ransom of King David from custody in England. Should, however, the Pope be pleased to absolve the Scots Government of that debt, then the gold nobles were to be employed in making war against England. When proffers were made to France for a separate truce, not including Scotland, they were gallantly rejected. On the other hand, when Scotland was sorely tempted by the Emperor Maximilian, and by other potentates from time to time, to desert her ally France, she refused. It endeared the alliance to both nations to sanctify it with the mellowness of extreme antiquity, and references to its existence since the days of Charlemagne find their way even at an early period into the formal diplomatic documents.

There are two sides in the history of an alliance as in that of a war. Of the history of the ancient League, however, the first chapter belongs almost entirely to France. Some Scotsmen went thither and influenced the political condition of the country long before France impressed the policy of Scotland. It will clear the way for what follows, to take a glance at the social condition of the land to which the Scots refugees flocked, after their country had established itself in hostile independence of the Plantagenet kings. In later times people have been accus

tomed to seek the politics of France in Paris, giving little heed to the provinces; but at the accession of the house of Valois, the contrast between the eminence of the one and the insignificance of the other was still greater.

Paris was at that time, indeed, as much beyond any other European capital in extent, in noble buildings, and in luxurious living, as it is now beyond the secondary towns of France. The fruitfulness of the reigning family provided it with a little mob of native royalties, who made it so attractive that not only did all the great feudatories of the crown flock thither, but even independent monarchs preferred playing the courtier there to reigning in their own dingy capitals. One finds the kings of Navarre, of Sicily, and of Bohemia perpetually in the way, and turning up upon the surface of history when anything notable occurs in the French Court; they could not tear themselves from the attractions of the place.

The populousness and luxurious living of Paris are attested in a not pleasant or dignified fashion by the large number of butchers necessary to supply the city. They formed, when combined, a sort of small army; large enough, however, to be estimated by the thousand. They were often used as a powerful but a dangerous political engine. By bullying bravado and violence they held a sort of corporate power when almost everything else of the kind had been annihilated. This power they used according to their nature. It was they who did the profes

sional part of the business when the prisons were broken open by the Burgundian party, and the throats of the prisoners cut, making a scene in the year 1418 which was exactly repeated in the year 1792.

The allusion to these brutes brings one naturally from the concentration of luxury, wealth, and rank in Paris, to the horrible abyss by which it was all surrounded. It is difficult to conceive the wretchedness and degradation of France at that time-still more difficult, when it is fully realised, to understand by what steps the great nation of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.—the still greater nation of later times arose to such a height of lustre and triumph. Whatever other elements were at work in the long eventful regeneration, it may surely be permitted to our national pride to count that the infusion of Scottish blood into the veins, as it were, of the country, must have had some share in the change.

There was at that time throughout the land neither sturdy independence nor affectionate, trusting dependence. Everything was thoroughly wrong. The great showed their superiority only in acts of injustice, insult, and cruelty; the poor were servile and abject in subjection, and brutal, treacherous, and ungrateful when the iron rule was for a moment evaded. A sort of mortifying process was killing all the elements of independent constitutional action one by one, and approaching the heart. The jurisdictions and privileges which the municipalities had inherited from the Roman Empire were crushed out.