laws of war and peace, which have kept Europe together.

The municipalities which have so deeply influenced the history of Europe are a section of the institutions of the Empire. There are towns whose existing governments were given to them by the Cæsars; and it was a signal testimony to the vitality of these institutions, that in the late reconsolidation of Italy they formed the means of dovetailing together the fragments which had been so long separated. In some countries the Justinian collections are the only absolute authorities in the law-in all they have more or less a place. In England even, for all the abuse it has met with from the common lawyers, the civil law has an acknowledged place in Equity, the Ecclesiastical Courts, and the Admiralty jurisdiction; and large masses of it have, surreptitiously and under false names, been brought into the sacred precinct of the common law itself. It would be difficult to say of the laws which adjust rights and obligations between man and man in England, whether one would find a greater quantity in the Statutes at Large than in the Pandects.

The political machinery of the Imperial system, though broken into fragments, remained in its several parts so compact and serviceable for centuries as to be available for consolidating the power of Napoleon. It may easily be understood, then, how readily it would serve any monarch of the thirteenth or fourteenth century who felt strong enough to use

it. Hence these monarchs were not merely excited by vague notions of influence and conquest with indefinite results, but saw a distinct, recognised office, supreme among worldly monarchies in dignity and power, which had been held of old, and might be aspired to again, as a legitimate object of ambition. The double-eagle in the achievement, figurative of the conjoined empires of the East and of the West, indicates powers which have some time or other aspired at the empire of the world-at renewing the conditions under which Cæsar could decree "that all the world should be taxed."

It is curious to see how the newly-grown feudal system, with its fictions and pedantries-its rights of property and possession, for instance, as separated from its rights of superiority-aided the influence of the Imperial organisation in the hands of clever and vigilant princes. A troublesome territory would be handed over by a great king to some smaller neighbour, who, nearer the spot, was better able to govern it, and who, if it were not handed over to him, might take it. He came under obligation to do homage for it to the giver, but the practical result of this obligation would depend on subsequent events. If generation after generation of his house were gradually acquiring such fiefs, they might soon possess a power sufficient to defy the feudal superior. On the other hand, the practice of doing homage for a part of their possessions might taint a decaying house with the sense of inferiority, and bring them

in at last for homage for the whole. When Edward I. summoned Baliol to come to Windsor and give account of his conduct, and when that same Edward was himself cited by Philip of France to kneel before him and answer for certain piracies committed by Englishmen, the feudal formalities were the same, but behind them were certain realities which made the two affairs very different. Thus Europe presented to the able and ambitious among her monarchs two kinds of apparatus of aggrandisement. In the one, a vassal house, gaining fief after fief, would work its way to the vitals of a monarchy, and extinguish its life; in the other, a great power would crush one by one its smaller neighbours, by gradually enlarging the prerogative of the lord paramount.

Whoever would wish to see this sort of game played with the most exquisite skill and the most curious turns of luck, should study closely the history of the absorption of Burgundy into France. In our own country the play was more abrupt and rough. It was handled with a brute force, which succeeded in Ireland and Wales, but drove Scotland to effective resistance. The significance of this resistance was not limited to this island. The Normans were then bearing it with a high hand over all the nations of Europe. If the Empire was to be restored, he who should be chief among the Norman rulers would be the man to restore it. Had Henry V. been King of all Britain, it would have been the most natural of effects to such a cause that he should

also have been undisputed King of France; and with such a combination of powers in his hand, what was to prevent him from being the successor of Charlemagne? The battle of Bannockburn was the ostensible blow which broke this chain of events. It was not the only interruption which Norman aggrandisement had then to encounter. Only twelve years earlier than Bannockburn, the Flemings had gained a popular victory over the chivalry of France at Courtrai; within a year after the defeat of Edward, the Swiss bought their independence in the terrible battle of Morgarten. The coincidence is not purely incidental. The three battles were types of a general revulsion against Norman aggrandisement arising in the hearts of the oppressed in various parts of Europe.

As part of an empire which included France and Scotland, with whatever else so much power might enable its owner to take, it is hard to say how it would have fared with the liberties of England, governed perhaps from Paris rather than London; and some have thought that the enjoyers of these liberties owe a debt to the victors at Bannockburn.

Everybody has heard of the famous Scots Guard of France. The same authorities that carry back the League to the days of Charlemagne, make him the founder of this force. It is a pity that we have no distinct account of its origin, and can only infer from historical probabilities that Claude Fauchet is right in saying that it was formed out of that remnant of the Scots who survived the slaughter at Ver

neuil, and did not desire to return home.* If Charles VII. was not the founder of the Guard, it is pretty certain that he adjusted its organisation as a permanent institution of the French Court. This easy, lucky monarch was so thoroughly the parent of the Scots Guard, that they wept for him in a demonstrative manner, which induced an old chronicler to say"Et les Escossoys hault crioient

Par forme de gemissement."

The Scots Guard consisted of one hundred gensdarmes and two hundred archers. They had a captain who was a high officer of state. The first captain of the Guard who appears in history-and probably the first person who held the office-was John Stewart, lord of Aubigné, the founder of a great Scots house in France, of which more hereafter. By a chivalrous courtesy the appointment to this high office was confided to the King of Scots. This was an arrangement, however, that could not last. As the two nations changed their relative position, and the Guard began to become Scots only in name, it became not only out of the question that the captain should be appointed by a foreign government, but impolitic that he should be a foreigner. It is curious to notice a small ingenious policy to avoid offence to the haughty foreigners in the removal of the command from the Scots. The first captain of the Guard who was a native Frenchman,

Origines des Dignitez et Magistrats de France,' p. 39.