CHAP. XI.: The same Subject continued.

WHAT first gave rise to the notion of a general regulation made at the time of the conquest, is our meeting with a prodigious number of servitudes in France towards the beginning of the third race; and

as the continual progression of these servitudes was not attended to, people imagined in an age of obscurity a general law which was never framed.

Towards the commencement of the first race, we meet with an infinite number of freemen, both among the Franks and the Romans; but the number of bondmen increased to that degree, that at the beginning of the third race, all the husbandmen and almost all the inhabitants While Gaul was under the dominion of the Romans, they formed particular bodies; these were generally freedmen, or the descendants of freed men. ^†913 of towns were become bondmen: and whereas at the first period there was very near the same administration in the cities as among the Romans; namely, a corporation, a senate, and courts of judicature; at the other we hardly meet with any thing but a lord and his bondmen.

When the Franks, Burgundians, and Goths, made their several invasions, they seized upon gold, silver, moveables, cloaths, men, women, boys, and whatever the army could carry; the whole was brought to one place, and divided amongst the army See Gregory of Tours, book ii. chap. 27. Aimoin, book i. chap. 12. ^†914. History shews, that after the first settlement, that is after the first devastations, they entered into an agreement with the inhabitants, and left them all their political and civil rights. This was the law of nations in those days; they plundered every thing in time of war, and granted every thing in time of peace. Were it not so, how should we find both in the Salic and Burgundian laws such a number of regulations absolutely contrary to a general servitude of the people?

But though the conquest was not immediately productive of servitude, it arose nevertheless from the same law of nations See the lives of the Saints in the next page. ^†915 which subsisted after the conquest. Opposition, revolts, and the taking of towns,

were followed by the slavery of the inhabitants. And, not to mention the wars which the conquering nations made against one another, as there was this particularity among the Franks, that the different partitions of the monarchy gave rise continually to civil wars between brothers or nephews, in which this law of nations was constantly practised, servitudes of course became more general in France than in other countries: and this is, I believe, one of the causes of the difference between our French laws and those of Italy and Spain, in respect to the right of seignories.

The conquest was soon over; and the law of nations then in force was productive of some servile dependencies. The custom of the same law of nations, which obtained for many ages, gave a prodigious extent to those servitudes.

Theodoric imagining that the people of Auvergne were not faithful to him, thus addressed the Franks of his division: “Follow me, and I will carry you into a country where you shall have gold, silver, captives, clothes, and flocks in abundance; and you shall remove all the people into your own country.”

After the conclusion of the peace Ibid. book vi. chap. 31. ^†916 between Gontram and Chilperic, the troops employed in the siege of Bourges having had orders to return, carried such a considerable booty away with them, that they hardly left either men or cattle in the country.

Theodoric, king of Italy, whose spirit and policy it was ever to distinguish himself from the other barbarian kings, upon sending an army into Gaul, wrote thus to the General Letter 43. lib. iii. in Cassiod. ^†917 “It is my will that the Roman laws be followed, and that you restore the fugitive slaves to their right owners. The defender of liberty

ought not to encourage servants to desert their masters. Let other kings delight in the plunder and devastation of the towns which they have subdued; we are desirous to conquer in such a manner, that our subjects shall lament their having fallen too late under our government.” It is evident, that his intention was to cast an odium on the king’s of the Franks and the Burgundians, and that he alluded in the above passage to their particular law of nations.

Yet this law of nations continued in force under the second race. King Pepin’s army, having penetrated into Aquitaine, returned to France loaded with an immense booty, and with a vast number of bondmen, as we are informed by the annals of Metz In the year 1763. Innumerabilibus spoliis & captivis totus ille exercitus diratus, in Franciam reversus est. ^†918.

Here might I quote numberless See the annals of Fuld, in the year 1739; Paulus Diaconus, de gestis Longobardorum, lib. iii. c. 30. & lib. iv. c. 1. and the lives of the saints in the next quotation. ^†919 authorities; and as the public compassion was raised at the sight of those miseries, as several holy prelates, beholding the captives in chains, employed the treasure belonging to the church, and sold even the sacred utensils, to ransom as many as they could; and as several holy monks exerted themselves on that occasion, it is in the See the lives of S. Epiphanius, S. Eptadius, S. Cæsarius, S. Fidolus, S. Porcian, S. Treverius, S. Eusichius, and of S. Leger, the miracles of S. Julian, &c. ^†920 lives of the saints that we meet with the best eclaircissements on this subject. And, although it may be objected to the authors of those lives, that they have been sometimes a little too credulous in respect to things which God has certainly performed, if they were in the order of his providence; yet we draw considerable lights from thence, with regard to the manners and usages of those times.

When we cast an eye upon the monuments of our history and laws, the whole seems to be an immense expanse, —— Deberant quoque littora ponto. Ovid. lib. 1. ^†921 or a boundless ocean: all those frigid, dry, crude writings must be devoured in the same manner, as Saturn is fabled to have devoured the stones.

A vast quantity of land which had been in the hands of freemen, Even the husbandmen themselves were not all slaves: see the 18th and 23d law in the code de agricolis, et censitis, et colonis, and the 20th of the same title. ^†922 was changed into mortmain, when the country was stripped of its free inhabitants; those who had a great multitude of bondmen either took large territories by force, or had them yielded by agreement, and built villages, as may be seen in different charters. On the other hand, the freemen who cultivated the arts, found themselves reduced to exercise those arts in a state of servitude: thus the servitudes restored to the arts and to agriculture whatever they had lost.

It was a customary thing with the proprietors of land, to give them to the churches, in order to hold them themselves by a quit-rent, thinking to partake by their servitude of the sanctity of the churches.