The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

which they paid.

 

But there came a time when the tribute of the provinces no

longer returned to the provinces to be expended on the public

buildings and the frontier garrisons and the military roads.

The rivers of gold which had so long flowed into Rome at last

dried up: the empire became poor, and yet its expenses remained

the same. The Praetorian Guards had still to be paid; the mob

of the capital had still to be rationed with bread, and bacon,

and wine, and oil, and costly shows. Accordingly the provinces

were made to suffer. Exorbitant taxes were imposed: the

aldermen and civil councillors of towns were compelled to pay

enormous fees in virtue of their office, and were forbidden to

evade such expensive honours by enlisting in the army, or by

taking holy orders. The rich were accused of crimes that their

property might be seized: the crops in the fields were gathered

by the police. A blight fell upon the land. Men would no longer

labour, since the fruits of their toil might at any time be

taken from them. Cornfield and meadow were again covered with

brambles and weeds; the cities were deserted; grass grew in all

the streets. The province of Gaul was taxed to death, and then

abandoned by the Romans. The government could no longer afford

to garrison the Rhine frontier: the legions were withdrawn, and

the Germans entered.

 

The invading armies were composed of free men, who, under their

respective captains or heads of clans, had joined the standard

of some noted warrior chief. The spoil of the army belonged to

the army, and was divided according to stipulated rules. The

king’s share was large, but more than his share he might not

have. When the Germans, instead of returning with their booty,

remained upon the foreign soil, they partitioned the land in

the same manner as they partitioned the cattle and the slaves,

the gold crosses, the silver chalices; the vases, the tapestry,

the fine linen, and the purple robes. An immense region was

allotted to the king; other tracts of various sizes to the

generals and captains (or chiefs and chieftains) according to

the number of men whom they had brought into the field; and

each private soldier received a piece of ground. But the army,

although disbanded, was not extinct; its members remained under

martial law the barons or generals were bound to obey the king

when he summoned them to war; the soldiers to obey their

ancient chiefs. Sometimes the king and the great barons gave

lands to favourites and friends on similar conditions, and at a

later period money was paid instead of military service, thus

originating rent.

 

The nobles of Roman Gaul lived within the city except during

the villeggiatura in the autumn. The German lords preferred the

country, and either fortified the Roman villas or built new

castles of their own. They surrounded themselves with a

bodyguard of personal retainers; their prisoners of war were

made to till the ground as serfs. And soon they reduced to much

the same condition the German soldiers, and seized their humble

lands. In that troubled age none could hold property except by

means of the strong arm. Men found it difficult to preserve

their lives, and often presented their bodies to some powerful

lord in return for protection, in return for daily bread. The

power of the king was nominal: sovereignty was broken and

dispersed: Europe was divided among castles: and in each castle

was a prince who owned no authority above his own, who held a

high court of justice in his hall, issued laws to his estates,

lived by the court fees, by taxes levied on passing caravans,

and by ransoms for prisoners, sometimes obtained in fair war,

sometimes by falling upon peaceful travellers. Dark deeds were

done within those ivy-covered towers which now exist for the

pleasure of poets and pilgrims of the picturesque. Often from

turret chambers and grated windows arose the shrieks of

violated maidens and the yells of tortured Jews. Yet castle-life had also its brighter side. To cheer the solitude of the

isolated house minstrels and poets and scholars were courted by

the barons, and were offered a peaceful chamber and a place of

honour at the board. In the towns of ancient Italy and Greece

there was no family: the home did not exist. The women and

children dwelt together in secluded chambers: the men lived a

club life in the baths, the porticoes, and the gymnasiums. But

the castle lord had no companions of his own rank except the

members of his own family. On stormy days, when he could not

hunt, he found a pleasure in dancing his little ones upon his

knee, and in telling them tales of the wood and weald. Their

tender fondlings, and their merry laughs, their half formed

voices, which attempted to pronounce his name — all these were

sweet to him. And by the love of those in whom he saw his own

image mirrored, in whom his own childhood appeared to live

again, he was drawn closer and closer to his wife. She became

his counsellor and friend; she softened his rugged manners; she

soothed his fierce wrath; she pleaded for the prisoners and

captives, and the men condemned to die. And when he was absent,

she became the sovereign lady of the house, ruled the vassals,

sat in the judgment-seat, and often defended the castle in time of

siege. A charge so august could not but elevate the female

mind. Women became queens. The Lady was created. Within the

castle was formed that grand manner of gentleness, mingled with

hauteur, which art can never stimulate, and which ages of

dignity can alone confer.

 

The barons dwelt apart from one another, and were often engaged

in private war. Yet they had sons to educate and daughters to

marry; and so a singular kind of society arose. The king’s

house or court, and the houses of the great barons, became

academies to which the inferior barons sent their boys and

girls to school. The young lady became the attendant of the

Dame, and was instructed in the arts of playing on the

virginals, of preparing simples, and of healing wounds; of

spinning, sewing, and embroidery. The young gentleman was at

first a Page. He was taught to manage a horse with grace and

skill, to use bow and sword, to sound the notes of venerie upon

the horn, to carve at table, to ride full tilt against the

quintaine with his lance in rest, to brittle a deer, to find

his way through the forest by the stars in the sky and by the

moss upon the trees. It was also his duty to wait upon the

ladies who tutored his youthful mind in other ways. He was

trained to deport himself with elegance; he was nurtured in all

the accomplishments of courtesy and love. He was encouraged to

select a mistress among the dames or demoiselles; to adore her

in his heart, to serve her with patience and fidelity, obeying

her least commands; to be modest in her presence; to be silent

and discreet. The reward of all this devotion was of no

ethereal kind, but it was not quickly or easily bestowed; and

vice almost ceases to be vice when it can only be gratified by

means of long discipline in virtue. When the page had arrived

at a certain age, he was clad in a brown frock; a sword was

fastened to his side, and he obtained the title of Esquire. He

attended his patron knight on military expeditions, until he

was old enough to be admitted to the order. Among the ancient

Germans of the forest, when a young man came of age, he was

solemnly invested with shield and spear. The ceremony of

knighthood at first was nothing more than this. Every man of gentle

birth became a knight, and then took an oath to be true to God and to

 

the ladies and to his plighted word; to be honourable in all

 

his actions, to succour the oppressed. Thus, within those

castle-colleges arose the sentiment of Honour, the institution

of Chivalry, which, as an old poet wrote, made women chaste and

men brave. The women were worshipped as goddesses, the men were

revered as heroes. Each sex aspired to possess those qualities

which the other sex approved. Women admire, above all things,

courage and truth; and so the men became courageous and true.

Men admire modesty, virtue, and refinement; and so the women

became virtuous, and modest, and refined. A higher standard of

propriety was required as time went on: the manners and customs

of the Dark Ages became the vices of a later period;

unchastity, which had once been regarded as the private wrong

of the husband, was stigmatised as a sin against society; and

society found a means of taking its revenge. At first the

notorious woman was insulted to her face at tournament and

banquet; or knights chalked an epithet upon her castle gates,

and then rode on. In the next age she was shunned by her own

sex: the discipline of social life was established as it exists

at the present day. Though it might sometimes be relaxed in a

vicious court, at least the ideal of right was preserved. But

in the period of the Troubadours the fair sinners resembled the

pirates of the Homeric age. Their pursuits were of a dangerous,

but not of a dishonourable nature: they might sometimes lose

their lives; they never lost their reputation.

 

We must now descend from ladies and gentlemen to the people in

the field, who are sometimes forgotten by historians. The

castle was built on the summit of a hill, and a village of

serfs was clustered round its foot. These poor peasants were

often hardly treated by their lords. Often they raised their

brown and horny hands and cursed the cruel castle which scowled

upon them from above. Humbly they made obeisance, and bitterly

they gnawed their lips as the baron rode down the narrow street

on his great war-horse, which would always have its fill of

corn, when they would starve, followed by his beef-fed varlets

with faces red from beer, who gave them jeering looks, who

called them by nicknames, who contemptuously caressed their

daughters before their eyes. Yet it was not always thus: the

lord was often a true nobleman, the parent of their village,

the god-father of their children, the guardian of their

happiness, the arbiter of their disputes. When there was

sickness among them, the ladies of the castle often came down,

bringing them soups and spiced morsels with their own white

hands; and the castle was the home of the good chaplain, who

told them of the happier world beyond the grave. It was there

also that they enjoyed such pleasures as they had. Sometimes

they were called up to the castle to feast on beef and beer in

commemoration of a happy anniversary or a Christian feast.

Sometimes their lord brought home a caravan of merchants whom

he had captured on the road and while the strange guests were

quaking for the safety of their bales, the people were being

amused with the songs of the minstrels, and the tricks of the

jugglers, and the antics of the dancing-bear. And sometimes a

tournament was held: the lords and ladies of the neighbourhood

rode over to the castle; turf banks were set for the serfs and

a gallery was erected for the ladies, above whom sat enthroned

the one who was chosen as the Queen of Beauty and of Love. Then

the heralds shouted, “Love of ladies, splintering of lances!

stand forth, gallant knights; fair eyes look upon your deeds!”

And the knights took up their position in two lines fronting

one another, and sat motionless upon