23. Philip V.
CHAPTER XXIII. Philip V. (1316-1322)
The name of Louis X. 's next brother was Philip, and he was called Philip le Long, or the Tall, because of his great height. His reign was almost as short as his brother's had been, and brought no comfort to the people of France, who had lost most of their money in the last two reigns, and who were to be still more ill-treated by the new king. Philip's first act was to call together what were called the States-General. This was a body of men, something like our Parliament, which met together from time to time to give the king advice or help in governing the country. This was the third time of its meeting; the first two had been in the reign of Philip's father, Philip le Bel. These meetings were made up of clergymen, of nobles, and of some of the chief men in the different towns of the country. When the king wished the States-General to meet, he sent out word a short time beforehand, and the nobles met together, and chose out some of their number to go for them to the meeting; for there would not have been space or time for every one to go. The clergy did the same, and the townspeople the same.
Every one could usually guess what the king was going to say, or to ask from his States-General, and the clergy, the barons, and the townspeople, who were not going to the meeting, told those who were going, who were called deputies, what they had better say to the king, and what they should ask from him; for the States-General never met without the deputies making a complaint to the king of everything that was going wrong in the country, and asking him to set their affairs right for them. They made lists of their complaints, which they gave to the king before the meeting broke up, and which he always promised to consider, though he very often took no further notice of them.
The first thing that happened when the deputies were all met together was that the king asked them whatever he wished to ask. He sometimes told them that he was going to war, and asked them to help him against some of his enemies; or he wished to know what they thought of some new law which he had made; or wanted them to collect money for him. Three men were chosen by the rest, one from each of the three orders, that is, the order of the clergy, the order of the nobles, and the order of the townspeople or burghers, who each made a speech in answer. At this time they usually agreed to whatever the king wished, for unless he expected them to agree with him, he did not call them together, and they could meet only when he called them.
After they had made their speeches and given in their list of complaints, the king sent back the deputies to their own homes. These meetings, though something like (our)<English> Parliaments, were different from them in many important ways, which I cannot explain here; but the great difference of all was that in England the nobles and the common people usually took the same side, and so were strong enough to prevent the king from having his own way in everything; while in France they were enemies, and neither was strong enough alone to resist the king, so that he had a great deal of power, and did what he liked. Philip wished the States-General to say solemnly that he was the right person to be king, and that no woman should ever be Queen of France. They did so, and swore to obey him as king, and his son after him. Philip's brother and the other great men of the State also agreed to his being king, and his reign began happily. It was a short and not an important reign. After Philip had been king for about two years, there was a great rising up of the peasants in the south of France. There were still at different times some ideas of another Crusade, and these poor people wished to set off to conquer the Holy Land for themselves. At first they went quietly through the country, asking peaceably for bread at the doors of the churches; but as more and more people joined them, chiefly shepherds and labourers out of the fields, their numbers grew too large for them to be satisfied in this way. They grew hungry, and took whatever they could find. Then the people of the towns rose up against them, and brought them before the magistrates, who hanged several of them. After this they broke open the prisons and made disturbances in all the countries through which they passed. In particular, they killed all the Jews whom they could find. At last, one of the king's officers brought an army against them, and shut them up in the town from which they had meant to set sail for the East, refusing to let them come back into the country they had left. Many of them were killed or taken prisoners; some died of illness, others escaped, and went quietly to their own homes. These poor people were called pastoureaux, or pasturers, many of them being shepherds.
There was another disturbance in France in this reign, caused by a set of people more miserable and unfortunate than the poor peasants; these were the lepers. Leprosy was a very bad illness caught in the East by some of the Crusaders, which spread through all Europe. It could not be cured, so the people who were taken ill with it were at once sent to houses made on purpose, where all the lepers lived apart from all healthy people, so that the illness might spread as little as possible. There arose an idea in the reign of Philip V. that the lepers had made a plan to try and poison all the healthy people in France, either to give them the leprosy also, or to make them die some other way. It was said that they put poison into springs of water, so that all the stream flowing from the spring might be poisoned, and that every one who used the water might die.
There is no reason to think that the lepers ever tried to do anything so wicked, or that they could have done it if they had tried. No one ever found a poisoned stream, but people became so much frightened at the idea, that the king ordered all lepers to be at once imprisoned, and a great number of them were burned without any one having shown that they had done anything in the least wrong. Others were imprisoned for life in their hospitals. They had before this been allowed to wander about the country by day looking for food. They were obliged to keep at a distance from any one who passed by, and to give them warning by their cries that they were lepers, and might give the illness to any one who came near.
Kind people often put down food and other gifts on the ground, which the lepers took up when they were gone away. After this law of Philip's they were treated as prisoners, and never allowed to go out into the country. At the same time a great number of Jews were burned alive; they had money which their enemies wished to steal from them, and the Christians were glad of a reason for satisfying the hatred they all felt for the unfortunate Jews.
Very soon after these cruel executions Philip V. was taken ill and died from a fever. His only son had been dead for some years; like his brother Louis he left only girls; but there was still a third brother to succeed him.
