12. Henry I.
CHAPTER XII. Henry I. (1031-1060)
A subject of the Duke of Anjou, who naturally disliked King Robert as the enemy of his master, wrote in a history of his own time, "Robert we have ourselves seen reigning most slothfully; his son, the present kinglet Henry, is not at all behind him in laziness." It is probably true that Robert was slothful; he does not seem to have done much in the thirty-five years of his reign; the wonder is how so weak and foolish a man, with so many enemies, can have kept himself on the throne for so long( a time).
His son Henry was as weak as he had been. At the beginning of his reign he was attacked by his mother, Constance, and one of his brothers. It was, perhaps, as well for him that Constance died a few months later, and he was left to govern his kingdom as best he could.
At this time many of his subjects were again disturbed by fears of the end of the world. They thought that as it had not come one thousand years after the birth of Jesus Christ, it might come one thousand years after His death. Some people felt so sure of this, that they said it was of no use to sow <grain>(corn), as they should be dead by the next year. They thus did what they could to make themselves die, for of course when the next year came, they had nothing to eat.
There followed one after another three years in which the weather was so horrible that there was neither seedtime nor harvest. All over Europe there was famine, misery, and sickness. The poor people had nothing to eat but roots, grass, and clay, and they died by thousands. Sometimes troops of wolves came out of the forests, and devoured every one whom they met.
But after these three dreadful years there came a time of great plenty, and the people took courage again. There were fresh pilgrimages made to Jerusalem, and the bishops, seeing that the country was being ruined by the weakness of the king and the lawlessness of the people, thought that now was a good time to persuade the people to live quietly and peacefully, neither to fight with one another, nor to hurt harmless passengers. The barons found it hard to give up their private wars; but at last the bishops met together and determined that on certain days in every week, and on all days at certain times of the year, fighting should be entirely forbidden, and every one should be bound to keep what was called The Peace of God.
This law answered very well. From Thursday evening to Monday morning in each week no one might fight at all, and this was a great stop to private wars, that is to wars between one chief and another, while the rest of the country was at peace. It obliged the barons to stay more at home in their castles and with their families than they had ever done before.
This led them to take more interest in peaceful business, to keep their houses in better order, and to look after their lands and fields more carefully than in old times, when they could fight every day in the year. It was a great comfort to all travellers and peaceful people to have some days on which they could travel without any fear of meeting the fierce soldiers, who probably did not care much whether passers-by were friends or enemies, if there seemed a good chance that anything could be taken from them.
It was in the reign of Henry I. that one of the dukes of Normandy died, leaving behind him a child named William, who was duke after him, and who, after showing himself to be a brave and wise warrior in his own country, was to lead his Normans to another, where he would become even more powerful than he had been in France.
King Henry's first wife died, and he married the daughter of the Duke of Russia, the most distant prince of whom he could hear, in order that there might be no fear of her being found to be his relation, as had happened to Robert with Bertha. They had a son named Philip, who when he was seven years old was crowned, as was then the custom, while his father was still alive.
All this time the emperors of Germany were following one another on the throne, but we have nothing to do with them. France and Germany were at this time distinct countries, and though it might have happened that the French King should also be Emperor of Germany - and in fact the empire was once offered to King Robert - it never did happen that the same sovereign ruled over the two countries.
When the emperor died a fresh one was chosen by the people; it was not always the son of the last emperor, but any one who seemed strong or wise, or able to govern well. In France, as you see, the son always succeeded his father.
Henry I. was not a great man; he took no part in anything that was going on in Europe; he behaved as if he were no greater than his own barons, and let the emperor conquer part of France without seeming to care at all, or interfering in any way. He died at last, and his son Philip became sole King of France.
Philip I. seems to have been much the same kind of man as his father. He had a long reign, and many important things happened in different parts of Europe, but he took no share in them whatever. Soon after King Henry's death, William, Duke of Normandy, came to tell Philip that he had determined to go to England in hopes of making himself king there, and offering if Philip would help him with men or money, to do homage to the King of France for any country he might conquer, that is to acknowledge Philip to be his master, and to do nothing important without consulting him. But Philip would have nothing to do with William, refused him all help, and sent him away. William easily found other friends, and as many followers as he wanted; he sailed to England, landed at Pevensey, defeated Harold King of England, who was killed at the battle of Hastings, and reigned over England for many years as William the Conqueror, leaving his crown to his son. He owed no gratitude to the man who had refused to help him, and instead of being Philip's vassal, as he might have been if Philip had agreed to his offers, he was now a king much stronger and more powerful than Philip himself. Philip, like his grandfather Robert, had a quarrel with the Pope about his wife. This time it was clearly the king who was in the wrong. Philip sent away his wife, and carried off the wife of the Duke of Anjou. The Pope told him to send away the Duke of Anjou's wife and to take back his own. He promised to do so, and broke his promises. The Pope excommunicated him, but was too busy with wars and troubles of his own to have much time to attend to Philip's evil doings. At this time there were great wars between the Emperor of Germany and the Pope. The Popes were very anxious to have the Kings of France on their side, and Philip was allowed to go on living his bad life in peace for some time.
At last the Pope went over the Alps to hold a council in France. The country had again fallen into a miserable state. The barons grew more and more fierce, and disturbed all their more peaceful neighbours by their wars with one another. An old writer of those times says, "War was preferred before peace by the princes of the earth, who quarrelled ceaselessly." The Pope had a proposal to make to the barons and people, which he hoped would make them stop quarrelling with one another, rid the country of some if not most of the fiercest of the barons, and bring honour and power to himself.
(I said that) when people believed the end of the world to be near, many of them made pilgrimages, or long journeys, to places which they thought holy, usually to the tomb of some good man. It was generally thought that the longer and more difficult the journey, the more good was to be had from the pilgrimage. The tomb most distant from the countries of Europe was also that which in itself was the most holy, the tomb of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem.
It is hard to believe that people in those days, when there were few and bad roads, no trains, no steamboats, scarcely any carriages, no comfortable inns by the way, or maps to show the road, can have made their way from France, England, or Ireland, to Jerusalem; but it did happen again and again that pilgrims took the journey successfully, saw the sepulchre of Christ, and came home believing that everything they had done wrong was forgiven them, and that they had done what was more pleasing to God than anything else.
This had begun hundreds of years before the time of Philip I. The Romans used to take the journey, which for them was not so long a one; some of the old Latin writers used to try to turn away people from making this pilgrimage; they said that the journey was unnecessary, for that people who believed God to be everywhere present, might pray to Him in their own homes as well as anywhere else. But people continued to go in great numbers; the journey was interesting, there were new countries to be seen, exciting adventures to be gone through, and valuable things to be bought cheaply in the East, and sold for a great price in Europe.
Some people went for these reasons, but probably more went disliking the journey and thinking that what was so unpleasant must be right to do. (Many people have an idea that it is right to do unpleasant things,) not because of any reason for doing them, or of their being of any use to any one, but just because they are disagreeable. In those days any one who had done anything wrong was told by the priests to punish himself by doing something he did not like — going without food for a long time, giving away a great deal of money, or going on a pilgrimage.
Arrangements were made in many countries for the convenience of pilgrims. Charlemagne ordered that they should be provided with food and lodging all through his kingdom; many of the monasteries were built partly as resting-places for them. The Mahommedans who had conquered Jerusalem treated them well, and allowed them to worship undisturbed at the sepulchre; but after a time the Mahommedans began to fight with one another, and the journey to Jerusalem became unsafe. At last the Turks conquered Jerusalem, and settled themselves there. They at once began to ill-treat the Christians, to take away what money they had, and to make them as uncomfortable as possible.
When the Christians got back to Europe they told every one how badly they had been treated; and in particular a monk called Peter the Hermit not only made the Pope very angry by his account of what he had seen, but travelled over all Europe describing the cruelty of the Turks in many different countries, and trying to persuade his hearers to send protection and help.
With Peter the Hermit telling them the same things as their own friends, the people who heard him were easily persuaded to believe what he said. The Pope meant to help him by making a speech on the same subject at the council which was to be held in France. He hoped to be able to persuade many of the barons and people in France to go in an army to the Holy Land, which was the name given to the country of which Jerusalem was the chief town, and force the Turks to behave well to the Christians, to give them leave to worship at the sepulchre, or at least to promise not to ill-treat them on their way to Jerusalem.
