For two hundred and fifty years under the Capets, France could hardly be called a kingdom. Though the name of king remained, the kingly authority was extinct. The history of France during this period is but a history of the independent feudal lords, each of whom held his court in his own castle. None of these kings had power to combine the heterogeneous and discordant elements. The fragile unity of the realm was broken by differences of race, of customs, of language, and of laws. But in this apparent chaos there was one bond of union, the Church, which exerted an almost miraculous sway over these uncultivated and warlike men. The ecclesiastics were strongly in favor of the Capets, and were highly instrumental in placing them upon the throne. With the Capets commenced a royal line which, in its different branches, running through the houses of Valois and of Bourbon, retained the throne for eight hundred years, until the fall of Louis XVI. in 1793. About the year 1100 we begin to hear the first faint murmurs of the people. Some bold minds ventured the suggestion that a man ought to be free to dispose of the produce of his own labor, to marry his children without the consent of another, to go and come, sell and buy without restriction. Indeed, in Normandy the peasants broke out in a revolt. But steel-clad knights, in sweeping squadrons, cut them down mercilessly and trampled them beneath iron hoofs. The most illustrious of the complainants were seized and hung to the trees, as a warning to all murmurers. The people were thus taught that trees made good gibbets. When their turn came they availed themselves of this knowledge. In the year 1294 Philip the Fair established a court in Paris called the Parliament. This was purely an aristocratic body, and was, in general, entirely subservient to the king's wishes. Similar parliaments were established by the great feudal princes in their provinces. There were occasional contentions between the parliaments and the king, but the king usually succeeded in compelling them to obedience. The Parliament enjoyed only the privilege of registering the royal edicts. In the reign of Louis XIV. the Parliament ventured to express a little objection to one of the tyrannical ordinances of the monarch. The boy-king, eighteen years of age, was astounded at such impudence. He left the chase, and, hastening to the hall, entered it whip in hand. He could send them one and all to the Bastille or the block, and they knew it, and he knew it. The presence of the king brought them to terms, and they immediately became as submissive as fawning spaniels. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Greg. Tur., book ii., c. 28.] [Footnote 6: Monach. Sangall, b. i., c. ii., sqq., as quoted by Michelet.] [Footnote 7: See the abundant proof of these statements in Michelet's History of France, p. 193.] CHAPTER II. THE HOUSES OF VALOIS AND BOURBON.