The entire secret of Charles’ success was reliance on his people; and perhaps the most valuable portion of this reliance was in the fact that in the word “people” he included the whole population of France. This great word was not limited, in his interpretation of it, to the taxpaying inhabitants of the towns or free labourers on the farms. The very serfs on the soil were fellow-countrymen of the great successor of St. Louis. His laws had reference as often to the interests of the lowest of his subjects as to the rights of the richest cities. He was the first and the last to put arms into the hands of the whole nation. Each man had his bow and quiver of arrows, his short sword or iron-pointed staff. He was openly practised in the use of them, and was taught that it was dishonourable for a Frenchman to be unable to defend his wife and children with his own hands. The experiment was so successful against even such generals as Chandos and the Black Prince, that it might be expected to continue one of the standing institutions of the kingdom. But these feelings of self-respect were only useful against a foreign enemy, and might be dangerous against a domestic master. So, ere many years elapsed, the system was abolished; the butts were destroyed, the bows and swords withdrawn, for fear the “small people” should find themselves too powerful; and the result was--as we shall see--Henry V of England and the battle of Agincourt. It was not more in the formation of new establishments that Charles showed his wisdom than in the purification and improvement of the old. The legalism so strongly encouraged by Philip the Fair, as a preservative against the power of the nobles, had now become an oppression to the people. The civil servants of the crown absorbed a vast portion of the taxes they were employed to raise, and the paid offices about the provincial courts and local parliaments were innumerable. He diminished them both in number and amount of salary, and tried to save his subjects from the intricacies of technical pleadings, as almost an equal evil with the violence of lawless force. The only people, indeed, he could not bring within the rules of mercy and justice were the lords and gentlemen, who were the ornaments of chivalry and the strength of his armies. Feudalism, in fact, was dissolving, and chivalry, which was its poetic ideal, could not stand the trial of actual war. Knights were still mere gladiators--sometimes more for show than action; and gentlemen, in our sense of the word, were not yet in existence.[n] [Illustration] FOOTNOTES [24] [The continuator of Nangis[d] is responsible for this statement.] [25] [The French left 11,000 dead on the field of battle. The English loss was but 2,500, and they made prisoners of 13 counts, 1 archbishop, 70 barons, and 2,000 armed men, not counting persons of less importance.]