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Hubert was, as has been well said, perhaps the first minister since the Conquest who made patriotism a principle of policy, though it is easy in the light of later developments to read into his doings more than he really intended. But whatever his motives, the results of his action were clear. He drove away the mercenaries, humbled the feudal lords, and set limits to the pope's interference.
Alexandre de Beauharnais, deputy from Blois, had passed with his colleagues into the ballroom, had with them taken the fatal oath; in the decisive night of the 4th of August he, with burning enthusiasm, had renounced all the privileges of the nobility, all his feudal rights; and, breaking with the past, with all its family traditions and customs, had passed, with all the passion and zest of his nine- and-twenty years, into the hostile camp of the people and of liberty.
There was a farmer's lodge at the landing, and over the rocks and amid the trees the picturesque roof of the villa of the sole proprietor of the island appeared, and gave a feudal aspect to the domain. The sweet grass affords good picking for sheep, and besides the sheep the owner raises deer, which are destined to be chased and shot in the autumn.
The many failures of the old Ghibelline or Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the artificiality of their rule. Might not such an impulse be imparted by the French Revolution? And would not the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French cause?
No doubt his philosophy of life had been of the peculiar sort practiced by the feudal barons of the Old World, before civilization had come, carrying its banner of justice, which, summed up epigrammatically, though ironically, had been "Might is Right." But might could never be right in this country. Dunlavey must learn this lesson; he could not hope to !
In his office of Grand Seneschal of France he generally caused himself to be represented by a deputy; but he had lately determined to make a journey to Paris, in the hope of winning over the young King Louis, and perhaps the beautiful Queen Eleanor, who was feudal sovereign, in her own right, of Guienne, Poitou and Aquitaine, and in reality a more powerful personage than the King himself.
I sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on the verge of republicanism. It brings the two far-separated points of time very closely together, to view the matter thus. October 16th.
'Yes, I mean them, and the three or four millions of poor whites the ignorant, half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. They are the real basis of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it, continued the Colonel, still laughing. 'I thought the negro was the serf, in your feudal system? 'Both the negro and the poor whites are the serfs, but the white trash are its real support.
Large elements of the population, previously engaged in producing and consuming the bare necessaries of food, shelter and clothing were increasingly engaged in trades and professions and rendering services unknown to the feudal countryside.
We meet with other forms of tenure in the partition of land in the days of the French régime for instance, franc aleu noble and franc aumone or mortmain, but these were exceptional grants to charitable, educational, or religious institutions, and were subject to none of the ordinary obligations of the feudal tenure, but required, as in the latter case, only the performance of certain devotional or other duties which fell within their special sphere.
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