Sunday, October 07, 2012

Comparison between English Feudalism and French Feudalism

When I started learning the medieval Western history, I was really surprised that French nobles were disloyal to their king unlike English nobles. English feudalism kept the loyalty of nobles to their monarchy, except the four times (John the land loser (Caused Magna-Carta to be established, and it has become the taboo to name John for English monarchy since his reign), Henry IV (Caused Wars of the Roses), Charles I (Caused the Cromwell revolution) and James II (VII of Scotland, Caused the Glorious Revolution)). By contrast, French monarchy always faced riots, betrayal, and assassination attempts in French feudalism. This characteristics caused Lois XIV to declare his absolute monarchism which extremely centralised French feudalism all the sudden.

The lack of French nobles' loyalty to their monarchy was due to the difference in the feudal property right of their land and the strong explicitly contract between nobles and king by law. In England, all nobles and their lands were entitled to be their king's subjects even though these nobles had a sovereign right to utilise their land and their commoners inhabiting there. This contract agreement has been strictly enforced by the law, which is the basis of British Common Law, since Henry II. Therefore, both the land and the commoners were governed by the dual ownership by both the King and the feudal lords. By contrast, French feudal lords had an ultimate feudal property right which the King was difficult to intervene into. Perhaps, it was because France is a continental country sharing a border with various countries unlike England and the rest of Britain. So, there were various nobles from too many different backgrounds to unify into one.

French claimed that English provoked the 100 years war by English interest. But when we consider the two aspect, it gives us an enough room to argue that English monarchy was hijacked by a French noble faction.

1) The contemporary English monarchy had a strong connection with French nobles (Since Plantagenet dynasty (Henry II, the first Plantagenet obtained Normandy and Anjou by getting married with Eleanor))

2) French monarchy was not strong enough to bind all nobles to obey their monarchy so that the regional conflict between the pro-monarchy side and the anti-monarchy side noble factions frequently took place then.

So, there must be a plot by the Anjou families and their fellow faction member nobles to attempt to conquer the opponents' land inside France by using their relative English monarchy and its factions.

P.S. By the way, I was really annoyed by how Brave Heart (Both the movie and the novel) depicted Philip IV、the French monarchy in Capet dynasty, as a good guy. I really hate Philip IV because he not only forcibly relinquished the Orders of Temple but also liquidated and tortured the Templar members even though the Templar did a tremendously big favour for French monarchy's fiscal administration! Even though he was a good king for majority French because he was strong enough to convince majority of French nobles to loyal to him.