The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman: A Tale from the Feudal Times

All the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were captured, even those who had paid ransom for their lives – men, women and children – all, to the number of seventy thousand human beings, were thus massacred. The extermination lasted two days and three nights, obedient to the following order of the seigneur Tancred, one of the heroes of the Crusade: "We consider it necessary to put to the sword without delay both the prisoners and those who paid ransom."

The last of the victims, cast at the mob by Peter the Hermit, were being massacred, when another band of Crusaders, running up from the other end of the street and marching towards the large square, passed by shouting: "The people of Tancred are pillaging the Mosque of Omar. * * * By all the saints of Paradise and all the devils of hell, we want our part of the booty!"

"And we stay here amusing ourselves with corpses!" cried out the butchers under Peter the Hermit's terrace. "Let's on to the mosque! To the sack! To the sack!"

Again Fergan was carried by the torrent of the crowd and arrived upon a spacious square littered with Saracen corpses, seeing that, after the assault had succeeded, the Saracens had retreated, fighting from street to street, and drawn themselves up before the mosque, where a last battle was delivered. At that place, these heroes were all killed defending the temple, the refuge of the women, the children and the old men, too feeble to fight, and who relied upon the pity and mercy of the vanquishers. Easier far had it been to excite the pity of a hungry tiger than that of the Crusaders.

Several tiers of marble stairs led down to the Mosque of Omar, whose floor was about three feet below the level of the street. Such had been the butchery indulged in by the Crusaders, and so much blood had run down into the temple, which measured more than one thousand feet in circumference, that the blood, rising above the first stairs, began to run over into the square. The interior of the Mosque of Omar offered to the eye but one vast sheet of blood, still warm, and the vapor of which rose like a light mist above an innumerable mass of corpses, here wholly, yonder only partially submerged in the red lake, where heads and members hacked from the trunk with hatchets, were seen floating at large. Of the Crusaders who entered the Mosque of Omar for pillage, some waded in blood to their waists. The warmth of the flowing blood and the site of the shocking butchery made Fergan reel with dizziness. His heart thumped against his ribs and his strength gave way. In vain he sought support against one of the porphyry columns at the facade of the mosque. He dropped down unconscious, his legs steeped in blood.

Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy, chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children and pilgrims, singing in chorus Laudate Creator. The crowd was so numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other in the middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.

When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.

PART III.

THE COMMUNE OF LAON

CHAPTER I.

THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES

For centuries Laon had for its temporal seigneur the bishop of the diocese, and figured from the start among the foremost cities of Picardy. Since the Frankish conquest, and down to the date of the events here narrated (1112), Laon constituted a part of the special domains of the kings. Clovis made himself master of the city through the treason of Saint Remy, who baptized that crowned bandit at Rheims. Clovis' wife, Clotilde, founded in the city the collegiate church of Saint Peter, and later Brunhild built a palace there. A bishop of Laon, Adalberon, the paramour of Queen Imma, was her accomplice in the poisoning of Lothair, the father of Louis the Indolent, – a homocidal example that was soon imitated upon himself by his Queen, Blanche, another adulterous poisoner, who, through the murder committed by her, confirmed the usurpation of Hugh Capet, to the injury of the last Carlovingian king. Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis the Indolent, having become through the latter's death the heritor of the crown of the Frankish kings, took possession of Laon. Hugh Capet besieged him there, and, after several assaults, succeeded in capturing the city, thanks to the connections that Adalberon, the adulterer and poisoning bishop, had preserved in the place. Since then, Laon continued as a sovereign ecclesiastical seigniory, but always under the suzerainty of the French King. In the year 1112, the date of this narrative, the reigning king was named Louis the Lusty. As obese as, but much less indolent than his father, Philip I, the excommunicated lover of the handsome Berthrade who died in 1108, Louis the Lusty did not, like his father, submit to the affronts and vexations of the feudal seigneurs; he waged war to the knife against them to the end of extending with their spoils his own domains, that then took in only Paris, Melun, Compiegne, Etampes, Orleans, Montlhery, Puiset and Corbeil. Thus, in addition to the scourge of the private wars among the seigneurs, the people bent under the affliction of the wars of the king against the seigneurs, and of the Normans against the king. The Normans, the descendants of old Rolf the Pirate, had conquered England under their duke William. But, although settled down in that ultramarine country, the Kings of England preserved in Gaul the duchy of Normandy and Gisors, and from thence dominated the territory of Vexin, almost to the gates of Paris, waging incessant war upon Louis the Lusty. Thus Gaul continued to be ravaged by bloody strifes, with none other than the people, the serfs and villeins, as the perpetual victims. The wretched agricultural plebs, decimated by the execrable craze of the Crusades, that held out despite the recapture of Jerusalem by the Turks, found itself crushed by a double burden, their decreased numbers being compelled by increased labor to provide for the needs, the prodigalities and the debaucheries of the clergy and the seigneurs.

The bourgeois and other townsmen, better organized, better able to realize their power, above all more enlightened than the serfs of the fields, had revolted in many cities against their lay or ecclesiastical seigneurs, and, by dint of daring, of energy and stubbornness, had, at the price of their own blood, regained their freedom and secured the abolition of the degrading and shameful rights that the feudal families had been long enjoying. A small number of cities, even without resorting to arms, had, by virtue of great pecuniary sacrifices, purchased their enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights, with round sums of money. Delivered from their former secular and creed servitude, the city populations celebrated with enthusiasm all the circumstances connected with their emancipation. Thus, on April 15, 1112, the bourgeois merchants and artisans of the city of Laon were in gala since early morning. From one side to the other of the streets, male and female neighbors called one another from their windows and exchanged gladsome salutations.

"Well, neighbor," said one, "the bright anniversary of the inauguration of our Commune Hall and belfry has arrived!"

"Do not mention it, neighbor; I have not slept all night! With my wife and children we were up till three o'clock in the morning burnishing up my iron casque and coat of mail. Our armed militia will add great luster to the ceremony. May God be praised for this great day!"

"And the procession of our artisans' guilds will be no less superb! Would you believe it, neighbor, that I, who during all my life of a carpenter have not, as you may imagine, ever held a needle in my hands, helped my wife to sew together the stripes of our new banner?"

"Thank God, the weather will be beautiful for the ceremony. Look how clear and brilliant the dawn is!"

"Couldn't be otherwise! Such a feast could not lack good weather. I expect that when I shall hear for the first time the peals from our communal belfry every clank will make my heart bound!"

These dialogues and many others, naive testimony of the joy of the inhabitants of Laon, took place along the length of all the streets from house to house, from the humblest to the richest. Almost all the windows, opened since the break of day, exposed to view the laughing faces of men, women and children, all actively engaged with preparations for the festivities.

The gladsome stir in almost all the quarters of the city, rendered all the more striking the gloomy and sombre and, so to say, sullen aspect of a certain number of dwellings of ancient architecture, and whose gates were, as a rule, flanked by two turrets with pointed roofs, surmounted with a weather-vane. Not a chink of these dwellings, blackish with age, was open on this morning. They belonged to the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the metropolitan church, or to noble knights, who, not owning estates large enough to live in the country, inhabited the cities, and ever sided against the bourgeois and with the lay or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, in Laon, these clergymen and knights were designated as the episcopals, while the inhabitants, who, according to the language of the day, "took the oath of the Commune," were called the communiers. The antique turrets of the dwellings of the episcopals were at once a species of fortification and a symbol of the nobility of their origin. On that morning, these dwellings, silent and shut up, seemed to denote the displeasure given to the noble episcopals by the rejoicings of the Laonese laboring classes.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHARTER OF LAON

But there were other dwellings, also flanked with turrets, besides those of the nobles. These others were gaily decorated, and the whiteness of their masonry, contrasting with the aspect of the ancient architecture of the nobles, to which they seemed to be annexes, bespoke a more recent date.

One of these establishments, thus fortified only a short time since, lay at the corner of Exchange street, the leading mercantile thoroughfare of the city. The old door, whose threshold and lintels were of stone, and at either side of which rose two white and high turrets recently built, had been thrown open at the very first break of day, and several townsmen were seen going in and out. They came for certain instructions on the ceremonies. In one of the chambers of this dwelling sat Fergan and Joan the Hunchback. It was about twelve years since they had left the Holy Land. The hair and beard of Fergan, now over forty years of age, began to betray streaks of gray. He was no longer the serf of olden days – restless, savage, tattered. His features breathed happiness and serenity. Equipped almost wholly as a soldier, he wore a jacket of iron mail and a corselet of steel. He was seated near a table at which he wrote. Joan, clad in a robe of brown wool, and wearing on her head a sober bonnet, from under which a long white veil fell upon her shoulders, looked no less blissful than her husband. On the sweet face of this brave mother, once so severely tried, the expression of profound felicity was depicted. At the request of Fergan she had just drawn from an old oaken cabinet a little iron casket, which she placed upon the table where Fergan was writing. The casket, an inheritance from Gildas the Tanner, contained several parchment scrolls, yellow with the age of centuries, besides the several relics so dear to the family of the Gallic chief Joel, and among which was the silver cross of Genevieve, together with the pilgrim's shell that Fergan had taken from Neroweg VI in the desert of Syria. Fergan had just finished transcribing on a parchment a copy of the communal charter, under which, for the last three years, the city of Laon was free and led a peaceful and flourishing existence. The quarryman wished to join the copy of that charter to the archives of the family of Joel, as a witness of the awakening spirit of freedom of his own days, and of the inexorable resolution of the people to battle against the kings, the clergymen and the seigneurs, descendants or heritors of the Frankish conquest. For the last fifteen or twenty years back, other cities besides Laon, driven to extremities by the horrors of feudalism, had, some through insurrection, others through great sacrifices of money, obtained similar charters, under shelter of which they governed themselves like republics, similar to the heroic and brilliant days of Gaul's independence, centuries before the invasions of the Romans. The copy of the communal charter of Laon, the original of which, deposited in the Mayor's office, bore the name and signature of Gaudry, bishop of the diocese of Laon, and of Louis the Lusty, King of the French, ran as follows:

CHARTER OF THE COMMUNE OF LAON

I

All men, domiciled within the walls of the city and in its suburbs, belonging to any seigneur who holds as a fief the territory which they inhabit, shall swear allegiance to this Commune.

II

Throughout the full extent of the city each shall render assistance to the other, loyally and to the best of his ability.

III

The men of this Commune shall be free holders of their goods. Neither the King, nor the Bishop, nor any other, shall be entitled to make any levy upon them, except by the judgment of their own town council.

IV

Each shall, on all occasions, observe fidelity towards those who shall have taken the oath of the Commune, and shall aid them with deed and advice.

V

Within the limits of the Commune, all the men shall mutually help one another, according to their power; and they shall in no wise, whatever it be, suffer the seigneur, Bishop or any other, to distrain any property from them, or compel them to pay imposts.

VI

Thirteen Councilmen shall be elected by the Commune. One of these councilmen shall be elected Mayor by the suffrage of all those who shall have taken the oath of the Commune.

VII

The Mayor and the Councilmen shall make oath to favor no person by reason of friendship, and to render an equitable decision in all matters, according to their powers; all others shall take the oath of obedience and to sustain with arms the decisions of the Mayor and Councilmen. When the bell of the belfry shall sound to assemble the Commune, anyone who does not attend shall pay a fine of twelve sous.

VIII

If anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune of Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen, they shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and property of the guilty party.

IX

If the guilty party takes refuge in a fortified castle, the Mayor and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of the castle, or his lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall have been rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if the seigneur refuses satisfaction, they shall themselves enforce justice upon the property and upon the men of said seigneur.

X

If any member of the Commune shall have entrusted his money to some one of the city, and he to whom the money has been so entrusted takes refuge in some strong castle, the seigneur having been notified, shall either return the money, or drive the debtor from his castle. If the seigneur does neither, justice shall be enforced upon his goods and his men.

XI

Whenever the Mayor and the Councilmen shall desire to fortify the city, they shall be free to do so on whatever seigneur's territory it may be.

XII

The men of the Commune shall be free to grind their corn, and bake their bread wherever they please.

XIII