Untitled - African American History

SLAVERY IN EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. CXV
enacted in the fourteenth century, in the celebrated re-
volt of the peasants, known as the " Jacquerie.'^
The names of the servile classes in France varied
according to their grades from the seneschal and mareschal,
the chief slaves, down to the gens de corps, who were
classed with the cattle, as levant et couchant. The inter-
mediate grades, between absolute liberty and absolute
were infinite. 2
slavery,
The wars of the Christians and Moors in France and
the Peninsula, increased largely the number of slaves.
France and Italy were filled with Saracen slaves. At
the same time, the Jews of Lyons and Verdun were fur-
Christian slaves to their Saracen customers. 3
nishing
On the other side, the wars of the German and Sla-
vonic tribes gave to the slave-trade its greatest activity,
and filled the neighboring nations with so many of the
Slavonic captives, as to transfer their name " slaves," to
servitude itself. 4
From the sixth to the fourteenth centuries there was
very little improvement in the condition of the serfs of
France. In 1315, Louis le Hutin, to render famous his
reign, promulgated
a celebrated ordinance for the en-
franchisement of royal serfs ; wherein, after declaring,
by the law of nature, all men are born free, and that the
kingdom of the Franks should comport with its name
and be a kingdom of freemen, as an example to other
seigneurs, he ordered his ofiicers to grant freedom to his
serfs, "upon certain composition, whereby sufficient
shall be made to us for the emoluments
compensation
1
VI,
See a graphic description of this, by Michelet, Hist, of France, Bk.
ch. iii.
2 For a full and accurate view of this subject, see Michelet, Origines du
droit frangais, 276; Du Cange Gloss, v. Colonus, Mancipia, Accola, &c.
Guizot, Essais sur 1'Histoire de France, p. 105; Giraud, Histoire du droit
frangais, torn, i, art. v ; Bonnemere, Histoire des Paysans, Introduction.
3 Bancroft's United States, i, 162, 164, and authorities there cited.
4 Bancroft's United States, i, 162.