I 



THE MUSKET AS A SOCIAL FORCE. 487 



described a lawyer as " a gentleman who rescues your estate from your 

 enemy and keeps it himself." It was on this principle that these 

 *' protectors " acted. They took the entire product of the husband- 

 man's labor as a reward for their friendship and courage in protecting 

 him from spoliation by some one else ! 



The period was the Golden Age of Might. It was the day of the 

 absolute monarchy of Brawn, and the strong right arm was the court 

 of first resort and tribunal of final appeal. Centuries of Egyptian, 

 Greek, and Roman civilization had developed the science of jurispru- 

 dence into laws and customs which were fairly equitable in securing 

 ownership of person and property. But moral chaos came again when 

 the Gothic cataclysm rolled over Europe. There was no longer any 

 recognition of a man's right to anything to which he could not hold on 

 by main strength. 



The gentleman whose factory-plant, oflSce-furniture, and stock in 

 trade consisted of a stone castle, a broad-haunched horse, a business- 

 suit of spring-steel, and a twenty-foot lance, held thirteen trumps in 

 the game as it was then played. To propitiate him — to gain even the 

 privilege of living in unutterable wretchedness and squalor — freemen 

 surrendered their lands to him, gave up all their labor's products, and 

 even yielded to him such of their women as his momentary cajmce 

 might demand. 



The Men on Horseback divided all the arable lands of Europe among 

 them. Katurally they had hot disagreements as to who should have 

 the monopoly of plundering a given valley or plain, and carried on the 

 dispute with much clamor and fighting. In spite of the ornate descrip- 

 tions of romancers and ballad-singers, this latter was not of a very san- 

 guinary nature. So completely was armor finally made to answer its in- 

 tended purpose that there are records of " battles " between imposing 

 arrays of armored horsemen, which lasted all day, but in which not a 

 single life was lost. The worst likely to happen to any combatant was 

 that he be unhorsed, pinned to the ground by the weight of his armor, 

 taken captive, and forced to pay ransom. " The knights of old " were 

 warriors " for revenue only." 



The only likelihood of any considerable slaughter was when the 

 wretched serfs — goaded to madness by their wrongs — revolted against 

 their despoilers, and strove against them with pikes, scythes, bills, and 

 similar ineffective weapons. Then the wolf-hounds of murder were let 

 loose. Cavaliers at war with one another would make a truce, to join 

 in slaying " rebellious hinds." The last great battle of this kind was in 

 the " War of the Jacquerie," in 1348, where nine thousand poor serfs 

 were massacred in the French town of Mcaux, and in the three weeks 

 that the hunt lasted more than twenty thousand were slain. So fond 

 were the chevaliers of this sport of hind-killing that it was not an un- 

 common thing for them — before or after one of the great armor-batter- 

 ing matches which they called battles — to turn upon and slaughter the 



