132 LAND REFORM 



Frolssart was an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers, 

 and, in common with his order, had not the remotest 

 idea that the common people had any natural rights 

 whatever. For the husbandmen — bond or free — to 

 assert any rights was, in his view, a proof of their 

 wickedness in questioning what was considered to be 

 a divine order of things ; accordingly he refers to the 

 rebellion with contempt, and vilifies the actors in it. 

 Except for this reference to Wat Tyler's revolt, his 

 books are filled mainly with brilliant descriptions of pre- 

 datory warfare, plots and counterplots, battles, sieges, 

 intrigues of kings and nobles, scandals and gossips of 

 courts, tournaments, etc. The terrible wars he de- 

 scribes were actuated by no patriotic motives or aims 

 and secured no permanent good to the nation. They 

 were mainly caused by the quarrels of kings and by 

 dynastic squabbles. War was a trade. Knights and 

 squires of the order of chivalry sold their swords to the 

 highest bidder regardless of side or cause or the just- 

 ness of the quarrel. Taking prisoners for the sake of 

 ransom was a miserable traffic recognized by these 

 warriors. Altogether it was a squalid business. The 

 vaunted rules of chivalry, which this class professed 

 to observe, imposed no obligation of honour or justice 

 in dealing with the inferior classes. A man might 

 treat the common people with any amount of cruelty, 

 meanness, and deceit, and still be regarded as a 

 chivalrous knight. Chivalry had no permanent effect 

 in the formation of the national character except to 

 inspire an exclusive class with a spirit of superiority 

 and arrogance which has not wholly died out at the 

 present time. 



In short, Froissart's Chronicles, and others of the 

 same type, refer only to the doings of a handful of men 



