The Forest Laird(140)

“It is an ambitious idea,” Lamberton said. “But I have thought much about it since the night Philip spoke of it to Duns and me, and I am not convinced it is as preposterous as once I thought. Now, in fact, I think he might achieve his goal.”

“But how can he do that, any of it, if, as you say, his treasury is bankrupt?”

Lamberton tilted his head in an unmistakable indication that he considered my point to be moot. “Edward of England’s treasury is bankrupt, too, but that has not prevented him from continuing to wage war against his Gascon rebels, or conducting an illicit campaign against this realm. Monarchs fight wars for widely differing reasons, but almost all of them do it—incessantly, it seems—and nothing is more ruinously expensive than conducting a war. Yet by that very token, no route to conquest and expansion or dominion is more direct or more effective than the one offered by war. A successful war results in massive riches, which, in return, defray the enormous costs incurred in waging war. It becomes a never-ending cycle.”

“Granted,” I said, nodding in agreement. “But you indicated that Philip had a new viewpoint, did you not? I interpreted that to mean he believes he can achieve this melding of all the duchies and territories where no one has done so since the days of the Caesars.”

“Aye, that is what I meant. And I believe there are several reasons why he might succeed. The first of those being that all the duchies share a common language. A common root language, that is. They all speak variants of the old Frankish tongue. We call it French, but many of them continue to call it by their local names—Angevin in Anjou, Poitevin in Poitiers, Oc in the Languedoc, and so on. There are regional differences, some of them profound, but fundamentally the tongue is French and they can all speak it and understand each other. Which means a newly conquered territory can be absorbed without great disruption.”

I stepped into the shadows beneath a dense stand of trees, where I hoped we would be challenged by the fourth and last of the guardsmen on duty. Lamberton followed at my heels, and within moments a voice rang out ahead of us, challenging us to stand where we were. I identified myself quickly, addressing the guardsman by name and telling him we were two priests with much to talk about and no desire to sleep, and after a brief exchange of greetings he waved us on, no doubt glad to have had the opportunity to speak with someone even for mere moments and even gladder, I was sure, to have been awake and at his post when we approached him.

“Tell me,” I asked as soon as he had fallen out of hearing behind us. “Are there burgesses in Philip’s France?”

“Heavens, yes—more than there are in Scotland, and they may even be wealthier, which means Philip’s problem there is more pronounced than ours yet is. Philip, gazing into his empty treasury and needy as he always is and ever was, is seeing the returns from his royal lands and holdings growing smaller from year to year, while more and more people are thriving without having to pay tribute, in the form of rent and revenues, to their so-called betters. Yet under the existing system he has no means of redress, other than to increase those holdings by any means available—namely, wars and conquest. But the riches of his burgesses must make him gag, because their wealth is laid out before his eyes in every town and city of his realm.”

“So how will he change that?”

“By changing the way things stand—by enacting new laws that will allow him to apply new taxes in ways that have never been seen before. He has already set his lawyers to work. He will tax merchants for the premises they own within his kingdom and for the use of the roads within his realm. He will tax them for their use of those ports and storage facilities they need in order to pursue their ventures. Rest assured, his lawyers will eventually find ways of taxing merchants for the nails that hold horseshoes in place. And in return he will offer them his royal protection—the protection of the state—against outside interference in their operations. Far more important, though, will be his offer to include them in the country’s governance.”

“Governance? To what extent?”

“To whatever extent he sees fit, though that will be subjected to his divine right to rule. But at least he is speaking of giving his merchants—his mercantile citizens—a voice for the first time. And that may be the single largest and most significant change in the coming new order. Like our burgesses, these men are commoners. The call themselves bourgeois in France, and it means exactly the same thing, burgh-dwellers. They have never had any voice, or any influence, in anything. But now they will. They may not speak out as loudly or as effectively as they do here in Scotland, where there is no divinely entitled monarch, but the French bourgeois will nevertheless be heard from more and more as they grow richer. Philip needs their wealth, but more than that, he needs their support. He cannot simply plunder their vaults, for they would quickly move away to a safer place where they could continue working beyond his influence, and that would be fatal to all his hopes. So he must keep them on his side. He must tax them in such a way that they will submit to his taxation, however grudgingly, and continue in their commerce. He has no choice. He will be forced to compromise, and that is a new phenomenon.”