CHAPTER VII

. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES

[Sidenote: [1096-1291 A.D.]]

No religious wars have ever been so long, so sanguinary, and so destructive as the Crusades. Countless hosts of holy warriors fell the victims of their own vindictive enthusiasm and military ardour. Fierceness and intolerance were the strongest features in the character of the dark ages, and it is, perhaps, not so much in the conduct, as in the object, of the Crusades, that anything distinct and peculiar can be marked. It was not for the conversion of people, nor the propagation of opinions, but for the redemption of the sepulchre of Christ, and the destruction of the enemies of God, that the crimson standard was unfurled. The western world did not cast itself into Asia from any view of expediency, or in consequence of any abstract theoretical principle of a right of hostility; men did not arm themselves from any conviction that the co-existence of Christendom and Islamism was compatible with the doctrines of the _Koran_, or that the countries of the West would be precipitated into the gulf of destruction, if Asia Minor were not torn from the Seljuk Turks, and restored to the emperor of Constantinople. But the flame of war spread from one end of Europe to the other, for the deliverance of the Holy Land from a state which was called pollution; and the floodgates of fanaticism were unlocked for the savage and iniquitous purpose of extermination. But popular madness would not listen to the calls of generous policy and lofty ambition. The wish for the redemption of the Holy Land was the feeling which influenced both Godfrey de Bouillon and St. Louis, the first and last great champions of the cross; it was that wild desire which moved Europe for two centuries, and without it the Crusades would never have been undertaken.

The question of the justice of the holy wars is one of easy solution. The crusaders were not called upon by heaven to carry on hostilities against the Mussulmans. Palestine did not, of right, belong to the Christians in consequence of any gift of God; and it was evident, from the fact of the destruction of the second temple, that there was no longer any peculiar sanctity in the ground of Jerusalem. There is no command in the Scriptures for Christians to build the walls of the Holy City, and no promise of an earthly Canaan as the reward of virtue. If the Christians had been animated by the conviction that war with all the world was the vital principle of the Mohammedan religion, then also a right of hostility would have been raised.

As Lord Bacon said in his _War with Spain_: “Forasmuch as it is a fundamental law in the Turkish empire, that they may, without any other provocation, make war upon Christendom for the propagation of their law; so that there lieth upon Christians a perpetual fear of war, hanging over their heads, from them; and therefore, they may at all times, as they think good, be upon the preventive.” But before they could have been justified on this last-mentioned argument, proof was necessary that the danger was imminent, and that time and circumstances had not reduced the principle to a mere dry, inoperative letter of the law. In the first hundred and fifty years of Mohammedan history, the Mussulmans made continued and successful attacks on the Christians; and the invasion of France by the Spanish and African Moors, seemed to endanger Christendom as a world independent of and not tributary to the Saracens. In all that long period the people of the West might have instituted crusades on principles of self-defence. But as they had acquiesced for ages in the existence of Islam, they could not afterwards draw the sword, except for the purpose of preventing or repelling new aggressions. No dangers hung over Christendom at the time when the Crusades commenced.

MORAL EFFECTS

On principles of morals and politics the holy wars cannot be justified. Yet war became a sacred duty, and obligatory on every class of mankind. The fair face of religion was besmeared with blood, and heavenly attraction was changed for demoniacal repulsiveness. The Crusades encouraged the most horrible violences of fanaticism. They were the precedent for the military contentions of the church with the Prussians and Albigenses; and as the execrable Inquisition arose out of the spirit of clerical dragooning, the wars in Palestine brought a frightful calamity on the world. Universal dominion was the ambition of the Roman pontiffs; and the iniquity of the means was in dreadful accordance with the audacity of the project. The pastors of the church used anathemas, excommunications, interdicts, and every weapon in the storehouse of spiritual artillery; and when the world was in arms for the purpose of destroying infidels, it was natural that the soldiers of God should turn aside and chastise other foes to the true religion. Crusades with idolaters and erring Christians were considered as virtuous and as necessary as crusades with Saracens; the south of France was saturated with heretical blood; and those booted apostles, the Teutonic knights, converted, sword in hand, the Prussians and Lithuanians from idolatry to Christianity.

The sword of religious persecution was not directed against Turks and heretics only. The reader remembers the sanguinary enormities that disgraced the opening of the First Crusade. Not only was this instance of persecution of the Jews the earliest one upon record in the annals of the West since the fall of the Roman Empire, but it is also true that that wretched people met with most of their dreadful calamities during the time of the holy wars. It is highly probable that the hatred which the Christians felt against them was embittered by that fierce and mistaken zeal for religion which gave birth to the Crusades; and as the chief object of those Crusades was the recovery of the sepulchre at Jerusalem, it was natural that the Christian belligerents should behold with equal detestation the nation which had crucified the Saviour and the nation which continued to profane his tomb. This conjecture is much confirmed by the circumstance, that the prevailing prejudice in the Middle Ages against the Jews was that they often crucified Christian children in mockery of the great sacrifice. If it be objected to this reasoning that the crusading Cœur de Lion befriended the Jews, we reply that the crusading king Edward I expelled them from England.

The penalties which the church inflicted on its members, as the temporal punishments of sin, might have been unwarranted by Scripture, and were doubtless often awarded by cruelty and caprice. But the practice of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, was in itself salubrious to the individual, and beneficial to society. It softened pride; it subdued the sensual passions; it diffused charity. Instead of these blessings, the slaughter of human beings was made the propitiation of offence; and the Christian virtues of self-denial and benevolence were considered an absurd and antiquated fashion. As the discipline of the church had been broken in upon for one purpose, it could be violated for another. The repentant sinner who could not take the cross himself, might contribute to the charge of the holy expedition. When offences were once commuted for money, the religious application of the price of pardon soon ceased to be necessary. Absolutions from penance became a matter of traffic, and holy virtues were discountenanced. For this reason, and for many others, the Crusades conferred no benefits on morals. The evils of a life free from domestic restraints, formed a strong argument against pilgrimages in very early ages of the church, and it does not appear that when the wanderers became soldiers their morals improved. The vices of the military colonists in Palestine are the burden of many a page of the crusading annalists. Something must be detracted from those representations in consequence of their authors’ prejudice that the vices of the Christians in the Holy Land effected the ruin of the kingdom. Yet enough remains to show that the tone of morals was not at a higher pitch in Palestine than in Europe. The decrees of the council at Nablus (Shechem or Neapolis) prove that a difference of religion, although a barrier against the dearest charities of life, was no impediment to a vicious sensual intercourse between the Franks and the Moslems. The Latins lived in a constant course of plunder on their Mussulman neighbours, and therefore on their return to Europe could not spread around them any rays of virtue.[82]

POLITICAL EFFECTS

As the Crusades were carried on for holy objects, not for civil or national ends, their connection with politics could only have been collateral and indirect. The spirit of crusading, composed as it was of superstition and military ardour, was hostile to the advancement of knowledge and liberty; and consequently no improvement in the civil condition of the kingdoms of the West could have been the legitimate issue of the principles of the holy wars. The pope was the only monarch who mixed politics with his piety. The other princes seem to have been influenced by the spirit of religion or of chivalry; and it was only in the attempts again to disorder the intellect of Europe, that we find one monarch, Henry IV of England, acting the part of a crafty politician.

Great changes in the political aspect of Europe were coeval with but were not occasioned by the holy wars. The power of the French crown was much higher at the end of the thirteenth, than it had been at the same period of the eleventh century; but the influence of the imperial throne was materially depressed. These opposite effects could never have been the simple results of the same cause; namely, the loss of the flower of the western aristocracy in Palestine.

The causes of the depression of imperial authority were the aggrandisement of the nobles (a natural effect of the feudal system); the improvident grants of lands which the Swabian family made to the clergy; the contests between the popes and emperors respecting their different jurisdictions, and, above all the rest, the destructive wars which the emperors waged in the north of Italy for the reannexation of that country to the throne of the descendants of the imperial house of Charlemagne.

[Illustration: GERMAN CRUSADER OF THE EARLY CRUSADES]

The political changes in England cannot with justice be attributed to the Crusades. Until the days of Richard I holy wars had not become a general or a national concern. The monarchy stood the same at the close of his reign as at its commencement; and the only favourable issue of Cœur de Lion’s armament was an increase of military reputation. His renunciation of feudal sovereignty over Scotland had no influence on politics. Edward I pressed his claim, although Richard had deprived him of his strongest support. The pusillanimous John assumed the cross; but that circumstance did not occur until after he had surrendered his crown to the papal see, and until the barons had formed a confederacy against him. His assumption of the cross neither retarded nor accelerated the progress of English liberty. The pope was not linked to him by stronger ties than those which had formerly bound them; and the barons were not deceived by the religious hypocrisy of the king. The transmarine expeditions of the earls of Cornwall and Salisbury, and of Prince Edward in the reign of Henry III, were the ebullitions of religious and military ardour, but did not affect the general course of events.

The great political circumstance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which was important above all others to civil liberty, was the appearance of free and corporate towns. But the Crusades neither produced their establishment nor affected their history. After various vicissitudes of fortune, the battle of Legnano, and the Peace of Constance, established the independence of the towns in the north of Italy. The Crusades did not contribute to these events; for the two sacred expeditions which had taken place were as disastrous to peasants as to princes, and drained Europe of all ranks of society. Consequently it was not from the holy wars that the people gained their liberties. We find that so ill regulated was the liberty of the towns alluded to, that anarchy soon succeeded. Men of personal importance and wealth aspired to sovereign honours; an overwhelming aristocracy extinguished freedom, and at the end of the thirteenth century there were as many princes in Tuscany and Lombardy as there had been free towns at the end of the twelfth.

It is only in the maritime cities of Italy that any indisputable influence of the Crusades can be marked. Trade with the Christian states in Palestine, and the furnishing of transports to the pilgrims, increased the wealth of the commercial cities. The capture of Constantinople by the French and Venetians was important in its issues. Venice regained maritime ascendency; but it was soon taken from her by the Genoese, who aided the Greeks to recover their capital. Genoa then became a leading power in the Mediterranean, and she subdued Pisa. The rapid increase of the wealth and power of Venice and Genoa, and the eventual destruction of Pisa seem, then, to form the principal circumstances in commercial history which the Crusades were instrumental in producing. But how insignificant were these events, both locally and generally, both in their relation to Italy and to the general history of Europe, when compared with the discovery of a maritime passage to India!

A view of the heroic ages of Christianity, in regard to their grand and general results, is a useful and important, though a melancholy employment. The Crusades retarded the march of civilisation, thickened the clouds of ignorance and superstition; and encouraged intolerance, cruelty, and fierceness. Religion lost its mildness and charity; and war its mitigating qualities of honour and courtesy. Such were the bitter fruits of the holy wars![c]

INFLUENCE UPON COMMERCE

Trade with the East, at that time, embraced many more articles of commerce than at the present day. Sugar and several other commodities sought for as luxuries or used as medicine, which now come entirely from the new world, were brought from Egypt or the Indies. Europeans looked to Asia for precious gems, especially emeralds, whose worth equalled that of diamonds, until the discovery of the rich mines in the mountains of America. Pearls were then to be found only on the shores of oriental seas. The Crusades gave the peoples of Europe a taste for delicacies and Asiatic ornaments, which several of them had never before known. Vanity and enervation made precious stones, silks, perfumes, and all the products less useful than pleasant which nature has sown in profusion throughout the Orient, necessary to them.

Accustomed by their intercourse with the Orientals to the burning savour of spices, soon they were not able to get along without them. They could not prepare famous dishes without plentiful use of spice; wines even were perfumed with them. Romancers of the era of the Crusades sang the praises, on nearly every page, of cinnamon, musk, clove, and ginger. Did these writers praise some exquisite odour, it was with spices they compared it. Did their fertile imagination build some superb palace, the magic home of the most powerful genii, they surrounded it with an odoriferous forest, planted with spice-bearing trees. Several Italian towns, especially the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, got from this, almost entirely, not only the benefits of a commerce which embraced so many sought-for commodities, but the other advantages of a sea-trade abandoned to the Franks, by the Greeks and Arabs.

ENRICHMENT OF CITIES

Venice, who nourished amid her waters an enormous population, seems through her natural environment to have been peopled only with merchants and followers of the sea. The Crusades helped the proud city to the accomplishment of her brilliant destiny, to make the Orient tremble at her fleets, to enrich the Occident by her industry, and to command respect through many ages for her military power. Genoa, less happily situated, and less rich than Venice, was, however, powerful enough to have aroused the Sea-Republic’s jealousy. Pisa had pushed herself too late into rivalry with Genoa, and the destruction of her harbour was the work of implacable Genoese hatred. Florence, never free from the throes of civil discord, obtained nevertheless great wealth from her commerce, which she generously consecrated to the culture of the fine arts.

The Crusades, therefore, enriched the great cities in giving the opportunity to extend their trade, and also to raise to exorbitant prices charges for their ships. The hardships and dangers which were inseparable from the overland route made it less and less frequented after the first expeditions. Crowds of pilgrims made their way to the ports, and several Italian republics amassed, in the transportation of human freight, a degree of wealth comparable for that time to that which the merchandise of the new world had since brought to the most flourishing cities of modern days.

COLONISATION

The establishment of colonies in the East gave more substantial foundation to Italy’s prosperity. Several cities, whose own interest was a constant stimulus, and whose industry grew with success, founded trading colonies in Egypt, Africa, throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem; at Tyre, where the Pisans had formed a celebrated commercial group; at Antioch, at Acre, stronghold of the Christians; at several other places which the Crusades had opened to them; and as a result the principal cause of the decline of Venice and other powerful Italian cities was not alone the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but to some extent the conquests which made Selim I master of Egypt.

Before the days of the holy wars, some of the Italian towns already possessed trading stations in the Greek Empire, but Constantinople having fallen into the hands of the Latins, the active spirit of the Italians was no longer disturbed by the defiant policy of the Eastern emperors. The Genoese founded the colony of Kaffa, which became very prosperous; the Venetians and Pisans multiplied their warehouses in many places. The subjects of the doge, always mindful of their commerce, demanded the islands of the archipelago, in dividing with the French the territory wrested from the Eastern Empire; but at the moment of taking possession of their share they feared to weaken themselves by occupying territory so remote and widely separated. In the end, however, they could not bring themselves to let go a maritime country so well adapted to trade, and the senate invited by proclamation the rich citizens to take possession of these isles, promising to give in fief those they succeeded in making subject to themselves. Thus it happened that the descendants of the Greeks once so jealous of their political independence saw, so to speak, their freedom at the auction block in the public squares of Venice.

And thus it was that the Crusades ruined the Greeks and the Arabs, and that traffic between the East and the West had to pass almost exclusively through the hands of the Italians, then called Lombards, active, sharp merchants and pitiless usurers, who have left their names as a monument to their thrift, upon the commercial streets of many a great town; those localities where the money lender, furnishing more often a passing aid to extravagance than real assistance to misery, exhibits his insatiable greed. They tried, in the twelfth century, to create merchant tribunals in several towns, to decide commercial disputes and make treaties with strangers--the first separation of commercial jurisprudence from common law. We shall be forgiven doubtless for not entering into any minute description of the Italian commercial establishments in Greece and Asia; it has been sufficient to note the turn given by the Crusades to trade in general.

The flourishing condition to which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa in the south of Europe were raised by trade with the East was almost equalled in the north by that of the Hanseatic towns. Necessary commodities for use at sea, all the products of colder climes, offered to the Teutonic Hansa large and assured profits. As the Lombards brought into parts of Germany where money was scarce the products of the south and east, there sprang up an exchange of merchandise for merchandise. The Hanseatic League apparently came into existence about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it is not hard to believe that the commercial activity stimulated by the Crusades favoured the formation of the powerful federation which breathed nothing but the love of gain, and which bartered for all the wealth of the south with all the product of the north.

In infusing into trade a new activity, the Crusades necessarily perfected the art of navigation. We may well admit that the sea held less of terror for one who confronted it to perform a religious duty, and insensibly this fear-inspiring element became less regarded as the inevitable tomb of all who confided to it their life or fortune. Moreover vessels ceased to be guided by blind instinct or the insufficient experience of pilots. The compass, whose origin it is so difficult to establish (and indeed the instrument may not have been invented before the time of the First Crusade), was in general use on the ships that plied the Mediterranean. We must admire the fortunate but rash industry of the Italians who overcame the caprices and fury of the waves. These navigators gained experience more and more in constantly transporting pilgrims, and proved that it was not impossible to sail the seas in winter. Venice surpassed the whole world in the brilliance of her maritime glory. She well deserved that a pope of this period, zealous to show his gratitude to his defenders, presented the doge, with solemn ceremony, the wedding ring which was for long ages the unique emblem of the republic’s naval power.

[Illustration: CRUSADER OF THE LAST CRUSADE]

Other fleets than those of Italy found their way to the Holy Land. One might see on the Southern Sea vessels carrying those pirates and adventurers which set out every year in great numbers from the countries in the north, the Flemings, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes often rendered considerable assistance to the Christians in the East. Norwegians fought under King Baldwin at the taking of Sidon; the Flemings rescued Lisbon from the Saracens. These northern people came in high-decked massive ships, while the vessels in use on the Mediterranean were very light and shallow affairs; a difference in structure which could not be noticed without a comparison of advantages and disadvantages.

From the Crusades may be dated the establishment of the French navy. Philip Augustus, on his return from the Holy Land, organised a national fleet; before this the French fleets were composed of foreign vessels hired for a certain time. The title of “admiral,” of which the name and idea was borrowed from the Greeks or the Arabs, came into constant use about the time of the Second Crusade, whereas the rank was never bestowed in former days except at the commencement of a war, and went out of use at its close.

Very soon the ocean and the Mediterranean were covered with vessels manned by prudent and intrepid sailors. The great overland route from Antwerp to Genoa, which was expensive, slow, and difficult, was thenceforth given up.

Naval architecture learned a lesson from several abuses which the Crusades momentarily had introduced into the art. Ships of excessive capacity, too weak, and of faulty proportions had been hastily built in order to accommodate the crowd of pilgrims. Seamen who wished their voyages to be more lucrative and passengers desirous of travelling in companies began to adopt these ungainly vessels. However, this departure from the principles of shipbuilding caused the loss of many fleets and brought about a fortunate innovation in naval architecture. Experience taught that a single mast was not sufficient in a vessel of great size, and we may trace to this period the custom of furnishing several masts to a single ship--a custom whose antiquity is well proven, but whose origin is somewhat shadowed in doubt.

An increase in the number of sails must of necessity follow the adoption of more than one mast; ships were no longer stopped in their course for lack of a directly favourable wind,--by trimming the sails with skill the seaman progressed nearly always towards his destination. The art of sailing for a certain point with the wind nearly dead ahead must certainly be counted as one of the most ingenious and important discoveries ever made.

INFLUENCE ON INDUSTRY

The same causes which gave a new activity to commerce served to develop powerfully every resource of industry. At the time of the first Crusades there were no manufactories of silken stuffs but those of the Greeks, a species of industry they had taken from the Persians, but which they themselves were soon forced to give over to Sicily. Then artisans leaving the island taught the Italians the art of making silk. The industry occupied principally the members of the religious order of the Humilies, who invented, it is said, cloth of gold and of silver.

In the cities of the Orient the Saracens, also, had manufactures of goods, and from them the crusaders bought textile fabrics of camels’ hair. These industries and those of the Greeks, whether the latter was transported to Palermo or remained in the Eastern Empire, were able to serve as models or as incentive, in Europe, to many establishments where wool was worked. There were some famous glass manufactories at Tyre. The sand which covers the environs of that town has the property of giving a high degree of transparence to the vitrified matter from which beautiful shapes were fashioned. These productions excited probably the emulation of Venice who drew great profit from her glassware, particularly in the fifteenth century when the use of metal vessels was abandoned for that of glass. Here are some particulars about inventions, the only ones we have been able to gather. Mills, whose motive power is wind, were invented in Asia Minor where running water is very scarce. It has been supposed that the crusaders introduced them into Europe in the twelfth century--a conjecture which would seem to be confirmed by the application of parts of windmills on a great number of old armorial bearings, but which certain other evidence does not permit us to adopt. Several writers have also presumed that the crusaders spread a knowledge of the invention of paper, which they had derived from the Greeks, throughout Europe.

The Arabs excelled at metal working and they knew how to chase and encrust it. They invented the art of “damascening,” which gave to steel the brilliance and splendour of gold and silver. Antiquaries have observed that since the Crusades the stamping of coins and the imprint of seals seem less incorrect and some attribute this improvement to lessons learned from the Arabs. The crusaders, however indignant at the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem, could not but admire the ornamentation of precious metals by which the columns and walls had been artistically treated in honour of Mohammed. They brought away with them more than five hundred silver vessels consecrated to the service of the false prophet. The process of enamelling metals and the use in painting of solid, bright colours may have been brought to perfection by the sight of these Arabian works of art. They also brought back from the Orient a quantity of rubies, hyacinths, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and they found out how to set them in gold and silver, so as to give an undying charm through the taste of their mounting and their setting.

THE MASONS ORGANISE

The Crusades contributed indirectly to the progress of art in that they caused religious orders and devout establishments to be multiplied. The number of sacred edifices which rose up at that time throughout Europe is truly prodigious. Nobles and even those who had little piety were ambitious for the title of “founder of a church.” While they may have wrecked temples in one place, it was often their pleasure to build them in others.

One extraordinary circumstance greatly favoured this eagerness to erect edifices devoted to the religious cult. In France, in Italy especially, it had been common rumour that the world was nearing its end and it was thought unnecessary, in this event, to repair churches, and even more useless to build new ones. But when the predicted period arrived and there were no signs of the final catastrophe, alarm diminished, and ashamed to have been misled by pusillanimous fear, people were anxious to make amends for the neglect of altars and sacred places of which they had been guilty. They were not satisfied to pay their debt to religion by rebuilding unsafe churches, but those of whose stability there was no question were torn down on the specious pretext that they were not sufficiently magnificent. To accomplish their aims a society was formed composed of men of every degree, noble and humble, who made themselves in their devotion into carpenters and masons; they offered their services in every direction, hauling carts like beasts of burden or binding themselves to certain religious devotions. The cathedral of Chartres is a monument of the labour of these pious workmen. These strange ideas having been developed towards the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades found in men’s minds a passion for this sort of construction, and they added to the general enthusiasm.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

Several monuments of architecture which still excite our admiration are the fruit of the artistic impulse received from contact with people more devoted to its culture and from the growing fervour of devotion. The sight of Greek and Arab monuments introduced into the West a new taste by which that Syrian, Arab, or Saracen type of architecture, improperly called Gothic, was brought to its highest degree of perfection. Delicately pointed ogive arches replaced the low and ugly openings which timid builders were afraid to raise higher and which presented but narrow outlooks to view. Architects were judged skilful as they were able to astonish by the boldness and daring of their own work. As in the mosques, they loaded upon light and graceful columns enormous masses which seemed upheld by the support of an invisible arm. They cut stones into a thousand different and often most fanciful forms, and set into them painted glass whose brilliant colours were admirably brought out by the rays of the sun. And as if they foresaw the indifference of posterity to their work, they gave it a solidity which has enabled it to go for great lengths of time without care and restoration.

At that time appeared the most magnificent offsprings of Gothic architecture. Then was built the leaning tower of Pisa, which has become a marvel through the injury of time. A Greek architect built at Venice the church of St. Mark, strongly impressed with the degenerate taste of the Greeks. A German conceived the plan of the tower of Strasburg, whose delicate structure seems unable to hold it so high in the air. Suger did not disdain to study architecture; he restored his own abbey church and left an account of his labours. The foundations of Amiens, masterpiece of bold and delicate construction, were laid. La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, less vast but equally delicate in style, was the finest work of the favourite architect whom St. Louis took with him to Asia. We should go on at too great a length were we to enumerate all the superb edifices built in the glorious age of Gothic architecture. Barbaric, perhaps, in ornamentation, these artists have never been equalled in principle, in general design, stone-cutting, in knowledge of arching, and in the majesty of their edifices as a whole.

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

Sculpture made these temples alive with a host of statues. It has preserved for us the images of many famous men, whose portraits, drawn from nature, we often regret not to know.

Painting was cultivated with greater zeal. Cimabue developed his happy faculties at Florence according to the teaching of some artists from Constantinople. He was the first to show what wonders one could expect from an almost forgotten art, and it is right that he should be placed at the head of all the painters that have appeared since his time.

From what has been said it is certain that the Crusades helped to infuse into the West a taste for painting, sculpture, and architecture. The spirit of conquest has always awakened that of the fine arts. Though artists may flee from the clash of arms, their souls, inspired by the commotion of great warlike movements and the general emulation of courage and valour, exhibit at such time a noble ambition for glory. The aspect of the theatre of desolation and carnage, swept by the conqueror’s tread, kindles often the sacred fire, which is extinguished in times of peace and tranquillity, and marvellous productions, conceived and matured in deep thought, quickly follow the imperfect and hastily finished sketch. Nations also wish to celebrate, by public monuments, triumphs watered with their blood and tears. For this reason painters display on heroes’ heads the wings of victory, are lavish with palm and crown, and place on every side the emblems of fame. Cities become filled with superb buildings, and public squares peopled with folk of bronze and marble who seem to live and breathe.[e]

HERDER’S OPINION OF THE CRUSADES

It has been customary to ascribe so many beneficial effects to the Crusades, that, conformably to this opinion, our quarter of the globe must require a similar fever, to agitate and excite its forces, once in every five or six centuries; but a closer inspection will show that most of these effects proceeded not from the Crusades, at least not from them alone; and that among the various impulses Europe then received, they were at most accelerating shocks, acting upon the whole in collateral or oblique directions, with which the minds of Europeans might well have dispensed. Indeed it is a mere phantom of the brain to frame one prime source of events out of seven distinct expeditions, undertaken in a period of two centuries, by different nations, and from various motives, solely because they bore one common name.

Trade the Europeans had already opened with the Arabian states, before the Crusades: and they were at liberty to have profited by it, and extended it, in a far more honourable way than by predatory campaigns. By these, indeed, carriers, bankers, and purveyors were gainers: but all their gain accrued from the Christians, against whose property they were in fact the crusaders. What was torn from the Greek Empire was a disgraceful traders’ booty, serving, by extremely enfeebling this empire, to render Constantinople an easier prey at a future period to the Turkish hordes, who were continually pressing more closely upon it. The Venetian Lion of St. Mark prepared the way, by the Fourth Crusade, for the Turks to enter Europe and spread themselves so widely in it. The Genoese, it is true, assisted one branch of the Greek emperors to re-ascend the throne: but it was the throne of a weakened, broken empire, which fell an easy prey to the Turks; then both the Venetians and Genoese lost their best possessions, and finally almost all their trade, in the Mediterranean and Euxine seas.

Chivalry arose not from the Crusades, but the Crusades from chivalry: the flower of French and Norman knighthood appeared in Palestine in the first campaign. The Crusades, indeed, contributed rather to rob chivalry of its proper honours, and to convert real armed knights into mere armorial ones. For in Palestine many assumed the crested helmet, which in Europe they durst not have borne: they brought home with them armorial devices and nobility, which they transmitted to their families, and thus introduced a new class, the nobility of the herald’s office, and in time also nobility by letters patent. As the number of the ancient dynasties, the true equestrian nobility, lessened, these new men sought to obtain possessions and hereditary prerogatives, like them: they carefully enumerated their ancestors, acquired dignities and privileges, and in a few generations assumed the title of ancient nobility; though they had not the slightest pretensions to rank with those dynasties which were princes to them. Every man that bore arms in Palestine might become a knight: the first Crusades were years of general jubilee for Europe. These new nobles in right of military service were soon of great use to growing monarchy, which cunningly knew how to avail itself of them against such of the superior vassals as still remained. Thus passion balances passion, and one appearance counteracts another: and at length the nobility of the camp and the court totally obliterated the ancient chivalry.

The arts and sciences, too, were nowise promoted by the proper crusaders. The disorderly troops that first flocked to Palestine had not the least notion of them; and were not likely to acquire them in the suburbs of Constantinople, or from the Turks and mamelukes in Asia. In the succeeding campaigns we need not reflect on the short time the armies passed there, and the wretched circumstances under which this time was often spent merely on the confines of the country, to dissipate the splendid dream of great discoveries imported thence. The pendulum clock, which the emperor Frederick II received as a present from Kamil, did not introduce gnomonics into Europe; the Grecian palaces, which the crusaders admired in Constantinople, did not improve the style of European architecture. Some crusaders, particularly Frederick I and II, laboured to promote the progress of knowledge: but Frederick I did this ere he beheld Asia; and the short visit paid that country by Frederick II served only as a fresh stimulus to urge him forward in that course of government which he had long before chosen. Not one of the spiritual orders of knighthood introduced any new knowledge into Europe, or contributed to its cultivation.

All that can be said in favour of the Crusades, therefore, is confined to a few occasions, on which they co-operated with causes already existing, and involuntarily promoted them.

(1) As multitudes of wealthy vassals and knights repaired to the Holy Land in the first campaigns, and many of them never returned, their estates were of course sold or swallowed up by others. By this they profited who could, the liege lord, the church, the cities already established, each after his own manner: this promoted and accelerated the course of things, tending to confirm the regal power by the erection of a middle class, but was by no means its commencement.

(2) Men became acquainted with countries, people, religions, and constitutions of which they were before ignorant; their narrow sphere of vision was enlarged; they acquired new ideas, new impulses. Attention was drawn to things which would otherwise have been neglected; what had long existed in Europe was employed to better purpose; and as the world was found to be wider than had been supposed, curiosity was excited after a knowledge of its remotest parts. The mighty conquests made by Jenghiz Khan in the north and east of Asia attracted men’s eyes chiefly towards Tatary; whither Marco Polo the Venetian, Rubruquis (Guillaume de Rubrouck), the Frenchman, and John de Plano Carpino (Giovanni Piano Carpini), an Italian, travelled with very different views: the first, for the purpose of trade; the second, to satisfy royal curiosity; the third, sent by the pope, to make converts of the people. These travels, of course, have no connection with the Crusades, before and after which they were undertaken. The Levant itself is less known to us from these expeditions, than might have been expected: the accounts the Orientals give of it, even in the period when Syria swarmed with Christians, are still indispensable to us.

(3) Finally, in this holy theatre Europeans became better acquainted with one another, though not in a manner much to be prized. With this more intimate acquaintance kings and princes for the most part brought home an implacable enmity: in particular the wars between England and France derived from them fresh fuel. The unfortunate experiment, that a Christian republic could and might contend in unison against infidels, formed a precedent for similar wars in Europe, which have since extended to other quarters of the globe. At the same time it cannot be denied that, while the neighbouring powers of Europe obtained a closer inspection of their mutual weaknesses and strength, some obscure hints were given for a more comprehensive policy, and a new system of relationship in peace and war. Everyone was desirous of wealth, trade, conveniences, and luxuries; as an uncultivated mind is prone to admire these in strangers, and envy them in the hands of another. Few, who returned from the East, could be satisfied with European manners; even their heroism left much behind, awkwardly imitated Asia in the West, or longed for fresh travels and adventures. For the actual and permanent good produced by any event is always proportionate to its consonancy with reason.

Unfortunate would it have been for Europe if, at the time its military swarms were contending for the Holy Sepulchre in a corner of Syria, the arms of Jenghiz Khan had been sooner and more powerfully turned toward the West. Then probably our quarter of the globe would have been the prey of the Mongols, like Poland and Russia; and its nations might have dislodged, with the pilgrim’s staff in their hands, to tell their beads round the object of their contention.[b]

GIBBON ON THE RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES

As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not the memory, was erased in the Mohammedan realms of Egypt and Syria. The faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery of their empire, they emulated the valour, discipline, and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of the West they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in the rights of man; and some institutions of public and private life were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers and classics were at length honoured with a Greek version. But the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by persecution; and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the two churches.

If we compare, at the era of the Crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated regions of the East. Yet in a reign of sixty years the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version from the Jews and Moors of Andalusia.

The principle of the Crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the Inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country; the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East.

In one respect we can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the Crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. Among the cause that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the Crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration, which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest, gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[82] In the entertaining romance of _Le Renard_, written in the thirteenth century, it is said, that foreign pilgrimages had done no good to anybody, and that many good people had been made bad by them. In tracing the history of morals, it is curious to observe, that Piers Ploughman speaks of pilgrims and palmers, who on their return have leave to tell lies all the rest of their lives.

[Illustration]

APPENDIX. FEUDALISM

[Sidenote: [800-1450 A.D.]]

To the average mind the term Middle Ages is a synonym for chaos. And, compared with the periods before and after, it is indeed chaos. But, in a sense, all human history is “without form,” even if not “void,” and the comparative simplicity which we see in certain periods is arrived at chiefly by a process of the cancellation of numberless confusing details and the concentration of the attention on certain large and picturesque personages or movements which were actually far from holding such stark and eminent importance in the eyes of contemporaries.

Thus in the case of Alexander’s conquest of that little segment of space which he called “the world,” to the contemporary Athenian, Alexander was almost a myth lost in the wilderness of the East as in a fog. The Athenian found his immediate troubles and triumphs in his own family, in his shop, in his deme. To myriads of other peoples, however, Alexander’s very existence was unknown; and splendid intrigues, superb politics, lofty feats of statecraft and of warfare were taking place far from the orbit of Alexander. These deeds were never chronicled, or the chronicles are lost, or perhaps only waiting discovery. Consequently we are ignorant of these confusing histories, and sum up in the exclusive phrase “Alexandrian epoch” a vast web of what were chaos, did we but know more of it.

But still, taking history as we have it, the Middle Ages torment and bewilder us with the variety and seeming unimportance of their events. They are called the Dark Ages, though, upon a closer look, they deserve the name no more than the Night herself with all her revelation of the stars which the Day absorbs in the one central splendour of the sun.

Let the name of Dark Ages stand, however, though it must not be forgotten that human history at least dreamed and walked in this apparent sleep. There is no lack of chronicle and no lack of action. Nor, in spite of the common idea, was there lack of progress. The barbarians had come down in avalanches of stolid clay upon the gardens of civilisation. During the seeming idleness the seeds were at work and ideals were busily thrusting upward till of a sudden they burst forth in that springtime known as the Renaissance.

The history of each major country is given, in this work, its own chronicle, but for the better comprehension of the forces that were making possible the Renaissance and driving mankind to cry aloud for a betterment of conditions, it will be useful to set apart for brief consideration certain special phases and forces of Middle Age life. It will make it the easier to comprehend that life was by no means without the ferment of progress during that period which we so arbitrarily cleave out of history and put aside as the Middle Age.

Throughout the various histories of modern nations will be found a discussion of the multiform phases of feudalism. It is desirable, however, to give it some isolated discussion, though necessarily brief. A guide might be found in the words of Bryce, whose definition of feudalism also makes a good beginning; and in the words of the philosopher Hegel:[a]

BRYCE AND HEGEL ON FEUDALISM

“This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman soil, nor for showing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet under Pepin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the impress which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be possible here to examine its social and moral influence. Politically it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt thereon; an annexation of personal to territorial authority more familiar to eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained, feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have scarcely shaken off.”[b]

The three steps by which feudalism was reached are thus broadly summed up by Hegel:

“While the first period of the German world ends brilliantly with a mighty empire, the second is commenced by the reaction resulting from the antithesis occasioned by that infinite falsehood which rules the destinies of the Middle Ages and constitutes their life and spirit. This reaction is, first, that of the particular nationalities against the universal sovereignty of the Frankish Empire, manifesting itself in the splitting up of that great empire. The second reaction is that of individuals against legal authority and the executive power--against subordination, and the military and judicial arrangements of the constitution. This produced the isolation and therefore defencelessness of individuals. The universality of the power of the state disappeared through this reaction; individuals sought protection with the powerful, and the latter became oppressors. Thus was gradually introduced a condition of universal independence, and this protecting relation was then systematised into the feudal system.”[c]

COMMENCEMENT OF THE FEUDAL RÉGIME

The true heirs of Charlemagne were not the kings of France, nor those of Germany and Italy, at first, but rather the feudal lords. Not only had the empire been dismembered after the deposition of Charles the Fat, but its composing kingdoms and even its great fiefs as well. Dukes and counts had been quite as powerless as kings against the Northmen, Saxons, and Hungarians, and quite as unable to maintain the vast domains under their control. Populations whose leaders did not know how to bring them together for concerted action had acquired, little by little, the habit of depending upon themselves alone.

After having fled for a long time at the approach of the heathen to the woods among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted people had turned their heads and refused to abandon all their possessions without an attempt at defence. Here and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, on the hill overlooking the plain, entrenchments and walls were raised where the brave and the strong held out. An edict of 853 directed the counts and vassals of the king to repair their old castles and to build new ones. The country was soon covered with fortresses against which invaders flung themselves in vain. A few reverses quickly taught these bold adventurers prudence. They no longer dared to venture so far, to where these strongholds had sprung up from the ground on all sides, and the new invasion meeting with fresh obstacles and difficulties came to an end in the following century. It was not until afterwards that the masters of these castles became the terror of the countryside they had once helped to save.

[Illustration: A FEUDAL CASTLE]

Feudalism, so oppressive in its age of decline, had therefore its time of lawful and just existence. All power is raised up by its virtues and falls by its abuse.

But what was the new régime? We have seen the matter of acquiring and holding property become more uniform among barbarian nations, by the settlement of heredity upon lands ceded by the king, and the law’s sanction given to another kind of usurpation--the heredity of the royal offices. It was generally the owners of freehold property or of royal lands who became the holders of these offices, which brought about the union of sovereignty and proprietorship in the same hands. This is essentially what constitutes feudalism.

In the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire public offices in all degrees of the hierarchy were bestowed directly by the ruler, and their disposition remained always in his power, so that he could take them back when and under what condition he pleased. Furthermore the public official held neither the land of the province he governed nor the control of any particular piece of property that he might happen to own as a private citizen. He was bound therefore, as landlord, by the civil law applicable to the whole empire, and as governor, to the voluntary will of his sovereign. In the feudal régime it was exactly the opposite. The lord who _enfeoffed_, that is, conceded by title of sub-fief some portion of his own fief, gave up entirely to the grantee or _vassal_ the property and its control, and it could not be taken back unless the vassal failed to perform some part of the agreement made at the time of receiving the investiture.

One lord might obtain land from another and thus become his vassal. The former had to go to the latter, and between the two there took place the ceremony known as homage. Kneeling before his future lord, with their hands together, the future vassal proclaimed loudly that he would be the other’s _homme_, or man, that is to say, that he would be attached and devoted to him, defend him with his own life, somewhat as the ancient _leudes_ of Germany did towards their warrior chiefs. After this profession, which is homage in the original sense of the word, he took an oath of fidelity or faith to the lord, promising to fulfil the new duties required of him under the new title of _homme_ of the lord. When he had contracted this double tie, the lord no longer feared to confide his land to a man so strongly bound to him, and gave it to him by investiture or seizin, accompanied with symbolic emblems--a sod of grass, a stone, or some other object according to the custom of the fief. “It is the custom,” says Otto von Freising,[e] “to deliver up kingdoms by the sword, and provinces by the standard.” This three-part ceremony of homage once completed, the reciprocal obligations began.

RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS OF VASSAL AND LORD

There were in the first place the moral obligations of the vassal towards his lord, such as keeping his secrets, revealing the machinations of his enemies, to give one’s horse to him in battle if he be unseated, to take his place in captivity, to respect and to cause his honour to be respected, to assist him with good counsel, etc. The material obligations, the services due from the vassal, were of several kinds.

(1) Military service. This was the very basis of the feudal relation and the principle of that state of society which does not contain permanent and organised armies. The vassal on the requisition of his lord was bound to follow him, either alone, or to bring such and such a number of men according to the importance of his fief. The duration of this service also was dependent on the same thing--it might be sixty, forty, or only twenty days--a system which did not permit of distant expeditions and could be employed only in neighbourhood or private wars. There were some fiefs where military service held only within the feudal domain, or could be called on only for purposes of defence.

(2) The “fiance,” or obligation to serve the lord in his court of justice. As under the feudal régime the lord replaced the states general, and was invested with the functions of public power, it was necessary in order to exercise these to hold at his command the forces disseminated through the hands of his vassals. War was one of these functions; justice was another.

[Illustration: KNIGHTS AND PEASANTS]

The lord summonsed his men to court, and they had to attend, either to serve him with their advice or to take part in the judging of disputes brought before him, and they thus bound themselves to assistance in carrying out the judgments their own mouths had proclaimed.

(3) The “aids,” some legal and compulsory, others courteous and voluntary. Legal aids were usually demanded under three conditions--when the lord was a prisoner and required to pay a ransom, when he knighted his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter in marriage. This aid took the place of the public imposts of ancient and modern legislatures, but as may be seen was of a totally different character. It was not, in fact, periodic or exacted in a regular manner for public needs; it had the appearance of a voluntary gift under certain peculiar circumstances. An annual tax would have seemed an affront to the vassals.

To these services must be added certain feudal rights by which the lord, in virtue of his sovereignty, intervened in any important change the ceded fief might undergo. Some of these were for him a new source of revenue. These rights were the relief, a sum of money due from every major individual who entered into possession of a fief by right of succession, and more particularly if that succession did not take place in line of direct descent; the right to the alienation tax, which he who sold or alienated his fief in any fashion must pay; the right of disinheritance and confiscation by which the fief reverted to the lord when the vassal died without heirs or when he had forfeited his fief or deserved for any reason to be deprived of it; the right of guardianship, by virtue of which the lord, during the minority of his vassal, undertook his tutelage and the administration of his fief, and enjoyed its revenue; the marriage right, that is to say, the right of the overlord to provide a husband for the heiress of a fief, and oblige her to choose from the suitors he presents.

The vassal who fulfilled his obligations fully and conscientiously was as nearly as possible master of his own fief. He could in turn enfeoff the whole or part of his domain, and become in turn the sovereign lord of vassals of a lower rank, or _vavasseurs_, holding towards him the same obligations as he to his own lord. Such was the fabric of the hierarchy.

If the vassal had his obligations, the lord also had his. He could not take back a fief arbitrarily or without a legitimate reason from his vassal. He must protect him if he were attacked, see that he received justice, etc.

Let us note that the feudal system in developing itself made a fief of everything. Every concession--for hunting in the forests, for ferrying across rivers, for acting as guides on the roads, for escorting merchants, for running communal ovens in the towns--every useful employment, in fact, conceded in return for fidelity and homage, became a fief.

Lords multiplied concessions of this kind in order to multiply the number of men owing them military service. But the fief itself, to which the rights of justice were attached, remained in general undivided and was handed down according to the laws of primogeniture.

FEUDAL JUSTICE

The obligation of the vassals to attend the courts of their lord has made it clear that the principle of feudal justice was trial by one’s peers, a principle which was entirely in the customs and even the institutions of the Germanic peoples, where freedmen were tried by an assembly of freedmen.

They called peers (_pares_, equals), vassals of the same lord settled around him on his domain, and holding fiefs of the same rank. The king himself had his peers who were those holding their estates directly from him, not only as feudal lord but as king. Each had the right to be judged by his peers before his lord. If the peers refused him justice or the vassal believed that it had been unfairly rendered, he made a complaint “in default of right,” and brought the matter to the attention of his lord’s suzerain. It was to this higher tribunal that it was necessary always to bring disputes which arose between a lord and his vassal.

But this right of appeal did not entirely satisfy the spirit of independence which animated this warlike society. The lords preserved with jealous care another right of appeal--that which is addressed to the power of arms; they preferred to obtain justice for themselves rather than receive it from the hands of others. So thoroughly was the custom enrooted in their manners that the king regulated the formalities which preceded this species of warfare and had for their object the warning of the party to be attacked and the giving of an opportunity to place himself in a state of defence. After all, our international wars proceed from the same principle and are no better. The lords waged their wars with their little armies as we with our greater ones. Only hostilities had a more individual character since the states were much smaller.[i]

Besides the _Fehde_ or right of private warfare--an old Germanic custom--there was the “trial by combat,” which must not be confused with it. The true “judicial combat,” in which champions fight for a cause, or for the settlement of a quarrel, is a product of the Middle Ages, when faith in God was as strong as faith in the strength of the human arm. This custom became so universal a method of settlement of difficult questions that it was even used by Alfonso, the great Spanish lawgiver, to decide upon the introduction of new laws concerning inheritance. This much at least may be said in favour of it, that it was less of an evil than the torture which tended to supplant it in judicial proceedings in the later Middle Ages.[a]

Justice was not the prerogative of all the lords to the same extent. It was distinguished in France by three degrees, high, low, and middle justice. The first alone gave the right of life and death. In general it may be said it was the largest and most important fiefs that had powers of justice to the greatest extent. Still it was possible for a simple _vavasseur_ to possess the functions of “high justice,” and in some places the lord who could dispense but “low justice” could punish with death the robber caught at his crime. Within these variable limits the lord alone dispensed justice on his fief, and when, later on, royalty usurped the right, there was a revolution.

To complete the enumeration of rights inherent in the sovereignty of the lords it is necessary to mention two: first, that of recognising throughout the whole extent of the fief no higher legislative power. We find in the last collection of laws made in the ninth century by Charles the Simple the final manifestation of law-bearing public power. After that, there were no laws, civil or political, to be applied generally, but only local customs, isolated, independent, and differing one from the other, in fact possessing a territorial character in distinction from those of the barbaric nations, which were entirely personal.

Second, the right to coin money, which was always a sign of lordship. Before Charlemagne it seems that some private individuals, who doubtless possessed the privilege, coined money. After him this was one of the prerogatives of the lords, and at the advent of Hugh Capet there were no less than 150 who exercised this right.

Every political régime may be characterised by the place where the exercise of power is bestowed. Ancient republics had their agora and fora. The great monarchy of Louis XIV had its palace of Versailles. The feudal lords had their castles. They were, as a usual thing, enormous edifices, situated on high places, massive, round, or square, without architecture or ornamentation, the walls pierced by a few loopholes for the discharge of arrows. There was a single entrance giving on a great moat which could only be passed by a drawbridge. The castle was crowned with parapets and battlements, from which rocks, molten pitch, and lead could be thrown down on the heads of too venturesome assailants at the foot of the walls. To-day the gaping gray masses are but nests for crows, crumbled and eaten away by time. Seen from afar they quite eclipse the small and light habitation of modern days--these monuments at once of legitimate defence and oppression. But they could have been nothing less than they were to provide shelter from the northern incursions and the feudal wars. Everyone sought refuge in them. Those who had not the right to live within the castle, who were neither lords nor warriors, settled around its great walls, under their powerful protection. This was the nucleus of many towns.

ECCLESIASTICAL FEUDALISM

Even the clergy had their place in this system. The bishop, formerly “defender of the city,” had often become its count, by traditional usurpation or by express royal concession when the king had united the county and the bishopric, the temporal and the spiritual authority. This made the bishop sovereign of all the lords of his diocese.

Besides her tithes the church possessed, through the donation of the faithful, immense wealth, and in order to protect this from the brigandage of the times she had recourse to secular arms. She chose laymen, men of courage and wisdom, to whom she confided her property that they might defend it, if necessary at the point of the sword. But these attorneys of the monasteries and churches did as the counts of the king--made their functions hereditary, and took for themselves the wealth entrusted to their care. They condescended, however, to regard themselves as the vassals of those whom they had despoiled, and to swear faith and homage under ordinary conditions of natural right and personal service.

Abbés and bishops in consequence became suzerains, temporal lords having numerous vassals ready to take up arms for their cause, courts of justice--in fact all the prerogatives exercised by the great landlords. There were bishops, dukes, and bishop-counts, vassals themselves of greater lords and especially of the king, from whom they received the investiture of the property attached to their churches, or, as it was called, their temporal domain.

This ecclesiastical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in France and England it possessed during the Middle Ages more than a fifth of all the land; in Germany nearly a third. For there was this difference between the church and king, that the latter, a conquest once made, received nothing more, but on the contrary constantly gave away until it came to pass that he possessed nothing but the town of Laon; while the church, if she did lose some of her land (a difficult thing since she had excommunication to defend it with), was acquiring more every day, since few of the faithful died without leaving her something. And so it was that she constantly got more and never or very rarely gave anything up, and then only when it was wrested from her by force.[i]

The manner in which the church often lost her property in feudal times is described by Carl Spannagel:

THE CHURCH AND THE FEUDAL ARMY

The bishops and abbots as land proprietors went into the battle-field at the head of their contingents. They often wore armour under their priestly garments, and they did not shrink from actual fighting in

## action. The care for souls (if such an expression can be used with

regard to a priestly dignitary of the Middle Ages) which even in peace made but a slight demand upon them, must have nearly vanished under such circumstances in the field. The account of Bishop Daniel of Prague attending to the wounded and administering them spiritual comfort has a modern foreign tone about it. Only special royal permission could exempt the bishops and their respective abbots from appearing at the head of their men.

But the king did not make such frequent demands upon the participation of the spiritual dignitaries in campaigns as we are inclined to think. This idea arose from the command of Otto II in 981, which demanded the personal command of their contingents of seven bishops and the seven abbots, whilst twelve bishops and three abbots are told only to send their _loricati_ to the emperor. Substitutes for the bishops and abbots in this case would be priests or vassals of rank of their diocese, or abbotship.

It is worthy of note that the immunity, the purport of which had so increased in extent since the Carlovingian time, exercised no influence on the military obligations of the churches to which it was addressed. In most of the immunity documents military duty is not touched upon, so it was considered something quite independent. In some it is expressly mentioned that no _index publicus_ should exercise the arrière-ban over the particular cloister, but this made no change in the obligation of the abbots themselves. On the contrary, in a privilege of Otto I for the bishopric of Worms, the sentence from a document of Louis the Pious is retained which commands that the military followers of the men of the church are only to be called upon in the interest of the kingdom. The transfer of their service to the princes was of greater import to the military obligations of the church than the immunity.

Such transfers, however, only refer to monasteries and not also to bishoprics. There were two different kinds of exemption--either the king gives the cloister in question to a lord of his kingdom as a favour or as his property, so that (forever or for a time) it ceases to be a royal cloister, or he takes away a part of its landed property and makes it over to lay princes who thenceforward undertake the military duties hitherto pertaining to the cloister. By this means the cloister remains royal, only it is exempt from military obligations. A third possibility was added to these two. Very often the great lords did not wait for the king’s initiative to enrich themselves with church property, but they seized it on their own account and obtained possession of the longed-for cloister by any means.

With such measures by force there was certainly no legal adoption of the obligation which the cloister owed the kingdom. But there is no doubt that the property thus gained was taken into account in the valuation of the service due to the kingdom by the new owner. The documental protection of the king generally proved most inefficient against such seizures. In more ancient times, particularly under the later Carlovingians, we find taxations of abbotships. The cases became rarer later on without quite disappearing. The kingdom evidently did not depend upon increasing the power of the princes which was continually developing by such means, so that the seizures of the princes increased with the feudal system.[d]

SERFS AND VILLEINS

In the eleventh century, Carlovingian Europe was divided into a multitude of fiefs which formed each its own state, having its own life, laws, customs, and its almost perfectly independent lay or ecclesiastical chief.

We have described the community of the lords, but they were not the only feudal community. That was the fighting and war-making community, the community that ruled, judged, punished, and oppressed. Below this was the community that worked, by which the other lived, got its clothes, its arms, its castles, and its bread--the community of serfs, or rather craftsmen (_gens potestatis_). We must not now look for free men, for they have disappeared. Some have raised themselves and become the fortunate lords; others have been pushed back into the lower regions of society and have become serfs and villeins. That class of simple freemen which had been nearly swept away in the invasion of the Roman Empire had been engulfed a second time. There were no longer any freehold owners, or so few that their mention is not worth while.

But the villeins were a numerous lot. The chief, the noble, had not only vassals but subjects residing on that portion of his estate that he never enfeoffed. And these were the serfs, properly called, men of the soil who were entirely at their lord’s disposal. “The lord,” says Beaumanoir,[f] “can take from them all that they have, put them in prison, rightly or wrongly, and as often as he pleases, and has no account to give of them except to God.”

In spite of this the condition of the serf was better than that of the slave of ancient times. The progress which slavery had made at the fall of the Roman Empire was not entirely lost in the wreckage of invasion, but appeared again in feudal society. The freeman of antiquity had been harder towards his slave than was the barbarian in whom the leaven of Christianity had produced some effect. The serf was recognised as a man having a family, sharing the common ancestry of his lord, and made in the image of God. Serfs finally entered the church, and sometimes mounted higher than the most powerful lords.

Above the serfs were the inalienables (_mainmortables_), “more kindly treated,” continues the old jurist of Beauvais,[f] “since the lord, if they did no wrong, could ask nothing of them except their dues and rents and the debts which they were accustomed to pay for their servitude.” But the inalienable could not marry without the consent of his lord, and if he took a free wife, or one outside the seigneury, there was a fine at the pleasure of the lord. This was the right of “formarriage” (a tax for marriage out of rank or condition), and the issue of such a marriage was divided between the lords of the husband and of the wife. If there was but one child, it went to the lord of the mother. At an inalienable’s death all his property went to his lord. For these people there was no way of escape from the hand that bent them to the furrow. Wherever they went the right of succession was attached to their persons and their purse. The lord inherited on every hand from his serfs.

In a higher degree still were to be found the free tenants known as villeins, peasants, or commoners. Their condition was less precarious. They had preserved the freedom the serf did not possess, and had hung on to it at the sacrifice of an annual tax, a statute duty, and the rent of the land which the landlord had ceded them and which they could transmit with all their other property to their children. But while the beneficiary holdings or fiefs were under the protection of a public and well-defined law, the land of the villeins was under the absolute jurisdiction of the landlord and protected only by private agreements. This is why the villeins, and especially those in the country, where it was not necessary to oversee them as strictly as those in the large towns, were often under the heel of absolute dominion.

One reads in ancient documents about the lords: “They are masters of heaven and earth; they have jurisdiction above and beneath the ground, over necks and heads, over the water, winds, and fields.” The villeins could not escape their jurisdiction, for the feudal law said, “Between thee, lord, and thee, villein, there is no judge but God.” “We recognise from our gracious lords,” runs another formula, “both ban and convocation; the high forest, the bird in the air, the fish in the stream, the beast in the bush, as far as our sovereign lord, or the servants of his grace, can hold his own. For this our gracious lord will take under his shelter and protection the widow and orphan as well as the peasant.” Thus were all rights given over to the lord, but in exchange he protected the weak. Such is the principle of feudal society towards its subjects. Royalty no longer filled the office for which it was instituted; bishops, counts, barons, and other powers were called upon for the protection which could no longer be expected from the nominal head of the state.

Everything belonged to the lord; but since there was no industry or commerce, no luxury by which one alone could consume in a few moments the fruit of the labour of many, the exactions of this lord were not at first oppressive, and for the villeins these exactions were as systematically determined as are to-day the rights of the landlord over his farmer-tenants. Only in the Middle Ages was there always the element of arbitrariness and violence which modern law does not allow. The villeins’ tax was paid either in natural produce, as provisions, corn, cattle, and fowl, products of the soil and the farm; or in work, or manual labour, as statute labour in the fields and vineyards of the lord, in the building of his castle, or digging ditches, in the repair of roads; or the making of furniture, utensils, horseshoes, ploughshares, carts, etc. In towns and wherever money was scarce, the lord did not make the mistake, it must be understood, of demanding his dues in coin, or of imposing arbitrary taxes. But let us go back to the times themselves and listen to the words of a scribe: “The lord who demands unjust rights of his villein, does so at the peril of his soul.” If the fear of heaven did not suffice, here were the commoners coming to the rescue, and the king’s officials were not far behind.

There were some strange compensations to enliven the sad life of the feudal lord, shut up the whole year within the sombre walls of his castle. At Bologna, in Italy, the tenantry of the Benedictines of St. Procule paid as a tax the steam from a boiled capon. Every year each man brought his capon between two plates to the abbot, uncovered it, and, the steam having all been given off, was quits, and took his capon back with him. Elsewhere the peasants brought solemnly before their lord, in a carriage drawn by four horses, a little bird, or perhaps a may-bush decorated with ribbons. The man who owned a monkey was quits, according to an ordinance of St. Louis, when he had caused the monkey to perform before the lord’s tax-gatherer; the jongleur had to pay with one song. The lords themselves did not refuse, sometimes, to play a rôle in these folk comedies. The markgraf of Jülich, whenever he made a solemn entry, was mounted on a one-eyed horse, with wooden saddle, and bridle of bark from the linden, and wearing two spires of hawthorn, and carrying a white stick. When the abbé of Figeac came into town the lord of Monbrun received him in a most grotesque costume with one leg bare.

Feudalism, bored with itself, laughed sometimes with the poor people, as did also the church when she authorised the celebration in the basilicas of the feast of the Asses. The powerful and the fortunate, in this age so sad and so stern, where misery was everywhere and security nowhere, owed much to their villeins and peasants for giving them some moments of forgetfulness and pleasure.

ANARCHY AND VIOLENCE; FRIGHTFUL CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS AND SOME HAPPY RESULTS THEREFROM

They were in truth hard times for the poor people, these Middle Ages, when in spite of all the formulæ and other conventions, the noble did not believe in anything but the right of the sword. In theory the principles of the feudal relation were very beautiful; in practise they nearly brought matters to a state of anarchy, for its judicial institutions were too defective to prevent the tie of vassalage from being constantly broken. Here lay the cause of the interminable wars which broke out in all parts of feudal Europe, and which were the great affliction of that epoch. Everyone could have recourse to his sword in a proven wrong or a sentence he deemed unjust, and a state of war was chronic in that society. Every hill became a fortress; every plain a field of battle.

Shut up in strong castles, covered with mail, and surrounded by armed men, the feudal lords, “the tyrants,” as a monk of the eleventh century calls them, lived but to fight, and knew no other mode of enrichment than pillage. There was no more commerce--the roads were no longer safe; no more industry, for the lords, masters of the towns, levied upon the burghers as soon as some little sign of wealth would appear. The most different customs were established everywhere, since there was no longer any general legislation, each noble having sole law-making power on his own fief.[83] Everywhere, likewise, there was the deepest ignorance except perhaps in the heart of some of the monasteries; and the clergy, guardians of moral law, were compelled not to forbid violence, but to regulate it by the “Truce of God” [_Treuga Dei_], which forbade killing and robbing from Wednesday evening to Monday morning.

On whom fell all the burden of these feudal wars? They were not very murderous for the nobles wrapped in steel, but they were so for the peasant with scarcely any defensive armour. At Brenneville, where the kings of France and England fought, nine hundred knights took part, and only three were left on the battle-field. At Bouvines, Philip Augustus was thrown from his horse and remained some time helpless amidst the foot-soldiers of the enemy. They vainly sought some opening in his armour through which to pass a dagger blade, and they dealt heavy blows which could not break his cuirass. His knights took their time about rescuing and replacing him in the saddle. After which he threw himself with them into the midst of that rabble where their long lances and heavy axes did not deliver a single blow in vain. The sovereign captured, another calamity; his ransom must be paid. But who paid for the cottage and the burned fields of the poor peasant--who stanched his wounds, who provided for his widow and orphans?

Two contemporary writers, historians of the Crusades, paint thus these direful times: “Before the Christians left for the countries beyond the sea,” says Guibert de Nogent, “the kingdom of France was in the throes of constant trouble and hostilities. One heard nothing but of brigandage on the public roads. Fires were innumerable, and war was inflicted on every hand for no other reason than insatiable cupidity. In short, grasping men respected no right of property and gave themselves up to pillage with unrestrained boldness.”

And William, archbishop of Tyre,[h] says: “There was no security for property. Were a man regarded as rich, this was sufficient excuse for throwing him into prison, keeping him in irons, and putting him to cruel torture. Sword-girded brigands infested the roads, lay in ambush, and spared neither strangers nor men devoted to the service of God. Cities and fortified towns were not safe from such crimes. Cut-throats made the streets and squares dangerous for the wealthy man.” In the seventy years between 970 and 1040 there were forty of famine and pestilence.

However, the onward march of civilisation can never be so completely suspended that these centuries were absolutely sterile for the progress of humanity. In the church thought awakened, and in lay society poetry made its appearance. There was even some progress in morals, at least among the ruling classes. In the isolation in which each one lived, exposed to all sorts of perils, the soul fortified itself to meet them. The feeling of the dignity of man, which despotism managed to smother, was revived; and the society which spilled blood with such deplorable facility showed often a moral elevation which is to be found only in this age. The low vices and cowardice of the decadent Romans or enslaved peoples were unknown to them, and the Middle Ages have bequeathed to modern times the sentiment of honour. The feudal nobility knew how to die, which is the first condition of knowing how to get the most out of life.

Another beneficial consequence was the reorganisation of the family. In ancient cities the head of the family lived outside his house, in the fields or in the forum. He scarcely knew his wife and children, yet had over them the right of life and death. In primitive times the custom of polygamy and the facility for divorce prevented the family from establishing itself on any better basis. In feudal society men lived in isolation, and the head of the family was brought into close touch with it. When wars gave him leisure in his castle, perched like an eagle’s nest on the mountain top, he had nothing to occupy his life and his heart but his wife and children. The church, which brought rough soldiers to the feet of a virgin and made them for the sake of the mother of Christ respect female virtue, softened the temper of the warrior and prepared him to come under the spell of the finer feelings and more delicate sentiments with which nature had endowed the other sex.

Woman assumed, then, her place in the family and in society which the Mosaic law had once given her. Things went even further--she became the object of a cult which created new sentiments, which the poetry of troubadours and minstrels seized upon and which chivalry expressed in

## action. As in the beautiful legend of St. Christopher, the strong was

conquered by the weak, the giant by the little child.

[Illustration: TOWER OF A GERMAN FEUDAL CASTLE]

This is seen in an institution of the times. Robert d’Arbrissel founded near Saumur at Fontevrault, about the year 1100, an abbey which soon became famous, and which opened its gates to recluses of both sexes. The women were cloistered, and spent their time in prayer. The men worked in the fields, drained the marshes, cleared the land, and remained the perpetual servants of the women. The abbey was governed by an abbess, “because,” says the bull of confirmation, “Jesus Christ in dying gave his best beloved disciple to his mother for a son.”

Outside the family, the state was doubtless badly organised. It is necessary to call attention, in spite of all contradictory facts, to the political theory which this society represents. If the serf had no rights, the vassals had them, and well-defined ones too. The feudal tie was formed on conditions well known and accepted by him in advance; new conditions could not be placed upon him except by his own agreement. From these come those grand and strong maxims of common law which, in spite of a thousand violations, have come down to us--no tax can be imposed without the consent of the contributants; no law is valid unless accepted by those who must obey it; no sentence is legal unless declared by the peers of the accused. These are the laws of feudalism which the states general of 1789 buried under the débris of absolute monarchy; and in guarantee of these rights the vassal had the power of breaking the tie of vassalage by giving up his fief or of responding by war to a denial of justice from his lord. This right of armed resistance, which St. Louis himself recognised, led, it is true, to anarchy; it weakened the social structure, but it strengthened the individual. But it is with the individual that we must commence. Before intelligently building up the state, it is necessary to elevate the individual and the family; this double work was the task of the Middle Ages.

The church worked with energy to establish the sanctity of marriage, even for the serf; in preaching the equality of all men before God, which was a threat to the great inequalities of this world; by proclaiming by the principle of election that she reserved for herself at the very pinnacle of hierarchy the rights of the intellect, in contradistinction to the feudal world which recognised but the right of blood; and in crowning with the triple crown and seating in the chair of St. Peter, where they had one foot on the neck of kings, a serf like Adrian II and the son of a poor carpenter, like Gregory VII.

GEOGRAPHIC OUTLINES OF THE KINGDOM OF GERMANY

Such were the principles that ruled in all the countries comprised within the limits of Charlemagne’s empire, that is to say, almost the whole of the Germanic peoples, France, Germany, Italy, and the north of Spain. The political geography of the countries formed itself after the fashion of its feudal organisations. As the fundamental axiom of feudalism expressed itself, “No territory without its lord,” there did not exist throughout the land a domain so small that it was not incorporated in some degree in the hierarchy. Of all these superimposed suzerainties, the royal was the only one whose limits served to determine the extent of the realms already formed but still very vaguely outlined.[i]

The difference between feudalism and the politics both of antiquity and of modern times lies, according to Paul von Roth,[j] chiefly in the absence of a state power. There was no proper monarchy; public offices are hereditary or belong to an estate. The impossibility of the permanence of feudalism is shown, he says, most clearly in the feudal army by which even feudal justice suffered. Von Roth draws a vivid comparison between France and Germany at the end of the tenth century: France is much the more feudal and anarchic under the powerless Hugh Capet; Germany is more centralised under monarchic power. He compares them again three centuries later: France is a consolidated monarchy; Germany weak with a lasting weakness. The cause he finds above all is this--that the French kings had vigorously and in every way worked for the uprooting of the feudal system.[a]

THE TRANSITION FROM FEUDALISM TO MONARCHY

The moral phenomena above mentioned, tending in the direction of a general principle, were partly of a subjective, partly of a speculative order. But we must now give particular attention to the practical political movements of the period. The advance which that period witnessed presents a negative aspect, in so far as it involves the termination of the sway of individual caprice and of the isolation of power. Its affirmative aspect is the rise of a supreme authority whose dominion embraces all--a political power properly so called, whose subjects enjoy an equality of rights, and in which the will of the individual is subordinated to that common interest which underlies the whole.

This is the advance from feudalism to monarchy. The principle of feudal sovereignty is the outward force of individuals--princes, liege lords; it is a force destitute of intrinsic right. The subjects of such a constitution are vassals of a superior prince or seigneur, towards whom they have stipulated duties to perform; but whether they perform these duties or not depends upon the seigneur’s being able to induce them so to do, by force of character or by grant of favours. Conversely, the recognition of those feudal claims themselves was extorted by violence in the first instance; and the fulfilment of the corresponding duties could be secured only by the constant exercise of the power which was the sole basis of the claims in question. The monarchical principle also implies a supreme authority, but it is an authority over persons possessing no independent power to support their individual caprice, where we have no longer caprice opposed to caprice; for the supremacy implied in monarchy is essentially a power emanating from a political body, and is pledged to the furtherance of that equitable purpose on which the constitution of a state is based.

Feudal sovereignty is a polyarchy--we see nothing but lords and serfs; in monarchy, on the contrary, there is one lord and no serf, for servitude is abrogated by it, and in it right and law are recognised; it is the source of real freedom. Thus in monarchy the caprice of individuals is kept under, and a common gubernatorial interest established. But since this monarchy is developed from feudalism, it bears in the first instance the stamp of the system from which it sprang. Individuals quit their isolated capacity and become members of estates (or orders of the realm) and corporations; the vassals are powerful only by combination as an order; in contraposition to them the cities constitute powers in virtue of their communal existence. Thus the authority of the sovereign ceases to be mere arbitrary sway. The consent of the estates and corporations is essential to its maintenance; and if the prince wishes to have it, he must will what is reasonable.

We now see a constitution embracing various orders, while feudal rule knows no such orders. We observe the transition from feudalism to monarchy taking place in three ways: (1) Sometimes the lord paramount gains a mastery over his independent vassals, by subjugating their individual power, thus making himself sole ruler. (2) Sometimes the princes free themselves from the feudal relation altogether, and become the territorial lords of certain states; or lastly (3) the lord paramount unites the particular lordships that own him as their superior with his own particular suzerainty in a more peaceful way, and thus becomes master of the whole.

These processes do not indeed present themselves in history in that pure and abstract form in which they are exhibited here; often we find more modes than one appearing contemporaneously, but one or the other always predominates. The cardinal consideration is that the basis and essential condition of such a political formation is to be looked for in the particular nationalities in which it had its birth. Europe presents

## particular nations, constituting a unity in their very nature, and having

the absolute tendency to form a state. All did not succeed in attaining this political unity; we have now to consider them severally in relation to the change thus introduced. First, as regards the Roman Empire, the connection between Germany and Italy naturally results from the idea of that empire: the secular dominion united with the spiritual was to constitute one whole; but this state of things was rather the object of constant struggle than one actually attained. In Germany and Italy the transition from the feudal condition to monarchy involved the entire abrogation of the former; the vassals became independent monarchs.

PROGRESS IN GERMANY

Germany had always embraced a great variety of stocks--Swabians, Bavarians, Franks, Thuringians, Saxons, Burgundians; to these must be added the Slavs of Bohemia, Germanised Slavs in Mecklenburg, in Brandenburg, and in a part of Saxony and Austria; so that no such combination as took place in France was possible. Italy presented a similar state of things. The Lombards had established themselves there, while the Greeks still possessed the exarchate and lower Italy; the Normans too established a kingdom of their own in lower Italy, and the Saracens maintained their ground for a time in Sicily. When the rule of the house of Hohenstaufen was terminated, barbarism got the upper hand throughout Germany; the country being broken up into several sovereignties, in which a forceful despotism prevailed. It was the maxim of the electoral princes to raise only weak princes to the imperial throne; they even sold the imperial dignity to foreigners. Thus the unity of the state was virtually annulled.

A number of centres of power were formed, each of which was a predatory state; the legal constitution recognised by feudalism was dissolved, and gave place to undisguised violence and plunder; and powerful princes made themselves lords of the country. After the interregnum the count of Habsburg was elected emperor, and the house of Habsburg continued to fill the imperial throne with but little interruption. These emperors were obliged to create a force of their own, as the princes would not grant them an adequate power attached to the empire. But that state of absolute anarchy was at last put an end to by associations having general aims in view. In the cities themselves we see associations of a minor order; but now confederations of cities were formed with a common interest in the suppression of predatory violence. Of this kind was the Hanseatic League in the north, the Rhenish League consisting of cities lying along the Rhine, and the Swabian League. The aim of all these confederations was resistance to the feudal lords; and even princes united with the cities, with a view to the subversion of the feudal condition and the restoration of a peaceful state of things throughout the country.

[Illustration: EARLY CANNON WITH PROTECTED MOUNTING]

What the state of society was under feudal sovereignty is evident from the notorious association formed for executing criminal justice; it was a private tribunal, which, under the name of the _Vehmgericht_, held secret sittings; its chief seat was the northwest of Germany. A peculiar peasant association was also formed. In Germany the peasants were bondmen; many of them took refuge in the towns, or settled down as freemen in the neighbourhood of the towns (_Pfahlbürger_); but in Switzerland a peasant fraternity was established. The peasants of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under imperial governors; for the Swiss governments were not the property of private possessors, but were official appointments of the empire. These the sovereigns of the Habsburg line wished to secure to their own house. The peasants, with club and iron-studded mace (_Morgenstern_), returned victorious from a contest with the haughty steel-clad nobles, armed with spear and sword, and practised in the chivalric encounters of the tournament.

INFLUENCE OF GUNPOWDER

Another invention also tended to deprive the nobility of the ascendency which they owed to their accoutrements--that of gunpowder. Humanity needed it, and it made its appearance forthwith. It was one of the chief instruments in freeing the world from the dominion of physical force and placing the various orders of society on a level. With the distinction between the weapons they used, vanished also that between lords and serfs. And before gunpowder, fortified places were no longer impregnable, so that strongholds and castles now lost their importance. We may indeed be led to lament the decay or the depreciation of the practical value of personal valour--the bravest, the noblest may be shot down by a cowardly wretch at safe distance in an obscure lurking-place; but, on the other hand, gunpowder has made a rational, considerate bravery, spiritual valour, the essential to martial success.

[Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF MORTAR]

Only through this instrumentality could that superior order of valour be called forth--that valour in which the heat of personal feeling has no share; for the discharge of firearms is directed against a body of men--an abstract enemy, not individual combatants. The warrior goes to meet deadly peril calmly, sacrificing himself for the commonweal; and the valour of civilised nations is characterised by the very fact that it does not rely on the strong arm alone, but places its confidence essentially in the intelligence, the generalship, the character of its commanders, and, as was the case among the ancients, in a firm combination and unity of spirit on the part of the forces they command.

MONARCHISM IN ITALY

In Italy, as already noticed, we behold the same spectacle as in Germany--the attainment of an independent position by isolated centres of power. In that country, warfare in the hands of the condottieri became a regular business. The towns were obliged to attend to their trading concerns, and therefore employed mercenary troops, whose leaders often became feudal lords; Francis Sforza even made himself duke of Milan. In Florence, the Medici, a family of merchants, rose to power. On the other hand, the larger cities of Italy reduced under their sway several smaller ones and many feudal chiefs. A papal territory was likewise formed. There, also, a very large number of feudal lords had made themselves independent; by degrees they all became subject to the one sovereignty of the pope.

How thoroughly equitable in the view of social morality such a subjugation was, is evident from Machiavelli’s celebrated work _The Prince_. This book has often been thrown aside in disgust, as replete with the maxims of the most revolting tyranny; but nothing worse can be urged against it than that the writer, having the profound consciousness of the necessity for the formation of a state, has here exhibited the principles on which alone states could be founded in the circumstances of the times. The chiefs who asserted an isolated independence, and the power they arrogated, must be entirely subdued; and though we cannot reconcile with our idea of freedom the means which he proposes as the only efficient ones, and regards as perfectly justifiable--inasmuch as they involve the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, assassination, and so forth--we must nevertheless confess that the feudal nobility, whose power was to be subdued, were assailable in no other way, since an indomitable contempt for principle and an utter depravity of morals were thoroughly engrained in them.

IN FRANCE

In France we find the converse of that which occurred in Germany and Italy. For many centuries the kings of France possessed only a very small domain, so that many of their vassals were more powerful than themselves; but it was a great advantage to the royal dignity in France that the principle of hereditary monarchy was firmly established there. The consideration it enjoyed was increased by the circumstance that the corporations and cities had their rights and privileges confirmed by the king, and that the appeals to the supreme feudal tribunal--the court of peers, consisting of twelve members enjoying that dignity--became increasingly frequent. The king’s influence was extended by his affording that protection which only the throne could give. But that which essentially secured respect for royalty, even among the powerful vassals, was the increasing personal power of the sovereign. In various ways, by inheritance, by marriage, by force of arms, etc., the kings had come into possession of many earldoms (_Grafschaften_) and several duchies. The dukes of Normandy had, however, become kings of England; and thus a formidable power confronted France, whose interior lay open to it by way of Normandy. Besides this there were powerful duchies still remaining; nevertheless, the king was not a mere feudal suzerain (_Lehnsherr_) like the German emperors, but had become a territorial possessor (_Landesherr_); he had a number of barons and cities under him, that were subject to his immediate jurisdiction; and Louis IX succeeded in rendering appeals to the royal tribunal common throughout his kingdom.

The towns attained a position of greater importance in the state. For when the king needed money, and all his usual resources, such as taxes and forced contributions of all kinds, were exhausted, he made application to the towns and entered into separate negotiations with them. It was Philip the Fair who, in the year 1302, first convoked the deputies of the towns as a third estate, in conjunction with the clergy and the barons. All indeed that they were in the first instance concerned with was the authority of the sovereign as the power that had convoked them, and the raising of taxes as the object of their convocation; the states nevertheless secured an importance and weight in the kingdom, and as a natural result, an influence on legislation also.

A fact which is particularly remarkable is the proclamation issued by the kings of France, giving permission to the bondsmen on the crown lands to purchase their freedom at a moderate price. In the way we have indicated the kings of France very soon attained great power; while the flourishing state of the poetic art in the hands of the troubadours, and the growth of the scholastic theology, whose especial centre was Paris, gave France a culture superior to that of the other European states, and which secured the respect of foreign nations.

IN ENGLAND

William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, introduced the feudal system into England, and divided the kingdom into fiefs, which he granted almost exclusively to his Norman followers. He himself retained considerable crown possessions; the vassals were under obligation to perform service in the field, and to aid in administering justice; the king was the guardian of all vassals under age; they could not marry without his consent. Only by degrees did the barons and the towns attain a position of importance. It was especially in the disputes and struggles for the throne that they acquired considerable weight.

When the oppressive rule and fiscal exactions of the kings became intolerable, contentions and even war ensued; the barons compelled King John to swear to Magna Charta, the basis of English liberty, _i.e._, more

## particularly of the privileges of the nobility. Among the liberties thus

secured, that which concerns the administration of justice was the chief; no Englishman was to be deprived of personal freedom, property, or life without the judicial verdict of his peers. Everyone, moreover, was to be entitled to the free disposition of his property. Further, the king was to impose no taxes without the consent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, and barons. The towns, also, favoured by the kings in opposition to the barons, soon elevated themselves into a third estate and to representation in the commons’ house of parliament. Yet the king was always very powerful, if he possessed strength of character: his crown estates procured for him due consideration; in later times, however, these were gradually alienated, given away, so that the king was reduced to apply for subsidies to the parliament.

We shall not pursue the minute and specifically historic details that concern the incorporation of principalities with states, or the dissensions and contests that accompanied such incorporations. We have only to add that the kings, when by weakening the feudal constitution they had attained a higher degree of power, began to use that power against each other in the undisguised interest of their own dominion. Thus France and England carried on wars with each other for a century. The kings were always endeavouring to make foreign conquests; the towns, which had the largest share of the burdens and expenses of such wars, were opposed to them, and in order to placate them the kings granted them important privileges.

THE PAPACY AND FEUDALISM

The popes endeavoured to make the disturbed state of society, to which each of these changes gave rise, an occasion for the intervention of their authority; but the interest of the growth of states was too firmly established to allow them to make their own interest of absolute authority valid against it. Princes and peoples were indifferent to papal clamour urging them to new crusades. The emperor Louis set to work to deduce from Aristotle, the Bible, and the Roman law a refutation of the assumptions of the papal see; and the electors declared at the diet held at Rense in 1338, and afterwards still more decidedly at the imperial diet held at Frankfort, that they would defend the liberties and hereditary rights of the empire, and that to make the choice of a Roman emperor or king valid, no papal confirmation was needed. So, at an earlier date, 1302, on occasion of a contest between Pope Boniface and Philip the Fair, the assembly of the states convoked by the latter had offered opposition to the pope. For states and communities had arrived at the consciousness of independent moral worth.

Various causes had united to weaken the papal authority; the great schism of the church, which led men to doubt the pope’s infallibility, gave occasion to the decisions of the councils of Constance and Bâle, which assumed an authority superior to that of the pope, and therefore deposed and appointed popes. The numerous attempts directed against the ecclesiastical system confirmed the necessity of a reformation. Arnold of Brescia, Wycliffe, and Huss met with sympathy in contending against the dogma of the papal vicegerency of Christ, and the gross abuses that disgraced the hierarchy. These attempts were, however, only partial in their scope. On the one hand the time was not yet ripe for a more comprehensive onslaught; on the other hand the assailants in question did not strike at the heart of the matter, but (especially the two latter) attacked the teaching of the church chiefly with the weapons of erudition, and consequently failed to excite a deep interest among the people at large.

HEGEL ON THE RISE OF MANKIND THROUGH FEUDALISM

But the ecclesiastical principle had a more dangerous foe in the incipient formation of political organisations than in the antagonists above referred to. A common object, an aim intrinsically possessed of perfect moral validity, presented itself to secularity in the formation of states; and to this aim of community the will, the desire, the caprice of the individual submitted itself. The hardness characteristic of the self-seeking quality of “heart,” maintaining its position of isolation--the knotty heart of oak underlying the national temperament of the Germans--was broken down and mellowed by the terrible discipline of the Middle Ages.

The two iron rods which were the instruments of this discipline were the church and serfdom. The church drove the “heart” (_Gemüth_) to desperation--made spirit pass through the severest bondage, so that the soul was no longer its own; but it did not degrade it to Hindu torpor, for Christianity is an intrinsically spiritual principle and, as such, has a boundless elasticity. In the same way serfdom, which made a man’s body not his own but the property of another, dragged humanity through all the barbarism of slavery and unbridled desire, and the latter was destroyed by its own violence.

It was not so much from slavery as through slavery that humanity was emancipated. For barbarism, lust, injustice constitute evil: man, bound fast in its fetters, is unfit for morality and religiousness; and it is from this intemperate and ungovernable state of volition that the discipline in question emancipated him. The church fought the battle with the violence of rude sensuality in a temper equally wild and terroristic with that of its antagonist; it prostrated the latter by dint of the terrors of hell, and held it in perpetual subjection, in order to break down the spirit of barbarism and to tame it into repose.

Theology declares that every man has this struggle to pass through, since he is by nature evil, and only by passing through a state of mental laceration arrives at the certainty of reconciliation. But granting this, it must on the other hand be maintained that the form of the contest is very much altered when the conditions of its commencement are different, and when that reconciliation has had an actual realisation. The path of torturous discipline is in that case dispensed with (it does indeed make its appearance at a later date, but in quite a different form), for the waking up of consciousness finds man surrounded by the elements of a moral state of society. The phase of negation is, indeed, a necessary element in human development, but it has now assumed the tranquil form of education, so that all the terrible characteristics of that inward struggle vanish.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[83] [In the words of Bryce,[b] “Nascent feudalism was but one remove from anarchy.”]

[Illustration]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

## CHAPTER I . ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES

[b] J. F. MICHAUD, _History of the Crusades_.

[c] CHARLES MILLS, _History of the Crusades_.

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