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REFLECTIONS UPON THE STATE OF EUROPE, UPON THE VARIOUS CLASSES OF SOCIETY, AND UPON THE PROGRESS Of NAVIGATION, INDUSTRY, ARTS, AND GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, DURING AND AFTER THE CRUSADES.
A.D. 1571-1685.
We have made known the origin, the spirit, and the character of the crusades; it is now our task to show their influence on the state of society. Before giving our opinion upon the results of the holy wars, it has appeared to us desirable to lay before our readers, in a few words, the judgments that others have passed upon them. In the seventeenth century, so abounding in men of genius, the heroic bravery of the Crusaders was admired, their reverses were deplored, and, without a question as to the good or evil which these distant expeditions had brought about, the pious motives which had made the warriors of the West take arms were respected. The eighteenth century, which had adopted all the opinions of the Reformation, and exaggerated them,—the eighteenth century did not spare the crusades, and did not fail to accuse the ignorance, barbarity, and fanaticism of our ancestors as the causes of them.[93]Voltaire published a history of the crusades, in 1753; the subject he had chosen was at that time so low in public opinion, and he himself cast so much ridicule upon the events he described, that his book created no curiosity, and found no readers. Nothing can equal the violence with which the authors of the Encyclopédie, a short time afterwards, surpassed even the acerbity of Voltaire. This manner of judging the crusades became so general, that the panegyrists of St. Louis allowed themselves to be drawn into it, and several among them, in their discourses, were scarcely inclined to pardon the pious monarch for his exploits and his misfortunes in Egypt and before Tunis.
A philosophy, however, enlightened by the spirit of research and analysis, traced events to their causes, studied their effects, and, from holding truth as the only object worthy of inquiry, neglected declamation and despised satire. The judicious Robertson, in his introduction to the History of Charles V., gave it as his opinion, that the crusades had favoured the progress of liberty and the development of the human mind. Whether this perception flattered some of the opinions of the time, or whether it exercised over the public the natural ascendancy of truth, it met with a sufficient number of partisans; and from that time the expeditions of the Crusaders into the East have been judged with less severity.
A few years ago the Institute of France proposed a question, by which they invited the learned to point out all the advantages society had derived from the crusades; and if we may judge by the memorials which obtained the prize in this learned contest,[94] the holy wars brought more benefits for posterity in their train, than they produced calamities for the generations contemporary with them. Thus, opinions upon the crusades had changed several times in less than two centuries; a great lesson for those who pronounce with so much assurance upon the revolutions which we have seen begin, but which we shall not see end; when there is so much difficulty in judging of revolutions long ago accomplished, and whose results are all before our eyes!
Perhaps we are arrived at the favourable moment for appreciating with some truth the influence of the crusades, and the opinions of those who have reflected upon them before us: we may say, that the revolutions of the present age are for us a torch which enlightens the history of past times; none of the lessons which are afforded by great political concussions have been wanting for the present generation, and on that account, no doubt, our age will some day merit the title of the age of enlightenment.
We may safely say, that that which the crusades were deficient in, in order to have found more indulgent judges, was success; let us suppose for a moment that the crusades had succeeded, as they who undertook them hoped they would, and let us see, in that case, what would have been their results. Egypt, Syria, and Greece would have become Christian colonies; the nations of the East and the West would have pursued together the great march of civilization; the languages of the Franks would have penetrated to the extremes of Asia; the Barbary coast, now inhabited by pirates, would have received the morals and the laws of Europe; and the interior of Africa would not have been for a long time a land impenetrable to the relations of commerce and the researches of learned men and travellers. In order to judge what nations under the same laws and the same religion would have gained by this union, we have but to remember the state of the Roman world under the successors of Augustus, forming, as it were, one people, living under the same law, speaking the same language. All the seas were free, and the most distant provinces communicated with each other by easy and commodious routes; cities exchanged the objects of their arts and their industry, climates their various productions, nations their knowledge. If the crusades had subdued the East to Christianity, it is fair to believe that this grand spectacle, which the human race had only once beheld, would have been repeated in modern times, and opinions would not now be divided as to the advantages of the holy wars. Unfortunately, the Crusaders were unable to extend or preserve their conquests. The results of the crusades are thus more difficult to seize, and the good attributed to them does not strike all minds with equal force.
Among the results of the crusades, impartial history cannot pass over the evils they caused humanity to undergo; but these evils were felt in the time itself of the holy wars; and the faithful picture of that period has been quite sufficient to make us acquainted with them. As to the good the crusades produced, it has been like the germ, which remains a long time concealed in the earth, and develops itself slowly. After the account of each crusade, our readers will remember that, in a short summary, we have pointed out the immediate results of it. Now we will embrace all the epochs of the Eastern expeditions in a general review. When the ages to which the events of which we have spoken belonged become better known, the spirit of these events and their consequences will be better understood and better judged of: we are about to exhibit societies such as they were in the middle ages, and the progress they have made towards civilization; leaving to enlightened readers the care of appreciating that which belongs to the crusades.
We will in the first place examine the state of the different powers of Europe, and will begin with France.
When we remember the state of weakness and decay in which the commencement of the twelfth century found the French monarchy, we are astonished at the degree of prosperity and splendour it attained in subsequent ages. Skilful negotiations, successful wars, useful alliances, the decay of the feudal system, and the progressive enfranchisement of the commons, favoured the dynasty of the Capets, in the aggrandizement of their states, and in the increase of their authority. Several centuries were employed in consummating this great work of fortune and policy; and the more slowly that this revolution was operated, the more durable proved its effects. One plan of conduct, followed up by all the princes of one same family, and the success it obtained in the prosperity and aggrandizement of the kingdom, and the glory and independence of the nation, at the present day, merit all the attention of history. Frenchmen cannot help feeling both gratitude and admiration when they reflect that the union of so many rich provinces—that this French monarchy, which has grown from age to age, and which finished by extending from the Rhine to the Pyrenees; that this beautiful France, in a word, such as we see it, is the work of the august family which governs it at the present day.[95]
The policy of our kings was no doubt seconded by the great events of the crusades; it was natural that the nation which took the greatest share in these events should profit more than others by it, in the increase of its power and the amelioration of its social condition. The glory which the French arms acquired beyond the seas gave a new lustre to the monarchy; royal authority profited equally by the exploits and the reverses of the numerous warriors whom the holy wars attracted into Asia; the absence, the death, or the ruin of the great vassals permitted royalty to rise from the bosom of feudal anarchy, and establish order in the kingdom.
More than a century before the first crusade, the barons and prelates had ceased to meet in general assembly to regulate the forms of justice, and lend to the acts of royal authority the support of their political influence. At the second crusade, there were several assemblies of the great men of the kingdom, in which preparations for the expedition, and measures for the maintenance of public order and the execution of the laws during the absence of Louis VII., were deliberated upon. In these meetings, which were very numerous, the French might trace at least a faint image of those assemblies, so celebrated under the first races, in which the kings and their subjects deliberated together upon the means of securing the independence of the nation and the safety of the throne.
Thus the crusades aided the kings of France in resuming their legislative power, and the most enlightened part of the nation, in recovering those ancient prerogatives which they had exercised under the children of Clovis and Charlemagne.
It may be remembered, that after the accession of Hugh Capet, the great vassals not only did no longer assemble around their prince, but had entirely separated their cause from that of the crown; several even scarcely acknowledged a king of France, and covering their opposition with a pious pretext, they, in their public acts, designated the year of the reign of Jesus Christ, instead of that of the king. This opposition, which lasted more than a century, at last gave way to other feelings, when they saw the French monarchs at the head of those expeditions which attracted the attention of all Christendom, and in which the cause of Jesus Christ himself, as well as of all Christian nations, seemed interested. In order to perceive clearly what the kings of France owed to the holy wars, and what in particular they gained by taking part in them, it would suffice to compare Philip I., shut up in his palace, in a melancholy manner, during the Council of Clermont, excommunicated by Urban, condemned by the bishops, and abandoned by his nobles, with Philip Augustus, in the first place conqueror of Saladin in Syria, and afterwards triumphant at Beauvines, over the enemies of his kingdom; or with Louis IX., surrounded in his reverses by a faithful nobility, ever respected by the clergy and the people, revered as the firmest support of the Church, and proclaimed by his own age the arbiter of Europe.
We will speak hereafter of the changes which were then effected in the different classes of society; we will confine ourselves here to saying that the crusades were the signal for a new order of things in France, and that this new order of things cast solid foundations during the holy wars.
If royalty in France was weak at the period of the first crusade, in England it was strong and powerful; royalty and feudalism oppressed England with all the weight of the conquests of William; but an authority founded upon victory, and sustained by violence, created at an early period in men’s minds a feeling of opposition, which time and circumstances were destined to develop. Military despotism had been able to impose silence upon opinions; but it had not entirely changed the manners of the English, or destroyed their attachment to old customs. Passions suppressed by the sword broke out with greater violence in the end.
An all-powerful monarchy exhibited a tendency to decline, and in England was seen the contrary of that which had been seen in France. Liberty made advances at the expense of royal authority. It does not enter into our plan to explain in detail the causes of this revolution. Several English monarchs allowed themselves to be led away by an imprudent and passionate policy, which threw them into fatal extravagances; their excesses, their violences, and particularly the crimes of John Lack-land, alienated the minds of their subjects, and united the whole nation in one feeling of resistance to absolute power. Another cause of decline not less remarkable, and to which history has not sufficiently drawn attention, was the ambition of the English princes, which inspired them with the senseless project of conquering the kingdom of France. The ruinous wars which they maintained against an enemy they could not subdue, placed them at the discretion of the barons and the English people, who furnished them with subsidies and fought under their banners.
The crusades had, perhaps, less influence upon the civilization of England than upon that of several other states of Europe. They might, however, concur with many circumstances of that period in effecting the changes which the English monarchy underwent.
Richard Cœur de Lion was more anxious to acquire the renown of a great captain than the reputation of a great king; the glory of arms made him forget the cares of his kingdom. It may be remembered that before his departure he sold the charges, the prerogatives, and the domains of the crown; he would have sold, as he himself said, the city of London, if he could have found a purchaser; his reverses and his captivity ruined his people, and his long absence kept up the spirit of faction among his nobles, and more especially in his own family.
The English barons were several times desirous of going into the East, against the will of the king; and the idea of opposing a monarch they did not love, often added to their impatience to embark for Palestine. Kings likewise took advantage of the opinions of their times, and engaged themselves to set out for the crusades, with the sole view of obtaining subsidies, which they employed in other enterprises. These means, too often employed, drew contempt upon the policy of princes, and only served to increase the public mistrust.
But that which completed the overthrow of the foundations of an absolute monarchy in England, was the violent enterprises of the popes against the English kings; enterprises which the spirit of religious wars favoured. In the league of the barons against Henry III., the rebels wore a cross, as in the wars beyond the seas; and the priests promised the palms of martyrdom to those who should die in the cause of liberty. One very curious circumstance is, that the head of the league formed for the independence of the English nation, was a French gentleman, the son of that count de Montfort so renowned[96] in the crusade against the Albigeois.
But the long efforts of England to obtain liberty deserve so much the more to fix the attention of history, from their having, in the end, attained a positive and durable result. So many other nations, after having contended for a long time, sometimes against license, sometimes against tyranny, have only met with misery, shame, and slavery. If the English revolution produced in the end salutary effects, it was because all classes of society concurred together in it; because it was made in the interests of all, according to the character and the manners of the nation, and according to the spirit of Christianity, which then presided over all which ought to last among men. Unanimity of opinions and sentiments, the accordance of manners and laws, of policy and religion, founded from that time that public spirit of which England still offers us the model; and this public spirit became in the end the most firm support and the most sure safeguard of liberty.
Whilst England was wresting liberty from its kings, and France was requiring hers back again of royalty, Germany presented another spectacle; the German empire, which had thrown out great splendour up to the eleventh century, declined rapidly during the crusades.
The emperors, in order to resist the great vassals, granted several advantages to the clergy, and bestowed privileges upon the cities. The clergy employed these advantages in favour of the popes, who attacked the imperial power; the cities profited by the concessions which were made to found their independence. All the efforts of the emperors had proved unable to prevent the crown continuing elective, whilst the great fiefs became hereditary. Thus the heads of the empire depended for their election upon the princes and nobles whom they themselves had freed from all dependence. In the competition of the pretenders to the throne, in a competition which was almost always decided by fortune, intrigue, or victory, it may easily be supposed that ambition was often more successful than moderation and virtue. Among the princes who ascended the imperial throne, many were men of great character; but their active and restless genius led them into adventurous and gigantic enterprises, which exhausted their strength and hastened the decline of the empire.
The memories of ancient Rome and of the power of the Cæsars were always present to their imagination. One of the greatest errors of their policy was turning their views towards Italy; they encountered on their way thither the popes, who declared a war of extermination against them; two families of emperors succumbed beneath the thunders of Rome; they were never able to reign over Italy, and whilst they exhausted themselves in vain efforts to establish their domination there, they completed the loss of their influence in Germany.
It is a consoling remark for humanity, that most of the conquerors of the middle ages weakened themselves by their undertakings, victory itself only serving to bring about the ruin of their power. The kings of France of this period evinced, perhaps, less talent and genius than the emperors of Germany; but their policy was wiser and more fortunate; they confined themselves to conquering their own kingdom; their conquests only tended to unite the scattered members of a large family; and their authority became more popular in proportion with their being considered as a natural tie between the French of all the provinces.
The glory which the emperors of Germany acquired by their conquests was but a personal glory, and did not at all interest the German people. This manifestation of their power had nothing in common with the nations of which they were the head. As soon as this power was no longer a bond or a support for the people, they separated themselves from it, and every one sought his safety or his aggrandizement in his own strength.
A state of things arose from this which was, perhaps, more fatal to Germany than the absolute authority of the emperors; upon the ruins of the imperial grandeur arose a crowd of states, opposed to each other by diversity of laws and the spirit of rivalry. All those ecclesiastical and secular principalities in which the spirit of monarchy prevailed; those cities in which the spirit of liberty fermented; that nobility animated by the pretensions of aristocracy, could not possibly have the same interests or the same policy to direct their efforts towards one common and salutary aim.
The popes, after having weakened the power of the emperors, wished to dispose of the broken sceptre of Charlemagne, and offered it to all who appeared likely to promote their scheme of vengeance. A crowd of princes then started up as pretenders to the empire thus held out by the popes, and the greater the number of these, the more rapidly the empire declined. Amidst civil discords, Germany completed the loss of its political unity, and at last its religious unity.
In order to judge to what a degree it was difficult to put in motion that enormous mass called the German confederation, it is only necessary to contemplate, in the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, those numerous diets which assembled to deliberate upon the war against the Turks, in which the presence of imminent peril even was never able to produce one energetic decision for the safety of Germany.
The popes sometimes made use of the pretext of the crusades to drive the emperors to a distance, and to precipitate them into disastrous expeditions; thus the enthusiasm for the holy wars, which had a tendency to establish union among Christian nations, had no power to bring together the members of the German nation, and only served to keep up trouble and disorder in the bosom of the empire. We must, however, repeat here what has been read in this history; it was under the auspices and by the influence of the court of Rome, when occupied seriously by a crusade, that the family of Rodolph of Hapsburg arose, a family whose power restored the empire to something of its ancient splendour, and saved Europe from the invasion of the Turks.
We have likewise to add that, at the period of the crusades, Germany augmented its territories and its population. The expeditions against the infidels of the East gave birth to the idea of attacking the pagans and idolaters, whose hordes inhabited the banks of the Vistula and the coasts of the Baltic. These races, when subdued by the Crusaders, entered into the Christian republic, and formed part of the German confederation. At the aspect of the cross, such cities as Dantzic, Thorn, Elbing, Kœnigsberg, &c., sprang up from the bosom of forests and deserts. Finland, Lithuania, Pomerania, and Silesia became flourishing provinces; new nations arose, new states were formed, and, to complete these prodigies, the arms of the Crusaders marked the spot in which a monarchy was to appear that did not exist in the middle ages, but which the present age has seen all at once take its place in the rank of the great powers of Europe. At the end of the thirteenth century, the provinces from which the Prussian monarchy derives both its name and its origin, were separated from Christendom by idolatry and savage manners; the conquest and the civilization of these provinces were the work of the holy wars.
If from Germany we pass into Italy, we there meet with other forms of government, and other revolutions.
When the last columns of the Roman empire crumbled away, Italy was covered with ruins. The Huns, the Franks, the Vandals, the Goths, the Germans, and the Lombards, held over this beautiful country, in turns, the scourge of their domination, and all left behind them traces of their manners, their legislation, and their character.
In the tenth century, the emperors of Constantinople being unable any longer to retain Italy, other powers arose, some from conquests, others by good fortune, and others from circumstances which history has much difficulty in indicating. The influence of the popes sometimes defended the independence of Italy against the invasions and the yoke of the German emperors; but the struggle was so long, and the war between the two powers exhibited so many vicissitudes, that it only served to perpetuate trouble and discord; during several centuries, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines desolated Italy without defending it.
In every nation of Europe there was then a power, or rather a preponderating authority, which was as a rallying-point, or centre, around which society formed and united its forces to defend its political existence.
Italy had not, like France and other countries, this precious means of conservation. Nothing proves better the dissolution in which this rich country was plunged, than the manner by which it endeavoured to establish its independence in the middle ages. That division into many states, that parcelling out of territory, that numerous population split into a thousand fractions, all announced the absence of any tie, of any common centre. Italy comprised many nations; twenty republics had each their own laws, their own interests, and their own history. Those perpetual wars between the citizens of the same cities; those animosities between republic and republic; that necessity of the inhabitants for calling in strangers in their internal quarrels; those mistrusts which bore harder upon the citizens than upon the stipendiary adventurers, tended to efface the true sentiment of patriotism, and at length caused even the name of the Italian nation to be forgotten.
The feudal system was abolished earlier in Italy than elsewhere; but with feudalism departed the ancient honour of brave knights, and the virtues of chivalry. In republics defended by mercenaries, bravery, and all the generous sentiments that accompany it, ceased to be esteemed. Violent passions had no longer any check, either in the laws or in the opinions of men; it was at this unhappy period that those hatreds and vengeances displayed themselves which appear so improbable to us in our tragedies; no spectacle can be more afflicting than that of Italy in the fourteenth century; and we may safely say that Dante had but to look around him to find the model for his Hell.
Society, always ready to split to pieces, appeared to have no other motive but the fury of parties, no other principle of life but discord and civil war; there was no other guarantee against license but tyranny; or against tyranny, but the despair of factions, and the poniard of conspirators. As the strength of most of the little states which covered Italy was seldom equal to their ambition; and as princes and citizens, by the same reason that they were weak, wanted both moderation and courage; they sought their elevation or their safety in all the means that treachery and perfidy could suggest. Plots, political stratagems, odious crimes, everything appeared right to them; everything seemed properly available that could sustain their quarrels, and satisfy their ambition or their jealousy. At length, all morality disappeared; and it was then that school of policy was formed, which is to be found in the lessons, or rather in the satire, of Machiavel’s book.
It is said that the Italians were the first to form the idea of what publicists call the balance of power. We do not think that Italy merits such a glory; that which is understood by the balance of power is not an invention: it is nothing but the natural resource of the weakness which seeks a support. If we follow the progress of events, we shall find that this system, so long boasted, became fatal to Italy, by calling thither conquerors, who made it, even up to our own days, the theatre of most sanguinary wars.
At the period of the crusades, the cities of Lombardy, and the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, had attained great prosperity; and that which gave them this prosperity was the commerce of the East, which Italy carried on before the crusades, and persevered in, with all the advantages accruing from the expeditions beyond the seas.
But these republics, which contended for the empire of the sea, and only occupied a little corner of land upon the Mediterranean,—which had their eyes constantly fixed upon Syria, Egypt, and Greece,—which left to strangers the care of defending their territories, and only armed their citizens for the defence of their commerce,—these mercantile republics were much better calculated to enrich Italy than to keep up the sentiment of a true independence among the Italian nations.
We cannot, however, refrain from admiring that republic of Venice, whose power everywhere preceded the arms of the Crusaders, and which the nations of the middle ages looked upon as the queen of the East. The decline of this great republic did not begin before the period at which the progress of navigation, that it had so much contributed to, at length opened the route to India, and led to the discovery of a new world. Most of the other republics of Italy neither displayed the same splendour nor enjoyed the same duration; many among them—particularly those in which democracy prevailed—had disappeared at the end of the crusades, in the chaos and tumult of discords and civil wars. In their place arose dukes and princes, who substituted the intrigues of policy for popular passions, and sometimes made it their ambition to favour the revival of arts and letters, the true glory of Italy.
The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, situated at the extremity of Italy, was for the Crusaders the road to Greece and the East. The riches of this country, which appeared never to have any guardians,—a territory which its inhabitants were never able to defend, must have often tempted the cupidity and the ambition of the princes and even of the knights who went to seek their fortunes in Asia. The history of this fine country is mixed up during two centuries with that of the holy wars, the crusades often furnishing a pretext or an opportunity for the conquest of it. The wars undertaken for the kingdom of Naples,—those wars which produced more monstrous crimes than glorious exploits, more revolts than battles, completed the corruption of the Neapolitan character, in which has always been remarked, on the one part, an inclination to shake off the yoke of present domination, and, on the other, an extreme resignation in submitting to the yoke of victory.
Whilst glancing thus at the principal states of Europe, we are particularly struck with the great diversity that exists in the manners, the institutions, and the destinies of nations. How is it possible to follow the march of civilization amidst so many republics and monarchies, some bursting with splendour from the bosom of barbarism, others sinking into ruins? And how is it possible to point out the influence of the crusades through so many revolutions, which have often the same causes, but whose effects are so different, and sometimes so opposite? Spain, to which we are now about to turn our attention, will present us with other pictures, and must furnish fresh subjects for meditation.
During the course of the crusades, we see Spain occupied in its own boundaries with defending itself against those same Saracens whom the other nations of Europe went to contend with in the East; in the north of the Peninsula, some Christian sovereignties had maintained themselves, which began to be formidable under Sancho the Great, king of Castile and Arragon. The valour of the Castilians, sustained by the example of the Cid, and by the influence of chivalric manners, and seconded by warriors from all the provinces of France, took Toledo, before the end of the eleventh century. But the conquests of the Spaniards did not afterwards correspond with the splendour of their early triumphs; as fast as they retook provinces from the Moors, they made separate kingdoms of them; and the Spanish power, thus divided, became, in some sort, weakened by its own victories.
The invasion of the Moors in Spain bore some resemblance to that of the Franks in Asia. It was the religion of Mahomet that animated the Saracen warriors to the fight, as the Christian religion inflamed the zeal and ardour of the soldiers of the cross. Africa and Asia often answered to the appeal of the Mussulman colonies in Spain, as Europe did to the cries of alarm of the Christian colonies in Syria. Enthusiasm gave birth on both sides to prodigies of heroism, and held fortune for a long time suspended between the two inimical nations and the two inimical religions.
A spirit of independence naturally grew up among the Spaniards, during a war in which the state had need of all its citizens, and in which every citizen, by that means, acquired a great degree of importance. It has been remarked, with reason, that a people that has done great things, that an entire people called to the defence of its country, experiences an exaggerated sentiment of its rights, shows itself more exacting, sometimes more unjust towards those who govern, and often feels tempted to employ against its sovereigns the strength it had employed against its enemies. Thus we may see in the Spanish annals, that the nobility and the people were more turbulent than in other countries, and that monarchy was there at first more limited than among the other nations of Europe.
The institution of the Cortes, the enfranchisement of the commons, and a crowd of privileges granted to cities, signalized very early, among the Spaniards, the decay of the feudal system and of the absolute authority of the monarchs. If we may judge by public acts of legislation, we might believe that the Spanish people enjoyed liberty before all the other nations of Europe. But, in times of trouble, we must be guarded in judging of the liberty of a nation by that which is said in political rostrums, or in charters and institutions, by turns obtained by violence and destroyed by power, always placed between two rocks,—anarchy and despotism. The history of Spain, at this period, is full of crimes and monstrous deeds, that stain the cause of princes as well as that of the people: which proves at least that morals did not keep pace with laws, and that institutions, created among public discords, did not soften the national character.
Amidst the revolutions which agitated Spain, political passions sometimes caused even the domination of the Moors to be forgotten. When at the end of the thirteenth century, the Mussulmans, conquered by James of Arragon, abandoned the Balearic isles and the kingdom of Valencia and Murcia, the Spaniards all at once suspended the progress of their arms. Whilst in the East, the victorious Mamelukes redoubled their efforts to completely drive the Franks from the coast of Syria; in the West, the Moors remained, during two centuries, in possession of a part of Spain, without the Spaniards ever seriously attempting to complete the conquest of their own country. The standard of Mahomet floated over the cities of Granada, up to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was only at this period that the Spanish monarchy issued all-powerful from the chaos of revolutions, and revived in the people the warlike and religious enthusiasm which completed the expulsion of the Moors. Then terminated the struggle which had lasted during eight centuries, and in which, according to Spanish authors, three thousand seven hundred battles were fought. So many combats, which were nothing but one long crusade, must have been a school of bravery and heroism; thus the Spaniards, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were considered the most brave and warlike nation of Europe. Philosophers have sought to explain by the influence of climate that spirit of haughtiness and pride, that grave and austere character which to this day distinguish the Spanish nation. It appears to us that a much more natural explanation of this national character is to be found in a war at once patriotic and religious, in which twenty successive generations were engaged, the perils of which must have inspired serious thoughts as well as noble sentiments.
The aversion for the yoke and the religion of the Moors, redoubled the attachment of the people for their religion and their ancient customs. The remembrance of that glorious struggle has not failed to animate the ardour and courage of the Spaniards at a recent period;—fortunate had it been for Spain if, at the moment at which I am speaking, she had not forgotten her own examples!
Towards the end of the war against the Moors, Spain adopted the Inquisition with more warmth than the other Christian nations. I will not attempt to repel the reproaches which modern philosophers have addressed to her; but it appears to me that sufficient account has not been taken of the motives which would render more excusable in Spain than elsewhere, those suspicions and those dark jealousies for all which was not the national religion. How could they forget that the standard of a foreign worship had so long floated over the Peninsula, and that during many ages, Christian warriors had fought, not only for the faith of their fathers, but for the very soil of their country against the infidels? According to my opinion, may it not be believed, that among the Spaniards, religious intolerance, or rather a hatred for all foreign religion, had something in itself which was less a jealous devotion than an ardent, restless patriotism?
Spain took no part in the crusades, till the spirit of these wars began to die away in the rest of Europe. We must, however, remark, that this kingdom derived some advantages from the Eastern expeditions. In almost all the enterprises of Christendom against the Mussulmans of Asia, a great number of the Crusaders stopped on the coast of Spain to combat the Moors. Many crusades were published in the West against the infidels who were masters of the Peninsula. The celebrated victory of Tolosa over the Moors was the fruit of a crusade preached in Europe, and particularly in France, by order of the sovereign pontiff. Expeditions beyond the sea were likewise favourable to the Spaniards, by retaining in their own country the Saracens of Egypt and Syria, who might have joined those on the coast of Africa. It has been shown in this history that the kingdom of Portugal was conquered and founded by Crusaders. The crusades gave the idea of those orders of chivalry, which, in imitation of those of Palestine, were formed in Spain, and without the succour of which the Spanish nation would not perhaps have triumphed over the Moors.
We may add, that Spain is the country in which the memory of the crusades was preserved the longest. In the last century, the bull called Crusada was there published every year in all the provinces. This solemn publication reminded the Spaniards of the triumphs they had formerly obtained over the Mussulmans.
We have shown the state of the principal powers of Europe during the crusades; it now remains for us to speak of a power which dominated over all the others, and which was as a tie or centre to all the powers;—we mean the authority of the heads of the Church.
The popes, as a temporal power and as a spiritual power, presented a singular contrast in the middle ages. As sovereigns of Rome, they had almost no authority, and were often banished from their own states: as heads of Christendom, they exercised an absolute empire to the extremities of the world, and their name was revered wherever the Gospel was preached.
It has been said that the popes made the crusades; they who maintain this opinion are far from being acquainted with the general movement which then affected the Christian world; no power on earth could have been able to produce such a great revolution; it only belonged to Him whose will gives birth to and disperses tempests, to throw all at once into human hearts that enthusiasm which silenced all other passions, and drew on the multitude as if by an invisible power. In the first book of this volume we have shown how the enthusiasm for the holy wars developed itself by degrees, and how it broke forth towards the end of the eleventh century, without any other influence but that of the dominant ideas: it led away the whole of society, and the popes were led away as nations of people were; one proof that the sovereign pontiffs did not produce this extraordinary revolution is, that they were never able to revive the spirit of the crusades, when that spirit became extinct among Christian nations.
It has likewise been said that the crusades very much increased the authority of the popes; we shall soon see what truth there is in that assertion. Among the causes which contributed to the growth of the pontifical authority, we may name the invasion of the barbarians of the North, who overthrew the empire of the West, and the progress of the Saracens, who would not allow the emperors of the East leisure to turn their attention towards Italy, or even to preserve any domination over that country. The popes thus found themselves freed from two powers upon which they depended; and remained in possession of the city of Rome, which appeared to have no other master. Other circumstances added from that time to the authority of the successors of St. Peter. However it may be, everybody knows that this authority had already made immense progress before the crusades; the head of the most powerful monarchs had already bowed before the thunders of the Vatican; and Christendom seemed to have already adopted the maxim of Gregory VII., that “the pope, in quality of Vicar of Jesus Christ, ought to be superior to every human power.”
It cannot be doubted that a religious war was calculated to favour the development of the pontifical authority. But this war itself produced events, and gave rise to circumstances which were less a means of aggrandizement for the power of the popes, than a rock against which that power was dashed and injured. But it is positive, that the end of the crusades left the sovereign pontiffs less powerful than they had been at the commencement of the holy wars.
Let us, in the first place, say a few words of the advantages which the heads of the Church derived from the expeditions against the infidels. Recourse was always had to the sovereign pontiffs when the question of a crusade was agitated; the holy war was preached in their name, and carried on under their auspices. Warriors enrolled under the banners of the cross, received from the pope privileges which freed them from all other dependence but that of the Church; the popes were the protectors of the Crusaders, the support of their families, the guardians of their properties; it was to the popes the Crusaders submitted all their differences, and confided all their interests.
The sovereign pontiffs were not at first aware of the advantages they might derive from the crusades. In the first crusade, Urban, who had enemies to contend with, did not think of asking the assistance of the warriors he had persuaded to take the cross; it was not till the second crusade that the popes perceived the ascendancy the holy wars must give them. At this period a king of France and an emperor of Germany were, in a manner, lieutenants of the Holy See; in the third crusade, the pope compelled Henry II. to take the cross, to expiate the murder of Thomas à Becket. After the death of Henry, his son Richard set out for the East, at the signal of the sovereign pontiff. In consequence of this crusade, great disorders, as we have related, disturbed the kingdom of England; the popes took advantage of them to give laws to the English people, and a few years after the death of Richard, his brother and successor acknowledged himself the vassal of the court of Rome.
The crusades were for the popes a pretext to usurp, in all the states of Europe, the principal attributes of sovereignty; they became possessed, in the name of the holy war, of the right of levying everywhere both armies and imposts; the legates they employed in all the countries of Christendom exercised supreme authority in their name; the presence of these legates inspired respect and fear; their wills were laws. Armed with the cross, they commanded all the clergy as masters; and as the clergy, among all Christian nations, had the greatest ascendancy, the empire of the popes had no longer any opposition or limits.
It may be perceived that we have forgotten none of the advantages the heads of the Church found in the crusades: here are the obstacles and the rocks they met with in the exercise of their power.
It must be allowed that the empire of the popes received but very little increase in Asia during the holy wars; the quarrels and disputes which constantly disturbed the Christian colonies in the East, and in which they were obliged to interfere, multiplied their embarrassments, without adding to their power.
Their voice was not always listened to by the multitude of the Crusaders; sometimes even the soldiers of the cross resisted the will and despised the counsels of the pontiffs. The legates of the Holy See were frequently in opposition to the leaders of the army, and their character was not always respected in camps. As the popes were supposed to direct the crusades, they were, in some sort, responsible for the misfortunes and disorders they had no power to prevent: this moral responsibility exposed them sometimes to be judged with rigour, and was injurious to their reputation for wisdom and ability.
By an abuse of the spirit of the crusades, the popes were dragged into wars in which their ambition was often more interested than religion; they then thought of their temporal power, and that was their weakest point; they were never strong but when they depended upon a higher support; the crusades became for them as a lever, which they employed to elevate themselves; but it must be allowed that they depended upon it too much, and when this lever failed them, their authority trembled. Seeking to regain what they had lost, the popes made, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, incredible efforts to revive the spirit of the crusades; the question then being no longer to go and fight the Saracens in Asia, but to defend Europe against the invasion of the Turks. Amidst the perils of Christendom, the conduct of the popes merited the greatest praise, and the zeal they displayed has not been sufficiently appreciated by historians. But the time of the fervour for crusades was past. The success obtained by the sovereign pontiffs was never proportionate with their efforts, and the uselessness of their attempts necessarily weakened the idea entertained of their ascendancy and their power.
The crusade against the Albigeois procured them very little advantage; the intolerance which gave birth to that war proceeded from the crusades; the Inquisition, which arose from it, awakened more passions than it suppressed. By the Inquisition, the Church assumed in this world a jurisdiction which partook too strongly of humanity; her decrees were much more respected when they were referred to heaven or to a future life.
Nothing can equal the enormity of the tributes that were imposed upon the clergy for carrying on the holy wars. The tenths were not only levied for the crusades, but for every attempt at a crusade; not only for expeditions to the East, but for every enterprise against the enemies of the court of Rome. They were at length levied under the most vain pretexts; all Europe addressed warm remonstrances to the popes; at first the rigour with which the agents collected the tributes was complained of; and afterwards their infidelity in the application of the treasures extorted from the faithful became equally a subject of scandal. Nothing could be more injurious to the pontifical authority than these complaints, which arose from all quarters, and which, in the end, furnished weapons for the formidable heresy of Luther.
The history of the popes in the middle ages completes the proof of that which we have said. Their domination went on constantly increasing during a century up to Innocent III.; it after that period declined during another century, down to Boniface VIII., at which time crusades beyond the seas ended.
In latter days, publicists have said a great deal about the power of the heads of the Church; but they have judged rather according to systems than according to facts,—more after the spirit of our own age than that of the middle ages. The genius of the sovereign pontiffs has been much lauded, particularly for the purpose of placing their ambition in a stronger light. But if the popes really had the genius and the ambition attributed to them, we must believe they would have been principally employed in aggrandizing their states, and increasing their authority as sovereigns. Nevertheless, they did not succeed in this, or else they never attempted it. In fact, what could men do, who were mostly arrived at the age of decrepitude?—what could princes do, who merely passed over the throne, to strengthen their authority, and master the passions belonging to the infancy and the youth of societies? Among the crowd of popes who succeeded each other, many were endowed with a superior genius, whilst others only possessed a moderate capacity; men of all characters and all turns of mind occupied, in succession, the chair of St. Peter; nevertheless, these men, so different by their tastes, their passions, and their talents, all aimed at and all did the same thing; they had, therefore, an impulsion which was not in themselves, the motive of which must be sought elsewhere than in the vulgar policy of princes.
That would be a curious history which would trace, in the same picture, the spiritual empire and the temporal empire of the popes. Who would not be surprised at seeing in it, on one side, a force which nothing could resist, which moves the very world,—a will always the same, which is transmitted from pontiff to pontiff, like a deposit, or like a sacred heritage; on the other, a policy weak and changeable, like man,—a power which can scarcely defend itself against the lowest of its enemies, and which at every moment the breath of revolutions has power to shake? In this parallel, the imagination would be dazzled when such an empire should be presented to it as has never been seen upon earth, and which would lead to the belief that the popes did not belong to this fragile and transitory world,—a power which hell cannot pull down,—which the world cannot corrupt,—which, without the help of any army, and by the simple ascendancy of a few words, subdues things sooner, and proves itself more formidable, than ancient Rome, with all her victories. What more magnificent spectacle can the history of empires present to us? But, in the other part of the picture, who would not be moved to pity at beholding a government without vigour, an administration without foresight,—that people, descended from the king people, led by an indolent, timid old man, the eternal city falling into ruins, and as hidden beneath the grass? When we see—so near to a power almost supernatural—weakness, uncertainty, the fragility common to things below, and humanity with all its miseries, why may we not be permitted to compare the double power of the popes to Jesus Christ himself, of whom they were the vicars and images upon earth,—to Jesus Christ, whose double nature presents us, on one side, a God beaming with splendour, and on the other a simple mortal, loaded with the cross, and crowned with thorns?
If the principal features of this picture are not wanting in truthfulness, how can we believe in the policy of the popes as it is represented to us?—is it not more natural to think that the sovereign pontiffs, in all they did that was great, followed the spirit of Christianity? In the middle ages, which was the period of their power, they were much more directed by this spirit than they directed it themselves; later, and when popes entertained projects like those that are attributed to their genius and ambition, their power declined. We have but to compare Gregory VII., giving himself up to the spirit of his age, and supporting himself by the ascendancy of the Church, with Julius II., whom Voltaire calls a great prince, and who only employed the known combinations of policy.
The pontifical authority was the only one that had its bases and roots in opinions and beliefs. This power gave the world, or, rather, the world asked of it, laws, knowledge, and a support. The popes were right in the famous comparison of the two great luminaries. The authority of the heads of the Church was much more in advance towards civilization than the authority of princes. In order that the world might be civilized, it was important for the popes to have great power; and the need that was felt for their power favoured the progress of it.
As long as the world was governed by opinions and beliefs, rather than by civil laws and political authorities, the popes exercised the greatest influence; when the interests and rights of princes and nations became better regulated; when the world passed from the empire of opinions to that of laws; when, in a word, temporal power was well established in Europe, and prevailed over the spiritual of society, the pontiffs necessarily lost their ascendancy. Such is the history of the origin, of the progress, and of the decay of the pontifical power in the ages which have preceded us.
That which we have said of the popes clearly shows what influence the Church exercised over the society of Europe in the middle ages; but gross minds were not yet prepared to receive all the benefits of Christianity. The alliance of barbarism with superstition retarded the progress of true knowledge. The passions and customs of barbarians were still mingled with some salutary institutions.
The Franks, the Germans, and Goths, when obtaining possession of the richest countries of Europe, had employed all the rights of conquest, and these rights had become the laws of European society. We may form an idea of the government of the middle ages by representing to ourselves a victorious army, which disperses itself throughout the conquered country, shares the territory and those who inhabit it, and is always ready to march at the signal of its officers and its supreme general, to combat the common enemy, and defend its possessions.
As long as discipline and subordination subsisted in this military colony, public order was not entirely disturbed; and this kind of government might supply the place of wiser institutions. But as soon as the relations of assistance and fidelity, obedience and protection, became weakened, society—or rather the feudal government—no longer presented anything but the aspect of an army given up to license,—of an army whose officers and soldiers no longer acknowledged a head, were no longer subject to direction, and fought at hazard under a thousand different standards.
The vassals depended, in the first place, on the prince, because they held their lands and their offices of him. These lands and these offices becoming hereditary, their holders soon desired to render themselves independent, and to arrogate to themselves privileges which only belonged to the sovereign; such as coining money, holding a jurisdiction, and making war in their own name. From that time there remained scarcely any trace of subordination.
This decline of society, or, rather, this corruption of the feudal system, is referrible to the end of the second race. Charlemagne, in his endeavours to reëstablish the empire of the Cæsars, committed violence upon the social compact, and his extraordinary efforts exhausted the powers of royalty. The bow which he had too strongly bent, broke in the hands of his successors, and his empire crumbled away, when no longer sustained by the ascendancy of a great character. Charlemagne wished to emancipate himself from the laws of feudalism; under his feeble successors, feudalism, in its turn, was desirous of emancipating itself from the crown. The greatest evil of the feudal system was that it destroyed all protective power, all tutelary legislation, which could watch over the order and safety of society.
The monarch, despoiled of all authority, could neither be the support of innocence nor the avenger of crime; nor the mediator in war, nor the arbitrator in disputes that disturbed peace. Sovereignty, exercised by every man who wore a sword, was spread everywhere, without any one acknowledging its power anywhere; such was the disorder and confusion among those who disputed, sword in hand, for the wreck of sovereign power.
Nothing is more afflicting than this picture; the excesses which accompanied feudal anarchy no one is ignorant of. It does not form part of our plan to speak of it to any extent; the task we have to perform is a less painful one: if we turn our looks towards old times, it is only in order to discover the origin of our institutions; and among the revolutions of a barbarous age, we have only to make known what they produced that is salutary and durable. Before we proceed further, and in order to mix a few consolatory ideas with sad and painful images, we will show, by the side of the abuses of feudalism, the advantages contemporary society received from the feudal system, and the happy germs of civilization which grew from it for the benefit of following ages.
If the feudal government contained sources of disorder, it prevented disorder being carried to its height, and the evil from remaining without remedy. If it favoured anarchy and civil wars, it preserved Europe from the fury of conquerors, and from that of despotism. Vassals did not willingly consent to leave their lands; they were only bound to follow their sovereign to war for a stipulated time. This condition of the feudal compact, which was general in Europe, was found favourable for the defence of territory, and placed obstacles in the way of every project of invasion. Forces, spread about in all parts, served to protect every country against a foreign enemy, and could not be collected anywhere to assist the designs of an ambitious leader.
At a time in which passions did everything and laws were nothing, in which no political interest bound people together, what could have prevented a prince from assembling armies and ravaging Europe? What could have prevented a conqueror from subduing several kingdoms, and subjecting the people to all the excesses of tyranny, supported by the force of arms alone? It was then to the spirit of resistance of the feudal nobility that European society owed, in the midst of barbarism, the advantage of not becoming a prey to Eastern despotism, and security from wars of invasion.
Feudalism had rights and privileges to defend; the defence of these rights and privileges naturally led to ideas of independence, and these ideas of independence spread in the end through all classes of society. It must not be forgotten that the English barons established liberty in their country, whilst defending the privileges and rights of the feudal compact.
The reciprocity of obedience and protection, of services and duties, kept alive some generous sentiments. From feudal relations was born that spirit of devotion and respect for the sovereign which is neither the blind submission of the slave, nor the reasonable submission of the republican. This sentiment, which was considered, up to modern times, as the conservative principle of society in monarchies, became particularly the distinctive character of the French nobility.
The history of the crusades presents us with several examples of this devotion of the barons and knights to their monarch. When the kings of France who took the cross, were in any dangers in the East, what proofs of respect and love did they not receive from the gallant knights who accompanied them? What spectacle can be more touching than that of the imprisoned army in Egypt, forgetting its own captivity to deplore that of Louis IX.! Who is not affected at seeing, upon the coast of Africa, the French warriors overwhelmed with evils, but finding no tears in their miseries but to weep for the death of a king of France?
These ties of fidelity, which arose from feudal relations, were so powerful over men’s minds, that the preachers of the crusades sometimes invoked them in their exhortations. They preached the duties of feudalism concurrently with the precepts of the Gospel, and in order to excite Christian warriors to take the cross, they called them “the vassals of Jesus Christ.”
It is to the times of the feudal government we must go back, to find in all its purity, that susceptibility upon the point of honour, that inviolable fidelity to the word, which then supplied the absence of laws, and which in polished societies often render men better than laws themselves. All our ideas of military glory, that boundless esteem which we accord to bravery, that profound contempt which, amongst us, is attached to falsehood or felony, are to be traced to this remote period. Feudalism was so completely mixed up with the spirit and character of nations, that modern societies have no institutions that have not some relation with it; and we have everywhere traces of it in our habits, our manners, and even in our speech.
Let me be allowed to add here one single observation. It is in vain we protest against our origin by our words; we are incessantly reminded of it by our tastes, by our sentiments, and sometimes by our pleasures. In fact, if, on one side, our reason, formed in the school of new ideas, finds nothing that is not revolting in the middle ages, why, on the other, does our imagination, moved by the spectacle of generous passions, delight in representing to itself olden times, and mingling with gallant knights and paladins? Whilst a severe philosophy heaps measureless blame upon the barbarous customs of feudalism, and the gothic manners of our ancestors, how is it that the remembrances which these manners and these customs have left us inspire still our poets with pictures which appear to us so full of charms? Why are these remembrances revived every day with the same success, in our poems, in our romances, and upon our stage? Would it be true to say that there is more patriotism in our imagination than in our reason, since the one would make us forget the history of our country, and the other unceasingly reminds us of it?
The crusades assisted in destroying the abuses of the feudal system; they served to preserve all that the system inspired of generous sentiments, and concurred at the same time in developing that which it contained that was favourable to civilization. We will finish our sketch of the manners of feudalism and the salutary effects of the crusades, by describing the revolution which operated at this time upon the different classes of society. The nobility will fix our attention in the first place.
Nobles are found in every nation where the memory of ancestors is reckoned for anything. There can be no doubt that nobility was common among the Franks and other barbarous people who invaded Europe. But in what point of view was this nobility looked upon before the eleventh and twelfth centuries? How was it at first constituted? How was the illustration of races transmitted? We are in possession of very few monuments to assist in deciding these questions; and when we have thoroughly studied the history of the middle ages, we have nothing better to do than to imitate the genealogists, who, when embarrassed in explaining the origin of the most ancient families, content themselves with assigning it to the night-time of the past.
When we reflect upon the rapidity with which generations pass away, and how difficult it is, even in civilized times, for most families to make out their own history during a single century, can we be astonished that, in times of ignorance and barbarism, there have been so few means of preserving the memory of the most illustrious families? In addition to the almost entire absence of written documents, the idea of true grandeur, the idea of that which constitutes heroic illustration, did not yet strike men’s minds sufficiently forcibly to make them preserve a long remembrance of it.[97] In these barbarous times, men, and even princes, were most frequently only distinguished by their physical qualities or their bodily defects. To be convinced of this truth we have but to glance at the list of kings of the middle ages, in which we find the names of Pepin-le-Bref (Pepin the Short), Charles-le-Chauve (Charles the Bald), William-le-Roux (William Rufus, or the Red), Louis-le-Gros (Louis the Fat), Frederick-Barbereusse (Frederick Barbarossa, or Red Beard), and many others, whom their age only designated by that which struck their eyes and was obvious to the grossest perception. There are few things more curious for an observer, than to see how old chronicles make us acquainted with the personages whose actions they give an account of. They never omit in their pictures, either the colour of the hair, or the stature, or the countenance of the princes and heroes; and their historical portraits (may I be allowed the comparison?) bear much less resemblance to a passage of history, than to those descriptions which are now-a-days written upon the passports of travellers.
If, as a writer has said, entire man was not yet understood, it cannot be said that virtue was not known, as at any other period; but the idea of virtue was then lost in that of duty, and with the single sentiment of duty, which was but the voice of conscience or the modest instinct of habit, they dreamt not of living in the memory of men.[98] The desire for illustrating a name belongs to a nascent civilization. When civilization threw forth its first rays, moral ideas of greatness were attached to the name of ancient families; and it may be safely said that nobility was not truly instituted before the value of glory began to be felt. But what is very certain is, that in the crusades nobility acquired an eminence that it had never before enjoyed. The exploits of nobles in the cause of Christianity, were very different affairs from those wars of castle against castle, with which they employed themselves in Europe. Nobility from that time found its archives in history, and the opinion the world entertained of its valour became its loftiest title.
If we consult the most authentic facts and the most probable opinions, we have reason to believe that the distinctions of nobility were at first founded upon great offices, but principally upon property. It was for the land or estate that, in the feudal system, the oath of fealty or homage was taken, and the protection of the sovereign claimed. For the man who was not a proprietor there was no contract, no privilege; he had nothing to give, nothing to receive; in the times of Joinville, nobles were called rich men. In France, a great proprietor was, by right, noble; if he was ruined or despoiled, his descendants sank into the crowd again: thus had the customs of a barbarous age established it. A strange thing it is, that there are times in which extreme civilization can make a nation revert to the same estate as extreme barbarism. When political illusions shall be dispersed, and there shall remain nothing but the mere substance of society, it is still property, it is the estate which will establish pre-eminence and denote ranks. Lands will no longer furnish soldiers, but they will pay taxes for the support of them; they will no longer be held by the tenure of complying with the duty of feudal aid; but they will still owe the sovereign the support of their influence, in exchange for the protection they shall receive from the sovereign authority.
If, in the middle ages, aristocracy was founded upon land, society derived a great advantage from the circumstance; for territorial property, which does not change, which is always the same, preserves the institutions and manners of a people better than industrial property, which most frequently belongs no more to one country than another, and which, on that account, bears within itself the germs of corruption. If it was for this reason that formerly nobility was degraded by giving itself up to the speculations of commerce and industry, it must be agreed that the usage thus established, had at least a respectable aim, and arose from a salutary principle.[99]
Territorial property had then such an influence over the social state, that it is quite enough to be acquainted with the changes it experienced, to judge of the changes to which society was subjected. “As soon as the state of the property of a certain period is discovered,” says Robertson, “we may determine with precision what was at the same time the degree of power then enjoyed by the king or the nobility.” During the crusades, ecclesiastical and civil laws permitted nobles to alienate their domains. A great number of them availed themselves of this fatal privilege, and did not hesitate to sell their lands; which displaced property, and consequently power. The nobility thus lost its power, and the crown gained that which the aristocracy lost.
The crusades, however, were not unproductive of good fruit for the nobility; gentlemen acquired principalities in the East; most of the cities of Greece and Syria became so many lordships, which recognised as masters counts and barons enrolled under the banners of the holy wars; some, still more fortunate, ascended the throne of David, or that of Constantine, and took place among the greatest monarchs of Christendom.
The military orders likewise presented the nobility with amends for the losses they experienced in ruinous wars. These orders had immense possessions in both the West and the East; they were for the European nobility, an asylum in peace, and a school of heroism in war.
It was at this period that the use of surnames was introduced, and coats of arms were assumed. Every gentleman added to his own name the name of his estate, or the title of the lordship he possessed; he placed in his coat of arms a sign which distinguished his family and marked his nobility; genealogy became a science, and consecrated, by its researches, the illustration of races. Whatever value may be now-a-days attached to this science, it must be admitted that it often threw a great light upon the history of illustrious families, and sometimes upon the general history of a country to which these families belonged.
Everything leads us to believe that the origin of surnames,[100] but more particularly of coats of arms, is due to the Crusaders. The lord stood in no need of a mark of distinction when he did not go off his own manor; but he became aware of the necessity for distinguishing himself from others when he found himself at a distance from home, and confounded in the crowd of the Crusaders: a great number of families ruined themselves, or became extinct, in the holy wars. Such as were ruined attached themselves more strongly to the remembrance of their nobility, the only wealth that was left them; after the extinction of families, the necessity for replacing them was felt; it was under Philip-le-Hardi that the practice of creating nobles was introduced.[101] As soon as there were new nobles, it became of more consequence to be considered ancient ones. Property did not appear sufficient to preserve and transmit a name which itself became a property, consecrated by history and acknowledged by society. It was then that nobility attached more value to marks of distinction.
At the end of the feudal government, the nobility, it is true, still constituted, in a great degree, the strength of the army; but it served the state in a new character; it conformed more with the spirit of chivalry than with that of feudalism. A gentleman no longer paid homage to his sovereign for his estate, but he swore upon his sword to be faithful to him.
As soon as feudal services ceased to be required, the nobility increased in zeal for personal service. Kings eagerly welcomed them when they were no longer formidable; thus they recovered in the favour of courts a great portion of the advantages they had lost. As they still held the first rank in society, and preserved a great ascendancy over the other classes, they continued, by their example, to polish the spirit and the manners of the nation; and it is by their means particularly, that those elegant manners were formed which have so long distinguished the French among all the nations of Europe.
It is difficult, however, to say with precision what the nobility gained and what they lost by the changes that were effected. Their existence, doubtless, had something more brilliant in it, but also something less solid. The honorary prerogatives which they retained, without giving them any real strength, armed more jealous passions against them than territorial power had done; for it may be remarked, that man’s self-love endures riches and power in others, with a better grace than it endures distinctions.