This was not an ordinary war, but a veritable war of opinions; and as the lords had, to sustain it, nothing but their swords, they were at last obliged to renounce their pretensions.
The society of Europe, however, arrived at that period so fatal to nations, at that crisis, almost always a sanguinary one, in which new opinions and old opinions declare an obstinate war against each other; in which all that is new ferments, and is agitated violently; in which all that is ancient resists, and falls to pieces with a crash. For a length of time old laws were powerless; and the laws which were endeavoured to be established, had, in their execution, neither the force that is acquired by habit, nor that which is conferred by experience. A universal crisis was experienced throughout Europe; and the West, troubled by revolutions and civil wars, was, for a moment, upon the point of falling back into the darkness and chaos of the tenth century.
It was at this period that was established in Germany the imperial chamber, instituted for the purpose of appeasing discords and repressing brigandage. In Arragon the tutelary authority of the justiza was created, who was armed against license with all the power of a dictator. In all countries brotherhoods and associations were formed against the excesses of anarchy. It was in France, above all, that the necessity was felt to call in justice to the support of shaken social order, and to place it under the safeguard of royalty. Royal power was born, in some sort, amongst the perils and fears of society. There is an instinct which, in moments of crisis, guides people towards the authority which is to protect them; and this authority becomes all-powerful, from the reason that its assistance is implored, and that it is the object of all hopes.
Ecclesiastical jurisdiction had already dealt a mortal blow to feudal justice. The study of the Roman law caused something of the experience of the ancients to revive among nations scarcely escaped from barbarism. A new judicial order sprang up in Europe, particularly in France.[116] This judicial order was at first very complicated, in consequence of that natural disposition of men of the pen and of the robe to multiply forms in all affairs. To follow the clue through the labyrinth of the new laws, the barons were deficient in knowledge, and more particularly in patience. If it be true that lawyers complicated legislation in order to remain the sole interpreters of it, their hopes were not deceived; for they in the end took the places of the feudal nobles in judicial functions.
It is true that seignorial justices were not abolished; but an appeal was permitted from their decisions to the judgment of the crown. There were, besides, cases in which the justice of the barons was found incompetent, and as this incompetence was almost always judged of by the jurisdiction of the king, the latter finished by attracting to itself most of the causes of any weight or importance. As it is otherwise important that justice should be protected by a force that can make it respected, as the power of the barons declined, and as that of the king increased daily, the royal jurisdiction prevailed, and custom sanctioned the maxim that all justice emanates from the king. When once this maxim was recognised and proclaimed in all the provinces, Beaumanier was right in saying, “that the king was sovereign over everything, and that he had by right the general guardianship of the kingdom.”
It was at this period arose that French magistracy which afterwards became so eminent. The parliaments exhibited the frankness and loyalty of old times, united with the intelligence of modern times. They sometimes defended the rights of the people against the crown, and were often a buckler for the crown against factions. Perhaps their roots did not strike deeply enough into the society whose rights they defended. The fundamental laws of the kingdom had neither regulated their rights, nor fixed with precision the limits of their power. Their authority was due less to written constitutions than to that want of justice which is felt among civilized people, than to that supreme ascendancy which they almost always obtain whose function it is to be exponents of the law. We have seen parliaments perish amidst public disorders, for which they themselves gave the imprudent signal. They saw the faults of administration, but they were deficient in positive knowledge to point out the proper remedy: they appealed to the people, and factions answered; they invoked liberty, and the revolution burst forth. Now, when this magistracy no longer exists among us, and that it can have no place in the order of things which events have given birth to, it appears to us the moment is come for everybody to be just towards it, and to praise that noble disinterestedness, that enlightened firmness, that inflexible probity, which formed its principal character. “It is for the observer of the present period,” says an English writer, “and not for the historian of past times, to decide if those virtues which distinguished the ancient French magistracy are sufficiently common now-a-days, not to be remembered with great praise, and exhibited to our contemporaries as useful examples.”
In the revolution which was effected, we are astonished that the barons showed so little foresight; they opposed the privileges of an order of things which no longer existed, when, without their intervention and without their concurrence, a new order of things was established; the greater that was their need of union to defend themselves, the more obstinacy they showed for maintaining the too fatal privilege of making war upon each other. The habit of warlike and feudal manners made them prefer to all other functions the occupation of arms, which they considered, with reason, as the most glorious career; but which ruined them, kept them in their ignorance, and drove them from affairs, whilst others enriched themselves in peaceful employments, exercised their faculties usefully, and employed themselves exclusively with power. In the end, the nobility, after the most generous sacrifices, became nothing but an aristocracy without action in the government, whilst those who lent a hand to the administration became really the masters.
The revolutions we have just described have made us for a moment forget the crusades; the holy wars, however, may be reckoned among the causes which ameliorated legislation. The departure of the Crusaders gave occasion for a number of actions; precautions against fraud were multiplied; public notaries were called in; the use of charters,—called chartres chirographaires, or chartres parties,—was adopted, or rather revived. We have already said that many regulations were made to limit the numbers of the Crusaders, and these regulations were so many laws added to those which existed. The Crusaders, whilst passing through distant countries, might remark many wise customs, which they brought back into their own country. Villehardouin informs us with what astonishment the French nobles, on their arrival at Venice, beheld the senate, the doge, and the people deliberating in their presence. This spectacle could not fail to enlighten them. When the Latins were masters of Constantinople, they there became acquainted with the legislation of Greece; in Palestine, the Assizes of Jerusalem gave them an idea of a legislation less imperfect than their own; the code which for a long time governed the Christian colonies led Louis IX. to think of making a collection of laws, which he did not, it is true, put in practice, but which no doubt spread much useful information. The example of St. Louis, and the encouragement that jurisconsults received on his return from Egypt, contributed to create among the people the love of justice; and this love of justice, which began to be felt among all classes, was the best guarantee of a nascent civilization.
Skilful writers have gone over before us this epoch, so abundant in great events and in lessons of policy. They have shown how royalty rose from the bosom of disorder; how legislation progressively prevailed over anarchy; and how several states of Europe—particularly France—attained that degree of strength and splendour in which we have seen them during the eighteenth century. There would remain but very little for us to say, after the great publicists who have preceded us, if recent revolutions had not broken forth to enlighten us. The experience of the present times has thrown a new light over past ages; and we are better acquainted with the nature and origin of old institutions, since we have seen them sink into ruins. The tree of our ancient monarchy has not been able to resist the concussions which have shaken society; its branches have strewed the earth, and its roots have been laid bare. It then became easy for us to see by what secret conduits strength and life had been circulated; how had grown, and how had fallen,—
“That tree whose head approached to heaven,
And whose feet touched the empire of the dead.”[117]
After having gone through the different classes of society, and shown the origins of our institutions during the crusades, we are about to see what was, at the same period, the progress of navigation, commerce, industry, the sciences, letters, the arts, and general knowledge.
Before the twelfth century, the seas of Europe and Asia, with the exception of the Mediterranean, were scarcely frequented even by the nations who dwelt upon their shores. At the period of the first crusades, that which formed the kingdom of France had but two or three ports upon the coast of Normandy, and had not a single one upon the ocean, or the Mediterranean, when, in the seventh crusade, Louis IX. caused that of Aigues-Mortes to be dug.[118] England was scarcely more advanced; that kingdom abandoned the navigation of the seas which surrounded it to pirates. It appeared that the world was not yet large enough for the ambition and genius of the English nation, which at the present day dominates over all the known seas. Some cities on the shores of the Baltic, of Holland, Flanders, and Spain, made maritime expeditions, but which scarcely deserve to be described in the history of the crusades. When the crusades began, the spirit of devotion, united with that of commerce, gave a new and more extended direction to the voyages and labours of navigators. The inhabitants of Denmark appeared in the seas of Syria; and Norwegians, who came by sea, assisted at the taking of Sidon. Citizens of Lubeck and Bremen were present at the siege of Ptolemaïs. From all the coasts of the West, vessels and fleets transported pilgrims, provisions, and arms into the kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Christian principalities established in Asia by the victories of the Crusaders.
Thus navigators from all countries met in the seas of the East. It was, in some sort, under the auspices of the cross, that advantageous relations began to be established among the maritime nations of Europe. At the commencement of the twelfth century, a fleet of Pisans, joined with some other Italians, came to assist the Arragonese in conquering the Balearic Isles. The navigators of Italy were so little acquainted with the seas of Spain, that they took the coasts of Arragon for the country of the Moors. This first alliance between distant nations was the work of a crusade preached by Pope Pascal III., and seconded by a great number of knights of Provence and Languedoc.
The navigators of Lubeck, Bremen, and Denmark, after having tried their strength in long voyages, took advantage of the experience they had gained, to visit the unknown seas of the Baltic. These new enterprises presented to their pious zeal and their ambition a nearer sea, and savage peoples which they might bring under their faith, and make subservient to their commercial views. Maritime expeditions were mixed with the crusades preached against nations still living in a state of paganism. At the aspect of the cross and the flag of navigators, rich cities sprang up, and barbarous regions began to be acquainted with the blessings of civilization.
It was at this period that navigation opened for itself a new career, and saw the theatre of its useful labours expand. Nothing could have favoured its progress like the communication that was then established between the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the Spanish Ocean, and the seas of the north. By uniting nations in pursuit of the same advantages, it multiplied their relations, their ties, and their interests, and redoubled their emulation. In this career thus opened to all the nations of Europe, practical knowledge became rectified, was much increased, and spread everywhere; the configuration of coasts, the position of capes, ports, bays, isles, &c. &c., were all ascertained; the depth of the ocean was fathomed; the direction of winds, currents, and tides was observed; much information was gained upon all the points of hydrography, and very soon that ignorance of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was dispersed, which had occasioned so many shipwrecks, that the chroniclers of the times of the first crusades, as they tremblingly recount them, can only ascribe them to the anger of Heaven.
We would here speak of the mariner’s compass, if the period of its invention could be ascertained clearly. A passage of James of Vitry, which we have elsewhere given, does not permit us to doubt that the properties of the loadstone were known in the time of the crusades, and that navigators derived great assistance from it in their long voyages; but, on the other hand, there is nothing to prove that the use of the mariner’s compass was then general. We may believe that so valuable a discovery was still a secret for the vulgar, and that those who were in possession of this secret, only sought to profit by it for their own interest, without thinking of the advantages that might be drawn from it for the progress of navigation. We will add that that which has happened to the mariner’s compass, has happened also to most of the inventions of industry, of which history can rarely assign the epochs, because their authors, from a spirit of cupidity or jealousy, have not only not promulgated them, but have concealed them carefully from the knowledge of their contemporaries.
Naval architecture was much improved during the crusades. The vessels were greatly enlarged, to enable them to contain the multitudes of pilgrims to be transported. The dangers incidental to long voyages, caused the ships destined for the East to be constructed in a more solid manner. The art of setting up several masts in the same vessel, the art of multiplying the sails, and of disposing them so as to enable the ship to sail against the wind, were the happy fruit of the emulation which then animated navigators.
Thus the activity and the genius of man triumphed over all obstacles, commanded the elements, and took possession of the empire of the sea. But this empire, like that of the land, was, in the middle ages, a prey to brigandage and violence; tempests, contrary winds, shipwrecks, were not the only evils to be apprehended in long voyages. On every sea no right was known but the right of the strongest, and the absence of a maritime code added greatly to the perils of distant navigation.
The necessity for a legislation that might assure the interests and the freedom of navigators was strongly felt. It was Spain that furnished the first model of one. At the commencement of the twelfth century a code of maritime rights was drawn up by the ancient prudhommes[119] of the Sea of Barcelona. The Venetians adopted it in an assembly held at St. Sophia, in 1255. This code was afterwards adopted by the Pisans and Genoese, and, under the name of the Consulat of the Sea, became the common law or right of the eastern seas. Another code, published at first by Eleanor of Guienne, and afterwards by Richard Cœur-de-Lion, under the title of “Rolls of Oleron,” obtained the assent of several maritime nations, and was at last accepted in all the seas of the West.
Protected by this code, navigators were enabled to gather the fruit of their long labours, and soon disputed advantageously the empire of the Mediterranean with the infidels. If Italy and several other countries of the West escaped the yoke of the Saracens, they owed their safety more to the superiority of their fleets than to that of their armies.
I have spoken in the preceding book of the discovery of America, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. It is probable that, without the crusades, the genius of navigators would, although later, have surmounted the immense space and numberless dangers that separated the Baltic and the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean, and the Old World from the New. We may at least say that the distant expeditions and the perilous enterprises undertaken beneath the banners of the cross, prepared the way for the last prodigies of navigation, by opening everywhere new routes for industry, and, above all, by favouring the progress of commerce, the natural and necessary link between the divers nations and the different countries of the globe.
Each climate has its productions; and this diversity of riches creates for men an obligation for exchanges. This obligation for exchanges produces communication among all nations, so that in time the most widely-separated regions cannot remain unknown to each other. It may truly be said, that Providence has thus placed various productions in different climates, that it has denied to some countries what it has granted to others, to create for men dispersed over the face of the earth, the necessity for reciprocally seeking each other, for trading to supply their mutual wants, for communicating their knowledge, and for marching together towards civilization.
In the middle ages, the indolent and effeminate Greeks neglected to bring into the West the merchandises of Asia. The Saracens only anchored on the coasts of Europe, to bring thither the scourges of war. The commerce of the West went to seek that which was not brought to it; and frequent voyages to the East were all for the profit of the West.
A long time before the crusades, the merchandises of India and Asia had arrived in Europe, sometimes by land, crossing the Greek empire, Hungary, and the country of the Bulgarians; but more frequently by the Mediterranean, in which were all the ports of Italy. These routes were both made more familiar by the holy wars, and from that time nothing could stop the rapid progress of commerce, protected in its march by the standard of the cross.
Most of the maritime cities of the West not only got rich by furnishing Europe with the productions of the East, but they found further a considerable advantage in the transport of pilgrims and Christian armies. Fleets followed along the coasts of the countries in which the Crusaders were fighting, and sold them the munitions of war and the provisions of which they always stood in need. Thus commerce brought back into Europe a part of the treasures which the princes and barons, who ruined themselves to go and fight the infidels, carried into Asia.
All the wealth of the maritime cities of Syria, and even of Greece, belonged to merchants of the West. They were the masters of a great part of the Christian cities of Asia; we know what was the share of the Venetians after the taking of Constantinople. They possessed all the isles of the Archipelago, and half of Byzantium. The Greek empire was as another Venice, with its laws, its fleets, and its armies.
The Latins soon lost Constantinople, Jerusalem, and most of the countries which submitted to their arms. Commerce, more fortunate, preserved its conquests after the crusades. The city of Tana, built at the mouth of the Tanais, became for Venice a colony, which opened for her useful relations with Persia and Tartary, and which dominated in the markets of Tauris, Trebizond, Bagdad, and Bassora. Some Genoese, assembled in a little city of the Crimea,—Caffa, at the time even when the Turks were threatening Europe, employed themselves in working the mines of the Caucasus, and receiving the treasures of India by way of Astracan. European commerce established stores even among nations that made cruel war against the Christians. The terror which the Mamelukes inspired did not prevent colonies of merchants establishing themselves in Egypt. Africa, particularly the coast of the Mediterranean, was all subservient to their mercantile ambition, and the places which St. Louis had not been able to conquer, became tributaries to their industry.
Whilst the commerce of all parts of the world was thus placed in the hands of a few maritime cities, many of the great kingdoms of Europe were still strangers to it. England, which had no other wealth but its wools, gladly received in its capital the merchandises of Asia, brought thither by Italian and Spanish merchants. The cities of France took but little part in the commerce of the East. The crusades were the work of the French; others gathered the fruits of them. Marseilles was, in the middle ages, the only French city which kept up any relation with distant nations. This city founded by the Phocians, for the sake of the commerce with the Gauls, had never ceased to turn its eyes towards the places of its origin, and have commercial relations with Syria and Greece. Spain, whose industry developed itself early, took more advantage from the crusades, and, towards the end of the holy wars, the Spaniards had warehouses upon all the coasts of Asia.
No country, however, derived more advantage from the trade of the East than Italy. This country, which dominated over the Mediterranean, and which lay open to all parts of the known world, was placed in the most favourable position. This position, which had formerly facilitated the conquests of the Romans, assisted the nations of Italy in their new enterprises, and subdued the world to their speculations, as it had subdued it to their arms. Whilst their fleets set out for the East, they sent into Europe, not legions and proconsuls, as Rome had done, but caravans of merchants, who subdued the provinces they passed through to the calculations and the wants of commerce. These merchants disposed of, by their industrious traffic, all the money which then circulated in the West. In all countries they had numerous colonies and considerable establishments. Europe has no great cities in which the name of the Lombards, given to a street, to a quarter, does not, even at the present day, attest the long sojourn of the Italian merchants.
We cannot help admiring this power of commerce; but it had likewise its principle of destruction. What rivalries, what jealous passions, did it not give birth to daily! Pacific conquests were contended for without ceasing, swords in hand. In this struggle many cities succumbed; Pisa was destroyed by Genoa; Genoa, in her turn, could not maintain its rivalry against Venice. Another rock for these commercial powers, was the mobility of the commerce which had elevated them, and which carried unceasingly its favours and its gifts from one place to another. If commerce changed its route or its direction, that was quite enough to make a city prosper, or to precipitate its fall. In the middle ages, a crowd of cities disappeared, without discord or war having at all contributed to their ruin. It appeared as if fortune took a pleasure in destroying her own work, and as if she disdained on that account to associate herself with human passions.
It is not possible to separate the progress of industry and even of agriculture from that of commerce. To ascertain what industry and agriculture could gain by relations with the East, it would perhaps be sufficient to ascertain in what state these two sources of prosperity then were among the Orientals. Among so many travellers, there were, doubtless, some who had an interest in observing the usages and practices of the distant countries they visited. We know that in the expeditions of the Crusaders, such as were masters of a trade, or were skilful in a mechanical art, were enrolled in preference to others. These industrious pilgrims did not always make a voyage barren of advantages for their country; and in those holy wars, in which the knights of the cross only sought victory and renown, industry, if I may venture to say so, had also its crusade, whose peaceful trophies consisted in precious discoveries, stolen from the Greeks or the Saracens, and in the happy imitation of that which they had admired in the arts of the East.
The Saracens had manufactures of stuffs before the crusades. At Damascus, and in the cities of Egypt, metals were worked with greater perfection than in the West. Old chronicles inform us that the Christians of Palestine went sometimes to Damascus to purchase arms. Joinville relates that, being on a pilgrimage to our lady of Tortosa, he bought at Tripoli some camlets, fabricated in that city. He sent some pieces of them to Queen Marguerite, who, he tells us, at first took them for relics, and fell on her knees to receive them; but upon discovering her mistake arose, saying, “Mischief upon the seneschal! who has made me kneel to his camlets.”[120] Joinville was directed by Louis IX. to purchase a quantity of this stuff, which proves that the manufactory in which it was fabricated had some reputation.
There were at this period, in the same city of Tripoli, and in several cities of Greece, a great number of silk-looms, the produce of which must have excited great attention in the merchants and pilgrims who visited the East. About the middle of the twelfth century, Roger II., king of Sicily, caused several of these looms to be transported to Palermo; this was the fruit of an expedition to the coasts of Greece. The mulberry-tree flourished and multiplied under the beautiful sky of Italy, as well as under that of the Morea, and this useful conquest gave the Sicilians the means of soon surpassing the industry of the Greeks. The principal workshop was placed in the palace of the kings, as if to display the richness and magnificence of this new art.
Many useful inventions came to us at this period from the countries of the East. Some writers affirm that windmills were known in Europe before the crusades; but we should remember that they might have been due to the early pilgrimages into Asia, which it is so difficult to separate, upon such matters, from the holy wars.[121]
Tyre was at this time famous for its glass. The sand found in its vicinity gave to the fabrication of glass a perfection unknown in other countries. The use of glass was much more common in Palestine than in the West. The Venetians obtained from Tyre the idea of their beautiful works in glass, so celebrated in the middle ages.
The Crusaders, as has been seen in this history, always evinced great surprise at witnessing the explosion of the Greek fire. But what appears very strange, they never seemed to envy the Saracens this great advantage. The Frank warriors, in the field of battle, preferred the sword and lance to a means of fighting which, in their minds, took away something from personal bravery. It is not at all improbable, however, that the Greek fire, in the end, furnished the idea of gunpowder; an invention fatal to humanity, but which placed a formidable weapon in the hands of European society, when threatened by the Turks and Tartars.
We have already spoken of the maize, or Turkish wheat, sent into Italy by Boniface of Montferrat, in the fourth crusade. The Damascus plum was brought at the same time into Europe by a duke of Anjou, who visited Jerusalem. Our gardens owe to the holy wars the ranunculus, so prized by Orientals, and shalots, which take their name from Ascalon; the knowledge, or rather the use of saffron, alum, and indigo, in Europe, may be traced to the times of the crusades.
We may remember with what delight the Crusaders saw for the first time the sugar-canes of the territory of Tripoli. The plant was transported to Sicily, about the middle of the twelfth century. It is not correct, however, to say that it passed from thence into the new world. If the Spaniards afterwards transported the sugar-cane to the island of Madeira, we may believe they found it in the kingdom of Granada, whither the Moors had brought it from Africa. But it is also probable that notice was only taken of this plant because the taste for sugar was widely spread, and that the substance, which was brought from Egypt, became an important branch of commerce. It is thus we may render honour to the crusades.
Natural history, which is connected with the progress of industry and agriculture, was enriched likewise by some useful notions. Distant climates not only exchanged their vegetable productions, but the crusades procured for Europe an acquaintance with several animals of Africa and Asia. We have mentioned that the Mamelukes of Egypt sent Louis IX. an elephant, of which the French monarch made a present to the king of England. A short time after the first expedition of Louis IX., Bibars sent to Mainfrey, son of Frederick II., several Mogul prisoners, with their horses, which were of Tartar breed. Among the Oriental productions which the Egyptian ambassadors were directed to present to the king of Sicily, was a giraffe, an animal that had never till that time been seen in the West.
The curious circumstances which we could further produce, would add nothing to the opinion that must be already entertained of the happy influence of the crusades upon the progress of agriculture and industry. The riches of Asia, when brought into Europe, soon gave birth to a desire for the cultivation of the arts which embellish life, and of the sciences which double the faculties of man.
In the tenth century, architecture consisted in the construction of towers, ramparts, and fortresses. In the habitations of the great, everything was sacrificed to the necessity of providing defences against an enemy; nothing could be afforded to comfort or magnificence. The dwellings of the people, even in cities, scarcely protected them from the injuries of weather or the intemperance of seasons. The only architectural monuments were those which devotion raised to ancestors. Before magnificent palaces for princes, or convenient houses for the rich were thought of, edifices consecrated to religion were constructed. It is scarcely possible to enumerate the churches and monasteries built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to the opinion of the time, the most certain mode of expiating sins, was to build a church or a monastery. Thus architectural monuments arose at the voice of repentance, and religious inspirations revived, in some sort, the prodigies which fabulous antiquity attributed to the lyre of Amphion.
In every city, in every town, the inhabitants made it their pride to ornament their cathedral, and the altars at which they invoked the saint whom the parish had chosen for its patron. It may be said that there was something like patriotism in this pious zeal; for the basilic, or paternal church, was then the most noble and the most sensible image of the country.
At the commencement of the crusades, there existed a religious confraternity composed of men practised in the labours of building; they travelled about the world, offering their services to the faithful to build or repair churches. Another confraternity was formed with the useful design of constructing bridges for pilgrims and travellers. A chapel or an oratory reminded passengers that the bridge they were crossing was the work of charity.
The clergy, who were rich, and could only display their opulence in buildings, made it their glory to erect churches. To complete their work, they called in the aid of painting and sculpture, which, like architecture, owed their first encouragement to piety, and whose earliest masterpieces were consecrated to the ornamenting of the altars of the Christian religion.
Nothing was more common than to see noble Crusaders, on their departure for Palestine, or on their return to the West, found a monastery or a church. Several pilgrims are named, who, on coming back from Jerusalem, employed their treasures in constructing churches, the form of which might offer them an image of the holy sepulchre they had visited. The treasures conquered from the infidels were often appropriated to such buildings. Before the first crusade, some cities of Italy undertook an expedition into Africa, and the spoils were reserved for the ornamenting of churches. We read in an Italian chronicle, that the Pisans ceded to the Greek emperor Calo-John several cities which belonged to them in Asia Minor, upon the condition that this emperor would defray the expenses necessary for the building of the archbishop’s palace at Pisa, and ornamenting the cathedral of Palermo.
During the crusades, the sight of the monuments of architecture which were admired in the East, must have awakened the emulation of the western pilgrims. Nothing could exceed the surprise of the Crusaders at beholding the city of Constantine. Foucher de Chartres exclaimed in his enthusiasm: “Oh, what a vast and beautiful city is Constantinople!” The German historian Gunther likewise expresses his admiration, and says that such magnificence could not be believed if it were not seen. The marshal of Champagne relates that the French knights, on seeing the beautiful towers and the superb palaces of Byzantium, could not persuade themselves that there could be such a rich city in all the world!
Italy, which derived such advantages from its relations with the East, profited greatly by the masterpieces of Greece. The inhabitants of Rome, and of several other cities founded and embellished by the Romans, had before them remains of antiquity that might serve them as models. The riches which their commerce brought them furnished them with the means of encouraging industry and the arts, which assist in the embellishment of cities. The cities of Italy,—Venice in particular,—had palaces and sumptuous edifices before the crusades. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the taste for beautiful architecture changed the face of Italy, and spread by degrees throughout the rest of Europe.
We must add, however, that the fine arts, with the exception of architecture, owed very little to the frequent communications with the East. Painting was despised among the Mussulmans, to whom the Koran forbade the reproduction of the images of man or of animated beings. The Latins likewise, as our readers may remember, after the taking of Constantinople, destroyed most of the monuments raised by the genius of sculpture, and converted the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles into pieces of coin.
The indolent and silent character of the orientals was not calculated to carry music to perfection, as this art bespeaks a lively and warm imagination in a people; and the Greeks had for a long time lost the secret of those melodious songs which, in the times of Linus and Orpheus, charmed the heights of Rhodope and the woods of Mænalus. The history of music, then, has very little to do with that of the holy wars. When Italy saw the fine arts revive, they sprang up as a natural production of the soil, as plants indigenous to the climate; they owed their splendour to the prosperous state of society, and followed, as a consequence of the opulence and luxury which commerce and industry had produced.[122]
The revival of the fine arts announced that of letters. But if it be true that letters owed a part of their progress to the influence of the crusades, it must be confessed that the Crusaders did not always show themselves disposed to profit by them for themselves: nothing can exceed the ignorance of the Crusaders who then set out for the East. History informs us that after the taking of Jerusalem, they burnt at Tripoli a library which contained the most precious monuments of oriental literature: at the taking of Constantinople, a conflagration devoured the literary treasures of ancient Greece. The Crusaders beheld this misfortune with so much indifference, that not one of their chronicles makes mention of it, and posterity would have been ignorant of it but for the eloquent complaints of Nicetas.
The science which gained most by these distant expeditions was doubtless geography. Before the crusades, this science was quite unknown. Countries, the least distant from each other, had no intercommunication. Burgundy was scarcely known at Paris; in Burgundy Paris was considered as a very remote place. The Crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit were not acquainted with the names of the cities of Germany and Hungary which they passed through. They experienced a defeat at Mersbourg, and the contemporary chronicles that speak of it content themselves with calling the Hungarian city Malleville, or the city of misfortune.
If the Franks scarcely knew their own country, what must have been their ignorance of the countries of the East? We may judge by the necessity they felt for taking their guides from among the Greeks, whom they mistrusted, and by their extreme embarrassment whenever these guides abandoned them. Several armies perished from want of knowing the places to which victory conducted them. Most of the chroniclers knew no more about the matter than the Crusaders; and this it is that renders it so difficult to follow them in Asia Minor and Syria.
One most remarkable circumstance is, that out of more than two hundred chronicles that speak of Egypt, we have not been able to find more than one that makes mention of the Pyramids. James of Vitry, who sojourned for a long time in Syria, and who appears to have possessed as much knowledge as was then common to the learned, repeats, in his descriptions of the East, the fables of Herodotus; such as the history of the Amazons and that of the phœnix. We can scarcely forbear laughing at the simple credulity of Joinville, who tells us gravely, in his memoirs, that the trees of the terrestrial paradise produce cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and that these spices are fished out of the waters of the Nile, whither they have been carried by the winds.
The Crusaders, constantly engaged in fighting, never entertained the idea of making themselves acquainted with the countries subdued by their arms. Nevertheless, in consequence of them, religion and commerce,—the one led by the desire of spreading the Gospel, the other by the hopes of gaining wealth, opened some new routes, and gained useful notions concerning the East during the crusades. The missionaries sent by the court of Rome and by St. Louis travelled over the vast regions of Asia, and commerce either followed or went before them in these distant journeys. The accounts of Rubruquis, Asselin, John Plan Carpin, and Marco Paolo, contain observations of which the truth and correctness are recognised at the present day.
We may add that the Crusaders, who went from all the countries of Europe, became acquainted with each other beneath the standard of the cross. Nations were no longer foreign to each other; which dissipated the ignorance in which they had been regarding the names of the cities and provinces of the West.
The geographical charts of this period neither give the configuration of the globe, nor the extent of countries, nor the position or limits of emperors; they merely trace, by vague designations, that which struck travellers most forcibly,—such as the curiosities of each country, the animals, the buildings, and the various dresses of men. We have seen a map of the world, which is attached to the chronicle of St. Denis, and which appears to have been made in the thirteenth century: we do not find, as in modern maps, the names of the four cardinal points set down, but on the four sides are written the names of the principal winds, to the number of twelve. Jerusalem, according to the opinion of the time, is placed in the centre of the three parts of the known world; a large edifice surmounted by a cross represents the holy city. Around this queen of cities, the author of the map has figured, by other edifices, the cities of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, &c.: the distances are marked without any attention to exactness; all appears thrown at random on the paper: this confused mass of edifices or houses, seems to be less a representation of the universe than the shapeless picture of a great city, built without plan or regularity.
We may judge by this how completely geography was then in its infancy; but, at the same time, it renders it evident that it was not quite neglected, as till that time it had been. Thus, we have a right to believe they would not stand still there, and that geographical knowledge would soon advance. In the fourteenth century, the countries of the East were already much better known, if we may judge by the chart which Sanuti presented to the pope, and which may be seen in the collection of the historians of the crusades by Bengars.
The sciences most useful to man, such as medicine, might have made some progress during the crusades, if the Crusaders had profited by the knowledge of the Orientals. In medicine particularly, the Arabians had more positive knowledge than the Latins. At the siege of Ptolemaïs, we have seen that Saladin sent his physicians to Richard; but we do not learn that the king of England sent his to Saladin, when he fell ill. In the first crusade of St. Louis, the physicians who accompanied the army of the Crusaders understood nothing of the scurvy and other epidemic diseases, which exercised such ravages in the camp of the Christians. Their ignorance was not less fatal than the contagion: when Louis IX. and his warriors became the prisoners of the Mussulmans, the diseases which desolated them ceased all at once, because they were no longer attended by their own physicians, but were placed under the care of the Arabians.
The East then furnished Europe with several processes and remedies from which modern medicine, for a length of time, derived great advantage. Cassia and senna came from Asia, and became known in the West at the period of the crusades. Theriaca, which played so great a part in the medicine of the middle ages, was brought from Antioch to Venice. Robert of Normandy, on his return from the Holy Land, after the taking of Jerusalem, obtained from the school of Salerno a collection of Hygeian precepts, which became proverbs among all the nations of Europe.
And yet these discoveries, and this knowledge of the Orientals, did not much enlighten the West in the art of curing. Properly to receive lessons of experience of this kind, preliminary studies were necessary, and the physicians of Europe were then too ignorant to profit by the learning of the Arabians. At this period, religious charity raised a great number of open asylums for suffering humanity. But this charity, however admirable, when its object was to attend the sick, and comfort them in their sufferings, knew but very little of the symptoms or the character of the numberless diseases which attack the life of man. It may be safely said, that during the crusades, we received from the East many more serious diseases than true instruction in medicine. We know that there were numerous lazar-houses established in Europe in the time of the crusades; but we know nothing of the remedies employed for the cure of leprosy. Isolation appears to have been the only curative or preservative means known for this malady, which many learned physicians now look upon as mere prejudice. The spirit of devotion richly endowed lepers, without doing anything for their cure. Leprosy, in the end, disappeared without the assistance of medicine, and the property bestowed upon lazar-houses was transferred to the hospitals; which was advantageous to humanity, and may be set down as one of the benefits of the crusades.[123]
We will say nothing of the other sciences, which owed still less than geography and medicine to the holy wars.
The Saracens of Syria were very little enlightened in the middle ages. In the East, the state of knowledge, like everything else, depended upon the reign of a great prince; whilst this prince reigned, knowledge flourished by his influence; at his death, everything returned to darkness, as the natural state of countries governed by Islamism.[124]
The Franks gained more by their commerce with the Greeks than by that with the Saracens. The Crusaders established continual relations between the cities of Italy and the empire of Byzantium. Some sparks of the genius of the Greeks were glimmering in Italy before the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.
A college for young Greeks was established at Paris in the reign of Philip Augustus. In the thirteenth century universities flourished at Bologna, Paris, and Salamanca, in which the Greek language was taught; and later, the Oriental languages were added, by a decree of the council of Vienna.
We find in a chronicle of St. Denis these remarkable words:—“This year, 1257, William, a physician, brought some Greek books from Constantinople.” Thus, the arrival of some volumes from Greece was an event worthy of being recorded, and the importance attached to it, already announced the disposition of men’s minds.
When the Turks became masters of Constantinople, the learned, exiled from their country, came to establish themselves in Italy, where the Greek muses formed an alliance with the Latin muses. The venerable interpreters of antiquity were hailed everywhere with eagerness, and the communication of their knowledge was repaid by generous hospitality. Among the distinguished men to whom the muses of ancient Greece owed an honourable protection, we must not forget Nicholas V., who, as the head of the Christians of the West, excommunicated the Greek Church, and, as a scholar, seemed to have vowed a worship to the genius of Homer and Plato.[125] Printing, which had then recently been invented, was employed to preserve the literary treasures brought from the East, and made them for ever safe from the scythe of Time, the furies of war, or the hands of barbarians. The Iliad and the Odyssey found readers in places which had inspired the Æneid; the orations of Demosthenes were again read amid the wrecks of the forum, where the learned might believe they still listened to the voice of Cicero. The genius of the Italians, kindled by the masterpieces of ancient Rome and of old Athens, produced fresh masterpieces; and Italy presented a phenomenon which the world will, perhaps, never see again,—that of a nation which, in the space of a few centuries, obtained twice the palm of literature in two different languages.
It was from Constantinople we received the philosophy of Aristotle. We can scarcely say to what extent the true friends of intelligence ought to congratulate themselves on this head. Aristotle had disciples, partisans, and martyrs; the philosopher of Stagyra was very near being preferred to the Bible; the contemners of Aristotle were called Biblici. At that period a mania for subtleties was introduced into the schools, which dishonoured the teaching of philosophy. Reason was no longer studied in the mind of man, but in a book; nature was no longer studied in the universe, but in Aristotle. The schools became like fencing-matches. In an age in which everything was decided by violence, the human mind wished to have its species of warfare; so that victory in most affairs was considered justice; and became, in the schools, the only reason. We may believe that this philosophy did not much assist the march of true wisdom; but we must admit, that if it did, for a moment, lead the human mind astray, it did not quite arrest its progress. It exercised the faculties of man, and by that means assisted in their development. At the commencement of societies, it is less the errors of the mind than its inaction that retains nations in the darkness of barbarism.
Universities had never been so attended as at this period. The number of students in the schools of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford were said to amount to ten thousand. The great privileges granted to universities, prove the esteem in which learning was then held. The doctors disputed for precedency with knighthood itself. If Bartholo is to be believed, ten years’ teaching of the Roman law conferred the title of knight. This dignity was called the knighthood of learning, and they who attained it were called knights-clerks.
Among all the productions of mind, those which ought to be ranked first, were such as had for object the preservation of the memory of events. At all periods of the middle ages, chronicles appeared, to which were consigned the important facts of history. In many monasteries were kept registers or journals, in which was inserted everything remarkable that happened in the various parts of the world. Monks, in the general assemblies, sometimes communicated these registers to each other, and this communication assisted them in rendering their chronicles more complete. In ages less remote from us, other cenobites have collected, with laborious care, these same chronicles, concealed in the solitude of cloisters, and have transmitted them to posterity as the most precious monuments of old times.
The ancient chroniclers were simple and pious men; they considered the least falsehood as a mortal sin; they were scrupulous in telling the truth, when they were acquainted with it. Most of them would have thought themselves deficient in the duties of an historian, if they had not gone back to the creation of the world, or at least to the deluge. Among the events which they relate, they never forgot such as would strike the vulgar, and which struck themselves; as the revolutions of nature, famines, prodigies, &c. According to the spirit of their age, the foundation of a monastery holds a more conspicuous place in their recitals than that of a kingdom or of a republic. Politics are quite unknown to them; and everything which astonishes them, everything they do not easily comprehend, they rarely fail to account for by a miracle.
Such is the character of our old chroniclers; and even when they do not inform us of that which we desire to know, their simplicity touches us, and their ingenuousness interests us. When they tell us of wonderful things which were believed in their times, and of which they appear fully persuaded, they do nothing but paint themselves and their age.
But we must beware of fancying the Oriental chronicles of the same period more perfect than our own. We find in them the same spirit of superstition and credulity, united to that spirit of fatalism which characterizes the Mussulman faith.
It is quite in vain for us to seek in Arabian historians any of those thoughts that instruct us in the knowledge of human passions or political revolutions. They almost always neglect the most important circumstances of events, in order to describe whimsical particularities, or to enter into insignificant details; thus, obeying the spirit of oriental despotism, which wills that man should be always occupied with little things. When they relate the fall of an empire, if asked why it has fallen, they reply: “God knows, God has willed it so.” In all their chronicles which we have consulted, whenever the Mussulmans triumph over the Christians, we never find any other reflection but this: “God is God, and Mahomet is his prophet.” When the Christians gain a victory, the Mussulman chronicles preserve a perfect silence, contenting themselves with saying: “May God curse them!”
Oriental historical productions are very far from redeeming this absence of remark by another merit, such as order, clearness, or elegance; most of their accounts are nothing but a nomenclature of facts confusedly arranged. Quotations from the Koran, verses made upon the occurrence of an event, some comparisons which belong rather to poetry than history,—such are the only ornaments of their narrations.
We see by this that our chronicles of the middle ages have nothing to envy in those of the East. Most of them, it is true, are of an extreme dryness, and have neither precision nor method. But still some few of them do not appear unworthy of attracting the attention of scholars and men of taste. As their authors wrote in Latin, we have reason to believe that the great works of antiquity were not unknown to them, and in many of their recitals, we may easily perceive they have had models.
History must have made some progress during the crusades. These long wars between the Christians and the Mussulmans were like a great spectacle at which Europe and Asia were present. The importance of the events, and the lively interest which Christendom took in them, inspired several writers with the desire of retracing the history of them. A crowd of chroniclers arose in the West, among whom some were not unworthy of the name of historians. Everybody is acquainted with William of Tyre, who may be called the Livy of the crusades, Albert d’Aix, Baudry, archbishop of Dol, Odo of Deuil, and particularly James of Vitry, in whom we meet with vivid and animated descriptions, a rapid and flowing style, and a narration almost always elegant:—and, though last, not least, Villehardouin and Joinville, who wrote in the French language, and whose memoirs are the earliest monuments of French literature.
But all these events which presented to historians such rich pictures, the wonders of nascent institutions, the prodigies of the social world issuing from the chaos of barbarism, must not only have awakened the curiosity, they must have struck vividly the minds of new generations. This grand spectacle, without doubt, contributed to the development of the faculties connected with the imagination. After having seen the simple and faithful relations of events, the genius of poets was called upon to add something to the truthful pictures of the chroniclers. The troubadours who flourished during the crusades were not likely to neglect the exploits of so many gallant knights. We hear their voices constantly mingling with those of the preachers of the holy wars, and find their poetical fictions everywhere confounded with the narrations of history.
Among the warriors who went into the East to combat the infidels, a great number of troubadours and trouvères distinguished themselves. We have seen the romance of Raoul de Couci, and the verses of Thibault, count of Champagne. We may add to these names known in the fasti of the French muses, those of the count of Poictiers, the count of Anjou, the duke of Brittany, Frederick II., and Richard Cœur-de-Lion. Often would these princely and lordly Crusaders charm the tediousness of a long pilgrimage by poetical relaxations and remembrances. The count of Soissons, when a prisoner with St. Louis, sang the praises of the dames of France, in the presence and beneath the very swords of the Saracens. One chronicle relates that at the end of the third crusade, the duke of Burgundy made a satire against Richard, and that Richard replied by a poem. The example of these princes was enough to arouse the emulation of the poets; and as they composed their verses in the French language, this language, which was then spoken at Jerusalem, Constantinople, and many other places in the East, must have prevailed over all contemporary idioms.
The muse of the troubadours celebrated chivalry, love, and beauty; that of the trouvères, who dwelt on the banks of the Loire, and in the provinces situated beyond that river, delighted in songs of a more serious kind. The trouvères had rivals in England and Germany. These poets had created for themselves an heroic and new world, which inspired them with noble actions. They celebrated the lofty deeds of Arthur and Rinaldo, the knights of the Round Table, Charlemagne, Roland, and the twelve peers of France. They added to these names those of Godfrey, Tancred, Richard, and Saladin, the remembrance of whom vividly interested all the Christian nations of the middle ages.
The marvellous, among a people, belongs to their habits, to the effects of climate, and to the great revolutions of society. In consequence of the mixture and confusion of divers nations in the middle ages, the wonderful traditions of the North became confounded with those of the South, and produced a semi-barbarous mythology, which differed widely from the laughing mythology of the Greeks. But the labours, the perils, the exploits of a religious war, of a distant war, like those of the crusades, must have given a more noble direction to the imagination of poets, and preserved it from that which was common and whimsical in the romantic conceptions of a gross age. That which was then passing upon the real theatre of events, was more extraordinary than the inventions of poetry; and the marvellous of that period was the more easy to be seized, from being all to be found in actual history.
A new literature then was born, conforming with the genius of a new state of society. If this literature, which, to employ the expression of the learned Heren, bore a character of national and contemporary originality, had produced great works like the Iliad and the Odyssey, the muses would have opened for themselves a career unknown to the ancients; language would have been, from that time enriched, perfected, fixed by the masterpieces themselves; and history would have spoken of the age of the crusades, as it speaks to us of the age of Augustus or Pericles.
Unfortunately, our literature of the middle ages only produced indifferent poems, which were not able to make us forget the great works of antiquity. There were none but romantic productions, in which the interest of the subject was not at all raised by talent, and poems whose authors, though witty and ingenious, had none of that authority of genius which carries away the opinions of an age, and even of posterity.
We have more than one reason for regretting that the human mind did not open for itself a new career at the period of the crusades. There is no doubt that the ancients offer us the more perfect models of taste; but in proportion as people, in the end, became impassioned for the Greeks and the Latins, modern nations disdained their own antiquities for those of Athens and Rome. With the study of masterpieces which had nothing to do with our own glory, the remembrance of our own ancestors was not at all mixed; and the knowledge they have given us has added nothing to our patriotism. What an interest and what a value would the remembrances of our country have had for us, if they had been traced by a literature, formed according to the manners of the nation, and which would, in some sort, have commenced with the nation itself!
Most of the romancers, and even the poets of these times, who had no models and wanted taste, found no other means of interesting their readers, than by exaggerating the sentiments of chivalry. Imitation, pushed to the extreme, was taken for reality, and there were found knights who wished to do that which they saw in romances and poems. Thence came knight-errantry. Thus, in all times, the state of society has acted upon literature, and literature, in its turn, has reacted upon the state of society.
The romances which were consecrated to chivalry and the crusades, underwent the modifications that manners and customs received; and this species of composition has come down to our days, expressing, by turns, the tastes, sentiments, and opinions of each age. This was quite unknown to antiquity. It was born with the Romance language, whose name it took; and they who now derive pleasure from it ought to be thankful for it to the age of the crusades.
These kinds of productions, which attracted the curiosity and attention of the vulgar, contributed to form the national language, which then appeared to be scorned by the learned. The Latin language still remained the language of the sciences and of learning. But it lost its correctness and its purity. The Latin of the fifteenth century was more corrupt than that of the twelfth. The Romance language and the Latin language had a tendency to corrupt each other, by their mixture and their reciprocal borrowings.
Knowledge, however, continued to increase and spread, and assisted greatly in polishing the manners of the nations of Europe. One proof that the crusades were not unconnected with these first steps of civilization is, that knowledge and letters first flourished among the peoples enriched by the commerce which the holy wars favoured, as in Italy; and with the peoples who had most communication with the Orientals, as the Spaniards. Two inventions were destined to complete this happy revolution, and mark the commencement and the end of the period of the crusades. The first was the invention of paper, which became known in Europe just before the first expedition into the East; the second, the invention of printing, which took place towards the end of the holy wars.
There remains but little for us to say upon the results of the crusades. Several distinguished writers have spoken of them before us, and the information they have given upon this important subject, whilst it facilitates our labour, only leaves us the advantage of expressing an opinion which their authority has consecrated, and which has no longer any need of being defended.
The better to explain and make clear all the good that the holy wars brought with them, we have elsewhere examined what would have happened if they had had all the success they might have had. Let us now attempt another hypothesis, and let our minds dwell for a moment upon the state in which Europe would have been, without the expeditions which the West so many times repeated against the nations of Asia and Africa. In the eleventh century, several European countries were invaded, and others were threatened by the Saracens. What means of defence had the Christian republic then, when most of the states were given up to license, troubled by discords, and plunged in barbarism? If Christendom, as M. De Bonald remarks, had not then gone out by all its gates, and at repeated times, to attack a formidable enemy, have we not a right to believe that this enemy would have profited by the inaction of the Christian nations, and that he would have surprised them amidst their divisions, and subdued them one after another?[126] Which of us does not tremble with horror at thinking that France, Germany, England, and Italy might have experienced the fate of Greece and Palestine?
We have said, when commencing our history, that the crusades offered the spectacle of a sanguinary and terrible struggle between two religions which contended for the empire of the world; the victory to belong to that one of these two religions which would inspire its disciples and defenders with the most generous sentiments, and which, favouring among them the progress of civilization, would give them the greater force and power to defend their territories and assure their conquests.
In this formidable struggle, the true means of defence consisted in superiority of knowledge and of social qualities. As long as the ignorance of barbarism reigned over the nations of the West as well as over those of Asia, victory continued uncertain; perhaps even the greater strength was then on the side of the more barbarous people, for they were already possessed of all the conditions of their political existence. But when the dawn of civilization rose over Europe, she became aware of her own security, and her enemies began to be sensible of fear.
The Mussulman religion, by its doctrine of fatalism, appeared to interdict all foresight to its disciples, and in days of mischance contained nothing to revive the courage of its warriors. The Christians, on the contrary, lost none of their faculties in reverses: reverses often even redoubled their energy and activity. What is most astonishing in the history of the crusades, is to observe that the defeats of the Christians in Asia, excited, among the warlike populations of Europe, much more enthusiasm than their victories. The preachers of the holy wars, to persuade Christian warriors to take up arms against the infidels, said nothing of the glory and the power of Jerusalem; but endeavoured, in their pathetic lamentations, to exaggerate the perils, the misfortunes, and the decline of the Christian colonies.
We see by this what advantage Christianity had over the worship of Mahomet, in the war between the East and the West.
Another vice of the Koran is, that it has a tendency to isolate men; which is injurious to the development of their social qualities. Under the empire of Islamism, there is nothing strong but despotism; but the strength of despotism is, almost always, nothing but the weakness of the nation it rules over. The Christian religion has another aim, when it says to its disciples, Love one another as brothers. One of its most admirable characteristics is the spirit of sociability with which it inspires men. By all its maxims, it orders them to unite, to help one another, to enlighten one another. It thus doubles their strength, by placing them constantly in community of labours and dangers, fears and hopes, opinions and feelings. It was this spirit of sociability which gave birth to the crusades, and sustained them during two centuries. If this spirit was unable to assure success, it at least prepared the Christian republic, at a later period, to defend itself with advantage. It made the nations of Europe like fasces that cannot be broken. It created, in the midst of disorders even, a moral force which nothing could conquer; and Christianity, defended by this moral force, was at length able to say to the barbarians, masters of Constantinople, that which God said to the waves of the sea: You shall go no further.
Thus Christianity, and the heroic virtues with which it inspired its disciples, were, in the middle ages, an invincible buckler for Christian Europe. When the enthusiasm for crusades beyond the seas began to die away, the heads of the Church still invoked the spirit of the Gospel, to animate the nations against the Mussulmans, on the point of invading Germany and Italy; and, still holding up to Christian warriors the cross of Christ, sometimes succeeded in awakening in hearts sentiments of a religious and patriotic heroism. It cannot then be denied that the crusades contributed to save European societies from the invasion of the barbarians; and this was, without doubt, the first and greatest of the advantages which humanity derived from them.
Here I am, then, arrived at the termination of my labour. To resume my opinions and render a last homage to truth, I must say, that, among the results of the crusades, there are some which appear incontestable, others which cannot be determined with precision. I ought to add, that many circumstances concurred with the civil wars in assisting the progress of knowledge and civilization. Nothing can be more complicated than the springs which set modern societies in motion; and he who would desire to explain the march of things by one single cause, must fall into great error. The same events do not produce always or everywhere similar effects; as may be seen by the picture we have traced of Europe in the middle ages. The holy wars assisted, in France, in abasing the great vassals, whilst feudal power received scarcely any injury from it in Germany and other countries. During this period some states were enlarged, others marched rapidly towards their fall. Among some nations, liberty took deep root, and presided over young institutions; among others, the power of princes was elevated, at times freeing itself from all restraints, at others, being limited by wise laws. Here flourished commerce, the arts and sciences; elsewhere industry made no progress, and the human mind remained immersed in darkness. The germs of civilization, in the times of the crusades, were like those seeds which the storm carries with it, and scatters, some in barren places, where they remain unknown and unproductive; others, upon propitious land, where, the action of the sun, a happy temperature, and the fecundity of the soil, favour their development, and cause them to bear good fruits.
Every age has its dominant opinions; and when these opinions are connected with great events, they leave their impress upon the institutions of societies. Other events, other opinions come, in their turn, to give a new direction to human affairs, and to modify, ameliorate, or corrupt the morals and the laws of nations. Thus, the political world is unceasingly renewed; by turns, disturbed by violent shocks, and ruled by generally-spread truths or errors. If, in the future, societies assume still another new face, there is no doubt their institutions will, one day, be explained by the influence of the revolutions we have seen, as we now explain the institutions of times past, by the influence of the crusades. May posterity gather and preserve the fruit of our misfortunes, better than we ourselves have gathered and preserved the fruit of the experience and of the misfortunes of our fathers![127]
See Supplementary Chapter, at page 549.