History Of Civilisation In Europe. (continued 4)

Considerable remnants of the Roman institutions likewise lingered in the towns. Frequent instances of the convocations of the senate and the curia are met with at this epoch, and many facts of that nature have been collected by Messrs de Savigny and Hulmann, Mademoiselle de Lezardière, &c. There is some doubt concerning public assemblies and municipal magistrates. But the affairs of civil life, testaments, donations, and a multitude of other acts, are legalised in the curia by its officers, as took place in Roman municipalities. Yet barbarism, and an always increasing disorder, hastened the depopulation of towns, and gradually undermined all that remained of urban activity and freedom. The establishment of the masters of the land in the country districts, and the growing preponderance of the rural life, were additional causes of decay to the towns. The bishops themselves, when they had entered into the feudal frame, attached much less importance to their municipal ties. Finally, when feudalism had completely triumphed, the towns, without falling into the slavery of the serfs, found themselves under the sway of liege lords, and comprised within fiefs, in consequence of which they lost that share of independence which had been left to them in times even more barbarous, in the first ages of the invasion. So that from the fifth century to the period of the complete organisation of feudalism, the state of towns was continually getting worse.

When feudalism was once fairly established, when each man had taken up his station, and planted himself on an estate, and the wandering life had finally ceased, the towns, after a certain interval, began again to acquire some importance, and to deploy a renewed activity. Human activity is like the fecundity of the earth; as soon as the storm ceases, it reappears, germinates, and bears fruit. Whenever there is the least glimpse of order and peace, mankind resumes hope, and with hope labour. Thus it happened in the towns: so soon as the feudal system was well fixed, there sprang up amongst the fief-holders new wants and a certain taste for advancement and amelioration, to satisfy which a little commerce and industry took root in the towns of their domains, and wealth and population returned to them; slowly, I admit, but still they returned. Amongst the circumstances which hastened that result, may be reckoned one not hitherto much regarded—namely, the right of sanctuary in churches. Even before the boroughs were constituted, and before their force and ramparts enabled them to hold out an asylum to the wretched population of the fields, the protection which could be found in the church alone was sufficient to attract a great many fugitives into the towns. They came to shelter themselves either in the church itself, or around the church; and they were not confined to men of the inferior class, serfs and boors, but were frequently men of consideration and wealth who had been proscribed. The chronicles of the epoch are full of such examples. We see men, formerly powerful, pursued by a neighbour yet more powerful, or by the king himself, abandoning their domains, carrying off all their movables, and flying to a town to put themselves under the protection of a church. These men became burgesses; and such refugees were, in my opinion, of some influence on the progress of towns, as they brought into them both wealth and the elements of a population superior to the bulk of the former inhabitants. Besides, is it not probable that when anything like a considerable association had been formed in any quarter, men would flock to it not only on account of the greater security afforded by it, but also from the mere spirit of sociability which is so natural to them?

By dint of all these causes, the towns acquired a certain degree of strength after the feudal system had become somewhat regulated. But security was not gained in the same proportion. It is true the wandering life had ceased, yet this wandering life had been to the conquerors and new proprietors of the soil a great means of gratifying their passions. When urged by a craving for plunder, they had made a foray, or gone to a distance in search of fresh fortune or a fresh domain. But when each had fixed himself, and it was necessary to renounce the conquering vagabond life, the taste for it was far from ceasing, or brutish appetites, or fierce desires, from abating. Their weight fell upon that part of the population lying most at the mercy of those possessed of power, upon the towns. Instead of going to a distance to pillage, they pillaged near their own homes. The extortions of the lords upon the burgesses redoubled from the beginning of the tenth century. Every time that the proprietor of a domain in which a town was included had any lust of pelf to satisfy, the burgesses were sure to feel its worst effects. It was at this epoch, more than at any other, that the complaints of the boroughs were loud and repeated, in consequence of the absolute want of security to commerce. The merchants, after making their rounds, were unable to return in peace into their towns; the roads and avenues were incessantly blocked up by the lord and his followers. The period in which industry recommenced its exercise was thus precisely that in which security was most deficient. Nothing frets men more than to be thus troubled in their labours, and despoiled of the fruits which they had thence anticipated. They are thereby much more annoyed and enraged than when they are subjected to suffering in a course of life for a long time fixed and monotonous, or when that of which they are deprived is not the result of their own activity, exerted in the reasonable hope of drawing sure returns. In the progressive movement which lifts up a man or a population to a new fortune, there is a principle of abhorrence for iniquity and violence much more energetic than in any other situation.

This, then, was the condition of the towns in the course of the tenth century. Their strength, importance, and riches had increased; and these acquisitions rendering them every day objects of greater envy to the lords, it became more than ever necessary to be able to defend them. The danger and the evil grew in magnitude with the means of resisting them. Indeed the feudal system offered to all its participators the continual example of resistance; it presented to the mind, under no modification, the idea of an organised government, capable of regulating and controlling all by its intervention alone. On the contrary, the spectacle of individual will, refusing to submit to any restraint, was unceasingly displayed. The greater number of the fief-holders was in this position with regard to their lords-paramount, and the small lords with regard to the great; so that, at the very time when the towns were oppressed and tormented, and they began to have new and important interests to maintain, they had under their eyes a continual lesson of insurrection. Feudalism has certainly done this service to humanity, that it has given a perpetual exhibition of individual will acting in all its energy. The lesson was not thrown away, for notwithstanding their weakness, and the prodigious inequality of condition between them and their lords, the towns became insurgent on all sides.

It is difficult to assign a precise date to the event. It is generally said that the enfranchisement of the boroughs commenced in the eleventh century; but in all great events, how many unknown and unsuccessful efforts are made before that which finally prevails! In all things, Providence, to accomplish its designs, lavishes courage, virtues, sacrifices man himself; and it is only after a countless multitude of unknown labours, in appearance utterly lost, after numberless noble hearts have sunk under discouragement, and the painful conviction of the hopelessness of their cause, that the triumph is achieved. This was doubtless the case with the boroughs. There can be little question but that very many attempts at resistance and struggles for enfranchisement were made in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, which not only did not succeed, but the memory of which remained without renown, because unfortunate. But these endeavours most assuredly exercised an influence upon posterior events; they gave animation and prevalence to the spirit of liberty, and laid the train for the great insurrection of the eleventh century.

I call it insurrection designedly. The enfranchisement of the boroughs, in the eleventh century, was the result of a veritable insurrection, of a real war declared by the inhabitants of towns against their lords. The first fact which is always met with in such histories, is a levy of the burghers, who arm themselves with any weapon they can catch, the expulsion of the officers of the superior, who had come to make exactions, or an enterprise against his castle; the characteristics of war are always there. If the insurrection is suppressed, what is the first act of the conqueror? He orders the destruction of the fortifications raised by the burghers, not only around their town, but around each house. We find that at the formation of the confederacy, after undertaking to act in common, and swearing the borough as a whole, the first proceeding of each burgher was to place his house in a state of defence. Some boroughs, whose names are at the present day buried in obscurity—for example, the petty borough of Vézelai in Nivernais—maintained a prolonged and energetic contest with their lords. In the case of Vézelai, victory fell to its abbot, and he instantly enjoined the demolition of the fortified houses of the burgesses. The names of several of those whose houses were thus destroyed have been preserved.

If we enter the interior of these houses of our ancestors, and study the mode of construction, and the kind of life which it reveals, we shall find everything adapted for war, and possessing a warlike character.

The following is the construction of a burgher's house of the twelfth century, as far as we can judge at the present day. There were generally three floors, with a single room on each floor. The ground-floor was a low room, in which the family fed; the first floor was very elevated, as a means of safety, affording the most remarkable peculiarity in the construction. On this was a room in which the owner of the house dwelt with his wife. The building was almost always flanked by towers at the angles, usually of a square form, another adaptation for war, and a means of resistance. On the second and last floor was a room, the use of which is uncertain, but which probably served for the children and the rest of the family. Above, there was very often a small platform, evidently destined to serve as an observatory. Thus the whole construction of the house gives an idea of war. In reality, such was the actual character and true designation of the movement which produced borough enfranchisement.

Now, when war has continued a certain time, whoever may be the belligerents, it necessarily ends in peace. The treaties of peace between the boroughs and their adversaries were the charters. The borough charters were mere treaties of peace between the burghers and their superiors.

The insurrection was general. When I use the term general, I do not mean that there was any concert or coalition amongst all the burghers of a country; far from it. The situation of the boroughs was almost everywhere the same, exposed to the same danger, and overborne by the same misfortunes. Having acquired pretty nearly the same means of resistance and offence, they employed them at almost the same moment. It is possible, also, that example may have had some effect, and that the success of one or two boroughs may have been contagious. The charters sometimes seem drawn upon the same pattern; that of Noyon, for example, served as a model for those of Beauvais, Saint Quentin, &c. Yet I am very doubtful that example operated to such an extent as is commonly supposed. The communications were difficult and rare, reports vague and unaccredited. There are more grounds for believing that the insurrection was the consequence of an identical situation, and of a spontaneous general movement. Again, I mean the word general merely to express that it took place in almost every district, for it was not the result of a unanimous and concerted movement. On the contrary, all was individual and local; each borough rose against its superior on its own peculiar account, and all was effected in separate localities.

Great were the vicissitudes of the strife. Not only did success alternate, but even after peace appeared made, and charters had been sworn to on both sides, they were broken or eluded in every possible way. The royal power bore an important part in the alternations of this strife, of which I will speak more in detail when I come to treat of royalty itself. Its influence in the movement of borough enfranchisement has been perhaps too much exaggerated; sometimes it has been denied altogether, or too much underrated. At present, I confine myself to the declaration that it frequently interfered, invoked sometimes by the boroughs, sometimes by the lords; that it often played contrary parts, acting now on one principle, then upon another, and unceasingly changing its designs and conduct; but that, upon the whole, its action was attended with more good than bad consequences.

Notwithstanding all these vicissitudes, and the continual violations of charters, the enfranchisement of the boroughs was consummated in the twelfth century. Europe, and especially France, which had been overrun with insurrections, was now filled with charters of a more or less favourable tendency. The degree of security with which the boroughs enjoyed them was variable, but still they enjoyed them. The fact was established, and the right was recognised.

We will now inquire into the immediate results of this great fact, and the changes it produced in the position of the burghers in society.

In the first place, it altered nothing, at least at the commencement, in the relation of the burghers with the general government of the country, with what we now call the state; they interfered with it to no greater extent than before. Everything remained local, and confined to the limits of the fief.

One circumstance, however, must be taken to modify this assertion. Between the burghers and the king a tie began at that time to be formed. In many cases the boroughs had invoked the support of the king against their superior, or his guarantee, when a charter was promised or sworn to. In other cases the lords had called for the judgment of the king between themselves and the burghers. At the demand of one or other of the parties, from a concourse of different causes, the royal power had interfered in the quarrels, whence sprang up pretty constant relations between the burghers and the king, which sometimes became very intimate. By these means the commonalty grew connected with the centre of the state, and began to have ties with the general government.

Although everything remained local, still the effect of the enfranchisement was to call a new and general class into being. No coalition had existed amongst the burghers, nor had they, as a class, any public and common existence. But the land was covered with men occupying an identical situation, with common interests and manners, amongst whom there could not fail to be formed by degrees a certain bond and unity, which was sure to originate a burgher class. Thus a necessary result of the local enfranchisement of boroughs, was the formation of a great social order, the citizen or burgher class.

We must not imagine that this class was then what it has since become. Not only has its situation greatly changed, but its elements or component parts were quite different. In the twelfth century, it was only composed of dealers and traders driving a trifling commerce, and of small proprietors, either of houses or of land, who had taken up their abodes in towns. Three centuries afterwards, the burgher class comprised, in addition, lawyers, physicians, local magistrates, and persons engaged in various literary avocations. It was thus formed successively, and of very distinct elements; but neither to the succession nor to the diversity has proper attention been paid in its history. Whenever the burgher class is spoken of, it has been considered, apparently, as at all epochs composed of the same elements. Such a conclusion is absurd. It is, perhaps, more than all in the diversity of its composition, at the various eras of history, that the secret of its destiny ought to be sought. So long as it included neither magistrates nor lettered men—so long, in fact, as it was not what it became in the sixteenth century—it possessed neither so high a standing nor so great an influence in the state. The successive rise within itself of new professions and relative moral positions, of a new intellectual development, must be traced, in order to comprehend the vicissitudes of its fortunes and its power. In the twelfth century it was composed, I repeat, of petty traders, who retired into the towns after making their purchases and sales, and of owners of houses or small estates who had fixed their residence in them. Such was the European burgher class in its first elements.

The next great result of the enfranchisement of boroughs was the contest of classes, which thereupon arose inevitably from the fact itself, a contest which occupies all modern history. Europe, as at present constituted, has sprung from the struggles amongst the different orders of society. In other regions, as I have formerly stated, the contest produced very opposite effects. In Asia, for example, one class completely triumphed; the system of castes succeeded that of classes, and society fell into stagnation. Thanks be to God, no such consequence has happened in Europe. No one order has been able to vanquish or enslave the others; the contest, instead of becoming a principle of immobility, has been the cause of advancement. The relations of the different classes amongst themselves, and the necessity in which they have found themselves to struggle and to yield by turns, the variety of their interests and passions, the desire for conquest, without being able to accomplish it—from all this has resulted, perhaps, the most energetic and fruitful principle of development in European civilisation. The orders have been engaged in constant warfare: they detested each other; a deep-seated diversity in position, interests, and manners, wrought amongst them a profound moral hostility or antagonism, and yet they have progressively drawn together, amalgamated, and merged their differences. Every country in Europe has witnessed a certain general spirit, a certain community of interests, ideas, and feelings, take root and gain development within its own confines, which has triumphed over dissension and division. For example, in France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the social and moral separation of the orders was still deeply planted; yet there is no doubt that the fusion was even then far advanced, and that there was a veritable French nation, not of one class exclusively, but comprising all classes, animated with a certain common sentiment, having a common social existence, and strongly impressed with nationality.

Thus, from our diversity, enmity, and warfare, has arisen in modern Europe that national unity, which has become so brilliant a feature of the present times, and which is tending, day by day, to a development still more glorious and beneficial.

Such are the great external, palpable, and social effects that have resulted from the revolution under review. We will now proceed to inquire what were its moral effects, or what changes it wrought in the minds of the burghers themselves, what, in fact, they became, in a moral sense, in their new position.

There is one fact with which it is impossible to avoid being struck, when we study the relations of the burghers, not merely in the twelfth century, but in after ages, with the state, or government of the state, with the general interests of the country. I speak of the extraordinary timidity and humility of the burghers, of the excessive modesty of their pretensions with regard to the government of their country, and of the facility they display in being contented. They give no token of possessing that true political spirit which aspires to influence, to reform, and to govern; they are utterly devoid of boldness of thought and greatness of ambition. They seem more like prudent and plodding freedmen.

There are only two sources whence greatness of ambition and boldness of thought, in the political sphere, can result. There must be present either the feeling and consciousness of exercising an important influence and great power over the destinies of others, and upon a vast stage, or an energetic self-conviction of complete personal independence, an absolute certainty of individual liberty, and an inward persuasion of a destiny dependent upon no other will than that of the individual himself. Upon one or other of these conditions seem to depend hardihood of mind, loftiness of ambition, and a desire to act in an extended sphere, and to be instrumental in obtaining results of high import.

Neither the one nor the other entered into the situation of the burghers of the middle ages. Their importance was limited to themselves: out of their own towns, or upon the state at large, their influence was trifling. Neither could they have any strong sentiment of personal independence. It was of little moment that they had conquered and obtained charters. The burgher of a town, comparing himself to a petty lord who lived near him, and who had just been vanquished, felt, notwithstanding the latter incident, his extreme inferiority; he was a stranger to that haughty feeling of independence which swelled the breast of the fief-holder; his portion of freedom was held not from himself, but from his association with others, resting on a succour difficult and precarious. Thence arose that character of reserve, timidity of spirit, modest awe, and cringing humility of speech, even in the midst of stem resolution, which was so profoundly impressed on the burgher life of the twelfth century, and which has come down to their latest descendants. They have never had a taste for great enterprises; and when fate has plunged them into such, they have been beset with disquietude and embarrassment; the weight of responsibility has pressed too heavily upon them; they have felt themselves out of their sphere, and longed to return to more accustomed habits; thus they have always been ready to treat on moderate terms. We therefore find, in the course of European history, and especially in the French, that the burgher class was esteemed, flattered, even consulted, but very rarely feared; it seldom impressed its adversaries with the idea of its being a great or high-spirited power of real political weight. This weakness in the comparatively modern burgher class is not matter of astonishment, since its principal cause is clearly assignable to its origin, and to those circumstances of its enfranchisement which I have shortly before noted. A high ambition, entertained independently of social station, expansion and boldness in political thought, desire for intervention in the affairs of the realm, full consciousness of the dignity of man as a human being, and of the extent of his power, if he have capacity to exercise it—these are sentiments and dispositions altogether modern, the proceeds of modern civilisation, and the fruit of that glorious and elastic generality which characterises it, and which can never fail to assure to the people an influence and a weight in the government of the country, which were always wanting, and must of necessity have been wanting, to the burghers, our ancestors.

But, on the other hand, they acquired and displayed a degree of energy, devotedness, perseverance, and patient zeal, in the strenuous maintenance of the local interests intrusted to them upon their narrow stage, which has never been surpassed. The difficulty of accomplishing that task was so great, and they had to struggle against so many perils, that an unexampled deployment of courage was required. A very false idea of the life of a burgher of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is entertained at this day. Sir Walter Scott has given in one of his novels, Quentin Durward, a description of the burgomaster of Liege, whom he has represented as a true burgher of comedy, fat, sluggish, ignorant, and cowardly, solely occupied in passing his life comfortably. But the burghers of those times had always their coats of mail on their breasts, and their pikes in their hands; their course of life was almost as disturbed, as warlike, and as rough, as that of the lords with whom they fought. It was in their constant danger, and in their bearing up against all the hardships of military life, that they acquired that strong determination and stubborn energy which have become somewhat mitigated in the softer activity of modern times.

None of these social or moral effects of the enfranchisement of the boroughs had taken its full development in the twelfth century; it is in the following ages that they incontestably appear, and give opportunity for their clear discernment. Yet it is just as sure that their seed was sown in the original position of the boroughs, in the mode of their enfranchisement, and the place or station which the burghers thereafter took in the general society. Therefore I am justified in anticipating them at present. We will, in consequence, penetrate into the very interior of the borough of the twelfth century, and will see how it was governed, and what principles and facts predominated in the mutual relations of the burghers amongst themselves.

It will be recollected that, in speaking of the municipal system bequeathed by the Roman Empire to the modern world, I stated that the Roman Empire was a great coalition of municipalities, which had formerly been sovereign powers like Rome herself. Each of those towns had had originally the same existence as Rome, and had been a small independent republic, making peace and war, and governing itself at its own pleasure. In proportion as they were incorporated into the Roman Empire, the rights which constitute sovereignty, the rights of peace and war, of legislation, taxation, &c. were taken from each town, and concentred in Rome. Then there remained but one sovereign municipality, Rome, reigning over a great number of municipalities, which no longer preserved anything but a civil existence. The municipal system changed its character, and instead of being a political government, invested with sovereignty, it became a mere mode of administering affairs. This was the great revolution consummated under the Roman Empire. The municipal system, having become a mode of administration, was reduced to the government of local affairs, and the civil interests of the city. The fall of the Roman Empire left the towns and their institutions in this state. In the midst of the barbaric chaos, ideas were jumbled in as much confusion as facts; the attributes of sovereignty, and those of mere administration, were confounded. These distinctions were no longer attended to, and affairs were abandoned to the course of necessity. Each locality had its sovereign or its administrator, according to events or immediate wants. When the towns rose in insurgency to secure themselves from arbitrary spoliation, they assumed the sovereignty. This was not owing in the slightest degree to any respect for political theory, or to any sentiment of their own dignity. But in order to have the best means of resisting the lords against whom they rebelled, they appropriated to themselves the right of making militia levies, of self-taxation for supporting war, of making their own chiefs and magistrates—in a word, of governing themselves. Government administered in the interior of the towns was essential to defence and security. Thus sovereignty returned to the municipal system, from which it had departed in consequence of the Roman conquests. The boroughs became again independent and self-governing. Such is the political characteristic of their enfranchisement.

It is of course not to be inferred that this sovereignty was complete. There always remained some trace of external sovereignty; sometimes the lord preserved a right to send an officer into the town, who took the borough magistrates for his assessors; sometimes he had a right to collect certain revenues, or a tribute was in some instances secured to him. Occasionally the outward sovereignty of the borough passed into the hands of the king.

The boroughs themselves, having entered into the folds of feudalism, had vassals, and became suzerains, or superior lords, and under this title they possessed all that portion of sovereignty which belonged inherently to feudal lordship. A confusion ensued between the rights with which they were invested by their feudal position, and those which they had conquered by their insurrection; but under this twofold title sovereignty appertained to them.

The description of what took place, and how the government was carried on in the interior of a borough in the first ages, may be drawn as follows from the very incomplete monuments left for our guidance. The entirety of the inhabitants formed the borough assemblies; all those who had been sworn in burgesses (and whoever lived within the walls, was obliged to take the oaths) were called together to general assembly by the sound of the clock. There the magistrates were nominated. The number and form of magisterial offices were very variable. The magistrates being named, the assembly was dissolved. They governed almost alone with a considerable degree of arbitrariness, and without any other check or responsibility than what might arise from new elections, or rather popular risings, which were the grand method of calling to account in use at that day.

Thus the internal organisation of the boroughs was reduced to two simple elements—the general assembly of the inhabitants, and a government invested with a nearly arbitrary power, under the check of insurrection or risings. It was impossible, chiefly from the state of manners, to establish a regular government and veritable guarantees for order and stability. The greatest part of the borough population was in such a condition of ignorance, brutality, and ferociousness, as rendered it very difficult to govern. In a short time, there was almost as little security in the interior of a borough, as there existed formerly in the relations of the burghers with the superior lord. Still, a higher class of burghers was rather speedily formed, the cause of which may be easily divined. The state of ideas and of social relations produced the establishment and legal constitution of industrial professions into companies or corporations. The system of privilege or monopoly was thus introduced into the interior of the boroughs, and, as a consequence, great inequality. There was shortly in all of them a certain number of important and wealthy burghers, and a labouring population more or less numerous, which, in spite of its inferiority, had a considerable share of influence in the affairs of the borough. Therefore the boroughs were divided into two classes—the higher burghers, and a population prone to all the errors and vices of a mob. The superior burghers were trammelled by the enormous difficulty of governing this lower population on the one hand, and by the continual efforts of the old lord of the borough to re-usurp his power on the other. This was their situation not only in France, but in all Europe, up till the sixteenth century, and this was perhaps the principal cause which prevented the boroughs from obtaining all the political importance which they might otherwise have had in several countries of Europe, and especially in France. Two principles were in constant strife within them: among the inferior population, a blind, reckless, and ferocious democratic spirit; and thence among the superior population, a spirit of timidity and management, inducing an extreme facility to make accommodations either with the king or with the ancient lords, in order to re-establish order and docility in the interior of the community. These two tendencies, by their separate action, effectually prevented the boroughs from assuming an important station in the general state.

All these consequences had not broken out in the twelfth century; yet we are enabled to anticipate them from the very character of the insurrection, from the manner in which it had commenced, and from the condition of the different component parts of the borough population.

Such are, if I mistake not, the principal characteristics and general results both of the enfranchisement of the boroughs and of their internal government. I have already stated that they were not so uniform and universal as I have represented them. There is, on the contrary, a great diversity in the history of European boroughs. For example, in Italy and in the south of France, the Roman municipal system prevailed; the population was not so much divided or so unequal as in the north. The borough organisation was also much better, either on account of the lingering Roman traditions, or on account of the superior state of the population. In the north, it was the feudal system which influenced the borough existence. There, all was made subordinate to a successful struggle against the lords. The southern boroughs were much more occupied with their internal organisation, with improvements, and with the means of advancement. They were paving the way for their becoming independent republics. The destiny of the northern boroughs, of the French especially, assumed a more rude and incomplete aspect; a destiny of far inferior development. If we survey the boroughs of Germany, Spain, and England, we shall find in them differences of other kinds. It is not my purpose to enter into these details; we shall have occasion to remark some of them as we advance in the history of civilisation. At their original formation, all things were confounded in pretty nearly one likeness, and it was only by successive developments that the variety occurred. By subsequent developments, societies have been urged to that grand and concurrent unity which is the glorious goal of the efforts and hopes of the human race.

Lecture VIII. The Twelfth And Thirteenth Centuries. The Crusades.

I have not hitherto stated the entire plan of my inquiry. I commenced by indicating its object, and then I proceeded, without considering European civilisation as a whole, or without marking out at one and the same time the point of departure, the course, and the port; that is, the commencement, the middle, and the end. We are now, however, arrived at an era in which this survey of the whole, this general sketch of the region we are traversing, becomes necessary. The periods that we have investigated so far, are illustrated in some sort by themselves, or by immediate and distinct results. Those upon which we are about to enter would not be understood, and would indeed fail in exciting any lively interest, if they were not connected with their most indirect and remote consequences. In so extensive an investigation, moments occur in which the mind seeks for elucidation as to the ultimate object, and feels reluctant to proceed with mists and darkness before it; not only whence we come, and where we are, does it seek to know, but also whither we go. This is what we feel at present. The epoch upon which we now open is intelligible, and its importance can be appreciated only by the relations which link it to modern times. Its true tendency has only been revealed at a very late period.

We are now in possession of almost all the essential elements of European civilisation. I say almost, because I have not yet entered upon royalty. The era of the decisive development of royalty did not take place until the twelfth or even the thirteenth century; it was not till then that the institution was truly established, and began to assume its definitive station in modern society. For this reason I have not treated of it earlier, but it will form the subject of my next lecture. With this exception, however, we grasp all the great elements of European civilisation: the feudal aristocracy, the church, and the boroughs, have all been traced to their origin; the institutions corresponding to each of these matters have been laid open, and not only the institutions, but also the principles and ideas which they were calculated to excite in the minds of men. Thus, when treating of feudalism, we have gone to the cradle of the modern household, to the sanctuary of domestic life; and we have fully understood the prevailing sentiment of individual independence in all its energy, and the influence it was destined to exercise upon our civilisation. On the question of the church, we have witnessed the rising of the purely religious society, its relations with civil society, the theocratic principle, the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, the first objects of persecution, and the first cries of liberty of conscience. The consideration of the infant boroughs has shown an association founded upon very opposite principles to those of feudalism or the church, the diversity of the social classes, their contests, the first and deep-rooted characteristics of modern burgher manners, timidity of spirit by the side of firm determination, and mob licentiousness accompanied by principles of legality, In a word, all the elements which have concurred in the constitution of European society, and all that that society has been, have now been fully searched into.

Now let us transport ourselves into the midst of modern Europe; I do not mean the present Europe, after the astonishing change we have witnessed, but that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Do we recognise the society we have just beheld in the twelfth? How prodigious the difference! I have already dilated upon this difference when on the subject of the boroughs; I then endeavoured to show how little the third estate of the eighteenth century resembled that of the twelfth? Scrutinising feudalism and the church in the same manner, we are struck by a similar metamorphosis. There was no more resemblance between the nobility of Louis XIV.'s court and the feudal aristocracy, or between the church of Cardinal de Bernis and that of the Abbot Suger, than between the third estate of the eighteenth century and the burghers of the twelfth. In the interval between these two epochs, society (although in possession of all its elements) was completely transformed.

I shall attempt a clear explication of the general and essential character of this transformation.

From the fifth to the twelfth century, society contained all that I have described—kings, a lay aristocracy, a clergy, burghers, serfs, religious and civil powers, the germs, in fact, of all that constitutes a nation and a government, and yet there was no government or nation. As to a people, properly so called, or a veritable government, in the sense with which those words are now applied, there was nothing of the sort in the whole period mentioned. We have encountered a multitude of particular forces, of special facts and of local institutions, but nothing general or public, no political system, in the strict sense of the word; in fine, no real nationality.

Let us look, on the contrary, to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We behold in every quarter two great forms appear on the stage of the world, the government and the nation. Society is formed by, and history is occupied in the relation of, the action of a general power upon a whole country, and the influence of that country upon the power which governs it; the mutual ties of these two great forces, their alliance and their strife, are the especial objects of history. The nobles, the clergy, the burghers, all those particular classes and powers, have no longer a prominent appearance, but are merged in and effaced by these two great bodies, the government and the nation.

This is, if I mistake not, the essential feature which distinguishes modern from primitive Europe, and the metamorphosis was accomplished between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.

It is therefore between these two eras that the secret is embowelled, and the distinctive character of the epoch upon which we are entering is, that it has been employed to turn primitive Europe into modern Europe; hence its importance and high historic interest. Unless we contemplate it under that aspect, and unless we seek to learn what has resulted therefrom, not only shall we be utterly at a loss to understand the epoch, but we shall also feel tired and wearied with its pursuit. In fact, viewed by itself, and apart from its consequences, it was a period without character, a time during which confusion went on increasing, without the causes being apparent, an era of movement without direction, of agitation without result; royalty, nobility, clergy, burghers, all the elements of social order, kept moving in the same circle, all equally incapable of progress and repose. Experiments of all kinds were made, and all failed; attempts were made to give stability to government, foundation to public liberty, even to introduce religious reforms, but nothing was effected, nothing grew to a head. If the human race was ever delivered over to a destiny at once agitated and stationary, to labour at once unremitting and barren, such were certainly the features of its condition from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.

I know only one work in which this characteristic is truthfully portrayed—namely, 'The History of the Dukes of Burgundy,' by M. de Barante. I do not refer to the truth which sparkles in his descriptions of manners, or minute relations of events; but to that general truthfulness which renders his whole work a faithful image, a transparent mirror of the whole epoch, the restlessness and the monotony of which it so well unfolds.

Considered, on the contrary, in its relation to what followed it, as the period of transition from the primitive to the modern state of Europe, the epoch in question brightens into perspicuity and animation; a uniformity in the whole, a direction and a progress, are instantly discoverable; its unity of action and its interest are contained in the heavy and obscure labour itself which worked out the accomplishment.

The history of European civilisation may therefore be summed into three great periods. First, a period which I shall call that of origins, of formation, in which the different elements of our society emerged from chaos, took being, and displayed themselves in their native forms with their animating principles. This period was prolonged almost to the twelfth century. Second, the second period was one of trial, experiment, groping; the different elements of social order drew towards each other, came in contact, and, so to express myself, felt each other, yet were unable to strike out anything of a general, regular, and lasting order. This state did not terminate until the sixteenth century. Third, the last is the period of development, properly so called, in which human society took a definitive form in Europe, pursued a determined direction, and progressed, rapidly and as a whole, towards a clear and precise object. This commenced in the sixteenth century, and still holds its course.

Such appears to me, upon a combined survey, the aspect of European civilisation, and in such a light I shall endeavour to present it. We are entering at the present moment upon the second period. We have to search it for the great crises and the determining causes of the social transformation which thence resulted.

The first great event which stands before us, and opens, as it were, the epoch of which we speak, is the phenomenon of the crusades. They began at the end of the eleventh, and filled the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They form assuredly a great event, which, from the era of its accomplishment, has unceasingly occupied philosophic historians, all of whom, even before engaging in a particular analysis, have felt that it was one of those influences which change the condition of populations, and which it was imperatively incumbent well to study, in order to obtain a clear comprehension of the general course of things.

The main characteristic of the crusades is their universality. All Europe together took part in them; they were the first European occurrence. Previous to the crusades, Europe had never been moved by an identical sentiment, nor had acted in one and the same cause; there was, in fact, no Europe. The crusades unfolded a Christian Europe. The French formed the bulk of the first army of the crusaders, but there were also Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and Englishmen. Take the second or the third crusade; all the Christian nations were engaged in each. Nothing similar had ever been witnessed.

This was not all. In the same manner as the crusades were an European event, so were they in each country a national event. In each nation all classes of society were animated with the same conviction, obeyed the same idea, and abandoned themselves to the same enthusiastic impulse. Kings, lords, priests, burghers, husbandmen, all took the same interest and the same share in the crusades. A moral unity amongst the nations broke forth—a fact as novel as the European unity.

When such events occur in the youth of nations, in those times when they act spontaneously, and from free impulse, without premeditation, political intention, or governmental combinations, we acknowledge them to be what history calls heroic events, and to evidence the heroic age of nations. The crusades were, in fact, the heroic era of modern Europe—a movement at once individual and general, national, and yet unguided.

All documents avouch, and all facts prove, that this was actually their primitive character. Who were the first crusaders who put themselves in motion? Bands of populace, who departed under the conduct of Peter the Hermit, without preparation, and without guides or chiefs, followed, rather than led, by some obscure knights, and who, after traversing Germany and the Greek empire, dispersed or perished in Asia Minor.

The superior class, the feudal nobility, was, in its turn, eager for the crusade. Under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon, the lords and their followers set off full of ardour. When they had traversed Asia Minor, the chiefs became lukewarm and weary, were little disposed to continue the route, and felt inclined to throw aside all considerations but themselves, to make conquests, and gain establishments. The commonalty of the army rose in anger; they were bent on proceeding to Jerusalem; the deliverance of Jerusalem was the object of the crusade, and not to gain principalities for Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond, or any other. The popular, national, European impulse prevailed over all individual schemes; the chiefs had not sufficient ascendancy over the masses to bend them to their selfish interests.

The sovereigns, who had remained aloof from the first crusade, were finally drawn into the movement like the people. The great crusades of the twelfth century were commanded by kings.

I pass at once to the end of the thirteenth century. Crusades were still talked of in Europe, were still preached with zeal. The popes urged sovereigns and people; councils were held in commendation of the Holy Land; but every one hung back, and was indifferent about going. Something had passed into the European mind and society which put an end to crusades. There were still some particular expeditions; a few lords and parties of men still departed for Jerusalem, but the general movement was evidently arrested. Yet it does not appear that either the necessity for continuing in it or the facility of so doing had ceased. The Moslems triumphed more and more in Asia. The Christian kingdom founded at Jerusalem had fallen into their power. It was necessary to reconquer it; to secure success, the means were much greater than they were at the time that the crusades commenced; a great number of Christians were established, and still powerful, in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. The best modes of travelling there, and of acting effectually, were much better known than at the earlier period. But, however, all this was unavailing to reanimate the crusading spirit. It is clear that the two great powers of society—the sovereigns on the one hand, and the nations on the other—wished for no more crusades.

It has been repeatedly said that this arose from lassitude; that Europe was tired with thus pouring upon Asia. It is proper that this word lassitude, which is so often used on similar occasions, should be understood, for it is singularly inappropriate. It is not true that human generations are weary with what they have not done, weary of the fatigues of their fathers. Lassitude or weariness is personal, and is not transmitted like an inheritance. The men of the thirteenth century were not fatigued with the crusades of the twelfth; another cause operated upon them. A great change had been effected in ideas, feelings, and social positions. The same wants and desires were no longer felt. The same things were no longer either believed or wished for. Such political or moral metamorphoses, and not weariness, explain the varying conduct of successive generations. The lassitude which is attributed to them is a metaphor void of truth.

Two great causes, the one moral, the other social, threw Europe into the crusades.

The moral cause was the impulse derived from religious sentiments and creed. Since the end of the seventh century, Christianity had fought against Mohammedanism, and had conquered it in Europe, after being fearfully menaced by it; it had succeeded in restricting it to Spain. Thence also it was constantly labouring to expel it. The crusades have been represented as a sort of accident, as an unforeseen and unbruited event, brought about by the recitals of pilgrims on their return from Jerusalem, and the preachings of Peter the Hermit. Nothing of the kind. The crusades were the continuation and apogœum of the great contest carried on for four centuries between Christianity and Mohammedanism. The theatre of that contest had previously been in Europe, then it was transported into Asia. If I put any value on those comparisons and parallels in which people sometimes delight to press, suitably or unsuitably, historical facts, I might exhibit Christianity as running in Asia exactly the same career, and undergoing the same fate, as Mohammedanism in Europe. Mohammedanism was established in Spain, where it conquered and founded a kingdom and principalities. The Christians did that also in Asia, and they found themselves, with regard to the Mohammedans, in the same position as the latter in Spain with regard to the Christians. The kingdom of Jerusalem and that of Grenada precisely corresponded. However, such likenesses or similitudes are of very little consequence. The great fact was the contest of the two religious and social systems. The crusades were its main and culminating crisis. In that is their historical character, the bond which unites them to the entirety of affairs.

Another cause, the social state of Europe in the eleventh century, equally contributed to their breaking forth. I have been particular in explaining why nothing of a general nature could gain establishment in Europe from the fifth to the eleventh century, and I endeavoured to show how completely the local system prevailed, and within what narrow limits states, existences, and minds were confined. The feudal system had effected that. After some time, limits so narrow no longer satisfied; human thought and activity were eager to overleap the bounds to which they were restricted. The wandering life had ceased, but not the taste for its excitement and adventures. The populations rushed to the crusades as to a new existence, wider and more varied than their own, pleasurable to them as both recalling the ancient liberty of barbarism, and opening out vast prospects for the future.

Such were, in my opinion, the determining causes of the crusades in the twelfth century. At the end of the thirteenth century, neither the one nor the other of them any longer existed. Mankind and society were so changed, that neither the moral impulse nor the social wants which had precipitated Europe upon Asia, were any longer felt. It is a curious matter to compare the contemporary chroniclers of the first crusades with those of the end of the twelfth and of the thirteenth century; for example, Albert of Aix, Robert the monk, and Raymond of Agiles, who were present in the first crusade, with William of Tyre and James of Vitry. When we bring these two classes of writers together, we are immediately struck with the distance which separates them. The first are animated chroniclers, with excited imaginations, who relate the events of the crusade with great warmth. But their minds were prodigiously narrow, having no idea out of the petty sphere in which they lived, strangers to all science, filled with prejudices, and incapable of forming any judgment whatsoever upon what was passing around them, or upon the events which they recount. On the contrary, opening the history of William of Tyre, we are astonished to discover almost an historian of modern times, a developed, expansive, and unprejudiced mind, a rare political insight into events, comprehensive views, and a judgment based upon causes and effects. James of Vitry presents the example of another order of development; he is a learned man, who carries his inquiries beyond what has immediate reference to the crusades, and dilates upon the state of manners, upon geography, heathenism, and natural history; in fact, one who observes and describes the world. In fine, there is a vast interval between the chroniclers of the first crusades and the historians of the last, sufficient to convince us of a veritable revolution in the state of the human mind.

This revolution is especially perceptible in the feeling with which the two classes mention the Mohammedans. To the first chroniclers, and consequently to the first crusaders, of whom they are but the expression, Mohammedans are objects only of hatred; it is evident that those who speak of them do not know them or judge them upon proof, but consider them only with the blindness of the religious hostility which exists between them: we discover no trace of any mutual social relation; they hate and they fight them, nothing more. William of Tyre, James of Vitry, and Bernard the Treasurer, speak of the Mussulmans quite differently; although engaged in combating them, it is clear that they look upon them no longer as monsters, that they have to a certain extent entered into their ideas, that they have lived with them, and that relations, and even a sort of sympathy, have been established between them. William of Tyre passes a fine eulogium upon Noureddin, and Bernard the Treasurer upon Saladin. They even sometimes go so far as to place the manners and conduct of the Mussulmans in opposition to the manners and conduct of the Christians, and they praise the Mohammedans, in order to satirise the Christians, as Tacitus painted the manners of the Germans as a contrast to those of Rome. Now, the change must have been immense which was accomplished between the two epochs, since we find in the last a freedom and impartiality of spirit in regard to the very enemies of the Christians, those against whom the crusades themselves were directed, which would have filled the first crusaders with astonishment and rage.

Here was the first and main result of the crusades, a great step towards the enfranchisement of the mind, and a considerable advance towards more extended and unprejudiced ideas. Commenced in the name, and under the influence of religious principles, the crusades took from religious ideas, I will not say their legitimate share of influence, but the exclusive and despotic possession of the human mind. This consequence, doubtless a very unforeseen one, was produced by various causes. The first arose certainly from the novelty, the extent, and the variety of the scenes that were offered to the contemplation of the crusaders. There happened to them what usually happens to travellers. It is a mere commonplace to say that the mind of a traveller is set free, and that the custom of comparing different nations, manners, and opinions expands the ideas, and clears the judgment from ancient prejudices. Now, the same fact occurred to these travelling populations who have been called crusaders; their minds were opened and elevated by the mere circumstance of witnessing a multitude of different things, and by becoming acquainted with manners distinct from their own. Besides, they came into relations with two civilisations, not only different, but more advanced—namely, the Greek society on the one hand, and the Mussulman on the other. There can be no doubt but that the Greek society, although its civilisation was emasculated, corrupted, and expiring, had on the crusaders the operation of a society in a more advanced state, more polished and enlightened than theirs. The Mussulman society offered to them a spectacle of the same nature. It is curious to perceive in the chronicles the impression that the crusaders produced upon the Mohammedans; the latter regarded them upon their first approach as barbarians, as the most brutal, ferocious, and stupid mortals it had been their lot to behold. The crusaders, on their side, were struck with the exhibition of wealth and the refinement of manners amongst the Moslems. Frequent relations between the two people soon succeeded this first impression. These extended, and became much more important than is generally believed. Not only had the Christians of the East habitual relations with the Mohammedans, but the East and the West came to know, to visit, and to mingle with each other. Not long ago, one of those learned men who made France honourable in the eyes of Europe, M. Abel Remusat, has brought to light the intercourse between the Mongol emperors and the Christian kings. Mongol ambassadors were sent to the Frank kings, to St. Louis amongst others, to induce them to enter into alliance, and to recommence crusades for the common interests of Mongols and Christians against the Turks. And not only were diplomatic or official relations thus established between the sovereigns, but they extended to frequent and varied relations amongst the populations. I shall quote literally from M. Remusat. [Footnote 11]

'A great many Italian, French, and Flemish monks were charged with diplomatic missions to the great khan. Mongols of distinction came to Rome, Barcelona, Valentia, Lyons, Paris, London, and Northampton, and a Franciscan of the kingdom of Naples was archbishop of Pekin. His successor was a professor of theology of the faculty of Paris. But how many other persons less known were drawn after these, either as slaves, or attracted by the love of gain, or urged by curiosity, into countries up to that period unknown! Chance has preserved the names of some. The first envoy who came to visit the king of Hungary, on the part of the Tartars, was an Englishman, banished from his country for certain crimes, and who, after having wandered over all Asia, had finished by taking service amongst the Mongols. A Flemish shoemaker met in the depths of Tartary a woman from Metz, named Paquette, who had been carried off in Hungary; a Parisian goldsmith, whose brother was established in Paris upon the great bridge; and a young man from the environs of Rouen, who had been at the taking of Belgrade. He saw also some Russians, Hungarians, and Flemings. A chorister, named Robert, after traversing Oriental Asia, returned to end his days in the cathedral of Chartres. A Tartar was purveyor of helmets in the armies of Philip the Handsome. John de Plancarpin fell in, near Gayouk, with a Russian nobleman whom he calls Temer, who was officiating as interpreter; several merchants of Breslau, Poland, and Austria accompanied him in his journey to Tartary. Others returned with him by way of Russia; they were Genoese, Pisans, and Venetians. Two merchants from Venice, whom hazard had conducted to Bokhara, consented to follow a Mongol ambassador from Houlagou sent to Khoubalai. They sojourned several years in China and Tartary, returned with letters from the great khan for the pope, went back to the great khan, taking with them the son of one of them, the celebrated Marco Polo, and once more quitted the court of Khoubalai to return to Venice. Travels of this sort were not less frequent in the following age. In the number are those of Sir John Mandeville, an English physician, of Orderic of Frioul, of Pegoletti, of William Bouldeselle, and of several others. We can readily conceive that those whose memory is preserved are but a very small portion of those that were undertaken, and that there were at the period in question more people capable of executing distant journeys than of writing accounts of them. Very many of these adventurers must have settled and died in the countries they went to visit. Others returned to their native land as obscure as they went away, but with an imagination filled with what they had seen, and gave relations to their families, highly coloured doubtless, but thereby leaving around them, amidst ridiculous fables, useful remembrances, and traditions capable of bearing good fruit. Thus in Germany, Italy, and France, in the monasteries, in the castles of the feudal lords, and even in the lowest ranks of society, were deposited precious mementos, destined at a somewhat later period to be turned to account. All these unknown travellers, carrying the arts of their own countries into distant lands, brought back others not less precious, and made, without perception on their parts, more advantageous exchanges than all those of commerce. By these means, not only the trade in silks, porcelain, and Indian commodities became extended and more practicable, opening up new routes to commercial industry and activity, but what was of still greater consequence, foreign manners, unknown nations, and extraordinary productions, crowded upon the minds of Europeans, repressed since the fall of the Roman Empire into too narrow a circle. They began to estimate properly the finest, the best-peopled, and the most anciently-civilised of the four quarters of the globe. They set about studying the arts, creeds, and idioms of the nations who inhabited it, and there was even a project for establishing a chair of the Tartar language in the university of Paris. Romantic accounts, being soon investigated and valued as they deserved, spread on all sides more just and comprehensive ideas. The world seemed to open on the side of the East; geography made a prodigious stride; and an ardour for discoveries became the new direction which the adventurous spirit of Europeans fell into. When our own hemisphere was better known, the idea of another ceased to present itself to the mind as a paradox stripped of all likelihood; and it was upon an expedition in search of the Zipango of Marco Polo, that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.'

Here we see how vast and novel a world was opened to the European mind by means of circumstances brought about by the impulse of the crusades in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We cannot doubt it to have been one of the most powerful causes of the mental development and freedom which broke forth at the end of that great era.

Another circumstance deserves to be mentioned. Previous to the crusades, the court of Rome—the centre of the church—had held communication with laymen only through the agency of ecclesiastics, either of legates sent by Rome, or of bishops and the whole body of clergy. Of course there were always some laymen in direct relation with Rome; but, upon the whole, it was by ecclesiastics that it communicated with the populations. During the crusades, on the contrary, Rome became a place of passage to a great proportion of the crusaders, either in going or returning. Multitudes of laymen thus enjoyed an opportunity of more narrowly inspecting the policy and manners of the papal court, and of discriminating how much of personal interest was mixed up with religious discussions. There can scarcely be a doubt that this new species of knowledge inspired numerous minds with a hardihood previously undreamt of.

When we reflect upon the state of public opinion in general, and especially with regard to ecclesiastical matters, at the termination of the crusades, a singular fact cannot fail to strike us. We do not find that the religious ideas had changed, or that they had been supplanted by contrary or merely different opinions, yet was opinion infinitely more free, religious dogmas were no longer the only sphere in which the human mind gave itself scope; but without altogether forsaking them, it commenced to shake them off, and carry its inquiries into other quarters. Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century, the moral cause which had provoked the crusades, or which had been at least their most energetic principle, had disappeared; the moral state of Europe had undergone deep-seated modifications.

The social state also had suffered an alteration of an analogous nature. Much labour has been spent in investigating the influence of the crusades in a social respect; it has been shown that a great number of proprietors of fiefs was reduced to the necessity of selling them to the kings, or of granting charters to the boroughs, for the purpose of raising money and going to the crusades; and also that, by their mere absence, many lords lost a considerable portion of power. Without entering into details, I think the influence of the crusades upon the social state may be summed up into a few general facts.

They greatly diminished the number of small fiefs, of petty domains, and of small proprietors, and concentrated property and power into a less number of hands. It is subsequent to the crusades that we find the great fiefs, the great feudal formations, spread over the face of the country.

I have often regretted that there is no map of France divided into fiefs, in the same manner as we have one divided into departments, arrondissements (circles), cantons, and boroughs, in which all the fiefs were denoted, with their extent, relations, and successive changes. If by the aid of such a map we could compare the state of France before and after the crusades, we should perceive at a glance how many fiefs had disappeared, and to what extent the great and middle fiefs had increased. This was one of the most important results of the crusades.

And even when the small proprietors preserved their fiefs, they ceased to live so isolated as formerly. The possessors of large fiefs became centres, around which the small ones flocked and passed their lives. During the crusades they had found it necessary to range themselves under the banner of the wealthiest and most powerful, and receive assistance from him. With this chief they had lived, partaken his fortunes, and shared his adventures. When they returned home, this sociability and habit of associating with the superior became fixed in their manners. So, whilst we perceive the great fiefs enlarged after the crusades, we likewise find that their owners held a much more considerable court than theretofore in their castles, and had about their persons a great number of gentlemen, who preserved their small domains, but no longer shut themselves up in them.

The extension of the great fiefs, and the creation of various centres for society, instead of the dispersion and isolation previously existing, were the two greatest effects of the crusades within the folds of feudalism.

As to the burghers, a result of the same nature is instantly perceptible. The crusades were the means of creating large towns. Petty inland commerce and industry had been insufficient to form boroughs such as the great towns of Italy and Flanders. Their rise was owing to commerce upon an extensive scale, maritime commerce, and particularly that between the East and the West. Thus it was the crusades which gave to maritime commerce the strongest impulse it had ever received.

Upon the whole, when we look to the state of society at the conclusion of the crusades, we find that that tendency to dispersion and dissolution, that movement to universal localisation, if I may be permitted so to speak, which had preceded that epoch, had ceased and been replaced by a tendency of a contrary nature, by a movement to centralisation. Everything was disposed for junction and amalgamation. The smaller existences were absorbed in the greater, or grouped around them. In this direction society marched, to this object were its advancements pointed.

We now clearly understand why nations and sovereigns, at the end of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth century, were indifferent about crusades. They had no longer any occasion or inclination for them; they had been thrown into them by the impulse of a religious spirit, and by the exclusive dominion held by religious ideas over the entirety of their existence; this dominion was on the wane, its energy was gone. The crusades had been recommended to them also by the novelty, extent, and variety of the scenes they opened up, and they began to find in Europe itself, in the progress of social relations, a life possessing all such characteristics. It was at this epoch that the career of political aggrandisement opened to kings. Why go in search of kingdoms in Asia, when they had them to conquer at their thresholds? Philip Augustus went to the crusades much against his inclination; his unwillingness was quite natural, for he had yet to make himself king of France. The people were affected in the same manner. The career of wealth was laid open before them, and they renounced romance for labour. Political affairs were substituted by sovereigns for adventures, and extended industry by the people. One class only of society continued to keep up a taste for adventures, namely, that portion of the feudal nobility which, being on too low a scale to pretend to political aggrandisement, and despising labour, preserved its old position and its ancient manners. It therefore continued to rush to the crusades, and to endeavour their revival.

Such, according to my conception, were the great and veritable effects of the crusades; on the one hand, expansion of ideas, enfranchisement of opinion; on the other, the aggrandisement of particular powers, and a wider sphere opened to all sorts of activity. They produced, at one and the same time, an increase to individual liberty and to political unity. They conduced to the independence of man and to the centralisation of society.

Many inquiries have been directed to ascertain what means of civilisation were directly imported from the East. It has been said that the majority of the great discoveries which, in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, stimulated so vastly the development of European civilisation—the compass, printing, and gunpowder—were known in the East, and might have been brought thence by the crusaders. That is true to a certain extent. Yet some of these assertions are impugnable. But what is not so, is that influence, that general effect of the crusades upon the minds of men on the one hand, and upon society on the other; they drew European society out of a narrow drain, and sent it forward upon new and broad ways; they commenced that transmigration of the different elements or parts of European society into governments and nations, which is the character of modern civilisation. At the same period, royalty, one of the institutions which have most powerfully contributed to that great result, was developed. Its history from the birth of modern states to the thirteenth century will be the object of my next lecture.

Lecture IX. Rise And Progress Of Royalty.

In my last lecture I endeavoured to determine the essential and distinctive character of modern society, as compared with the primitive European society; and it was my object to show that it was exhibited in this fact, that all the elements of the social state, at first numerous and distinct, were reduced to two—the government on the one hand, and the people or nation on the other. Instead of encountering as predominant powers and chief actors in history, the feudal nobility, the clergy, kings, burghers, boors, and serfs, we find in modern Europe but two great forms alone occupying the historical stage—the government and the country.

If such be the head to which European civilisation has gathered, such also must be the object towards which we are to direct our steps, to which our researches must be made subservient. It is incumbent on us to trace the great result through its different stages, its origin, development, and progressive consolidation. We have already entered upon the epoch to which its origin may be assigned; and it was, as we have seen, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries that a slow and hidden labour was at work in Europe, which drew our society to that new and definitive configuration. So also have we investigated the first great event which, in my opinion, palpably and irresistibly impelled Europe into that direction—namely, the crusades.

In the same epoch, nearly at the instant that the crusades broke loose, the institution which has mainly contributed to the formation of modern society, and to that fusion of all the social elements into the two powers mentioned, royalty commenced its aggrandisement.

Royalty has assuredly played a prodigious part in the history of European civilisation, as a glance at facts will convince us. We see the development of royalty progressing step by step, if I may so say, with that of society itself; at least for a long time the advancement is mutual. And not only so, but whenever society advances towards its definitive and modern character, royalty appears to expand and prosper; so that when the work is achieved, and there remains in none, or nearly none, of the great states of Europe any other important and decisive influence than that of the government and the body of the nation, it is royalty which forms the government.

It has thus come to pass not only in France, where the fact is evident, but in the great majority of the countries of Europe; a little earlier or a little later, and under forms somewhat differently modified, the history of society in England, Spain, and Germany offers us the same result. In England, for example, it was under the Tudors that the old particular and local elements of English society were displaced, broken up, and supplanted by the system of public powers; it was likewise the period in which royalty exercised the greatest influence. There have been the same circumstances in Germany, in Spain, and in all the great European states.

If we proceed out of Europe, and carry our views to the rest of the world, we encounter an analogous fact. We everywhere find royalty occupying an important station, and appearing as an institution perhaps the most general, the most permanent, and the most difficult to prevent, where it did not previously exist, and to eradicate where it had existed. From time immemorial it has possessed Asia. On the discovery of America, all the great states were there found, in different combinations, subjected to the monarchical system. Even in the interior of Africa, wherever nations of any extent are met with, it is the prevailing regime. And not only has royalty penetrated into all quarters, but it has accommodated itself to situations the most various, to civilisation and barbarism, to the most pacific manners—as in China, for example—and to those in which war or the military spirit held predominance; it has established itself at one time in the heart of the system of castes, in societies the most rigorously classified, and at another in the midst of a system of equality, and in societies the most alien to all legalised and permanent classification. Often despotic and oppressive, and again, elsewhere, favourable to the progress of civilisation and liberty, it seems to be a head fitted for a multitude of different bodies—a fruit which may grow from the most diversified germs.

From this fact we might deduce many important and curious consequences. I will take but two; the first, that it is impossible such a result should be the offspring of mere hazard, or of force and usurpation alone, and that a profound and powerful analogy must exist between the genius of royalty considered as an institution, and the nature either of individual man or of human society. Doubtless force mingled at the origin of the institution, and has had a great share in its progress; but when a result like this is met with, when we find a great fact constantly developing or reproducing itself during a long series of ages, and amidst so many varied ramifications, we can never attribute it exclusively to force. Force is a great instrument, an every-day instrument in human affairs, but it is not their moving or highest principles; above force, and the part it enacts, is always hovering a moral cause, which decides the course of affairs. Force, in the history of societies, is like the body in the history of man. The body assuredly holds an important place in the life of man, yet it is not the principle of life. Life circulates within it, but emanates not from it. This also is the case with human societies; whatever part may be borne by force, it does not govern them, or exercise a sovereign sway over their destiny; this is the province of ideas and moral influences, which are hid under the accidents of force, and which, in their concealment, regulate the course of societies. It is undoubtedly a cause of this nature, and not force, which has made royalty so prosperous.

The second fact is scarcely less important. It consists in the flexibility of the institution, its faculty for modification, and for adaptation to a multitude of diverse circumstances. In this it presents a strong contrast; its form is of itself permanent and simple, not offering that great variety of combinations which are perceived in other institutions, and yet it accommodates itself to societies which have the least resemblance to it. It therefore evidently consists with a great diversity, and is linked, either through man himself, or through society, to many different elements and principles.

From not having contemplated the institution of royalty in all its extent; from not having, on the one hand, pierced to its peculiar and invariable principle, to that which makes its essence, and still subsists, whatever may be the circumstances to which it is made applicable; and from not having, on the other, estimated all the variations to which it lends itself, all the principles with which it may enter into alliance; from not having considered royalty under this twofold and expansive point of view, its part in the history of the world has often been mistaken, and erroneous conceptions formed as to its nature and effects.

To embrace these points is the task I impose upon myself, so as to present a complete and precise account of the effects of this institution in modern Europe, whether as flowing from its peculiar principle, or from the modifications it has undergone.

There can be no doubt that the strength of royalty, that moral power which is its true character, does not rest in the personal or self-will of the man who is for the moment king, or that nations, in receiving it as an institution, and philosophers in supporting it as a system, have not intended or wished to subject themselves to the will of one man, which in its essence is narrow, arbitrary, capricious, and ignorant.

Royalty is a thing quite distinct from the will of one man, although it presents itself under that form. It is the personification of the supremacy of right, and of that will which is essentially reasonable, enlightened, just, and impartial, foreign and superior to all individual wills, and having, by virtue of these claims, a right to govern them. Such is the meaning attached to royalty in the minds of nations, and such is the motive of their adhesion to it.

Is it true, then, that there is a sovereignty of right, a will which has the right to govern men! It is certain that they believe so, for they seek, and have constantly sought, and they cannot but seek, to be placed under its empire. Let us conceive, I will not say a nation, but the smallest assembly of men subjected to a sovereign, who is so only de facto, to a power, whose only right is that of force, governing in spite of reason, justice, and truth. Human nature instantly revolts against such a supposition; it will yield only to some claim of right. The object it wishes to attain, therefore, is, that right should reign, and to it alone will it consent to pay obedience. What is history but the demonstration of the universality of this fact! What has caused the majority of those contests which have worried the life of nations, but a neverceasing effort to make right supreme, so as to range themselves under its empire? And not only nations, but philosophers, firmly believe in its existence, and are incessantly in search of it. What are all the systems of political philosophy but disquisitions for the discovery of right, to give it sovereignty! What do they treat of, unless it be to decide who has the right to govern society? Take the theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical systems, do they not all boast of having found out in whom the sovereignty by right resides, and do they not all profess to place society under its legitimate master? I assert again that this is the object of all the speculations of philosophers, as well as of all the efforts of nations.

How could it be otherwise than that both, philosophers and nations, should believe in the veritable existence of a sovereign right? or that they should not constantly be on the search for it? Take one of the most simple propositions in elucidation; let there be some action to work out, or some influence to exercise, over society as a whole, or over some of its members, or even over one man; there is most certainly and indispensably a rule for that action or influence, a legitimate will to follow and apply. Whether we descend to the minor details of the social life, or rise to its greatest events, we find in all a truth to discover, a rational law to infuse into realities. In this consists the sovereignty of right, after which nations and philosophers have never ceased, and, in the nature of things, never can cease, earnestly to yearn.

And now arises the question as to the extent to which the sovereignty of right can be represented, in a general and permanent form, by an earthly power, by a human will. Is there nothing necessarily false or dangerous in granting that it is thereby adequately represented? What is to be thought, in particular, of the personification of the sovereignty of right under the image of royalty? Upon what conditions, and under what limitations, is that personification admissible? These are important questions, which I am not called upon here to discuss, but which I cannot avoid alluding to, or bestowing a few words upon, as I proceed.

I affirm, and the simplest common sense must coincide, that the sovereignty of right, complete and permanent, can belong to no individual, and that all attribution thereof to any human power whatever is false and dangerous. Hence comes the necessity for limiting all powers, whatever may be their names and forms; and hence also comes the radical illegitimacy of every absolute power, whether its origin may rest on conquest, hereditary claim, or election. Differences may exist as to the best means to be employed in establishing the supremacy of right; indeed they must be varied according to times and places; but at no time, in no place, can any power be legitimately the independent possessor of that supremacy.

This principle being laid down, it is nevertheless certain that royalty, in whatever system it is contemplated, protrudes itself as the personification of the sovereign right. Here is the theocratic system; it tells us that kings are the image of God on earth, which means nothing else than that they are the personification of sovereign justice, truth, and goodness. Here are the jurisconsults; they tell us that the king is the living law; which again means that the king is the personification of sovereign right and of the just law which has a prerogative to govern society. Here is royalty itself in a system of pure monarchy; it asserts itself the personification of the state, of the general interest. In whatever conjunction or situation it is beheld, it is always found gathering itself into an allegation of its representing and giving embodiment to that sovereign right which is alone entitled legitimately to govern society.

In this there is no occasion for astonishment. What are the characteristics of supreme right, such as it derives from its very nature? First, it is by itself alone; for as there is but one truth, and one justice, there can be but one supreme right. Furthermore, it is permanent, always the same: truth changes not. It is placed in a situation superior and unknown to all the vicissitudes, all the hazards, of this world: in some degree it is of this world only as a judge and spectator—such is its part. Now, it is royalty which substantively brings out these rational and natural characteristics of right under the most sensible outward form, and seems their most faithful representative. M. Benjamin Constant has ingeniously likened royalty to a neutral moderating power, raised above the accidents and contests of society, and interfering only in great crises. This is, as it were, the very attitude of supreme right in the government of human affairs. This idea must have had something calculated to convince the judgment, for it passed with surprising rapidity from books to facts. One sovereign made it the very base of his throne, in the constitution of Brazil, in which royalty appears as a moderator, raised above the active powers as spectator and judge.

Under whatever point of view the institution may be regarded, when tested in comparison with sovereign right, it will be found to possess a great external resemblance, naturally calculated to strike the minds of men. Thus, whenever their reflection or their imagination has been turned towards the contemplation or study of the nature of the sovereignty of right and of its essential characteristics, they have inclined towards royalty. As, for instance, in those periods in which religious ideas had predominance, the habitual contemplation of the attributes of God has led mankind to the monarchical system. So, also, when jurisconsults have swayed society, the habit of studying, under the name of law, the nature of the supremacy of right, has been conducive to the dogma of its being personified in royalty. The attentive application of the human intellect to the investigation of the nature and the qualities of rightful sovereignty, when other causes have not interfered to destroy its operation, has invariably given strength and credit to royalty, as portraying its likeness.

Furthermore, there are times peculiarly favourable to this personification, times in which individual forces range through the world with all their accidents and caprices, and in which selfishness rules paramountly over individuals from ignorance and brutality, or from corruption of manners. Then society, abandoned to the conflict of personal wills, and unable to constitute by their free concurrence a common and general will capable of rallying and controlling them, passionately longs for a superior to whom all individuals may be compelled to yield obedience; and as soon as any institution presents itself which bears some of the characteristics of rightful supremacy, and holds out to society its legitimate empire, all cling to it with eager haste as fugitives fly to a sanctuary. This is witnessed in the season of the disorganised youth of nations, in times such as we have surveyed. Royalty is admirably adapted for those eras of anarchy in which society longs for constitution and regularity, and cannot accomplish its aspiration by the free concord of individual inclinations.

There are other times in which, from a totally different cause, it has the same good quality. How did the Roman world, on the verge of dissolution at the end of the republic, still subsist for nearly fifteen centuries under the name of that empire which, after all, was but a continual decay, a prolonged agony! Royalty alone could have produced such an effect, it alone could have repressed a society which corruption was perpetually tending to destroy. Thus the imperial power bore up for fifteen centuries against the ruin of the Roman world.

Hence there are periods in which royalty alone is able to retard the dissolution of society, and also periods in which it alone can accelerate its formation. And in both cases it exercises this power over events, because it represents more vividly and energetically the sovereignty of right than any other form of government.

Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude that in every aspect under which the institution is viewed, and in every epoch that it is taken, its essential character, its moral principle, its real and inherent spirit, and that which constitutes its strength, consists in its being the image, the personification, the presumed interpreter of that single, supreme, and essentially legitimate will which alone holds the right to govern society.

Let us now consider royalty under the second point of view—that is to say, with regard to its flexibility in the vast variety of the parts it has played, and of the effects it has produced. It is incumbent on us to find a reason for it, and to determine its causes.

We have here an advantage, as we can immediately plunge into history, and into our own history too. By a singular concourse of circumstances, it has come to pass that royalty has assumed in modern Europe all the characters under which it has displayed itself in the history of the world. If I may be allowed to use an arithmetical expression, European royalty has been in some degree the multiplicand of all possible species of royalty.

My intention is to take its history from the fifth to the twelfth century, in the course of which it will be made evident under how many distinct phases it presents itself, and to what extent that character for variety, complication, and conflict which belongs to all European civilisation is met with.

In the fifth century, at the period of the great invasion of the Germans, two royalties are before us—the barbarian royalty, and the imperial royalty; that of Clovis, and that of Constantine— each very different in principles and consequences.

The barbarian royalty was essentially elective: the German kings were elected, although their election was not accompanied by the forms to which we are accustomed to attach that idea; they were, in fact, military chiefs, bound to render their power freely acceptable to a great number of companions, who obeyed them as the bravest and ablest. Election, therefore, was the true source of barbarian royalty, its primitive and essential characteristic.

I do not mean to state that even in the fifth century this quality had not been somewhat modified, or that other elements had not been introduced into royalty. The different tribes had had their chiefs for a certain time; some families had raised themselves to more consideration, trust, and wealth than others. This gave a beginning to the hereditary principle; the chief was no longer elected out of particular families. This was the first circumstance of a different order which became associated to the predominant principle of election.

Another idea or element had also previously been infused into the barbarian royalty, springing from religious feelings. We find amongst some of the barbarian nations—for example, amongst the Goths—the conviction that the families of their kings were descended from their gods, or from the heroes whom they had made gods—from Odin, for instance. It is the situation of the kings of Homer, who had sprung from gods or demigods, and under that title were the objects of a sort of religious veneration, notwithstanding the narrow limits of their power.

Such was barbarian royalty in the fifth century, already exhibiting different and fluctuating characteristics, although its primitive principle still prevailed.

Now I take the Roman or imperial royalty, and find it perfectly distinct. It was the impersonation of the state, the inheritor of the sovereignty and majesty of the Roman people. In the royalty of Augustus and Tiberius, the emperor was the representative of the senate, of the comitiæ, of the entire republic; them he succeeded, and combined in his own person. The modest pretensions of the first emperors, of those at least who were men of sense, and understood their position, give proof of this fact. They felt themselves before the people so lately supreme, and who had abdicated in their favour; they addressed them as their representatives and ministers. But in reality they exercised the whole power of the people, and in the most formidable intensity. Such a phenomenon is easy for us to comprehend, as we have ourselves witnessed it: in the history of Napoleon we have seen the sovereignty pass from the people into the hands of one man. He also was the impersonation of the sovereign people, as he perpetually said. 'Who ever was elected, like me, by eighteen millions of men! Who is so perfect a representative of the people as I!' he was accustomed to exclaim. And when we read on his coins, 'The French republic' on one side, and 'Napoleon, emperor,' on the reverse, does it not prove the fact as I describe it, the people merged into a king?

In this was exemplified the fundamental character of the imperial royalty, which it preserved for the three first centuries of the Empire, as it was only under Diocletian that it took its definitive and complete form. At that time, however, it was on the point of undergoing a great modification; a new species of royalty was about to appear. Christianity had laboured for three centuries to introduce the religious element into the Empire; and under Constantine it succeeded, not in making it paramount, but in enabling it to perform an important part. Then royalty presented itself under a totally different aspect; its origin ceased to be of the earth; the prince was not the representative of the public sovereignty, but the image of God, the delegate and representative of Heaven. Power came down to him from on high, whilst in the imperial royalty it had come up from below. These two positions were quite distinct, and had analogous results. The rights of liberty and political guarantees were difficult to combine with the principle of religious royalty; but the principle itself was elevated, moral, and salutary. Let us see the idea formed of the prince in the seventh century, amid the system of religious royalty. I take it from the canons of the council of Toledo.

'The king is called king (rex) because he governs justly (recte). If he acts with justice (recte), he possesses legitimately the name of king; if he acts with injustice, he perishes miserably. Therefore our fathers rightly said, "Thou wilt be king if thou perform just actions; but if thou do not so act, king thou wilt not be." [Footnote 12] The two principal royal virtues are justice and truth (the science of truth, reason).