"But what arguments will these emissaries advance in order to rouse the masses to these insensate migrations?"
"I shall answer that question presently. But let me remind you of the principal motives of the church to drive the people to the Crusades; to habituate Catholic Europe to rise at the voice of the Pope for the extermination of heretics; to switch off to Palestine a large number of the seigneurs who are contending with the Church for the goods of the earth and the dominion of the people,—to get rid of one's enemies."
"The idea is good, profound, politic. I can well see the object that the Pope has in view."
"Let me, furthermore, call your attention to a fact that renders necessary a large migration of the common people to the Holy Land. In Gaul, despite the private wars of the seigneurs and the sufferings of this century, the population of the serfs has multiplied to an extraordinary degree during the last fifty years."
"That is so. The serf population, decimated by the famines that reigned from 1000 to 1034, immediately began to recover with the years of plenty that followed upon those of dearth."
"Aided, above all, by the action of the Church when, desirous of repeopling her domains, stripped of its agricultural serfs, she caused the 'Armistice of God' to be proclaimed, interdicting the seigneurs and the bishops from levying war during three days of each week under penalty of excommunication."
"That plebeian increase brought on the formidable revolts of the serfs of Normandy and Brittany, when doggerels were sung containing strophes of unheard-of audacity, as you may judge from this one:
| Why allow we ourselves to be oppressed? |
| Are we not human like the seigneurs? |
| Have we not, as they, body and limbs? |
| Is not our heart as large as theirs? |
| Are we not one hundred serfs to a single knight? |
| Let's then be up striking with our pitchforks and our scythes! |
| For lack of arms, take the stones the roads are strewn with! |
| 'Death to the friars!' |
"And that's the truth, Jeronimo! Those songs of revolt gave the signal to terrible insurrections in Normandy and Brittany. But two or three millions of the rebels had their eyes put out, their feet and hands chopped off, and the revolt was stamped out. Those wicked people must be exterminated."
"In order to conjure away the return of similar uprisings, it is necessary to lead abroad the plebeian increase. The plebs grows threatening by reason of its numbers and the force that numbers carry with them. In order to weaken it, it will be enough to make it depart on the Crusade across Europe."