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.