SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
M. Michaud has told the story of the crusades with such fulness and accuracy that, so far as these religious pilgrimages in arms are concerned, nothing need be added. The movement of the West upon the East is traced and described in minute detail, with every accessory of personal incident and achievement, and the work has been done so thoroughly that probably no later historian will feel drawn to the same field. It may be profitable, however, to supplement this trustworthy and spirited narrative by a rapid survey of the wide and fruitful changes which the crusades directly and indirectly introduced into the social and political life of Europe. It is one of the gains of time that its lapse discloses those larger relations of great events which are hidden from the observation of an earlier age; and while the earlier historian has the advantage of being near the historical movement which he describes, and of collecting at first hand the fullest information of its origin, direction, and personality, the later writer is far more fully equipped for the work of setting the movement in right relation to its social and political environment. Thucydides must remain preëminently the historian of the Peloponnesian War; but Grote and Curtius, largely deriving their facts from him, are able to discuss the decisive struggle between Athens and Sparta with wider grasp of the elements of Greek character and politics which brought about the conflict, and to trace its influence in later Greek history. This chapter will add no newly discovered facts concerning the crusades; but, taking advantage of later studies in this important field, it will indicate some of the results of these expeditions as they have disclosed themselves in the subsequent political development of Europe.
The Council of Clermont in 1095 found the feudal system fully developed in Western Europe. The Holy Roman Empire which, in the person of Charlemagne, had given brief promise of a restoration of authority to government, and of cohesion to society, had become a mere shadow among the warring, aggressive factions of feudalism. The tremendous energy of Charles was potent enough to drive back the boundaries of barbarism, and make for a little time a comparatively clear field for efforts toward an organized and stable society; but the task of subduing the social and political anarchy about him was too great even for a ruler of his genius. The time was not ripe, and when the laboriously gathered lines of power fell from the strong hand, there was no successor to grasp them. Anarchy became well-nigh universal. The royal authority was everywhere, with here and there a passing exception, a vague and indefinite thing, hemmed in and jealously watched by barons, more powerful than the king in everything but name. Society was broken up into small communities, with apparently no common direction of movement or impulse of progress. Every castle was a centre of power, which might be hostile to every other authority about it. There were no common ties binding races into the larger fellowship of kindred aims and aspirations. Men of the same blood were arrayed in more deadly hostility to each other than were men of alien races.
No large enterprises were possible, because the community of sentiment and the harmony of action which made them possible, were alike absent. The principle of individualism—the greatest contribution of the northern races to the political development of Europe—had reached its fullest growth, and everywhere asserted itself in the most aggressive forms. Western Europe had gone so far in this direction that no further progress in the arts, industries, and institutions of civilization was possible without the introduction of a new element into the problem. What was needed was the cohesive influence of some common purpose, which should give a new unity by disclosing to men the larger possibilities of organized social and political life. Organization is the necessary condition of progress, and so long as Europe remained without the conception of government with well-defined powers, regularity of administration, and ability to suppress opposition and impress its authority, in all sections of its territory, with a firm and steady hand, no forward movement was possible.
This spell of political and social impotence was broken by the crusades. Peter the Hermit was a voice crying in the wilderness, the forerunner of a historical movement which was to be the salvation of Europe. Returning from Syria with a heart hot with indignation at the insults and persecutions which beset the pilgrim to the Holy Sepulchre, his call to arms had all the authority which a genuine religious conviction could give it, and all the persuasive eloquence of a call for which men had been longing and waiting in silence and despair. No one will deny the strength of the religious sentiment which, in answer to that message, speedily marshalled the hosts of the first crusade; but the restless life of oppressed and burdened races found in the new enterprise an outlet through which it poured itself like a rising tide. For the first time in its history Western Europe had a common purpose and united in a common undertaking. In the farthest hamlet the overshadowing power of the feudal lord became for the time being tributary to the authority of the Church, summoning Europe to fight its battles and protect its sacred places. Europe awoke to the fact, unsuspected before, that it was larger than its warring feudatories, that the possibilities of its life were far more varied and rich than men had dreamed under the iron pressure of the feudal system, and thus the needed element of association and coöperation asserted itself.
Like all great social and political changes, the transition from feudal communities to national organization was unconscious and undiscovered. In the minds of the crusaders and of the communities whose faith they represented and whose impulse they carried into action, no clearly defined ideal of national life answered the call of Peter. That ideal grew slowly, but its roots were planted in this movement. Spaniards, Germans, Italians, Englishmen, and Frenchmen found themselves acting in harmony for a common purpose. They bore different banners, they marched under different leaders, they took different roads; but a common impulse sent them forth and a common goal drew them on. Their community of sentiment was often marred by mutual jealousies, and their unity of action impaired by mutual antagonisms; but the substantial harmony which underlay these disorders and which secured the positive results of the earlier crusades, gave Europe a conception of life which it had thoroughly learned before the last crusaders returned from their fruitless quest.
That which drew together various nationalities and races, disclosing to them the religious and social aims and tastes which they possessed in common, brought about a similar result through the widely separated ranks of society. European society had no homogeneity when the first crusade was preached. It was divided into ranks sharply discriminated from each other, bound together by the pressure of external force, rather than by the cohesive power of organic structure. There was no mutuality of interest or feeling. King, baron, burgher, and peasant were so widely apart by virtue of the education of their circumstances that they could not understand each other. That common language of experience and aspiration, which to-day finds a response among men of all social ranks, would have been incomprehensible in the age of the first crusade. Baron and peasant had indeed acted together in feudal warfare; but only as the lower was forced to serve the higher, the weaker to do the work of the stronger. No common impulse had ever before stirred the common humanity of all classes; no call had ever before summoned them as individuals to a service in which each stood in a spiritual equality with every other. Men had moved in classes before, but they moved as classes and not as men.