When we remember the state of weakness and decay in which the commencement of the twelfth century found the French monarchy, we are astonished at the degree of prosperity and splendour it attained in subsequent ages. Skilful negotiations, successful wars, useful alliances, the decay of the feudal system, and the progressive enfranchisement of the commons, favoured the dynasty of the Capets, in the aggrandizement of their states, and in the increase of their authority. Several centuries were employed in consummating this great work of fortune and policy; and the more slowly that this revolution was operated, the more durable proved its effects. One plan of conduct, followed up by all the princes of one same family, and the success it obtained in the prosperity and aggrandizement of the kingdom, and the glory and independence of the nation, at the present day, merit all the attention of history. Frenchmen cannot help feeling both gratitude and admiration when they reflect that the union of so many rich provinces—that this French monarchy, which has grown from age to age, and which finished by extending from the Rhine to the Pyrenees; that this beautiful France, in a word, such as we see it, is the work of the august family which governs it at the present day.[95]
The policy of our kings was no doubt seconded by the great events of the crusades; it was natural that the nation which took the greatest share in these events should profit more than others by it, in the increase of its power and the amelioration of its social condition. The glory which the French arms acquired beyond the seas gave a new lustre to the monarchy; royal authority profited equally by the exploits and the reverses of the numerous warriors whom the holy wars attracted into Asia; the absence, the death, or the ruin of the great vassals permitted royalty to rise from the bosom of feudal anarchy, and establish order in the kingdom.
More than a century before the first crusade, the barons and prelates had ceased to meet in general assembly to regulate the forms of justice, and lend to the acts of royal authority the support of their political influence. At the second crusade, there were several assemblies of the great men of the kingdom, in which preparations for the expedition, and measures for the maintenance of public order and the execution of the laws during the absence of Louis VII., were deliberated upon. In these meetings, which were very numerous, the French might trace at least a faint image of those assemblies, so celebrated under the first races, in which the kings and their subjects deliberated together upon the means of securing the independence of the nation and the safety of the throne.
Thus the crusades aided the kings of France in resuming their legislative power, and the most enlightened part of the nation, in recovering those ancient prerogatives which they had exercised under the children of Clovis and Charlemagne.
It may be remembered, that after the accession of Hugh Capet, the great vassals not only did no longer assemble around their prince, but had entirely separated their cause from that of the crown; several even scarcely acknowledged a king of France, and covering their opposition with a pious pretext, they, in their public acts, designated the year of the reign of Jesus Christ, instead of that of the king. This opposition, which lasted more than a century, at last gave way to other feelings, when they saw the French monarchs at the head of those expeditions which attracted the attention of all Christendom, and in which the cause of Jesus Christ himself, as well as of all Christian nations, seemed interested. In order to perceive clearly what the kings of France owed to the holy wars, and what in particular they gained by taking part in them, it would suffice to compare Philip I., shut up in his palace, in a melancholy manner, during the Council of Clermont, excommunicated by Urban, condemned by the bishops, and abandoned by his nobles, with Philip Augustus, in the first place conqueror of Saladin in Syria, and afterwards triumphant at Beauvines, over the enemies of his kingdom; or with Louis IX., surrounded in his reverses by a faithful nobility, ever respected by the clergy and the people, revered as the firmest support of the Church, and proclaimed by his own age the arbiter of Europe.
We will speak hereafter of the changes which were then effected in the different classes of society; we will confine ourselves here to saying that the crusades were the signal for a new order of things in France, and that this new order of things cast solid foundations during the holy wars.
If royalty in France was weak at the period of the first crusade, in England it was strong and powerful; royalty and feudalism oppressed England with all the weight of the conquests of William; but an authority founded upon victory, and sustained by violence, created at an early period in men’s minds a feeling of opposition, which time and circumstances were destined to develop. Military despotism had been able to impose silence upon opinions; but it had not entirely changed the manners of the English, or destroyed their attachment to old customs. Passions suppressed by the sword broke out with greater violence in the end.
An all-powerful monarchy exhibited a tendency to decline, and in England was seen the contrary of that which had been seen in France. Liberty made advances at the expense of royal authority. It does not enter into our plan to explain in detail the causes of this revolution. Several English monarchs allowed themselves to be led away by an imprudent and passionate policy, which threw them into fatal extravagances; their excesses, their violences, and particularly the crimes of John Lack-land, alienated the minds of their subjects, and united the whole nation in one feeling of resistance to absolute power. Another cause of decline not less remarkable, and to which history has not sufficiently drawn attention, was the ambition of the English princes, which inspired them with the senseless project of conquering the kingdom of France. The ruinous wars which they maintained against an enemy they could not subdue, placed them at the discretion of the barons and the English people, who furnished them with subsidies and fought under their banners.
The crusades had, perhaps, less influence upon the civilization of England than upon that of several other states of Europe. They might, however, concur with many circumstances of that period in effecting the changes which the English monarchy underwent.