Richard Cœur de Lion was more anxious to acquire the renown of a great captain than the reputation of a great king; the glory of arms made him forget the cares of his kingdom. It may be remembered that before his departure he sold the charges, the prerogatives, and the domains of the crown; he would have sold, as he himself said, the city of London, if he could have found a purchaser; his reverses and his captivity ruined his people, and his long absence kept up the spirit of faction among his nobles, and more especially in his own family.
The English barons were several times desirous of going into the East, against the will of the king; and the idea of opposing a monarch they did not love, often added to their impatience to embark for Palestine. Kings likewise took advantage of the opinions of their times, and engaged themselves to set out for the crusades, with the sole view of obtaining subsidies, which they employed in other enterprises. These means, too often employed, drew contempt upon the policy of princes, and only served to increase the public mistrust.
But that which completed the overthrow of the foundations of an absolute monarchy in England, was the violent enterprises of the popes against the English kings; enterprises which the spirit of religious wars favoured. In the league of the barons against Henry III., the rebels wore a cross, as in the wars beyond the seas; and the priests promised the palms of martyrdom to those who should die in the cause of liberty. One very curious circumstance is, that the head of the league formed for the independence of the English nation, was a French gentleman, the son of that count de Montfort so renowned[96] in the crusade against the Albigeois.
But the long efforts of England to obtain liberty deserve so much the more to fix the attention of history, from their having, in the end, attained a positive and durable result. So many other nations, after having contended for a long time, sometimes against license, sometimes against tyranny, have only met with misery, shame, and slavery. If the English revolution produced in the end salutary effects, it was because all classes of society concurred together in it; because it was made in the interests of all, according to the character and the manners of the nation, and according to the spirit of Christianity, which then presided over all which ought to last among men. Unanimity of opinions and sentiments, the accordance of manners and laws, of policy and religion, founded from that time that public spirit of which England still offers us the model; and this public spirit became in the end the most firm support and the most sure safeguard of liberty.
Whilst England was wresting liberty from its kings, and France was requiring hers back again of royalty, Germany presented another spectacle; the German empire, which had thrown out great splendour up to the eleventh century, declined rapidly during the crusades.
The emperors, in order to resist the great vassals, granted several advantages to the clergy, and bestowed privileges upon the cities. The clergy employed these advantages in favour of the popes, who attacked the imperial power; the cities profited by the concessions which were made to found their independence. All the efforts of the emperors had proved unable to prevent the crown continuing elective, whilst the great fiefs became hereditary. Thus the heads of the empire depended for their election upon the princes and nobles whom they themselves had freed from all dependence. In the competition of the pretenders to the throne, in a competition which was almost always decided by fortune, intrigue, or victory, it may easily be supposed that ambition was often more successful than moderation and virtue. Among the princes who ascended the imperial throne, many were men of great character; but their active and restless genius led them into adventurous and gigantic enterprises, which exhausted their strength and hastened the decline of the empire.
The memories of ancient Rome and of the power of the Cæsars were always present to their imagination. One of the greatest errors of their policy was turning their views towards Italy; they encountered on their way thither the popes, who declared a war of extermination against them; two families of emperors succumbed beneath the thunders of Rome; they were never able to reign over Italy, and whilst they exhausted themselves in vain efforts to establish their domination there, they completed the loss of their influence in Germany.
It is a consoling remark for humanity, that most of the conquerors of the middle ages weakened themselves by their undertakings, victory itself only serving to bring about the ruin of their power. The kings of France of this period evinced, perhaps, less talent and genius than the emperors of Germany; but their policy was wiser and more fortunate; they confined themselves to conquering their own kingdom; their conquests only tended to unite the scattered members of a large family; and their authority became more popular in proportion with their being considered as a natural tie between the French of all the provinces.
The glory which the emperors of Germany acquired by their conquests was but a personal glory, and did not at all interest the German people. This manifestation of their power had nothing in common with the nations of which they were the head. As soon as this power was no longer a bond or a support for the people, they separated themselves from it, and every one sought his safety or his aggrandizement in his own strength.
A state of things arose from this which was, perhaps, more fatal to Germany than the absolute authority of the emperors; upon the ruins of the imperial grandeur arose a crowd of states, opposed to each other by diversity of laws and the spirit of rivalry. All those ecclesiastical and secular principalities in which the spirit of monarchy prevailed; those cities in which the spirit of liberty fermented; that nobility animated by the pretensions of aristocracy, could not possibly have the same interests or the same policy to direct their efforts towards one common and salutary aim.