Society, always ready to split to pieces, appeared to have no other motive but the fury of parties, no other principle of life but discord and civil war; there was no other guarantee against license but tyranny; or against tyranny, but the despair of factions, and the poniard of conspirators. As the strength of most of the little states which covered Italy was seldom equal to their ambition; and as princes and citizens, by the same reason that they were weak, wanted both moderation and courage; they sought their elevation or their safety in all the means that treachery and perfidy could suggest. Plots, political stratagems, odious crimes, everything appeared right to them; everything seemed properly available that could sustain their quarrels, and satisfy their ambition or their jealousy. At length, all morality disappeared; and it was then that school of policy was formed, which is to be found in the lessons, or rather in the satire, of Machiavel’s book.
It is said that the Italians were the first to form the idea of what publicists call the balance of power. We do not think that Italy merits such a glory; that which is understood by the balance of power is not an invention: it is nothing but the natural resource of the weakness which seeks a support. If we follow the progress of events, we shall find that this system, so long boasted, became fatal to Italy, by calling thither conquerors, who made it, even up to our own days, the theatre of most sanguinary wars.
At the period of the crusades, the cities of Lombardy, and the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, had attained great prosperity; and that which gave them this prosperity was the commerce of the East, which Italy carried on before the crusades, and persevered in, with all the advantages accruing from the expeditions beyond the seas.
But these republics, which contended for the empire of the sea, and only occupied a little corner of land upon the Mediterranean,—which had their eyes constantly fixed upon Syria, Egypt, and Greece,—which left to strangers the care of defending their territories, and only armed their citizens for the defence of their commerce,—these mercantile republics were much better calculated to enrich Italy than to keep up the sentiment of a true independence among the Italian nations.
We cannot, however, refrain from admiring that republic of Venice, whose power everywhere preceded the arms of the Crusaders, and which the nations of the middle ages looked upon as the queen of the East. The decline of this great republic did not begin before the period at which the progress of navigation, that it had so much contributed to, at length opened the route to India, and led to the discovery of a new world. Most of the other republics of Italy neither displayed the same splendour nor enjoyed the same duration; many among them—particularly those in which democracy prevailed—had disappeared at the end of the crusades, in the chaos and tumult of discords and civil wars. In their place arose dukes and princes, who substituted the intrigues of policy for popular passions, and sometimes made it their ambition to favour the revival of arts and letters, the true glory of Italy.
The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, situated at the extremity of Italy, was for the Crusaders the road to Greece and the East. The riches of this country, which appeared never to have any guardians,—a territory which its inhabitants were never able to defend, must have often tempted the cupidity and the ambition of the princes and even of the knights who went to seek their fortunes in Asia. The history of this fine country is mixed up during two centuries with that of the holy wars, the crusades often furnishing a pretext or an opportunity for the conquest of it. The wars undertaken for the kingdom of Naples,—those wars which produced more monstrous crimes than glorious exploits, more revolts than battles, completed the corruption of the Neapolitan character, in which has always been remarked, on the one part, an inclination to shake off the yoke of present domination, and, on the other, an extreme resignation in submitting to the yoke of victory.
Whilst glancing thus at the principal states of Europe, we are particularly struck with the great diversity that exists in the manners, the institutions, and the destinies of nations. How is it possible to follow the march of civilization amidst so many republics and monarchies, some bursting with splendour from the bosom of barbarism, others sinking into ruins? And how is it possible to point out the influence of the crusades through so many revolutions, which have often the same causes, but whose effects are so different, and sometimes so opposite? Spain, to which we are now about to turn our attention, will present us with other pictures, and must furnish fresh subjects for meditation.
During the course of the crusades, we see Spain occupied in its own boundaries with defending itself against those same Saracens whom the other nations of Europe went to contend with in the East; in the north of the Peninsula, some Christian sovereignties had maintained themselves, which began to be formidable under Sancho the Great, king of Castile and Arragon. The valour of the Castilians, sustained by the example of the Cid, and by the influence of chivalric manners, and seconded by warriors from all the provinces of France, took Toledo, before the end of the eleventh century. But the conquests of the Spaniards did not afterwards correspond with the splendour of their early triumphs; as fast as they retook provinces from the Moors, they made separate kingdoms of them; and the Spanish power, thus divided, became, in some sort, weakened by its own victories.
The invasion of the Moors in Spain bore some resemblance to that of the Franks in Asia. It was the religion of Mahomet that animated the Saracen warriors to the fight, as the Christian religion inflamed the zeal and ardour of the soldiers of the cross. Africa and Asia often answered to the appeal of the Mussulman colonies in Spain, as Europe did to the cries of alarm of the Christian colonies in Syria. Enthusiasm gave birth on both sides to prodigies of heroism, and held fortune for a long time suspended between the two inimical nations and the two inimical religions.