Knowledge, however, continued to increase and spread, and assisted greatly in polishing the manners of the nations of Europe. One proof that the crusades were not unconnected with these first steps of civilization is, that knowledge and letters first flourished among the peoples enriched by the commerce which the holy wars favoured, as in Italy; and with the peoples who had most communication with the Orientals, as the Spaniards. Two inventions were destined to complete this happy revolution, and mark the commencement and the end of the period of the crusades. The first was the invention of paper, which became known in Europe just before the first expedition into the East; the second, the invention of printing, which took place towards the end of the holy wars.
There remains but little for us to say upon the results of the crusades. Several distinguished writers have spoken of them before us, and the information they have given upon this important subject, whilst it facilitates our labour, only leaves us the advantage of expressing an opinion which their authority has consecrated, and which has no longer any need of being defended.
The better to explain and make clear all the good that the holy wars brought with them, we have elsewhere examined what would have happened if they had had all the success they might have had. Let us now attempt another hypothesis, and let our minds dwell for a moment upon the state in which Europe would have been, without the expeditions which the West so many times repeated against the nations of Asia and Africa. In the eleventh century, several European countries were invaded, and others were threatened by the Saracens. What means of defence had the Christian republic then, when most of the states were given up to license, troubled by discords, and plunged in barbarism? If Christendom, as M. De Bonald remarks, had not then gone out by all its gates, and at repeated times, to attack a formidable enemy, have we not a right to believe that this enemy would have profited by the inaction of the Christian nations, and that he would have surprised them amidst their divisions, and subdued them one after another?[126] Which of us does not tremble with horror at thinking that France, Germany, England, and Italy might have experienced the fate of Greece and Palestine?
We have said, when commencing our history, that the crusades offered the spectacle of a sanguinary and terrible struggle between two religions which contended for the empire of the world; the victory to belong to that one of these two religions which would inspire its disciples and defenders with the most generous sentiments, and which, favouring among them the progress of civilization, would give them the greater force and power to defend their territories and assure their conquests.
In this formidable struggle, the true means of defence consisted in superiority of knowledge and of social qualities. As long as the ignorance of barbarism reigned over the nations of the West as well as over those of Asia, victory continued uncertain; perhaps even the greater strength was then on the side of the more barbarous people, for they were already possessed of all the conditions of their political existence. But when the dawn of civilization rose over Europe, she became aware of her own security, and her enemies began to be sensible of fear.
The Mussulman religion, by its doctrine of fatalism, appeared to interdict all foresight to its disciples, and in days of mischance contained nothing to revive the courage of its warriors. The Christians, on the contrary, lost none of their faculties in reverses: reverses often even redoubled their energy and activity. What is most astonishing in the history of the crusades, is to observe that the defeats of the Christians in Asia, excited, among the warlike populations of Europe, much more enthusiasm than their victories. The preachers of the holy wars, to persuade Christian warriors to take up arms against the infidels, said nothing of the glory and the power of Jerusalem; but endeavoured, in their pathetic lamentations, to exaggerate the perils, the misfortunes, and the decline of the Christian colonies.
We see by this what advantage Christianity had over the worship of Mahomet, in the war between the East and the West.
Another vice of the Koran is, that it has a tendency to isolate men; which is injurious to the development of their social qualities. Under the empire of Islamism, there is nothing strong but despotism; but the strength of despotism is, almost always, nothing but the weakness of the nation it rules over. The Christian religion has another aim, when it says to its disciples, Love one another as brothers. One of its most admirable characteristics is the spirit of sociability with which it inspires men. By all its maxims, it orders them to unite, to help one another, to enlighten one another. It thus doubles their strength, by placing them constantly in community of labours and dangers, fears and hopes, opinions and feelings. It was this spirit of sociability which gave birth to the crusades, and sustained them during two centuries. If this spirit was unable to assure success, it at least prepared the Christian republic, at a later period, to defend itself with advantage. It made the nations of Europe like fasces that cannot be broken. It created, in the midst of disorders even, a moral force which nothing could conquer; and Christianity, defended by this moral force, was at length able to say to the barbarians, masters of Constantinople, that which God said to the waves of the sea: You shall go no further.
Thus Christianity, and the heroic virtues with which it inspired its disciples, were, in the middle ages, an invincible buckler for Christian Europe. When the enthusiasm for crusades beyond the seas began to die away, the heads of the Church still invoked the spirit of the Gospel, to animate the nations against the Mussulmans, on the point of invading Germany and Italy; and, still holding up to Christian warriors the cross of Christ, sometimes succeeded in awakening in hearts sentiments of a religious and patriotic heroism. It cannot then be denied that the crusades contributed to save European societies from the invasion of the barbarians; and this was, without doubt, the first and greatest of the advantages which humanity derived from them.