As the Crusades were carried on for holy objects, not for civil or national ends, their connection with politics could only have been collateral and indirect. The spirit of crusading, composed as it was of superstition and military ardour, was hostile to the advancement of knowledge and liberty; and consequently no improvement in the civil condition of the kingdoms of the West could have been the legitimate issue of the principles of the holy wars. The pope was the only monarch who mixed politics with his piety. The other princes seem to have been influenced by the spirit of religion or of chivalry; and it was only in the attempts again to disorder the intellect of Europe, that we find one monarch, Henry IV of England, acting the part of a crafty politician.
Great changes in the political aspect of Europe were coeval with but were not occasioned by the holy wars. The power of the French crown was much higher at the end of the thirteenth, than it had been at the same period of the eleventh century; but the influence of the imperial throne was materially depressed. These opposite effects could never have been the simple results of the same cause; namely, the loss of the flower of the western aristocracy in Palestine.
The causes of the depression of imperial authority were the aggrandisement of the nobles (a natural effect of the feudal system); the improvident grants of lands which the Swabian family made to the clergy; the contests between the popes and emperors respecting their different jurisdictions, and, above all the rest, the destructive wars which the emperors waged in the north of Italy for the reannexation of that country to the throne of the descendants of the imperial house of Charlemagne.
German Crusader of the Early Crusades
The political changes in England cannot with justice be attributed to the Crusades. Until the days of Richard I holy wars had not become a general or a national concern. The monarchy stood the same at the close of his reign as at its commencement; and the only favourable issue of Cœur de Lion’s armament was an increase of military reputation. His renunciation of feudal sovereignty over Scotland had no influence on politics. Edward I pressed his claim, although Richard had deprived him of his strongest support. The pusillanimous John assumed the cross; but that circumstance did not occur until after he had surrendered his crown to the papal see, and until the barons had formed a confederacy against him. His assumption of the cross neither retarded nor accelerated the progress of English liberty. The pope was not linked to him by stronger ties than those which had formerly bound them; and the barons were not deceived by the religious hypocrisy of the king. The transmarine expeditions of the earls of Cornwall and Salisbury, and of Prince Edward in the reign of Henry III, were the ebullitions of religious and military ardour, but did not affect the general course of events.
The great political circumstance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which was important above all others to civil liberty, was the appearance of free and corporate towns. But the Crusades neither produced their establishment nor affected their history. After various vicissitudes of fortune, the battle of Legnano, and the Peace of Constance, established the independence of the towns in the north of Italy. The Crusades did not contribute to these events; for the two sacred expeditions which had taken place were as disastrous to peasants as to princes, and drained Europe of all ranks of society. Consequently it was not from the holy wars that the people gained their liberties. We find that so ill regulated was the liberty of the towns alluded to, that anarchy soon succeeded. Men of personal importance and wealth aspired to sovereign honours; an overwhelming aristocracy extinguished freedom, and at the end of the thirteenth century there were as many princes in Tuscany and Lombardy as there had been free towns at the end of the twelfth.
It is only in the maritime cities of Italy that any indisputable influence of the Crusades can be marked. Trade with the Christian states in Palestine, and the furnishing of transports to the pilgrims, increased the wealth of the commercial cities. The capture of Constantinople by the French and Venetians was important in its issues. Venice regained maritime ascendency; but it was soon taken from her by the Genoese, who aided the Greeks to recover their capital. Genoa then became a leading power in the Mediterranean, and she subdued Pisa. The rapid increase of the wealth and power of Venice and Genoa, and the eventual destruction of Pisa seem, then, to form the principal circumstances in commercial history which the Crusades were instrumental in producing. But how insignificant were these events, both locally and generally, both in their relation to Italy and to the general history of Europe, when compared with the discovery of a maritime passage to India!
A view of the heroic ages of Christianity, in regard to their grand and general results, is a useful and important, though a melancholy employment. The Crusades retarded the march of civilisation, thickened the clouds of ignorance and superstition; and encouraged intolerance, cruelty, and fierceness. Religion lost its mildness and charity; and war its mitigating qualities of honour and courtesy. Such were the bitter fruits of the holy wars![c]