History of France Author:James White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. FROM PHILIP THE HARDY, A. D. 1271, TO CHARLES THE FIFTH, A. D. 1364 With the death of St. Louis the crusading spirit came to an end. Calculatio... more »ns have been made by which it appears that the eight expeditions against the Saracens, extending from 1095 to 1270, cost to Europe the lives of two millions of men. It was now found that denuding Christendom of its soldiers was not the surest means of weakening the Mohammedan power.; and from. this time the energies of kings and peoples were directed to the settlement of their national affairs. Sufficient had been done during the eight crusades, by giving a common direction to the enterprise of many states, to spread the same principles of action among them all. The gentlemen of the most distantly situated kingdoms became acquainted during their common triumphs or dangers, under the walls of Jerusalem or Acre. A sort of freemasonry of knighthood ran through all lands. The Scottish cavalier interchanged ideas and feelings of brotherhood and amity with a knight of Sicily or Spain. But now this fraternity of nations, founded on a community of hopes and fears, was to be exchanged for quarrels among themselves. Yet the remembrance of the league which once had bonnd them, acted as a civiliscr between the warriors of all lands in their intercourse with each other. The names of the early crusaders had now become historic. Heraldry had established itself as the highest of sciences, and the bearings on shields, and mottoes on pennons, revealed to the hostile squadrons, when drawn up in battle- array, who their antagonists were. In the same way as mutual respect was thus established among the knights and 82 EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES. [a. D. 1270 nobles of different kingdoms, there was a feeling of kindliness produced between the...« less