THE IMPOVERISHED CONDITION OF EUROPE.
The once luxuriant civilization of Rome had been swept away by the
Northern invaders as completely as a freshet despoils the fields when it
not only destroys standing vegetation, but carries with the débris the
soil itself. The most primitive arts, those associated with agriculture,
were forgotten, and the rudiments of modern industries were not thought
of. Much of the once cultivated land had, as has elsewhere been noted,
reverted to native forest and marsh, and in places was still being
purchased by strangers on titles secured by occupancy and first
improvement, as now in the new territories of America. But even nature’s
pity for man was outraged; the bounty she gave from half-tilled acres
was despoiled by men themselves, as hungry children snatch the morsels
of charity from one another’s hands. What was hoarded for personal
possession became the spoil of petty robbers, and what was left by the
neighborhood marauder was destroyed in the incessant baronial strife. To
these devouring forces must be added the desolating wars between the
papal and imperial powers, the conquest and reconquest of Spain by Moors
and Christians, and the despoiling of Saxon England by the Normans.
Throughout Europe, fields, cottages, castles, oftentimes churches, were
stripped by the vandalism which had seemingly become a racial
disposition. To this ordinary impoverished condition was added the
especial misery, about 1195, of several years’ failure of crops. Famine
stalked through France and middle Europe; villages were depopulated.
Cruel as they were, men grew weary of raiding one another’s possessions
when there was nothing to bring back but wounds. Even hatred palled when
unsupported by envy and cupidity.
The crusades gave promise of opening a new world to greed. The stories
that were told of Eastern riches grew, as repeated from tongue to
tongue, until fable seemed poor in comparison with what was believed to
be fact. All the wealth of antiquity was presumed to be still stored in
treasure-vaults, which the magic key of the cross would unlock. The
impoverished baron might exchange his half-ruined castle for some
splendid estate beyond the Ægean, and the vulgar crowd, if they did not
find Jerusalem paved with gold like the heavenly city, would assuredly
tread the veins of rich mines or rest among the flowers of an earthly
paradise. The Mohammedan’s expectation of a sensual heaven after death
was matched by the Christian’s anticipation of what awaited him while
still in life.
They who were uninfluenced by this prospect may have seized the more
warrantable hope of opening profitable traffic with the Orient. The
maritime cities of Italy had for a long time harvested great gains in
the eastern Mediterranean, in spite of the Moslem interruptions of
commerce. Would not a tide of wealth pour westward if only the swords of
the Christians could hew down its barriers?
The church piously, but none the less shrewdly, stimulated the sense of
economy or greed by securing exemption from taxation to all who should
enlist, and putting a corresponding burden of excise upon those who
remained at home, whose estates were assessed to pay the expenses of the
absent. The householder who found it difficult to save his possessions
while keeping personal guard over them was assured that all his family
and effects would be under the watchful protection of the church, with
anathemas already forged against any who should molest them. If one were
without means he might borrow to the limit of his zeal, with exemption
from interest. It was understood that the Jews were still under
necessity of paying back the thirty pieces of silver with which they had
bought the Christians’ Lord, the interest on which, compounded through
the centuries, was now equal in amount to all there might be in the
vaults of this accursed race.
When we remember the wars of modern times which have originated in the
cupidity of men, we are not surprised that the same disposition,
inflamed by the sense of dire need at home and the vision of untold
treasures _outre mer_, with heavenly rewards beyond the sky, should have
led to the same result in an age that knew almost nothing of the arts of
peace.