he meeting of the General Assembly for the purpose
of choosing their magistrates. This done, the assembly dissolved, and
the magistrates were left with a free hand to rule or ruin, until
checked by popular outbreak or a new election.

As is always the case, time developed two classes: an inferior
population, with a furious spirit of democracy, and a superior class,
more conservative, and desirous of keeping peace with the great
proprietors.

In this simple, humble fashion were the people groping toward freedom,
and experimenting with the alphabet of self-government.

The acknowledgment of the free cities by Louis VI., was the first move
toward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance which
would eventually wrest the power from the hands of the nobles. But
that end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power came
in the succeeding reign when Louis VII. married Eleanor, daughter of
the Duke of Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the largest of the
feudal states, was thereby annexed to the crown: a marriage which made
some troublesome chapters in the history of two kingdoms, of which we
shall hear later. But, in the duel between king and peerage, the
balance of power was moving toward the throne.

At the time these things were happening that great event, the Crusades,
had already commenced.

It was in 1095 that Peter the Hermit, returning from a pilgrimage, by
command of the Pope went throughout Europe proclaiming the desecration
of the holy places. At a council held at Clermont in France, 1095, the
first Crusade was proclaimed by Urban II. Led by Peter the Hermit, a
vast undisciplined host, without preparation, rushed indiscriminately
toward Asia Minor, perishing by famine, disease, and the sword before
they reached their goal. Undismayed by this, another Crusade was
immediately organized under the direction of the greatest nobles in
France; and in three years (1099) the Holy City had been captured, the
Cross floated over the Holy Sepulchre, and Godfrey of Boulogne, leader
of the expedition, was proclaimed King of Jerusalem.

France had inaugurated the most extraordinary movement in the history
of civilization. Appealing as it did to the knightly and to the
romantic ideal, what an opportunity was here for idle adventurous
nobles, their occupation gone through changed conditions! If the
Church, by "the Truce of God," had bid them sheathe their swords, now
she bade them to be d