eir position, in
carrying on the expenses of the crusades. There was, consequently, the
beginning of the remaking of all Europe upon a national basis. First,
the enlarged ideas of life broke the bounds of feudalism; second, the
failure to unite the nations in the common sentiment of a Western {324}
Empire had left the political forces to cluster around new
nationalities which sprang up in different sections of Europe.

_The Development of Monarchy_.--The result of this centralization was
to develop monarchy, an institution which became universal in the
process of the development of government in Europe. It became the
essential form of government and the type of national unity. Through
no other known process of the time could the chaotic state of the
feudal regime be reduced to a system. Constitutional liberty could not
have survived under these conditions. The monarchy was not only a
permanent form of government, but it was possessed of great
flexibility, and could adapt itself to almost any conditions of the
social life. While it may, primarily, have rested on force and the
predominance of power of certain individuals, in a secondary sense it
represented not only the unity of the race from which it had gained
great strength, but also the moral power of the tribe, as the
expression of their will and sentiments of justice and righteousness.
It is true that it drew a sharp line between the governing and the
governed; it made the one all-powerful and the other all-subordinate;
yet in many instances the one man represented the collective will of
the people, and through him and his administration centred the wisdom
of a nation.

Among the Teutonic peoples, too, there was something more than
sentiment in this form of government. It was an old custom that the
barbarian monarch was elected by the people and represented them; and
whether he came through hereditary rank, from choice of nobles, or from
the election of the people, this idea of monarchy was never lost sight
of in Europe in the earliest stages of existence, and it was perverted
to a great extent only by the Louis's of France and the Stuarts of
England, in the modern era. Monarchy, then, as an institution, was
advanced by the crusades; for a national life was developed and
centralization took place, the king expressed the unity of it all, and
so everywhere throughout Europe it became the universal type.

{325}

_The Crusades Quickened Intellectual Develo