etty nobles, who made their
castles so many receptacles of robbers and plunder, were thus the
foundation of public liberty. And it appears tolerably certain
that the Paladins of Ariosto were in reality nothing more than
those brigand chieftains of the Ardennes, whose ruined residences
preserve to this day the names which the poet borrowed from the
old romance writers. But in all the rest of the Netherlands,
excepting the provinces already mentioned, no form of government
existed, but that fierce feudality which reduced the people into
serfs, and turned the social state of man into a cheerless waste
of bondage.

It was then that the Crusades, with wild and stirring fanaticism,
agitated, in the common impulse given to all Europe, even those
little states which seemed to slumber in their isolated independence.
Nowhere did the voice of Peter the Hermit find a more sympathizing
echo than in these lands, still desolated by so many intestine
struggles. Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, took the
lead in this chivalric and religious frenzy. With him set out
the counts of Hainault and Flanders; the latter of whom received
from the English crusaders the honorable appellation of Fitz
St. George. But although the valor of all these princes was
conspicuous, from the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem by
Godfrey of Bouillon in 1098, until that of the Latin empire of
Constantinople by Baldwin of Flanders in 1203, still the simple
gentlemen and peasants of Friesland did not less distinguish
themselves. They were, on all occasions, the first to mount the
breach or lead the charge; and the pope's nuncio found himself
forced to prohibit the very women of Friesland from embarking
for the Holy Land--so anxious were they to share the perils and
glory of their husbands and brothers in combating the Saracens.

The outlet given by the crusaders to the overboiling ardor of
these warlike countries was a source of infinite advantage to
their internal economy; under the rapid progress of civilization,
the population increased and the fields were cultivated. The
nobility, reduced to moderation by the enfeebling consequences
of extensive foreign wars, became comparatively impotent in their
attempted efforts against domestic freedom. Those of Flanders and
Brabant, also, were almost decimated in the terrible battle of
Bouvines, fought between the Emperor Othon and Philip Augustus,
king of France. On no occasion, however, had this redu