I have shown his sympathy with his age, and his superiority to it; nevertheless he was not free from its great defects. St. Louis was a Christian, and yet he did not recognise the rights of conscience; he was a king, and by his blind infatuation for the Crusades he imposed useless dangers, miseries, and sacrifices upon his people for a fruitless enterprise. It is not my intention to discuss here the leading idea and general influence of the Crusades; originally they were without doubt the spontaneous and universal impulse of Christian Europe towards a noble, disinterested, and moral aim, worthy alike of men's enthusiasm and their devotion. The attacks of Islamism had for a long time compelled Christianity to occupy a defensive position, which was both humiliating and full of peril, and the crusade was an aggressive reaction. {142} As to results, I think that the Crusades have had many that are valuable; and if we take a comprehensive view of events and centuries, we shall see that they rather aided than impeded or changed European civilization. But in the last half of the thirteenth century all the good that they could do had been accomplished, and they had lost that character of spontaneous and general impulse which had been at once their strength and their excuse; people of all classes were beginning to be doubtful and tired of them; not only the Sire de Joinville, but many burgesses and country people had ceased to be attracted by the enterprise or to believe in its success. By his blind infatuation, St. Louis did more than any other man of that period to incur the responsibility of prolonging a movement which was more and more inexpedient and ill-timed, because day by day it became less spontaneous and more impossible of success. On another subject, of even greater importance than the Crusades, St. Louis was quite as much in error, although his personal responsibility was less because he obeyed the prevailing and emphatic belief of his time with a sincere conviction of its truth. This was the employment of compulsion in matters of religion, and the prohibition by the State of all opinions condemned by the Church.