things worse than joyousness. Nor did the great religious upheavals of the Middle Ages which helped to tighten the Papal grip on the European mind produce any injurious effects in Italy. Far otherwise. The most serious of those movements, the Crusades, proved of signal benefit to the Italian republics. The campaigns that drained other countries of men and money, opened new sources of profit and power to Venice and Genoa, Florence, Milan and Pisa; they invigorated their maritime trade, and increased their knowledge of foreign lands. While the kings and knights of Northern and Central Europe dreamed dreams of military glory, of victory for the Cross, and of conquest for themselves, the commonwealths of Italy realised the more solid, if less splendid, boons of extensive commerce, and even more extensive credit. When Bayezid, surnamed the Lightning, towards the end of the fourteenth century, threatened to carry war into the heart of holy Christendom and boasted that his horse should eat his oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, it was not the Romans who resented the impious insolence of the infidel. Nor were they moved when the King of Hungary, Sigismund, panic-stricken, sent a bishop and two knights with letters to King Charles VI. of France, the eldest son of the Church, imploring him to ward off the evils that menaced it. The Italians saw with calm unconcern the young Count de Nevers, heir of the Duke of Burgundy, and cousin of the French monarch, accompanied by four other princes, lead his brilliant host of knights and squires against the “enemies of God.” It was the villeins of Burgundy and the burgesses of Flanders who paid the expenses of the ruinous campaign undertaken to save Rome from the Turk. And if the honest, but credulous, Froissart is to be believed, the Italians, so far from sympathizing with the aim of the expedition, actually assisted the infidels by information and advice. Bayezid, on hearing that the Christian forces had crossed the Danube, is reported by the Chronicler to have said: “My wishes are now accomplished. It is now four months since I heard of the expedition from my good friend the Duke of Milan, who advised me to draw up my men with prudence.” ♦1396 Sept. 28♦