The effect of the Crusades was nevertheless a complete revolution in the manners and customs of the Western nations; the suppression of servitude, the founding of the free towns, the alienation and the division of the feudal lands, and the development of the communal system, were the immediate consequences of the tremendous emigration of men who went forth to fight and die in Palestine. The nobles ceased to wage their perpetual private quarrels, knighthood assumed a regular and solemn character, judiciary duels diminished, religious orders multiplied, and charitable institutions were established on every side. Men’s minds became more enlightened and their manners softened under the influence of the growing expansion of science, art, and literature. Law, natural history, philosophy, and mathematics came to them in direct descent from the Greeks and the Arabians; a new literature, abounding in poetic gems, sprang forth all at once from the imagination of troubadours, minstrels, and minnesingers; art, the fine arts particularly, architecture, painting, sculpture, and embroidery, began to unfold their thousand wonders; industry and commerce multiplied a hundredfold the public wealth, which at one time had seemed nearly swallowed up in ruinous expeditions; and the art of war, as well as the art of navigation, made immense strides in the direction of progress. [Illustration: Fig. 114.--Assault on a Fortified Place.--From a Miniature in the “Histoire des Croisades” of Guillaume de Tyr, Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.] CHIVALRY. DUELS AND TOURNAMENTS. Origin of Chivalry.--Its different Characteristics.--Chivalric Gallantry.--Chivalry and Nobility.--Its Relations with the Church.--Education of the Children of the Nobility.--Squires.--Chivalric Exercises.--Pursuivants at Arms.--Courts and Tribunals of Love.--Creation of Knights.--Degradation of Knights.--Judicial Duels.--Trials by Ordeal.--Feudal Champions.--Gages of Battle.--The Church forbids Duels.--Tournaments invented by the Sire de Preuilly in the Tenth Century.--Arms need in a Tournament.--Tilt.--Lists.--The part taken by Ladies.--King René’s Book. The word Chivalry, according to M. Philarète Chasles, whose ingenious opinions we often borrow, expresses a mixture of manners, of ideas, and of customs peculiar to the Middle Ages of Europe, and to which no analogy is to be traced in the annals of the human race. Illustration: Fig. 115.--King Artus, protected by the Virgin, is fighting a Giant.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Chroniques de Bretagne,” of Alain Bouchard; 4to, Paris, Galliot du Pré, 1514.]