Before the second crusade was contemplated, a change--an immense change had operated itself in the state of society. Just fifty years had passed since the council of Clermont: but the kings of France were no longer the same; the royal authority had acquired force[547]--the latent principles of domination had been exercised for the general good. Kings had put forth their hands to check abuses, to punish violence and crime; and the feudal system began to assume the character, not of a simple confederation, but of an organized _hierarchy_,[548] in which the whole body was the judge of each individual, and the head of that body the executor of its sentence. Louis VI., commonly called Louis the Fat,[549] was the first among the kings of France who raised the functions of royalty above those of sovereignty, and the distinction between the two states is an important one. The former monarchs of France, including Philip I., under whose reign the first crusade was preached, had each been but sovereigns, who could call upon their vassals to serve them for so many days in the field, and whose rights were either simply personal, that is to say, for their own dignity and benefit, or only general so far as the protection of the whole confederacy from foreign invasion was implied. Louis the Fat, however, saw that in the kingly office was comprised both duties and rights of a different character; the right of punishing private crime,[550] and of opposing universal wrong; the duty of maintaining public order, and of promoting by one uniform and acknowledged power the tranquillity of the whole society and the security of each individual. The efforts of that prince were confined and partial, it is true;[551] but he and his great minister, Suger, seized the just idea of the monarchical form of government, and laid the basis of a well-directed and legitimate authority.