It may be remembered, that after the accession of Hugh Capet, the great vassals not only did no longer assemble around their prince, but had entirely separated their cause from that of the crown; several even scarcely acknowledged a king of France, and covering their opposition with a pious pretext, they, in their public acts, designated the year of the reign of Jesus Christ, instead of that of the king. This opposition, which lasted more than a century, at last gave way to other feelings, when they saw the French monarchs at the head of those expeditions which attracted the attention of all Christendom, and in which the cause of Jesus Christ himself, as well as of all Christian nations, seemed interested. In order to perceive clearly what the kings of France owed to the holy wars, and what in particular they gained by taking part in them, it would suffice to compare Philip I., shut up in his palace, in a melancholy manner, during the Council of Clermont, excommunicated by Urban, condemned by the bishops, and abandoned by his nobles, with Philip Augustus, in the first place conqueror of Saladin in Syria, and afterwards triumphant at Beauvines, over the enemies of his kingdom; or with Louis IX., surrounded in his reverses by a faithful nobility, ever respected by the clergy and the people, revered as the firmest support of the Church, and proclaimed by his own age the arbiter of Europe. We will speak hereafter of the changes which were then effected in the different classes of society; we will confine ourselves here to saying that the crusades were the signal for a new order of things in France, and that this new order of things cast solid foundations during the holy wars. If royalty in France was weak at the period of the first crusade, in England it was strong and powerful; royalty and feudalism oppressed England with all the weight of the conquests of William; but an authority founded upon victory, and sustained by violence, created at an early period in men’s minds a feeling of opposition, which time and circumstances were destined to develop. Military despotism had been able to impose silence upon opinions; but it had not entirely changed the manners of the English, or destroyed their attachment to old customs. Passions suppressed by the sword broke out with greater violence in the end.