Clermont, in an assembly at which he presided and harangued. They exclaimed “’Tis the will of God;” and these words became the device of the crusaders, the number of whom encreased beyond measure. The military history of this expedition does not concern us: we have only to observe, that the first act of this army was to re-establish ‘en-passant’ pope Urban, in the city of Rome, at the end of the year 1096. Henry, driven from Italy by the troops of the Countess Matilda, retired to Germany. Urban did not die till 1099; and the pontificate of his successor Pascal II. belongs principally to the twelfth century. ¹⁶⁸ Velly’s Hist, of France, v. 2, p. 493. ¹⁶⁹ Fleury. Hist. Eccles. 1. 62. n. 14. The age which we have passed over, ought to remain for ever famous in the history of the popes. If they are not yet recognized as sovereigns, if their temporal power has not yet been declared independent, it in effect rivals and threatens the throne which ought to govern it. Already the Two Sicilies had become fiefs of the Holy See; the donations of Matilda have extended, over almost all Middle Italy, the rights or pretensions of the court of Rome. But what signify the limits and the nature of these temporal possessions, when the spiritual authority no longer recognizes restriction, when the gospel ministry transforms itself into a universal theocracy, which brands, curses, deposes kings, and disposes of their crowns. One man alone, it is true, had fully conceived this tremendous system; but the opinions, of which the ignorance of this man, as well as his contemporaries, was composed, encouraged his undertakings, however monstrous, and political circumstances promised him success from them. New dynasties had arisen in France, England, and other countries: the French emperors, threatened in their own palaces, had lost every remnant of authority in Italy: it was sufficient to humble the Emperor of the West; he alone counterbalanced in Europe the weight of the Holy See. In attacking him one might reckon on the support or neutrality of other monarchs; they were jealous of his preponderance: Rome in humiliating them, disposed them to reconcile themselves to it by the spectacle of more serious outrages reserved for their head; they childishly rejoiced in the great share he should have in the common humiliation. They turn, in the mean time, against him, the old or new factions which troubled Germany; they redouble their insolence and their power by the thunder of the anathemas with which they struck him; and if so many efforts did not overthrow him, at least, they staggered and weakened him. Such was the war waged by Hildebrand, against Heniy IV. the first at the period, or as we may term him, the only representative of the civil power in the West. In bequeathing this war to his successors, Hildebrand vanquished as he was, had pointed out the object, traced the plan, and tempered the arms.¹⁷⁰ There had needed to complete his work, perhaps, in the course of the