Although it may be broadly asserted that the emancipation did not alter the relations of the citizens with the general government, that assertion must be modified in one respect. A link was established between the citizens and the king. Sometimes they appealed for his aid against their lord, sometimes the lord invoked him as judge; in one way or another a relation was established between the king and the towns, and the citizens thus came into touch with the centre of the State. _V.--The Crusades_ From the fifth to the twelfth century, society, as we have seen, contained kings, a lay aristocracy, a clergy, citizens, peasantry, the germs, in fact, of all that goes to make a nation and a government; yet--no government, no nation. We have come across a multitude of particular forces, of local institutions, but nothing general, nothing public, nothing properly speaking political. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the contrary, all the classes and the particular forces have taken a secondary place, are shadowy and almost effaced; the stage of the world is occupied by two great figures, government and people. Here, if I am not mistaken, is the essential distinction between primitive Europe and modern Europe. Here is the change that was accomplished in the period extending from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Viewed by itself, that period seems a characterless one of confusion without cause, of movement without direction, of agitation without result. Yet, in relation to the period that followed, this period had a tendency and a progress of its own; it slowly accomplished a vast work. It was the second period of European civilisation--the period of attempt and experiment, succeeding that of origins and formation, and preparing the way for that of development properly so called. The first great event of this period was the Crusades--a universal movement of all classes and all countries in moral unity--the truly heroic event of Europe. Besides the religious impulse that led to the Crusades, there was another impulse. They gave to me an opportunity of widening their horizons, of indulging the taste for movement and adventure. The opportunity, thus freely taken, changed the face of society. Men's minds were opened, their ideas were extended, by contact with other races; European society was dragged out of the groove along which it had been travelling. Religious ideas remained unchanged, but religious beliefs were no longer the only sphere in which the human intellect exercised itself. The moral state of Europe was profoundly modified.