carried off his beasts of burden. "Leagues of Peace" were formed to
diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to enforce order.
The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest mentions of
these "Leagues of Peace," was held 1223 years ago. The Council of
Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to police the
rural districts and prevent war. Our ancestors believed in leagues with
"teeth in them." From France where the movement had its origin and
culminated at Elne (1207) in the full organization of the "Truce of
God," it spread eastward into Germany and Thuringia. The German duchies
and the Austrian marches submitted soon after to its humanitarian and
Christian code. In 1030, the Pope, the French and German princes united
their efforts for the development of the forerunners of the "Truce of
God," the conventions known as the "Peace of God." The Peace, the
earlier institution of the two, exempted from the evils of war,
churches, monasteries, clerics, children, pilgrims, husbandmen; the
cattle, the fields, the vineyards of the toiler; his instruments of
labor, his barns, his bakehouse, his milch cows, his goats and his fowl.
The Truce forbade war at certain "closed seasons." It gave angry
passions time to subside, and endeavored to discredit war by making
peace more desirable and its blessings more prolonged. It is probable
that the Council of Charroux already mentioned laid the germs of the
Truce. At the Council of Elne we see it fully organized. In 1139 the
Tenth General Council, the Second Lateran, gave in its eleventh Canon
its official approbation to what must be considered one of the most
beautiful institutions of the Middle Ages.

Under the guidance of our American author, George Henry Miles, we are
led back to the days of the eleventh century. He is an accurate and
picturesque chronicler of that iron, yet chivalrous age. If on the one
hand, we see the sinister figure of Henry IV of Germany, on the other we