constitutions, came about by slow instalments. At no stage of the
development was there any general cataclysm such as had followed the
dissolution of the Frankish Empire, and was to follow the advent of
Napoleon. New ideas matured slowly in the medieval mind; by the twelfth
century the forces making for social stability had grown until they
balanced those of disruption; and it was only in the age of the
Renaissance that the equilibrium was again destroyed. In the interim the
vested interests of property and privilege, of religious and secular
authority, presented a firm front to the anarchists and radicals. The
Jacquerie in France and Wat Tyler's followers in England, the Albigeois
of Languedoc and the Hussites of Bohemia, were overwhelmed by armies of
conservatives spontaneously banded together in defence of the
established order;--while this spirit prevailed among the ruling
classes, there was little fear that a revolution of any kind would be
effected by a sudden stroke. As in domestic politics, so too in
international relations, these solidly established states were
habitually inert, strong in defence, but irresolute and sluggish in
attack. The age produced no conqueror to sweep through Europe like a
whirlwind, because the implements of conquest on the grand scale had
either been destroyed or had not yet come into existence. The peoples of
Europe had emerged from the nomadic stage of culture, and they were not
yet organised as so many armed camps. The feudal host was hard to
mobilise, harder still to keep in the field, and at the best an
unmanageable weapon; a standing army of mercenary soldiers would have
called for taxation heavier and more regular than any ruler dared to
demand, or any people could afford to pay. The wars of the Middle Ages
have therefore, with few exceptions, a stamp of futility and pettiness.
Ambitious enterprises were foredoomed to failure, and powers apparently
annihilated by an invading host recovered strength as soon as it had
rolled away. In short, on the European and on the national stage alike,