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Medieval Europe by H. W. C. (Henry William Carless) Davis
page 102 of 163 (62%)
medieval politics meant the eternal recurrence of the same problems and
disputes, the eternal repetition of the same palliatives and the same
plan of campaign. It is true that political science made more progress
than the art of war. But substantial reforms of institutions were
effected only in a few exceptional communities--in Sicily under the
Normans and Frederic II, in England under Henry II and Edward I, in
France under Philip Augustus and his successors. Even in these cases the
progress usually consists in elaborating some primitive expedient, in
developing some accepted principal to the logical conclusion. The more
audacious innovators, a Montfort, an Artevelde, a Frederic II, were
tripped up and overthrown as soon as they stepped beyond the circle of
conventional ideas. It will therefore suffice for our present purpose to
state in the barest outline the leading events of international
politics, and the chief advances in the theory of government, which
signalised the Middle Ages.

Extensive diplomatic combinations, though continually planned, seldom
came to the birth and very rarely led to any notable result. The
existence of some common interests was recognised; no power viewed with
indifference any movement threatening the existence of the Papacy, which
represented religious unity, or of the crusading principalities which
formed the outer bulwark of Western Christendom; the principle of the
Balance of Power, though not yet crystallised into a dogma, was so far
understood that the inordinate growth of any single power alarmed the
rest, even though they stood in no imminent danger of absorption.
Therefore whenever the Empire gained the upper hand over the Church,
whenever a new horde of Asiatics appeared on the horizon, whenever
France seemed about to become a province of England, or Italy a province
of France, the alarm was sounded by the publicists, and there ensued a
general interchange of views between the monarchies; treaty was piled on
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