code of regulations prescribed for its direction. Their ensign was & black cross, on a white robe. They subdued the kingdom of Prussia (A. D. 1230), of which they held possession until the progress of the Reformation gave that country to a protestant prince (A. D. 1525). The last great order was that of St. Lazarus, instituted originally for superintending the treatment of leprosy, a loathsome disease which the crusaders introduced into Europe. It soon became military, like the preceding, but never rose to similar eminence.

The Italian maritime states supplied the crusaders with transports, and conveyed to them provision and the munitions of war.

This traffic led to a rapid increase in the commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean; a taste for spices and other articles of oriental luxury was gradually diffused throughout Europe, and trading depôts were formed by Venice, Genoa, and other Italian powers, on the shores of the Levant, and the coasts of the Greek empire. Several French towns imitated this example, and in the remote north an association was formed for the protection and extension of commerce between the cities of Lubeck and Hamburgh (A. D. 1241), which laid the foundation of the Hanseatic league. The progress of industry, the encouragement which sovereigns found it their interest to grant to trade, and their anxiety to check the arrogance and rapacity of their feudal vassals, led to a great change in most European countries, the establishment of municipal institutions.

The royal authority gained considerably by the extension of municipal freedom. The cities and towns saw that the sovereign was the person most interested in protecting their growing freedom, and they therefore gladly gave him their support in his struggles with the aristocracy and the clergy. The emancipation of the serfs was a consequence of municipal freedom. The free cities granted protection to all who sought shelter within their walls, and the nobles saw that they must either ameliorate the condition of their vassals, or witness the depopulation of their estates. Liberty thus gradually recovered its right civilization consequently began to extend its blessings over society.

The imperial house of Hohenstauffen fell from its pride of place on the death of the emperor Frederic II., the great opponent of the papacy (A. D. 1250). His son Conrad fell a victim to disease, after a brief but troubled reign; and the anarchy which succeeded in Germany, is justly named the calamitous period of the great interregnum. William of Holland, and an English prince, Rickard, earl of Cornwall, were successively elected emperors, and enjoyed little more than the title. At length, Rodolph, count of Hapsburgh, was chosen (A. D. 1273) and showed himself worthy of the crown by his energy in suppressing the predatory wars that were waged by his vassals. In the meantime, the popes, in defiance of the rights of the Hohenstauffen, had bestowed the kingdom of Naples on Charles, duke of Anjou brother to the king of France.

The cruelties of Charles led the Italians to invite young Conradin to assert the hereditary claims of his family. At the age of sixteen this brave prince entered Italy, where he was enthusiastically received. But the Italians were not able to compete with the French in the field, when Conradin encountered Charles, his followers broke at the first on

set, and he remained a prisoner. The duke of Anjou subjected the young prince to the mockery of a trial, and commanded him to be exeouted.

Thus fell the last prince of the house of Suabia, which had long been the most formidable obstacle to papal usurpation. The triumph of the papacy appeared complete: Italy was severed from the German empire; but the peninsula recovered its independence only to be torn in sunder by factions; the church did not succeed to the empire, and the pontiffs found that the spirit of freedom, which they had themselves nurtured, was a more formidable foe than the sovereigns of Germany. SECTION X.-Formation and Constitutional History of the Spanish Monarchy.

FOR several hundred years after the great Saracen i rasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the number of states into which the country had been divided was reduced to four; Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada. The last, comprised within nearly the same limits as the modern province of that name, was all that remained to the Moslems of their once vast possessions in the peninsula. Its concentrated population gave it a degree of strength altogether disproportioned to the extent of its territory; and the profuse magnificence of its court, which rivalled that of the ancient khaliphs, was supported by the labors of a sober industrious people, under whom agriculture and several of the mechanic arts had reached a degree of perfection probably unequalled in any other part of Europe during the middle ages.

The little kingdom of Navarre, embosomed within the Pyrenees, had often attracted the arice of neighboring and more powerful states. But since their selfish schemes operated as a mutual check upon each other, Navarre still continued to maintain her independence when all the smaller states had been absorbed in the gradually increasing dominion of Castile and Aragon. This latter kingdom comprehended the province of that name, together with Catalonia and Valencia. Under its auspicious climate and ree political institutions, its inhabitants displayed an uncommon share of intellectual and moral energy. Its long line of coast opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and its enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and the Balearic Isles.

The remaining provinces of the peninsula fell to the crown of Castile, which, thus extending its sway over an unbroken line of country from the bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, seemed, by the magnitude of its territory, to be entitled to some supremacy over the other states of the peninsula; especially as it was there that the old Gothic monarchy may be said first to have revived after the great Saracen invasion This claim, indeed, appears to have been recognised at an early period of her history.

The Saracens, reposing under the sunny skies of Andalusia, so congenial with their own, seemed willing to relinquish the sterile regions

of the north to an enemy whom they despised. But when the Spaniards, quitting the shelter of their mountains, descended into the open plains of Leon and Castile, they found themselves exposed to the pred atory incursions of the Arab cavalry. It was not until they had reached some natural boundary, as the river Douro, that they were enabled, by constructing a line of fortifications behind this natural fence, to secure their conquests. Their own dissensions were another cause of their tardy progress. More Christian blood was wasted in these national feuds than in all their encounters with the infidel. The soldiers of Fernan Gonçales, a chieftain of the tenth century, complained that their master made them lead the lives of very devils, keeping them in the harness day and night, in wars not against the Saracens, but one another.

These circumstances so far checked the energies of the Christians, that a century and a half elapsed after the invasion before they had penetrated to the Douro (A. D. 850), and nearly thrice that period before they had advanced the line of conquest to the Tagus (A. D. 1147), notwithstanding this portion of the country had been comparatively deserted by the Mohammedans. But it was easy to foresee that a people living as they did under circumstances favorable to the development of both physical and moral energy, must ultimately prevail over a natior. oppressed by despotism, and the effeminate indulgence to which it was naturally disposed by a sensual religion and a voluptuous climate. Ir. truth, the early Spaniard was urged by every motive which can give energy to human purpose. His cause became the cause of Heaven The church published her bulls of crusade, offering liberal indulgences to those who served, and paradise to those who fell in the battle against the infidel. Indeed, volunteers from the remotest parts of Christian Europe eagerly thronged to serve under his banner, and the cause of religion was debated with the same ardor in Spain as on the plains of Palestine.

To the extraordinary position in which the nation was placed may be referred the liberal forms of its political institutions, as well as a more early development of them than took place in other countries of Europe. From the exposure of the Castilian towns to the predatory incursions of the Arabs, it became necessary, not only that they should be strongly fortified, but that every citizen should be trained to bear arms in their defence. An immense increase of consequence was given to the burgesses, who thus constituted the most effective part of the national militia. To this circumstance, as well as to the policy of inviting the settlement of frontier places by the grant of extraordinary privileges to the inhabitants, is to be imputed the early date, as well the liberal character of the charters of community in Castile and Leon. These, although varying a good deal in their details, generally conceded to the citizens the right of electing their own magistrates for the regulation of municipal affairs. In order to secure the barriers of justice more effectually against the violence of power, so often superior to law in an imperfect state of society, it was provided in many of the charters that no nobles should be permitted to acquire real property within the limits of the municipality; that no fortress or palace should be erected by them there; that such as might reside within the terri

tory of a chartered city or borough should be subject to its jurisdiction, and that any violence offered by the feudal lords to its inhabitants might be resisted with impunity. Thus, while the inhabitants of the great towns in other parts of Europe were languishing in feudal servitude, the Castilian corporation, living under the protection of their own laws and magistrates in time of peace, and commanded by their own officers in time of war, were in full enjoyment of all the essential rights and privileges of freemen.

The earliest instance on record of popular representation in Castile, occurred at Burgos in 1169; nearly a century antecedent to the first convocation of the English house of commons, in the celebrated Leicester parliament. Each city had but one vote whatever might be the number of its representatives. The nomination of the deputies was originally vested in the householders at large, but was afterward con fined to the municipalities; a most mischievous alteration which subjected their election eventually to the corrupt influence of the crown. They assembled in the same chamber with the higher orders of the nobility and clergy; but on questions of importance retired to deliberate by themselves. After the transaction of other business, their own petitions were presented to the sovereign; and his assent gave them the validity of laws. The Castilian commons, by neglecting to make their money grants dependant on corresponding concessions from the crown, relinquished that powerful check on its operations so beneficially exerted in the British parliament, but in vain contended for even there until a period much later than that now under consideration. Whatever may have been the right of the nobility and clergy to attend the Cortes, their sanction was not deemed essential to the validity of legislative acts; for their presence was not even required in many as semblies of the nation which occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The extraordinary power thus committed to the commons was, on the whole, unfavorable to their liberties. It deprived them of the sympathy and co-operation of the great orders of the state, whose authority alone could have enabled them to withstand the enactments of arbitrary power, and who in fact did eventually desert them in their utmost need.

But notwithstanding these defects, the popular branch of the Castilian Cortes, very soon after its admission into that body, assumed functions and exercised a degree of power superior to that enjoyed by the commons in other European legislatures. It was soon recognised as a principle of the constitution, that no tax should be imposed without the consent of the representatives of the people. The commons showed a wise solicitude in regard to the mode of collecting the public revenue. They watched carefully over its appropriation to its destined uses. Α vigilant eye was kept on the conduct of public officers, as well as on the right administration of justice, and commissions were appointed by the Cortes to inquire into any suspected abuses of judicial authority. They entered into negotiations for alliances with foreign powers, and by determining the amount of supplies for the maintenance of troops in time of war, preserved a salutary check over military operations. The nomination of regencies was subject to their approbation, and they defined the nature of the authority to be intrusted to them. Their con

cent was esteemed indispensable to the validity of a title to the crown; and this prerogative, or at least the shadow of it, long continued to sur Vive the wreck of their ancient liberties. Finally they more than once set aside the testamentary provisions of the sovereign in regard to the succession.

It would be improper to pass by without notice an anomalous institution peculiar to Castile, which sought to secure the public tranquillity by means which were themselves scarcely compatible with civil subordination. This was the celebrated Hermandad, or " Holy Brotherhood," which was designed as a substitute for a regularly-organized police. It consisted of a confederation of the principal cities, bound together by solemn league and covenant for the defence of their liberty in seasons of civil anarchy. Its affairs were conducted by deputies, who assembled at stated intervals for the purpose, transacting their business under a common seal, enacting laws which they were careful to transmit to the nobles and the sovereign, and enforcing their measures by an armed body of dependants. This wild kind of justice, so characteristic of an unsettled state of society, repeatedly received the legislative sanction; and however formidable such a popular engine may have appeared to the eye of a monarch, he was often ied to countenance it by a sense of his own impotence, as well as of the overweening power of the nobles, against whom it was principally directed. Hence these associations, though the epithet may seem somewhat overstrained, have received the appellation of " Cortes Extraordinary."

With these immunities the cities of Castile attained a degree of opulence and splendor unrivalled, unless in Italy, during the middle ages. At a very early period indeed their contact with the Arabs had familiarized them with a better system of agriculture and a dexterity in the mechanic arts unknown in other parts of Christendom. Augmentation of wealth brought with it the usual appetite for expensive pleasures but the surplus of riches was frequently expended in useful public works.

The nobles, though possessed of immense estates and great political privileges, did not consume their fortunes or their energies in a life of effeminate luxury. From their earliest boyhood they were accustomed to serve in the ranks against the infidel, and their whole subsequent lives were occupied either with war, or those martial exercises whicn reflect the image of it. Looking back with pride to the ancient Gothic descent, and to those times when they had stood forward as the peers, the electors of their sovereign, they would ill brook the slightest indig nity at his hand. Accordingly we find them perpetually convulsing the kingdom with their schemes of selfish aggrandizement. The petitions of the commons are filled with remonstrances on their various oppressions, and the evils resulting from their long desolating feuds.

The over-weening self-confidence of the nobles, however, proved their ruin. They disdained a co-operation with the lower orders in defence of their privileges, when both were assailed by the Austrian dynasty, and relied too unhesitatingly on their power as a body, to feel jealous of their exclusion from the national legislature, where alone they could make an effectual stand against the usurpations of the crown. The long minorities with which Castile was afflicted, perhaps more