ABSTRACT
THE history of chivalry as a living organism may almost be said to be co-extensive with the history of the Crusades. 'The Crusades' says Gibbon,l were 'at once an effect and a cause of this memorable institution.' Before the first Crusade, knighthood was undisciplined. The military orders had not yet set a pattern of knightly per· fection; heraldry and ceremonial of all kinds were undeveloped; the literature of romance was in its infancy; gallantry was no necessary qualification of a knight; the lingua franca of a common profession had not yet bound all nationalities together in a common interest; and feudal obligations were not yet softened by the courtesies enjoined by chivalry. The soldiers of the first Crusade were brave,
violent, cruel, enthusiastic, superstitious and devout; uncontrolled in all their passions, good and bad, and owning few of the restraints afterwards imposed as the duty of knighthood, except valour and honour. By the end of the last Crusade, chivalry had ceased to advance. Its rules were fixed, its standards of conduct settled. It had nothing to invent, no novelties to expect. The art of noble horsemanship and the manage of the sword and lance were early completed i to these, warfare with the Saracens had added the employment of light-cavalry, and improved that of archery; and contact with the military science of Constantinople had taught the soldiers of the West how to marshal their infantry and cavalry in the field, and how to build, besiege, and defend castles larger and more artfully constructed than the Norman keeps, such as the Tower and Rochester Castle, which represent the first age of castle-building in Europe. l
The nations of Europe had never been brought face to to face with each other till the first Crusade joined them in a single enterprise. With no common language, and few common ideas to unite them,-beyond their allegiance to the Church of Rome, the only stable landmark in a distracted age-the crusaders found another tie in the primeval tradition of knighthood. The bond of a common knighthood was as real and as effective as that of a common fai tho It was difficult for the rude soldiers, hot-tempered and full of earthly passions, to behave every day like Tasso's paladins. They had come to the East from a variety of causes, no t all religious-enterprise, ambition, knight-errantry, commercial speculation. The trade routes of Europe pointed the way
lOman, His/Dry of til, Art of War.
