Verily when the thirteenth century opened, the times were evil, and
no hope seemed anywhere on the horizon. The grasp of the infidel was
tightened upon the Holy City, and what little force there ever had
been among the rabble of Crusaders was gone now; the truculent
ruffianism that pretended to be animated by the crusading spirit
showed its real character in the hideous atrocities for which Simon
de Montfort is answerable, and in the unparalleled enormities of the
sack of Constantinople in 1204. For ten years (1198--1208) through
the length and breadth of Germany there was ceaseless and sanguinary
conflict. In the great Italian towns party warfare, never hesitating
to resort to every kind of crime, had long been chronic. The history
of Sicily is one long record of cruelty, tyranny, and wrong--
committed, suffered, or revenged. Over the whole continent of Europe
people seem to have had no _homes;_ the merchant, the student,
the soldier, the ecclesiastic were always on the move. Young men made
no difficulty in crossing the Alps to attend lectures at Bologna, or
crossing the Channel to or from Oxford and Paris. The soldier or the
scholar was equally a free-lance, ready to take service whereever it
offered, and to settle wherever there was dread to win or money to
save. No one trusted in the stability of anything.
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