gradually to absorb other similar centres, was thus laid.  Lawyers, versed in the study of Roman law, flocked into such centres; a tenacious and ambitious race of men issued from among the burgesses, who equally hated the naughtiness of the lords and what they called the lawlessness of the peasants.  The very forms of the village community, unknown to their code, the very principles of federalism were repulsive to them as “barbarian” inheritances.  Caesarism, supported by the fiction of popular consent and by the force of arms, was their ideal, and they worked hard for those who promised to realize it.(37)

The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally, worked in the same direction.  The attempt at constituting the theocratic Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors of Constantinople.  The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her sanctity, she crowned them as God’s representatives on earth, she brought to their service the learning and the statesmanship of her ministers, her blessings and maledictions, her riches, and the sympathies she had retained among the poor.  The peasants, whom the cities had failed or refused to free, on seeing the burghers impotent to put an end to the interminable wars between the knights—­which wars they had so dearly to pay for—­now set their hopes upon the King, the Emperor, or the Great Prince; and while aiding them to crush down the mighty feudal owners, they aided them to constitute the centralized State.  And finally, the invasions of the Mongols and the Turks, the holy war against the Maures in Spain, as well as the terrible wars which soon broke out between the growing centres of sovereignty—­Ile de France and Burgundy, Scotland and England, England and France, Lithuania and Poland, Moscow and Tver, and so on—­contributed to the same end.  Mighty States made their appearance; and the cities had now to resist not only loose federations of lords, but strongly-organized centres, which had armies of serfs at their disposal.

The worst was, that the growing autocracies found support in the divisions which had grown within the cities themselves.  The fundamental idea of the medieval city was grand, but it was not wide enough.  Mutual aid and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must spread to its surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the association.  And in this respect the medieval citizen had committed a formidable mistake at the outset.  Instead of looking upon the peasants and artisans who gathered under the protection of his walls as upon so many aids who would contribute their part to the making of the city—­as they really did—­a sharp division was traced between the “families” of old burghers and the newcomers.  For the former, all benefits from communal trade and communal lands