Germany and the Germans | Page 7

and the
Danube.
As we know these countries to-day, the definite thing about them is
their difference. You cross the channel in fifty minutes from Dover to
Calais, you cross the Rhine in five minutes, and the peoples seem
thousands of miles apart. "How did it happen," asks Voltaire, "that,
setting out from the same point of departure, the governments of
England and of France arrived at nearly the same time, at results as
dissimilar as the constitution of Venice is unlike that of Morocco?"
One might ask as well how it happened, that the speech of one German
invasion mixing itself with Latin became French, of another Spanish, of
another Portuguese, of another Italian, of another English. These are
interesting inquiries, and in regard to the former it is not difficult to see,

that men grew to be governed differently, according as the geographical
exigencies of their homes were different, and as they occupied
themselves differently.
The observant traveller in the United States, may see for himself what
differences even a few years of differing climate, and circumstances,
and custom will produce. The inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina,
are evidently and visibly different from those in Davenport, Iowa. Two
towns of similar size and wealth, Salisbury, Maryland, and Hingham,
Massachusetts, are almost as different, except in speech, and even in
speech the accent is perceptibly different even to the careless listener,
as though Salisbury were in the south of France, and Hingham in the
north of Germany. These changes and differences are only inexplicable,
to those who will not see the ethnographical miracles taking place
under their noses. Look at the mongrel crowd on Fifth Avenue at
midday, and remember what was there only fifty years ago, and the
differentiation which has taken place in Europe due to climate,
intermarriage, laws, and customs seems easy to trace and to explain.
The fishermen and tillers of the soil in the Scandinavian peninsula,
afterward the settlers in the Saxon plain and in England, recognized
him who ruled over their settled place of abode as king; while roaming
bands of fighting men would naturally attach themselves to the head of
the tribe, as the leader in war, and recognize him as king. As late as the
death of Charlemagne, when his powerful grip relaxed, the tribes of
Germans, for they were little more even then, fell apart again. Another
family like that of Pepin arose under Robert the Strong, and under
Hugue Capet (987) acquired the title of Kings of France. The monarchy
grew out of the weakening of feudalism, and feudalism had been the
gradual setting, in law and custom, of a way of living together, of these
detached tribes and clans, and their chiefs.
A powerful warrior was rewarded with a horse, a spear; later, when
territory was conquered and the tribe settled down, land was given as a
reward. Land, however, does not die like a horse, or wear out and get
broken like a spear, and the problem arises after the death of the owner,
as to who is his rightful heir. Does it revert to the giver, the chief of the

tribe, or does it go to the children of the owner? Some men are strong
enough to keep their land, to add to it, to control those living upon it,
and such a one becomes a feudal ruler in a small way himself. He
becomes a duke, a dux or leader, a count, a margrave, a baron, and a
few such powerful men stand by one another against the king. A
Charlemagne, a William the Conqueror, a Louis XIV is strong enough
to rule them and keep them in order for a time. Out of these conditions
grow limited monarchies or absolute monarchies and national
nobilities.
More than any other one factor, the Crusades broke up feudalism. The
great noble, impelled by a sense of religious duty, or by a love of
adventure, arms himself and his followers, and starts on years of
journeyings to the Holy Land. Ready money is needed above all else.
Lands are mortgaged, and the money-lender and the merchant buy
lands, houses, and eventually power, and buy them cheap. The
returning nobles find their affairs in disarray, their fields cultivated by
new owners, towns and cities grow up that are as strong or stronger
than the castle. Before the Crusades no roturier, or mere tiller of the soil,
could hold a fief, but the demand for money was so great that fiefs were
bought and sold, and Philippe Auguste (1180) solved the problem by a
law, declaring that when the king invested a man with a sufficient
holding of land or fief, he became ipso facto a noble. This is the same
common-sense policy which led Sir Robert Peel to declare, that any