Historical and Political Essays | Page 8

and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these fields,
but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight had won
his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were directed
almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic tribes. With
the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very slightly in contact. He
made in person but one expedition against them, and that expedition
was both insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the Karlovingian
romances, which were written when the crusading enthusiasm was at its
height, the figure of the great emperor underwent a strange and most

significant transformation. The German wars were scarcely noticed.
Charlemagne is surrounded with the special glory that ought to have
belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented as having passed his
entire life in a victorious struggle with the Mohammedans of Europe,
and is even gravely credited with a triumphant expedition to Jerusalem.
The three romances of the Crusades which are believed to be the oldest
were all written by monks, and they all make Charlemagne their hero.
Even geography was transformed by the new enthusiasm, and old maps
sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre of the world.
In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals
created by the popular imagination and the realities that are recognised
by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty, more
outrage, and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have brought a
blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the idea that inspired them
was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured by the
imaginations of men that in combination with the other influences I
have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the most beautiful
in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in the romances of
Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the "Red-Cross Knight"
of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which paint so vividly the hero
of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword for his faith and his lady-love
and in the cause of the feeble and the oppressed. The glorification of
military courage and self-sacrifice which had been so prominent in
antiquity was again in the ascendant, but it was combined with a new
kind of honour and with a new vein of courtesy, modesty, and
gentleness. When we apply the epithet 'chivalrous' to a modern
gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There is even now an element in
that character which may be distinctly traced to the ideal of chivalry
which the Crusades made dominant in Europe.
I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in turn
prevailed. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to illustrate a
kind of history which appears to me to possess much interest and value.
It will show, too, that a faithful historian is very largely concerned with
the fictions as well as with the facts of the past. Legends which have no
firm historical basis are often of the highest historical value as

reflecting the moral sentiments of their time. Nor do they merely reflect
them. In some periods they contribute perhaps more than any other
influence to mould and colour them and to give them an enduring
strength. The facts of history have been largely governed by its fictions.
Great events often acquire their full power over the human mind only
when they have passed through the transfiguring medium of the
imagination, and men as they were supposed to be have even
sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they actually were.
Ideals ultimately rule the world, and each before it loses its ascendancy
bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding legacy to the human race.

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY
When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am
endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received from your Secretary a report
of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland
Institute,--when I observed the immense range and variety of subjects
included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly the intense
intellectual activity of this great town,--my first feeling was one of
some bewilderment and dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that
would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience, and
relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many of
their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On reflection,
however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other cases, the
proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his last, and that
a writer who, during many years of his life, has been engaged in the
study of English history could hardly do better than devote the