Revolution; Germany, the
Reformation; Italy, modern Art; but Russia? "We," Tourgenieff once
said, "we have given the samovar." But that poet's own works, the
symphonies of Tschaikowsky, the one novel of Dostoievsky, have changed
all this.

[9] Nevertheless the Truce of God is one of the noblest efforts of
mediaeval Europe. It drew its origins from southern France, arising
partly from the misery of the people oppressed by the constant and
bloody strife of feudal princes and barons, heightened at that time by
the fury of a pestilence, partly also from a widespread and often fixed
and controlling persuasion that with the close of the century the
thousand years of the Apocalypse would be fulfilled, and that with the
year A.D. 1000 the Day of Judgment would dawn. Ducange has collected
the evidence bearing on the use of the Latin term, and Semichon's
admirable work, _La Paix et la Treve de Dieu, premiere edition_, 1857,
_deuxieme edition revue et augmentee_, 1869, sketches the growth of the
movement. With the eleventh century, though the social misery is
unaltered, the force of the mystic impulse is lost; at the synod of
Tuluges in 1027 the days of the week on which the Truce must be
observed are limited to two. But towards the close of the century the
rising power of Hildebrand and the crusading enthusiasm gave the
movement new life, and the days during which all war was forbidden were
extended to four of the seven days of the week, those sacred to the
Last Supper, Death, Sepulture, and Resurrection. With the decline of
the crusading spirit and the rise of monarchical principles the
influence and use of the Treuga waned. The verses of the troubadour,
Bertrand le Born, are celebrated--"Peace is not for me, but war, war
alone! What to me are Mondays and Tuesdays? And the weeks, months,
and years, all are alike to me." The stanza fitly expresses the way in
which the Truce had come to be regarded by feudal society towards the
close of the twelfth century.

[10] St.-Pierre's work appeared in 1712, three years after Malplaquet,
the most sanguinary struggle of the Marlborough wars. It is thus
synchronous with the last gloomy years of Louis XIV, when France, and
her king also, seemed sinking into the mortal lethargy of Jesuitism.
St.-Simon in his early volumes has written the history of these years.
Voltaire accuses St.-Pierre of originating or encouraging the false
impression that he had derived his theory from the D