, was lost in the second, and never recovered. And so
ineffectual had been the expenditure of life, fortune, and enthusiasm
that the last Crusade was not even fought in Palestine, but on the
shores of North Africa.

But something had been accomplished which none had foreseen: a result
of greater magnitude than territorial possession of the Holy Land.
Through the broadening of men's views, and the common heritage of a
great experience, a group of isolated kingdoms had been drawn into
fraternal relations, and a European civilization had commenced.

There had been many surprises. Close contact had softened prejudices.
The infidel had found that the crusader was something more than the
most brutal and stupid of barbarians, as he had supposed; and the
crusader, that the profaning infidel was not the monster he expected to
find. In fact, the European discovered that in the Saracen and the
Greek they met a civilization much more advanced, more learned, and
more polished than their own. More civilization was brought out of the
East than was carried into it by its Christian invaders. And it was
through this strange and disastrous experience that the art and the
thought of Europe received its first impulse toward a great future.

During the fifteen years of the reign of Louis's son, Philip III.,
France moved on under the momentum received from his father. But the
succeeding reign of Philip IV. was epoch-making. That imperious,
strong-willed son of Saint Louis demanded that the clergy should share
the state's burden by contributing to its revenue. Pope Boniface
VIII., imperious and strong-willed as he, immediately issued a bull,
forbidding the clergy to pay, or the officers to receive, such taxes.
The answer to this was a royal edict forbidding the exportation of
precious metals (of course including money) from France to Italy, thus
cutting off from the pope the large revenue from the Church in France.

The quarrel resolved itself at last into a question of the relative
authority of king and pope in the kingdom. In order to fortify his
position, and perhaps to show his contempt for clergy and barons alike,
Philip took a step which profoundly affected the future of France. At
a great council summoned to consider these papal claims, he commanded
the presence not only of the ecclesiastics and nobles, the two
governing estates, but also summoned the representatives of the towns
and cities--the _Tiers Etat_! Prelate, baro