t of Rome. Though sensible of the danger attending the
interposition of ecclesiastical authority in temporal disputes, he
applied to the pope, as his superior lord, to excommunicate his enemies,
and by these censures to reduce to obedience his undutiful children,
whom he found such reluctance to punish by the sword of the
magistrate.[*] Alexander, well pleased to exert his power in so
justifiable a cause, issued the bulls required of him; but it was soon
found, that these spiritual weapons had not the same force as when
employed in a spiritual controversy; and that the clergy were very
negligent in supporting a sentence which was nowise calculated to
promote the immediate interests of their order. The king, after taking
in vain this humiliating step, was obliged to have recourse to arms,
and to enlist such auxiliaries as are the usual resource of tyrants, and
have seldom been employed by so wise and just a monarch.

The loose government which prevailed in all the states of Europe, the
many private wars carried on among the neighboring nobles, and the
impossibility of enforcing any general execution of the laws, had
encouraged a tribe of banditti to disturb every where the public peace,
to infest the highways, to pillage the open country, and to brave all
the efforts of the civil magistrate, and even the excommunications of
the church, which were fulminated against them. Troops of them were
sometimes enlisted in the service of one prince or baron, sometimes
in that of another: they often acted in an independent manner, under
leaders of their own; the peaceable and industrious inhabitants, reduced
to poverty by their ravages, were frequently obliged for subsistence to
betake themselves to a like disorderly course of life; and a continual
intestine war, pernicious to industry, as well as to the execution
of justice, was thus carried on in the bowels of every kingdom. Those
desperate ruffians received the name sometimes of Brabancons, sometimes
of Routiers or Cottereaux; but for what reason is not agreed by
historians; and they formed a kind of society or government among
themselves, which set at defiance the rest of mankind. The greatest
monarchs were not ashamed, on occasion, to have recourse to their
assistance; and as their habits of war and depredation had given them
experience, hardiness, and courage, they generally composed the most
formidable part of those armies which decided the political quarrels
of princes. Seve