Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/113

 Mahomed the Second and Solieman the Magnificent, were truly Byzantine, viz: Roman Caesars. Under their sceptres the Christian nations, who are commonly said to have lived under oppression, continued the same local existence as they had done under the rule of Christian emperors. All western activities were of secondary interest to the ruler of three continents, the master of the Mediterranean and the Euxine. Louis XIV was the first modern king of France, but modern France, unitary and centralised (the created France not the historical), was the work of the political struggles of the Revolution.

The Revolution was not the beginning of a new era. Its ideas and methods were to be found at the beginning of the 15th century in the riotous Paris of Caboche. Without the intervention of the «absolute» monarchy the outburst would have forestalled Mirabeau by four hundred years. But the former free life of the cities, the greatest thing in that greatest epoch of mankind, the middle ages, was crushed. The political importance of the bourgeoisie was recognised by Louis XIV. The destruction of the Court by the shy half-Teuton Louis XV made of the new bourgeoisie of the salons the intellectual leaders of France. The philanthropical debility of Louis XVI gave the final blow to the already tottering edifice as the Bastille, the institution of the old kings, was conquered because it was never defended. This is why I began my contemporary history with America, the first to employ the theories of French philosophy, the first to uphold a popular, and this time a true popular movement of liberty.

Nevertheless, in the middle ages, a new principle of historical life was presented: the Roman territories, practically abandoned by the Empire and unoccupied by the barbarian, developed in a free and patriarchal manner, free forces such as Venice, Genoa, peasant confederations such