Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/174

 an edifice built upon evanescent clouds, the menacing cracks in crumbling walls, the absolute need of making up our minds either to abandon everything which, up to today, had been a fixed and certain article of faith, or of perishing under the ruins of our disillusionment.

Other forms of democracy are, indeed, to be found in the development of human society. Rousseau, however, could not see them. In Venice, where he played the part of an impertinent, pretentious secretary to the French Ambassador there, the old and mediaeval regime, based on the participation of all citizens, had disappeared at the commencement of the 13th century, when the Great Council was closed, no longer permitting the entry of new families into the stronghold of a proud and cunning aristocracy. In his own city, and in the neighbouring Swiss cantons, the mediaeval life in the isolated peasant communities of the valleys had given way to the domination of the wealthy bourgeoise communities of the cities: hardly a trace was left of the original clan predominance. All over Europe the princes, and the wealthy urban classes were in the saddle.

In the Balkan peninsula a transformation had also taken place which had destroyed the old systems in which an organic historical democracy had, for a time, prevailed.

I shall sketch this first in the Roumanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, particularly the latter, which was the product of the free and gradual combination of peasant communities, whereas Moldavia, in the north, was founded by immigrant Roumanian knights in rebellion against their overlord, the king of Hungary, who won for themselves a province wrested from the grip of the Mongol raider.