away, they order him to forget the unions which formerly were based on free initiative and free agreement, and their aim is to level the whole of society in the same submission to the master. They destroy all bonds between men, by declaring that State and Church alone must henceforth constitute the union between the subjects of a State—that only Church and State have the mission of watching over industrial, commercial, judiciary, artistic, and passional interests, for which men of the twelfth century had been wont to unite directly.
And who are those barbarians ? It is the State,—the Triple Alliance, constituted at last, of the military chief, the Roman judge, and the priest, the three forming a mutual insurance for domination; the three united in one power that will command in the name of the interests of society and will crush that society.
We naturally ask ourselves how these new barbarians could get the mastery over communes, formerly so powerful. Whence did they get their strength for conquest?
That strength they first of all found in the village. As the communes of ancient Greece did not manage to abolish slavery, so the communes of the Middle Ages were not able to emancipate the peasant from serfdom at the same time that they emancipated the citizen.
It is true that nearly everywhere, at the time of his emancipation, the citizen—himself an artisan-cultivator—had tried to induce the country folk to help in his enfranchisement. During two centuries, the citizens of Italy, Spain, and Germany carried on a stubborn war against feudal lords. Prodigies of heroism and perseverance were displayed by citizens in that war against the feudal castles. They exhausted themselves to become masters of the castles of feudalism and to cut down the feudal forest that enveloped them. But they only half succeeded. Then, tired of war, they made peace over the head of the peasant. To buy peace they delivered the peasant up to the lord, outside the territory conquered by the commune. In Italy and Germany they even ended by recognizing the lord as fellow citizen on con-
