volume one

272 IIISTOET OF THE CRUSADES.
reckoned as nothing, and scarcely merited any attention from
the legislators. The Assizes of Jerusalem did, indeed, deign
to take notice of villains, slaves, peasants or cultivators, or
but they Mere only considered in the
captives taken in war ;
light of property, of which they wished to assure the enjoyment
to its legitimate possessors. Those who had lost them
could reclaim them as thev coidd a falcon or a hound : the
value of a falcon and a slave was the same ; a war-horse was
estimated at more than double the value of a peasant or a
captive. The laws did not condescend to notice these unhappy
classes, and left it to religion alone to protect them.
To watch over the execution of the constitutional laws of
the state, and to decide in all disputes, two courts were in-
stituted ;
the one presided over by the king, and composed
of the nobles, was to pronounce judgment upon differences
among the great vassals ; the other, presided over by the
\-iscount of Jerusalem, and formed of the principal inhabitants
of each city, was to regulate the interests and the
rights of the citizens and the common people. A thirdcourt
was instituted, which was reserved for Oriental Chris-
tians ; the judges of it were bom in Syria, spoke its language,
and decided according to the laws and usages of the
coimtry. Thus all the citizens of the kingdom were judged
bv their peers, and enjoyed the benefits of an institution
which has not been despised in ages much more enlightened.
The Franks, with their warlike character, were certain to
evince disdain for the slow, and often uncertain, forms of
they adopted, in their legislation made for the East,
justice ;
the ordeal bv iron or fiire, which had taken its birth among
the nations of the North. Judicial combat was also admitted
in criminal causes, and sometimes even in ci^-il ones.
Among a warlike people everything must present the image
of war ;
was, in
every action commenced against a baron or a knight
his eyes, an injmw—an afli'ont—that he ought to
repulse sword in hand ; Christian knights were likewise
persuaded that God would not allow innocence to succumb
in an unequal combat, and ^'ictory appeared to them at once
the triumph of human laws and divine justice.
Such dispositions still bespeak the barbarity of the most remote
a£es: but a sfreat number of other laws attest the wisdom
of the legislators of the Holv Land : their code contamed