after died the illustrious Saladin, leaving behind him the character not only of one of the most heroic, but of one of the best of princes. In his last illness, instead o the imperial ensigns which used to adorn the gates of his palace, he ordered a winding sheet to be hung up, while a slave proclaimed, with a loud voice,"This is all that Saladin, the conqueror of the East, has obtained by his victories!" He bequeathed, by his last will, a large sum of money to be distributed equally among the poor, whether they were Mahometans, Christians, or Jews, intending, as Voltaire well remarks, to teach, by his bequest, that all men are brethren, and that when we assist them we ought not to inquire what they believe, but what they feel.

This great prince died in the year 1195. The passion for religious warfare was not yet extinguished in Europe; a new expedition was fitted out in the year 1202, under Baldwin, count of Flanders, consisting of about 40,000 men. The object of this crusade was different from all the rest, and its leaders, under the cloak of a holy war, proposed, instead of extirpating the infidels, to dethrone the emperor of Constantinople, and put an end to the empire of the East. Isaac Angelus, the emperor, had been deprived of his liberty by his brother Alexius; but his son maintained a considerable party in his interest, and the crusaders offered him their assistance to regain the empire. The prince disgusted both parties of his countrymen by accepting the aid of foreigners, and the consequence was that he was strangled by one of his own relations. Baldwin and his army, on pretence of revenging his death, laid siege to Constantinople: he took it almost without resistance. The crusaders put all that opposed them to the sword; and it is remarked, as strongly characteristic of a spirit of national levity, that the French, immediately after a scene of massacre and pillage, celebrated a splendid ball, and danced with the ladies of Constantinople, in the sanctuary of the church of St. Sophia. Thus Constantinople was taken for the first time, sacked, and plundered by the Christians. Baldwin was elected emperor, and the imperial dominions were divided between him and the other leaders of the crusade. The Venetians, who had furnished both ships and troops, got for their share the Peloponnesus, the Isle of Candia, (ancient Crete,) and several cities on the coast of Phrygia. The marquis of Monferrat took Thessaly, and the pope became, for a time, the head of the Eastern, as he was of the Western, church. Of all the numbers who had taken up the cross in this crusade, a very few found their way into the Holy Land, under Simon de Montfort; but they did nothing effectual. The imperial family of the Comnenari was not extinguished in the fall of the Eastern empire. One of them, Alexius, escaped with some ships to Colchis, and founded there, between the sea and Mount Caucasus, a small state, which he called the empire of Trebizond. Another state, dignified likewise

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with the title of empire, was founded by Theodore Lascarius, who retook Nicæa. .Other Greeks formed a league with the Turks and Bulgarians, and with their assistance dethroned the new emperor Baldwin, and, cutting off his legs and arms, exposed him to be devoured by wild beasts.

Notwithstanding the miserable termination of all these religious. enterprises, the enthusiastic spirit was still as violent as ever, and a new expedition was fitted out to establish John de Brienne is king of Jerusalem, of which the throne happened now to be vacant. An army of 100,000 excellent troops, French, Hungarians, and Germans, landed at Ptolemais, in Palestine, while Sapbadin, sultan of Egypt, the brother of Saladin, had left his dominion to lay waste the Holy Land. It seemed a tempting enterprise for the crusaders to make reprisals upon Egypt, and accordingly they left the Christians in Palestine to defend themselves, and set sail for Damietta, the ancient Pelusium. The siege of this city employed them no less than two years; and after it was taken it was lost by the folly of the pope's legate, who pretended that in right of his master he had a title to regulate the disposition of the army as well as the church. By his orders they were encamped between two branches of the Nile, at the very time when it began its periodical inundation. The sultan of Egypt assisted its operation by a little art, and, by means of canals and sluices, contrived entirely to deluge the Christians on one side, while he burnt their ships on the other. In this extremity they entreated an accommodation, and agreed to restore Damietta and return into Phoenicia, leaving their king, John de Brienne, as an hostage. John, however, soon after got his liberty: and, by a very strange vicissitude of fortune, coming to the assistance of Constantinople during an interregnum after the death of Baldwin, was elected emperor of the East. He gave his daughter in marriage to Frederick II., emperor of Germany, along with his right to the kingdom of Jerusalem. This politic prince was very sensible that nothing was to be made by crusades; he therefore concluded a treaty with the sultan Meladin, by which he secured the right to Jerusalem, Nazareth, and some villages, and agreed to relinquish all the rest.

Such was the state of affairs in the East, and such the small fruit of so much bloodshed, when a very great revolution took place in Asia. Genghis-khan, with his Tartars, broke down from the countries beyond Caucasus, Taurus, and Mount Imaus. They first fell upon the inhabitants of Chorassin, a province of Persia, who, being forced to abandon their own country, precipitated themselves upon Syria, and put all to the sword, Christians, Turks, and Jews indiscriminately. The Christians united to repe these invaders, and the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights, (a new order formed by the German pilgrims,) signalized themselves in some desperate efforts of resistance; but

the Christians were entirely defeated. They retained still a few places on the sea-coast; but their affairs were, on the whole, in a most wretched situation, when Lewis IX. of France, distinguished by the title of Saint Lewis, prevented for awhile their entire extirpation, by fitting out the last crusade.

Lewis was a prince in every respect formed to render his supjects happy, and to repair, by his political and economical talents, the misfortunes which his country had sustained during the course of a century and a half by those ruinous expeditions to the East. But, unfortunately, in the delirium of a fever, he fancied that he had received a summons from heaven to take up the cross against the infidels; and neither the return of his reason, the entreaties of his queen, nor the remonstrances of his counsellors could divert him from that fatal project. He employed four years in preparing for the expedition, and set out with his queen, his three brothers, and their wives, and all the knights of France, with a prodigious number of their vassals and attendants. On arriving at Cyprus he was joined by the king of that island, and proceeding to Egypt they began the campaign with expelling the barbarians from Damietta. Here they were reinforced by a new army from France, amounting to 60,000 men, and Melecsala, the sultan of Egypt, thought it his wisest course to sue for peace, which, however was refused him. This denial the Christians had soon abundant reason to repent, for half of their immense army perished by sickness, and the other half was defeated by Almoadin, the son of Melecsala. Lewis himself, with two of his brothers, were taken prisoners, and the third was killed in the engagement. Lewis offered a million of besants in gold for the ransom of himself and his fellow-prisoners; and such was the uncommon generosity of this infidel prince, that he remitted to him a fifth part of the sum. Lewis paid his ransom and returned to his dominions, where, for thirteen years, he employed himself in all the duties of a wise and virtuous prince; but his passion for the crusades returned with double violence. The pope encouraged him by granting him a tenth penny out of the revenues of the clergy for three years; and he set out a second time with nearly the same force as before. But his brother Charles of Anjou, whom the pope had made king of Naples and Sicily, turned the course of his arms to Africa instead of Palestine. Charles's ambition was to seize the dominions of the king of Tunis, and Lewis joined in the enterprise from an earnest desire of converting that prince and his subjects The to Christianity; both were unsuccessful in their aims.

Christians were besieged in their camp by the Moors, and the unfortunate Lewis, after losing one of his sons by the plague, fell a victim himself to the same distemper. His brother, the king of Sicily, concluded a peace with the Moors, and some few of the Christian troops who survived that mortal contagion were brought back to Europe. In these two unfortunate expeditions of

Lewis IX., it is computed that there perished 100,000 men 50,000 had perished under Frederic Barbarossa; 300,000 under Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion; 200,000 in the time of John de Brienne; and 160,000 had before been sacrificed in Asia, besides those that perished in the expedition to Constantinople. Thus, without mentioning a crusade in the North, and that afterwards to be taken notice of against the Albigenses, it is a reasonable computation to estimate that two millions of Europeans, in these expeditions, were buried in the East.

CHAPTER X.

Effects of the Crusades-Rise of Chivalry and Romance.

SEVERAL authors have incidentally touched upon the effects produced by the crusades on the government and manners of the European nations; particularly two of the greatest of our English historians, Hume and Robertson, the last of whom has examined that topic, at considerable length, in the Introduction to the History of Charles V. The subject, however, is not, as I apprehend, exhausted. The particular effects which have been touched on by these authors, I shall very briefly recapitulate. Some of them are, as I think, liable to a few objections, and I shall subjoin the notice of such other consequences as I think must have been the natural and certain result of those expedi

ons.

One immediate consequence of the crusades is generally supposed to have been a refinement of the European manners, and an improvement of the arts imported by the crusaders, from an acquaintance with the countries more polished than their own; yet, the truth is, that we do not find from history, that the period of the crusades was the era of any such actual improvement, either in manners or in the arts. The times immediately succeeding the crusades were, in many respects, rather inferior to those which preceded, than superior. The last crusade was finished in the year 1250: from that time, for above two centuries, there never was a period in which Europe, on the whole, appeared more barbarous and unenlightened; nor was it till after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and the utter destruction of the Greek empire, which was in the year 1453, that there was any sensible improvement in the state of the fine arts

in Europe. It was then that the Greek artisans, and many men, eminent for their learning, being driven from their country, now occupied by the Turks, resorted to the different kingdoms of Europe, particularly Italy and France; and from that time, we may date with certainty the revival of the arts, and the sensible improvement of the European manners.

One certain effect of the crusades must have been great changes in territorial property throughout the kingdoms of Europe. The nobility and barons who went on those expeditions were obliged to sell their lands to defray their charges. The lands passed into the hands of other proprietors, and their former masters, such of them as ever returned to their country, had expended the whole of their fortunes. This fluctuation of property diminished the weight and influence of the greater barons, and weakened the aristocratical spirit of the feudal system. The lands of a single lord were likewise divided among a number of smaller proprietors; for few individuals were then opulent enough to have purchased entire lordships. This would necessarily dif fuse a spirit of independence, and bring men nearer to an equality of property.

In the next place, the towns or boroughs, which were then tied down by a sort of vassalage and clientship to the nobles, began now to purchase their immunity; and, instead of being entirely governed by these nobles, to whom the magistrates were no more than servants and stewards, while they exercised themselves the supreme civil and criminal authority, and imposed what taxes or exactions they thought fit, the towns now acquired a right of choosing their own magistrates, who were responsible to the public; they freed themselves from those arbitrary impositions, and were governed by their own municipal statutes, subordinate to the public laws of the kingdom. Thus the municipal government began, in many of the towns of Europe, to take the place of the feudal.

It is difficult to say whether the church, upon the whole, gained or lost by the crusades. The authority of the popes was certainly increased in the article of an extent of jurisdiction, and their right of conferring kingdoms began now to be less questioned, because it was so customary; but the unsuccessful issue of these enterprises, and their ruinous consequences in depopulating and impoverishing all Christendom, took a strong hold of the minds of men of sense, and thus weakened the papal authorty, by exposing the interested and selfish motives which had influenced the see of Rome in preaching up those destructive armaments and expeditions. In another respect, the gain of the church was balanced by its loss. Many of the religious orders and societies acquired cons lerable territorial opulence by the purchase of the lands of the barons at an easy rate but this increase of wealth was proportionally diminished by the tax of