aggressive, useless, unjustifiable wars, except the chivalry associated with them. The reason of modern times as sternly rebukes them as the heart of the Middle Ages sickened at them. In one aspect they are absolutely repulsive; and this in view of their vices. The crusaders were cruel. They wantonly massacred their enemies, even when defenceless. Sixty thousand people were butchered on the fall of Jerusalem; ten thousand were slaughtered in the Mosque of Omar. The Christians themselves felt safe when they sought the retreat of churches, in dire calamities at home; but they had no respect for the religious retreats of infidels. When any city fell into their hands there was wholesale assassination. And they became licentious, as well as rapacious and cruel. They learned all the vices of the East. Even under the walls of Acre they sang to the sounds of Arabian instruments, and danced amid indecent songs. When they took Constantinople they had no respect for either churches or tombs, and desecrated even the pulpit of the Patriarch. Their original religious zeal was finally lost sight of entirely in their military license. They became more hateful to the orthodox Greeks than to the infidel Saracens. And when the crusaders returned to their homes,--what few of them lived to return,--they morally poisoned the communities and villages in which they dwelt. They became vagabonds and vagrants; they introduced demoralizing amusements, and jugglers and strolling players appeared for the first time in Europe. All war is necessarily demoralizing, even war in defence of glorious principles, and especially in these times; but much more so is unjust, fanatical, and unnecessary war.