‘From Jerusalem to the Aegean,’ he wrote, ‘the Turkish hordes have mastered all: their galleys, sweeping the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, threaten the imperial city itself, which, if fall it must, had better fall into the hands of Latins than of Pagans.’ These Turks, or ‘Tartars’, to whom he referred, were the cause of the Eastern Empire’s sudden danger. Descendants of a Mongol race in central Asia, of which the Huns were also an offshoot, they turned their faces westward some centuries later than the ancestors of Attila, fired by the same love of battle and bloodshed and the same contempt for civilization. To them the wonderful Arabian kingdom, moulded by successive Caliphs of Bagdad out of Eastern art, luxury, and mysticism, held no charm save loot. Conquered Greece had endowed Rome with its culture, but the inheritance of Haroun al-Raschid bequeathed to its conquerors only the fighting creed of Islam. Mahometans in faith, the Turkish armies, more dangerous than ever because more fanatical, swept over Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, subjugating Arabs and Christians until they came almost to the straits of the Bosporus. Here it was that they forced Alexius Commenus to realize his imminent danger and to turn to his enemies in Europe for the protection of his tottering Empire. The Latins, or Christians of the West, to whom he appealed, had reasons enough of their own for answering him with ready promises of men and money. From the early days of the Church it had been the custom of pious folk, or of sinners anxious to expiate some crime, to set out in small companies to visit the Holy Places in Jerusalem where tradition held that Christ had preached, prayed, and suffered, that there they might give praise to God and seek His pardon. These ‘pilgrimages’, with their mixture of good comradeship, danger, and discomfort, had become very dear to the popular mind, and, if not encouraged by the Mahometan Arabs, had been at least tolerated. ‘Hospitals’, or sanctuaries, were built for the refreshment of weary or sick travellers, and pilgrims on the payment of a toll could wander practically where they chose. On the advent of the Turks all was changed: the Holy Places became more and more difficult to visit, Christians were stoned and beaten, mulcted of their last pennies in extortionate tolls, and left to die of hunger or flung into dungeons for ransom. [Sidenote: The First Crusade] Tradition says that a certain French hermit called Peter, who visited Jerusalem during the worst days of Turkish rule, went one night to the Holy Sepulchre weeping at the horrors he had seen, and as he knelt in prayer, it seemed to him that Christ himself stood before him and bade him ‘rouse the Faithful to the cleansing of the Holy Places’. With this mission in mind he at once left the Holy Land and sought Pope Urban II, who had already received the letter of Alexius Commenus and now, fired by the hermit’s enthusiasm, willingly promised his support.