An era of most wicked persecution opened for the Jews of Central Europe with the first crusade in 1096. The frenzy of intolerance and fanaticism which was called forth under the fair names of religion and chivalry spread like an epidemic. At Trèves it began; and there, the rabble, under the direction of heartless and impecunious knights, sacked the Jewish quarters and massacred the inhabitants. The example set at Trèves was followed at Metz, at Strasburg, at Mainz, at Worms, at Cologne, and at Spires. All along the banks of the Rhine, of the Moselle, of the Maine, and the Danube, in the flourishing towns which Jewish enterprise had made wealthy and prosperous, Jewish men and women, and even little children, were slaughtered like cattle. The spoils gained from murder and robbery went to defray the costs of the holy wars. Sometimes the alternative of baptism was given to the victims; oftener no choice was offered, but sacrilege followed on sacking, and murder on robbery. Some commanders burnt the Jews; some contented themselves with burning only Jewish books and scrolls. But it is a remarkable fact that although their books were burnt, lest those who read them should be contaminated, it was never thought necessary to subject their valuables in coin and jewels to the like purging process! On the whole, burning was the favourite fashion of killing Jews, but occasionally some town or some leader would hit on a more original method. Spires, for instance, drowned her Jews, and Mainz once drove hers into wholesale suicide, and Strasburg got rid of two thousand at one time in an enormous bonfire. In 1098, Jerusalem, after many a repulse, was safe in the crusaders’ hands, and the conquerors celebrated their success by so complete a massacre of the Jews then living in Jerusalem and its suburbs, that when the city was again retaken by the Mahomedans, hardly a Jew was left to exult at the reversal of Christian arms. For fifty years Jerusalem remained a Mahomedan conquest. At the end of that time (1147) a second crusade was organised to retake it. All who joined this expedition were solemnly released by Pope Eugenius III. from all obligations to pay any debts which they might owe to the Jews. And in this second crusade, as in the first, a broad red track of Jewish blood marked the way which the crusaders took to the East, and the flames from burning Jewries were beacon-lights on their path.