prevented Europe from falling a prey to the Turks and Arabs; they did more, they saved her from revolutions at home, with which she was threatened; they suspended intestine wars by which she was ever and anon desolated; and, finally, they opened an outlet to that excess of population which sooner or later occasions the ruin of nations.[171] The administration of Godfrey was gentle and prosperous. He gained a decisive victory over the Vizier of Egypt, who had encamped on the plains of Ascalon with the view of assisting his Syrian allies to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the Christians. According to the spirit of the age, he joined to the qualities of a brave soldier the profession of an ardent faith and the utmost reverence for the authority of the church. He refused a precious diadem offered to him by his companions in arms, declaring that he would never wear a crown of gold in the city where the Saviour of the world had worn a crown of thorns. In the same feeling he was disposed to reject the title of king and to exercise his office under the name of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. Upon the demise of this distinguished commander, which is supposed to have taken place at Jaffa, the government devolved upon his brother Baldwin, who sustained its glory and interests with a steady hand. About the year 1118, he was succeeded on his throne by his nephew, who bore the same name, and who, although sometimes unfortunate, did not tarnish the honour of his family. Melisandra, his eldest daughter, married Foulques of Anjou, and conveyed the kingdom of Jerusalem into the hand of her husband, who enjoyed it ten or twelve years, when he lost his life by a fall from a horse. His son, Baldwin the Third, a youth of a rash temper and destitute of experience, assumed the sceptre of Jerusalem, which he held twenty years,--a period rendered remarkable by the events of the second Crusade, and the rise of various orders of knighthood,--the Hospitallers, Templars, and Cavaliers. The news from Palestine, that certain reverses had been sustained by the Christians, acted so powerfully on the pious spirit of St. Bernard and the troubled conscience of Louis the Seventh, the king of France, as to suggest a second confederation among the European princes for the security of the Holy Land. This new apostle of a sacred war was, on many accounts, greatly superior to Peter the Hermit. He was a man of noble birth; possessed learning sufficient to rival the attainments of Abelard, his contemporary; and could speak with a degree of eloquence to which no orator of his age had the boldness to aspire. The French monarch, who had assembled around him a powerful and most splendid army, was joined by the Emperor of Germany, Conrade the Third, whose thousands equalled those of his warlike brother, and whose zeal in the cause of Christendom was not less active.