The first efforts of valour, animated by enthusiasm, were irresistible; part of the Lesser Asia, all Syria, and Palestine, were wrested from the infidels; the banner of the cross was displayed on Mount Sion; Constantinople, the capital of the Christian empire in the East, was afterwards seized by a body of those adventurers who had taken arms against the Mahometans; and an Earl of Flanders and his descendants kept possession of the imperial throne during half a century. But, though the first impression of the crusaders was so unexpected that they made their conquests with comparative ease, they found infinite difficulty in preserving them. Establishments so distant from Europe, surrounded by warlike nations animated with fanatical zeal scarcely inferior to that of the crusaders themselves, were perpetually in danger of being overturned. Before the expiration of the thirteenth century the Christians were driven out of all their Asiatic possessions, in acquiring of which incredible numbers of men had perished, and immense sums of money had been wasted. The only common enterprise in which the European nations ever engaged, and which they all undertook with equal ardour, remains a singular monument of human folly. CHAPTER V. ROYAL IMPOSTORS. Pretenders to Royalty numerous--Contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster gives rise to various Pretenders--Insurrection of Jack Cade--He is killed--Lambert Simnel is tutored to personate the Earl of Warwick--He is crowned at Dublin--He is taken Prisoner, pardoned, and made Scullion in the Royal Kitchen--Perkin Warbeck pretends to be the murdered Duke of York--He is countenanced by the King of France--He is acknowledged by the Duchess of Burgundy--Perkin lands in Scotland, and is aided by King James--He is married to Lady Catherine Gordon--He invades England, but fails--His Death--Pretenders in Portugal--Gabriel de Spinosa--He is hanged--The Son of a Tiler pretends to be Sebastian--He is sent to the Galleys--Gonçalo Alvarez succeeds him--He is executed--An Individual of talents assumes the Character of Sebastian--His extraordinary Behaviour in his Examinations--He is given up to the Spaniards--His Sufferings and dignified Deportment--His Fate not known--Pretenders in Russia--The first false Demetrius--He obtains the Throne, but is driven from it by Insurrection, and is slain--Other Impostors assume the same Name--Revolt of Pugatscheff--Pretenders in France--Hervegault and Bruneau assume the Character of the deceased Louis XVI.