These abuses of the crusades, and the dire passions which had mixed themselves with them, plunge Europe in disorder and anarchy; when a pious king undertakes once more to arm the powers of the West against the infidels, and to revive among the Crusaders the spirit which had animated the companions of Godfrey. The two wars directed by this pious chief, are more unfortunate than all the others. In the first, the world is presented with the spectacle of a captive army and a king in fetters; in the second, that of a powerful monarch dying in its ashes. Then it is that the illusion disappears, and Jerusalem ceases to attract all the attention of the West. Soon after, the face of Europe is changed; intelligence dissipates barbarism; the crusades no longer excite the same degree of enthusiasm, and the first effect of the civilization it begins to spread is to weaken the spirit of the fanaticism which had given them birth. Some few useless efforts are at times made to rekindle the fire which had burnt so fiercely in Europe and Asia. The nations are so completely recovered from the pious delirium of the Crusades, that when Germany finds itself menaced by the Mussulmans who are masters of Constantinople, the banner of the cross can with difficulty gather an army around it; and Europe, which had risen in a mass to attack the infidels in Asia, opposes but a feeble resistance to them on its own territories. Such is, in a few words, the picture of the events and revolutions which the historian of the crusades has to describe. A writer who has preceded us by two centuries and who calls the history of the Crusades _a right royal history_, is surprised at the silence preserved to his time.[3] “I esteem it,” says he, “a deplorable thing that such persons inferior in no way to those who have been so much celebrated by the Greeks and the Romans, should have fallen into such obscurity, that we search in vain to discover who they were and what they did; and they appear to me highly culpable, who, possessing learning and the skill to write, have left these histories neglected.” Everybody ought now to be of this opinion, and regret that our great writers have not entertained the noble subject of the Crusades. When I undertake to supply the want created by their silence, I am duly impressed with the difficulty of the task.