We cannot perceive, whatever may have been asserted, that in the first crusade Europe received any great quantity of knowledge from the East. During the eleventh century, Asia had been the theatre of the most sanguinary revolutions. At this period the Saracens, but more particularly the Turks, cultivated neither the arts nor the sciences. The Crusaders had no other relation with them but a war of extermination. On another side, the Franks held the Greek among whom, besides, the arts and sciences were declining, in too much contempt to borrow any kind of instruction from them; nevertheless, as the events of the crusade had strongly affected the imagination of nations, this great and imposing spectacle was sufficient to give an impetus to the human mind in the West. Several writers undertook to trace the history of this memorable period. Raymond d’Agiles, Robert the monk of St. Remy, Tudebode, Foulcher de Chartres, Abbot Guibert, Baudry, the bishop of Dol, and Albert d’Aix were contemporary historians, and most of them ocular witnesses of the conquests and exploits they have described. The histories they have left us are not destitute of merit, and some of them are even better than that which was written of the same kind among either the Greeks or the Arabs. These writers were animated in their labours by the same spirit of piety which governed the heroes of the cross. This spirit of piety caused them to take up the pen, and persuaded them that they wrote for the cause of God. They would have thought themselves wanting in their duty as Christians, if they had not employed their abilities in transmitting the events of the holy war to posterity. In whatever manner we judge of their motives, we cannot avoid being convinced that they have rendered great services to history, and that without them the heroic times of our annals would have remained without monuments. The wonderful portion of the character of this first crusade likewise awakened the epic muse. Raoul de Caen,[219] who, in his history, sometimes sounds the epic trumpet in order worthily to celebrate the “gestes” of Tancred, is not deficient in either warmth or fancy. The conquest of Jerusalem was during the twelfth century the subject of several works in verse. A Limousin knight, Geoffrey de la Tour, called the prior or abbot of the Vigeois, described very tolerably the events of these wars in a large volume all written in his maternal tongue, and in vulgar rhyme, in order that the people might understand it the better. This poem, written in verse, which was the fruit of the labour of twelve years, is lost. Many other similar works have doubtless shared the same fate; but that which remains suffices to prove that human intelligence began to expand at the commencement of the twelfth century.