An old empire which moulders away, a new empire ready to sink into ruins, such are the pictures that this crusade presents to us; never did any epoch offer greater exploits for admiration, or greater troubles for commiseration. Amidst these glorious and tragical scenes, the imagination is excited in the most lively manner, and passes, without ceasing, from surprise to surprise. We are at first astonished at seeing an army of thirty thousand men embark to conquer a country which might reckon upon many millions of defenders; a tempest, an epidemic disease, want of provisions, disunion among the leaders, an indecisive battle, all, or any of these, might have ruined the army of the Crusaders, and brought about the failure of their enterprise. By an unheard-of good fortune, nothing that they had to dread happened to them. They triumphed over all dangers, and surmounted all obstacles: without having any party among the Greeks, they obtained possession of their capital and the provinces; and, at the moment when they saw their standards triumphant all around them, it was that their fortune deserted them and their ruin began. A great lesson is this, given to nations by Providence, which sometimes employs conquerors to chastise both people and princes, and then, at its pleasure, destroys the instrument of its justice! There is no doubt that that Providence, which protects empires, will not permit great states to be subverted with impunity; and to deter those who wish to conquer everything by force of arms, it has decreed that victory shall sometimes bear none but very bitter fruits. The Greeks, a degenerate nation, honoured their misfortunes by no virtue; they had neither sufficient courage to prevent the reverses of war, nor sufficient resignation to support them. When reduced to despair, they showed some little valour; but that valour was imprudent and blind; it precipitated them into new calamities, and procured them masters much more barbarous than those whose yoke they were so eager to shake off. They had no leader able to govern or guide them; no sentiment of patriotism strong enough to rally them: deplorable example of a nation left to itself, which has lost its morals, and has no confidence in its laws or its government! The Franks had just the same advantages over their enemies that the barbarians of the north had over the Romans of the Lower Empire. In this terrible conflict, simplicity of manners, the energy of a new people for civilization, the ardour for pillage, and the pride of victory, were sure to prevail over the love of luxury, habits formed amidst corruption, and vanity which attaches importance to the most frivolous things, and only preserves a gaudy resemblance of true grandeur.