Europe at this period turned its eyes from countries which had so long excited its veneration and enthusiasm to direct them towards regions invaded or threatened by the Turks. We have seen, towards the end of the eleventh century, hordes from this nation spread themselves as conquerors over the whole of Asia. It may be remembered that it was their invasion of Palestine, and their violent domination over the holy city, which roused Christendom, and provoked the first crusade. Their power, which then extended as far as Nice, and which, even at that time, alarmed the Greeks, was checked by the victorious armies of the West. The Turks of whom we are now speaking, and of whom Christendom, towards the end of the fourteenth century, began to be very much in dread, like those who had preceded them, drew their origin from the Tartars. Their warlike tribes, formerly established in Carismia, had been driven thence by the successors of Gengiskhan; and the remains of this conquering nation, after ravaging Syria and Mesopotamia, came, a few years before the first crusade of St. Louis, to seek an asylum in Asia Minor. The weakness of the Greeks and the division of the Mussulman princes enabled them to conquer several provinces, and to found a new state among the ruins of several empires. The terror inspired by their fierce and brutal valour facilitated their progress, and opened for them the road to Greece. Countries which had been the cradle of civilization, of the arts, and of knowledge, soon succumbed beneath the laws of Ottoman despotism. There can be no doubt that despotism, such as it was known then in Asia, and as it is seen in our days, is the most fragile of human institutions. The violent measures which it took to preserve itself, showed plainly that it itself felt a consciousness of its own fragility. When we see it immolate all the laws of nature to its own laws, hold the sword constantly suspended over all that approach it, and itself experience more fear than it inspires, we are tempted to believe that it has no veritable support. Whilst reading the oriental history of the middle ages, we are astonished to see all those empires which the genius of despotism raised in Asia, fall almost without resistance, and disappear from the scene of the world. But we must admit, when this monstrous government supports itself upon religious ideas, and upon the prejudices and passions of a great nation, it has also its popular ascendancy; it is also, to employ a mode of speaking very common at present, the expression of all its wills, and nothing can resist its action, or arrest the development of its power.