After having developed the advantages of the vast enterprise he proposed, Leibnitz neglected none of the means that would be likely to secure the success or facilitate the execution of it. It was in this part of his memorial that he showed all the superiority of his genius; and when we read the account of the last war of the French in Egypt, we cannot but feel persuaded that Buonaparte was well acquainted with the plan of campaign addressed by Leibnitz to Louis XIV. But certainly this gigantic enterprise, whose result was likely to be more brilliant than either solid or durable, was less suited to a monarch guided in his policy by the sentiments of real greatness, than to the modern hero, always enamoured of an adventurous and romantic glory. Nevertheless, the ideas of Leibnitz, although not favourably received by the cabinet of Versailles, did not fail to produce a lively impression upon the statesmen of the seventeenth century. It is known likewise, that the king of France had already thought seriously of a war against the Turks; and we have reason to believe that Boileau alluded to all these projects of distant conquests, when he said in his epistle to the king: Je t’attends dans six mois aux bords de l’Hellespont.[90] The eloquence, or even the flattery of authors, could not induce princes to take up arms against the infidels; and the Crusaders finished, as they began, with pilgrimages. Among the celebrated pilgrims who repaired to the East after the holy wars, one of the most remarkable was Ignatius Loyola. He visited the holy places twice, and, like St. Jerome, would have ended his days in Palestine, if the Latin priests had not advised him to return into Europe, where he established the order of the Jesuits. As was the case before the crusades, princes mixed with the crowd of Christians who went to the Holy Land. Frederick III., before he ascended the imperial throne, went on a pilgrimage to the holy city. We still possess an account of the voyages which were made successively into Palestine by a prince of Radziwil, a duke of Bavaria, a duke of Austria, and three electors of Saxony, among whom was he who was the protector of Luther. Pilgrims from the West were no longer received at Jerusalem, as in the early times, by the Knights of St. John, but by the Latin fathers of the order of St. Francis of Assisi, who devoted themselves to the guardianship of the holy sepulchre. Preserving the hospitable manners of ancient times, the guardian father himself washed the feet of travellers, and furnished them with the necessary assistance for their pilgrimage. Pilgrims embarked at Venice, where vessels were always ready to transport them to the coast of Syria. People could obtain all the benefits attached to the pilgrimage of the Holy Land, without quitting their homes; either by commissioning pious men who were sent beyond the seas, or cenobites who resided on the spot.