The creation of this monastic standing army was evidently due to the inferiority of the attack to the defence, which made the civil power incapable of coercing the individual who refused to pay taxes. The petty barons who built the castles throughout Palestine were too poor to erect fortifications capable of resisting the superior engines used in the East. Therefore the whole burden of the war was thrown upon the Church, and in all modern history nothing is more wonderful than the way in which this work was done. Within fifty years after the conquest the feudal machinery was in ruin, and the strategic points, one after another, passed into the hands of the strongest force of the age, the force which was incarnate imagination. The fortresses built by the monks were the ramparts of Christendom, and among the remains which have survived the past, perhaps none are more impressive than the huge castles of the crusaders in the gorges of the Syrian mountains; nor do any show so clearly whence came the rationalistic stimulus which revolutionized Europe, shattered the Church, and brought in the economic society which has ruled Europe since the Templars passed away. Twenty-five miles due west of Homs, at the point where the Lebanon melts into the Ansarieh range, the mountains open, and two passes lead by easy descents to the sea. Through the southern runs the road to Tripoli, through the northern that to Tortosa. Between them, on a crag a thousand feet above the valleys, still stands the castle of the Krak des Chevaliers, ceded by Count Raymond of Tripoli to the Hospital in 1145. Towering above the plain it can be seen for miles, and no description can give an idea of its gigantic size and power. Coucy and Pierrefonds are among the largest fortresses of Europe, and yet Coucy and Pierrefonds combined are no larger than the Krak. Compared with it, the works then built in the West were toys, and the engineering talent shown in its conception was equalled by the magnificence of its masonry. The Byzantine system was adopted. A double wall, the inner commanding the outer, with a moat between; and three enormous towers rising from the moat, formed the donjon. There were stone machicoulis and all the refinements of defence which appeared in France under Saint Louis and his son, and a study of this stupendous monument shows plainly whence Europeans drew their military instruction for a century to come.