From a purely military point of view, the Crusades ended in disastrous failure, for they left the Mohammedans in absolute possession of the Holy Land. Although this is the twentieth century since the birth of Christ, the Mohammedans still continue in that possession. But in spite of their failure these wars brought great good to England. In many respects the civilization of the East was far in advance of the West. One result of the Crusades was to open the eyes of Europe to this fact. When Richard and his followers set out, they looked upon the Mohammedans as barbarians; before they returned, many were ready to acknowledge that the barbarians were chiefly among themselves. At that time England had few Latin and no Greek scholars. The Saracens or Mohammedans, however, had long been familiar with the classics, and had translated them into their own tongue. Not only did England gain its first knowledge of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle from Mohammedan teachers, but it also received from them the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. This new knowledge gave a great impulse to education, and had a most important influence on the growth of the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, though these institutions did not become prominent until more than a century later. Had these been the only results, they would still, perhaps, have been worth all the blood and treasure spent by the crusaders in their vain attempts to recover the permanent possession of the sepulcher of Christ; but these were by no means all. The Crusades brought about a social and political revolution. They conferred benefits and removed evils. When they began, the greater part of the inhabitants of western Europe, including England, were chained to the soil (S150). They had neither freedom, property, nor knowledge. There were in fact but three classes, who really deserved the name of citizens and freemen; these were the churchmen (comprising the clergy, monks, and other ecclesiastics), the nobles, and the inhabitants of certain favored towns. The effect of the Crusades was to increase the number of this last class. We have seen that Richard was compelled, by his need of money, to grant charters conferring local self-government on many towns (SS182, 183). For a similar reason the great nobles often granted the same powers to towns which they controlled. The result was that their immense estates were broken up in some measure. It was from this period, says the historian Gibbon, that the common people (living in these chartered towns) began to acquire political rights, and, what is more, to defend them. 188. Summary. We may say in closing that the central fact in Richard's reign was his embarking in the Crusades. From them, directly or indirectly, England gained two important advantages: first, a greater degree of political liberty, especially in the case of the towns; secondly, a new intellectual and educational impulse. John--1199-1216