cavalry was irresistible. It was partly the armor in which they were encased, partly the character of their antagonists, partly local jealousies: in Calabria, the enmity of the Lombards to the Greeks; in Sicily, the enniity of the Greeks to the Saracens. But the causes of their uniform success are chiefly to be found in the manly and martial exercises to which the Normans were accustomed from their earliest years; in the chivalrous and adventurous spirit of the age which excited their minds; and, above all, in that confidence in self which makes the soldier invincible. Each individual Norman was, in effect, a legion. — KNIGHT. CHIVALRY. SEE, under the TWELFTH CENTURY, page 270. THE CRUSADES. THESE remarkable military expeditions (called Crusades from the French croisade, from Latin crux, cross), undertaken by Christian powers in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Mahometans, are the principal movements of European history during the period in which they took place. During two centuries Europe seems to have had no object but to recover, or keep possession of, the Holy Land; and through that period vast armies continued to march thither. - ROBERTSON. The Crusades, or expeditions in order to rescue the Holy Land out of the hands of infidels, seem to be the first event that roused Europe from the lethargy in which it had long been sunk, and that tended to introduce any considerable change in government or in manners. - ROBERTSON. The Crusades must be regarded as one great portion of the struggle between the two great religions of the world, Christianity and Mahometanism; a struggle which began in the seventh century, on the confines of Arabia and Syria, and embraced in quick succession all the countries round the Mediterranean, and after thousands of years and changes has disturbed our own century, as it did that of Gregory VII. The history of the human race records no contest more violent or more protracted than this. — VON SYBEL. The most durable monuments of human folly. — HUME. When the Seljuk Turks, in the latter half of the century, took possession of Palestine, the Christians, who had long been wont to undertake pilgrimages from all parts of the Western world to the Holy Land, were obliged to endure the most harsh cruelties at their hands. Hence arose a passionate eagerness through all Western Europe to recover Palestine from the profanation of the Mahometans, and to check the advance of that detested religion. The First Crusade (1096-1099) was set in motion by Peter the Hermit, with the encouragement and help of Pope Urban II. The progress of the Christian armies led by the chivalry of Europe proved irresistible, and Syria and Palestine were wrested from the infidels. But the conquests thus made were preserved with extreme difficulty, and always held by a most precarious tenure. The Crusades, comprising eight or nine expeditions, lasted through two centuries, the final expulsion of the Christians from Syria occurring in 1291. It was in these circumstances that a religious opinion suddenly spread through Europe, that, the place where Jesus Christ was beTM, and the place where he suffered, being profaned by infidels, the me of effacing one's sins was to take arms for their expulsion. Eur was full of men who loved war, and who had many crimes to ex It was proposed that they should expiate their crimes by fc their dominant passion. The result was that immense m took the cross and sword. - MONTESQUIEU. The turbaned race are pouring in thickening swarms The scimitar, that yields not to the charms Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ (Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross Forthwith a power of English shall we levy; WORDSWORTH. Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb, To chase these pagans, in those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed, SHAKESPEARE. From the moment that the incursions of the Saracens threatened Europe, the fear of their progress and the hatred of their religion armed against them from all parts those Northmen who lived idle on the territory of Gaul, Spain, and Italy. Frankish adventurers went to defeat them more than once on the coasts of Calabria and Sicily; and when a pope, seconded by the eloquence of the monk Peter, raised up against them entire Christian Europe, this great insurrection was only the complement of those partial and obscure enterprises which had so long been preparing it. - THIERRY. vas Peter, commonly called the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in ardy, had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Being deeply 1ed with the dangers to which that act of piety now exposed the out of s, as well as with the instances of oppression under which the Europe Christians labored, he entertained the bold and, to all appeartended tɩracticable project of leading into Asia, from the furthest extremities of the west, armies sufficient to subdue those potent and warlike nations which now held the holy city in subjection. He proposed his views to Martin Second, who filled the papal chair, and who, though sensible of the advantages which the head of the Christian religion must reap from a religious war, and though he esteemed the blind zeal of Peter a proper means for effecting the purpose, resolved not to interpose his authority till he saw a greater probability of success. He summoned a council at Placentia, which consisted of four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty thousand seculars, and which was so numerous that no hall could contain the multitude, and it was necessary to hold the assembly on a plain. The harangues of the Pope, and of Peter himself, representing the dismal situation of their brethren in the East, and the indignity suffered by the Christian name in allowing the holy city to remain in the hands of infidels, here found the minds of men so well prepared, that the whole multitude suddenly and violently declared for the war, and solemnly devoted themselves to perform this service, so meritorious, as they believed it, to God and religion. — HUME. Urban and Peter! the corpses of two millions of men lie heavy on your graves, and will fearfully summon you on the day of judgment. HELLER. "And shall," the Pontiff asks, "profaneness flow From Nazareth, source of Christian piety, From Bethlehem, from the mounts of agony And glorified ascension? Warriors, go; With prayers and blessings we your path will sow; These sons of Amalec, or laid them low!" "GOD WILLETH IT," the whole assembly cry; Shout which the enraptured multitude astounded. The council-roof and Clermont's towers reply: Sacred resolve, in countries far and nigh, Through "Nature's hollow arch," that night resounded! 1 WORDSWORTH. 1 The decision of this council was believed to be instantly known in remote parts of Europe. Amid the throng the Hermit stood; so wan, A proud steed listens for the clarion's cry, So sprang they to their feet: and every man, Pontiff and prince, prelate and peer, caught up Their swords, and kissed the crosiered hilts, and swore, As though their lips the sacramental cup Had touched, Christ's sepulchre to free! The shore "Deus id vult," - from Clermont through the world! AUBREY DE VERE. The dream of such an enterprise had long floated before the minds of keen-sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts: it was realized for the first time when, after listening to the burning eloquence of Urban II. at the council of Clermont, the assembled multitude with one voice welcomed the sacred war as the will of God. If we regard this undertaking as the simple expression of popular feeling stirred to its inmost depths, we may ascribe to the struggle to which they thus committed themselves a character wholly unlike that of any earlier wars waged in Christendom, or by the powers of Christendom against enemies who lay beyond its pale.-G. W. Cox. The Crusades have been represented as a sort of accident, an unforeseen event, sprung from the recitals of pilgrims returned from Jerusalem, and the preaching of Peter the Hermit. They were nothing of the kind. The Crusades were the continuation, the height of the great struggle which had subsisted for four centuries between Christianity and Mahometanism. —GUIZOT. Long had those two sisters, those two halves of humanity, Europe and Asia, the Christian religion and the Mussulman, lost sight of each other, when they were brought face to face by the Crusade, and their inquiring gaze met. That first glance was one of horror. MICHELET. The Crusades took their rise in Religion; their visible object was, commercially speaking, worth nothing. It was the boundless, Invisible world that was laid bare in the imaginations of those men; and in its burning light the visible shrunk as a scroll. Not mechanical, |