and the four cities
of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics of the
Mahometan conquests in Syria. The laws and language, the manners and
titles, of the French nation and Latin church, were introduced into
these transmarine colonies. According to the feudal jurisprudence, the
principal states and subordinate baronies descended in the line of
male and female succession: but the children of the first conquerors, a
motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the climate;
the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a
casual event. The service of the feudal tenures was performed by six
hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of two hundred
more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was
attended to the field by four squires or archers on horseback. Five
thousand and seventy sergeants, most probably foot-soldiers, were
supplied by the churches and cities; and the whole legal militia of the
kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand men, a slender defence against
the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks. But the firmest bulwark
of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John, and
of the temple of Solomon; on the strange association of a monastic and
military life, which fanaticism might suggest, but which policy must
approve. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross,
and to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit
and discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight
thousand farms, or manors, enabled them to support a regular force of
cavalry and infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of
the convent soon evaporated in the exercise of arms; the world was
scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these Christian
soldiers; their claims of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the
harmony of the church and state; and the public peace was endangered by
their jealous emulation. But in their most dissolute period, the knights
of their hospital and temple maintained their fearless and fanatic
character: they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the
service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring
of the crusades, has been transplanted by this institution from the holy
sepulchre to the Isle of Malta.

The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt
in its strongest energy by the volu