out his arms towards the coast, he cried,
"Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty; and may He
grant me long life enough to return hither and deliver thee from the yoke
of the infidels! "A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph of
the first crusaders, and the dominion they had acquired by conquest in
the Holy Land had become, even in the eyes of their most valiant and most
powerful successors, an impossibility.

[Illustration: Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land----10]

Nevertheless, repeated efforts and glory, and even victories, were not
then, and were not to be still later, unknown amongst the Christians in
their struggle against the Mussulmans for the possession of the Holy
Land. In the space of a hundred and seventy-one years from the
coronation of Godfrey de Bouillon as king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the
death of St. Louis, wearing the cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand
crusades were undertaken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns
of Christian Europe; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of
Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively engaged
therein. And they all failed. It were neither right nor desirable to
make long pause over the recital of their attempts and their reverses,
for it is the history of France, and not a general history of the
crusades, which is here related; but it was in France, by the French
people, and under French chiefs, that the crusades were begun; and it was
with St. Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the banner of the cross, that
they came to an end. They received in the history of Europe the glorious
name of _Gesta Dei per Francos_ (God's works by French hands); and they
have a right to keep, in the history of France, the place they really
occupied.

During a reign of twenty-nine years, Louis VI., called the Fat, son of
Philip I., did not trouble himself about the East or the crusades, at
that time in all their fame and renown. Being rather a man of sense than
an enthusiast in the cause either of piety or glory, he gave all his
attention to the establishment of some order, justice, and royal
authority in his as yet far from extensive kingdom. A tragic incident,
however, gave the crusade chief place in the thoughts and life of his
son, Louis VII., called the Young, who succeeded him in 1137. He got
himself rashly embroiled, in 1142, in a quarrel with Pope Innocent II.,
on the subject of the election of the