when he was sentenced to be
hanged.

[MN The Crusades.]
But the noise of these petty wars and commotions was quite sunk in the
tumult of the crusades, which now engrossed the attention of Europe,
and have ever since engaged the curiosity of mankind, as the most
signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared
in any age or nation. After Mahomet had, by means of his pretended
revelations, united the dispersed Arabians under one head, they issued
forth from their deserts in great multitudes; and being animated with
zeal for their new religion, and supported by the vigour of their new
government, they made deep impression on the eastern empire, which was
far in the decline, with regard both to military discipline and to
civil policy. Jerusalem, by its situation, became one of their most
early conquests; and the Christians had the mortification to see the
holy sepulchre, and the other places, consecrated by the presence of
their religious founder, fallen into the possession of infidels. But
the Arabians or Saracens were so employed in military enterprises, by
which they spread their empire, in a few years, from the banks of the
Ganges to the Straits of Gibraltar, that they had no leisure for
theological controversy; and though the Alcoran, the original monument
of their faith, seems to contain some violent precepts, they were much
less infected with the spirit of bigotry and persecution than the
indolent and speculative Greeks, who were continually refining on the
several articles of their religious system. They gave little
disturbance to those zealous pilgrims who daily flocked to Jerusalem;
and they allowed every man, after paying a moderate tribute, to visit
the holy sepulchre, to perform his religious duties, and to return in
peace. But the Turcomans or Turks, a tribe of Tartars, who had
embraced Mahometanism, having wrested Syria from the Saracens, and
having, in the year 1065, made themselves masters of Jerusalem,
rendered the pilgrimage much more difficult and dangerous to the
Christians. The barbarity of their manners, and the confusions
attending their unsettled government, exposed the pilgrims to many
insults, robberies, and extortions; and these zealots, returning from
their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, filled all Christendom with
indignation against the infidels, who profaned the holy city by their
presence, and derided the sacred mysteries in the very place of their
completi