egory attempted without result; how, along the very way
which the pilgrims I have described journeyed, 100,000 men at length
appeared cased in complete armour and on horseback; how they drove the
Turk from Nicaea over against Constantinople, where he had fixed his
imperial city, to the farther borders of Asia Minor; how, after
defeating him in a pitched battle at Dorylaeum, they went on and took
Antioch, and then at length, after a long pilgrimage of three years,
made conquest of Jerusalem itself, I need not here relate. To one point
only is it to our present purpose to direct attention. It is commonly
said that the Crusades failed in their object; that they were nothing
else but a lavish expenditure of men and treasure; and that the
possession of the Holy Places by the Turks to this day is a proof of it.
Now I will not enter here into a very intricate controversy; this only
will I say, that, if the tribes of the desert, under the leadership of
the house of Seljuk, turned their faces to the West in the middle of the
eleventh century; if in forty years they had advanced from Khorasan to
Jerusalem and the neighbourhood of Constantinople; and if in consequence
they were threatening Europe and Christianity; and if, for that reason,
it was a great object to drive them back or break them to pieces; if it
were a worthy object of the Crusades to rescue Europe from this peril
and to reassure the anxious minds of Christian multitudes;--then were
the Crusades no failure in their issue, for this object was fully
accomplished. The Seljukian Turks were hurled back upon the East, and
then broken up, by the hosts of the Crusaders.[46] The lieutenant of
Malek Shah, who had been established as Sultan of Roum (as Asia Minor
was called by the Turks), was driven to an obscure town, where his
dynasty lasted, indeed, but gradually dwindled away. A similar fate
attended the house of Seljuk in other parts of the Empire, and internal
quarrels increased and perpetuated its weakness. Sudden as was its rise,
as sudden was its fall; till the terrible Zingis, descending on the
Turkish dynasties, like an avalanche, cooeperated effectually with the
Crusaders and finished their work; and if Jerusalem was not protected
from other enemies, at least Constantinople was saved, and Europe was
placed in security, for three hundred years.[47]

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Thornton.

[36] Gibbon.

[37] Vid. Dow's Hindostan.

[38] Caldecott's Baber. Vid. also Elphinsto