onnexion with other Mussulman
disorders when mutual assassination was popular. But, on the whole,
pilgrims, who at this time swarmed from all over Europe to visit the
Holy Places at Jerusalem, were allowed to do so comparatively
unmolested--that is, they were probably not robbed more in Palestine
than in other professedly Christian countries through which they had to
pass along their road. Had the Arab Mussulman remained master of
Jerusalem, the Christians of Europe would probably have remained content
with the situation.

A change came in the year 1077. Jerusalem was then taken by the Turks,
who had conquered all Asia Minor and were already threatening the
Byzantine Empire in Europe. The treatment which the Christian pilgrims
now received at Jerusalem aroused intense indignation in Europe, chiefly
stimulated by the preaching of Peter the Hermit. Other motives there
were, such as the protection of the Byzantine Empire from the menaces of
the Turk, the desire of the Latin Church to prevail over the Byzantine,
and the temptations always offered in a holy war of loot upon earth and
salvation in heaven. Nevertheless, there undoubtedly spread, throughout
Western Europe, a mighty wave of religious enthusiasm which was sincere.

The first Crusade was mainly recruited in France. Great were the
vicissitudes through which the Crusaders passed on their pilgrimage
through Europe and Asia Minor, largely through quarrels with their
fellow-Christians before the Turks had even been encountered or their
country entered. Having defeated the Turks at Antioch, the army marched
south along the coast and at length reached and besieged Jerusalem. Of
the numbers that set out from Western Europe, probably not less than a
million, only a remnant of twenty thousand fighting men, with an equal
number of followers, had reached the Holy City. Though thus decimated
and war weary, the Crusaders were ecstatic with religious fervour; St.
George was said to have appeared to them clad in shining armour; the
Saracens gave way, and Jerusalem was taken by assault. The usual
massacre of the inhabitants followed, and estimates of the slain vary
from forty to a hundred thousand. In 1099 was established the Christian
kingdom of Jerusalem, the kingdom of the Crusaders, Latin in creed,
French in nationality, feudal in character and precarious in existence.
The state of affairs seems now rather to have resembled the relationship
which formerly existed between the