The Sixth Crusade (1248-50) only secured the capture of Damietta, on the banks of the Nile.

The Seventh and last of these miserable wars was the most unfortunate of all, A.D. 1270.  The saintly monarch of France perished, with most of his forces, on the coast of Africa, and the ruins of Carthage were the only conquest which was made.  Europe now fairly sickened over the losses and misfortunes and defeats of nearly two centuries, during which five millions are supposed to have lost their lives.  Famine and pestilence destroyed more than the sword.  Before disheartened Europe could again rally, the last strongholds of the Christians were wrested away by the Mohammedans; and their gallant but unsuccessful defenders were treated with every inhumanity, and barbarously murdered in spite of truces and treaties.

Such were the famous Crusades, only the main facts of which I allude to; for to describe them all, or even the more notable incidents, would fill volumes,—­all interesting to be read in detail by those who have leisure; all marked by prodigious personal valor; all disgraceful for the want of unity of action and the absence of real generalship.  They indicate the enormous waste of forces which characterizes nations in their progress.  This waste of energies is one of the great facts of all history, surpassed only by the apparent waste of the forces of nature or the fruits of the earth, in the transition period between the time when men roamed in forests and the time when they cultivated the land.  See what a vast destruction there has been of animals by each other; what a waste of plants and vegetables, when they could not be utilized.  Why should man escape the universal waste, when reason is ignored or misdirected?  Of what use or value could Palestine have been to Europeans in the Middle Ages?  Of what use can any country be to conquerors, when it cannot be civilized or made to contribute to their wants?  Europe then had no need of Asia, and that perhaps is the reason why Europe then could not conquer Asia.  Providence interfered, and rebuked the mad passions which animated the invaders, and swept them all away.  Were Palestine really needed by Europe, it could be wrested from the Turks with less effort than was made by the feeblest of the crusaders.  Constantinople—­the most magnificent site for a central power—­was indeed wrested from the Greek emperors, and kept one hundred years; but the Europeans did not know what to do with the splendid prize, and it was given to the Turks, who made it the capital of a vital empire.  All the good which resulted to Europe from the temporary possession of Constantinople was the introduction into Europe of Grecian literature and art.  Its political and mercantile importance was not appreciated, nor then even scarcely needed.  It will one day become again the spoil of that nation which can most be benefited by it.  Such is the course events are made to take.