quite certain that the crusaders of the eleventh century, in their haste to deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were far from foreseeing that, a few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would fall again beneath the yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric stagnation; and this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would doubtless have chilled their zeal.  But it is not a whit the less certain that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for, in the panorama of the world’s history, the crusades marked the date of the arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive preponderance of Christian civilization.

[Illustration:  The Four Leaders of the First Crusade——­385]

To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive less disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still very vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the Mussulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing them begin again.  Instinctively war was carried to the East to keep it from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks.  And this prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance.  They were about to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for evil, to the enemy from whom they had suffered in the same way; hatred and pride, as well as piety, obtained satisfaction.

There is moreover great motive power in a spirit of enterprise and a taste for adventure.  Care-for-nothingness is one of man-kind’s chief diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively enlightened and favored communities, amidst the labors and the enjoyments of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence.  To escape therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any resource but war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions.  Thither rushed the masses of the people, whilst the minds which were eager, above everything, for intellectual movement and for knowledge, thronged, on the mountain of St. Genevieve, to the lectures of Abelard.  Need of variety and novelty, and an instinctive desire to extend their views and enliven their existence, probably made as many crusaders as the feeling against the Mussulmans and the promptings of piety.

[Illustration:  Crusaders on the March——­386]