From the end of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century, between the crusade of Philip Augustus and that of St. Louis, it is usual to count three crusades, over which we will not linger.  Two of these crusades—­one, from 1195 to 1198, under Henry vi., Emperor of Germany, and the other, from 1216 to 1240, under the Emperor Frederick ii. and Andrew ii., King of Hungary—­are unconnected with France, and almost exclusively German, or, in origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe.  They led, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to wars, negotiations, and manifold complications; Jerusalem fell once more, for a while, into the hands of the Christians; and there, on the 18th of March, 1229, in the church of the Resurrection, the Emperor Frederick ii., at that time excommunicated by Pope Gregory ix., placed with his own hands the royal crown upon his head.  But these events, confused, disconnected, and short-lived as they were, did not produce in the West, and especially in France, any considerable reverberation, and did not exercise upon the relative situations of Europe and Asia, of Christendom and Islamry, any really historical influence.  In people’s lives, and in the affairs of the world, there are many movements of no significance, and more cry than wool; and those facts only which have had some weight and some duration are here to be noted for study and comprehension.  The event which has been called the fifth crusade was not wanting, so far, in real importance, and it would have to be described here, if it had been really a crusade; but it does not deserve the name.  The crusades were a very different thing from wars and conquests; their real and peculiar characteristic was, that they should be struggles between Christianity and Islamism, between the fruitful civilization of Europe and the barbarism and stagnation of Asia.  Therein consist their originality and their grandeur.  It was certainly on this understanding, and with this view, that Pope Innocent iii., one of the greatest men of the thirteenth century, seconded with all his might the movement which was at that time springing up again in favor of a fresh crusade, and which brought about, in 1202, an alliance between a great number of powerful lords, French, Flemish, and Italian, and the republic of Venice, for the purpose of recovering Jerusalem from the infidels.  But from the very first, the ambition, the opportunities, and the private interests of the Venetians, combined with a recollection of the perfidy displayed by the Greek emperors, diverted the new crusaders from the design they had proclaimed.  What Bohemond, during the first crusade, had proposed to Godfrey de Bouillon, and what the Bishop of Langres, during the second, had suggested to Louis the Young, namely, the capture of Constantinople for the sake of insuring that of Jerusalem, the first crusaders of the thirteenth century were led by bias, greed, anger, and spite to take in hand and accomplish; they conquered Constantinople, and, having once made that conquest, they troubled themselves no more about Jerusalem.  Founded, May 16th, 1204, in the person of Baldwin ix., Count of Flanders, the Latin empire of the East existed for seventy years, in the teeth of many a storm, only to fall once more, in 1273, into the hands of the Greek emperors, overthrown in 1453 by the Turks, who are still in possession.