Eight days after their conquest of the Holy City, in 1099, the first crusaders proceeded to establish the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its first king.  On the death of Godfrey, in 1100, his brother Baldwin succeeded him, and in 1118 he was succeeded by Baldwin II, Count of Edessa.  The fourth king was Fulc, Count of Anjou and son-in-law of Baldwin II (1131-1144), and after him reigned his son, Baldwin III (1144-1162).  This King came to the throne at the age of thirteen.  Early in his reign the Christian stronghold of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was captured by the Turks, and its loss, which seemed to threaten the destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, was the occasion of an appeal to Europe which called out the Second Crusade.  The great preacher of this crusade was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a man who, in earnestness and eloquence, closely resembled Pope Urban and Peter the Hermit.  Bernard’s influence won to his cause not only the common people, but also nobles and kings, and the Second Crusade was led by Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of Germany.

The time of the Second Crusade was 1147-1149.  Louis and Conrad each commanded a great army, but they made the mistake of working separately.  Conrad reached Constantinople first, and partly in consequence of the faithless conduct of Manuel, the Byzantine emperor—­who, like his predecessor Alexius, in the time of the First Crusade, threw obstacles in the way of the western hosts—­the whole German army was cut to pieces in Asia Minor, only the Emperor himself, with a few followers, escaping.  Louis, soon arriving with his army, received the same treatment from Manuel, and after taking a few towns he saw his forces likewise destroyed by the Turks.  Louis himself escaped and returned to France.

So ended in utter failure and shame the Second Crusade.  The event seemed to give the lie to the glowing promises of St. Bernard, who was charged by anguished women with sending their fathers, husbands, and sons forth on a fruitless errand to disgrace and death.  The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem profited nothing from this ignominious enterprise.  The power of that kingdom was already waning, and, but for the knights of the military orders now in Jerusalem, the city must have yielded to the Turcoman hordes that continually menaced it.  Baldwin III died in 1162, at the age of thirty-three, loved and lamented by his people and respected by his foes.  He died childless, and his brother Almeric was elected to succeed him.  What experience and what fate awaited the kingdom after this will be seen in the remarkable narration which follows.

Almost at the beginning of Almeric’s reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the side of one Mahometan race, tribe, or faction against another.  The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of theology, but they were scarcely