statesmen, if such there were among the best informed of bishops and abbots, may have felt the necessity of the conflict in a political sense; but I do not believe this was a general conviction.  There was, doubtless, a political necessity—­although men were too fanatical to see more than one side—­to crush the Saracens because they were infidels, and not because they were warriors.  But whether they saw it or not, or armed themselves to resist a danger as well as to exterminate heresy, the ultimate effects were all the same.  The crusaders failed in their direct end.  They did not recover Palestine; but they so weakened or diverted the Mohammedan armies that there was not strength enough left in them to conquer Europe, or even to invade her, until she was better prepared to resist it,—­as she did at the battle of Lepanto (A.  D. 1571), one of the decisive battles of the world.

I have said that the Crusades were a disastrous failure.  I mean in their immediate ends, not in ultimate results.  If it is probable that they arrested the conquests of the Turks in Europe, then this blind and fanatical movement effected the greatest blessing to Christendom.  It almost seems that the Christians were hurled into the Crusades by an irresistible fate, to secure a great ultimate good; or, to use Christian language, were sent as blind instruments by the Almighty to avert a danger they could not see.  And if this be true, the inference is logical and irresistible that God uses even the wicked passions of men to effect his purposes,—­as when the envy of Haman led to the elevation of Mordecai, and to the deliverance of the Jews from one of their greatest dangers.

Another and still more noticeable result of the Crusades was the weakening of the power of those very barons who embarked in the wars.  Their fanaticism recoiled upon themselves, and undermined their own system.  Nothing could have happened more effectually to loosen the rigors of the feudal system.  It was the baron and the knight that marched to Palestine who suffered most in the curtailment of the privileges which they had abused,—­even as it was the Southern planter of Carolina who lost the most heavily in the war which he provoked to defend his slave property.  In both cases the fetters of the serfs and slaves were broken by their own masters,—­not intentionally, of course, but really and effectually.  How blind men are in their injustices!  They are made to hang on the gallows which they have erected for others.  To gratify his passion of punishing the infidels, whom he so intensely hated, the baron or prince was obliged to grant great concessions to the towns and villages which he ruled with an iron hand, in order to raise money for his equipment and his journey.  He was not paid by Government as are modern soldiers and officers.  He had to pay his own expenses, and they were heavier than he had expected or provided for.  Sometimes he was taken captive, and had