would meet the ever-beautiful dark-eyed houris in the life after death.  To the material, sensual allurements, the Church added spiritual blessings and eternal rewards, guaranteed to those who took the red cross.  During the Crusades the Christians did their utmost to copy the cruelties of the Moslems.  That contempt for human life, that entire absence of mercy and the sense of pity which is familiar in all countries where Islam has gained sway is characteristic also of the Crusades.

Although the narrative of the Crusades belongs rather to the history of Europe than of any one country, it is so closely intertwined with the history of Egypt at this period that some digression is necessary.  About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, in 1076, the Holy Sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy, France.  His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the Patriarch, and earnestly inquired if no hope of relief from the Greek emperors of the East could be entertained.  The Patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of Constantine.  “I will rouse,” exclaimed the hermit, “the martial nations of Europe in your cause;” and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit.  The astonished Patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff.  Pope Urban II. received him as a prophet, applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land.  Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, this zealous missionary traversed with speed and success the provinces of Italy and France.  He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the highways:  the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and the cottage; and the people of all classes were impetuously moved by his call to repentance and arms.

The first Crusade was headed by Godefroy de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine; Baldwin, his brother; Hugo the Great, brother of the King of France; Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror; Raymond of St. Gilles, Duke of Toulouse; and Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum.  Towards the end of 1097 A.D. the invading force invested Antioch, and, after a siege of nine months, took it by storm.  Edessa was also captured by the Crusaders, and in the middle of the summer of 1098 they reached Jerusalem, then in the hands of the Fatimites.

El-Mustali b’Illah Abu’l Kasim, son of Mustanssir, was then on the throne, but he was only a nominal ruler, for El-Afdhal, a son of El-Gemali, had the chief voice in the affairs of the kingdom.  It was the army of Kasim that had captured Jerusalem.  The city was besieged by the Crusaders, and it surrendered to them after forty days.  Twice did new expeditions arrive from Egypt and attempt to retake the city, but with disastrous results, and further expeditions were impossible for some time, owing to the internal disorders in Egypt.  Mustali died after a reign of about four years; and some historians record, as a truly remarkable circumstance, that he was a Sunnite by creed, although he represented a Shiite dynasty.