When the King of France heard that the ransom money had at length been raised, he wrote to John, telling him that his brother was free.  “Look out for yourself,” said he; “the devil has broken loose.”  Richard generously pardoned his treacherous brother; and when the King was killed in a war in France (1199) John gained the throne he coveted, but gained it only to disgrace it.

186.  Purpose of the Crusades.

Up to the time of the Crusades, the English, when they entered upon Continental wars, had been actuated either by ambition for military glory or desire for conquest.  But they undertook the Crusades from motives of religious enthusiasm.

Those who engaged in them fought for an idea.  They considered themselves soldiers of the cross.  Moved by this feeling, “all Christian believers seemed redy to precipitate themselves in one united body upon Asia” (S182).  Thus the Crusades were “the first European event."[1] They gave men something noble to battle for, not only outside their country, but outside their own selfish interests.

[1] Guizot’s “History of Civilization.”

Richard, as we have seen, was the first English King who took part in them.  Before that period England had stood aloof,—­“a world by itself.”  The country was engaged in its own affairs or in its contests with France.  Richard’s expedition to the Holy Land brought England into the main current of history, so that it was now moved by the same feeling which animated the Continent.

187.  The Results of the Crusades:  Educational, Social, Political.

From a purely military point of view, the Crusades ended in disastrous failure, for they left the Mohammedans in absolute possession of the Holy Land.  Although this is the twentieth century since the birth of Christ, the Mohammedans still continue in that possession.  But in spite of their failure these wars brought great good to England.  In many respects the civilization of the East was far in advance of the West.  One result of the Crusades was to open the eyes of Europe to this fact.  When Richard and his followers set out, they looked upon the Mohammedans as barbarians; before they returned, many were ready to acknowledge that the barbarians were chiefly among themselves.

At that time England had few Latin and no Greek scholars.  The Saracens or Mohammedans, however, had long been familiar with the classics, and had translated them into their own tongue.  Not only did England gain its first knowledge of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle from Mohammedan teachers, but it also received from them the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy.

This new knowledge gave a great impulse to education, and had a most important influence on the growth of the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, though these institutions did not become prominent until more than a century later.