(9) Troops of warriors and pilgrims, often confounded together, went continually to the east in the intervals of the great crusades, though all except seven were inconsiderable expeditions. The latter were commonly excited by some remarkable event, as the loss of Edessa or of Jerusalem.

(r) In the book entitled Gesta Dei per Francos, which is a collection of treatises relative to the crusades, we find the admiration of the Latins very strongly expressed in the following passages. O quanta civitas nobilis et decora, quot monasteria, quotque palacia sunt in ea opere miro fabrefacta, quot etiam in plateis vel in vicis opera ad spectandum mirabilia! Tædium est quidem magnum recitare quanta sit ibi opulentia bonorum omnium, auri et argenti, palliorum multiformium, sanctarumque reliquiarum: omni etiam tempore navigio frequenti cuncta hominum necessaria illuc afferuntur. Fulcherii Carnet. Gesta Peregr. Franc. And almost the same expressions again occur: O quanta civitas, quam nobilis, quam jucunda, quamque referta ecclesiis et palaciis. miro opere fabricatis, quæ spectacula, quæ mirabilia ære et marmore cælata in ea continentur! Gesta Franc. Hierus Expugn. lib. 1.

(s) Of the coast of Anatolia he acquired the entire circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian Gates, so that the Seljukian dynasty of Roum

was separated on all sides from the sea and their Musulman brethren, and after the loss of Nice the seat of government was established at Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and inland town more than three hundred miles from Constantinople. Decl. and Fall, &c. vol. 6 p. 74. A portion of the territory thus acquired by the Greek emperor, extending from the banks of the Mæander to the neighbourhood of the Grecian capital, served to form the little empire of Nice, which sheltered the imperial family of Constantinople, until it became practicable to expel their Latin conquerors. Ibid. p. 182.

(t) Only one fourth part was given to the emperor, the other three being equally shared between the republic of Venice and the barons of France. The doge of Venice accordingly assumed the singular addition of lord of one fourth and a half of the Roman empire, the portion of the republic being three eighth parts, or a fourth and the half of a fourth. Ibid. p. 177, 178.

(u) A renewal of the crusades was often meditated in succeeding times. Henault mentions such a design as formed in the reigns of Charles IV. and Philip VI. and in the pontificate of Pius II. who was contemporary to Lewis XI. Mezeray notices such a scheme in

his account of the reigns of Philip VI. John I. Charles V. Charles VI. Charles VII. and Lewis XI; and tells us that Charles VIII. proposed to pass into Greece, when he should have effected the conquest of Italy. This last project was defeated by the jealousy of the Venetians and the pope. Even in the reign however of Lewis XII. he remarks, the pope endeavoured to excite the Christian princes against the Turks, who had made an irruption into Friuli in aid of Lewis Sforza. This attempt was frustrated by the disagreement of the French and Venetians. Mickle, in his remarks on the Lusiad of Camoens, has observed, that the eastern expeditions of the Portuguese, being directed against the Saracen possessors of the oriental countries, were really a renewal of the crusades. Lewis Sforza in the year 1499 inverted the principle, by forming an alliance with Bajazet, the Turkish emperor, against the Venetians, and thus introducing the Turks into the political combinations of Europe. The precedent was followed by Francis I. of France, who brought the Turks into Hungary to attack the emperor.

LECTURE XXIV.

Of the consequences of the Crusades.

A VERY superficial consideration of the subject of this lecture will produce a conviction of the importance of the consequences which must have followed such a series of great expeditions, whatever may be thought of them as advantageous or prejudicial. Occurring just at the time when the governments of western Europe were beginning to assume the forms of the future system of policy; creating a political and social intercourse among nations, which before were scarcely brought together, except by the violences of neighbouring hostility; familiarizing the half-civilized inhabitants of the western states to the commercial opulence of the Italian cities, to the still remaining grandeur of the eastern capital of the antient empire, and to the peculiar manners and appearances of yet more distant countries; and exercising whatever influence of good or ill

they possessed, not in one temporary and transient agency upon the society of Europe, but by an operation continued during the long period of almost two centuries; these expeditions cannot have failed to generate effects of the greatest importance, not only in those nations of Europe which were immediately engaged, but also as far as the operation of European manners and principles can be imagined to extend. Though therefore the termination of the crusades is more than five hundred years distant from the present time, the consideration of their influence must even now be a most interesting enquiry.

Historians are indeed by no means agreed in determining, whether the consequences of these enterprises should be regarded as beneficial or mischievous. Among the writers by whom they have been particularly noticed, four may be distinguished; Mosheim, Robertson, Gibbon, and Herder. Of these four writers, Mosheim and Gibbon, though influenced by very different sentiments, may be classed together as agreeing in the condemnation of the crusades, which they represent as the sources of the most fatal calamities; Robertson as their unqualified panegyrist; and Herder as holding a middle rank between the two descriptions. It will be useful to compare their several statements, that we may the better