t he was impeded and embarrassed by so many and
such various difficulties, that, if I proposed to go through them, I
should find myself engaged in a history of Europe during those
centuries. I will suggest some of them, though I can do no more.

1. First of all, then, I observe generally, that the Pope, in attempting
to save Constantinople and its Empire, was attempting to save a
fanatical people, who had for ages set themselves against the Holy See
and the Latin world, and who had for centuries been under a sentence of
excommunication. They hated and feared the Catholics, as much as they
hated and feared the Turks, and they contemned them too, for their
comparative rudeness and ignorance of literature; and this hatred and
fear and contempt were grafted on a cowardly, crafty, insincere, and
fickle character of mind, for which they had been notorious from time
immemorial. It was impossible to save them without their own cordial
cooeperation; it was impossible to save them in spite of themselves.

These odious traits and dispositions had, in the course of the two
hundred years during which the Crusades lasted, borne abundant fruits
and exhibited themselves in results intolerable to the warlike
multitudes who had come to their assistance. For two hundred years "each
spring and summer had produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for
the defence of the Holy Land;"[59] and what had been the effect upon the
Greeks of such prodigality of succour? what satisfaction, what gratitude
had they shown for an undertaking on the part of the West, which ought
properly to have been their own, and which the West commenced, because
the East asked it? When the celebrated Peter the Hermit was in
Constantinople, he would have addressed himself first of all to its
imperial master; and not till the Patriarch of the day showed the
hopelessness of seeking help from a vicious and imbecile court, did he
cry out: "I will rouse the nations of Europe in your cause." The
Emperors sought help themselves instead of lending it. Again and again,
in the course of the Holy Wars, did they selfishly betake themselves to
the European capitals; and they made their gain of the successes of the
Crusaders, as far as they had opportunity, as the jackal follows the
lion; but from the very first, their pride was wounded, and their
cowardice alarmed, at the sight of their protectors in their city and
provinces, and they took every means to weaken and annoy the very