ompanied by eight horses, and preceded by
a goat and a goose, into which some one had told them that the Holy
Ghost had entered. Driven to madness by disappointment and
famine--expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must
be Jerusalem--in their extremity they laid hands on whatever they could.
Their track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first
crusade more than half a million of men died. It was far more disastrous
than the Moscow retreat.

[Sidenote: Storming of Jerusalem.] But still, in a military sense, the
first crusade accomplished its object. The capture of Jerusalem, as
might be expected under such circumstances, was attended by the
perpetration of atrocities almost beyond belief. What a contrast to the
conduct of the Arabs! When the Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he
rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing
with him on its antiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to
perform his devotions in the Church of the Resurrection, in which he
chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of the Church of Constantine;
"for," said he to the patriarch, "had I done so, the Musselmen in a
future age would have infringed the treaty, under colour of imitating my
example." But, in the capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young
children were dashed out against the walls; infants were thrown over the
battlements; every woman that could be seized was violated; men were
roasted at fires; some were ripped open, to see if they had swallowed
gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and there burnt; a
massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope's legate was
seen "partaking in the triumph."

[Sidenote: Political results of the Crusades.] It had been expected by
the politicians who first projected these wars that they would heal the
divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give birth to a European
republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects
they proved a failure. It does not appear that the popes themselves
personally had ever any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever
joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark
very little money in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer
to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful
stimulus to the papal power. [Sidenote: Give to Rome the control of men
and money in Europe.] Under the plausible pret