ed repose and toleration, and both were
endangered by the arrival of the Germans. They looked upon them in
consequence as over-officious intruders, and gave them no encouragement
in the warfare against Saphaddin. The result of this Crusade was even
more disastrous than the last--for the Germans contrived not only to
embitter the Saracens against the Christians of Judea, but to lose the
strong city of Jaffa, and cause the destruction of nine-tenths of the
army with which they had quitted Europe. And so ended the fourth
Crusade.

The fifth was more important, and had a result which its projectors
never dreamed of--no less than the sacking of Constantinople, and the
placing of a French dynasty upon the imperial throne of the eastern
Caesars. Each succeeding Pope, however much he may have differed from
his predecessors on other points, zealously agreed in one, that of
maintaining by every possible means the papal ascendancy. No scheme was
so likely to aid in this endeavour as the Crusades. As long as they
could persuade the kings and nobles of Europe to fight and die in
Syria, their own sway was secured over the minds of men at home. Such
being their object, they never inquired whether a Crusade was or was
not likely to be successful, whether the time were well or ill chosen,
or whether men and money could be procured in sufficient abundance.
Pope Innocent III. would have been proud if he could have bent the
refractory Monarchs of England and France into so much submission. But
John and Philip Augustus were both engaged. Both had deeply offended
the church, and had been laid under her ban, and both were occupied in
important reforms at home; Philip in bestowing immunities upon his
subjects, and John in having them forced from him. The emissaries of
the Pope therefore plied them in vain;--but as in the first and second
Crusades, the eloquence of a powerful preacher incited the nobility,
and through them a certain portion of the people, Foulque, Bishop of
Neuilly, an ambitious and enterprizing prelate, entered fully into the
views of the Court of Rome, and preached the Crusade wherever he could
find an audience. Chance favoured him to a degree he did not himself
expect, for he had in general found but few proselytes, and those few
but cold in the cause. Theobald, Count of Champagne, had instituted a
grand tournament, to which he had invited all the nobles from far and
near. Upwards of two thousand knights were present with