The age of the crusades . power to occupy the arms of their contestants,leaving the Christians of the West free to prey uponthe Moslems of Syria and adjacent countries. Nowall was changed in this respect. The war of Latinswith Greeks engrossed, and largely used up, thepower of both as against their common the capital had fallen, the Greek everywherewas still the sworn enemy of the Latin. In the meantime the Moslems were compactingand extending their military power. They weregrowing in multitude by the migration of new swarmsfrom the original hive in the farther East. Theywere dest
The age of the crusades . power to occupy the arms of their contestants,leaving the Christians of the West free to prey uponthe Moslems of Syria and adjacent countries. Nowall was changed in this respect. The war of Latinswith Greeks engrossed, and largely used up, thepower of both as against their common the capital had fallen, the Greek everywherewas still the sworn enemy of the Latin. In the meantime the Moslems were compactingand extending their military power. They weregrowing in multitude by the migration of new swarmsfrom the original hive in the farther East. Theywere destined to become too strong for Christendomto resist, to move steadily on to their own conquestof Constantinople, and even to knock at the gate ofVienna. The words of Edward Pears are undoubt-edly warranted: The crime of the fourth crusadehanded over Constantinople and the Balkan peninsulato six centuries of barbarism. CHAPTER XXXIX. BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CRUSADES-CONDITION OF EAST AND WEST—THE CHIL-DRENS HE campaign of Europe against Constan-tinople wrought only evil among theChristian colonists of Syria and the time of their deepest need therewere diverted from their cause the enor-mous sums of money that had been raised for theirsuccor, multitudes of brother warriors, whose swordswere sadly missed amid the daily menaces of theirfoes, and the active sympathies, if not even theprayers, of their coreligionists at home. Dire calam-ities also fell upon them, which no human armcould have prevented. The plague had followed theterrible Egyptian famine of 1200, and spread its pallfar to the East. Earthquakes of the most terrificsort changed the topography of many places; tidalwaves obliterated shore-lines; fortresses, like thoseof Baalbec and Hamah, tottered to their fall uponthe unsteady earth; stately temples, which hadmonumented the art and religion of antiquity, be-came heaps of ruins; Nablous, Damascus, Tyre, 296 Eastern Disasters—John of Brienne.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidageof, booksubjectcrusades
