hood and Christianity together which produced the two great and glorious events of those times, the Norman conquest of England and the Crusades. THE CRUSADES.-PREACHING OF PETER THE HERMIT. ENTHUSIASM OF THE CRUSADERS. 66 (See note on the Crusades, extracts from Gibbon.) IN 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the 1 Hermit, Pope Urban II was at Clermont, in Auvergne, presiding at the grand council, at which thirteen archbishops and two hundred and five bishops or abbots were met together, with so many princes and lay-lords, that "about the middle of the month of November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were full of people, and divers were constrained to have their tents and pavilions set up amid the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the season and the country were cold to an extreme." The first nine sessions of the council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West; but at the tenth, Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject of deliberation. The Pope went out of the church wherein the council was assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of the throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at 2 his side, spoke first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of 3 the exactions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him Pope Urban II spoke in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter had spoken, for he was himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandees and populace. He made a long speech, entering upon the most painful details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem, "that royal city which the Redeemer of the human race had made illustrious by his coming, had honored by his residence, had hallowed by his passion, had purchased by his death, had distinguished by his burial. She now demands of you her deliverance . men of France, men from beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right valiant knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness of King Charlemagne and your other kings; it is from you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations, God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms. Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalem for the remission of your sins, and depart, assured of the imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven." From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, "God willeth it! God willeth it!" The Pope paused for a moment, and then, making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued: "If the Lord God were not in your souls, ye would not all have uttered the same words. In the battle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that came from God; in the army of the Lord let naught be heard but that one shout, God willeth it! God willeth it!' We ordain not, and we advise not, that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be not suited for arms, and let not women set out without their husbands or their brothers; let the rich help the poor; nor priests nor clerks may go without the leave of their bishops; and no layman shall commence the march save with the blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his brow or his breast the cross of the Lord; and let him who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him between his shoulders; for thus he will fulfill the precept of the Lord, who said, 'He that doth not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me.' 999 The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the 4 first shout of the crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adhémar, Bishop of Puy, was the first to receive the cross from the Pope's hands. It was of red cloth or silk, sewed upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on the front of the helmet. The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it. Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first 5 and the determining motive of the Crusade. It is to the honor of humanity, and especially to the honor of the French nation, that it is accessible to the sudden sway of a moral and disinterested sentiment, and resolves, without prevision as well as without premeditation, upon acts which decide for many a long year the course and the fate of a generation, and, it may be, of a whole people. We have seen in our own day, in the conduct of populace, national assemblies, and armies, under the impulse not any longer of religious feeling, but of political and social agitation, France thus giving herself up to the rush of sentiments, generous indeed and pure, but without the least forecast touching the consequences of the ideas which inspired them or the acts which they entailed. It is with nations as with armies: the side of glory is that of danger; and great works are wrought at a heavy cost, 6 not only of happiness, but also of virtue. It would be wrong, nevertheless, to lack respect for and to speak evil of enthusiasm; it not only bears witness to the grandeur of human nature, it justly holds its place and exercises its noble influence in the course of the great events which move across the scene of human errors and vices, according to the vast and inscrutable design of God. It is quite certain that the Crusaders of the eleventh century, in their haste to deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were far from foreseeing that, a few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would fall again beneath the yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric stagnation; and this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would doubtless have chilled their zeal. But it is not a whit the less certain that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for, in the panorama of the world's history, the Crusades marked the date of the arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive preponderance of Christian civilization. 7 To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive, less disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still very vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the Mussulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing them begin again. Instinctively, war was carried to the East to keep it from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks. And this prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance. They were about to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for evil, to the enemy from whom they had suffered in the same way; hatred and pride, as well as piety, obtained satisfaction. There is, moreover, great motive power in a spirit of 8 enterprise and a taste for adventure. Care-for-nothingness is one of mankind's chief diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively enlightened and favored communities, amid the labors and the enjoyments of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence. To escape therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any resource but war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions. Thither rushed the masses of the people, while the minds which were eager, above everything, for intellectual movement and for knowledge, thronged, on the mountain of St. Geneviève, to the lectures of Abélard. Need of variety and novelty, and an instinctive desire to extend their views and enliven their existence, probably made as many Crusaders as the feeling against the Mussulmans and the promptings of piety. DEATH OF MARSHAL TURENNE. GUIZOT'S " HISTORY OF FRANCE. Marshal Turenne was one of the most illustrious of French commanders, and his modesty was equal to his merit. Few generals have done more to develop war into a science than Turenne, and his great pupil, the Duke of Marlborough. On the 27th of June, 1675, in the morning, Turenne 1 ordered an attack on the village of Salzbach. The young Count of St. Hilaire found him at the head of his in |