against the infidels, after plundering his subjects of an immense sum of money to defray the charges of the enterprise. Forming a league with Philip Augustus of France, the two monarchs joined their forces, and acting for some time in concert, were successful in the taking of Acra or Ptolemais; but Philip, jealous of his rival's glory, soon returned to France, while Richard had the honour of defeating the heroic Saladin in the battle of Ascalon, with prodigious slaughter of his enemies. He prepared now for the siege of Jerusalem, but finding his army wasted with famine and fatigue, he was compelled to end the war by a truce with Saladin, in which he obtained a free passage through the Holy Land for every Christian pilgrim. [A.D. 1192.] Wrecked in his voyage homeward, and travelling in disguise through Germany, Richard was seized, and detained in prison by command of the emperor Henry VI. The king of France ungenerously opposed his release, as did his unnatural brother John, from selfish ambition; but he was at length ransomed by his subjects for the sum of 150,000 marks, and after an absence of nine years, returned to his dominions. His traitorous brother was pardoned after some submission, and Richard employed the short residue of his reign in a spirited revenge against his rival, Philip. A truce, however, was concluded by the mediation of Rome; and Richard was soon after killed while storming the castle of one of his rebellious vassals in the Limosin. He died in the 10th year of his reign, and 42nd of his age, 1199.

9. John (Lackland) succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother, but found a competitor in his nephew Arthur, the son of Geoffrey, supported by Philip of France. War was, of course, renewed with that country: but Arthur, with fatal confidence, throwing himself into the hands of his uncle, was removed by poison or the sword; a deed which, joined to the known tyranny of his character, rendered John the detestation of his subjects. He was stripped by Philip of his continental dominions, and he made the pope his enemy by an avaricious attack on the treasures of the church. After an ineffectual menace of vengeance, Innocent III. pronounced a sentence of interdict against the kingdom, which put a stop to all the ordinances of religion, to baptism, and the burial of the dead. He next excommunicated John, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance; and he finally

deposed him, and made a gift of the kingdom to Philip. John, intimidated into submission, declared himself the pope's vassal, swore allegiance on his knees to the papal legate, and agreed to hold his kingdom tributary to the holy see. On these conditions, which ensured the universal hatred and contempt of his people, he made his peace with the church. It was natural that his subjects, thus trampled upon and sold, should vindicate their rights. The barons of the kingdom assembled, and biùding themselves by oath to a union of measures, they resolutely demanded from the king a ratification of a charter of privileges granted by Henry I. John appealed to the pope, who, in support of his vassal, prohibited the confederacy of the barons as rebellious. These were only the more resolute in their purpose, and the sword was their last resource. At length John was compelled to yield to their demands, and signed, at Runnymede [situate between Windsor and Staines] 19th June, 1215, [the articles of] that solemn charter, which is the foundation and bulwark of English liberty, Magna Charta.

10. By this great charter, 1. The freedom of election to benefices was secured to the clergy; 2. The fines to the overlord on the succession of vassals were regulated; 3. No aids or subsidies were allowed to be levied from the subject, unless in a few special cases, without the consent of the great council; 4. The crown shall not seize the lands [or rent] of a baron [or other British subject] for a debt, while he has [chattels, i. e.] personal property sufficient to discharge it; 5. All the privileges granted by the king to his vassals shall be communicated by them to their inferior vassals; 6. One weight and one measure shall be used throughout the kingdom; 7. All men shall pass from and return to the realm at their pleasure; 8. All cities and boroughs shall preserve their ancient liberties; 9. The estate of every freeman shall be regulated by his will, and, if he die intestate, by the law; 10. The king's court shall be stationary and open to all; 11. Every freeman shall be fined only in proportion to his offence, and no fine shall be imposed to his utter ruin; 12. No peasant [in fact no person] shall, by a fine be deprived of his instruments of husbandry; 13. No person shall be tried on suspicion alone, but on the evidence of lawful witnesses; 14. No person shall be tried or punished but by the judgment of his peers and the law of the land.

11. John granted at the same time the Charta de Foresta, which abolished the royal privilege of killing game over all the kingdom, and restored to the lawful proprietors their woods and forests, which they were now allowed to enclose and use at their pleasure. As compulsion alone had produced these concessions, John was determined to disregard them, and a foreign force was brought into the kingdom to reduce the barons into submission. These applied for aid to France, and Philip sent his son Louis to England with an army; and such was the people's hatred of their sovereign, that they swore allegiance to this foreigner. At this critical period John died at Newark, 1216, and an instant change ensued. His son, Henry III., a boy of nine years of age, was crowned at Bristol, and his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, appointed protector of the realm: the disaffected barons returned to their allegiance, the people hailed their sovereign, and Louis with his army, after an ineffectual struggle, made peace with the protector, and evacuated the kingdom.

XVI.-State of Germany and Italy in the Thirteenth Century.

1. Frederick II., son of Henry VI. was elected emperor on the resignation of Otho IV., 1212. At this pericd Naples, Sicily, and Lombardy, were all appendages of the empire; and the contentions between the imperial and papal powers divided the states of Italy into factions, known by the name of Guelphs and Ghibellines; the former maintaining the supremacy of the pope, the latter that of the emperor. The opposition of Frederick to four successive popes was avenged by excommunication and deposition; yet he kept possession of his throne, and vindicated his authority with great spirit. Frequent attempts were made against his life, by assassination and poison, which he openly attributed to papal resentment. On his death, 1250, the splendour of the empire was for many years obscured. It was a prey to incessant factions and civil war, the fruit of contested claims of sovereignty; yet the popes gained nothing by its disorders; for the troubles of Italy were equaily hostile to their ambition. We have seen the turbulent state of England; France was equally weak and anarchical; Spain, ravaged by the contests of the Moors and Christians. Yet, distracted as

appears the situation of Europe, one great project gave a species of union to this discordant mass, of which we now proceed to give account.

XVII.-The Crusades, or Holy Wars.

1. The Turks, or Turcomans, a race of Tartars from the regions of Mount Taurus and Imaus, invaded the dominions of Moscovy in the eleventh century, and came down upon the banks of the Caspian. The caliphs employed Turkish mercenaries; and they acquired the reputation of able soldiers in the wars that took place on occasion of the contested caliphate. The caliphs of Bagdat, the Abassidæ, were deprived, by their rival caliphs of the race of Omar, of Syria, Egypt, and Africa; and the Turks stripped of their dominions both the Abassidæ and Ommiades. Bagdat was taken by the Turks, and the empire of the caliphs overthrown in 1955; and these princes, from temporal monarchs, became now the supreme pontiffs of the Mahometan faith, as the popes of the Christian. At the time of the first crusade, in the end of the eleventh century, Arabia was governed by a Turkish sultan, as were Persia and the greater portion of Lesser Asia. The eastern empire was thus abridged of its Asiatic territory, and had lost a great part of its dominions in Europe. It retained, however, Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Illyria; and Constantinople itself was populous, opulent, and luxurious. Palestine was in the possession of the Turks; and its capital, Jerusalem, fallen from its ancient consequence and splendour, was yet held in respect by its conquerors as a holy city, and constantly attracted the resort of Mahometans to the mosque of Omar, as of Christian pilgrims to the sepulchre of our Saviour.

2. Peter the Hermit, a native of Amiens, on his return from this pilgrimage, complained in loud terms of the grievances which the Christians suffered from the Turks; and Urban II. pitched on this enthusiast as a fit person to commence the execution of a grand design which the popes had long entertained, of arming all Christendom, and exterminating the infidels from the Holy Land. The project was opened in two general councils held at Placentia and Clermont. The French possessed more ardour than the Italians; and an immense multitude of ambitious and disorderly nobles, with all their dependants, eager for enterprise and plunder, and assured of eternal salvation,

immediately took the cross. Peter the Hermit led 80,000 under his banners, and they began their march towards the east in 1095. Their progress was marked by rapine and hostility in every Christian country through which they passed; and the army of the Hermit, on its arrival at Constantinople, was wasted down to 20,000, The emperor Alexius Commenus, to whom the crusaders behaved with the most provoking insolence and folly, conducted himself with admirable moderation and good sense. He hastened to get rid of this disorderly multitude, by furnishing them with every aid which they required, and cheerfully lent his ships to transport them across the Bosphorus. The sultan Solyman met them on the plain of Nicea, and cut to pieces the army of the Hermit. A new host, in the mean time, arrived at Constantinople, led by more illustrious commanders; by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Brabant, Raymond Count of Thoulouse, Robert of Normandy, son of William King of England, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, the conqueror of Sicily, and other princes of high reputation. To these, who amounted to some hundred thousands, Alexius manifested the same prudent conduct, to accelerate their departure. The Turks, overpowered by numbers, were twice defeated, and the crusaders, pursuing their successes, penetrated at length to Jerusalem, which, after a siege of six weeks, they took by storm, and with savage fury massacred the whole of its Mahometan and Jewish inhabitants, A.D. 1099. Godfrey was hailed king of Jerusalem, but was obliged soon after to cede his kingdom to the Pope's legate. The crusaders divided Syria and Palestine, and formed four separate states, which weakened their power. The Turks began to recover strength; and the Christian states of Asia soon found it necessary to solicit aid from Europe.

3. The second crusade set out from the West in 1146, to the amount of 200,000, French, Germans, and Italians, led by Hugh, brother to Philip I. of France. These met with the same fate which attended the army of Peter the Hermit. The garrison of Jerusalem was at this time so weak, that it became necessary to embody and arm the monks for its defence, and hence arose the military orders of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers, and soon after the Teutonic, from the German pilgrims. Meantime pope Eugenius III. employed St. Bernard to preach up a new crusade in France, which was headed by its sovereign,