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Jerusalem; and the brave hero, Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, was proclaimed King a.d. 1099. Being presented with a golden crown, he refused to wear it, saying that he would never consent to wear a crown of gold where the Redeemer of the world had worn a crown of thorns; and he never gave himself any other title but that of Duke Godfrey. The new kingdom, however, lasted only eighty-eight years. Owing to the treachery of the Greeks, and to the want of discipline and harmony among the Crusaders, it was unable to resist the superior forces of the Turks, although it repeatedly obtained auxiliaries from the West; and thus Jerusalem was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, in 1187. About the year 1300, fresh hordes of Turks, called the Ottomans, poured down from Tartary, subdued the Seljukians, and extended their conquests over Western Asia, Eumelia, Moldavia, Servia, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Morea; until at last, under that monster of brutality and voluptuousness called Mahomet (II.) the Great, they rendered themselves masters of Constantinople, the capital of the Greek Empire (a.d. 1453), which calamity God no doubt permitted in punishment for the grievous offences it had committed against Him. The further progress of the Turks, however, was checked by the ardent zeal and heroic valor of the Christian princes Huniades and Scanderbcg, of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem (who from 1310 were called Knights of Rhodes, and from 1530 Knights of Malta), and of other Christian Orders of Chivalry, till they were at last completely overthrown by the united forces of the Pope, of Spain, and of Venice, and by the evident help of the glorious Mother of God, in the famous battle of Le panto (a.d. 1571). The result of this victory was not only a check to the progress of the Ottomans, but also the beginning of the decline of their power; and thus Catholic Europe, and especially Germany, was saved from the imminent danger of being