Nevertheless for two ceuturies the idea of the Crusades was kept alive in Europe, and every spring saw fresh bodies of men sewing the cross in gold, or silk, or cloth on to their garments, and setting out for the holy war. It was a great calamity that originated the next extensive movement of this kind—known as the third Crusade. In October 1187, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Sultan Saladin. This roused the old Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to go himself to recover the Holy City. He defeated the sultan at Iconium, but was drowned in attempting to ford the river Calycadnus (a.d. 1190). Richard i. of England now became the chief leader of the Crusade, amid great difficulties caused by the jealousies of other princes and his own inconsiderate eagerness, for he was but a glorified schoolboy. Richard and Saladin—who was neither a Turk nor an Arab, but a Kurd, and therefore, like the Crusaders themselves, of the Aryan stock—came to terms, which left Jerusalem in the hands of the courteous Moslem, but allowed the Christians possession of the Holy Sepulchre and the right of pilgrimage there.
The story of the fourth Crusade might well be told with tears of shame and humiliation for the disgrace which it was to Christendom. In the year 1217 Innocent iii. summoned the nations to yet another attempt to rescue the holy sites from the possession of the infidel. No emperor or king now responded. There was no great Bernard to inspire enthusiasm. But a preacher of a distinctly lower type, Fulco of Neuilly, succeeded in obtaining support from a number of French nobles, who involved themselves in unworthy obligations to blind Dandolo, the patriotic doge of Venice. He would supply them with ships if they would do his business for him. Venice was now quarrelling with Constantinople, and the Crusaders consented to begin their expedition with an attack on their fellow-Christians, the Greeks. They first took Zaras and then sailed up to the very walls of Constantinople, gazing with wonder on the gilt domes and spires of its 500 churches. The Crusaders—we should say, the invaders—
