Putting the Keys on Du Guesclin's Bier 407




A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.




CHAPTER XVII.----THE CRUSADES, THEIR DECLINE AND END.

In the month of August, 1099, the Crusade, to judge by appearances, had
attained its object. Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians, and
they had set up in it a king, the most pious and most disinterested of
the crusaders. Close to this ancient kingdom were growing up likewise,
in the two chief cities of Syria and Mesopotamia, Antioch and Edessa, two
Christian principalities, in the possession of two crusader-chiefs,
Bohemond and Baldwin. A third Christian principality was on the point of
getting founded at the foot of Libanus, at Tripolis, for the advantrge of
another crusader, Bertrand, eldest son of Count Raymond of Toulouse. The
conquest of Syria and Palestine seemed accomplished, in the name of the
faith, and by the armies of Christian Europe; and the conquerors
calculated so surely upon their fixture that, during his reign, short as
it was (for he was elected king July 23, 1099, and died July 18, 1100,
aged only forty years), Godfrey de Bouillon caused to be drawn up and
published, under the title of Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of laws, which
transferred to Asia the customs and traditions of the feudal system, just
as they existed in France at the moment of his departure for the Holy
Land.