as many Hospitallers alone escaped from the dreadful carnage. The
victorious Moslems then set fire to the city, and the rule of the
Christians in Palestine was brought to a close forever.

73. Kingsley ably summarizes the effects of the crusades as follow:
"Egypt was still the center of communication between the two great
stations of the Moslem power; and, indeed, as Mr. Lane has shown us in
his most valuable translation of the 'Arabian Nights,' possessed a
peculiar life and character of its own.

74. "It was the rash object of the crusaders to extinguish that life.
Palestine was first their point of attack, but the later crusaders
seem to have found, like all the rest of the world, that the destinies
of Palestine could not be separated from those of Egypt, and to
Damietta accordingly was directed that last disastrous attempt of St.
Louis. The crusaders failed utterly of the object at which they aimed.
They succeeded in an object of which they never dreamed; for in those
crusades the Moslem and the Christian had met face to face, and found
that both were men, that they had a common humanity, a common eternal
standard of nobility and virtue. So the Christian knights went home
humbler and wiser men, when they found in the Saracen enemies the same
generosity, truth, mercy, chivalrous self-sacrifice, which they
fancied their own peculiar possession; and, added to that, a
civilization and a learning which they could only admire and imitate.
And, thus, from the era of the crusades, a kindlier feeling sprang up
between the Crescent and the Cross, till it was again broken by the
fearful invasions of the Turks through Eastern Europe.

75. "The learning of the Moslem, as well as their commerce, began to
pour rapidly into Christendom, both from Spain, Egypt, and Syria; and