volume one

378 HISTOET OF THE CETJSADES.
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shameful to cslitj arms in Europe, whilst the Crusaders were
contending with the Saracens in the East. Eeligion itself
watched over Grermany, which had heen so long troubled by
c.i\il wars. Conrad, a weak monarch without character, who
had lost his army in Asia, was more powerful on his return
from Palestine than he had been before he quitted his dominions.
The king of France also found his authority increased,
from ha\ing been defended during his absence by
the thunders of the Church and the eloquence of St. Bernard.*
The crusade gave him a pretext for imposing taxes
upon his people, and placed him at the head of a numerous
army, where he accustomed the great vassals to consider him
as their supreme head.
Stni, if it is true that the divorce of Eleanor of Gruienne
was one of the consequences of the crusade, it must be admitted
that the evils which resulted from this war were much
greater for the French monarchy than any good it derived
from it. The kingdom which then lost the province of
Aquitaine, which fell into the hands of the EngHsh, was
doomed to become the 'pvey of the children that Eleanor had
by her second marriage. A following age saw the descendants
of these children crowned kings of France and England
in the church of Xotre Dame, at Paris, and the successors
of Louis TIL found themselves almost reduced to seek an
asvlum in foreign lands.
Flattery imdertook to console Louis the young, for the
reverses he had experienced in Asia, and represented him,
upon several medals,t as the conqueror of the East. He
left Palestine with the project of returning thither ; and in
* St. Bernard wrote to the Estate? of the kingdom, assembled by Suger,
to repress the ambition of a brother of the king and some great vassals.
He also wrote to the abbot of St. Denis : " Whilst Louis,*' said he in his
letter, " is fighting for a king whose reign is eternal ; whilst in the flower of
his age he exiles himself from his kingdom to serve Him who causes them
to reign that serve him, is it possible there can be men so rash as to create
disorder and troubles in his states, and to attack in his person the Lord
and his Christ V'—Ep. 337.
f The legend of one of these medals is conceived in these terms :—
Regi invicto ab oriente reduci,
Frementes laetitia cives.
In another medal the Meander is represented, and a trophy raised upon
its banks, with this inscription
Turcis ad ripas Mseandri caesis fugatis.