Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/59

Rh As the military strength of the state was evidently unequal to cope with Noureddin’s forces unassisted, the patriarch of Palestine and the king of Jerusalem decided on sending an envoy to Europe for the purpose of securing, if possible, an armed intervention from the Christian powers of the West. The bishop of Zabulon was selected for this duty, and he at once proceeded to Rome to lay the matter before Pope Eugene III. That dignitary entered warmly into the project, and he directed Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux, to preach a new Crusade throughout France and Germany. Bernard was a man held in the highest veneration, from the rigid austerity of his life. He had succeeded in introducing much needful reform into the discipline of the clergy, which had hitherto been disgracefully lax, and his influence with all classes was unbounded. He seconded the wishes of the Pope with all the strength of his fiery eloquence. Traversing the land from end to end he called upon all faithful Christians to come forward at this hour of the church’s need, to prevent the infidel from once more regaining those holy places which had been taken from them at the cost of so much blood.

Louis VII., the king of France, having in one of his numerous wars committed barbarities of more than usual atrocity, resolved upon atoning for the same by heading the new crusade. As a modern infidel writer has expressed it, he “proposed to slaughter some millions of Saracens as an expiation for the murder of four or five hundred Champagnois.”