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 WEAKENING OF THE EMPIRE BY THE CllUSADES. 125 salem. It was not their business to punish lieretics or de- stroy Christian cities. The army crossed the Bospliorus and puslied forward tow- ards the Turkish dominions in Asia Minor. But fever, the necessity of finding forage, and the difficulty of making progress over a country where the roads had been destroyed, greatly reduced the numbers of the arm3 Many of the sick had to be abandoned. Louis embarked with the bulk of his army at Adalia for Antioch. Seven thousand men were left behind. These attempted to force their way along the coast to Antioch, but with disastrous results. Most of them perished in the attempt, though a few saved their lives by embracing Mahometanism. The attempt upon Damascus under the combined efforts of Failure of Louis, Courad, and Baldwin of Jerusalem complete- SueVto Ij failed. Much had been expected of this crusade ; empire. preparations had been made on a gigantic scale by both the nations of the AYest ; and when at length the tidings reached Europe of terrible disasters and general failure men's hearts sank within them. In the "West fault was largely at- tributed to the schismatic Christians of the East. They had betrayed Christ ; they had assisted liis enemies ; they had united themselves now with the Turks and now with the Saracens in order to defeat the cause of the Cross. The dis- order, the jealousies among the Western soldiers, the want of discipline, were for a while forgotten. The news of the apostasy of the emperor of the New Rome, in allying himself with the infidel, deepened the prejudice against what was called the treachery of the Greeks. In the months and years during wdiich the evil tidings came pouring into the "West every fresh calamity was attributed to the heretical schis- matics of the East. The failure of the next, that is, of the third, crusade, which The third ^as Undertaken in 1187, still further increased the crusade. animosity of the people of the West towards the subjects of the Kew Rome. Saladin had succeeded in again bringing Egypt under the spiritual rule of the Caliph of Bagdad. In 1187 he had