The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1990]
[Footnote *: They descended the heights to a beautiful valley which by beneath them. The Turks seized the heights which separated the two divisions of the army. The modern historians represent differently the act to which Louis owed his safety, which Gibbon has described by the undignified phrase, "he climbed a tree." According to Michaud, vol. ii. p. 164, the king got upon a rock, with his back against a tree; according to Wilken, vol. iii., he dragged himself up to the top of the rock by the roots of a tree, and continued to defend himself till nightfall. - M.]
[Footnote 22: The original French histories of the second crusade are the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the ivth volume of Duchesne's collection. The same volume contains many original letters of the king, of Suger his minister, &c., the best documents of authentic history.]
[Footnote 23: Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam sterilem, inamoenam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language of a sufferer.]
[Footnote 24: Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, praedones sine ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518.]
[Footnote 25: See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of Canisius, Tagino and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both Saladin and Frederic.]
[Footnote 26: The desire of comparing two great men has tempted many writers to drown Frederic in the River Cydnus, in which Alexander so imprudently bathed, (Q. Curt. l. iii c. 4, 5.) But, from the march of the emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course.
Note: It is now called the Girama: its course is described in M'Donald Kinneir's Travels. - M.]
[Footnote 27: Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus ecclesiae per terram nullatenus est ducenda.
He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather exception, of the first crusade, (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)]
The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity: the nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings: their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, ^28 the monk, or the saint, may claim the most honorable place. ^* About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three- and-twenty he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux ^29 in Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honors