[The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon]@TWC D-Link book
The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

CHAPTER LIX: The Crusades
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[8] Forty-eight years after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the emperor, and the French king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh, undertook the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of the Latins.

[9] A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, [10] who sympathized with his brothers of France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem.

These three expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel may save the repetition of a tedious narrative.

However splendid it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts for the defence or recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.
[Footnote 8: For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna Comnena, (Alexias, l.xi.p.331, &c., and the viiith book of Albert Aquensis.)] [Footnote 9: For the second crusade, of Conrad III.

and Louis VII., see William of Tyre, (l.xvi.c.


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