They are Bedouins, as homeless as the desert.

The "wrong horse" of Lord Salisbury was an Arab steed, only stabled in Byzantium.

It is hard enough to rule vagabond people, like the gypsies.

To be ruled by them is impossible.
Nevertheless what was called the nineteenth century, and named with a sort of transcendental faith (as in a Pythagorean worship of number), was wearing to its close with reaction everywhere, and the Turk, the great type of reaction, stronger than ever in the saddle.

The most civilised of the Christian nations overshadowed by the Crescent dared to attack it and was overwhelmed in a catastrophe that seemed as unanswerable as Hittin.