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It was not to be expected that the Turks would resign their empire to the Christians without a struggle to recover it. Within a

short month after his election to fill the throne of Jerusalem, the gallant Godfrey was summoned in the battle of Ascalon to sustain the arduous office of "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre," a designation which his modesty had prefixed to the regal title. The caliph of Egypt, roused to equal indignation and alarm by the intelligence of the fall of the holy city, had immediately dispatched a great army to Palestine, and the influence of a common cause and a common faith attracted numerous hordes of Turks and Saracens to his standard. The armies met, and the organized and mail-clad chivalry of Europe once more triumphed over the multitudes of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. Of the infidel host, the incredible number of thirty-thousand in the battle, and sixty thousand in the pursuit, are declared to have been slaughtered. An immense booty, the spoils of the Egyptian camp, fell into the hands of the victors; and the standard and sword of the caliph, being alone reserved from the division of the plunder, were piously suspended by Godfrey over the altar of the sepulchre at Jerusalem.*

The virtues of Godfrey were not long destined to bless, nor his talents to protect, the newly established kingdom. In the month of June, returning from a military expedition, he

* Gulielmus Tyrii, lib. ix caps. x.-xiii.

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was seized with illness, and in a few weeks, and only one year from the taking of the holy city, he breathed his last.* The vacant throne was

speedily filled. Baldwin, the brother of the duke, succeeded to it, between the period of whose reign and the commencement of the Second Crusade three Christian sovereigns, Baldwin de Bourgo, a relative of Godfrey; Foulk, a son-in-law of his predecessor, and Baldwin m., the son of the latter, swayed the sceptre of the Holy Land; Godfrey's successors having none of the scruples which he himself entertained against the kingly title and the regal state.

THE CONSTITUTION of the kingdom was settled by Godfrey. The whole territory was occupied by the warriors of the cross, upon the strictest principles of a feudal settlement, with all the subdivisions and conditions of tenure which belonged to that martial polity. The necessities and danger of the Christian state of Palestine enforced the fullest obligations which the system imposed; and in the extant legal code of the kingdom, under the name of the Assizes of Jerusalem,† these are defined with a strictness which marks the peculiar exigence of the state. The unusual amount and extent of the obligations there imposed upon the vassals for the ransom of a captive lord, bespeak the calamities of an unequal warfare with the Mussul

Geimus Tyrii, lib. ix. caps. xv. xvi.

This code, originally prepared by Godfrey, was enlarged and amended by his successors. It is the enlarged and amended form which has been preserved.

mans, in which the occasions for such aid were but too frequent. The alienation of fiefs, without the consent of the lord, and in any case to minors and females, as incapable of military service, was forbidden on pain of forfeiture, with an anxiety to be expected in a state which could not afford to lose the services even of a single knight. In the same spirit the heiress of a fief was compelled to marry, in order that her husband might perform the feudal duties to which her sex rendered her incompetent.

According to the custom of European states, the principal offices of the crown, such as those of the seneschal, constable, marshal, and chamberlain, were hereditary. Although the crown was at first purely elective, yet the successive elevation of Godfrey of Bouillon, of his brother Baldwin 1., and of his relative Baldwin II., also established a principle of succession in that family, which was transmitted even through the female line, and the kingdom became a HEREDI

TARY FEUDAL MONARCHY.

The most memorable institutions which sprung up in Jerusalem between the first and the second Crusades were the RELIGIOUS ORDERS OF MILITARY MEN, combining the austere rules of the monk with the warlike activity of the soldier. Such a combination seems to have been a legitimate consequence of the wars of the cross, in which a spirit of devotion and military fervour had been so intimately united. The most distinguished of these orders were the Hospitallers and the Templars.

The Hospitallers lay claim to the earliest. origin. Long before the era of the Crusades, some Italian merchants purchased a license from the Mussulman rulers of Jerusalem to found in that city a hospital, together with a chapel, which they dedicated to St. John the Eleemosynary, a canonized Patriarch of Alexandria, for the Relief and Wayfaring Entertainment of Sick and Poor Pilgrims. By the alms of wealthier Christian visitants, and by the charitable collections which the merchants of Amalfi zealously made in Italy, and as religiously transmitted to Jerusalem, the establishment was supported. Its duties were performed by a few Benedictine monks, with the aid of such lay brethren among the European pilgrims as were induced to extend their penitential vows to a protracted residence in the Holy Land.

When Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Crusaders, the house was joyfully opened for the reception and cure of the wounded warriors. After the battle of Ascalon, Godfrey visited the establishment, where he still found many of the followers of the Crusade, who, struck with admiration at the institution, and filled with gratitude for the services they had received, determined to embrace the order also, and dedicate their lives to acts of charity. Godfrey, as a reward for the benefits which these holy men had conferred on his fellow-Christians, endowed the hospital with a large estate in his hereditary dominions in Brabant, its first foreign possession. Various other gifts were added by the

different Crusaders of rank, and the poor brothers of St. John began to find themselves a rich and flourishing community.

The Brothers of the hospital, subsequently known as the knights of St. John, now assumed a religious habitt-a long black mantle and a red belt, with a white cross of eight points, worn on the left breast; and separating from the monks of the chapel of the almoner, placed their institution under the higher patronage of St. John the Baptist By the patriarch of Jerusalem their triple monastic vow of obedience, charity, and poverty, was accepted, and a bull of pope Pascal ., fourteen years after the conquest of Jerusalem, confirmed the order, received it under the protection of the holy see, and invested it with many valuable privileges.

The next transition of the order to a military character is less accurately recorded. But the change may be referred in general terms to the reign of Baldwin II., since the services of its brethren in arms are acknowledged under that prince in a papal bull. In fact, the constant jealousy in which the Latin state was placed by the assaults of the infidels, admitted of no exemption to any community in the kingdom, whether lay or ecclesiastical, from active contribution to the public defence; and the martial habits and feelings of the Crusaders of knightly rank, who had enrolled themselves in the fraternity of the hospital, would naturally suggest the preference of a personal to a deputed service. The revenues of the order, moreover, were