A General History of the World, Volume 2

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: go and die in the Holy Land, to divide his heritage on condition that it should be left to his children. Innocent remained immovable, and pursued the annihilation of '' that race of vipers.'' The struggle was becoming still more envenomed when the emperor died suddenly (1250). His death heralded the fall of German domination in Italy and the beginning in the peninsula of a new period, that of independence. THE CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099).During the Middle Ages there were two worlds, that of the Gospel and that of the Koran, the one in the north and the other in the south. At their points of contact in Spain and toward Constantinople they had long been engaged in conflict. At the end of the eleventh century the two religions grappled, and their encounter is called the Crusades. Mussulman Asia had passed from the power of the Arabs into that of the Seljuk Turks. Under Alp Arslan (1063) and Malek Shah (1075) they had conquered Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor. At the death of Malek Shah his empire was divided into the sultanates of Syria, Persia, and Kerman, to which must be added that of Koum in Asia Minor. The empire of Constantinople, the bulwark of Christendom, had wavered at this new invasion. For a time it seemed hardly able to resist its enemies, despite the vigor it manifested under several emperors of the Macedonian and Comnenan dynasties and the victories it had gained over the Persians, Bulgarians, Russians, and Arabs. At the very beginning of the century, Pope Sylvester II had suggested to the Western peoples the idea of delivering the Holy Sepulcher (1002). Pilgrimages became more frequent. Pilgrims by thousands visited the sacred places and on their return inflamed Europe with stories of outrages and cruelt...