The age of the crusades covers the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For two hundred years, to use the vigorous language of the Greek-princess Anna Conmena, who witnessed the first crusade, "Europe was loosened from its foundations and hurled against Asia". As an Alpine glacier presses down into the valley, only to melt away at the summer line, yet with renewed snows repeals the fatal experiment from year to year, so seven times Western Christendom replenished its mighty armaments, to see them destroyed at the border-land of Oriental conquest...
