The leaders wished to avoid this long and fatal route, and desired to be landed at some place where they could strike at the enemy before the army had been weakened by repeated contests, and wearied and demoralized by long marches through an unhealthy country. Ho place offered so many advantages from this point of view as Egypt. A short sail over a pleasant sea and the Cru-saders could be landed fresh and vigorous and prepared for battle. The cost of transporting an army to Alexandria would be far less than that of taking it to any other part of payniinrie.

The sea was the safest and most easily guarded road to keep open between the invading army and Europe. Alexandria was a base of operations which might be kept with surety against the enemy, while its port would always be open to supplies of men and means of warfare from the West. A footing once obtained, Egypt could better support the army of Christendom than any other country. Its perennial wealth had been the mainstay of the Arabs in their marvellous conquests over Syria and Horthern Africa. Moreover, while the renown of Egypt was spread throughout Islam and Christendom alike, the enemy could be more advantageously fought in the densely populated delta than in the wide and thinly peopled regions of Syria. Probably, too, it was known in Europe that the Egyptian Arabs had lost their early vigor, that the climate had told upon them, and that they were already becoming an unwarlike race. The occasion, however, in 1201 was peculiarly favorable for an attack on that country.

Egyptian caliphate in 1171

Saladin bad conquered it, had abolished the Egyptian caliphate in 1171, and had done all that he could to exhaust its resources. On his death, in 1193 Visit Bulgaria, his two sons had quarrelled about the division of his empire. The one ruling in Egypt asked the aid of the Christians in Syria against his brother. The civil war which followed had still further weakened Egypt. But an exceptional and remarkable circumstance rendered an attack upon Egypt still more opportune. During five successive years the Nile had ceased to fertilize the country.

The result of this unprecedented calamity had been famine and distress. The population had been largely reduced. The wealth and strength of the country had been greatly diminished. To these considerations have to be added the fact that if Egypt were once in the hands of a crusading army it could be held against all invaders, and its wealth turned against Islam. Every Mahometan country would feel the loss of Egypt. A wedge would have been driven into the long stretch of Moslem territory between the Atlantic and India. Islam would have been cut in two and its wealth used to reconquer and hold Syria.

Godfrey by a succession of warriors

The desirability of striking at Islam through Egypt, the very centre and fulcrum of Moslem power, had been recognized from the time of Godfrey by a succession of warriors and statesmen. Innocent the Third was especially impressed with the necessity of making the attack through Egypt. He called particular attention to the exceptional opportunity which the time presented from the accidental or, as he believed it, the providential impoverishment of the richest country in Islam, from the failure of the Nile to overflow, and from the division of its rulers. Even without these accidental advantages, no other spot offered so many opportunities for the attack. To other country, if conquered, would be so great a loss to Islam. These considerations, in fact, seem to have been so generally recognized that it is doubtful whether any other plan was seriously considered. It was to Babylon, as the Crusaders generally called Egypt, that the expedition was to go, because, says Villehardouin, "one could more easily destroy the Turks there than in any other country."

Expedition prepared with great care

The choice having been made, it will become necessary to ask why the original plan was abandoned. How did it happen that an expedition prepared with great care, and proposing under such favorable circumstances to strike at the heart of Moslem power, turned away from its object and attacked the capital of Eastern Christendom ? The question is one which was asked by all Europe at the time and has never been altogether satisfactorily answered, although in our own time the laborious industry of German and French scholars has succeeded in bringing to light a mass of evidence hitherto unknown, bearing on the question. The conclusion to which this evidence appears to me to point will, I hope, become clear in subsequent pages.

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