More than a hundred years elapsed before another
expedition of this kind started for the East. The Second Crusade, inspired by
St. Bernard acting as the half-reluctant spokesman of the Holy See, was
ill-organised, ill-directed, and so disastrous a failure that it was followed
by a perceptible reaction against the idealistic policy of which it was the outcome.
It revealed to Europe the inefficiency of forces raised with more regard to the
pious motives than to the efficiency of the recruits, and laid bare the
calculating selfishness of the Latin principalities. But the principal
leaders, Louis VII of France and the Emperor Conrad II, could not be charged
with insincerity.
They made gross mistakes, but were faithful to the purpose
with which they set out. Similarly in the Third Crusade, though part of the
failure can be directly attributed to the national jealousies of the various
contingents, and to the quarrels of Richard I with the more important of his
colleagues, the recovery of Jerusalem remained from first to last the dominants
object of the army. There were cases of petulance, of unnecessary meddling in
the squalid disputes of the Latin settlers, of readiness to depart on the first
honourable excuse. But there was no disposition to make the pilgrimage a commercial
undertaking. It was otherwise in 1203 when the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade
set out from Venice, leaving behind them the papal legate and openly defying
the injunctions of Innocent III, whose appeal to Christendom was nominally the
warrant for their venture.
