the Levant]
FRANCE AND THE LEVANT
Europe, Asia and Africa meet in the Levant, the land of the rising sun; and of all the nations of Christendom France claims by far the largest share in its romantic story.
I. The Crusades
French interests and ambitions in the Levant date from the Crusades, which, though springing from a common Christian sentiment, owed their main impulse and their greatest achievements to France. The First Crusade was preached by Urban II, himself a Frenchman, and by itinerant preachers, such as Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, and, though the King stood aloof, was largely the work of French nobles, French troops and French money. To French feudatories belonged the glory of rescuing the Holy Places from the infidel in 1099; and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, ruled as it was by French Kings, was for nearly a century an outpost of France. When the inevitable counter-attack of Islam was launched half a century later and Edessa was lost, it was a French Abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, who summoned Christendom to save the remaining Christian principalities in the Levant. Louis VII cooperated with Conrad III, and Damascus was attacked; but the Second Crusade ended in failure. The capture of Acre and Jerusalem in 1187 by Saladin set the Third Crusade in motion; but Barbarossa, who was first in the field, perished in Asia Minor. He was followed by Richard I—himself a French feudatory as well as an English King—and Philip Augustus, who recovered Acre, after which Philip quarrelled with his colleague and returned to France. Cyprus, which had been conquered by Richard I, was granted by him as a fief to Guy de Lusignan. The Fourth Crusade, though planned by Germans and aided by
