228 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. were not shortly sent to the Christians in Palestine. The supplementary expedition had been a failure. The Crusaders who had remained behind, aided by the Armenian, Greek, and Syrian Christians, were doing their best to hold the ter- ritory which had been conquered, but every year saw that territoiy decreasing. Every traveller returning from Syria brought a prayer for immediate help from the survivors of the third crusade. It was necessary to act at once if any por- tion even of the wreck of the kingdom of Jerusalem were to be saved. Innocent the Third and some, at least, of the states- men of the "West were fully alive to the progress which Is- lam had made since the departure of the Western kings. In 1197, however, after live j^ears of weary waiting, the time seemed opportune for striking a new blow for Christen- dom. Saladin, the great sultan, had died in 1193, and his two sons were already quarrelling about the partition of his empire. The contending divisions of the Arab Moslems were at this moment each bidding for the support of the Chris- tians of Syria. The other great race of Mahometans which had threatened Europe — the Seljukian Turks — had made a halt in their progress through Asia Minor. We have seen that their empire was also divided against itself. Moreover, the great Asiatic horde which v^-as shortlj^ nnder Genghis Khan — perhaps the Prester John of the Middle Ages — to threaten the empire which the Seljukians had carved out of the eastern dominions of the New Home, was already ap- proaching, and the Seljukians were compelled to turn their attention to the formidable enemy of their own race which was threatening their rear. Other special circumstances which rendered the moment favorable for a new crusade, combined with the profound conviction of the statesmen of the West of the danger to Christendom from the progress of Islam, urged Western Eu- rope to take part in the new enterprise. Tlic reigning pope, Innocent the Third, was the great mov- innocentthe ^"» Spirit of the fourtli crusadc. lie came to the Thud. pontificate in 1198, when he was thirty-seven years old-. Innocent was a man versed in the learning of his age.
