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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin
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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin
page 251
shown. Baldwin, taught by his Armenian wife, and by his experience in Edessa, went so far as to shock the Christians by an alliance with the Damascenes. His successor could not prevent his men, even if he tried, from friendly intercourse with the enemy.
The changes which had been wrought by time are graphically put forth by our friend Foulcher de Chartres : " Consider," he says, "how the West has been turned into the East ; how he who was of the West has become of the East ; he who was Boman or Frank has become, here a Galilaean or an inhabitant of Palestine; he who was a citizen of Bheims or of Chartres is become a citizen of Tyre or of Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; they are even by this time either unknown to most of us, or at least never spoken of. Some of us hold lands and houses by hereditary right ; one has married a woman who is not of his own country—a Syrian, an Armenian, or even a Saracen who has abjured her faith ; another has with him his son-in-law, or his father-in-law ; this one is surrounded by his nephews and his grandchildren ; one cultivates vines, another the fields ; they all talk different languages, and yet succeed in understanding one another. . . . The stranger has become the native, the pilgrim the resident ; day by day our relations come from the West and stay with us. Those who were poor at home God has made rich here ; those who at home had nothing but a farm here have a city. Why should he who finds the East so fortunate return again to the West?" The plenty and sunshine of Palestine, where every Frank was a sort of aristocrat by right of colour, no doubt gave charms to a life which otherwise was one of constant fighting and struggle. Palestine was to France in this century what America was to Europe in the sixteenth, the land of prosperity, plenty, and danger. How the country got peopled is told by another writer, Jacques de Vitry, in too glowing colours.
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