Excerpt from The History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land, Vol. 2 of 2 Among the causes of the first Crusade we mentioned the influence of the spirit of commerce on the love of pil grimages. That spirit was afterwards 'mingled with the de sire of conquest, particularly in the case of the Egyptian politics. Situated between the Red Sea and the Mediter ranean, Egypt was the communication between Europe and the Indies: and the possession of that country would have rendered the Europeans masters of'commerce. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.