Our own
Richard the Lion Heart did his best, and so did the excellent French
king, St. Louis, who died in Africa on his way to the Crusade, but all
in vain; and finally the Christians were driven out of Acre, their last
town, and Palestine became Mahometan again with only a few oppressed
Christians here and there. Then came a much more rude, dull, and violent
race of Mahometans, the Turks, who burst out of the East, conquered the
Saracens, gained all Asia Minor, and at last, in the year 1453, they
took the city of Constantinople, killed the last emperor, Constantine,
in the assault, and won all the country we now call Turkey, where they
sadly oppressed the Greeks, though they could not make them turn from
their true Catholic faith. It was then that the light of truth faded
entirely away from Ephesus and the Churches of Asia; a blight fell
wherever the Turks went, and cities, once prosperous, were deserted and
ruined. Tyre was one of these; and she has now become a mere rock, where
fishermen spread their nets to dry upon the sea-shore, as Ezekiel had
foretold. However, it was only forty years afterwards, that the last
remains of the Mahometan conquerors were chased out of Spain, so that it
became again an entirely Christian country.
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