MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION but they were not subject to any discipline; they remained free to pass over to another troop, or even to abandon the expedition when they judged their vow was accomplished. An army of crusaders was then only a union of bands following the same route. They marched in disorder and slowly, mounted on big horses, clothed in a heavy armor, encumbered with bag-gage, servants and camp-followers. They lost months in traversing the Byzantine Em- pire and in fighting the Turkish cavalry of Asia Minor. In the deserts, where water was scarce, and where they could not renew their stock of provisions, men and horses died of hunger, thirst and fatigue; in the camps where they stopped, the lack of care, privations, fasts, alternating with excesses at table and in drink- ing,, caused epidemics which carried them off by thousands. Of all who departed, very few arrived in Syria. So that in the twelfth century along the route to the Holy Land there was a terrible destruction of men* The crusaders at last gave up the pilgrimages by land, and in the thirteenth century all took their way over the sea; the Italian ships in a few months transported them and their horses to the Holy Land, where real war was made. In the combats with an equal number of Moslems the knights had the advantage; with their heavy horses and impenetrable armor they formed compact battalions that the Saracen cavalry, mounted ttpon small horses, could not injure with their arrows and sabers. It is true that their victories had hardly any results; the conquering crusaders went back to Europe and the Moslems returned to the Holy City*