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Title: The crusades
Author: George W. Cox
Editor: Edward Ellis Morris
Release date: November 3, 2025 [eBook #77173]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890
Credits: Brian Coe and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUSADES ***
_EPOCHS of HISTORY_
EDITED BY
EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A.
THE CRUSADES.
G. W. COX, M.A.
EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
Edited by Rev. G. W. COX and CHARLES SANKEY, M. A. Eleven volumes, 16mo,
with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style,
gilt top, in box, $11.00.
TROY—ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE. By S. G. W. Benjamin.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By G. W. Cox.
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE. By G. W. Cox.
THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES. By Charles Sankey.
THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE. By A. M. Curteis.
EARLY ROME. By W. Ihne.
ROME AND CARTHAGE. By R. Bosworth Smith.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By A. H. Beesley.
THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By Charles Merivale.
THE EARLY EMPIRE. By W. Wolfe Capes.
THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. By W. Wolfe Capes.
EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY.
Edited by EDWARD E. MORRIS. Eighteen volumes, 16mo, with 77 Maps, Plans,
and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in
box, $18.00.
THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES. By R. W. Church.
THE NORMANS IN EUROPE. By A. H. Johnson.
THE CRUSADES. By G. W. Cox.
THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS. By Wm. Stubbs.
EDWARD III. By W. Warburton.
THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK. By James Gairdner.
THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By Frederic Seebohm.
THE EARLY TUDORS. By C. E. Moberly.
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By M. Creighton.
THE THIRTY YEARS WAR, 1618-1648. By S. R. Gardiner.
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. By S. R. Gardiner.
THE FALL OF THE STUARTS. By Edward Hale.
THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS XIV. By Osmond Airy.
THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris.
THE EARLY HANOVERIANS. By Edward E. Morris.
FREDERICK THE GREAT. By F. W. Longman.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE. By W. O’Connor Morris. Appendix
by Andrew D. White.
THE EPOCH OF REFORM, 1830-1850. By Justin Macarthy.
[Illustration: General Map for the ERA OF THE CRUSADES]
THE CRUSADES
BY
GEORGE W. COX, M.A.
AUTHOR OF
‘HISTORY OF GREECE’ ‘MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS’
ETC.
_WITH A MAP_
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
1890.
CONTENTS.
A. D. PAGE
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES.
The crusades a series of popular wars 1
Distinction between the crusades and other wars of
the Middle Ages 2
Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian
traditions 3
The Christianity of St. Paul 4
The Christianity of the Roman empire 4
Localism of heathen religions 6
Influence of these local religions on Christianity 6
Growth of local associations in Palestine 7
Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine 8
Gradual decay of spiritual religion 9
Encouragement given to pilgrimages 9
Trade in relics 10
Stimulus given by pilgrimages to commerce with the East 10
The long struggle between Rome and Persia 10
611 Capture of Jerusalem by the Persian king Khosru II. 11
Persian invasion of Egypt 11
622-625 Campaigns of the emperor Heraclius 11
627 Battle of Nineveh 11
628 Restoration of the True Cross by the Persians 12
629 Pilgrimage of Heraclius to Jerusalem 12
637 Conquest of Palestine by Omar 12
Terms of the treaty made by Omar with the Christians
of Jerusalem 13
Omar and the patriarch Sophronios 13
Effects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to Jerusalem 14
Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage 14
1010 Ravages of the Egyptian sultan Hakem in Jerusalem 14
Persecution of Jews in Europe 15
Tax levied on pilgrims at the gates of Jerusalem 15
Expectation of the end of the world A. D. 1000 15
997 Conversion of Hungary under king Stephen 16
Advance of the Seljukian Turks 17
1092 Division of the Seljukian empire 17
Appeal of the Greek emperor Alexios to Western
Christendom 17
1076 Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem 18
Increased burdens of the Christian pilgrims 18
Decline of commerce with the East 18
Oppression of the Christians of Palestine 19
General indignation felt in Western Christendom 19
Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct
this feeling 19
CHAPTER II.
THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.
Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes 20
Schemes and motives of Gregory VII. 22
1074 His circular letter to the faithful 22
1081 The Normans in Italy 23
1095 Council of Piacenza 24
Council of Clermont 25
1093 Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem 26
1094 The mission and preaching of the hermit 27
1095 Decrees of the council of Clermont prohibiting private
wars and confirming the Truce of God 29
Speech of Urban II. before the people 30
The assent of the multitude 31
The cross and the vow of the crusaders 32
Motives of the crusaders 32
Financial effects of the crusades 34
Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and
the clergy 35
Dispensing power of the pope 35
Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal system 35
Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy 36
Alienation, and pledging or mortgaging, of lands 36
The crusades not national enterprises 37
1085 Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II. 38
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST CRUSADE.
1096 Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under Peter
the Hermit and Walter the Penniless 39
Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk 40
Bloody persecutions of the Jews 40
The Jews taken under the protection of the empire 41
March of Walter and his followers through Hungary and
Bulgaria 41
Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos 42
Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan 42
Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade 43
Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and
Eustace 43
Hugh of Vermandois 43
Robert of Normandy 44
Robert of Flanders, and Stephen of Chartres 44
Adhemar, bishop of Puy 44
Raymond of Toulouse 45
Bohemond 45
Tancred 45
Cause and effect of chivalry 46
Knighthood 47
Courtesy 48
August Departure of the main army of the crusaders under
Godfrey 49
Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois 49
Christmas Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of
Constantinople 50
Policy of the emperor Alexios 51
Compact between Alexios and the crusaders 51
Homage of the crusaders to Alexios 52
Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to
Constantinople 53
Refusal of Raymond to do homage 53
1097 Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders 54
March Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos 55
Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and the
Greeks 55
Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy 56
Numbers of the crusaders 56
June Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia) 57
July 4 Battle of Dorylaion 58
March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch 58
Quarrel between Godfrey and Tancred at Tarsus 59
Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin 59
October Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch 60
Siege of Antioch 60
Folly of the besiegers 61
Famine in the crusading camp 62
Arrival of envoys from the sultan of Egypt 62
Their terms rejected by the crusaders 63
1098 Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks 63
March Plans of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch 64
June Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond 65
Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga 65
Desertion of Stephen of Chartres 66
Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch 66
Discovery of the Holy Lance 67
Fate of the discoverer 68
June 28 Battle of Antioch 68
Defeat of Kerboga 69
Antioch made a principality for Bohemond 69
Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople 70
Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy 70
Siege and capture of Marra 71
1099, May March of the crusaders from Antioch 71
June Siege of Jerusalem 72
July Storming of the city 74
Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the
Sepulchre 74
Exaltation of Peter the Hermit 75
Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem 75
Comparison of Omar and Godfrey 76
Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem 76
Battle of Ascalon 77
Return of the pilgrims to Europe 77
CHAPTER IV.
THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.
1099-1100 Reign of Godfrey 77
Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem 78
Assize of Jerusalem 78
Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey 79
1100-1118 Baldwin I. 80
1101 Death of Stephen of Chartres 80
1105 Death of Raymond of Toulouse 80
Sequel of the career of Bohemond 81
1112 Death of Tancred 82
Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine empire 82
Fresh swarms of pilgrims 82
1101 Death of Hugh of Vermandois 83
1118 Death of the emperor Alexios 83
1118-1131 Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem 84
1115 Conquest of Sidon 84
1124 Conquest of Tyre 84
1131-1144 Fulk, king of Jerusalem 85
1144-1162 Baldwin III. 85
1145 Fall of Edessa 85
CHAPTER V.
THE SECOND CRUSADE.
Bernard the apostle of the second crusade 86
Sources of Bernard’s influence 88
1137 Death of Louis VI. of France 88
1146 Council of Vezelai 89
Easter Speech of Bernard 89
The Knights Templars 90
Reluctance of Conrad, emperor of Germany, to join
the crusade 90
1147 Meeting of Louis VII. and the pope at St Denys 91
Whitsuntide Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk Rodolph 91
Suppressed by Bernard 92
March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis 92
Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at
Constantinople 92
Supposed treachery of Manuel 93
Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis 93
1148 Visit of the French king to Jerusalem 94
March Resolution to attack Damascus 94
Siege of Damascus 95
Treachery of the barons of Palestine 95
Retreat of the army to Jerusalem 95
Failure of the crusade 95
Accusations against St Bernard 96
His answer 96
1153 Death of St. Bernard 97
CHAPTER VI.
THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM.
Misuse of victory by the crusaders 97
1151 Death of Joceline of Courtenay 97
1153 Siege and fall of Ascalon 97
1162 Death of Baldwin III. Almeric elected king of
Jerusalem 98
Relations of Almeric with the sultans of Egypt and
Aleppo 98
Mission of Shiracouh and Saladin to Egypt 99
Siege and surrender of Shiracouh in Pelusium 99
1163 Defeat of the Latins by Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo 99
Alliance of Almeric with the Egyptian sultan 99
1167 Operations of Almeric against Shiracouh 100
Real designs of Almeric 100
1168 Expedition of Almeric to Pelusium 101
His ignominious retreat 101
Rise of Saladin to power in Egypt 102
1169 Attempts to stir up a crusade 102
1171 Suppression of the Fatimite caliphat by Saladin 102
Quarrel between Saladin and the sultan of Aleppo 103
1173 Death of Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo 103
Character of Noureddin 103
Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem 104
1186 Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem 104
Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem 104
Preparations of Saladin for the reconquest of
Jerusalem 105
1187 Battle of Tiberias 105
July Capture of Guy of Lusignan 106
Loss of the True Cross 106
Fruits of the victory of Saladin 107
Siege and fall of Jerusalem 107
Terms of the capitulation 109
Departure of the Latins from the Holy City 109
Entry of Saladin into Jerusalem 110
Escape of Tyre under Conrad 110
Further conquests of Saladin 110
Causes of weakness in the kingdom of Jerusalem 111
(1) Bad faith in dealing with the Moslem 111
(2) Disregard of rights of property 111
(3) Lax military discipline 111
(4) Total lack of statesmanship 111
(5) General immorality 112
(6) Desultory character of the crusades 112
(7) Quarrels and feuds of the Latin chiefs 112
(8) Antagonistic jurisdictions of the civil power,
the church, and the military orders 113
CHAPTER VII.
THE THIRD CRUSADE.
Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of
England 114
Real character of the actors in the third crusade 115
Decay of the crusading spirit 115
Change in the character of the crusades 116
1174 Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem 117
1187 Death of Urban III. 118
Pontificate of Gregory VIII. 118
1188 Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip
Augustus of France 119
Saladin tax or tenth 119
Feuds in the family of Henry II. 119
1189 Death of Henry II. 121
July Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade 121
Modes of raising money 122
Persecution and massacre of Jews in England 122
Fearful tragedy in York castle 122
1190 Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai 124
Poetry and influence of the troubadours 124
March of Frederick I., Barbarossa, to Constantinople 124
The popes and the empire 125
Death of Frederick I. 125
Re-occupation of Antioch 126
1189 Siege of Acre by the Latins of Palestine 126
Rise of the Teutonic order 127
1190 Death of Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem 127
Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem 128
Sept 23 Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina 128
Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily 128
Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus 129
1191 March War between Richard and the Comnenian emperor of
Cyprus 130
Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre 130
July 12 Surrender of Acre 131
Return of Philip to France 131
Massacre of five thousand Turkish hostages 131
Victory of Richard at Azotus 132
Abortive negotiations with Saladin 133
Feud between the English king and the duke of Austria 133
1192 Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem 134
March of Richard towards Jerusalem 135
Retreat of the army from Bethlehem 135
Relief of Jaffa 135
Truce between the crusaders and Saladin 136
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 136
Results of the third crusade 136
Captivity of Richard I. in Austria 137
1193 Exertions made for the liberation of Richard 138
Richard before the diet at Hagenau 139
1194 Release of Richard 140
His return to England 140
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FOURTH CRUSADE.
Motives of the chief promoters of the fourth crusade 140
1193 Death of Saladin and its consequences 141
Encouragement given to the crusade by the emperor
Henry VI. 141
1196 Death of Henry VI. 142
Arrival of his barons with their troops in the Holy
Land 142
Capture of Jaffa by Saphadin 142
Arrival of fresh crusaders under Conrad, bishop of
Hildesheim 142
1197 Siege of the castle of Thoron 142
Complete defeat of the crusaders 143
Capture of Jaffa, and massacre of the crusaders 143
Almeric of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus 144
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIFTH CRUSADE.
1198 Election of Innocent III. 144
Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction
of the pope 145
Weakening of the imperial power 146
Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples
of Europe 146
Effects of Innocent to remove this mistrust 147
Fulk of Neuilly 148
The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope 149
Efforts of his eloquence 149
1202 Death of Fulk 150
1200 The chiefs of the fifth crusade 150
1201 Mission from the French barons to Venice 150
Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to
Palestine 151
1202 Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed
on with the Venetians 152
Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition
against Zara 153
1195 Mission to Rome to ask aid for the dethroned
Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus 153
Determination of the Venetians to insist on the
expedition to Zara 154
1202 Siege and conquest of Zara, Nov. 15 155
Proposal to direct the crusade to the restoration of
Alexios at Constantinople 155
Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios 156
Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the
interdict 157
1203 Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition 158
Easter Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople 158
Flight of the usurper Alexios 159
The crusaders are compelled to winter at
Constantinople 160
Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the
crusaders 160
Deposition and death of Alexios 161
Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constantinople 161
1204 Siege and conquest of Constantinople 162
April Horrible excesses of the crusaders 162
Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, as emperor
of the East 163
Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of
Constantinople 164
Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the pope 165
Answers of Innocent III. 166
Results of the crusade to the pope and to the
Venetians 167
CHAPTER X.
THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
Contrast between the Greeks and the Latins 168
Attempt to upset the civilization of the old empire 169
Conduct of the pope towards the Greek clergy 170
Opposition of the French clergy to the new patriarch 171
Partition of the empire among the crusading chiefs 172
1204 Rise of new empires at Nice, Trebizond, and Durazzo 173
1205 Massacre of the Latins in Thrace by order of the
Bulgarian Calo-John 173
April Captivity of the emperor Baldwin 174
Death of Baldwin 174
1206-1216 Henry I., brother of Baldwin, emperor of
Constantinople 175
1207 Assassination of Calo-John 175
Wise government of the emperor Henry 176
Death of Henry 176
Peter of Courtenay, emperor of Constantinople 176
1218 Captivity and death of Peter of Courtenay 177
1219 Robert, emperor of Constantinople 177
1228 John of Brienne, emperor of Constantinople 178
1235 Siege of Constantinople by Vataces 179
1237-1261 Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople 179
Efforts to raise money 179
Sale of relics 179
1255 Death of Vataces 180
1259 The envoys of Baldwin repelled by Michael Paleologos 180
1261 Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks 181
July Permanent alienation of the East from the West 181
CHAPTER XI.
THE SIXTH CRUSADE.
Chief features of the sixth crusade 182
Depression of the Latins in Palestine 183
1204 Truce between Saphadin and the Christians 183
1210 John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem 184
Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade 184
Robert of Courcon 185
1215 Fourth council of Lateran 185
1216 Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary 186
1218 Siege of Damietta 186
Death of Saphadin 186
Terms of peace offered by Coradin 187
Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders 187
1219 Fall of Damietta, Nov. 5 187
1220 March of the Christians for Cairo 187
The old terms again rejected 187
Ruin of the crusaders 188
1212 Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa 188
The popes and the emperors 188
Otho of Brunswick 189
1214 Battle of Bouvines 189
1216 Honorius III., pope 189
1221 Loss of Damietta 190
1222 Treaty of Ferentino 190
1225 Treaty of San Germano 191
Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem 191
1227 Gregory IX., pope 191
Excommunication of the emperor 193
1228 Departure of Frederick from Brundusium 195
Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais 195
1229 Treaty between Frederick and the sultan Kameel 196
Feb. 18 Frederick at Jerusalem 196
Moderation of the emperor 197
Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX. 198
Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe 198
Renewed excommunication of the emperor 199
CHAPTER XII.
THE SEVENTH CRUSADE.
Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans 199
Charges of peculation against the papal collectors 200
1230 Opposition of the pope and the emperor to the new
crusade 200
1239 Arrival of the French crusaders at Acre 201
Their complete failure 201
1240 The English crusade 201
Treaty between Richard of Cornwall and the Egyptian
sultan 201
1242 Invasion of the Korasmians 201
Alliance of the Templars with the Syrians 202
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EIGHTH CRUSADE.
1245 Council of Lyons 202
1226 Louis IX., king of France 203
Louis IX., the pope, and the emperor 205
1245 Assumption of the cross by Louis IX. 207
1248 Departure of Louis from France 208
1249 Capture of Damietta 209
March of the army towards Cairo 209
Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois 210
1250 The king taken prisoner 211
Firmness of the king 211
Terms of ransom 211
Murder of Turan Shah 212
Release of Louis IX. 212
Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth 212
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NINTH CRUSADE.
Comparison of the earlier and later crusades 213
1259 Battle between the Templars and Hospitallers 214
1263 Invasion of Palestine by the Mameluke sultan Bibars 214
Loss of Antioch 214
1270 Second crusade of Louis IX. 215
Death of the king 216
1271 Capture of Nazareth by Edward, son of Henry III. of
England 216
1272 Return of Edward to Europe 217
Vain efforts of Gregory X. to stir up a crusade 217
Claims to the titular kingdom of Jerusalem 217
1291 Loss of Acre 218
CHAPTER XV.
THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS.
Gradual decay and extinction of the crusading spirit 219
Persecution and suppression of the Knights Templars 220
The Albigensian crusades 221
1212 The Children’s crusades 222
Indirect results of the crusades 224
_MAP._
GENERAL MAP FOR THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES _To face title-page._
THE CRUSADES.
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES.
[Sidenote: The crusades—a series of popular wars.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1095. Nov.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1066.]
The Crusades were a series of wars, waged by men who wore on their
garments the badge of the Cross as a pledge binding them to rescue the
Holy Land and the Sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of the unbeliever.
The dream of such an enterprise had long floated before the minds of
keen-sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts: it was realized for the
first time when, after listening to the burning eloquence of Urban II. at
the council of Clermont, the assembled multitude with one voice welcomed
the sacred war as the will of God. If we regard this undertaking as the
simple expression of popular feeling stirred to its inmost depths, we
may ascribe to the struggle to which they thus committed themselves a
character wholly unlike that of any earlier wars waged in Christendom,
or by the powers of Christendom against enemies who lay beyond its pale.
Statesmen (whether popes, kings, or dukes) might have availed themselves
eagerly of the overwhelming impulse imparted by the preaching of Peter
the Hermit to passions long pent up; but no authority of pope, emperor,
or king, could suffice of itself to open the floodgates for the waters
which might sweep away the infidel. In this sense only were men stirred,
whether at the council of Piacenza in 1094, or in that of Clermont, to
a strife of a wholly new kind. If Urban II. gave his blessing to the
missionaries who were to convert the Saracens at the point of the sword,
the papal benediction had been given nearly thirty years before at the
instigation of Hildebrand to the expedition by which the Norman William
hoped to crush the free English people and usurp the throne of the king
whom they had chosen.
[Sidenote: Distinction between the crusades and other wars of the Middle
Ages.]
But the movement of the Norman duke against England was merely the
work of a sovereign well awake to his own interest and confident in
the methods by which he chose to promote it. Under the sacred standard
sent to him by Pope Alexander II. he gathered, indeed, a motley host
of adventurers; but the religious enthusiasm by which these may have
fancied themselves to be animated had reference chiefly to the broad
acres to which they looked forward as their recompense. The great gulf
which separated such an undertaking from the crusade of the hermit Peter
lay in the conviction, deep even to fanaticism, that the wearers of the
Cross had before them an enterprise in which failure, disaster, and
death were not less blessed, not less objects of envy and longing, than
the most brilliant conquests and the most splendid triumphs. They were
hastening to the land where their Divine Master had descended from his
throne in heaven to take on Himself the form of man—where for years the
everlasting Son of the Almighty Father had patiently toiled, healing the
sick, comforting the afflicted, and raising the dead, until at length
He carried, his own Cross up the height of Calvary, and having offered
up his perfect sacrifice, put off the garments of his humiliation when
the earthquake shattered the prison-house of his sepulchre. For them
the whole land had been rendered holy by the tread of his sacred feet:
and the pilgrim who had traced the scenes of his life from his cradle at
Bethlehem to the spot of his ascent from Olivet, might sing the _Nunc
dimittis_, as having with his own eyes seen the divine salvation.
[Sidenote: Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian traditions.]
Thus the crusade preached by Peter the Hermit, and solemnly sanctioned by
Pope Urban, was rendered possible by the combination of papal authority
with an irresistible popular conviction. That papal authority was the
necessary result of the old imperial tradition of Rome; the popular
conviction was the growth of a tendency which had characterized every
religion professed by Aryan or Semitic nations; and both these causes
were wholly unconnected with the teaching of Christ and of his disciples,
as it is set before us in the New Testament. Far from ascribing special
sanctity to any one spot over another, the emphatic declaration that
the hour was come in which men should worship the Father not merely in
Jerusalem or on the Samaritan mountain, proclaimed a gospel which taught
that all men in all places are alike near to God in whom they live, move,
and have their being. If we turn to the narrative which relates the Acts
of the Apostles, we shall find not a sign of the feeling which regards
Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, or the banks of
the Jordan, as places which of themselves should awaken any enthusiastic
or passionate feeling. The thoughts of the disciples, if we confine
ourselves to this record, were absorbed with more immediate and momentous
concerns. Before their generation should pass away, the Son of Man would
return to judgment, and the dead should be summoned from their graves to
his awful tribunal. Hence any vehement longing for one spot of earth
over another was wretchedly out of place for those who held that the time
was short, and that it behooved those who had wives to be as though they
had none, those that bought as though they possessed not, and those that
wept and rejoiced as though they wept and rejoiced not. Nay, more, with
a feeling almost approaching to impatience, the great apostle of the
Gentiles could put aside the yearnings of a weaker sentiment and declare
that although he had known Christ in the flesh, yet henceforth he would
so know Him no more.
[Sidenote: The Christianity of St. Paul.]
The image, therefore, of the great founder of Christianity was for him
purely spiritual. In the letters which he wrote to the churches formed
by his converts there is not a sign that the thought or the sight of
Bethlehem or Nazareth would awaken in him any deeper feeling than places
wholly destitute of historical associations. If he speaks of Jerusalem,
he never implies that it had for him any special sanctity. His mission
was to preach a faith altogether independent of time and place, and not
only not needing but even rejecting the sensuous aid afforded by visible
memorials of the Master whom he loved.
[Sidenote: The Christianity of the Roman Empire.]
Such was the Christianity of St. Paul; and with such weapons it went
forth to assail and throw down the strongholds of heathenism. Three
centuries later we behold Christianity dominant as the religion of the
Roman Empire; but in its outward aspect and in its practical working it
has undergone a vast and significant change. It cannot be supposed that
this change was wrought at once by the mere fact of its recognition by
the temporal power. The endless debates, which fill the history of early
Christianity, on the relations of the Persons of the Trinity and on the
mystery of the Incarnation, may in some degree have helped to fix the
minds of men on the land where the Saviour had lived, and on the several
scenes of his ministry; but this alone would never have sufficed to work
the revolution which Christianity has manifestly undergone, even before
we reach the age of Constantine. The victory won over heathenism, if not
merely nominal, was at best partial. The religion of the empire knew
nothing of the One Eternal God, who demands from all men a spontaneous
submission to his righteous law, and bids them find their highest good
in his divine love. That religion rested on the might of the Capitoline
Jupiter and the visible majesty of the Emperor; but the real influences
which were at work from the first to modify the Christianity of St. Paul
lay in the lower strata of society, in the modes of thought and feeling
prevalent among the masses who furnished the converts of the first two
or three centuries. In these converts we cannot doubt that there was
wrought a real change,—a change manifest chiefly in the conviction that
the divine law is binding on all, and that the state of things in the
Roman world was unspeakably shameful. In the Jesus whom Paul preached
they beheld the righteous teacher who condemned the iniquities of godless
rulers and a corrupt people, the avenger of their unjust deeds, the
loving Redeemer in whose arms the weary and heavy-laden might find rest,
the awful Judge who should be seen at the end of the world on his great
white throne, with all the kindreds of mankind awaiting their doom before
Him. The personal human love thus kindled in them turned only into a
different channel thoughts and feelings which it would need centuries to
root out.
[Sidenote: Localism of heathen religions.]
These thoughts and feelings had been fed by that tendency to localize
incidents in the supposed history of gods or heroes which is the most
prominent characteristic of all heathen religions; and of the vast crowd
of these heathen religions or superstitions there was, if we may trust
the statements of Roman writers, scarcely one which had not its adherents
and votaries at Rome. Here were gathered the priests and worshippers of
the Egyptian Isis, the virgin mother of Osiris, the god who rose again
after his crucifixion to gladden the earth with his splendour; here might
be seen the adorers of the Persian sun-god Mithras, born at the winter
solstice, and growing in strength until he wins his victory over the
powers of darkness after the vernal equinox. But this idea of the death
and resurrection of the lord of light was no new importation brought in
by the theology of Egypt or Persia. The story of the Egyptian Osiris was
repeated in the Greek stories of Sarpedon and Memnon, of Tithonos and
Asklepios (Æsculapius), of the Teutonic Baldur and Woden (Odin). The
birthplace of these deities, the scenes associated with their traditional
exploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating legends, and
not a few attracting to themselves vast gatherings of pilgrims.
[Sidenote: Influence of these local religions on Christianity.]
It was not wonderful therefore that the worshippers of these or other
like gods should, on professing the faith of Christ, carry with them all
that they could retain of their old belief without utterly contradicting
the new; that his nativity should be celebrated at the time when the sun
begins to rise in the heavens, and his resurrection when the victory of
light over darkness is achieved in the spring. The worshipper of the
Egyptian Amoun, the ram, carried his old associations with him when
he became a follower of the Lamb of God; and the burst of light which
heralded the return of the Maiden to the Mourning Mother in the Greek
mysteries of Eleusis was reproduced in the miracle still repeated year by
year by the patriarch of Jerusalem when he announces the descent of the
sacred fire in the sepulchre of Christ.
[Sidenote: Growth of local associations in Palestine.]
Thus for the Christians of the third century, if not of the second,
Judæa or Palestine became a holy land; and with the growth of devotion
to the human person of Christ grew the feeling of reverence for every
place which He had visited and every memorial which He had left behind
Him. The impulse once given soon became irresistible. Every incident of
the gospel narratives was associated with some particular spot, and the
certainty of the verification was never questioned by the thousands who
felt that the sight of these places brought them nearer to heaven and was
in itself a purification of their souls. They could follow the Redeemer
from the cave in which He was born and where the Wise Men of the East
laid before Him their royal offerings, to the mount from which He uttered
his blessings on the pure, the merciful, and the peacemakers, and thence
to the other mount on which He offered his perfect sacrifice for the sins
of the whole world. The spots associated with his passion, his burial,
his resurrection, called forth emotions of passionate veneration which
were intensified by the alleged discovery of the cross on which He had
suffered, together with the two crosses on which the thieves had been
condemned to die. If the presence of the tablet containing the title
inscribed by Pontius Pilate still left it uncertain to which of the
crosses that tablet belonged, and to which therefore the homage of the
faithful should be paid, all doubt was removed when a woman at the point
of death on whom the touch of two of these crosses had no effect was
restored to strength and youth by the touch of the third.
[Sidenote: Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine.]
[Sidenote: Gradual decay of spiritual religion.]
The splendid churches raised by the devout zeal of Constantine and his
mother Helena over the cave at Bethlehem and the sepulchre at Jerusalem
became for the Christians that which the sacred stone at Mecca and
the tomb of the prophet at Medina became afterwards for the followers
of Islam; nor can we be surprised if the emperor whose previous life
had been marked by special devotion to the Greek and Roman sun-god
transferred the characteristics of Apollon (Apollo) to the meek and
merciful Jesus whose teaching to the last he utterly misapprehended. The
purpose which drew to Palestine the long lines of pilgrims, which each
year increased in numbers, was not the mere aimless love of wandering
which is supposed to furnish the motive for Tartar pilgrimages in our
own as in former ages. The Aryan, so far as we know, was never a nomadic
race; but we can understand the eagerness even of a stationary population
to undertake a long and dangerous journey, if the mere making of it
should insure the remission of their sins. Nothing less than this was
the pilgrim led to expect, who had traversed land and sea to bathe in
the Jordan and offer up his prayers at the birthplace and tomb of his
Master. A few men, of keener discernment and wider culture, might see the
mischiefs lurking in this belief, and protest against the superstition.
Augustine, the great doctor whose ‘Confessions’ have made his name
familiar to thousands who know nothing of his life or teaching, might bid
Christians remember that righteousness was not to be sought in the East
nor mercy in the West, and that voyages are useless to carry us to Him
with whom a hearty faith makes us immediately present. In these protests
he might be upheld by men like Gregory of Nyssa and Jerome; but Jerome,
while he dwelt on the uselessness of pilgrimage and the absurdity of
supposing that prayers offered in one place could be more acceptable
than the same prayers offered in another, took up his abode in a cave
at Bethlehem, and there discoursed to Roman ladies, who had crossed the
sea to listen to his splendid eloquence. Heaven, he insisted, was as
accessible from Britain as from Palestine: but his actions contradicted
his words, and his example exercised a more potent influence than his
precept. The purely spiritual faith on which Jerome laid stress was
as much beyond the spirit of the age as the moral feelings of a later
age were behind those of the woman who in the crusade of St. Louis was
seen carrying in her right hand a porringer of fire, and in her left a
bottle of water. With the fire she wished, as Joinville tells us, to
burn paradise, with the water to drown hell, so that none might do good
for the reward of the one, nor avoid evil from fear of the other, since
every good ought to be done from the perfect and sincere love which man
owes to his Creator, who is the supreme good. Such a tone of thought
was in ludicrous discord with the temper which brought Jerome himself
to Bethlehem, and which soon began to fill the land with those who had
nothing of Jerome’s culture and the sobriety which in whatever degree
must spring from it.
[Sidenote: Encouragement given to pilgrimages.]
[Sidenote: Trade in relics.]
[Sidenote: Stimulus given by pilgrimages to commerce with the East.]
The contagion spread. From almost every country of Europe wanderers
took their way to Palestine, under the conviction that the shirt which
they wore when they entered the holy city would, if laid by to be used
as their winding-sheet, convey them (like the carpet of Solomon in
the Arabian tale) at once to heaven. An enterprise so laudable roused
the sympathy and quickened the charity of the faithful. The pilgrim
seldom lacked food and shelter, and houses of repose or entertainment
were raised for his comfort on the stages of his journey as well as in
the city which was the goal of his pilgrimage. Here he was welcomed
in the costly house which had been raised for his reception by the
munificence of Pope Gregory the Great. If he died during his absence,
his kinsfolk envied rather than bewailed his lot: if he returned, he
had their reverence as one who had washed away his sins, and still more
perhaps as one who had brought away in his wallet relics of value so
vast and of virtue so great that the touch of them made the journey to
Palestine almost a superfluous ceremony. Wherever these pilgrims went,
these fragments of the true cross might be found; and the happy faith
of those who gave in exchange for them more than their weight in gold
never stopped to think that the barren log which was supposed to have
produced them must in truth have spread abroad its branches wider than
the most magnificent cedar in Libanus. Nor probably, even in the earliest
ages, was the traffic consequent on these pilgrimages confined to holy
things. The East was not only the cradle of Christianity, but a land rich
in spices and silks, in gold and jewels: and the keen-sighted merchant,
looking to solid profits on earth, followed closely on the steps of the
devotee who sought his reward in heaven.
[Sidenote: The long struggle between Rome and Persia.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 611. Capture of Jerusalem by the Persian king, Khosru
II.]
[Sidenote: Persian invasion of Egypt.]
The first interruption to the peaceful and prosperous fortunes of
pilgrims and merchants was caused by one of the periodical ebbs and
flows which for nearly seven hundred years had marked the struggle
between the powers of Persia and of Rome. The kings of the restored
Persian kingdom had striven to avenge on the West the wrongs committed
by Alexander the Great, if not those even of earlier invaders; and the
enterprise which Khosru Nushirvan had taken in hand was carried on forty
years later by his grandson Khosru (Chosroes) II. Almost at the outset
of his irresistible course Jerusalem fell, nor was it the fault of the
Persians that the great churches of Helena and Constantine were not
destroyed utterly by fire. Ninety thousand Christians, it is said, were
put to death: but, according to the feeling of the age, a greater loss
was sustained in the carrying off of the true cross into Persia. From
Palestine the wave of Persian conquest spread southward into Egypt, and
the greatness of Khosru seemed to be unbounded, when from an unknown
citizen of Mecca he received the bidding to acknowledge the unity of the
Godhead and to own Mahomed as the prophet of God. The Persian king tore
the letter to pieces, and the man of Mecca, whose successors were to
carry the crescent to Jerusalem and Damascus, to the banks of the Nile
and the mountains of Spain, warned him that his kingdom should be treated
as he had treated his letter.
[Sidenote: Campaigns of the Emperor Heraclius.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 622-625.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 627. Battle of Nineveh.]
For the present the signs of this catastrophe were not to be seen. The
Roman emperor was compelled to sign an ignominious peace and to pay a
yearly tribute to the sovereign of Persia. But Heraclius (Herakleios)
woke suddenly from the sluggishness which marked the earlier years
of his reign. The Persians were defeated among the defiles of Mount
Taurus, and the destruction of the birthplace of Zoroaster offered
some compensation for the mischief done to the churches of Helena and
Constantine. Two years later the Roman emperor carried his arms into the
heart of the enemy’s land; and during the battle of Nineveh, in which he
won a splendid victory, he slew with his own hands the Persian general
Rhazates. Khosru fled across the Tigris; but he could not escape from the
plots of his son, and his death in a dungeon ended the glories of the
Sassanid dynasty, under whom the Persian power had, in the third century
of our era, revived from the death sleep into which it had sunk after the
conquests of Alexander.
[Sidenote: A. D. 628.]
[Sidenote: Restoration of the true cross by the Persians.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 629. Pilgrimage of Heraclius to Jerusalem.]
With Siroes, the son and murderer of Khosru, the Roman emperor concluded
a peace which not merely delivered all his subjects from captivity, but
repaired the loss which the church of the Holy Sepulchre had sustained
by the theft of the true cross. The great object of pilgrimage was thus
restored to Jerusalem, and thither Heraclius (Herakleios) during the
following year betook himself to pay his vows of thanksgiving. With
the pageant which marked this ceremony the splendour of his reign was
closed. Before his death the followers of Mahomed had deprived him of the
provinces which he had wrested from the Persians.
[Sidenote: A. D. 637. Conquest of Palestine by Omar.]
Eight years only had passed after the visit of Heraclius (Herakleios) to
Jerusalem, when the armies which had already seized Damascus advanced
to the siege of the Holy City. A blockade of four months convinced the
patriarch Sophronios that there was no hope of withstanding the force
of Islam: but he demanded the presence of the caliph himself at the
ratification of the treaty which was to secure a second sacred capital to
the disciples of the Prophet. After some debate his request was granted;
and Omar, who on the death of Abubekr had been chosen as the vicegerent
of Mahomed, set out from Medina on a camel, which carried for him his
leathern water-bottle, his bags of corn and dates, and his wooden dish.
[Sidenote: Terms of the treaty made by Omar with the Christians of
Jerusalem.]
The terms imposed by the caliph sufficiently marked the subjection of
the Christians, but they imposed no severe hardships and perhaps showed
a large toleration. The Christians were to build no new churches, and
they were to admit Mahomedans into those which they already had, whether
by day or by night. The cross was no longer to be seen on the exterior
of their buildings or to be paraded in the streets. The church-bells
should be tolled only, not rung. The use of saddles and of weapons was
altogether interdicted, and the Christians, distinguished from their
conquerors by their attire, were to show their respect for the latter
by rising up to them if they were sitting. On these conditions the
Christians were not only to be safe in their persons and fortunes, but
undisturbed in the exercise of their religion and in the use of their
churches.
[Sidenote: Omar and the patriarch Sophronios.]
For the observance of this last stipulation the rugged and uncouth
conqueror showed a greater care than the patriarch who regarded his
presence in the church of the Resurrection as the abomination of
desolation in the holy place. The hour of prayer came, and Omar asked
Sophronios where he might offer his devotions. ‘Here,’ answered the
patriarch; but Omar positively refused, and repeated his refusal when he
was led away into the church of Constantine. At last he knelt down on the
steps outside that church, and afterwards told the patriarch that had
he worshipped within the building, the document securing its use to the
Christians would have been worthless. His words were verified by the zeal
of his followers, who insisted on inclosing within a mosque the steps on
which he had prayed: but the mosque which bears Omar’s name rose over the
great sacrificial altar of the temple, which passed for Jacob’s stone.
[Sidenote: Effects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.]
This second conquest may have again checked the rush of pilgrims to the
Holy Land; but the difficulties which it placed in their way only added
to the glory and the benefits of the enterprise: and, after all, the
victory of Omar did little more than share the holy city between two
races each of which acknowledged its sanctity and reverenced the relics
of the righteous men whose bodies reposed beneath its sacred soil. Nor
had the Christians any stronger ground of complaint than that the Saviour
whom they worshipped was regarded by their conquerors as a prophet only
inferior, if not equal, to the founder of Islam.
[Sidenote: Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage.]
Nearly four centuries had passed away after the submission of Sophronios
to Omar; and during this long series of generations the West had without
let or hindrance sent forth its troops of pilgrims, in whose train
merchants may have found sources of profit for more worldly callings.
If the palmy days during which the wanderers might regard themselves as
practically lords of the land through which they travelled had passed
away, they underwent at the worst nothing which could greatly excite
their anger or rouse the indignation of Christendom.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1010. Ravages of the Egyptian Sultan Hakem in Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Persecution of Jews in Europe.]
Nor was this state of things materially changed by the furious
onslaught of Hakem, the mad Fatimite sultan of Egypt, when, spurred on
by a bigotry unknown to his predecessors, he resolved to destroy the
Christian sanctuary in Jerusalem. The rule of these earlier sovereigns
of Egypt had been more beneficial to the Christians than that of the
Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad. But Hakem cared nothing for the worldly
interests of his kingdom or of the profits to be derived from trade with
the unbeliever; and his soldiers were busied on the dignified task of
demolishing the church of the Resurrection, and in attempts to destroy
with their hammers the very cave in which, as it was supposed, the body
of the Saviour had been laid. In this task they had but a very partial
success, and to Hakem probably the suspension for a single year of the
descent of the sacred fire scarcely outweighed the risks of a combined
attack from the maritime powers of Christendom. For the present no such
alliance was threatened; but a cruel persecution of the Jews in many
Christian cities was a symptom of the temper which was placing a great
gulf between men who professed nevertheless to worship the same Almighty
Father.
[Sidenote: Tax levied on pilgrims at the gates of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1000. Expectation of the end of the world.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 997. Conversion of Hungary under King Stephen.]
After this violent but transient storm the condition of the pilgrims
became much what it had been before, except that a toll was now
levied on each pilgrim before he was suffered to enter the gates of
Jerusalem; but this impost may have been rather welcomed than resented
by the Christians, as it gave to the richer among them an opportunity
of discharging it for their poorer brethren, and so of securing for
themselves a higher degree of merit. The world, too, seemed to have taken
a new lease of existence, and everything appeared to promise a long
continuance of comparative peace. Ten years before, all Christendom was
fluttering with the expectation of immediate judgment. At the close of
the millennium, which came to an end with the year 1000, a belief almost
universal looked forward to the summons which would call the dead from
their graves and cut short the course of a weary and sin-laden world. But
the tale of years had been completed, the sun continued to rise and set
as it had risen and set before, and the flood of pilgrims soon began to
stream towards the East in greater volume than ever. Men of all ranks and
classes left their homes to offer up their prayers at the tomb of Christ:
bishops abandoned their dioceses, princes their dominions, to visit the
scenes where the Redeemer had suffered and where He had achieved his
triumph. More numerous, more earnest, more zealous than all, were the
Franks or the Frenchmen, whose name became henceforth in the East the
common designation of all Europeans. For the weak and inexperienced,
for the women and the youths, who pledged themselves to the enterprise,
there might be special and grave dangers; nor were the strongest assured
against serious, if not fatal, disasters. With thirty horsemen fully
equipped, Ingulf, a secretary of William the Conqueror, set out on his
journey to the Holy Land. Of these twenty returned on foot, with no other
possessions than their wallet and their staff. But their losses had been
caused probably by no human enemies, and the men who had died could
claim the credit of martyrdom only in the sense in which it is accorded
to the Holy Innocents massacred by the decree of Herod. On the whole,
the difficulties of the enterprise were as much smoothed down as in a
rude and ill-governed age they could well be. The conversion of Hungary
opened a safe highway across the heart of Europe, and the pilgrims had a
defender, as well as a friend, in St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom.
[Sidenote: Advance of the Seljukian Turks.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1092. Division of the Seljukian empire.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 325.]
[Sidenote: Appeal of the Greek Emperor Alexios to Western Christendom.]
But a change far greater than that which had been wrought by Omar was to
be effected by a power which had been working its way from the distant
East and menacing the existence of the Empire itself. From the deserts
of Central Asia the Seljukian Turks had advanced westwards, overrunning
the kingdoms of the Persian empire, and subjugating Asia Minor, the
inheritance of the Cæsars of Rome. In this task they received no slight
help from the neutrality of a great part of the Christian population,
in whom financial exactions and ecclesiastical tyranny had awakened
feelings of strong discontent, if not of burning indignation. The rulers
of Byzantium had, indeed, done all that they could to make the way smooth
for the invaders. The accumulation of land in the hands of a few owners
had dangerously diminished the number of inhabitants; nor was it long
before the Turks were in a majority throughout Cappadocia, Phrygia and
Galatia, and were enabled successfully to resist the crusading hosts
in countries which they had conquered but as yesterday. The Seljukian
sovereigns who had advanced thus far on the road to Constantinople, chose
as their abode that city of Nice (Nikaia, Nicæa) in which the first
general council of Christendom had defined the Catholic faith on the
doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. Here these fierce invaders proclaimed
the mission of Mahomet as the prophet of God, and issued the decrees
which assigned Christian churches to profanation or destruction, and
Christian youths and maidens to a disgraceful and shameful slavery.
Mountains visible from the dome of Sancta Sophia were already within the
borders of Turkish territory. The danger seemed imminent, and Alexios,
the Emperor of the East, invoked the aid of Latin Christendom: but the
fire was not yet kindled, and for the time his appeal was made in vain.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1076. Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Increased burdens and sufferings of the Christian pilgrims.]
[Sidenote: Decline of commerce with the East.]
[Sidenote: Oppression of the Christians of Palestine.]
[Sidenote: General indignation felt in Western Christendom.]
[Sidenote: Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct this
feeling.]
No long time, however, had passed before the Seljukian Toucush was master
of Jerusalem; and the Christians learnt to their cost that servitude to
the fierce wanderers from the northern deserts was very different from
submission to the rugged and uncultured Omar. The lawful toll levied on
the pilgrims gave way before a system of extortion and violent robbery
carried out in every part of the land; and the mere journey to Jerusalem
involved dangers from which the bravest might well shrink. Insults to
the persons of the pilgrims were accompanied by insults, harder to be
borne, offered to the holy places and to those who ministered in them.
The sacred offices were savagely interrupted, and the patriarch, dragged
by his hair along the pavement, was thrown into a dungeon, pending the
payment of an exorbitant ransom. For the pilgrims themselves there
might be dangers as they made their way through Europe: but these were
increased tenfold on the eastern side of the Hellespont. Thus far they
had journeyed in comparative security, and the merchants who sought to
combine profit with devotion added to that security by their numbers and
their prudence. The Easter fair of Jerusalem had drawn to the ports of
Palestine the fleets of Genoa and Pisa, and had sufficiently rewarded the
munificence of the merchants of Amalfi, the founders of the hospital of
St. John. But commerce has no liking for perils of flood and field: and
with the risk of disaster these fleets disappeared and the caravans were
confined to those for whom the sanctuary of Jerusalem was a goal to be
reached at all costs. These went forth still by hundreds; they returned
by tens or units to recount the miseries and wanton cruelties which
they had undergone, and to draw fearful pictures of the savage tyranny
exercised over the Christians of Jerusalem and of the East generally. The
church of Christ was in the iron grasp of the infidel, and the blood of
his martyrs cried aloud for vengeance. Throughout the length and breadth
of Christendom a fierce indignation was stirring the hearts of men, and
the pent-up waters needed only guidance to rush forth as a flood over the
lands defiled by the unbeliever. But unless the enterprise was to run to
waste in random efforts, it must have the solemn sanction of religion.
The people might be ready, but popular fury acting by itself will soon
spend its strength like the hurrying tempest. Princes might be willing
for a time to abandon their dominions: but the pressure of difficulties
abroad and at home would soon make them grow weary of the task. There
must be a constraining power to keep them to their vows by sanctions
which stretched beyond the present life to the life after death; and
these sanctions could come only from him who held the keys of the kingdom
of heaven, and whose seat was the rock of Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
CHAPTER II.
THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.
[Sidenote: Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes.]
The Pope is the bishop of Rome, and the traditions of the papacy delight
in recalling the humble origin of his vast monarchy, at once spiritual
and temporal, ecclesiastical and secular. If the poor Galilæan fisherman
ever entered the Eternal City, it was as a stranger who had come to
be the guide and friend of a small knot of men who saw and hated and
wished to keep themselves aloof from the abominable corruption of Roman
society. But if Christianity itself, as we have seen (p. 6), was, when
it had once taken root in the West, modified by the popular feelings and
old associations of the converts, the constitution of the church was in
like manner insensibly modified by the political forms of the state with
which it had at first to wage a terrible conflict. Rome was not as other
cities: and the bishop of Rome could not long remain like the presidents
of other churches. He was dealing with the subjects, and he lived in
the heart, of the empire. It was inevitable that the imperial tradition
should fasten on the object of their worship; nor was it long before the
exulting cry went up to heaven, Christ lives, Christ rules, Christ is
emperor (Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat).
[Sidenote: A. D. 587-604.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1073-1085.]
As the vicars of this invisible emperor, the popes acquired gradually
a power which overshadowed that of the mightiest sovereigns. It was
exercised with monastic austerity by Gregory the Great; it was wielded
with the ability of a consummate general by Gregory VII., Hildebrand.
The first Gregory was a monk, therefore also a Manichean; in other
words, one who believed in the essential impurity of all matter; but
this philosophy, if it had any attractions for Gregory VII., was wholly
subordinate to the one absorbing passion of ecclesiastical dominion. His
aim was to subdue the world by a spiritual army: but the issue of his
conquest was not to be confined to spiritual influence. It was to give
him power over kingdoms, dictation over princes, the command of their
weapons and their wealth. It was to humble civil polity under priestly
autocracy; it was to prove, what Hildebrand scrupled not to assert, that
the civil rule was in itself the mere development and working of the
evil principle. The foundations had long been laid; but Hildebrand left
to his successors not much to do towards completing the fabric of papal
empire. His predecessors had learnt to avail themselves dexterously
of popular feeling or the ambition of princes, to direct wide-spread
movements, if not to create them. It was the papal sanction which had
aided to depose the degenerate Merovingian; it was the papal chrism which
had anointed the first Carolingian king. It was the diadem of the ancient
Cæsars, bestowed by the hand of Leo III., which rested on the head of
Charles the Great. It was Hildebrand himself, who, by the hands of his
instrument, Alexander II., had transferred the crown of England from
the son of Godwine to William the Bastard of Normandy. It has been well
remarked, that although the name had not yet been heard, yet in truth it
was now that the first crusade was preached, and it was preached by the
voice of Rome against the liberties of England. We may note further that
the preacher was a pontiff, who, when he found it convenient to thank
the Sultan of Morocco for some indulgences granted to Christians in his
territories, could assure that infidel ruler that both worshipped the
same God and held the same faith, though their modes of worship and their
expressions of devotion might be different.
[Sidenote: Schemes and motives of Gregory VII.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1074. His circular letter to the faithful.]
The popes had become capable of setting vast armies in motion, and of
raising to a white heat the fire of a popular sentiment which had already
been kindled. These two conditions were needed before the power of
Europe could be precipitated on the infidel conquerors of Syria; and the
inability of the popes to accomplish this end if they were not in accord
with the prevalent feeling of the people is strikingly shown in the
history of Gregory VII. Eight years after he had helped to slay Harold
at Hastings, Hildebrand addressed a letter to all who loved and cared
to defend the Catholic faith, beseeching them to put aside all other
tasks in favour of the great work of chasing the hordes of the Seljukian
Turks beyond the bounds of the Eastern empire. Constantinople, the new
city of the Seven Hills, was even now threatened by these barbarians;
nor could any say how soon the danger might not menace Rome itself. It
could not be doubted that the faith, the energy, the warlike skill of
Christendom would sweep away these undisciplined unbelievers; and the
victory of the faithful would be followed by very solid gain to the
popes. The price to be paid by the emperor for his deliverance from
the Turks was his submission as a vassal to the see of Rome; in other
words, the pope was to become absolute lord both of East and West, and
the claims of the Byzantine patriarch to a co-ordinate dignity with
the successor of St. Peter should no longer be made with impunity. But
although the scheme thus carefully drawn out was to promote the interests
of a spiritual power, for the great mass of Latin Christians it was
purely a political enterprise. The fears and distresses of the Eastern
emperor could excite no sympathy; the Cæsar of Constantinople was not a
being who had exhibited the image of superhuman love or shed his blood
for those who had taken delight in torturing him; and the excommunication
which Hildebrand had imprudently hurled against the emperor Nicephorus
(Nikephoros) III., had left behind it in the East a feeling not
favourable to the designs of the Roman pontiff. The letter of Hildebrand
appealed to no religious associations; it said nothing of abominations
committed in the holy places, of terrible crimes wrought on the persons
of faithful pilgrims; it was silent about the eternal reward which the
bare act of pilgrimage would win for the believer. It was of little use
to say in passing that more than 50,000 warriors longed to rise up under
his guidance against the enemies of God and reach the sepulchre of their
Lord. He had not struck the right chord, and Hildebrand failed to see the
West gird itself for the great conflict with the enemies of the faith.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1081. The Normans in Italy.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1082.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1083.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1085.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1087.]
For a time he may have supposed that the great fire was already kindled,
when with a fleet of 150 ships and an army of 30,000 men Robert Guiscard
set sail from Brundusium (Brindisi). But the conqueror who had done so
much in Italy was to do but little to the east of the Adriatic. While
his army put forth its whole strength before the walls of Dyrrhachium
(Durazzo), his fleet under the command of his son Bohemond was miserably
defeated; and nothing but the wretched jealousy felt by the emperor
Alexios for his general Paleologos saved the army of Guiscard from ruin
and turned the threatened disaster into victory. When, being compelled to
return to Italy, he left Bohemond to carry on his enterprise, the latter
overran Epeiros and had well nigh succeeded in reducing the Thessalian
Larissa, when he too was compelled to hasten to Italy for reinforcements
both in men and money. In his absence his deputy, Brienne, the constable
of Apulia, was constrained to abandon the siege of Kastoria and to bind
himself not to invade again the territories of the Byzantine emperor.
Not many months later Robert Guiscard gathered another armament for the
conquest of the East. He raised the siege of Corfu (Korkyra), and had
reached Cefalonia (Kephallenia), when his career was cut short by death
and his scheme for the time seemed utterly brought to naught. The war
which Hildebrand sought to stir up against the Mahomedan powers was not
less vigorously preached by his successor Victor III., who promised
remission of sins to all who might engage in it; but his words called
forth no bands of warriors for the recovery of Jerusalem. The fleets of
Genoa and Pisa swept the African coasts, and gained in the shape of booty
a harvest which was to fall to the lot of few among the myriads who were
soon to leave their homes for the Holy Land.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1095. Council of Piacenza.]
Ten years after the death of Hildebrand three or four thousand of the
clergy and thirty thousand laymen were gathered to meet pope Urban II.
at the council of Piacenza (Placentia). So vast a throng could find
standing ground in no building, and the business of the council was
transacted in the plain outside the city. The envoys of the Eastern
emperor, Alexios Comnenos, were there to plead his distresses and
beseech the strenuous aid of the faithful. The policy of checking the
progress of the Turks while they were still at a good distance from
Italy may have influenced the more statesmanlike of their hearers; the
more vehement and enthusiastic among them were moved to tears by the
pathetic recital of the Byzantine ambassadors, and demanded loudly to
be led against the enemy. But Urban, with his heart more determinately
set upon the enterprise than any man present, felt that the hour for
the supreme decision had not yet come. He was in a country torn by
intestine divisions, where his own claim to the papacy was disputed by
an anti-pope whom with his adherents it was here his especial business
to excommunicate. He had to deal with other matters also. Some of the
clergy still refused to abandon their wives; and the wife of the emperor
Henry IV. was present to complain of treatment unimaginably monstrous on
the part of her husband. Both emperor and clergy must be condemned, and
brought into obedience; and Urban felt that after such business as this
it would be well to reserve his eloquence for another scene. He therefore
dismissed the envoys of Alexios with the assurance that when the hosts
of Western Christendom advanced to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre they
would not forget that they had work to do near Constantinople.
[Sidenote: A. D. 799.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1095. The council of Clermont.]
From Piacenza Urban made his way across the Alps to the realm of the
great Charles, whose intercourse with the ambassadors of the Caliph
Harun-al-Reschid may have laid the foundation for the myth, expanded
into a systematic fiction in the lying Chronicle of Turpin, that he had
himself smitten down the unbelievers under the shadow of the Church of
Constantine. On the northern side of the Alps Urban could breathe more
freely. The sentence of excommunication was impending, it is true, over
Philip the First, who called himself or was called King of France; but
the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, powerful though he might be within his
own dominion of Paris and Orleans, was little more than nominal lord of
the vast throng of feudal chiefs who lay beyond its borders. From his
old home in the great monastery of Clugny, Urban set off in the autumn
for Clermont in the territories of the Count of Auvergne. Before he
could reach the city, thousands of tents were pitched without the walls
for those who could find no shelter within them; and the eight days
during which the council held its sessions were spent in regulating
the enterprise about which the pope had spoken with so much reserve at
Piacenza, and in prescribing the measures to be taken for the safety
of those who might remain at home during the absence of their natural
protectors.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1093.]
There was now no more need for hesitation. Popular feeling to the north
of the Alps was far more deeply moved by the woes of the pilgrims and
the conquests of the infidels than on the southern side of the great
mountain barriers; and the wrath of the people had been fanned into an
ungovernable flame by the preaching of the hermit Peter. This man, born
at Amiens in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and laid aside the sword
which he wielded in the service of the Counts of Boulogne, to follow
the council of perfection in silence and solitude. Like others, he felt
himself drawn by an irresistible attraction to the Holy Land; but if his
passionate yearnings were rewarded by the privilege of offering up his
prayers before the tomb of the Redeemer, his very heart was stirred by
the sight of things, the mere recital of which had awakened his wrath at
a distance. The Sanctuary was in the hands of the infidels; the patriarch
was reduced practically to the state of a slave, and the pilgrim was
happy who returned from the Holy City without undergoing humiliations
and buffetings scarcely deserved by the worst of criminals. The murder
of many Christian men, the deadly wrongs done to many Christian women,
called aloud for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow that, with the
help of God, these things should cease. His conversations with the
patriarch Simeon brought out only confessions of the incapacity of the
Greek Emperor and the weakness of his empire. ‘The nations of the
West shall take up arms in your cause,’ said the hermit; and with the
patriarchal benediction Peter hastened to obtain for the mission which he
now saw before him the sanction of the man who claimed to be at the head
of Eastern and Western Christendom alike.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1094. The mission and preaching of the hermit.]
Before the Roman pontiff Peter poured forth his story of the wrongs which
called for immediate redress; but no eloquence was needed to stir the
heart of Urban. The zeal of the pope was probably as sincere as that of
any others who engaged in the enterprise; but it could not fail to derive
strength from the consciousness that, whatever might be the result to the
warriors of the cross, his own power would rest henceforth on more solid
foundations. His blessing was therefore eagerly bestowed on the fervent
enthusiast who undertook to go through the length and breadth of the
land, stirring up the people to the great work for the love of God and
of their own souls. His eloquence may have been as rude as it was ready;
but its deficiencies were more than made up by the earnestness which gave
even to the glance of his eye a force more powerful than speech. Dwarfish
in stature and mean in person, he was yet filled with a fire which would
not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon his soul were those
which would most surely stir the conscience and rouse the wrath of his
hearers. His fiery appeals carried everything before them. Wherever he
went, rich and poor, aged and young, the knight and the peasant, thronged
round the emaciated stranger, who with his head and feet bare rode on
his ass, carrying a huge crucifix. That form, of which they beheld the
bleeding sign, he had himself seen; nay, he had received from the Saviour
a letter which had fallen down from heaven. He appealed to every feeling
which may stir the heart of mankind generally, to every motive which
should have special power with all faithful Christians. He called upon
them for the deliverance of the land which was the cradle of their faith,
for the punishment of the barbarian who had dared to defile it, for the
rescue of the brethren who were the victims of his tyranny. The vehemence
which choked his own utterance became contagious: his sobs and groans
called forth the tears and cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his
words, and who greedily devoured the harrowing accounts of the pilgrims
whom Peter brought forward as witnesses to the truth of his picture.
Motives more earthly may have mingled with his austere call in the minds
of some who heard him. Of these motives the hermit said nothing: but
there is no doubt that he made his last and most constraining appeal to
that notion of mechanical religion which the prophet Micah puts into
the mouth of Balak the king of Moab. The consciences of some amongst
his hearers might be weighed down by the burden of sins too grievous
almost for forgiveness. He besought them to remember that such fears were
altogether misplaced, if only they made up their minds to take part in
the redemption of the Holy Land. If they chose to become the soldiers
of the cross, their salvation was at once achieved. There was no sin,
however fearful, which would not be cancelled by the mere taking of the
vow; no sinful habits which would not be condoned in those who might
fall in battle with the unbelievers. The excitement of the moment, the
frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind of the hermit, was by him
communicated to his hearers, threw, we cannot doubt, a specious colouring
over a degrading morality and a hopelessly corrupting religion; but as
little can we doubt that the whole temper which stirred up and kept
alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned atmosphere which could be
cleared only by the storms and tempests of the reformation.
[Sidenote: Decrees of the council of Clermont, prohibiting private wars,
and confirming the Truce of God.]
The preaching of the hermit predetermined the results of the council
of Clermont; but Urban and the throng of bishops and abbots who were
gathered round him were well aware that something more was needed than
the enlisting of an army of zealots for distant warfare. With our settled
laws and orderly government it is almost impossible for us to realize
the condition even of the most advanced states of Christian Europe in
an age when the power of the king over his vassals meant simply that
which the strength or the weakness of the vassals made it, and when the
vassal, if he owed allegiance to his lord, was bound by no ties to his
fellow vassals. The system of feudalism could not fail to feed the worst
passions of human nature; and the absence of an authority capable of
constraining all alike involved for those who felt or fancied themselves
aggrieved an irresistible temptation to take the law into their own
hands. But the practice of private war thus set up would sooner or later
assume the form of a trade, and in the words of William of Malmesbury
things had now come to so wretched a pass that feudal chiefs would
take each other captive on little or no pretence, and would set their
prisoners free only on the payment of an enormous ransom. This military
violence of the laity was accompanied by corruption on the part of the
clergy, showing itself in a shameless traffic of benefices and dignities
which, in brief phrase, fell to the lot of the highest bidder. In such
a condition of things to drain off to distant lands a large proportion
of the men who at home might do something to check, if not to repress,
the mischief, would be to leave those who remained behind defenceless.
Decrees were therefore passed condemning private wars, confirming the
Truce of God which suspended all hostilities during four days of each
week, and placing the women and the clergy under the protection of
the Church, which in an especial manner was extended to merchants and
husbandmen for three years.
[Sidenote: Speech of Urban II. before the people.]
When, the business of the council being ended, Urban ascended a lofty
scaffold and began his address to the people, he spoke to hearers for
whom arguments were no longer needed, but who were well pleased to hear
from the chief of Christendom words which carried with them comfort
and encouragement. Three forms or versions of this speech have been
preserved to us; one in the pages of William of Tyre, a second in those
of William of Malmesbury, a third from a manuscript in the Vatican. It
is possible that they may represent three different speeches: but the
substance of all is the same, and we are left in no doubt of the general
tenor of his words. With some inconsistency he dwelt on the cowardice
of the barbarians who had contrived to conquer Syria and whose tyranny
called forth the appeal which he now made to them. The Turk, shrinking
from close encounters, trusted to his bow and arrow; and the venom of
his poisoned shaft, not the bravery of a valiant warrior, inflicted
death on the man whom it struck. Their fears, he added, were justified,
for the blood which ran in the veins of men born in countries scorched
with the heat of the sun was scanty in stream and poor in quality as
compared with that which coursed through the bodies of men belonging to
more temperate regions. ‘In these temperate regions you were born,’ he
pleaded, ‘and you have therefore a title to victory which your enemies
can never acquire. You have prudence, you have discipline, you have
skill and valour, and you will go forth, through the gift of God and the
privilege of St. Peter, absolved from all your sins. The consciousness
of this freedom shall soothe the toil of your journey, and death will
bring to you the benefits of a blessed martyrdom. Sufferings and torments
may perhaps await you. You may picture them to yourselves as the most
exquisite tortures, and the picture may perhaps fall short of the agony
which you may have to undergo; but your sufferings will redeem your souls
at the expense of your bodies. Go then on your errand of love, of love
for the faithful who in the lands overcome by the infidel cannot defend
themselves, of love which will put out of sight all the ties that bind
you to the spots which you have called your homes. Your homes, in truth,
they are not. For the Christian all the world is exile, and all the world
is at the same time his country. If you leave a rich patrimony here, a
better patrimony is promised to you in the Holy Land. They who die will
enter the mansions of heaven, while the living shall behold the sepulchre
of their Lord. Blessed are they who, taking this vow upon them, shall
inherit such a recompense: happy they who are led to such a conflict,
that they may share in such rewards.’
[Sidenote: The assent of the multitude.]
It was no wonder that words thus striking chords of feeling already
stretched to intensity should be interrupted with the passionate cry
‘It is the will of God! It is the will of God!’ which broke from the
assembled multitude. ‘It is, in truth, his will,’ added the pontiff, ‘and
let these words be your war-cry when you unsheath your swords against the
enemy. You are soldiers of the cross: wear, then, on your breasts or on
your shoulders the blood-red sign of Him who died for the salvation of
your souls. Wear it as a token that his help will never fail you: wear it
as the pledge of a vow which can never be recalled.’
[Sidenote: The cross and the vow of the crusaders.]
By these words the war now proclaimed against the Turks received the name
which has become a general title for all wars or hostile undertakings
carried on in the name of religion. Thousands hastened at once to put on
the badge and so to take their place among the ranks of the crusaders.
The rival claims of the anti-pope withheld Urban himself from taking the
pledge to which he was clamorously invited; and worldly prudence alone
may have suggested the wisdom of standing aloof from a conflict in which
disaster to a Roman pontiff would certainly be regarded as a visible sign
of the divine displeasure. Of the clergy, the first to assume the cross
was Adhemar (Aymer), bishop of Puy, and as his reward he received the
powers and dignity of papal legate. At the head of the laity Raymond,
count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence, promised
through his ambassadors to be ready by the Feast of the Assumption,
August 15, next following the council, the day fixed for the departure of
the crusading hosts for Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Motives of the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1058-9.]
[Sidenote: Financial effect of the crusade.]
Thus was the die cast for a venture which in the eye of a keen-sighted
general or a far-seeing statesman should have boded little good, but
which held out irresistible attractions for the great mass of the
people,—attractions which continued to draw hundreds and thousands still
to the unknown and mysterious East, when a long series of disasters had
proved that the journey to Jerusalem was in all likelihood a journey to
the grave. For the really sincere and devout, whose lives had been passed
without reproach and who could await the future with a clear conscience,
there was the deep sense of binding duty, the yearning to be brought
nearer whether on earth or in heaven to the Master whom they loved. For
the feudal chieftain there was the fierce pastime of war which formed the
main occupation and perhaps the only delight of his life, with the wild
excitement produced by the thought that the indulgence of his passions
had now become a solemn act of religion. There was also the prospect
of vast and permanent conquest; and the duke or count who left a fair
domain behind him might look forward to the chance of winning a realm as
splendid as that which Robert Guiscard and his Normans had won in Apulia
and Sicily. For the common herd and those whom gross living had rendered
moral cowards, there was the offer of a method by which they might wipe
away their guilt without changing their character and disposition. Not a
few might be caught by the philosophy of the abbot Guibert, who boldly
drew a parallel between the crusades and holy orders or monachism. That
height of perfection which ecclesiastics might reach in their own sphere
was now attainable by laymen through an enterprise in which their usual
license and habits of life would win them the favour of God not less
than the most unsparing austerity of the monk or the priest. It was, in
short, a new mode of salvation, and they who were hurrying along the
broad road to destruction now found that the taking of a vow converted
it into the narrow and rugged path to heaven. Nor was the number few
of those for whom this convenient arrangement was combined with some
solid temporal advantages. The cross on the breast or shoulder set
free from the clutches of his lord the burgher or the peasant attached
to the soil, opened the prison doors for malefactors of every kind,
released the debtor from the obligation of paying interest on his debts
while he wore the sacred badge, and placed him beyond the reach of his
creditors. Lastly, the episode of a crusade might be for the priest a
pleasant interruption to the dull routine of parochial work, to the monk
an agreeable change from the wearisome monotony of his conventual life.
The usurer and the creditor might fancy himself to be somewhat hardly
treated. Yet they were amongst the few to whom the crazy enterprise
(crazy not from the impracticability of its objects, but from the way
in which these were followed,) brought a solid benefit. The unthinking
throng might rush off to Palestine without making the least preparation
for their journey or their maintenance, in the blind faith that they
would be fed and clothed like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the
field. But for those who could judge more soberly, and for those who were
not willing to forego their luxuries or their pleasures, there was the
need of providing a store of the precious metals by means of which alone
their wishes could be gratified. The duke, who had to maintain a vast and
brilliant retinue, was compelled to mortgage his dominions; and thus for
the sum of ten thousand marks, wrung from the lower orders in the English
state, William Rufus obtained from his brother Robert the government of
his dukedom for five years, and took care that the prize so won should
not slip again from his grasp. Nobles and knights, setting off on the
crusade, all wished to sell land, all wished to buy arms and horses. The
arms and horses therefore became ruinously dear, the lands ridiculously
cheap. It is easy to see that the prudent trader, the cautious merchant,
the landowner whose eye was fixed on the main chance, would stand at an
enormous advantage.
[Sidenote: Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and the
clergy.]
[Sidenote: Dispensing power of the pope.]
But if these were gainers, the gains of the pope and the sacerdotal army
of which he was the chief were greater still. If the proclamation of the
crusader rendered all private warfare a treason against Christendom,
if it set free even the noble from the power of the overlord, and made
the latter incapable of summoning his vassal to his standard, if the
crusader, as the soldier of the Church, was released from every other
obligation, these tremendous changes had been wrought wholly by the power
of the pope and his hierarchy. In placing the dominions of all crusading
princes under the protection of the Church, the council of Clermont may
have provided for those chiefs a most inadequate defence; but it placed
the pope on a level above all earthly princes, and the power which
withheld the arm of the creditor from falling upon his debtor became a
vast dispensing authority, the possession of which would have delighted
the heart and realized the highest longings of Hildebrand. Urban did
not go to Palestine: but even there he was present in the person of
his legate Adhemar, and thus claimed the guidance of a war sanctified
by his blessing and undertaken in the cause of the Church. The vows of
the crusader were taken, again, by many who had no present intention of
fulfilling them. Sickness, or misfortune, or qualms of conscience might
lead them to assume the fatal sign; but from that moment until they set
off on their journey they put themselves in the power of the pope, who
sometimes used with cruel effect the hold thus obtained over emperors and
kings.
[Sidenote: Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal system.]
Kings, it is true, reaped no small benefit from the impulse which drove
their vassals to the Holy Sepulchre; and the absorption of the smaller
into larger fiefs and of these again into royal domain, tended to that
extension of the sovereign power which ultimately broke up the feudal
system. But these results were far distant: the immediate harvest was
gathered by the pope.
[Sidenote: Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy.]
Thus far he had appeared by his representatives in general or local
councils; by these he had interfered in the settlement of disputes,
through these he had negotiated with princes. But the preaching of the
crusades furnished a reason or a pretext for sending his legates into
every land. Their primary business was to stir up the hearts of the
faithful or to keep them up to fever heat: but scarcely less important
was the task of collecting money for the support of the crusading armies.
On the clergy, whether secular or regular, and on the monastic orders,
the pope had a claim which they dared not to call into question, and the
subsidies exacted or enjoined for this purpose were paid with a real or a
feigned cheerfulness. To the laity the prayer for voluntary alms assumed
practically the form of a demand. Refusal would imply lukewarmness in the
faith, if not positive heresy; and the imputation could not be incurred
without peril of temporal and even of eternal ruin. Both for the clergy
and the laity the charge for a special and temporary purpose became
a permanent tax, the proceeds of which the pope might expend on any
objects, and in the theory of the time he could spend them on none which
were not good.
[Sidenote: Alienation and pledging or mortgaging of lands.]
But for the impost thus laid upon them the clergy had a compensation
which by the nature of the case could not be enjoyed by the laity. If
a bishop put on the cross he might lay a burden on his estates, but he
could not alienate them, as his right over them ceased with his death;
but in point of fact it was chiefly the prelates and the monastic
houses that became guardians or mortgagees of lands belonging to men who
had betaken themselves to the Holy Land. The Jews, who amassed immense
profits on their loans to needy crusaders, had nothing to do with the
cultivation of the soil, and in most countries could not be owners of it.
But the Church was everywhere ready with its protection and its money;
nor were there wanting enthusiasts who, as they fixed the blood-red
cross on their garment, gave up all their lands and worldly goods to the
spiritual body whose prayers they regarded as a more than sufficient
recompense. Even they who left the Church merely the guardian of their
estates in their absence might die in the East; and if they died without
heirs the guardians became absolute owners. If they came back, toil and
disappointment had often so worn them down that they took refuge in a
cloister and handed over to the fraternity whatever of their property
might still remain to them. The vast gains thus accruing were all over
and beyond the accumulations amassed from the bequests of ordinary or
extraordinary penitents on their death-beds or the gifts of enthusiastic
devotees during their lifetime; and all the land so gained to the Church
was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the sovereign who professed
to rule the country, and thus formed a kingdom within a kingdom, the
spiritual domain threatening constantly to absorb that of the secular
monarch. A collision, followed by violent and iniquitous spoliation,
became inevitable; and when the time was come the great fabric of
ecclesiastical wealth was plundered and demolished.
[Sidenote: The crusades not national enterprises.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1085. Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II.]
In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom thus stood committed, the
several nations or countries of Europe took very equal parts; or,
rather, no nation, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact
we have the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent
or average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings.
For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a
base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of individual
adventurers who either went without making any provisions for their
journey or provided for their own needs and those of their followers
from their own resources. The number of these adventurers were naturally
determined by the political conditions of the country from which they
came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the anti-pope went far
towards chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army
came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the
sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer
home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahomedan dominion
which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry
the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years before
the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled
by Alfonso, king of Gallicia: the kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty
years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither
and thither through the countries of northern Europe, the Christians of
Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing with
the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the Germans the
summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative
coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust
by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently
eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the
aged duke Guelf of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous
journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the
distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement
to follow their example. In England the English were too much weighed
down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in
strengthening their position, and the king, William the Red, more ready
to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any
risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands extending from
the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with
impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of thousands, who could
not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried
away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom.
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under
Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.]
Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders
had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women,
neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be
attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the
holy city. Mere charity may justify the belief that some even amongst
these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction
that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority
looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of any sin,
there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single quality
needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise, is absolutely
certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance, Peter undertook
the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some
pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this
motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together. At
Cologne they parted company; and 15,000 under the penniless Walter made
their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onwards a host
which swelled gradually on the march to about 40,000.
[Sidenote: Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk.]
Another army or horde of perhaps 20,000 marched under the guidance of
Emico, count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk Gotschalk, a
man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of his motives.
Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of 200,000 men, women, and
children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have supposed, by
banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and
Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde
no pretence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning freely, it would
seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands
through which they marched, while 3,000 horsemen, headed by some counts
and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to
share their spoil.
[Sidenote: Bloody persecutions of the Jews.]
[Sidenote: The Jews taken under the protection of the empire.]
But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was
to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by
plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk
was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the
descendants of those who had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of
Verdun and Treves, and of the great cities on the Rhine, ran red with
the blood of their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended
conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their
property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming
fires. Thus auspiciously began the mighty enterprise on which pope
Urban had insisted as the first duty of all Christians; and thus early
did the result of his preaching tend to revive the waning power of the
emperor, who interposed his authority to this merciless onslaught on a
peaceable and useful class of his subjects. The Jews were taken under the
protection of the empire, and for the time the change was a real relief.
Their posterity found to their cost that their guardian might in his turn
become their plunderer and tormentor.
[Sidenote: March of Walter and his followers through Hungary and
Bulgaria.]
A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and
Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the
Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of
the inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their misdeeds
provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction; and none perhaps
would have reached Constantinople, if the imperial commander at Naissos
had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and
guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These succours
involved some costs; and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men
amongst the pilgrims, and especially of the women and children, who were
seized to provide the necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of
the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos.]
Of such a rabble rout the Emperor Alexios needed not to be afraid. He
had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks,
and Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin
Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had
refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the
arrival of their fellow crusaders; and consulting the safety of his
people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporos, and
pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest
from the unbelievers.
[Sidenote: Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan.]
Alexios wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with
an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian Sultan David,
whose surname Kilidje Arslan marked him out as the Sword of the Lion.
The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to
Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was
no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings
that their companions had carried the walls of Nice (Nikaia), and were
revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde
rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones
alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the
forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed
the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In
this wild expedition not less, it is said, than 300,000 human beings had
already paid the penalty of their lives.
[Sidenote: Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade.]
Still the first crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the
seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success
it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took
part in it. The Western emperor, Henry IV., the representative of Charles
the Great was the enemy of the pope; Philip I., king of France, had been
excommunicated by Urban in the council of Clermont; the sovereigns of
Denmark, Scotland, Sweden and Poland were as yet scarcely brought within
the community of European monarchs; the Spanish kings had their crusades
ready made at home; and we have already seen that the English William
II., was more intent on acquiring dukedoms than on running the risk of
a blessed martyrdom at the gates of Jerusalem. The task of setting up a
Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of the second
order.
[Sidenote: Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and Eustace.]
Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey,
of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and
duke of Lothringen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV.,
the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount
the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might hope that
his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege.
Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by
his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life, an influence
which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than 80,000 infantry
and 10,000 horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace,
count of Boulogne.
[Sidenote: Hugh of Vermandois.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Normandy.]
Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey’s colleagues was Hugh, count of
Vermandois, whose surname the Great has been ascribed by some to his
birth as the brother of Philip I., the French king, by others merely to
his stature as ‘Hugh the long.’ With him may be placed the Norman duke
Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who
had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that
for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The picture drawn of him is
indeed not unlike that of the forefather of the Edomite tribes. Careless
of the future, open in his friendship or his enmity, free from duplicity
in himself and unsuspicious of treachery in others, charming others
and injuring himself by his light-hearted cheerfulness and his lavish
generosity, Robert was a man whom the total lack of the qualities which
marked his iron-hearted father brought to a horrible captivity and death
in the dungeons of Cardiff Castle.
[Sidenote: Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres.]
The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from northern
Europe is completed with the names of Robert, count of Flanders, whom
his followers lauded as the Sword and Lance of the Christians, and of
Stephen, count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, the possessor, if we
choose to believe the tale, of 365 castles, and as rich in his eloquence
as in his fortresses. The same arithmetic would have us think that the
minor chiefs were more numerous than the champions whom Agamemnon led to
the Trojan war; and the assertion is perhaps as much and as little to be
credited as the catalogue of Greek warriors in the Iliad.
[Sidenote: Adhemar bishop of Puy.]
[Sidenote: Raymond of Toulouse.]
Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the
southern bands, was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) bishop of Puy—a
leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering
soldiers under his banner. A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we
are told, the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, count of
Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare,
and won for himself a mingled reputation for wisdom and haughtiness,
obstinacy and greed.
[Sidenote: Bohemond.]
Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly
more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert
Guiscard, whom we have seen fighting at Dyrrhachium and victorious at
Larissa (p. 23), looked to the crusade as a means by which he might
regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the
northern shores of the Egean. Nay, if we are to believe William of
Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very
purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as
his inheritance, and in part of enabling the pontiff to suppress all
opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger
son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality
of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the
Eastern emperor.
[Sidenote: Tancred.]
Far above his companion Bohemond, rises his cousin Tancred, the son of
the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert
Guiscard; and his reputation comes not from his wealth or the greatness
of his following, but from the qualities of mind and person which raised
him indefinitely nearer than his fellows to the standard of the ‘very
gentle perfect knight’ of Chaucer. In Tancred was seen the embodiment of
those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the
crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted marvellous
strength and splendour.
[Sidenote: Cause and effect of chivalry.]
[Sidenote: Knighthood.]
[Sidenote: Courtesy.]
When in the council of Clermont pope Urban dwelt on the cowardice and
ignoble fears of the Turks, he probably touched a chord which grated on
the more generous and enthusiastic amongst his hearers, and was in fact
speaking as a priest when with greater wisdom he should have used the
language of a general. There can be little doubt that the finer spirits
of the age were moved by the eager desire of rescuing a crowd of helpless
Christians from conquerors whose might it was impossible for them to
resist, and who were worthy antagonists even for the noblest knights
of Latin and Teutonic Christendom. The rescue of this feeble multitude
could be effected only at the cost of a great sacrifice,—the sacrifice
of houses and lands, of luxuries and pleasures: and the consciousness of
large sacrifices, cheerfully made for the weak and suffering, is amongst
the highest feelings which may be awakened in the human heart. Thus
in the most noble-minded and disinterested of the crusading champions
there was distinctly a combination of two ideas, seemingly discordant,
yet working together to produce one definite moral result. These were
the indignation with which they regarded the tyranny exercised over the
Christians of the East, and the involuntary respect and even admiration
which they felt for the conquerors as the most redoubtable warriors of
the age next to the foremost knights of Christendom. The former feeling
would impel them to the most desperate efforts for the recovery of the
Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre; the latter would place checks dimly
recognized and not always heeded on the ferocious warfare with which
they would without scruple seek to sweep away all meaner or more savage
enemies. So far as he was actuated by such motives, the crusader was
cultivating in himself the germs of forbearance and toleration which
must at once to whatever extent soften the horrors of war and which
would in the end yield more solid and satisfying fruits. In this same
direction the influence of the Church was felt with constantly increasing
power. It had been her aim to curb, when she could not repress, the
violence of her children, and to establish by a solemn sanction that
Truce of God which prevented the practice of private war from becoming
a burden too heavy for the earth to bear. But in the expedition for the
delivery of the Holy Land war itself was sanctified; and the knight,
initiated even in past years by rites, which, heathen in their origin,
had been made sacred by the Church, was raised almost to the level of
the priest and the monk. Henceforth the young aspirant for the knightly
dignity and office was treated much as the catechumens had been treated
in the first Christian centuries. He must enter on his work with clean
thoughts and pure conscience, and the spotless garment of the catechumen,
purified by his long fast, was reproduced in the white robe which the
young squire put on after cleansing his body in the bath, while the
profession of baptism was repeated in the knightly vow which (after a
special confession of sin followed by absolution) pledged the young
man to deal justly, truly, and generously, defending the oppressed,
succouring the needy and helpless, and everywhere showing himself the
unsparing antagonist of all tyrants and evil-doers. In an especial degree
he was to be the champion of women, the protector of children; and he
rose from his knees before the assembled clergy, dubbed a knight by the
sword of his godfather in the names of God, of our Lady, and of St.
Michael, or St. George. The nearest to the heart of those who uttered
this formula, as to that of the young knight, was the name of the Virgin
Mother, whose name, it would seem, has fascinated multitudes without
curing them of savage treachery and bloodthirsty ferocity. In feudal
phrase she was his Lady (Notre Dame), as the crucified Jesus was his Lord
(Notre Seigneur); and the adoring and humble love which he bore for her
was held to sanctify and to be reflected in the devotion which he felt
for every noble lady and more especially for the one favoured dame who
became the idol of his heart, a star to be worshipped at a distance,
if not a queen at whose feet he might throw himself in an ecstacy of
passion. This being whom he delighted to picture to himself as the
peerless ideal of womanhood might be the wife of another man; and these
extravagant fancies produced not unfrequently the most lamentable and
ruinous results. But the knightly or chivalrous spirit, thus sometimes
led astray, tended nevertheless to impose moral checks on rude and savage
minds which had never felt them before; and the growth of this spirit was
ensured chiefly by the crusaders. The iniquities wrought by the soldiers
of the Cross were fearful indeed; but the horrors of the warfare were in
some small measure softened by the honour which the foremost warriors
on both sides paid each to the bravery and good faith of the other; and
this feeling expressed itself in a word which even now has by no means
lost its meaning. The quality of courtesy so named displayed itself in
the readiness to give place to another where strength and power might
have refused all concessions. It was closely allied to the Christian
qualities of meekness and mercy, and any approach to this heavenly
temper was a gain indeed in a brutalized and ferocious age. The highest
glory of the crusading knight was to be a mirror of courtesy: and this
glory is especially associated with the name of Tancred. Tancred lived,
fought, and conquered: the Rinaldo whom Tasso paints in his epic poem
on the deliverance of Jerusalem is a being of cloudland like the Greek
Achilleus, the Trojan Hektor, and the Persian Rustam.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. August. Departure of the main army of the
crusaders under Godfrey.]
The miserable remnant of 3,000 men who escaped from the field of blood
before the city of the Seljukian Sultan (p. 41), found a refuge in
Byzantine territory about the time when the better appointed armies
of the crusaders were setting off on their eastward journey. The most
disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks
of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon who led them
safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies
of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands
they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of
Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away
in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian king demanded
as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general: the demand was refused,
and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for
a free passage and a free market; but although these were granted, it
was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as
his army or horde passed through the country. The mischief might have
been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly as
a friendly escort but really as cautious warders kept close to the
crusading hosts.
[Sidenote: Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois.]
At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey
learnt that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the
Greek emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights in golden armour, and
who styled himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the
Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With
Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and
some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy; and
the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in
breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had
in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal. With little regard to order the
chiefs determined to cross the sea as best they might. Hugh embarked
at Bari; and if we may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the
worshipper of her father Alexios, his fleet was broken by a tempest
which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium
(Durazzo), of which John Comnenos, the nephew of the emperor, was at
this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good
pleasure of Alexios should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw
at once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders
conducted with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here
really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh
was so completely won by the charm of manner which Alexios well knew
how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and declaring himself
his man, he promised to do what he could to induce others to follow his
example.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. Christmas. Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of
Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: Policy of the emperor Alexios.]
From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexios, demanding the
immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey resumed
his march, treating the land through which he passed as an enemy’s
country, until by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before the
walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexios were
aroused by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they quickened
into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their way
under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact of
his mission as a crusader, he knew little or nothing: but in Bohemond he
saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his empire.
This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert
into open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties urged through
his envoys before Urban II. in the council of Piacenza; and his mind was
divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to their destination
and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and the desire to retain
a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they
might make in Syria.
[Sidenote: Compact between Alexios and the crusaders.]
Hugh was sent back to Godfrey’s camp; but the quarrel was patched up,
rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than
to restore friendship. But it was of the first importance for Alexios
that he should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round
his capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he
succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexios pledged them his word
that he would supply them with food and aid them in their eastward march,
and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On the
other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns,
gave their fealty to the emperor as their liege lord only for the time
during which they might remain within his borders, and undertook to
restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from
the empire. In order to secure this treaty Alexios had been compelled
to go through the fatigue of interminable audiences with the Western
warriors and to put up with not a little insolence. The effrontery of
a crusader, who flinging himself on the imperial throne declared that
he saw no reason for standing while one rustic remained seated, was
denounced as intolerable rudeness even by his companions; but Robert,
count of Paris, if indeed it was he, closed a brief career not many weeks
later, and is more conspicuous in modern romance than in the pages of
mediæval historians.
[Sidenote: Homage of the crusaders to Alexios.]
The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within him when on reaching
Constantinople he found that his colleagues, instead of remaining
independent chiefs, had made themselves vassals of the Byzantine
monarch. But Alexios was vigorously aided by Robert of Flanders, whose
friendly offices were the result of an alliance made with his father
eight years before; and Bohemond soon saw that he must in appearance
follow the example of his comrades, whatever course it might suit him
to take hereafter. He became the guest of the emperor, listened with
complacency to his flatteries, accepted a magnificent gift or bribe,
and accompanied his submission with a request for the office of Grand
Domestic, or general of the East. The emperor put him off with the
promise of an independent principality, and turned with more genuine
warmth to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This disinterested crusader
was anxious only to fulfill his vows; and Alexios felt that he was making
no sacrifice and entering into no inconvenient engagements by adopting
him as his son.
[Sidenote: Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Constantinople.]
The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome the opposition of
Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of
Toulouse, who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to
set out on his crusade. He should never make another journey, he said,
and he was determined to be well prepared. Wishing to avoid, so far
as he could, the lines of march chosen by the chiefs who had preceded
him, he took the road through Lombardy. Thus far his march was easily
accomplished: but things wore a different look when he reached the savage
mountains and desolate valleys of Dalmatia and Slavonia. The people had
driven their cattle (and their cattle formed practically their whole
property) into inaccessible glens: and instead of plundering others the
crusaders found themselves harassed and their stragglers cut off by
thieves and murderers. Raymond retaliated by cutting off the hands and
noses of all who were taken prisoners and putting out their eyes; and the
wrath of the natives was roused to desperate resistance. At Scodra he
entered into some sort of agreement with the Servian chief Bodin; but the
country could yield little for the support of this vast army, which was
compelled to struggle onwards under dire difficulties. It is astonishing
to hear that Raymond could still speak of himself as the leader of a
hundred thousand warriors, when he refused flatly to do homage to the
Greek emperor.
[Sidenote: Refusal of Raymond to do homage.]
The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the
French king. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexios on equal
terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he
was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat, which was
never forgiven, that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found
on the side of the emperor. But Alexios soon saw that in Raymond he had
to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He
took his measures accordingly, and winning the heart of the old warrior,
although he failed to compel his obedience, he confessed to him his
dislike of the rude and noisy habits of the Franks and his deep-seated
fears of Bohemond. The admiration of Anna Comnena was as great as the
esteem professed for him by her father. Raymond in her fervent language
shone among the barbarians as the sun among the stars of heaven.
[Sidenote: Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1097. March.]
While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond,
Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of
sending across the Bosporos the swarms which might soon become an army
of devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them
a welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed
since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the
soil of Asia. It was well to place even a narrow strait of sea between
himself and these dangerous friends, who had threatened him at first with
all the horrors of savage war. The rumour had got abroad that Alexios
meant to hem them in among marshes, and leave them there to starve; and
an assault of the crusaders on the suburbs showed the emperor what he
might expect, if these suspicions were not quieted. Probably he had not
intended to entrap them to their death: but he had felt less scruple
in submitting them to cheatings with debased coin and to extortions
which carried with them no sense of novelty for his own people. Even
these he found it politic to abandon, and so zealously did he employ an
opposite method that for the time the crusaders seemed to have become his
mercenaries.
[Sidenote: Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos.]
Godfrey’s men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the
Bosporos, than all the vessels which had transported them were brought
back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of
large gifts, Alexios in like manner freed the neighbourhood of his
capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came, they were
hurried across, and the emperor breathed more freely when, on the feast
of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore.
[Sidenote: Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and the Greeks.]
[Sidenote: Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy.]
The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger
arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men,
marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough
antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of
life, in the first notions of civilization, law, and duty. For the Greeks
feudalism was a thing of the remote past; in other words, was a thing
unknown. To get at a state resembling that of Western Europe they would
have had to go back for nearly twenty centuries—to the days of Solon and
of the Thessalian and Theban nobility, who were among the most efficient
allies of Xerxes. For the crusading armies or rather for their chiefs
(of the common herd there was no need to take any account), nothing was
so hateful as a central authority which pressed on all orders in the
state alike: nothing was so precious as local tyranny and the right
of private war, which respected neither person nor property. For the
subjects of the Eastern empire the protection of person and property was
everything, and in order to secure this they were willing to put up with
a large amount of oppression and of corruption in their governors. In a
sense not so high perhaps as that which the words bore in the days of
Herodotos, law was still their king; and of public law the Latins could
scarcely be said to have any conception. Nor must we forget the vast gulf
which separated the Eastern from the Western clergy. The latter were now
becoming well broken into the yoke of celibacy which had been finally
thrust upon them by Damiani and Hildebrand; for the former marriage was
a condition for the very reception of their orders. The Latin clergy had
by this change been converted into a close order or caste, which looked
up to the Roman pontiff as their head and hated the thought of allegiance
to any temporal ruler. This empire within an empire was an idea which had
not dawned on the Greek or the Eastern mind; and the clergy of the West
despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission to the
secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of
bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields
of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their
ferocity. Harmony between nations and races under such conditions is as
hopeless as the voluntary mingling of oil and water; and the result of
contact was an exasperation of the suspicion, jealousy, and hatred which
the one side felt instinctively for the supposed treachery, lying, and
violence of the other.
[Sidenote: Numbers of the crusaders.]
Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the Hellespont and the
Bosporos a host, we may well believe more vast than that which Xerxes
drove before him for the invasion of Europe, and leaving behind it in
utter insignificance the scanty force with which Alexander attempted and
achieved the conquest of Asia. When tribes or a nation pour out their
whole population, men, women, and children alike, there is practically no
limit to the numbers which may be set in motion; nor is it any tax on
our credulity to believe that a hundred thousand horsemen, fully armed
in the light coats of mail worn during the first crusading age, were
marshalled on the Bithynian plains, even if we put aside as an absurd
exaggeration the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that the whole
body of the crusaders amounted to not less than six millions.
[Sidenote: June. Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia).]
[Sidenote: July 4. Battle of Dorylaion.]
Their strength and valour were soon to be tested. They were now face
to face with the Turks on whose cowardice Urban II. had enlarged with
so much complacency before the council of Clermont. The Sultan David,
or Kilidje Arslan (p. 41), placed his family and treasures in his
capital city of Nice (Nikaia), and retreated with 50,000 horsemen to the
mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of
the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and for seven
weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman
warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on
which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was
protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had
command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexios sent thither
on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a double
blockade, submitted to the emperor, who was in no way anxious to see the
crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making ready for the
last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the walls.
Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers,
for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which
seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles: but Alexios, with gifts,
which added force to his words, professed that his only desire now, as
it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they
to go many stages before they found themselves again confronted with
their adversary. The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion,
and seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than
once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal
bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even
those seemed likely to be borne down, they received timely succours from
Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from bishop Adhemar of Puy and from
Raymond, count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed
likely that they would long hold out, when the appearance of the last
division of Raymond’s army filled them with the fear that a new host was
upon them.
[Sidenote: March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel between Baldwin and Tancred at Tarsus.]
The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights
belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying
away to enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts
were sweeping onwards, passing Cogni (Ikonion, Iconium), Erekli
(Herakleia), and the Pisidian Antioch. Their dangers were great; their
sufferings terrible. The son of Kilidje Arslan had hurried on before them
with ten thousand horsemen, and declared before the gates of each city
that they came as conquerors, not as fugitives. They had ravaged the
lands as they came along; in the town they sacked the churches, plundered
the houses, emptied the granaries; and the crusaders who followed them
had to journey over a naked soil under the burning Phrygian sun. Hundreds
died from the heat: and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage
horses which had perished. At length Tancred with his troop found
himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted
apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed
of the crusaders. Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen
jealousy the banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and
insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice of the
people and his own promise to protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin
changed their humour, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus
was followed by an attempt at private war between Tancred and Baldwin,
in which the troops of Tancred were overborne. So early was the first
harvest of murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the cross.
It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main army again
began its march, to undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and
peril.
[Sidenote: Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin.]
A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and rout them as
they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond,
recovering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, suffering from wounds
inflicted by a bear, have done much to help them. But for the present
their enemies were dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened
with eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the Greek or
Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As Alexios had done to his brother, so this
chief welcomed Baldwin as his son; but Baldwin, having once entered into
the city, cared nothing for the means which had brought him thither,
and the death of his adoptive father was followed by the establishment
at Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, or,
as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the
unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor had some of
the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on
the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterwards fell
into Baldwin’s hands, and was put to death.
[Sidenote: Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1097. Oct.]
Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was advancing towards the Syrian
capital, that ancient and luxurious city whose fame had gone over the
whole Roman world for its magnificence, its unbounded wealth, its soft
delights, and its unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendour
had passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins; its buildings were in
some parts crumbling away or had already fallen; but against assailants
utterly ignorant and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of
cities it was still a formidable position. Nor could they invest it until
they had passed the iron bridge (so called from its iron-plated gates) of
nine stone arches, which spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of
nine miles from the city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge
of Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of Godfrey; and
in the language of an age which delighted in round numbers, a hundred
thousand warriors hurried across to seize the splendid prize which now
seemed almost within their grasp.
[Sidenote: Siege of Antioch.]
But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to
despise the Greeks, and who had not yet learnt to respect the valour
of the Latins. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian
governor Baghasian had sent away, as useless, if not mischievous, most
of the Christians within the town; and the crusading chiefs had begun
to discuss the prudence of postponing all operations till the spring,
when Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted that delay
would imply fear, and that the imputation of cowardice would ensure the
paralysis of their enterprise. The city was therefore at once invested,
so far as the forces of the crusaders could suffice to encircle it;
and a siege began which in the eyes of the military historian must be
absolutely without interest, and of which the issue was decided by
paroxysms of fanatical vehemence on the one side, and by lack not of
bravery but of generalship on the other. Of the eastern and northern
walls the blockade was complete; of the west it was partial; and the
failure to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of the five
gates of the city, left the movements of the Turks in this direction free.
[Sidenote: Folly of the besiegers.]
But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of death. The wealth
of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible
temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise
an endless feast. The cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted
with besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings,
it is said, of all that passed in the crusading camp from some Greek and
Armenian Christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this
knowledge they availed themselves in planning the sallies by which they
caused great distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and devices
seemed to produce no result beyond the waste of time, and who felt
perhaps that they had done something when they blocked up the gate of the
bridge with huge stones dug from the neighbouring quarries.
[Sidenote: Famine in the crusading camp.]
Three months passed away; and the crusaders found themselves not
conquerors but in desperate straits from famine. The winter rains had
turned the land round their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left
them more and more unable to resist the pestilential diseases which were
rapidly thinning their numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and
Tancred filled the camp with food: it was again recklessly wasted. The
second famine scared away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor
Alexios; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps still more disgusted
by the desertion of William of Melun, called the Carpenter, from the
sledge-hammer blows which he dealt out in battle. Hunger obtained a
victory even over the hermit Peter, who was stealing away with William of
Melun, when he with his companion was caught by Tancred and brought back
to the tent of Bohemond.
[Sidenote: Arrival of envoys from the Fatimite sultan of Egypt.]
For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors
from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that country the progress of the
crusading arms had thus far brought with it but little dissatisfaction.
The humiliation of the Seljukian Turks could not fail to bring gain to
himself, if the flood of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back
in time. His generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre; and when the Fatimite
once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the crusaders’
camp to announce the deliverance of the Holy Land from its oppressors,
to assure to all unarmed and peaceable pilgrims a month’s unmolested
sojourn in Jerusalem, and to promise them his aid during their march, on
condition that they should acknowledge his supremacy within the limits of
his Syrian empire.
[Sidenote: Their terms rejected by the crusaders.]
The arguments and threats of the caliph were alike thrown away. The
Latin chiefs disclaimed all interest in the feuds and quarrels of rival
sultans and in the fortunes of Mahomedan sects. God Himself had destined
Jerusalem for the Christians, and if any held it who were not Christians,
these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion
or their death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer, and
still more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence
of a camp in which they had expected to see a terrible spectacle of
disorder and misery.
[Sidenote: Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1098. March.]
The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need
of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Cæsarea, Aleppo, and
other places, when they were cut off by Bohemond and Raymond, who sent a
multitude of heads to the envoys of the Fatimite caliph, and discharged
many hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch. The Turks
had their opportunity for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and
Genoese ships at the mouth of the Orontes drew off the greater part of
the besieging army. The crusaders were returning with provisions and
arms, when their enemies started upon them from an ambuscade. The battle
was fierce: but the defeat of Raymond which threatened dire disaster was
changed into victory on the arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert,
whose exploits equalled or surpassed, if we are to believe the story,
even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram. Hundreds, if not thousands,
of Turks fell. Their bodies were buried by their comrades in the cemetery
without the walls: the Christians dug them up, severed the heads from the
trunks, and paraded the ghastly trophies on their pikes, not forgetting
to send a goodly number to the Egyptian caliph, by way of showing how his
Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The picture is disgusting; but if
we shut our eyes to these loathsome details, the truth of the history is
gone. We are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is right that we
should know this.
[Sidenote: Plan of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch.]
The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce quarrel about a
splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift for the former, had been
seized by an Armenian chief and sent to the latter. But there was now
more serious business on hand. Rumour spoke of the near approach of a
Persian army, and the besieged under the plea of wishing to arrange terms
of capitulation obtained a truce which they sought probably only for the
sake of gaining time. The days passed by, but no offers were made; and
their disposition was shown by seizing a crusading knight in the groves
near the city, and tearing his body in pieces. The Latins returned with
increased fury to the siege: but the defence, although more feeble,
was still protracted, and Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud
might succeed where force had failed, but that from fraud he might reap
not safety merely but wealth and greatness. His plans were laid with a
renegade Christian named Phirouz (high in the favour of the governor),
with whom he had come into contact either during the truce or in some
other way. By splendid promises he ensured the zealous aid of his new
ally, and then came forward in the council with the assurance that he
could place the city in their hands, but that he could do this only on
condition that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. His
claim was angrily opposed by the Provençal Raymond: but this opposition
was overruled, and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at
once.
[Sidenote: June. Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond.]
There was need for so doing. Rumours spread within the city that some
attempt was to be made to betray the place to the besiegers, and hints or
open accusations pointed out Phirouz as the traitor. Like other traitors,
the renegade thought it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the
guards of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal
was received as indubitable proof of his innocence and his faithfulness;
but he had made up his mind that Antioch should fall that night, and
that night by means of a rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty followers
(the ropes broke before more could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing
ten towers of which all the guards were killed, they opened a gate, and
the Christian host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of the
towers; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a carnage began in which
at first the assailants took no heed to distinguish between the Christian
and the Turk. In the awful confusion of the moment some of the besieged
made their way to the citadel, and there shut themselves in, ready
to resist to the death. Of the rest few escaped: ten thousand, it is
said, were massacred. Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the
besiegers’ lines; but fainting from loss of blood he fell from his horse,
and his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his groans, and
striking off his head, carried the prize to the camp of the conquerors.
Phirouz lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his career as
a thief.
[Sidenote: Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga.]
The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance; and
their feasting was accompanied by the wildest riot and the most filthy
debauchery. But if heedless waste may have been one of the most venial
of their sins, it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which
spoke of the approach of the Persians were not false. The Turks within
the citadel suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged,
and that the Christians were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga prince
of Mosul and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan. The old horrors of famine
were now repeated, but in greater intensity; and the doom of the Latin
host seemed to be sealed.
[Sidenote: Desertion of Stephen of Chartres.]
Stephen count of Chartres had deserted his companions before the fall of
the city; others now followed his example, and with him set out on their
return to Europe. In Phrygia Stephen encountered the emperor Alexios, who
was marching to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but
with a force of well appointed pilgrims who had reached Constantinople
after the departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The story told by Stephen
drove out of his head every thought except that of his own safety. The
order for retreat was given; and the pilgrim warriors not less than
the Greeks were compelled to turn their faces westwards. In vain Guy,
a brother of Bohemond, pleaded his duty and his vow. His words were
unheeded; and his indignation wrung from him the desperate assertion that
if the Divine Being were omnipotent, He would not suffer such things to
be done.
[Sidenote: Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch.]
[Sidenote: The discovery of the Holy Lance.]
In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair.
Discipline had well nigh come to an end, and so obstinate was their
refusal to bear arms any longer, that Bohemond resolved to burn them out
of their quarters. These were consumed by the flames, which spread so
rapidly as to fill him with fear that he had destroyed not only their
dwellings but his whole principality. His experiment brought the men
back to their duty: but so despondingly was their work done that but
for some signal succour the end, it was manifest, must soon come. In a
credulous age such succour at the darkest hour, if obtained at all, will
generally be obtained through miracle. A Lombard priest came forward, to
whom St. Ambrose of Milan had declared in a vision that the third year
of the crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem; another had seen
the Saviour Himself, attended by his Virgin-Mother and the Prince of
the Apostles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders
for yielding to the seductions of pagan women (as if the profession of
Christianity altered the colour and the guilt of a vice), and lastly had
received the distinct assurance that in five days they should have the
help which they needed. The hopes of the crusaders were roused; with
hope came a return of vigorous energy; and Peter Barthelemy, chaplain to
Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for recounting a vision which
was to be something more than a dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed
the fact that in the church of St. Peter lay hidden the steel head of
the spear which had pierced the side of the Redeemer as He hung upon the
cross; and that Holy Lance should win them victory over all their enemies
as surely as the spear which imparted irresistible power to the Knight
of the Sangreal. After two days of special devotion they were to search
for the long-lost weapon: on the third day the workmen began to dig; but
until the sun had set they toiled in vain. The darkness of night made it
easier for the chaplain to play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the
‘Antiquary,’ assigns to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins of St. Ruth.
Barefooted and with a single garment the priest went down into the pit.
For a time the strokes of his spade were heard, and then the sacred
relic was found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The priest
proclaimed his discovery; the people rushed into the church; and from the
church throughout the city spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm.
[Sidenote: Fate of the discoverer.]
Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life
for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by his master Raymond
brought that chief into ill odour with his comrades, and let loose
against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond.
Raymond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly
attacked him in his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance.
Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the flames,
as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel his flesh, and
were vehement in their rejoicings at the result which vindicated his
integrity. He had really received fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards
he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence.
[Sidenote: Battle of Antioch.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1098. June 28.]
[Sidenote: Defeat of Kerboga.]
[Sidenote: Antioch made a principality for Bohemond.]
The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance
of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer
the alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on
the faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city
and territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk
would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he
give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of
the hermit raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever heat; and on the
feast of St. Peter and St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions,
in remembrance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Raymond of
Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the
citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, bishop of
Puy; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now regarded
as a sign assuring them of the divine favour. They were prepared to see
good omens in everything; and they went in full confidence that departed
saints would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and smite
down the infidel. The fight (one of brute force on the Christian side, of
some little skill as well as strength on the other) had gone on for some
time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the
aid of Bohemond who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan; and Kerboga
was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in
white armour and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen on
the neighbouring heights. ‘The saints are coming to your aid,’ shouted
the bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the
martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their
nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with a force and fury
which were now irresistible. Their cavalry could do little. Two hundred
horses only remained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a
few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of iron,
and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat; and
with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men, women,
and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some
declared themselves Christians and were baptized; those who refused to
abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mohamedan territory. The city was
the prize of Bohemond; and in his keeping it remained, although Raymond
of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on
the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed
and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils taken from the
infidel. The Greek patriarch was again seated on his throne: but he held
his office at the good pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was
made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the bishop of Puy.
[Sidenote: Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople.]
Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main
body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had
wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless
wastes at the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were
content to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys
to the Greek emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want
of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks were the
pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexios, for in the weakening of both
lay his own strength; and he saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh,
not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded
him.
[Sidenote: Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy.]
[Sidenote: Siege and capture of Marra.]
Winter came; but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were
occupied in expeditions against neighbouring cities: but a more pressing
care was the plague which punished the foulness and disorder of the
pilgrims. A band of 1,500 Germans, recently landed in strong health and
full equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims
the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of
discouragement was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs
vainly entreated the pope to visit the city where the disciples of St.
Peter first received the Christian name; the people were disheartened
by the animosities and the selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs.
Raymond still hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted
that Bohemond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jordanic
tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last great enterprise
of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes
witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness
and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of
human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped
up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the
fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to avoid
falling into the hands of the Christians; to some Bohemond, tempted by a
large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun, he
ordered these to be brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the
rest he sent to the slave-markets of Antioch.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1099. May march of the crusaders from Antioch.]
A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the crusaders only spurred them
to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea
was in their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June.
The chiefs, remembering the departure of Tatikios (p. 62) with his
Byzantine troops for Cyprus, retorted that he had broken his compact,
and had therefore no further claims on their obedience. Hastening on
their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), overlooked by
the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence the
great Phenician cities had sent their seamen and their colonists, with
all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and the gates
of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to Ramlah,
a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders
came in sight of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the
cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the
scene hallowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the
crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation
which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, to kiss
the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been
suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their
armour and their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim’s garb and with bare
feet towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his
agony and his passion.
[Sidenote: June. Siege of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: July. Storming of the city.]
But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged, there was other
work to be done. The chiefs took up their posts on those sides from
which the nature of the ground gave most hope of a successful assault.
On the northern side were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and
Robert of Normandy; on the west Raymond with his Provencals. On the
fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and trusting
to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls.
Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very rashness of their
attack struck terror for a moment into their enemies. But the garrison
soon rallied, and the invaders were all driven back or hurled from
the ramparts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more
formal manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive of
the immediate neighbourhood would not supply fit materials for their
construction. These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a distance
of thirty miles; and the work of preparation was carried on under the
guidance of Gaston of Bearn by the crews of some Genoese vessels which
had recently anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days,
days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At Antioch they had been
distressed chiefly by famine: in place of this wretchedness they had here
the greater miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every
place which might serve as a receptacle of water; and in seeking for it
over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the harassing attacks
of Moslem horsemen. Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals
or discipline of the camp; and the ghost of Adhemar of Puy appeared to
rebuke the horrible sins which were drawing down upon them the judgments
of the Almighty. Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred,
who made up his quarrel with Raymond; and the enthusiasm of the crusaders
was again roused by the preaching of Arnold (p. 68) and the hermit Peter.
The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested
probably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns preceded
the laity round the walls of the city. The Saracens on the ramparts
mocked their devotions by throwing dirt upon crucifixes: but they paid
a terrible price for these insults. On the next day the final assault
began, and was carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute
force and carnage which marked all the operations of this merciless war.
The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat was suspended,
but the besieged were incessantly occupied in repairing the breaches made
by the assailants, while these were busied in making their dispositions
for the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that deadly struggle, when
it seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent, a
knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse
the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. ‘It is St.
George the Martyr who has come again to help us,’ cried Godfrey, and
at his words the crusaders started up without a feeling of fatigue and
carried everything before them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the
hour was three in the afternoon (the moment at which the last cry from
the cross announced the accomplishment of the Saviour’s passion), when
Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the cross,
on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother
Engelbert: the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the two Roberts stormed
the gate of St. Stephen; the Provencals climbed the ramparts by ladders,
and the conquest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little
while ago to the crucifixes were avenged by Godfrey’s orders in the
massacre of hundreds; the carnage in the mosque of Omar swept away the
bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood. The Jews were all burnt
alive in their synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up to
the porch of the temple, were (so the story goes) up to the knees in the
loathsome stream; and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing
the bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on
the sermon of Urban at Clermont.
[Sidenote: Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the Sepulchre.]
[Sidenote: Exaltation of Peter the Hermit.]
From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of God passed
to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of
pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with
profound contrition, Godfrey entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre
and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers
came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which
had vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish
earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more,
and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined,
led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the
closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from
their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the
spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to
take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar
of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions
of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good
will towards all men. With departed saints were mingled living men who
deserved all the honour which might be paid to them. The backsliding of
the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered
only the fiery eloquence which had first called them to their now
triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the heart of
Christendom to cut short the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birth-land
of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave
thanks to God who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was
done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more.
[Sidenote: Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem.]
On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred captives to whom
he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee
of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the
crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the
ungovernable excitement of victory: but it was resolved that on the next
day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice.
The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of
Tancred was roused not by their fate but by an act which called his
honour into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness,
old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys
and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigour, all were
mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed
together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse;
his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the
slave-market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets
of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners; but whether these
(like the women servants whom Odysseus strung up like sparrows after the
slaughter of the suitors) were butchered when their work was ended we are
not told.
[Sidenote: Compassion of Omar and Godfrey.]
Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done,
since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror and knelt outside the
church of Constantine, that his followers might not trespass within it on
the privileges of the Christians (p. 13). The contrast is at the least
marked between the caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy
Catholic Church.
[Sidenote: Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Ascalon.]
[Sidenote: Return of the pilgrims to Europe.]
When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose
a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only
appeared to whom the crown could fitly be offered. Baldwin was lord
of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen
of Chartres had returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to
stay; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had
mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also
by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where
his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on
ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling
the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem, nor take the title of
king. He would watch over his Master’s grave and the interests of his
worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the Holy
Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed
to do battle with the hosts of the Fatimite caliph of Egypt, who now felt
that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of
his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army
was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword
and standard of the sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell
to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. He
retained, with 300 knights under Tancred, only 2,000 foot soldiers for
the defence of his kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama
of the crusades.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.
[Sidenote: Reign of Godfrey.]
[Sidenote: Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem.]
The reign of Godfrey fell short by five days even of the brief period
of a single year; but it sufficed not only for the discomfiture of
the Egyptian sultan, but for the foundation of a kingdom resting on
an elaborate system of carefully defined laws. His conflict with the
Fatimite caliph was followed by a conflict with Daimbert, bishop of Pisa,
the new Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. As legate of the pope Pascal II.,
(Urban had died a fortnight after the fall of the Holy City, in other
words, before he could hear of the victory of the crusaders,) Daimbert
had invested Godfrey and Bohemond with their feudal possessions, and
he lost no time in asserting the papal claim by demanding immediate
recognition as the lord of Jerusalem and Jaffa. In each of these cities a
quarter was at once assigned to him, and the whole was to pass into his
hands if Godfrey should die without children. Such was the compact made
by the Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre; but it was not to pass
unchallenged.
[Sidenote: Assize of Jerusalem.]
We have seen Godfrey in the siege and conquest of Jerusalem wading with
exultation through a sea of human blood, seizing infants by their feet
and dashing them against the walls or whirling them over the battlements,
or aiding and abetting those who did so. But a few days or a few weeks
later this man was to be seen seated as an impartial judge among men
whom he, the king and sovereign, regarded as his equals, setting about
the grave task of compiling a code of laws on the only basis which can
serve as the foundation of true constitutional government,—the sanction,
namely, of the laws by the men who are to obey them. There was little
enough of freedom in the feudal system; and the system embodied in the
code popularly known as the Assize of Jerusalem was but a reflection of
the general body of law in force throughout Western Christendom. Still
the legislation of Godfrey and his successors is full of instruction,
not merely as showing with what success the system of one country may
be transferred to another, but even as throwing a clearer light on the
working of feudalism in Western Europe. The story went that the code thus
drawn up with the advice of the Latin pilgrims was deposited in the Holy
Sepulchre and was lost with the fall of the city. The tale lies open to
grave suspicion. The whole code would form no heavy weight for a beast
of burden, while it would be an object utterly valueless in the eyes
of the Mahomedan conquerors. It is of more importance to remark that
the traditions which this lost record was supposed to have preserved
continued to guide the Latin principalities of the East, until in A. D.
1369, having undergone a final revision, they became the laws of the
Latin kingdom of Cyprus.
[Sidenote: Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey.]
The legislation of this code on the relation of vassals to their
overlords, on the subject of wardship, of judicial combats, of
villenage and slavery, may have been more minute and definite than the
laws of Western Europe; but it laid down no new principles. A more
important feature is to be found in the judicial courts which owed
their institution to the first Latin king of Jerusalem. In the court
of the barons or peers the king himself was the president; in that of
the burgesses he was represented by the viscount, and it is in this
court that we find the popular element which was hereafter to give a
new character to the history of Europe. It consisted of a number of the
citizens chosen for their trustworthiness and their wisdom. Popular
election, indeed was wanting; but an assembly of burgesses sworn to
judge according to the laws in all the concerns of their equals was a
germ from which good fruit might have been looked for, if the seed had
been sown in fitting soil. Not less wise was the institution of a third
court which dealt with Syrian Christians through the Syrians themselves.
But although the legislative work of Godfrey and his successors was
not wholly in vain, it was an exotic which could live only with the
ascendency of the Latins. It was sown in blood, nursed amid storms, and
uprooted by the tempest which swept the Western Christians from Palestine.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1100. July 18. Baldwin I.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1100-1118.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1101. Death of Stephen of Chartres.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1105. Death of Raymond of Toulouse.]
The death of Godfrey raised in the patriarch Daimbert hopes which were
to be disappointed. The subjects of Godfrey had no mind to be governed
by a priest, and Tancred offered the throne to Bohemond. But Raymond
was now a captive, and popular favour inclined to Baldwin, Godfrey’s
brother, the lord of the Mesopotamian Edessa. Resigning his principality
to his kinsman of the same name, Baldwin hastened to Jerusalem, and was
there chosen king. At first Daimbert held aloof in sullen displeasure;
but his opposition was at length overcome, and the patriarch poured the
anointing oil over the sovereign. Baldwin reigned for eighteen years,
and long before those years had come to an end, the great chiefs of the
first crusade had all passed away. In his second year he was compelled to
resist an Egyptian invasion; but his army was defeated in a battle near
Ramlah, in which Stephen earl of Chartres was taken prisoner and slain.
He had been driven back from Europe by the reproaches of his wife Adela,
a daughter of the Norman conqueror of England, and in her judgment at
least he thus redeemed his fame. Four years later Raymond of Toulouse
died in old age on the sea-coast, having satisfied probably neither his
ambition nor his avarice. He had conquered Tortosa and there founded a
principality: but the possession of Tripolis which he had coveted was
reserved for his son Bertrand. Bertrand enjoyed his new fief for two
years only, and was succeeded by his son Pontius, to whom Tancred left
his widow as a bride.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1103. Sequel of the career of Bohemond.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1106.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1107.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1109.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1112. Death of Tancred.]
The return of Bohemond to Antioch was soon followed by his capture in a
petty expedition for the enlargement of his principality; but his place
was well filled by Tancred; and when after two years of imprisonment
Bohemond came back in spite of all the efforts of Alexios to get
possession of his person, he found himself master not only of Antioch
but of Laodicea and Apameia. In the open war which followed with the
Byzantine emperor, Bohemond was defeated by land, but with the aid of
the Pisans was victorious at sea. His thoughts were running probably on
another crusade when his help was invoked by Daimbert the patriarch of
Jerusalem, who took refuge at his court from what he chose to call the
tyranny of Baldwin. With the prelate, Bohemond sailed for Italy, leaving
Tancred to rule at Antioch. His name had gone before him, and Philip I.
the French king hastened to invite to his court the most redoubtable of
the champions of Christendom. Bohemond became the son-in-law of Philip,
and sailed again for the land of his old exploits with 5,000 horse and
40,000 foot. Once more he attacked Durazzo; but the bribes of Alexios
foiled his enterprise, and Bohemond was constrained to content himself
with a treaty which admitted him to the imperial presence as the peer of
the Byzantine sovereign. He went back to Italy and was making ready the
next year for his return to Antioch when death cut short his vehement and
stormy career. Tancred remained lord of his principality. He was still in
the prime of his manhood, and a disposition which, as compared with that
of his fellows, was generous and merciful, might promise a long time of
righteous government for his people. But before three years had passed
Tancred died childless, of a wound received in battle, and left his power
to his kinsman Roger.
[Sidenote: Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine empire.]
[Sidenote: Fresh swarms of pilgrims.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1101. Death of Hugh of Vermandois.]
The only man who had derived permanent benefit from these crusading
expeditions was the man to whom it might be supposed that they had caused
the greatest mischief and annoyance. It was of the first importance to
the safety of the Byzantine empire that the Turks should be drawn away
from the nearer countries of Bithynia and Phrygia. This great result
the crusade fully achieved. The capital of the Turkish sultan of Roum
was transferred from Nice to the remote and obscure city of Cogni
(Iconium, Ikonion;) the authority of the Greek emperor was re-established
over all the maritime regions of Asia Minor; and the existence of his
empire prolonged for nearly 350 years. But Alexios, with his crafty
and scheming temper to which incessant occupation in tasks serious or
trifling brought a sense of self-importance, was pre-eminently a man to
think more of annoyances than of grave disasters. For him accordingly
it was grief of spirit that Latin chiefs should fail to do him homage
for distant conquests, the possession of which could bring him no good;
and he had a standing ground of quarrel and complaint in the trouble
given or the alarm caused by the hosts of pilgrims which Europe poured
out upon the East as soon as the tidings were brought that Jerusalem was
in the hands of the Christians. It certainly cannot be said that the
pilgrims left Alexios much time for idleness. A rabble more disorderly
than that of Walter the Penniless followed the armies of Godfrey and his
confederates. These were Lombards headed by the archbishop of Milan; and
when Alexios insisted on their crossing the Bosporos before more should
come, they broke out into open war and attempted to storm the quarter of
Blachernai. These were followed by a better appointed force under the
count of Blois and the constable of the emperor of Germany, who spoke
with confidence of attacking Bagdad and destroying the caliphat. But the
dress of the Greek clergy in some Phrygian town excited their wrath.
Priests and others were massacred; and the sequel of the expedition was
as disastrous as that of the hordes cut off by Kilidje Arslan at the hill
of bones (p. 42). No better success attended the companies gathered under
the standards of the count of Nevers, the count of Poitiers, and Hugh of
Vermandois. With the last of these chiefs came hundreds of ladies who
looked for nothing less than a triumphal march from Constantinople to
Jerusalem: for almost all of these a journey of unspeakable misery came
to an end in the slave-markets of Bagdad and other great cities of the
East. The counts of Nevers and of Poitiers reached Antioch on foot with a
few followers: Hugh of Vermandois managed to escape to Tarsus, and there
he died.
[Sidenote: Death of the emperor Alexios.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1118.]
An endless series of wars, some of which were forced upon him while
others were mere blunders, was to occupy the life of Alexios to its
close. Throughout it may be said that successful dissimulation and
even successful treachery brought him greater delight than the most
decisive victory in the field. Some of his worst faults are recorded as
constituting his greatest merits in the turgid pages of his daughter
Anna: but she and her mother Irene were to learn, as he lay almost at
the last gasp, that they too could be sufferers by his astuteness. He
allowed his son John to frustrate at the last moment their most cherished
scheme, and his wife bade him farewell with the plain-spoken phrase, ‘You
die, as you have lived,—a hypocrite.’
[Sidenote: A. D. 1118-1131. Baldwin II. king of Jerusalem.]
While the days of Alexios were drawing to an end at Constantinople,
Baldwin king of Jerusalem was dying in Egypt, whither he had gone in
the hope of crippling the power of the Fatimite sultan. His body was
embalmed, brought back to Jerusalem, and laid in the sepulchre of
Godfrey. On the day of his funeral the great council met to elect his
successor. His brother Eustace was absent in Europe; and the crown was
offered to his kinsman, Baldwin du Bourg, who had been recommended
for the post by the first king, and whose claim was urged by Joceline
of Courtenay. In his gratitude Baldwin invested Joceline with the
principality of Edessa.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1115. Conquest of Sidon.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1124. Conquest of Tyre.]
It may be enough to say of this king that during his reign, as in that
of his predecessor, the limits of the Latin power were being gradually
extended, the new acquisitions being bestowed on princes who held them
as fiefs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. After a siege of six weeks Sidon
had fallen, in the days of the first Baldwin. In this blockade the Latins
were aided to good purpose by the fleet and army of the Norwegian Siward.
Nine years later the Venetian doge Michael came to worship at the Holy
Sepulchre, and offered the help of his fleet for the reduction of Ascalon
or Tyre. The choice fell upon Tyre, and the doge stipulated that one half
of that city should remain to himself in absolute sovereignty, while
the Venetians should also have a church, a street, and other privileges
in Jerusalem. The siege lasted five months, when the still great, and
once peerless, Phenician city was compelled to yield and become the seat
of a Christian archbishopric. But if the crusading dominions were thus
enlarged, it is perhaps of little use to speak of the greatest extent
reached by a kingdom almost as restless and as changeful as the sea.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1131-1144. Fulk, king of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1144-1162. Baldwin III.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1145. Fall of Edessa.]
The third successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem was Fulk
of Anjou, whose lot on the whole was more tranquil than that of his
predecessors, although in attempting to aid Raymond count of Tripoli
against Zenghis, sultan of Aleppo, he was shut up in the castle of Barin
or Montferrat, and compelled to purchase his safety with gold. He was
succeeded by his son Baldwin, a boy thirteen years of age, who was soon
to see what the prowess of the West could do in a second crusade. The
feuds of the Christian princes of Antioch and Edessa gave to Zenghis an
opportunity of attacking the principalities of Joceline of Courtenay.
For eighteen days the inhabitants of Edessa awaited in terrible suspense
the result of a siege in which for them surrender meant death. The deeds
of Godfrey and his fellows on the fall of Jerusalem were still fresh in
the memory of their enemies, and the heralds of Zenghis were not slack
in teaching his men that conquest brought with it the right of pillage.
The Turks learnt the lesson in spirit as well as in letter; and on the
fall of Edessa the deeds of blood and cruelty showed that Moslems might
be apt pupils in the horrible school in which the Christians had attained
a standard of ideal excellence. The story told once needs not to be told
again. The murder of Zenghis awakened in Joceline of Edessa the hope
that the lost city might be recovered. The attempt issued in a second
disaster; and nothing remained but an appeal to the religious enthusiasm
of Western Christendom.
CHAPTER V.
THE SECOND CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Bernard the apostle of the second crusade.]
What Peter the Hermit had been for the first crusade, that St. Bernard
was for the second; and on Peter, Bernard looked down with undisguised
contempt. The failure of that first great enterprise he ascribes to the
wretched councils of the fanatical guide whose name he supposes that his
hearers or correspondents have sometimes heard. To the holy war which
he felt himself called upon to kindle, he looked forward without the
least misgiving, and the proud confidence which he feels and everywhere
expresses may be taken as a special characteristic of Western monachism
in its palmiest days. While the monks of the East were losing themselves
more and more in the mists of dreamy or useless speculation, the cell of
the Western monk became an imperial chamber from which went forth the
letters which were to cheer or counsel the Vicar of Christ, to rebuke
kings and statesmen, to warn and guide the faithful, to recall the
wanderer to the fold, and to confound the unbeliever. For these high
offices he had a commission higher than that of any earthly authority.
They fell within the range of his duty as the member of a society, the
soldier of an army, which was to fight the battles of the King of kings.
He was the knight sheathed in the impenetrable armour of the Spirit, and
he bore in his hand the invincible sword of faith. He had learnt the
language, and transferred to his monastic life the images and terms, of
feudalism. For him action was everything; solitude with its essential
idea of rest was in comparison of this as nothing. He fled from his home
to the cloister, because he could there fight better against material and
spiritual corruption. He chose the most severe schools which he could
find for the exercise of his self-discipline. He withdrew from these into
wilder deserts, if they failed to meet his ideal of self-mortification.
He established what he called a reform, if existing rules appeared to him
too indulgent to human weakness. Such was the life of St. Bernard. He was
from first to last a crusader, and the most pertinacious and successful
of his crusades was against the peace and quiet of his own family. His
mother had made a secret vow to devote all her children to God; and
Bernard held it among the first of his duties to see that her vow should
be fulfilled. Power, wealth, and dignity in the world were within his
grasp: he threw them all aside. The holy house of Molesme had sent forth
some of its most austere members under an Englishman named Stephen
Harding, and these found a ruder and more savage home on the borders of
Champagne and Burgundy, at Citeaux, the cradle of the great Cistercian
order. Thither came Bernard in his early manhood, and there he remained
until he in his turn went forth to found a new house in the gloomy and
ill-famed valley to which he gave a name associated for ever with his
memory. Here at Clairvaux his father took the habit of a monk, and died
in his arms. His brothers and his sisters had made their profession
before him,—not all without a struggle; but who should resist the Divine
Will? The wife of one of his brothers refused to make the sacrifice of
her husband’s love: but a sudden illness convinced her of the perils of
disobedience, and like her husband she found her home in a convent.
[Sidenote: Sources of Bernard’s influence.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1130.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1140.]
This was the man whom the tidings of the fall of Edessa filled with
profound emotion. He could no more doubt the duty of ridding the Holy
Land of unbelievers than he could call into question his own mission
against all ungodliness and sin. But if it had been right to rush to
the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre when it was still in the hands of the
infidel, it was still more right, it was indispensably necessary, to
keep that sacred place and the land in which it lay from falling again
under the old despotism. For Bernard, when his mind was once fixed on any
enterprise, there could be no rest, as there could also be no measure
in the vehemence of his eloquence. The energy with which he espoused
the cause of Innocent II. against a rival pope had invested him with an
influence second to that of no other man of his age; and he had wielded
this power with tremendous effect against Abelard, the keenest and most
daring thinker of Latin Christendom.
[Sidenote: Death of Louis VI. of France.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1137.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1142.]
Three years before the council of Sens, which under the direction of
Bernard condemned the propositions or heresies of Abelard, died the
French king Louis VI., surnamed the Fat, the monarch (if so he might
be called) of a scanty kingdom the enlargement of which would best be
promoted by advantageous marriages. Of such an opportunity Louis the Fat
eagerly availed himself when William, lord of Poitou and Guienne, the
wide region lying between the Loire and the Adour, offered his daughter
and heiress Eleanor as the wife of the heir to the French crown. By right
of this marriage Louis VII. found himself on the death of his father
and of his father-in-law possessed of a far larger kingdom and greater
resources than he had expected to inherit; and he might have made it
the business of his life to guard and extend his dominions at home, had
he not felt himself suddenly called to take up his cross and follow the
example of his great-uncle, Hugh of Vermandois. In a war with Theobald,
count of Champagne, he had stormed and set fire to the castle of Vitry.
To escape from his soldiers the people had taken refuge in a neighbouring
church. To this building the flames spread, and all within it, men,
women, and children, 1,300, it is said, in number, were burnt. The sight
of the scorched and charred bodies filled the king with horror and
grief: sickness followed, and he determined to work out his repentance
by leading his armies to the Holy Land. His remorse was quickened by the
eloquence of Bernard, and Louis put on the blood-red cross in the council
of Vezelay.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1146. Easter. Council of Vezelay.]
[Sidenote: Speech of Bernard.]
[Sidenote: The Knights Templars.]
From this council the pope, Eugenius III., was absent. His place was more
than supplied by his friend and adviser, whose voice stirred the depths
of every heart. The letter of Eugenius held out to the crusaders all the
promises which had been assured to them by Urban at Clermont, and warned
them against the vices which had brought disaster and disgrace on the
arms of Christendom. But for the moment every other feeling than that
of fierce yearning for conflict was swept away by the furious torrent
of Bernard’s oratory. He preached to the Knights Templars, the members
of that splendid order which was already astonishing the world with
its valour and its haughtiness. Associated at first for the protection
of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, they had established themselves
in the Holy City itself, and received from Baldwin II. some ground
to the east of the Temple; and the mosque of Omar, purified from its
defilements, became the church of the order. The fiery warriors who
professed themselves the humble guardians of the Holy Sepulchre needed
no stimulus of rhetoric to spur them on: and the rhetoric of Bernard was
fierce enough to stir even the most peaceable. In this new philosophy
butchery was the surest means of grace, and carnage imparted indelible
sanctity. ‘The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is sure
of his reward, more sure if he is slain. The Christian glories in the
death of the Pagan, because by it Christ is glorified; by his own death
both he himself and Christ are still more glorified.’ The floodgates of
enthusiasm were once again opened wide; and the scenes of the council of
Clermont were reproduced with little change. Accompanied by the French
king who wore the cross conspicuously on his dress, Bernard mounted a
wooden platform and addressed the impassioned multitude. His speech was
scarcely ended when all with one voice cried aloud for the cross. The
saint gave or scattered the badges which had been provided. When these
were exhausted, he tore up his own dress to furnish more.
[Sidenote: Reluctance of Conrad emperor of Germany to join the crusade.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1147. Whitsuntide. Meeting of Louis VII. and the pope at
St. Denys.]
But if Louis was eager to depart, Conrad of Germany hung back. The
Emperor felt more anxious about the reduction of refractory princes than
for the slaughter of unknown infidels. Christmas came; and at Spires
first, afterwards at Ratisbon, Bernard strove to impress on him the
paramount duty of the crusade. Conrad promised to give his answer on the
following day; and on that day Bernard preached a sermon, painting in
awful colours the terrors of the Great Assize when all the kindreds of
the nations should be gathered before the judgment-seat of the Son of
Man. He implored the emperor to think of the account which he would then
have to give, and of the infinite shame and endless agony which would be
his portion, if he should then stand convicted of unjust stewardship.
Conrad was melted to tears, and promised to take the cross. Bernard was
prepared for him and for all, and fastened the badge on their shoulders
at once. Taking from the altar the consecrated banner, he delivered it
to the emperor, and the hand of God was seen in the crowd of thieves and
ruffians who thronged to enlist themselves as champions of the cross.
Four months later Louis welcomed the pope at St. Denys, and received
from Eugenius at the altar the wallet and staff of the pilgrim, with the
banner which was to lead him to victory. The wishes of the devout turned
naturally to Bernard rather than to others of whose earnestness they
could not have equal assurance; but to their prayers that he would head
the enterprise he replied that he was no general and that they must find
some one to lead them who was skilled in the handling of earthly armies.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk Rodolph.]
[Sidenote: Suppressed by Bernard.]
When the followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless began
their march along the Rhinelands, their crusading zeal vented itself
first in horrible cruelties practised on the Jews (p. 40). That vile
example was followed by the bands now gathered round the standard of the
emperor. The appetite for blood was whetted by the wolfish howlings of
the monk Rodolph; and the spell of bigotry enlisted on his side a man
otherwise well deserving the reverence of all ages, Peter the Venerable,
abbot of Clugny. But the fanaticism of Bernard could not fasten itself
on men against whom not even a semblance of wrong could be charged; and
he refused to punish them now for the crimes of their forefathers in the
days of Pontius Pilate. ‘God has punished the Jews,’ he said, ‘by their
dispersion; it is not for man to punish them by murder.’ Rodolph was sent
back to his monastery: but it was no easy task to repress the fury of a
multitude already drunk with the blood of hundreds of victims in all the
great Rhine cities.
[Sidenote: March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis.]
[Sidenote: Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at
Constantinople.]
Conrad and Louis had met at Mainz. With Louis came his wife Eleanor;
and here he was joined by the counts of Toulouse, Nevers, Flanders and
other chiefs of the crusade, among these being, it is said, Robert de
Mowbray and the earl of Warren and Surrey from England. The story of the
enterprise is soon told. The numbers of the host were vast, but numbers,
never easily ascertained, are least of all to be depended upon in such
expeditions as these. The order of disciplined armies may have lessened
the perils and lightened the hardships of the passage across Europe; and
the troop of women who with spear and shield, headed by the Golden-footed
Dame, marched on, as they thought, to conquest, may have congratulated
themselves on the pleasantness of their task. The real danger began when
they had passed from Europe into Asia. The suspicions of Conrad had been
soon and vehemently excited against the Greek emperor Manuel, grandson
of Alexios. These suspicions were so much strengthened before he reached
Constantinople that he refused all interviews with him and crossed the
Bosporus without coming into his presence.
[Sidenote: Supposed treachery of Manuel.]
The French king was more complaisant; but if he was satisfied with the
welcome given to him by Manuel in person, he was alarmed and indignant at
the news that the Byzantine sovereign was in secret correspondence with
the Turkish sultan of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion). His indignation was fully
shared by his army; and while some held that the paramount duty which
called them to Palestine should overbear the avenging of all private
wrongs, others insisted that a power which had allowed the Holy Sepulchre
and the Holy Land itself to slip from its grasp, and had only placed
hindrances in the way of the pilgrims and champions of the cross, should
be swept utterly away.
[Sidenote: Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis.]
For the present the storm was lulled; and the crusaders went on their
way, to find that the guides with which Manuel had furnished them led
them into arid deserts or betrayed them directly to the enemy. Conrad had
already lost thousands or tens of thousands in Lykaonia, when the French
king, who had been cheated with false tidings of his triumphant progress,
received on the shores of the Askanian lake (p. 57) the news of his great
disaster. Conrad himself soon followed the miserable fugitives who had
told his dismal story, and the two sovereigns resolved to strike off
from the beaten path and make their way through the lands bordering the
eastern shores of the Egean Sea. They had advanced as far as the Lydian
Philadelphia, when the threatening appearance of things impelled many
to return to Constantinople, and Conrad himself embarked near Ephesus.
Louis with his people pressed on to the banks of the Meander, where the
Turks who hastened to attack them were signally defeated. This defeat was
more than avenged in the mountain passes beyond Laodicea whence after
fearful slaughter the French reached the Pamphylian Attaleia. From this
seaport it was proposed that all, whether soldiers or pilgrims, should
go by sea to Antioch. It was decided that the latter only should take
ship, as Louis urged that the warriors ought to follow in the steps of
the conquerors of Jerusalem. But the ships promised by the governor of
Attaleia proved to be wholly insufficient for this purpose. The king
embarked with his army, and the pilgrims with the sick were left in
charge of the count of Flanders. The guard was inadequate; the sick
were murdered by the people of Attaleia; the Turks bore down hardly on
the pilgrims. The count of Flanders escaped by sea, and seven thousand
miserable wanderers struggled onwards on the road by which they hoped
to reach Jerusalem. Their journey was soon ended by the martyrdom which
according to the promise of Urban and Eugenius was to ensure their
salvation.
[Sidenote: Visit of the French king to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1148. March.]
[Sidenote: Resolution to attack Damascus.]
The arrival of the French king with his forces at Antioch caused no
slight alarm to the Turks of Cæsarea and Aleppo. But although he was
earnestly pressed to take advantage of their dismay by striking a sudden
blow, nothing could dissuade him to put off his journey to Jerusalem;
and the entreaties of Eleanor, who was well content to stay where she
was, excited in him mingled feelings of resentment and suspicion. After
disasters so terrible his entrance into Jerusalem bore too much likeness
to a triumph; and after a council with Conrad, who had reached Ptolemais,
the project of rescuing Edessa, which had been the very purpose of the
crusade, was for the time abandoned for the siege, and, as it was hoped,
the conquest, of the more important and nearer city of Damascus.
[Sidenote: Siege of Damascus.]
[Sidenote: Treachery of the barons of Palestine.]
[Sidenote: Retreat of the army to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Failure of the crusade.]
With the aid of the Knights of the Temple and of St. John, the siege of
this city was prosecuted with a skill and vigour which seemed to leave no
doubt of the result. The Damascenes were in despair, and not a few turned
their thoughts to flight as the only means of safety: but with incredible
infatuation the king of the French and the German emperor took counsel
not for the completion of the enterprise but for the disposal of the city
when it should have been conquered. The decision that it should be given
to Thierry, count of Flanders, roused the indignation of the barons of
Palestine, who now scrupled not to add treachery to the long catalogue of
their crimes. Bribed by the Turks, they assured the sovereigns that they
would have better success by attacking the city from another quarter than
from that on which their toil had been all but rewarded by its capture.
Abandoning their former position in the rich gardens before the town,
they soon found themselves on barren soil, with scanty supplies or none,
and with a hopeless task before them. It was easier to suspect than to
punish the treachery of their advisers; and possibly on account of this
treachery the proposal that they should attack Ascalon was rejected. The
army retreated to Jerusalem. Conrad went back with the remnant of his
troops to Europe. A year later his example was followed by the French
king and his wife, of whose conduct Louis had formed suspicions fully
justified by certain judgments pronounced by her in Provençal Courts of
Love. Only a few months more had passed before he obtained a divorce on
the plea of consanguinity, and Eleanor transferred her vast inheritance
to her second husband the Norman duke Henry, afterwards Henry II. of
England.
[Sidenote: Accusations against St. Bernard.]
[Sidenote: His answer.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1153. Death of Bernard.]
So ended in utter shame and ignominy the second crusade. The event seemed
to give the lie to the glowing promises and prophecies of St. Bernard.
So vast had been the drain of population to feed this holy war that, in
the phrase of an eye-witness, the cities and castles were empty, and
scarcely one man was left to seven women; and now it was known that the
fathers, the husbands, the sons, or the brothers of these miserable women
would see their earthly homes no more. The cry of anguish charged Bernard
with the crime of sending them forth on an errand in which they had done
absolutely nothing and had reaped only wretchedness and disgrace. For
a time Bernard himself was struck dumb: but he soon remembered that he
had spoken with the authority of God and of his vicegerent, and that the
guilt or failure must lie at the door of the pilgrims. Like those who
had gone before them, these men had given loose to their passions and
filled their camps with debauchery and confusion; and such abominations
the Divine Righteousness could never tolerate. Nay, Bernard could even
see now the folly, if not the iniquity, of allowing thieves and murderers
to take part in an enterprise in which only the devout and faithful
were worthy to share. But such considerations were too cold to satisfy
permanently the temper of the age. The thoughts of the many, if not of
the few, went back into the old channel, when the monk John declared that
the slaughtered pilgrims had died with the exulting joy of martyrs at
the thought of their deliverance from a wicked world; and that from the
lips of St. Peter and St. John themselves he had the assurance that the
ranks of fallen angels had been filled up with the spirits of those who
had died as champions and pilgrims of the cross whether in the Holy Land
or on the journey across the intervening countries. For Bernard also the
saints and angels, he said, were impatiently waiting. Five years later it
was in his power to add that their desires and his had been fulfilled.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM.
[Sidenote: Misuse of victory by the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1151. Death of Joceline of Courtenay.]
The second crusade not only failed in its purpose: it did nothing towards
the maintenance of the waning ascendency of the Latins. Even victories
brought with them no solid result, and in not a few instances victory was
misused with a folly closely allied to madness. The success of Joceline
of Courtenay in a battle with Noureddin, son of Zenghis and sultan of
Aleppo, might have recovered for him his lost city of Edessa: he chose
rather to indulge in the dangerous luxury of insult, and the renewed
efforts of the enemy were rewarded by the capture of Joceline, his
imprisonment and death. His widow, by the advice of Baldwin III., king
of Jerusalem, surrendered to the Greek emperor for a stipulated sum such
places as still remained in her possession; and the dangers gathering
round the Latin kingdom were seen in an inroad of Turcomans who reached
the Mount of Olives.
[Sidenote: Siege and fall of Ascalon.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1153. July.]
This inroad was, it is true, severely punished. The king was absent with
his army: but the knights of the military orders who were in Jerusalem
led out such of the people as could be got under arms and set fire to the
camp of the enemy. These on their retreat were intercepted by Baldwin,
and in the conflict 5,000 of their number, it is said, were slain. The
tide seemed to have turned again in favour of the Christians, when, after
an obstinate siege which at one moment was all but abandoned, the city of
Ascalon fell into their hands.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1162. Almeric, king of Jerusalem.]
But the change was one of appearance only. The interminable series
of wars, or rather of forays and reprisals, went on; and amidst such
contests the life of Baldwin closed in early manhood. He was thirty-three
years of age: but in that short time he had won such love as his subjects
had to bestow, together with the admiration of his enemies. He died
childless, and although some opposition was made to the choice, his
brother Almeric was elected to fill his place.
[Sidenote: Relations of Almeric with the sultans of Egypt and Aleppo.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 741-771.]
Almost at the beginning of his reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom
became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen
fighting by the side of one Mahomedan race, tribe, or faction against
another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of
theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom;
and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity
which gave him a hold on the Fatimite caliph of Egypt, when Shawer the
grand vizier of that caliph came into his presence as a fugitive. A
soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the deposition of
the vizier was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs
themselves were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had
been in the days of Charles Martel and Pepin.
[Sidenote: Mission of Shiracouh and Saladin into Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Siege and surrender of Shiracouh in Pelusium.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1163. Defeat of the Latins by Noureddin, sultan of
Aleppo.]
Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin
(Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Koords. These Noureddin
despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy
Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins: but the
terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shiracouh
and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with success came the
fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies.
He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals
to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium, and
Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem,
besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with the help of the army
of Almeric. The Latin king after a fruitless blockade of some months
found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged
general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding
him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin
armies were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at
the hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave
Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.
[Sidenote: Alliance of Almeric with the Egyptian sultan.]
[Sidenote: Operations of Almeric against Shiracouh.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1167.]
Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch from the fear that such
an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek emperor. He was
more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt,—in other words,
to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south
as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger which king
Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best colour on
his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the
sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which
the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the
war attests the valour of both sides, under the alternations of disaster
and success. The Latin king had already entered Cairo, when a large
part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm.
But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the
Egyptians. Almeric received 200,000 gold pieces for the continuance of
his help, with the promise that 200,000 more should be paid to him on the
complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the
presence of the powerless sovereign whose consent was never asked for the
alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining
events of the campaign were a battle in which a part of the army of
Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the surrender
of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade of that city
by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the pledge that after an
exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the
condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him.
[Sidenote: Real designs of Almeric.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1168.]
[Sidenote: Expedition of Almeric to Pelusium.]
[Sidenote: His ignominious retreat.]
The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite caliph waved together on the
walls of Alexandria; but on either side the peace or truce was a mere
makeshift for the purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin king nor the
sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of Egypt; and
Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own
return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into communication with
their enemy and his. The king of Jerusalem had lately married the niece
of the Greek emperor, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with
his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitallers was easily obtained,
while (some said, on this account) that of the Knights Templars was
refused. At length with a large and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem,
pretending that his destination was the Syrian town of Hems: but after
a while his march was suddenly turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium;
and the storm and capture of that city were followed by a wanton carnage
which served to increase, if anything could increase, the reputation of
the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers of the vizir Shawer
for help were now directed as earnestly to the Turkish sultan as they
had once been to the Latin king of Jerusalem; but his envoys were also
sent to Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth
part was produced on the spot. Almeric took the bribe; and when his army
looked for nothing less than the immediate sack of Cairo, they were
told that they must remain idle while the rest of the money was being
collected. The vizir took care that the gathering should not be ended
before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached the frontier; and Almeric
found too late that he was caught in the trap which his own greed had
laid for him. He could himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat
was as disastrous as it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself
off the mouths of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek emperor
could not be punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise
was found in the grand-master of the Hospitallers, who was deprived of
his dignity by his knights.
[Sidenote: Rise of Saladin to power in Egypt.]
The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the vizir Shawer,
who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had invoked,
was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only two
months; and then, by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and
lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance,
the Fatimite caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The caliph was
mistaken. Saladin brought back his Koords, and so used the treasures
which his office placed at his command, that the new yoke became stronger
than the old one.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1169. Attempts to stir up a crusade.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1171.]
[Sidenote: Suppression of the Fatimite caliphat by Saladin.]
To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a
really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm prompted
embassies to the court of the Eastern emperor and the princes of Western
Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third crusade; and
only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins in a
fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo
in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved them from attack by the
army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in spite
of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Saladin
was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the
Fatimites as Pepin dealt with that of the Merovingians. The last Fatimite
sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, never knew that the public
prayer had been offered in the name of the caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin
had the glory of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and
from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen
robe and two swords.
[Sidenote: Quarrel between Saladin and the sultan of Aleppo.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1178. Death of Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo.]
But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another. Saladin
was the servant of the sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized
and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score of this
lieutenancy. But the new vizir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer
the summons of his old master; and to his threat of chastisement Saladin
in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war. His vehemence was
cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so
commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son’s head off from his
shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in
thinking of resistance, but in speaking of it; and a letter sent by his
advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over. But the time of
quietness could not last long. The designs of Saladin became continually
more manifest, and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when he was struck
down by illness and died at Damascus.
[Sidenote: Character of Noureddin.]
In the sultan of Aleppo, as in the general who had risen to greatness
through his favour, we have a man to whom the chronicles of the time
and of later ages delighted to ascribe the magnanimity and simplicity
of Omar. It must at the least be admitted that the ideal of Moslem
courtesy and chivalry is more refined and generous than that of Western
Christendom, and that the truth of the picture drawn of Noureddin
receives some support from the enthusiastic eulogies of William,
archbishop of Tyre. ‘I fear God,’ he replied to his queen who complained
that she had not enough even for her wants; ‘I am but the treasurer
of the people. But I have three shops in Hems; these you may take,
and this is all that I have to give.’ He made it his business to
provide everywhere mosques, hospitals, schools, and resting-places for
travellers; and justice, it is said, was as impartially administered in
his time as in the days of the English Alfred.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1173. Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1183.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1186. Baldwin V. king of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1186. Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem.]
The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband’s
death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege. A bribe to abandon it
was at first refused. A fortnight later it was accepted: but Almeric
returned to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five years
longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long enough
to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness. His son
and successor, Baldwin IV., was a leper; and his disease made such rapid
strides as to make it necessary to delegate his authority to another. His
first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla;
but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought
everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his
marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her
first marriage, Raymond II., count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and
Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years
the leper king died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V.; and
in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed
to establish himself by right of his wife king of Jerusalem. He was
still quite a young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name. The
murderer of Patric, earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II.,
from his dominions in France: and the opinion of those who knew him found
expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, ‘Had they known me, the
men who made my brother king would have made me a god.’
[Sidenote: Preparations of Saladin for the reconquest of Jerusalem.]
Guy was king: but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy
besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But
Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria
and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace
the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost
superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by
barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems.
Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his
standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem: but
their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these
ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of
private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his
own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to
confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the
invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but
the grand-master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his
self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some
sinister design which they were intended to hide.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1187. July. Battle of Tiberias.]
[Sidenote: Capture of Guy of Lusignan.]
[Sidenote: Loss of the true cross.]
Had it been Baldwin III. to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would
have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy
it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the
Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already
distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from
Jerusalem. The issue of the first day’s fighting was undecided; but
the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more
terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of
Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that
day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at
sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the
golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea
where the Galilæan fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth
the word of life. But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge
of divine favour yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the
relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying
point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on
either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must
determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the
Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The king and the
grand-master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which
had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the
infidels.
[Sidenote: Fruits of the victory of Saladin.]
The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken.
Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved
by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of
queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched
to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honourable peace, which after
some hesitation was accepted.
[Sidenote: Siege and fall of Jerusalem.]
The rejection of Raymond’s advice had left Jerusalem practically at the
mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people: but the garrison was
scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their
presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to
the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had
made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have
fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers,
wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to
give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go
down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction
of useless misery. Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but
it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language
more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged
the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place
hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if
the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the
inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide
them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all
intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer, honourable
to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it,
was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed
conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that
by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most
happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow
to the letter. Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The
Christians had done what they could to destroy the military engines of
their enemies; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down
and turned into money; but no solid advantage was gained by all their
efforts. The conviction of the Christian that death brought salvation to
the champions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to those
who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at
once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants and to the
fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged discovered that the
walls near the gate of St. Stephen had been undermined, and at once
they abandoned all hope of safety except from miraculous intervention.
Clergy and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened by the
knowledge that the Greeks within the city were treating with the enemy.
The remembrance of Saladin’s offer now came back with more persuasive
power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned
that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his
fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of
the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have
sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender the
city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they
could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the nobles and
fighting men should be taken to Tyre which still held out under Conrad;
that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of ten crowns
of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for each child; and that,
failing this ransom, they should remain slaves. On the sick and the
helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights of the Hospital were
among the most determined of his enemies, he would allow their brethren
to remain for a year in their attendance on the sufferers who could not
be moved away.
[Sidenote: Terms of the capitulation.]
In the exasperation of a religious warfare now extended over nearly a
century these terms were very merciful. It may be said that this mercy
was the right of a people who submitted to the invader, and that in the
days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to the
last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a
superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the
same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it would have
been sternly and fiercely refused.
[Sidenote: Departure of the Latins from the Holy City.]
Four days were allowed to the people to prepare for their departure. On
the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women carrying
or leading their children, the men bearing such of their household
goods as they were able to move. On the approach of the queen and her
ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants Saladin himself
came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to them words of
encouragement and consolation. Cheered by his generous language, they
told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they cared
nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to them their fathers,
their husbands, and their brothers. Saladin granted their request, added
his alms for those who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, and
remitted a portion of the ransom appointed for the poor. In this way the
number of those who remained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve
thousand; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel
as the slavery which has but as yesterday been extinguished by the most
fearful of recent wars.
[Sidenote: Entry of Saladin into Jerusalem.]
The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of
triumph. Amidst the waving of banners and the clash of martial music he
advanced to the mosque of Omar on the summit of which the Christian cross
still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the Christians
who were present as this emblem was hurled down to the earth and dragged
through the mire. For two days it underwent this indignity, while the
mosque was purified from its defilements by streams of rosewater, and
dedicated afresh to the worship of the One God adored by Islam. The
crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of the Christian sanctuaries,
which had been carefully stowed away in four chests, had fallen into the
hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin to send them to
the caliph of the Prophet as the proudest trophies of his victory. Even
this wish he generously consented to forego. The chests were left in the
keeping of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, 52,000 golden
byzants, was paid by Richard of England.
[Sidenote: Escape of Tyre under Conrad.]
[Sidenote: Further conquests of Saladin.]
Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even when
Saladin himself assailed its walls. The siege was raised: and the next
personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having
regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the city. The
grand-master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was short and
decisive. The people would own no other master than the gallant knight
who had so nobly defended them. But the escape of Tyre had no effect
on the general issue of the war. Town after town submitted to Saladin;
and the long series of his triumphs closed when he entered the gates of
Antioch.
[Sidenote: Causes of weakness in the kingdom of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: (1) Bad faith in dealing with the Moslem.]
[Sidenote: (2) Disregard of rights of property.]
[Sidenote: (3) Lax military discipline.]
[Sidenote: (4) Lack of statesmanship.]
[Sidenote: (5) General immorality.]
[Sidenote: (6) Desultory character of the crusades.]
[Sidenote: (7) Quarrels and feuds of the Latin chiefs.]
[Sidenote: (8) Antagonistic jurisdictions of the civil power, the Church,
and the military orders.]
Eighty-eight years had passed away since the crusaders of Godfrey and
Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during
all those years the Latin kingdom had seldom rested from wars and forays,
from feuds and dissensions of every kind. From the first it displayed
no characteristics which could give it any stability; from the first it
exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall. (1) It sanctified
treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith was to be kept
with the unbeliever; and the sowing of wind by the constant breach of
solemn compact made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pasturage round
Paneas had been granted to the Mahomedans by Baldwin III. When the ground
was covered with their sheep, the Christian troops burst in, murdered the
shepherds, and drove away their flocks,—not with the sanction, we may
hope, of the most high-minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem. (2) It
recognized no title to property except in those who professed the faith
of Christ, and the power to commit injustice with practical impunity
tended still further to demoralize the people. (3) It gave full play to
the passions of men in random wars and petty forays, while it did nothing
to keep up or to promote either military science or the discipline
without which that science becomes useless. (4) It was marked by an
almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country so circumstanced a wise
ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to
strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by
treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he
might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations
which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history
of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous
contrast to this picture, it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the
case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course
which prudence called upon them to take; and even here this course was
followed with miserable indecision, and at last disgracefully abandoned
through mere lust of gold. (5) It had to deal with an immorality not of
its own creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it should
have striven to keep well in check. No such efforts were made, and the
words of William of Tyre (even if taken with a qualification), when he
speaks of the Latin women, point to a state of things which must involve
grave and imminent peril. (6) It was the misfortune of this kingdom that
it was called into being by troops of adventurers banded together (it
cannot be said, confederated) for a religious rather than a political
purpose; in other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It
started therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who
engaged in the enterprise might abandon it when they thought that they
had fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance
of their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political
success of the undertaking. (7) The private and personal character
of these enterprises led to the perpetuation and multiplication of
private and personal interests, and thus to the endless divisions and
feuds between the barons of the kingdom, which were a constant scandal
and menace and which led frequently to deliberate treachery. (8) It
encouraged, or permitted, or was compelled to tolerate the growth of
societies which arrogated to themselves an independent jurisdiction,
and thus rendered impossible a central authority of sufficient coercive
power. The origin of the military orders may have been in the highest
degree edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians
of the Holy Places: the Knights Hospitallers may have been the poor
brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless
among the pilgrims of the cross. But in a land where they might at any
time encounter a merciless or at the least a detested enemy, they were
justified in bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the
need of discipline; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity
cut off from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become
formidable. The natural strength of these orders was increased by
immunities and privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem,
but in greater part by the popes. The Hospitallers, as bestowing their
goods to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed from the
obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if these
were laid upon the whole country while it was expressly asserted that no
patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence of excommunication
against them. In other words, a society was called into existence
directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an irreconcilable conflict of
claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor can we be surprised to find
the clergy complaining that the knights, not content with the immunities
secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not belonging to
their order but lying under sentence of excommunication, sought to place
themselves under their protection. But if the Knights of the Hospital
had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter
with the rival order of the Templars. With different interests and
different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the
other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common
decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid when that aid
was indispensable for the very safety of the state. Thus we have the
triple discord of the king and his barons struggling against the claims
of the clergy, and the military orders in conflict with the barons and
the clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are emphatically
true that a house divided against itself shall not stand.
CHAPTER VII.
THE THIRD CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of England.]
A halo of false glory surrounds the third crusade from the associations
which connect it with the lion-hearted king of England. The exploits of
Richard I. have stirred to enthusiasm the dullest of chroniclers, have
furnished themes for jubilant eulogies, and have shed over his life that
glamour which cheats even sober-minded men as they read the story of
his prototype Achilleus in the tale of Troy. They have done even more,
for, if we may believe the narrative, they excited the same vehement
admiration in his most redoubtable enemy; and the romance of youth or
even of maturer age fastens on the picture which exhibits the brother
of Saladin in the thick of mortal fight as sending to him two Arabian
chargers by way of lauding the hero for dealing wounds and death on a
multitude of his people.
[Sidenote: Real character of the actors in the third crusade.]
When we turn from the picture to the reality, we shall see in this third
crusade an enterprise in which the fiery zeal which does something
towards redeeming the savage brutalities of Godfrey and the first
crusaders is displaced by base and sordid greed, by intrigues utterly of
the earth earthy, by wanton crimes from which we might well suppose that
the sun would hide away its face; and in the leaders of this enterprise
we shall see men in whom, morally, there is scarcely a single quality to
relieve the monotonous blackness of their infamy, in whom, strategically,
a very little generalship comes to the aid of a blind brute force, and
in some of whom, personally, an animal courage or ferocity, which fears
no danger and knows no fatigue, surmounts a thousand difficulties and
charms the vast multitudes who find their highest delight in the worship
or idolatry of mere power. As a military leader Richard I. of England is
beneath contempt when compared with the first Napoleon; but he may fairly
compete with him as a criminal. Alaric the Goth and Attila the Hun never
professed to be sovereigns of a civilized people; but in no sense have
they a better title to be regarded as scourges of mankind.
[Sidenote: Decay of the crusading spirit.]
Undertakings which depend on the temper and resources of individual
men are not likely to be carried out with unswerving persistence; and
this ebb and flow of purpose and energy is especially manifest in the
history of the crusades. With any marked success comes a feeling of
self-complacency in the thought that a vow has been strictly fulfilled
or a duty thoroughly discharged; and the result is either slackness or
total indifference to matters which thus far seemed in their importance
to leave everything else in the shade. Assuredly there was little indeed
in the lives of the later Latin kings of Jerusalem to keep alive the
enthusiasm which had been roused by the preaching of the hermit Peter;
and for the time a change seems to pass over the spirit of the dream
which for nearly a hundred years had been beguiling Western Christendom.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1179.]
[Sidenote: Change in the character of the crusades.]
The impulse (it can scarcely be dignified with the name of policy) which
led Almeric (p. 100) to fix his thoughts on the conquest of Egypt, is
the nearest approach to the temper of the true statesman and general
exhibited in the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It aimed
not only at preventing a combination of hostile powers to the north and
south fraught with fatal dangers for any dominion which might lie between
them, but it seemed to promise the possession of a country of immense
importance to the merchant and the trader. This advantage was clearly
seen and eagerly aimed at by the third Lateran council, which insisted
that the conquest of Damietta should be the first object of every
crusade, the maintenance of the kingdom of Jerusalem at best only the
second. In short, these expeditions had in strictness of speech ceased to
be crusades, unless an exception is to be made in the case of the sainted
Louis IX. of France. With him, as with Godfrey and the first crusaders,
the religious motive absorbed every other. In the rest the professed
object of the scheme is made an excuse for roving forays or political
conquests, or is feebly carried out as an irksome or even repulsive task,
while the harmony indispensable for success is sacrificed for quarrels
and deadly feuds which would do credit to the society of savages.
[Sidenote: Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1174.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1177.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1180.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1185.]
But until the Cross had been thrust aside for the Crescent on the mosque
of Omar, the task of stirring up the Western princes for another crusade
was neither easy nor successful. The crusading spirit was never strong
in Henry II. of England, and even after the quarrel with Becket had come
to an end with his death, he had a convenient excuse for staying at home
in the dangers which menaced his dominions from the north. But with the
captivity of his enemy William this pretext vanished. The Scottish king
swore to hold his kingdom as a fief of the English crown; and Henry,
unable any longer to resist the arguments or entreaties of the French
king, Louis VII., promised to combine his forces as duke of Normandy
with those of his liege lord for the succour of the Christians in the
Holy Land. The death of Louis, which cut short this design, brought
no bitter disappointment to Henry; but when, some five years later,
Heraclius (Herakleios), patriarch of Jerusalem, kneeling before him with
the count of Tripoli and the grand-master of the Hospitallers, placed in
his hands the sceptre of his kinsman Fulk of Anjou and of the kings who
had succeeded him, with the keys of the Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre,
the English monarch was careful to address them in words which conveyed
encouragement while they committed him to nothing. He would ask the
advice of his council; and his question was so put as to show clearly
what he would wish the answer to be. He desired to know whether his duty
called him to govern and guard his subjects at home or to break lances
with Saracens to prop up the tottering sway of a distant sovereign. There
was no doubt in the mind of his barons and prelates that the nearer work
had a paramount call on him; and the promise of Henry to contribute
50,000 marks for the needs of the Latin kingdom in Palestine was received
by the patriarch with a dissatisfaction which manifestly excited the
king’s anger. Not a whit abashed, Heraclius bade him deal with himself as
he had dealt with the martyr Thomas of Canterbury, and expressed himself
as not less ready to die by his hands than by those of the less cruel
Saracens. This ridiculous taunt was allowed to pass without rebuke, and
Heraclius departed unhurt after consecrating the church of the Knights
Templars in the city of London.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1187. Death of Urban III.]
[Sidenote: Pontificate of Gregory VIII.]
But the fall of Jerusalem cast a new colour over questions of policy and
duty. A few days after that event, and in all likelihood before he could
have heard of it, pope Urban III. died at Verona, oppressed with grief
not for a disaster of which he was ignorant, but for the death struggle
which seemed imminent between the papal and the imperial power. His
successor Gregory VIII., whose short pontificate was ended in less than
two months, bewailed the event as a catastrophe affecting the whole of
Christendom; but he was probably not unconscious that for the papacy it
might create a diversion which might rescue it from dire peril, if not
destruction. The few days of life which remained to him were spent in
writing letters to reawaken the spirit which had been roused successively
by the hermit Peter and the sainted Bernard. The divine wrath was to be
appeased by a fast of five years, and the consciousness of shameless
corruption and venality inspired the cardinals to promise that they
would take no more bribes for the furtherance or perversion of justice,
and that they would never mount again on horseback until the land once
trodden by the Saviour should have ceased to be polluted by the feet of
the unbeliever.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1188. Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip
Augustus of France.]
[Sidenote: Saladin tax or tenth.]
Pope Gregory died on a journey undertaken for the purpose of making peace
between the republics of Genoa and Pisa, whose fleets were of the first
importance for the carrying out of the scheme which he had at heart. A
few weeks later the broad plain between Gisors and Trie witnessed the
meeting of Henry of England and Philip Augustus, the young French king,
to hear the cause of the Christians in Palestine pleaded by William,
archbishop of Tyre, the historian of the first and second crusades. The
two sovereigns assumed the cross, and their example was followed by the
count of Champagne, the count of Flanders, and a crowd of barons and
knights. It was agreed that the English cross should be white, and the
Flemish green, the French retaining the red. Henry hastened to England,
and obtained from a council held at Geddington in Northamptonshire the
imposition of a tax called the Saladin tithe. Every one who refused
to join the crusade was to pay a tenth of all his goods movable or
immovable. The sum thus raised was 70,000_l._; but it is astonishing
to learn that a sum almost as large, 60,000_l._, was extorted from the
scanty company of Jews settled in England. Whether the burden pressed
heavily upon them, we cannot tell. Worse things were in store for them
before many months should pass away.
[Sidenote: Feuds in the family of Henry II.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1183.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1188.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1186. July. Death of Henry II.]
It is possible that Henry may now have really intended to fulfil a
promise with which thus far he had only dallied. He sent messengers to
the Hungarian king Bela, and Isaac Angelus, the Eastern emperor, to
request a safe transit and free market for his followers. The demand was
granted: but Henry now had other concerns to occupy him. The wretched
quarrels which were the inevitable consequence of petty principalities
and the complicated tenures of feudalism had assumed their most hateful
form among the princes of the house of Anjou. Of the legitimate sons of
Henry II., Henry, Richard, and John, it is hard to say which led the most
disgraceful life and earned the most shameful reputation. The tyranny
of Richard in Aquitaine was monstrous even in an age notorious for its
cruelty and its treachery; but it was probably no disinterested sympathy
for his victims which brought against him the forces of his elder brother
Henry, and of his half-brother Geoffrey, the son of that Rosamond
Clifford into whose history the popular talk of that or of a later day
introduced a tale common to the folklore of many lands. The strife
was for the time appeased by their father, against whom these dutiful
children now turned their arms. The day fixed for the battle was drawing
nigh when the young prince or king Henry (he had been crowned A. D. 1169
by the bishops excommunicated by Thomas of Canterbury shortly before his
martyrdom) was cut off by a sudden attack of fever; and Richard, as the
eldest surviving son, looked on himself as heir to the crown of England.
But it soon became plain that the affections of his father were fixed
on his younger son John, one of the most despicable of cowards and most
contemptible of traitors. The discovery led Richard to renew his intimacy
with the French king, Philip Augustus, to whose sister Adelais or Alix he
had long since been betrothed. That princess had passed into the custody
of the English king, and had, it was said, borne him a child; but of this
Richard for the present took no count, as backed by Philip Augustus, he
insisted on her surrender and on receiving the fealty of the barons as
his father’s heir-apparent. On this second point the king’s answer was
ambiguous; and Richard, exclaiming indignantly that he now believed what
before he had thought impossible, knelt down at the feet of Philip, and,
demanding from him protection in his just rights, did homage to him for
all his father’s dominions in France. In the war which followed Henry
was driven from the castles of Mans, Amboise, and Tours. His body was
wasted with disease, and he was induced to meet his son and the French
king on a plain near Tours. A thunderstorm, in which the lightning twice
fell near them, unnerved him still more. He agreed to pay 20,000 marks to
Philip, to surrender Adelais, and to allow his vassals to swear fealty
to Richard, and asked only to see the list of the names of barons who
had joined the confederacy of the French king. At the head was the name
of his own son John. He read no further. A raging fever came on, during
which he heaped curses on his unnatural children; and in a week he died.
[Sidenote: Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade.]
[Sidenote: Modes of raising money.]
Richard was now king of England; but he was not the man to fix his
thoughts on the wilder schemes which had filled the mind of his father.
The power and wealth of his kingdom were things to be used for spreading
his own renown, and this renown could be won and extended nowhere so well
as in the Holy Land, and in no other way so gloriously as in cleaving the
bodies of unbelievers with his deadly broadsword. It was the ambition of
a ruffian, gilded over with a thin varnish borrowed from the chivalry
of Tancred (p. 45); and he proceeded to gratify it at the expense of
the real interests whether of the kingdom or of himself. The sum which
he needed for his enterprise far exceeded the 100,000 marks which his
father’s greed or economy had amassed in the treasury at Salisbury.
Richard sold the earldom of Northumberland for 1,000_l._ to the bishop of
Durham for the term of his life: for 3,000_l._ he received into favour
his brother Geoffrey, now archbishop of York: for 10,000_l._ he resigned
to William the Scottish king all the rights over Scotland which the
latter had conceded to Henry, together with the castles of Roxburgh and
Berwick; and then departed for Normandy on the same errand of plunder and
exaction.
[Sidenote: Persecution and massacre of Jews in England.]
[Sidenote: Fearful tragedy in York castle.]
Both the first and the second crusade had been marked at their outset
by persecutions and massacres of the Jews. The third was to furnish no
exception. The Jews of England felt probably that a storm was gathering,
and they hastened to conciliate the king with costly presents. Their
eagerness unhappily outran their discretion. Richard, knowing the feeling
of the people, had ordered that no Jews should appear before him on the
coronation day. Disregarding this command, some of them, mingling with
the crowd, entered the palace, were thrust out by the mob, and murdered.
The fire, thus kindled, spread furiously. Every Jew in the streets was
cut down: every house belonging to a Jew was plundered and burnt. Some
attempt was made to check the slaughter. Three men were hanged; but
they were charged, not with murdering Jews, but with robbing Christians
under pretence that they were Jews, or with setting houses on fire to
the danger or hurt of the property of Christians. The iniquity was not
confined to London. The same things were done in all the great cities. At
York, as at Lincoln, the wealthy Jews hurried with their goods into the
castle. At Lincoln they found safety: at York they unhappily interpreted
the departure of the governor from the castle as a sign that he was
plotting against them with the Christians of the town, and closed the
gates against him on his return. In his anger he induced the sheriff of
the county to order his armed bands to the assault: and these were joined
by the populace whose fury showed at once that they meant much more than
the mere recovery of the castle. The besieged could hear the fierce cry
of a canon regular, of the Premonstratensian order, who hounded on the
mob to ‘destroy the enemies of Christ.’ They knew that their doom was
sealed; but if they must die, they might still choose the mode of their
death. In a council summoned to debate the matter, the rabbi urged that
they should avoid frightful insults and barbarous torments for their
wives and children as well as for themselves by voluntarily rendering up
their souls to the Creator, and falling by their own hands. The deed,
he urged, was both reasonable and sanctioned by their law, as well as
made famous by the men who in the deadly struggle between Jerusalem and
Rome had slain themselves at Massada. To some his counsel seemed wise,
to others a hard saying. The rabbi cut the discussion short by bidding
all to depart in peace who could not approve his counsel. A few only
left the chamber. In a few hours the work of death was done, and the
castle was left in flames. The few, who could not summon courage to
follow the example of their brethren, offered from the walls to open
the gates and submit to baptism, if their lives should be spared. The
terms were granted and the surrender was made; and by way of keeping
faith the Christians rushing in slaughtered every living thing within
the walls. These were venial offences; but the men of York added to them
an act which was a real crime, and one of the deepest dye, in the eyes
of king Richard. They hastened to the cathedral, and seizing on all the
bonds and obligations which had been laid up in the archives burnt them
in the nave. These bonds on the death of those who held them would all
have escheated to the king; and the bishop of Ely, the chancellor, was
commissioned to search out and punish the offenders. But the ringleaders
had made their escape across the Scottish border; and justice even in the
matter of robbery was baffled.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai.]
[Sidenote: Poetry and influence of the troubadours.]
Richard, having filled his coffers so far as he could, met Philip
Augustus at Vezelai where, forty-four years before, the pleadings of St.
Bernard had seemed to stir the heart of Christendom to efforts which
must be successful. The voice which now had most power was not that of
the priest, the hermit, or the saint. It was that of the troubadour; and
if for the present his harp might be attuned to lofty measures, and his
words might convey lessons almost as austere as those of pope Urban II.,
there was at least the danger that a very moderate measure of success
might lead the minstrel to arouse emotions of a less devout sort and
tempt his hearers to less exalted delights than those of prayer and
meditation. The forces of the two kings amounted, it is said, to 100,000
men. The discipline which kept them together may be pictured from the
rules which enacted that murderers should be tied to the bodies of their
victims and hurled into the sea, that they who drew their swords in anger
should lose their hands, and that thieves should be tarred and feathered
and in that plight put on shore.
[Sidenote: March of Frederick I. Barbarossa to Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: The popes and the empire.]
While Philip and Richard were on their way to Sicily, Frederick I.,
emperor of the West, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, was on
his way to Constantinople. He had fought a long battle with the pope or
the man who called himself pope. He had himself set up an anti-pope,
as the imperialist popes were called; and with the sanction of this
anti-pope, who styled himself Pascal III., he had attacked Rome, beaten
down the gates of St. Peter’s with hatchets and axes, and seen his
troops advance filling the church with blood as they fought their way
to the high altar. In the midst of this carnage Pascal III. had placed
the crown on the head of the empress Beatrice, and had blessed again the
diadem of Frederick. He had had to contend with a mightier enemy than
the pope in the fearful pestilence which broke out within his camp; and
his flight from Rome had ensured the victory of pope Alexander III., the
somewhat hesitating friend of Thomas of Canterbury. But although the
warfare of previous years was succeeded by an apparent peace, Frederick
lost no opportunity of strengthening himself against the papacy; and in
the days of Urban III. he had gained much by securing for his son Henry
the hand of Constantia, heiress of the kingdom of Sicily. The old strife
might have been renewed; but the heart of Barbarossa was stirred by the
tidings from the Holy Land or the letters of Gregory VIII., and his
armies advanced under his standard through Hungary towards the capital of
the Eastern empire. That capital Barbarossa, like his predecessor Conrad
(p. 93), refused to enter. The Byzantine Cæsar had with scant courtesy
allowed him the privilege of buying food for his men; he had studiously
withheld from him the titles which implied a divided empire.
[Sidenote: Death of Frederick I.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190.]
[Sidenote: Re-occupation of Antioch.]
The steadier discipline, the more decent order which marked the army of
Barbarossa seemed to promise a better result to his enterprise. They
had defeated the Turks in a general battle, and had taken the Seljukian
capital of Cogni (Iconium), (p. 82); but a great disaster, nothing
less than the loss of their leader himself, awaited them. Frederick was
drowned in a Pisidian river, as some said while he was crossing it; as
others had it, from the effects of bathing. The misery and suffering
which had fallen to the lot of the earlier crusaders now weighed heavily
upon them: and the wretched story is sufficiently told, if it be true
that not a tenth of the number which crossed the Bosporos lived to enter
Antioch. The few who made their way thus far found a city almost deserted
by the Turkish soldiers, and Antioch once more had a Christian government.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189. Siege of Acre.]
But while the sovereigns of the West were thus preparing for another
great effort on their behalf, the Latins of Palestine were struggling
hard to win back their lost supremacy, and were aided by crowds of armed
pilgrims, whose immense numbers have to be taken into account if we wish
to realize the extent of the drain to which the population of Europe was
thus subjected. Too impatient to wait, these wanderers hurried, with
whatever motives, to the scenes where, as they supposed, honour could not
fail to be won, even if wealth and happiness should not be their portion.
The conflict now turned on the possession of Acre, the key of the whole
region lying to the west of the Jordan. It had opened its gates to
Saladin soon after the battle of Tiberias; and before Richard of England
and Philip Augustus set foot on the Holy Land it had been besieged for
nearly two years by Guy of Lusignan, titular king of Jerusalem, with an
army which the influx of pilgrims from Europe had raised, it is said, to
100,000 men. But the besiegers had little generalship, and the mischief
done to their effectiveness by vice and debauchery was completed by a
fearful pestilence which swept them away by thousands.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Teutonic order.]
In the midst of this misery a few German merchants, from the coast of the
Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering by running up the sails of their
ships as tents for the sick and dying. The happy results which followed
their work led to an organization similar to that of the orders of the
Temple and the Hospital. Like those orders, the Teutonic knights rose to
power and distinction, and in the history of the crusade of Frederick
II., we shall find their grand-master, Herman of Salza, in high favour
both with the emperor and with the pope, his implacable antagonist.
With the failure of the crusades in the East the order was transferred
to the more forbidding regions which had sent forth its founders, and
their crusade was turned against the heathen of the Lithuanian, Prussian,
Esthonian, and other tribes. They preached the gospel with the sword, and
their efforts were followed at least by military success. Their grasp on
the lands which they overran was never relaxed, and the last grand-master
became the sovereign of a state which has grown into the modern kingdom
of Prussia.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Death of Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem.]
The sickness and vice which wasted the forces of the crusaders before
Acre were powerfully aided by feuds among the chiefs. Sibylla, the sister
of Baldwin IV., and wife of Guy of Lusignan, was carried off by the
plague. Her two children died with her, and her husband found himself
stripped of the privilege which had made him at least the shadow of a
king. Isabel, the sister of his wife, still lived, and having got rid of
her first husband Humphry, lord of Thoron, was now married to Conrad,
marquis of Tyre. As thus wedded to the heiress of Almeric, Conrad
claimed the sovereignty of Jerusalem, and the decision of the point was
reserved for the kings of England and France.
[Sidenote: Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1190. Sept. 23.]
These kings were now on their way to the East. Richard had journeyed
by land to Genoa, while his fleet, having crossed the bay of Biscay,
anchored at Lisbon, where his forces found a crusade ready to their
hands. The town of Santarem, forty miles above Lisbon, was blockaded by
the Saracen emir. With the aid of the English the Portuguese raised the
siege and then found themselves compelled to fight with their deliverers
in the streets of Lisbon. The crusaders thought that they carried with
them a license for universal plunder and insult; and it was not without
difficulty and much bloodshed that they were persuaded by their leaders
to reserve the application of their theory for more distant lands. The
summer was coming to an end when Richard, having joined his fleet on the
Italian coast, entered Messina almost in the guise of a conqueror, to the
terror of the Sicilians and the disgust of the French king Philip.
[Sidenote: Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily.]
Then, as through almost the whole of its chequered history, Sicily was a
prize for which contending kings and adventurers intrigued, or fought. It
was now held by Tancred, an illegitimate son of the Apulian duke Roger.
His sister Constantia, the legitimate daughter of Roger, was the wife
of Henry, son of Frederick Barbarossa, who wished to make the island a
portion of his own imperial realm (p. 125). He was foiled by Tancred,
who took the further precaution of imprisoning Joanna, the widow of
his predecessor William called the Good. Joanna was the sister of the
English Richard, who was not slow in demanding her freedom, her dower,
and the legacies which William the Good had left to his father Henry II.
His demands were accompanied by robbery and violence, and his followers
hastened to imitate his example. They came to open strife with the people
in the streets of Messina; and the battle was followed by the plundering
of the town. But the raising of the English standard on the walls was
interpreted as an insult by Philip Augustus, and Richard was constrained
to appease his wrath by placing the city in the charge of the Knights
Templars and Hospitallers.
[Sidenote: Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus.]
The dispute with Tancred was made up by the betrothal of his infant
daughter to Arthur, duke of Brittany, that luckless victim of the cruelty
of John whom Shakespeare has made famous. But the quarrels of these
champions of the cross are tangled like links in a twisted chain. By
way of showing his friendly feeling, Tancred placed in Richard’s hand a
letter bearing the signature of the French king and inviting Tancred to a
private alliance against Richard. The latter charged Philip Augustus with
the treachery, and was charged in turn with producing forged letters by
way of devising an escape from his engagement with his sister Adelais.
Richard had offered to marry Berengaria, daughter of Sancho, king of
Navarre, and with studied coarseness he told Philip that he could have
nothing to do with the mother of his father’s child. So was changed into
mortal hatred that alliance which in its early days had led them to eat
at the same table and rest in the same bed.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. March. War between Richard and the Comnenian
emperor of Cyprus.]
Thus passed away the winter in disgraceful quarrels and in lavish outlays
of money scarcely less disgraceful. In the spring the French king sailed
for Acre. Richard went to Rhodes, and while he remained there sick, he
heard that some of his people had been wrecked on the coast of Cyprus,
robbed of their goods, and imprisoned by Isaac the Comnenian prince who
called himself emperor of the island. His demand for compensation was
unheeded. The English fleet appeared before Limasol, the southernmost
town of the island: and the English troops were soon masters of the city.
Isaac entered into a treaty which bound him to serve with 500 knights in
the crusade, and in the event of good behaviour Richard promised him the
restoration of his kingdom. But fear got the better of his prudence. He
made his escape, and again met the English king in battle. The fight was
followed by his surrender, and Richard ordered him to be kept in a castle
on the coast of Palestine.
[Sidenote: Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. July 12.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of Acre.]
[Sidenote: Return of Philip to France.]
Here, in the town which under the name of Paphos had won for itself a
pre-eminence in vice and folly, Richard was married to Berengaria of
Navarre. Here also he received and promised to take up the cause of Guy
of Lusignan, the weightiest argument for so doing being found in the fact
that Philip Augustus had taken up that of Conrad. Thus the two kings
reached Acre only to complicate old feuds with new strifes. The siege
had lasted nearly two years. In the plain was gathered the crusading
host, still magnificent in its appointments; on the heights were
assembled the Turkish armies under the black banner of Saladin. Richard
had loitered on the road as long as it suited his fancy or his ambition
to do so; and he had overwhelmed with a torrent of reproach and abuse
the envoys from the chiefs before Acre who dared to confront him at the
Cyprian Famagosta with the reproof that his business was not to dethrone
Comnenian princes and take their kingdoms, but to do battle with the
Turk for the sacred heritage of Christendom. He reached Acre, prostrated
with intermittent fever; but indifference to the enterprise had given way
to a fiery zeal. He had himself carried out on a mattress to point the
balistæ which by discharging stones served in some measures the purposes
of modern artillery. But at first the two kings would not act together,
and this division of forces enabled the besieged to stand out. Their
reconciliation, whether real or seeming, led to a combined action which
was soon rewarded by the offer of surrender. The terms now proposed were
rejected, and Saladin cheered the besieged with the hope of succours to
be received from Egypt. The help came not, and Saladin was compelled to
assent to a harder compact. The piece of the true cross was to be given
up, the Christian prisoners set free, and some thousands of hostages were
to be detained for the payment, within forty days, of 200,000 pieces of
gold. The surrender was made. Richard took up his abode in the palace,
Philip went to the house of the Templars, and the flags of the two kings
floated from the ramparts. Philip now regarded himself as absolved from
his vow, and he announced his determination to return to France. Richard
parted from his ally with undissembled anger and contempt, and Philip,
sailing to Tyre, gave to Conrad that half of the city of Acre which had
been reserved for himself.
[Sidenote: Massacre of 5,000 Turkish hostages.]
The forty days wore on. Saladin would not or could not restore the relics
of the true cross or make up the 200,000 pieces. Richard warned him
what the consequences of neglect would be; and he kept his word. On the
fortieth day two thousand seven hundred hostages were led to the top of
a hill from which all that passed might be seen in the camp of Saladin;
and at a signal from the king these two thousand seven hundred infidels
were all cut down. The soldiers hacked open their bodies to search for
the jewels and gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and
to obtain the gall which they kept as medicine. In such praiseworthy
deeds as these the Christians could act with admirable concert. At the
same hour hostages almost equalling in number the victims of Richard
were slaughtered on the walls of the city by the duke of Burgundy, the
representative of Philip Augustus.
[Sidenote: Victory of Richard at Azotus.]
The recovery of Acre was for these merciful and devout champions of
the cross a sufficient reason for plunging into beastly debauchery and
excess, from which it was no easy task to tear them away. At length the
army of Richard moved southwards, marching in compact array along the
coast, while the fleet, generally in sight, advanced along the shore.
On their left hung the hosts of Saladin, whose policy it was to wear
out his enemy, in a country the fortresses of which he had dismantled,
without fighting any pitched battles. In this way the crusaders and
their enemies had reached the neighbourhood of Azotus (Ashdod), when
Richard resolved to face his adversary. The right wing was under Jacob
of Avesnes; the left was held by the Duke of Burgundy; the English king
was in the centre. The disposition of the battle showed some approach to
generalship on his part; and his coolness was seen in the steadiness with
which he reserved for the decisive moment the charge of his horsemen.
Their tremendous onset broke the Turkish ranks. The victory was decisive:
but it was purchased with the death of Jacob of Avesnes, which Richard
mourned as a costly sacrifice.
[Sidenote: Abortive negotiations with Saladin.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1191. November.]
[Sidenote: Feud between the English king and the duke of Austria.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1192. April 27.]
[Sidenote: Henry of Champagne titular king of Jerusalem.]
His next move was to Jaffa, although he had wished to go on to Ascalon.
The French barons insisted on the necessity of rebuilding the walls
of Jaffa; and in spite of the sluggishness which with the crusaders
almost always followed strenuous exertion, the task was at length
completed. Richard resolved to renew the war with vigour, and announced
to Saladin that nothing less would content him than the surrender of
all the territory which had been included in the kingdom of Jerusalem
under Baldwin the leper, (p. 104). Saladin replied by an offer to yield
up all lands lying between the Jordan and the sea; but it soon became
clear that the negotiations were a mere pretext for gaining time, and
Richard determined to advance upon Jerusalem. The army reached Ramlah,
encountering some hardships from rain and tempests. Still it seemed
that they might soon win the prize to which they had looked forward as
the adequate recompense of all human toil. It was not to be so, and the
hindrance came from the military orders and from the men of Pisa. These
asserted that the reconquest of Jerusalem would be the dissolution of
the enterprise. The army would never be kept together, so soon as they
had once paid their vows before the tomb of the Redeemer. The crusaders
fell back to Ascalon, and there the winter was spent partly in restoring
the fortifications, but for the more part in incessant feuds. The duke
of Austria had learnt during the siege of Acre to look on Richard as an
enemy. The cause, it was said, was an insult done to the Austrian banner,
which Richard, on seeing it raised upon the ramparts, seized and flung
into the ditch. The hatred thus excited was embittered, we are told, by
the injunction or desire for the personal help of all in the camp for
the rebuilding of the walls of Ascalon. The duke replied that he was
neither a mason nor a carpenter; and the lion-hearted king retorted by
a kick which threw him down. This may be romance or fiction; but the
disorganization of the force is sufficiently shown by the facts that the
claim of Conrad to the throne of Jerusalem was urged by the Genoese, that
of Guy by the men of Pisa; that the French abandoned the camp because
Richard was no longer able to pay them; and that the jealousy of Conrad
could be satisfied with nothing less than an alliance with Saladin.
The end had almost come. Richard knew that his presence in England was
a matter of life and death, and he now in his offers to the Turkish
sultan abated his claim to the mere possession of the holy city and the
restoration of the true cross. To this last surrender Saladin had in the
previous negotiations made no objection. He had now become more orthodox
or more scrupulous, and he could not give even indirect encouragement
to the idolatry which would worship a piece of wood. Nor was a treaty
set on foot for the marriage of Richard’s sister Joanna to Saphadin the
sultan’s brother more successful. The English king even consented to give
up the cause of Guy and sanction the choice of Conrad of Tyre for the
Latin crown. The murder of Conrad by two of the fraternity known as the
Assassins drew on Richard a storm of indignation; but evidence for the
crime there was none. A more popular claimant appeared in Henry, count of
Champagne, whose election to the throne of Godfrey was followed by his
marriage to the widow of Conrad. The grief of Guy was consoled by the
sovereignty of Cyprus which was still in the hands of his descendants
when the Crescent in 1453 displaced the Cross on Justinian’s church in
Constantinople.
[Sidenote: March of Richard towards Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Retreat of the army from Bethlehem.]
[Sidenote: Relief of Jaffa.]
[Sidenote: Truce between the crusaders and Saladin.]
Disunion and bad generalship had practically sealed the doom of the
crusade; but for Richard the capture of Jerusalem still had greater
charms than the punishment of his brother John. In June, accordingly,
the army once more began its march to the Holy City. The tidings of
his approach caused almost panic terror among the Turks; but when they
had reached Bethlehem the crusaders discovered that their forces were
insufficient for the investment of the city; that to a commissariat
they could scarcely make a pretence; that they ran an imminent risk of
being cut off from their base of supplies; and, lastly, that the Turks
had destroyed the wells and cisterns for miles round. It was impossible
to resist the logic of these facts; and Richard made a last desperate
effort to divert their joint forces to an invasion of Egypt and the
attack of Cairo. He was led up a hill from which he was told that he
might see Jerusalem; he held up his shield before his face as being
unworthy to behold the city which he had failed to wrest from the power
of the infidel. The army was broken up. Some went to Jaffa, more to
Acre; and Saladin, advancing with rapid marches to the former city, so
pressed it that the besieged pledged themselves to surrender if within
twenty-four hours they should not be effectually succoured. Within that
time Richard appeared upon the scene. His onset was more fierce, his
valour and exploits more astonishing than ever. The besiegers retreated
in confusion, to learn presently with greater shame that they had been
scared by a mere handful of Christian horsemen. But if the splendid
bravery of the English king struck terror into the multitude, there
were not lacking some, it is said, in which it excited a chivalrous
admiration. Richard was dismounted, we are told, in the thick of the
fight, and Saladin’s brother Saphadin, whose son Richard had at his
request knighted, sent him two horses to enable him to renew the
struggle. The crusaders were victorious: but Richard had no wish to use
the advantage thus gained except for the purpose of gaining the best
terms from the enemy. The compact ultimately made pledged them to a
truce of three years and eight months. Ascalon was to be dismantled: but
the Christians were to remain in possession of Jaffa and Tyre with the
country between them; and all pilgrims were to have the right of entering
Jerusalem untaxed.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage to Jerusalem.]
Of this privilege the French at Acre desired to avail themselves. Richard
indignantly refused their request. They had done nothing to secure the
peace or to deserve it; and their allies only should be suffered to enter
the Sacred City. Among these pilgrims was the bishop of Salisbury, who
became the guest of Saladin and heard from his lips praises of the valour
of Richard which were not extended to his generalship. The thrust was
rather evaded than parried by the reply that the earth could not produce
two warriors who could be put into comparison with the Syrian sultan and
the English king.
[Sidenote: Results of the third crusade.]
So ended the third crusade, with its work barely more than begun, or
rather marred by the infatuated waste of splendid opportunities; yet not
with an extremity of humiliation which would convince even devotees of
the absurdity of further efforts. A large strip of coast bounded by two
important cities still remained as a base of operations in any renewed
contest, and much had been done to neutralize the effects which without
doubt Saladin had anticipated from his victory at Tiberias and his
conquest of Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: Captivity of Richard I. in Austria.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1192. Dec. 21.]
On the morning after his embarkation at Acre, Richard turned to take
a last look on the fading shores of Palestine. ‘Most holy land,’ he
exclaimed with outstretched arms, ‘I commend thee to the care of the
Almighty! May He grant me life to return and deliver thee from the yoke
of the infidels!’ His fleet, carrying his wife and sister, had preceded
him and reached Sicily in safety. He himself followed in a single ship,
and at the end of a month of baffling winds found himself at Corfu, where
he hired some trading vessels to take him to Ragusa and Zara. Sailing
on, he was thrown by a storm on the Istrian coast between Aquileia
and Venice, when the perils of his situation must have begun to force
themselves upon him. The kinsfolk of Conrad of Tyre bore no love for his
supposed murderer; the French king was in treaty with his brother John;
and Henry VI., the emperor of Germany, and son of Barbarossa, owed him a
grudge for his alliance with Tancred of Sicily (p. 128). Still Richard
thought, it seems, that a pilgrim’s disguise and an unshorn beard would
carry him through all dangers. Having reached the fortress of Goritz,
which was held by Maynard, a nephew of Conrad, he sent his companion,
Baldwin of Bethune, with the gift of a ruby ring, to ask a passport
for himself and Hugh the merchant, pilgrims going home from Jerusalem.
Maynard looked long at the ruby, and at length said, ‘This jewel can
come only from a king; that king must be Richard of England. Tell him he
may come to me in peace.’ Not trusting his promise, Richard fled during
the night. Baldwin and seven others who remained with him were seized
and kept as hostages. At Freisach six more of his companions were taken,
although Richard himself escaped with one knight and a boy who knew the
language of the country. This boy, sent to the market at Erperg, near
Vienna, showed his money too freely, was caught, put to the torture, and
revealed the name of his master. Surrounded in his house by troops of
armed men, Richard refused to yield except to their chief; and that chief
hastened to take charge of him. It was Leopold, who may have felt that
he could now taste the sweets of revenge for the insults (whatever these
may have been) which Richard had put upon him in Palestine. But Leopold
was induced to compound with his feelings by a bribe of 60,000_l._; and
Richard, as the prisoner of Henry VI., was closely guarded in a Tyrolese
castle.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1193. Exertions made for the liberation of Richard.]
The tidings of his captivity were received with sorrow by his subjects
generally, with undissembled joy by his brother John and Philip Augustus
of France. Of these two princes the former prepared to fight for the
crown, and after the first reverse accepted an armistice: the latter,
having sent to Richard to renounce his allegiance, invaded Normandy, and
met with a complete repulse at Rouen. At length the place of Richard’s
imprisonment was discovered by William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, the
English chancellor; or, as the romance would have it, by his faithful
minstrel Blondel. The pope was at once assailed with entreaties to come
forward for his rescue. Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath, reminded
Cælestine III. of his debt of gratitude to so faithful a son of the
Church. His mother Eleanor wrote to him in less measured terms. Where,
she asked, was the zeal of Elijah against Ahab, of John the Baptist
against Herod, of Alexander III. against the father of the emperor who
had wrought this iniquity in Christendom? ‘For trifling reasons your
cardinals are sent in all their power to the most savage lands; in this
great cause you have appointed not even a subdeacon or an acolyth. You
would not have much debased the dignity of the holy see had you set out
in person to rescue him. Restore to me my son, O man of God, if thou art
indeed a man of God and not a man of blood. If you remain lukewarm, the
Most High may require his blood at your hands.’ In later letters she
asks him if he thinks that his soul can be safe while he is thus slack
in rescuing the sheep of his fold, and tells him that he ought to be
willing to lay down his life for one in whose behalf he was unwilling to
speak or write a single word. The truth is that Cælestine was full of
zeal for Richard’s cause: he was only waiting with true papal caution for
Richard’s deliverance to express his zeal emphatically.
[Sidenote: Richard before the diet at Hagenau.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1194. Feb. 4. Release of Richard.]
[Sidenote: His return to England.]
At length, after nearly four months, Richard was brought before the
diet at Hagenau. The captive might have pleaded the incompetence of
the tribunal; he chose to answer the charges brought against him with
arguments which convinced his judges of his innocence and made the
emperor willing to treat about his ransom. This ransom was raised by
new taxes laid on his subjects, whose resources, even when taxed to the
uttermost, seemed unlikely to satisfy imperial avarice; and there was the
further danger that whatever might be the sum raised, John might outbid
them. This upright and honourable prince had offered to pay to Henry
VI. the sum of 20,000_l._ for every month during which the imprisonment
of Richard might be prolonged; but there was a limit to the patience
of the German barons, and their words convinced Henry that this limit
had been reached. Richard was released, hostages being given for that
portion of his ransom which was not paid on the spot. His deliverance set
free the tongue of pope Cælestine, who now wrote to the Austrian duke as
well as to the emperor, insisting that the ransom should be given back
and the hostages restored. The emperor paid no heed to the command, but
Leopold was brought to obedience by the discipline of excommunication and
sickness, and Richard after four years’ absence landed in his own kingdom
to impoverish his people by fresh exactions for quarrels as useless as
the enterprise which had taken him across the seas.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FOURTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Motives of the chief promoters of the fourth crusade.]
The story of the fourth crusade is soon told. It was an effort prompted
by the policy of a pope to whom the diversion of forces which the German
emperor might turn against himself was of supreme importance,—of an
emperor whose consciousness of ill desert made him catch eagerly at an
opportunity for winning the favour of his German subjects—and of chiefs
who hoped to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Turks for
the promotion of their personal interests against the wishes and even
against the warning and protests of the Latin Christians in Palestine.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1193. Death of Saladin and its consequences.]
Saladin, the chivalrous antagonist of the lion-hearted Richard, was
dead; and the fabric of his empire soon showed signs of decay. His
brother Saphadin, upheld by Saladin’s soldiers, maintained his ground
against the competition of Saladin’s children who ruled in Egypt,
Damascus, and Aleppo. But although Christians and Mahomedans were alike
weighed down by the pressure of a terrible famine, the Knights of St.
John longed to strike a blow by which they thought that they could surely
crush their enemies. Their efforts to stir up a crusade in England and
in Europe were seconded by pope Cælestine III., who promised all the
spiritual rewards which had called forth the heroism or the brutality
of the earlier pilgrim warriors. On Philip Augustus all entreaties were
thrown away. Richard of England, it is said, was nursing dreams of
conquests which were to place him in the seat of the Byzantine Cæsars:
but for the time he was busied with the less pleasing task of wringing
money from impoverished subjects.
[Sidenote: Encouragement given to the crusade by the emperor Henry VI.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1196. Death of Henry VI.]
But if pope Cælestine hoped that by urging this crusade he should rid
himself of his mortal enemy, he was doomed to disappointment. The death
of Tancred, king of Sicily, and of his heir enabled the emperor Henry
VI., the son of Barbarossa to claim the island by right of his wife
Constantia (p. 128); and the force which Germany might bring together for
the reconquest of the Holy Land could be made available for strengthening
the imperial power in Southern Europe. Thus the enterprise received
his strongest approval, and his encouragement stirred up a throng of
barons, knights and prelates to assume the cross. But he had no intention
of journeying to Palestine in person. Money and men he was ready to
contribute; but his own task lay nearer home. He had levelled the walls
of Capua and Naples, and was besieging a Sicilian castle, when his own
imprudence brought on a fever which cut short at the age of thirty a
career shameful for its merciless and wholesale tyranny.
[Sidenote: Arrival of his barons with their troops in the Holy Land.]
[Sidenote: Capture of Jaffa by Saphadin.]
[Sidenote: Arrival of fresh crusaders under Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim.]
His barons with their followers reached the Holy Land at a time when,
although the truce made with Saladin (p. 135) had expired, the Latin
Christians were not disposed to renew hostilities. But the Germans had
come to fight, not to debate; and their energy was to be tested by
Saphadin, who resolved to be first in striking a blow. Jaffa was taken
before any succour could reach it from Acre, its inhabitants slaughtered
by hundreds or by thousands, and its fortifications, the work on which
Richard and his soldiers had toiled so hard (p. 132), utterly demolished.
The arrival of a second body of German crusaders seemed to justify a
fresh movement which was directed against Berytos. Saphadin compelled
them to fight between Tyre and Sidon: but he did so to his grievous
cost. His army was for the time broken, and Jaffa with Sidon and other
cities came again into the possession of the Christians. In the town of
Berytos they found, it is said, provisions stored up for three years,
and the power and confidence of the conquerors were largely increased by
the arrival of a third body of armed pilgrims led by Conrad, bishop of
Hildesheim, chancellor of the empire.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1197. Siege of the castle of Thoron.]
[Sidenote: Complete defeat of the Crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1197. Capture of Jaffa, and massacre of the crusaders.]
The crusaders were, in all seeming, in the full career of victory; but
the advantages which they had gained were lost almost in a moment by
their own infatuated bloodthirstiness. They had besieged the castle
of Thoron, and so undermined the rocks on which it rested, that the
garrison, foreseeing the inevitable end, agreed to surrender on the
single stipulation that they should be allowed a free passage into Moslem
territory. The terms were accepted; but so loud were still the threats of
vengeance, so persistent, it is said, the assurances which the Frenchmen
gave to the besieged of the deadly intentions of the Germans, that the
miserable garrison resolved to fight to the death rather than fall into
their hands. They lined the passages which the besiegers had scooped
out in the rock, and their desperate resistance filled with dismay the
savages who but a little while ago had been crying out for their blood.
The disorganization which had not once or twice disgraced the armies
of the earlier crusaders was seen again in even greater degree. The
chiefs fled from the camp in the night, and their followers woke to find
themselves deserted. A confusion ensued so utter and helpless that an
enemy might have won a victory almost without striking a blow; but the
Saracens were scarcely less exhausted than the Christians, and these on
being gathered after their dispersion were able to accuse each the other
of obstinacy, cowardice, or treachery. Conrad of Hildesheim, hastening to
Jaffa with the purpose of restoring its walls, had won a battle fought
against Saphadin at a cost fully equal to any profit which might accrue
from it. The tidings of the death of Henry VI. dealt the final blow to
the enterprise, by recalling to Germany those princes who had an interest
in the election of the emperor. Those who remained behind took refuge in
Jaffa, only, however to meet their doom a few months later at the hands
of a Moslem host which suddenly attacked and stormed the city, while the
Germans were showing their devotion to St. Martin by drinking themselves
into a state of helpless stupidity.
[Sidenote: Almeric of Lusignan king of Jerusalem and Cyprus.]
In spite of these disasters the mockery of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem
was still carried on. On the death of Henry of Champagne (p. 134), his
widow Isabella was advised by the grand-master of the Hospitallers to
marry Almeric of Lusignan who had recently succeeded his brother Guy as
king of Cyprus. Isabella showed no unwillingness to follow this counsel,
and with her fourth husband she added the title of queen of Cyprus to
that of queen of Jerusalem. If the politics of the time represented
Cyprus as a convenient retreat in cases of emergency, such considerations
have little interest or none. The only valid plea for keeping up
the fiction of the Latin kingdom in Palestine would be found in the
likelihood that the abandonment of the title would be regarded throughout
Europe as a confession of defeat, and would be followed by the complete
extinction of the crusading impulse.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIFTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. Election of Innocent III.]
At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade exhibits
something like a return to the spirit of the age which gave so vast a
force to the preaching of the hermit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II.
In the chair of St. Peter there was now seated a man of far greater power
than the pope who stirred the Western world to a fever of enthusiasm
at the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven—an age without
example, perhaps, in the annals of the papacy—Lothair, of the house of
Conti, cardinal of St. Mark, had been chosen pope by the unanimous voice
of all the cardinals who were present, at a time when every other power
seemed to be tottering, if not in the very throes of dissolution. The
Byzantine empire was in its decrepitude; the Latin kingdom of Palestine
was reduced to a mere strip of coast; an infant was king of Naples; the
French king Philip Augustus was paying in whatever measure the penalties
of an evil life; the man who was hoping to wear the English crown was the
vindictive and despicable John, whose treachery had slain his father.
Everywhere was disunion, faction, and deadly hatred: and in the midst of
this chaos appeared the one man whose serene tranquillity, based on the
consciousness of a superhuman commission and on the sanction of a divine
law, was undisturbed by the storms raging around him. The influence,
righteously acquired by Leo and Gregory the Great, and vastly extended
(not altogether by the most righteous means) by Gregory VII. (p. 20)
was wielded with even greater effect by the youthful pontiff whose eye
surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny the troubled scene of European
politics.
[Sidenote: Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction of the
pope.]
To this exalted position the undefined claims of previous popes would
probably never have raised Innocent III., had it not been for the
crusades. In these enterprises the popes had a pretext ready to hand for
interfering with the affairs of every nation and country, for suspending
or annulling civil jurisdiction, for levying taxes under the name of
alms, for releasing barons from the allegiance due to their sovereigns,
inferior tenants from their chiefs, debtors from their creditors. The
crusade became a task which the popes might impose for their souls’
health on refractory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were filled
with the love of Christ must long to take part in the holy work of
rescuing his sepulchre from the hands of the unbelievers. If any were
careless or indifferent to a duty thus constraining, it must be because
their lives were not as pure, their faith not so sound as it should
be, and by such men the divine power for rebuke and even chastisement
committed to the vicars of Christ and of the prince of the apostles must
make itself felt. If kings and great feudal chiefs would prove themselves
to be good Christians, they must put on the cross: and the assumption of
the badge imposed an obligation from which, if the popes were bent on
keeping them to it, it would be almost, if not altogether, hopeless for
them to escape. If they resisted, their sentence was excommunication; and
excommunication, not removed, meant death here and hereafter.
[Sidenote: Weakening of the Imperial power.]
The effect of this policy (for such, however sincere some of the popes
may have been, it assuredly must be called) showed itself especially in
the weakening of the imperial power, without which such a supremacy as
that of Innocent III. over the sovereigns of his age would have been an
impossibility. The emperor Conrad had been driven to take the cross by
the awful pictures which Bernard drew of the judgment day (p. 90): he
came back shorn practically of all his power. Barbarossa had obeyed the
papal bidding, only to die in a distant land; and the struggle was to be
renewed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only in his cradle
when the cardinal Lothair began his career as pope.
[Sidenote: Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples of
Europe.]
But if the crusades and the undefined powers which they brought to the
popes carried to its utmost height the fabric of their supremacy, they
began at the same time to undermine it. At no time had the Roman court
possessed a high reputation for pecuniary probity; more commonly it had
been known as the seed-bed in which venality, jobbery, and corruption
flourished with rank luxuriance. All at once, owing to the new impulse
given to the energies of Christendom, the popes became the possessors or
administrators of revenues more vast than any of which in earlier ages
they could have ventured to dream. Then as in these enterprises failure
followed on failure, and the results attained seemed wholly inadequate to
the outlay, the suspicion was awakened that the funds obtained for the
crusades were sometimes diverted to other purposes. The suspicion might
be unjust, and the popes might appoint barons and bishops not belonging
to their court to be trustees of revenues which were not even to be
kept in Italy. Still in spite of these precautions the old sayings were
repeated, and they came not unfrequently with chilling force just when
the crusading enthusiasm had been fanned into the fiercest flame.
[Sidenote: Efforts of Innocent to remove this mistrust.]
This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enterprise which
Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of the Holy Land,—nay,
for that of all Christians whether of the East or the West. Not even
Urban II. had been more fervent in his exhortations, more lavish in his
promises of eternal happiness, more stern in his threatenings of endless
perdition. Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to defences
against charges of personal corruption, and to appoint for the management
of the crusading revenues committees to which it was supposed that
suspicion could not possibly attach itself. More than this, the pope and
his cardinals must show themselves ready to bear to the full the burdens
which they sought to lay upon others. A tenth of all their revenues
would be devoted to the rescue of the Holy Land from the power of the
infidel. The clergy in all other countries were to contribute at least a
fortieth part, and the laity should be everywhere urged to contribute to
the utmost of their power. The funds so raised were to be put into a safe
place, the amount only being notified at Rome: and hard-hearted indeed
must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of love and mercy.
[Sidenote: Fulk of Neuilly.]
But the indifference with which his words were everywhere received
furnishes a fresh proof that the work of a genuine crusade can be set in
motion only by the combination of authority with the enthusiasm of the
demagogue. So it had been in the days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of
the saint who had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, happily
for Innocent, it was now, when Fulk, a parish priest of Neuilly near
Paris, was smitten with the crusading fever. Even as a priest he had for
a time led a life of miserable slackness, if not of gross vice; but his
heart was touched with the penitence which was kindled in Mary Magdalene
or Mary of Egypt. He had striven to atone for his sins by the severest
asceticism, and to remedy his deplorable ignorance by attending the
lectures of Peter the Chanter, in whom Innocent hoped to find the most
eloquent preacher of his crusade. This hope was not to be realized. Peter
was seized by a fatal illness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the
mission which he had himself received from the pope.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope.]
Even before the death of Peter, Fulk had preached in the streets and
lanes of the great city, and his words had melted the most obdurate and
evil-lived sinners to tears. Still the spell of his oratory seemed to be
losing its power, and he had gone back to his parish work at Neuilly when
the last charge of Peter the Chanter animated him with an irresistible
impulse. He came forward now not merely as the preacher of a crusade, but
as the stern reprover of vice and of spiritual wickedness in high places.
Like Urban and Eugenius, Innocent saw his opportunity. He wrote to Fulk,
expressing his hearty approbation of his work, and bidding him, in
concert with some of the Black and White monks, and with the sanction of
the legate Peter of Capua, go up and down the land calling on all men to
repent and to give proof of penitence by hastening to the land of promise.
[Sidenote: Effects of his eloquence.]
Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher had appeared
whose powers were not inferior to those of St. Bernard. His miracles
were not indeed so numerous, nor, for the most part, of the sort which
ascribed to Bernard the excommunication of troublesome flies, who under
this potent sentence fell dead from the ceiling, and were swept up
from the floor by shovelfuls. His humour was not less ready than his
eloquence. His hearers strove for pieces of his clothing to be kept as
sacred relics. One noisy bystander had caused him special annoyance. He
turned to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed his own
garments, but that he would bless those of this man. In a moment the
man’s clothes were in tatters, and the fragments carried off in triumph
as relics endowed with miraculous power.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Death of Fulk.]
Yet, taken at its best, the effect of Fulk’s preaching was not equal
to that of Bernard or of Peter the Hermit. His words might enjoin high
austerities: his appearance might not belie his words, but it did not
convey indisputable evidence of their truth. He looked and lived much
like other men; and, what was worse, he had to do battle with the fatal
suspicion which Innocent had striven with the utmost earnestness to shake
off. He became the receiver of vast sums of money; and murmurs would
make themselves heard which asserted that all these moneys were not used
as they ought to be. His influence was on the whole waning: but he was
not to see the beginning of the enterprise which he had so strenuously
promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly, while the crusaders were still
at Venice, and his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1200. The chiefs of the fifth crusade.]
Other preachers also girded up their loins for the great work, and
their words told especially on some of the younger men among the French
princes. Foremost among these was Theobald, count of Champagne, who had
seen only twenty summers, and whose goal was well nigh reached already.
With him Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his lot, followed by
Simon of Montfort, the infamous leader of the yet future Holy War against
the Albigensians, Walter of Brienne, and with many others, last but not
least Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, the historian of
the crusade. Some months later the badge was assumed by Baldwin, count of
Flanders, by Hugh of St. Pol, by the count of Perche, and many more.
[Sidenote: Mission from the French barons to Venice.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1201.]
[Sidenote: Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to Palestine.]
The followers of these chiefs amounted already to a formidable army. But
the leaders had no adequate navy at their command, and the history of
all the preceding expeditions had convinced men at last of the desperate
risks to be encountered in the land journey across Europe and the Lesser
Asia. One state alone there was which was fully equal to all demands
that might be made upon it for ships; and of the crusades this state
at least had no just reason to complain. These armed pilgrimages had
vastly increased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in Europe
a general desire for eastern products which insured the continuance of
this wide-spread trade. To Venice accordingly the eyes of the crusading
chiefs were turned, and the envoys of the counts of Blois, Flanders, and
Champagne appeared there in the first week of Lent before the doge, or
duke, Henry Dandolo, venerable in his age of more than ninety years, and
the victim of that Byzantine cruelty which had almost, if not wholly,
deprived him of his sight. ‘Sire,’ said Villehardouin, the ambassador
from the count of Champagne, ‘we are come in the name of the great barons
of France, who are pledged to avenge by the conquest of Jerusalem the
insults offered to our Lord Jesus Christ. From no other state can they
obtain the help which they desire, and they implore you for the sake of
the Holy Cross and the Holy Sepulchre to furnish them with ships and all
other things necessary for conveying their men across the sea.’ ‘On what
terms?’ asked the doge. ‘On any that you may name,’ was the reply, ‘so
long as we may be able to bear them.’ The doge promised an answer at the
end of eight days; and when these were passed, the envoys were told that
for four marks of silver for each horse and two for each man the republic
would furnish ships, provisioned for nine months, for the conveyance of
4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,000 infantry.
The total cost would be 85,000 marks of silver; but the republic would
further join the expedition with 50 galleys of its own. The terms were
not unreasonable, and the envoys departed, some homewards, some to
seek further aid from Genoa and Pisa. Here they fared but ill; and
Villehardouin reached Troyes only to find Theobald the count of Champagne
prostrate with hopeless sickness. In his joy at seeing him, the young man
mounted his horse: but it was for the last time. In a few days he died,
and the count of Perche soon followed him to the grave.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed
on with the Venetians.]
The count of Champagne was to have been the chief of the enterprise.
The offer of the command was now refused by the duke of Burgundy as by
many others: it was accepted at last by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat.
But it was not until the following year that the crusading forces were
fairly in motion; and their lack of cohesion was at once seen in all
its mischievous effects. Venice may have driven—there is no just ground
for thinking that she had driven—a hard bargain; but as it was certain
that from her terms she would make no abatement, it was clear that
the interests of the crusaders should lead them to adhere to or give
up the compact in a body. To divide their forces was merely to lay a
heavier burden on those who should still seek the aid of Venice. But of
two courses the crusaders were well nigh sure to choose the worse, and
while some sailed across the bay of Biscay and through the straits of
Gibraltar, others embarked at Marseilles. Others again found their way to
ports in Southern Italy, leaving Villehardouin to deplore at Venice the
wretched mischief wrought by these desertions. It seemed at first that
they had dealt a death-blow to the enterprise. The Venetian fleet was
ready, in perfect order and magnificently equipped: but the price, the
85,000 silver marks, must be paid in advance, and the counts of Flanders
and St. Pol and the marquis of Montferrat could only make up 51,000 after
selling all their plate and putting the utmost strain upon their credit.
[Sidenote: Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition against Zara.]
Of this dilemma the doge proposed a solution which at first excited the
astonishment, the dismay, and even the disgust of the crusaders. The
war which pope Innocent had striven to kindle was strictly a holy war,
directed only against the infidel for the rescue of lands, which formed
the inalienable heritage of Christendom. But the Venetian doge now
announced that the 34,000 marks might be discharged by conquering for
the republic the town of Zara, which had been, so he averred, unjustly
seized by the king of Hungary. The summer wore on. The feast of the
Nativity of the Virgin had come round, when Dandolo, ascending the pulpit
in the church of St. Mark, declared his readiness to live or die with
the pilgrims of the cross, and then, going to the high altar, fixed the
blood-red badge on his high cotton cap. The sight called forth the tears
and wakened the enthusiasm of all who were present. The less pleasant
features of the compact lost their repulsive aspect; and the interests of
Venice were further consulted by the agreement that she should have one
half of all conquests that might be made.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1195. Mission to Rome to seek aid for the dethroned
Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus.]
A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some years past the palace
of the Byzantine Cæsars had been defiled by a series of bloody murders
or of mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after emperor had been put
to death or blinded and thrust into a dungeon. The latter penalty was
the doom of Isaac Angelus when his throne was usurped by his brother
Alexios, a tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, laxly guarded, was
able to communicate with his partisans; his son Alexios, having contrived
to make his escape in a Pisan vessel to Ancona, appeared to plead his
cause before Innocent at Rome. He received no genial welcome. The pope
had perhaps a better hope of bringing about the submission of the Eastern
to the Western church through the possessor of a throne than through
claimants or pretenders. He was better received at the court of his
brother-in-law, the Swabian chief Philip; and his messengers now appeared
in Venice to implore the help of the commercial republic and the high
chivalry of Western Christendom.
[Sidenote: Determination of the Venetians to insist on the expedition to
Zara.]
Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was destined for time to
realize may have floated before the mind of Dandolo, as he listened to
their earnest pleadings; but for the present he confined himself to
words of encouragement and sympathy. The task immediately before them
was the conquest of Zara; and Venice stuck to her bond with inflexible
pertinacity. In vain the abbot Martin, who with his followers had
crossed the Tyrolese Alps, protested against the invasion of territories
belonging to the Hungarian king who had himself assumed the cross.
They were told that the scheme might be given up on the payment of the
34,000 silver marks. In vain Innocent sent his cardinal legate Peter of
Capua with orders to interdict the Venetians from assailing Zara even
with their own forces, and to lead the army of the pilgrims himself to
Palestine. The legate was told that he might embark in their fleet if he
pleased, but that he must not dare to exercise his legatine authority
when he had done so. The indignant cardinal hastened to Rome. Some few
drew back from the enterprise: and the marquis of Montferrat pleaded
pressing engagements which withheld him at present from taking the
command.
[Sidenote: Siege and conquest of Zara.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Nov. 15.]
But with the main body of the crusaders the Venetian fleet set sail, in
a magnificent order and with a display of power which seemed capable of
sweeping everything before it. The people of Zara, dismayed at the sight
of the armament, offered at once to surrender on the best terms which
they could get. The doge promised to consider the matter with the barons:
but while they were thus in council, Simon of Montfort, the destined hero
of a bloody crusade against heretical Christians, upbraided the Zarans
with their cowardice, and assured them that the conquest of Zara was no
part of the crusading plan. When the summons for the envoys came from the
doge’s tent, they were nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into
the city, and the walls had been manned for a siege. In the camp Guido,
the abbot of Vaux Cernay, warned the army that they were pilgrims of the
cross, under oath not to make war against Christians in communion with
the Holy See. In high wrath Dandolo insisted that the barons should keep
to their engagements. Few dared, perhaps few wished, to gainsay him.
For five days Zara was besieged; on the sixth it fell. The doge took
possession, but he divided the spoil with his allies.
[Sidenote: Proposal to divert the crusade to the restoration of Alexios
at Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: December.]
The reduction of Zara raised hopes which were to be speedily
disappointed. The crusaders wished to sail at once for the Holy Land.
The doge was determined to guard his conquest against attacks from the
Hungarian king. Winter was coming on; the countries of Western Asia
were suffering grievously from famine, and a voyage then undertaken
would bring with it the miseries of starvation. The only course was to
make Zara their winter quarters. The proposal called forth vehement
opposition, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. The arrival
of the marquis of Montferrat to take the chief command gave promise of
more harmonious action; but the crusade was to be a second time diverted
from its original purpose. Envoys came from the Byzantine Alexios and
the Swabian Philip urging that the purposes of the expedition would be
better achieved by placing Alexios on the throne of Constantinople than
by attempts, which would certainly be in vain, to wrest Palestine from
the Saracens. They insisted that the crusader’s vow was really a vow to
promote in every way the cause of God, of right, and of justice; and
in no way would this cause be more surely furthered than by restoring
the disinherited prince to the throne of which he had been robbed by an
usurper. They pleaded that in this instance interest and duty went hand
in hand. It would be the first business of Alexios after his restoration
to bring the Eastern church into submission to the Roman church and see;
his next task would be to aid the crusaders to the best of his power in
the work which they had most at heart. He would not only feed the whole
army and give them 400,000 silver marks: but he would also join them in
person, or send 10,000 men at his own charge.
[Sidenote: Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios.]
[Sidenote: Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the interdict.]
The announcement of this proposal drew from the abbot of Vaux Cernay
the passionate rejoinder that they were in arms only against Saracens,
and that to Syria only would they go. But though he was firmly seconded
by his partisans, there was practically no reply to the retort that in
Syria they could do nothing, and that Jerusalem could be won only through
Constantinople or Egypt. Words and tempers ran high: but the treaty
with Alexios was accepted by the marquis of Montferrat and the count of
Flanders, and the destination of the army was fixed. The numbers of that
army were slowly diminished through the weeks of winter. The terrors
of the papal interdict hung like a cloud over the host, and the barons
resolved to send envoys who should assure Innocent that the diversion
to Zara, which they and he alike lamented, was to be laid wholly to the
charge of those faithless knights who by departing from other ports
left their comrades without the means of paying the money due to the
Venetians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they prudently said
nothing: and Innocent, while he agreed to suspend the interdict till
the arrival of his legate Peter of Capua, insisted that the barons must
still make atonement for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a
higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter excommunicating
these marauders. The marquis Boniface received the brief, but, instead of
publishing it, he wrote to Innocent, sending the submission of the barons
and saying that the Venetians were about to entreat his forgiveness
for the conquest of Zara. No such entreaties came: and Innocent issued
fresh orders that his brief should be placed in the hands of the doge.
If this was done, it produced no result: and Innocent was startled, if
not dismayed, when he learnt that the spoilers of Zara were making ready
to sin on a larger scale. He denounced the whole scheme with seemingly
vehement indignation. The emperor of Constantinople may have been guilty
of blinding his brother and usurping his throne; but his empire, he
insisted, was under the special protection of the Holy See. It was no
part of their business or their vow to avenge the wrongs of the prince
Alexios; it was their first and paramount duty to avenge the wrongs
done to their Redeemer, the sign of whose cross they bore upon their
shoulders. Nay, more, the Byzantine emperor had, at the special request
of the pope, promised to furnish provisions for the crusaders: and the
promise of the Eastern Cæsar might be trusted. If it should fail, then
they might forcibly take what they wanted, at the same time paying or
promising to pay the value in money.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Easter.]
[Sidenote: Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition.]
Dandolo was in no mood to have his course checked by either papal
pleadings or papal threats. The day of embarkation had arrived, and
Simon of Montfort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigotry, hastened away to
join the king of Hungary, the faithful servant of the pope. The other
chiefs went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps a shrewd suspicion
that their success would be followed by a marked change in the tone
and language of the pope. But whatever might be his desire to keep on
good terms with the reigning monarch, his longing to see the Byzantine
church brought back to Roman subjection was altogether more intense. This
submission would be the immediate result of the enthronement of Alexios,
and the crusaders would depart for the Holy Land, (the vision of a Latin
empire at Byzantium had not yet dawned upon their minds,) rich not only
in the blessing of the pope, but in a wealth of sacred relics which, now
stored up in the churches of the capital, ought to pass into the hands of
the faithful children of the Roman obedience.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople.]
About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian fleet anchored in the
Propontis nine miles to the west of the Imperial city. A few days later
the army was at Scutari, where they received a message from the reigning
emperor Alexios promising them aid in their passage through Asia Minor,
on the condition that during their stay on the shores of the Bosporos
they should do his subjects no harm. The reply was a summons to the
usurper to descend from his throne, with a promise that on this condition
they would obtain for him the pardon of his nephew, the rightful
sovereign.
[Sidenote: Flight of the usurper Alexios.]
This young prince was paraded by the Venetian fleet in front of the
walls; but the proclamation which called upon the people to acknowledge
him as their sovereign was received with contemptuous silence or with
showers of arrows, and no alternative remained but that of open war. The
struggle presents few features of real interest: as a series of military
operations it has little value or none. The imperial fleet consisted, it
is said, of only twenty ships, and these useless, the anchors, cables,
and sails having been sold by the admiral, a brother of the empress.
The army exhibited all the pageantry of war, and lacked almost every
soldierly quality. The port of Constantinople and the town of Galata
were soon in the possession of the invaders, and the siege of the city
was begun, so far as the efforts of a force which could assail but an
insignificant extent of wall deserves the name. The first flag planted
on one of the towers was placed there by the men of Dandolo’s ship; and
Dandolo himself, setting fire to the surrounding houses, kept off the
imperial troops while his crew fortified themselves in their position.
The Latins and the Greeks were now face to face. The splendid ranks
of the Byzantine army stood, as it might seem, ready for battle, when
Alexios gave the signal for retreat and sealed his own downfall. That
night he fled from the city. The blind Isaac Angelus, drawn from his
dungeon, was again clad in the imperial robes, and his son Alexios was
admitted to share his imperial dignity.
[Sidenote: The crusaders are compelled to spend the winter at
Constantinople.]
The task of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be now done. Their
heralds announced to the Egyptian sultan that they would soon take
summary vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy Land. The Pisans who
had aided the usurping Alexios made up their quarrel with Venice. The
French barons asked the forgiveness of the pope for the attack made
upon Constantinople, and Innocent replied that it must depend on the
fulfilment of the promises made by Alexios. This prince, having paid part
of the money which he had sworn to give them, bade them remember how
dear must be to himself the cost of alliance with them, and how greatly
he must need their help to stem the tide of unpopularity. In short, he
let them know that in or near Constantinople they must find their winter
quarters. It was absurd to think of encountering the risk of a voyage
during the winter: and even if they went, they could do nothing against
the Turks until spring. He would then see that nothing should be left
undone towards furthering the success of the crusade.
[Sidenote: Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the crusaders.]
The northern pilgrims received these proposals with murmurs of anger. But
the decision lay really with Dandolo, and Dandolo declared that at this
season of the year the ships of the republic should not be exposed to
useless dangers. The army remained where it was: but new troubles came
thick and fast. Religious antagonism ran out into brawls and fights.
An accidental conflagration preyed for eight days on the streets and
houses of the city. The rage excited by these losses was increased by
the exactions to which the young Alexios was driven in order to meet his
engagements with the crusaders, and was lashed into madness when his
officers stripped the churches of their gold and silver ornaments. The
indignation of the people found utterance in the vehement eloquence of
Alexios Ducas, called Mourzoufle from his dark and shaggy eyebrows; and
his protests so far swayed the youthful emperor as to make him remiss in
carrying out his compact with his allies. These told him plainly that to
that compact he must strictly adhere, or, failing in this, must prepare
himself for war.
[Sidenote: Deposition and death of Alexios.]
During the night following the day in which he received this warning
Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships against the Venetian fleet. The
danger was great; but the Venetian sailors were as prompt as they were
brave. The deadly ships were turned aside into open water, and a Pisan
merchant ship was the only vessel set on fire and destroyed. It was
the last exploit of Alexios. Another revolution hurled him from the
throne, which after one or two more emperors had been set up and put
down passed to Mourzoufle. The new Cæsar showed some aptitude for war,
but he preferred to try the effect of negotiations with Dandolo. The old
doge retorted that with an usurper he could have no dealings, and that,
if he sought peace, he should replace his master Alexios on the throne.
Mourzoufle resolved that this demand should not be made a second time:
and that night Alexios was slain in prison.
[Sidenote: Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constantinople.]
For the fate of their former ally the crusaders professed to feel a
profound sympathy; and their grief prompted the resolution of cutting
the evil at its root by placing a Latin emperor on the seat of the
Eastern Cæsars. The compact was accordingly drawn up. The booty to be
obtained within the city was to be shared equally between the French and
the Venetians; and a committee of twelve, half French, half Venetian,
should elect the new sovereign, who was to have one-fourth part of the
city with the palaces of Blachernai and Boukoleon, the rest of the city
being shared by the two allied powers. Venice, freed from all feudal
obligations to the Greek empire, should be equally free from all feudal
dependence on the Latin sovereign, while the Latin patriarch should be
chosen from the nation to which the emperor might not belong.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. April. Siege and conquest of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: Horrible excesses of the crusaders.]
The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of interest as the
first. The success of the Greeks on the first day was followed by a
series of disasters which on the fourth day enabled the Latins to force
their way through the gates. Mourzoufle shut himself up in his palace.
A third conflagration desolated the city. In the morning the conquerors
learnt that the usurper had fled with many of the inhabitants. The Latin
conquest was accomplished. The Byzantine clergy alone urged continued
resistance; but when they presented Theodore Lascaris to the people
as their emperor, their silence showed that the appeal was made in
vain. Then, seeing that nothing more could be done, the patriarch John
Kamateros fled from the sight of the awful scenes which disgraced the
triumph of the Latins. The three Western bishops had strictly charged
the crusaders to respect the churches and the persons of the clergy,
the monks, and the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the frantic
excitement of victory all restraint was flung aside, and the warriors of
the cross abandoned themselves with ferocious greed to their insatiable
and filthy lewdness. With disgusting gestures and in shameless attire an
abandoned woman screamed out a drunken song from the patriarchal chair
in the church of Sancta Sophia, the magnificent work of Justinian.
Wretches blind with fury drained off draughts of wine from the vessels
of the altar: the table of oblation, famed for its exquisite and costly
workmanship, was shattered: the splendid pulpit with its silver ornaments
utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the churches to bear
away the sacred treasures; if they fell, they were lashed and goaded till
their blood streamed upon the pavement. While the savages were employed
on these appropriate tasks, the more devout were busy in ransacking
the receptacles of holy relics, and laying up a goodly store of
wonder-working bones or teeth to be carried away to the churches of the
great cities on the Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. ‘How,’ asks the pope,
‘shall the Greek Church return to ecclesiastical unity and to respect for
the Apostolic See, when they have seen in the Latins only examples of
wickedness and works of darkness, for which they might justly loathe them
worse than dogs?’ The question might well be asked: and we may be well
assured that Innocent would not be likely to over-colour the picture in
favour of the Greeks, and that his informers would not care to put before
him in their naked hideousness iniquities which it would be a sin to
describe.
[Sidenote: Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, emperor of the East.]
The first task of the conquerors was to elect a chief and share the
spoil. The committee of twelve met in the chapel of the palace and
invoked the aid of the Holy Spirit. The six French electors were all
ecclesiastics,—the abbot of Loces, the bishops of Troyes, Soissons,
Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, and the archbishop-elect of Acre. Their first
choice fell on Dandolo. His wisdom, his energy, his undaunted courage,
seemed to point him out as the best man fitted to rule the empire in the
winning of which he had played the chief part. But the old man cared
little for the office, and to the Venetians the combination of the powers
of emperor and doge in the same person probably boded ill for the best
interests of the commercial republic. There remained only two who could
well be placed in competition for the prize. The marquis of Montferrat,
the lord of a petty principality at the foot of the Alps, could be no
object of Venetian jealousy, while his age and character well qualified
him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the age of thirty-two,
was in the first flush of vigorous manhood; he was come of the race of
Charles the Great, and the French king was his cousin. He was also the
feudal sovereign of a wealthy territory and the leader of a powerful army
raised among his own people. The electors came to an unanimous decision,
and this decision announced to the barons, who were waiting outside, that
the count of Flanders was the Eastern Cæsar. Boniface of Montferrat at
once did homage to him as his lord; and the old doge was the only man not
called upon to make this act of submission. Borne on the shields of his
comrades Baldwin was carried to the church of Sancta Sophia and there was
invested with the purple buskins. Three weeks later he was crowned by the
papal legate, the new patriarch not having been yet elected.
[Sidenote: Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Constantinople.]
This election was to the Venetians a subject of greater anxiety than
the choice of a temporal sovereign. There was no room here for the fear
that Venice might become an insignificant dependency of a vast empire;
and they set to work with their usual promptitude and coolness. The
canonical regularity of the election was, as they supposed, ensured by
the appointment of Venetian priests to be canons of Sancta Sophia; and
these canons were placed under oath to elect none but a Venetian. Their
choice fell on Thomas Morosini, a member of one of their noblest houses
and a man highly esteemed by Innocent III.
[Sidenote: Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the pope.]
The Roman pontiff played his part with consummate skill. While the
usurping Alexios was on the throne, he had striven to secure through
his help the submission of the Eastern church. No sooner had he fled,
than Innocent reminded his nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience
which he had personally made, and urged the crusaders to insist on
the immediate fulfilment of this promise. In no other way could they
justify themselves for diverting to other purposes the forces which had
been enrolled solely for the redemption of the Holy Land. He had now to
deal with a new order of things. The emperor Baldwin had prayed him to
ratify the compact made with the Venetians, to stir up afresh the zeal
of Western Europe for the maintenance of the Latin empire in the East,
to send forth new armies who in the countries now brought under Latin
sway would assuredly reap an abundant harvest, and to reinforce the
Latin clergy by a multitude of new recruits. The Venetians had besought
his forgiveness for attacking Zara, his sanction of the conquest of
Constantinople. They could not bring themselves to believe that the
people of Zara were really under his protection, and hence they had
determined to bear with the excommunication in patient silence until the
pontiff should learn the truth. For what they had done at Byzantium the
young Alexios was chargeable, not they. He had tried to send fire-ships
among their fleet, and it was indispensable for their own safety and that
of their allies to deprive him of the power of doing further mischief.
[Sidenote: Answers of Innocent III.]
The satisfaction which Innocent felt, and avowed that he felt, was
expressed in carefully guarded terms. He was rejoiced to be able to
revoke the excommunication of the Venetians, and so high was his
admiration of the valour and wisdom of Dandolo that he could not comply
with the prayer of the venerable doge to be relieved from further
obligation under his vow. The hero who could bear so lightly the burden
of ninety winters must not deprive the crusade of services which would
ensure success to the enterprise and a glorious reward for himself.
To the delicate praise which thus took the form of a command he added
the assurance that he had taken the Latin empire under his special
protection, and had prayed the sovereigns and prelates of the West to
exert themselves to the utmost in its behalf. He had felt himself bound
to pass a stern condemnation on the deeds of horrible violence and
lewdness committed by the crusaders in the sacking of a Christian city;
but he could not withhold the admission that the history of the conquest
was a memorable commentary on the parables of the talents and the
vineyard. The Greeks had done nothing with the good things committed to
their trust: far from aiding, they had seriously hindered, the warriors
of the cross and even done their best to destroy them. They had kept up
a causeless schism; they had turned a deaf ear to all entreaties which
called upon them to come back to the unity of the Church; and they had
now paid the penalty by seeing their inheritance in the hands of better
husbandmen who would bring forth fruit in due season. But if Innocent
was thus complaisant with the secular empire, he laid a heavy hand on
the spiritual power which the Venetians hoped to secure as their special
portion. The pope had a stern censure for the conduct both of the
Venetians and the French in daring to seize on the temporalities of the
Eastern church and to portion out along with other lands and property
all that might remain over and above the amount deemed sufficient for
the maintenance of the Latin clergy. Nor could he allow the validity of
Morosini’s election, whether by a self-constituted chapter or by priests
chosen by a purely secular authority. The election, in short, was null
and void; but so great was his regard for the Venetians, so high his
esteem for Morosini, that he would himself appoint to the Byzantine
patriarchate the man whom they had chosen, and invest him with singular
privileges. These privileges involved a reservation of certain appeals to
the pope; and the very plenitude of the powers thus bestowed served only
to show with the greater clearness the paramount sovereignty of the Roman
pontiff to whom he owed his dignity and his jurisdiction.
[Sidenote: Results of the crusades to the pope and to the Venetians.]
The great crusade promoted by Innocent had thus produced results very
different from those which he had looked for. It had not touched the
power of the Syrian sultans; it had not struck a blow on the soil of
Palestine. But on the whole he had no cause to complain. It had widely
extended the limits of his supremacy, and had subdued a spiritual
rebellion which had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ. But if the
pope was a gainer, Venice had secured to herself advantages, more solid
perhaps, certainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had laid
the foundations of her vast commercial empire; and her factories at Pera
needed only the defence of her fleets, while the Latins in Byzantium had
to guard themselves against attacks by land. She had her settlements in
the richest islands of the Egean, and in every harbour was seen the flag
of the maritime republic. This growth of her commerce was, moreover,
fostering in her a spirit of antagonism to ecclesiastical authority, of
which Innocent seems to have foreseen the issue, and which he sought with
all his power to crush. The abbot of St. Felix in Venice was consecrated,
by the command of Ziani, the successor of Henry Dandolo, to the
archbishopric of Zara, the sanction of the pope not being first asked.
The wrath of Innocent blazed forth at once. He reviewed in the harshest
terms the general policy of the Venetians in the conduct of the crusade.
It was true that they had taken Zara, and even that they had overthrown
the Byzantine empire: but what would not an army, which had won such
victories, have achieved in the Holy Land? Had the crusaders fulfilled
their vows, not only must Egypt have been subdued, and the cross replaced
on the dome of Omar, but Syria itself must have been swept clear of all
Saracen dominion. That this glorious result had not been brought about
already, was the fault of the Venetians and of them alone. He could not
therefore recognize their archbishop, and he insisted on their submission
under pain of the censures which were ready to fall upon them. There is
no evidence to show that the Venetians took the reproof to heart, or that
they vouchsafed any reply.
CHAPTER X.
THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
[Sidenote: Contrast between the Greeks and the Latins.]
We have already (p. 55) marked the broad contrast between the character
of the Greeks and that of the Latin and Teutonic nations of Western
Europe; between the centralized and legal government of the one and the
feudalism of the other; between the restlessness and ambition which in
the West ran out into constant private war, and the habit of almost
unreflecting obedience which had left the subjects of the Eastern Cæsars
unable to cope with rougher and ruder spirits except with the weapons
supplied by cunning, fraud, and treachery. The crusaders had come to
a people which to a large extent might be described as in a state of
decrepitude, but to a land nevertheless which was not less Christian
than Italy or France, nay, which boasted churches of an antiquity more
venerable than those of Milan, Ravenna, and Rome itself,—to a land ruled
by a system of law which has affected the legislation of every nation
in Europe,—to a land where Antony and Basil had reared the fabric of
monachism long before the days of the Nursian Benedict or the Scottish
Columba,—to a land where the ritual of the Church had taken root while
Christianity was in its cradle, and had moulded the life, the thoughts,
the very being of all its members.
[Sidenote: Attempt to upset the civilization of the old empire.]
This time-honoured civilization the Western champions of the cross now
fancied that they could crush or sweep away. Not one of them cared to
think that he was dealing with Christians or with the subjects of the
ancient empire of Octavius or of Constantine. For them the land, not
less than Syria and Egypt, was a part of heathendom; the people savages
to be brought under a yoke as heavy as that of the Western serfs; their
patriarchs, their bishops, their priests, and their monks were ministers
of a false faith beyond the pale of charity or mercy. Wiser conquerors
might have mingled with the people, and through intermarriage might have
infused new vigour into the feeble mass. By Baldwin and his allies a
rigid line was drawn separating the present from the past. All dignities,
offices, and lands were forfeited; all were shared exclusively among
the conquerors. If they were still under an emperor, this emperor was
not the autocrat who represented the majesty of Rome, but a mere feudal
chief whose barons, although owing him homage, regarded themselves as
practically his peers. In short, Baldwin and his comrades held that
they might do at Constantinople what Godfrey and his allies had done in
Palestine. The code of Justinian gave place to the Assize of Jerusalem
(p. 78), and not a single Greek was permitted to take part in the
administration of this law.
[Sidenote: Conduct of the pope towards the Greek clergy.]
As it was with the secular order of things, so was it with the spiritual.
The pope annulled without scruple the election of Morosini by self-chosen
or state-appointed canons: but he did so only because his own authority
was imperilled, not at all because they were invading the jurisdiction
of a patriarch whose throne was as ancient as that of Innocent himself.
Just as though they had been mere priests of Baal or Mahomedan Imams,
the Greek clergy were all driven from their churches (p. 163), and
the people compelled to abandon their venerable liturgy for that of
the Church of Rome. The emperor besought the pope to send out bands
of priests as though for the conversion of a heathen country, and to
furnish Dominican and Cistercian monks for the purposes of reforming
the stereotyped monachism of the East. Innocent was indeed full of
exultation. His letters everywhere called on the faithful to succour the
devoted missionaries who were preaching the Gospel in the churches of
Constantinople and bringing home to the people the enormity of the heresy
which denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as well as
from the Father. ‘Samaria,’ he said, ‘had now returned to Jerusalem; God
had transferred the empire of the Greeks from the proud to the lowly,
from the superstitious to the religious, from the schismatics to the
Catholics, from the disobedient to the devoted servants of God.’ He was
impressed with the needfulness of sending young men from the schools
of Paris to strengthen themselves by the learning of the East: Philip
Augustus summoned young Greeks to Paris to receive instruction in the
creed and ritual of the West. Both were playing with edged tools. The
pope and the king were both encouraging that intercourse of thought which
was in the end to scatter to the winds the theory of the divine right of
temporal despots and the infallibility of spiritual rulers.
[Sidenote: Opposition of the French clergy to the new patriarch.]
The order of things so set up lasted a little longer than the Latin
principality of Edessa (p. 59). It was essentially the piece of new cloth
patched into the old garment, the new wine poured into old leathern
bottles only to burst them. In its relation to the conquered race it had
no more stability than the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (p. 111); and in
itself gave play to all the jealousies and quarrels which disgraced the
feudal states of Western Europe. The strife began before the landing
of Morosini. While yet at Rome, he had been warned by the pope to have
nothing to do with the schemes of Venetian statesmen, and to show no
preference in his new home for men of Venetian birth. In Venice he was
compelled to abjure this promise, to swear that Venetians alone should be
canons of Sancta Sophia, and that, so far as his power might extend, he
would strive to secure to a Venetian the succession to his patriarchate.
Nothing more would be needed beyond the rumours of these intrigues to
rouse the suspicions of the French clergy; and accordingly, when Morosini
approached the shore, not one obeyed his summons. To the Greeks the sleek
and beardless prelate and his coarse-looking and beardless priests were
alike repulsive. Morosini was left almost alone. He threatened with
excommunication the clergy who would not admit his authority; his menaces
were treated with indifference or contempt.
[Sidenote: Partition of the empire among the crusading chiefs.]
The conquerors had indeed won for themselves a domain almost appalling
in its extent; and the sharing of the prize was soon followed by the
quarrelling of robbers over their booty. Not three months after the fall
of Constantinople the emperor led his forces against his vassal Boniface
of Montferrat, now the lord of Thessalonica: and the quarrel which was
for the time made up was a significant token of the future history of
his empire. The time was come for carrying out the compact made before
the conquest. The aged Dandolo became despot of Romania, and in his new
sovereignty he died, leaving to his countrymen the task of strengthening
and extending their commercial empire by means of a chain of factories
along the mainland and in the islands of the Adriatic and the
Archipelago. The task was too costly even for the resources of Venice:
and the commercial republic was constrained to govern her possessions by
that feudal system to which her constitution was utterly opposed. For
Boniface, the chivalrous rival of Baldwin, the lordship of Crete had
less attractions than the kingdom of the Macedonian Thessalonica: but
his wanderings did not end here. Thebes, Athens, Argos, received his
followers within their gates; and the resistance of Corinth and Napoli
was speedily overpowered. The count of Blois received the dukedom of
Nicæa (Nikaia, Nice), the count of St. Pol the lordship of Demetria, a
city about twenty miles to the south of Adrianople, while Geoffrey of
Villehardouin, now marshal of Romania as well as of Champagne, found a
splendid home on the banks of the Hebros.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. Rise of new empires at Nice, Trebizond, and
Durazzo.]
But the power of the old Byzantine Cæsars was rather divided than
crushed by the Latin crusaders. The wretched Mourzoufle, caught by the
Latins, was hurled from the Theodosian column; but Theodore Lascaris,
the son-in-law of the Alexios who dethroned Isaac Angelus, established
himself at Nicæa first as despot then as emperor, and in no long time had
extended his power from the Bosporos to the banks of the Meander. Other
parts of the empire were likewise in revolt against the new Cæsars. The
governors of Trebizond, without changing their titles at first, became
sovereigns of their province, and laid the foundations of their later
empire. A power not less formidable sprung up in Epirus (Epeiros) and had
its centre within the walls of that city of Durazzo which is especially
associated with the history of Bohemond. The conquerors were now to feel
the effects of feudal subordination, which was only another name for real
anarchy. The terror which they had inspired when their combined forces
assailed the walls of Constantinople was rapidly lessened when their
dispersal betrayed their scanty powers of cohesion, and when encounters
in the field proved to be not always irresistible.
[Sidenote: Massacre of the Latins in Thrace by order of the Bulgarian
Calo-John.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1205. April. Captivity of the emperor Baldwin.]
[Sidenote: Death of Baldwin.]
The storm burst on the Latins from a quarter in which they had not looked
for it. The chief of the Bulgarians, John or Calo-John, had at first
greeted Baldwin with the freedom of an equal as well as the heartiness of
a friend; but the retort that in the count of Flanders he must recognize
his emperor roused a resentment which led him to make common cause with
the insurgent Greeks. Waiting until Baldwin’s brother Henry had with a
large force crossed the Hellespont, he gave the signal for slaughter, and
the Latins were forthwith cut down in the towns and villages of Thrace.
Baldwin at once sent a messenger to recall his brother; but before he
could return, he set out with 140 knights and their retinues, followed
by the aged Dandolo. The force was perilously small; but good order
and discipline might have more than compensated this disadvantage. All
desultory action was forbidden; the order was disregarded by the count
of Blois who was himself surprised and slain, while the emperor Baldwin
became a prisoner. The army was saved by the wisdom, fortitude, and
heroism of Villehardouin, whose masterly retreat is perhaps the only
piece of true generalship in the whole military history of the crusades.
But the empire was already little more than the shadow of its former
self. A few fortresses on the shore of the Propontis now formed with the
capital the imperial domain of the Latins. Calo-John was in the full tide
of success. The pope, for whom he had but a little while ago professed a
deep devotion, entreated him to have mercy on his enemies and to release
the emperor. This last request was, he said, beyond mortal power to
grant. Baldwin had already died in prison. How, no one ever knew. Stories
grew up which told of horrible barbarities practised on the defenceless
captive; and the common belief that great men cannot die brought forward
twenty years later in Flanders a man who gave himself out as the true
sovereign of the country, and won from thousands a faith not to be
shaken by the discovery of his imposture and the ignominious death which
followed it.
[Sidenote: Henry, (brother of Baldwin,) emperor of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1205.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1207.]
The career of Alexander the Great and of Baldwin was cut short at the
same early age. The reign of Baldwin’s younger brother Henry was extended
over ten years, and closed when he was forty-four years old. It began in
darkness and gloom, it was followed by a time of overwhelming disasters:
but in itself it is the only period in the history of the Latin empire on
which our thoughts may rest with anything approaching to satisfaction.
Twelve months had passed while he acted as regent for his brother before
he could be brought to believe that Baldwin no longer lived, and to
assume the imperial title. Dandolo had already ended his long life at
Constantinople. Boniface of Montferrat was soon to follow him, after his
disputes with the emperor on points of homage had been settled by the
marriage of Henry to his daughter Agnes. Boniface died in a war with
Calo-John; and with him his friend Geoffrey of Villehardouin disappears
from history.
[Sidenote: Assassination of Calo-John.]
[Sidenote: Wise government of the emperor Henry.]
But the tide was now to turn against the Bulgarian chief. The Greeks, who
had looked to Calo-John as to one who would restore to them their freedom
and their laws, found that they were dealing with a savage whose mind
ran on massacre and on those wholesale deportations of conquered tribes
which have in all ages delighted the hearts of Eastern despots. The
cruelties of the tyrant taught them that in the Latin emperor they might
perhaps find a friend. At their prayer for help Henry took the field with
a dangerously scanty force; and the retreat of Calo-John was probably
caused less through fear of the Latin army than by the desertion of his
Comans. Not long afterwards the Bulgarian chief was killed in his tent,
while besieging Thessalonica. With his successor Vorylas Henry made an
honourable peace; a treaty with the Greek sovereigns of Nice and Epirus
(Epeiros) left to him undisturbed possession of an ample territory; and
the rest of his life was spent in conscientious efforts for its just and
orderly government. Clearly seeing the fatal folly of that exclusive
system which was so dear to the hearts of crusaders generally, Henry
resolved to govern Greeks through Greeks. The great offices of the state
were thrown open to them, in great part filled by them. To the tyranny
which repressed the use of the Eastern liturgy and thrust on the people a
theological dogma he opposed a passive resistance: to the theory of papal
supremacy he gave a significant answer by having his throne placed on the
right hand of the patriarch’s chair in the church of Sancta Sophia. His
presumption was rebuked by Innocent III.; but Henry was none the more
deterred from prohibiting the alienation of fiefs which was adding only
to the wealth and power of the clergy.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1207. Death of Henry.]
[Sidenote: Peter of Courtenay emperor of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1218. Captivity and death of Peter of Courtenay.]
Henry died at Thessalonica; and with him the male line of the counts of
Flanders came to an end. But the daughter of Henry’s sister Yolande was
married to Andrew, king of Hungary; and to the Latins it seemed that the
choice of a powerful sovereign as their emperor might be the salvation
of their dynasty. The prize had no attractions for Andrew: and the offer
of the crown was in a fatal hour accepted by Peter of Courtenay, count
of Auxerre, the husband of Yolande herself, who had won his spurs in a
crusade, not against Turks and Saracens, but against the Albigensian
heretics of Provence. To raise a decent force which might guard him on
the march to his capital Peter was compelled to sell or mortgage the best
part of his territories; and when he reached Rome, the pope, Honorius
III., careful to avoid anything which might seem to recognize his
authority over the old imperial city, crowned him in a church without the
walls. The means of transport across the sea he had been obliged to seek
from the Venetians. They were granted, but under conditions similar to
those which had been imposed on Baldwin and his allies. He must recover
Durazzo for the republic, as for her they had conquered Zara. His success
was not greater than that of Bohemond, and his miserable march from
Durazzo led him into trackless mountains, amongst which he fell into the
hands of his enemies. With him the papal legate became a captive.
At once the pope threatened to place the Epirot sovereign under his ban;
but it soon became evident that his anxiety was for the legate, not for
the emperor. The former was released; the latter was probably murdered in
prison; and the successor of Henry died without seeing the city of which
he was the Cæsar.
[Sidenote: Robert, emperor of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1219.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1224.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1228.]
While Peter of Courtenay pined in his dungeon, his wife Yolande, in the
midst of her grief, anxiety, and apprehension, gave birth to Baldwin, the
luckless child with whom the Latin dynasty was to reach its close. Death
soon brought relief from her sorrows; and the barons had again before
them the task of choosing an emperor. Namur, the inheritance of Yolande,
had passed to her eldest son Philip, who was too prudent to change the
substance of his principality for the shadow of an empire. The crown was
offered to her second son Robert, who set out on his journey, by way of
Germany and the Danube, through the territories of his brother-in-law,
the king of Hungary. He was crowned by the patriarch in Justinian’s
church; but the pageant preceded an endless line of disasters. Demetrius,
the son and successor of the marquis Boniface, was expelled from his
kingdom of Thessalonica: and the remains of Asiatic territory still in
the hands of the Latins were seized by the Nicæan emperor, John Vataces,
the son-in-law of Theodore Lascaris. Still more ominous was the fact
that these conquests were achieved by the aid of French mercenaries. The
house was indeed divided against itself; and the champions of the cross
had learnt the art of turning their arms to profit in the service of the
highest bidder or the most successful general. To disaster in the field
was added vice, with its issue crime, in the palace: and Robert, in an
agony of grief and rage at the mutilation of a woman for whom he had
wished to thrust aside his wife, the daughter of Vataces, sought comfort
and redress at the feet of the Roman pontiff. He was told to go back to
his capital and there do his duty. The weight of his humiliation was a
burden beyond his strength. Death relieved him from the duty of obedience
to the papal order.
[Sidenote: John of Brienne, emperor of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1235. Siege of Constantinople by Vataces.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1237-1261. Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: Efforts to raise money.]
[Sidenote: Sale of relics.]
Baldwin, the youngest son of Yolande, was a child only seven years old
when Robert died; and the barons of the Latin empire felt that the
imperial power, shadowy though it had become, could not yet be entrusted
to his hands. They resolved to offer it in the mean season to John of
Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem, by right of his wife Mary, daughter
of Isabella (p. 144) and Conrad of Montferrat, and grand-daughter of king
Almeric. This veteran warrior, now more than eighty years of age, whom
in his earlier years we shall meet in the crusade of Frederick II., was
induced to accept the title of emperor on condition that Baldwin should
marry his second daughter and succeed him on the throne. But his energy
was impaired, whether by age or by desire for rest. He did not reach
Constantinople till 1231, two years after his election: and the Greek
traditions are silent about the exploits which he is said by the Latins
to have performed during a siege of the city by the forces of Vataces
and the Bulgarian chief Azan. On his death began the ignominious reign
of the second Baldwin, a reign of twenty-five years, most of which were
spent in foreign lands for the purpose of exciting pity for his sorrows
and raising alms to relieve his needs. His success was not equal to his
importunities. If at the council of Lyons which excommunicated Frederick
II. he was placed on the right hand of the pope, at Dover he was asked
how he could presume without leave to enter an independent territory.
In England he received 700 marks: at Rome the pontiff loaded him with
indulgences and proclaimed a crusade in his favour. The sainted Louis
of France was moved to tears of sympathy by the story of his wrongs:
but his arms were directed to Egypt, not to Constantinople. Still, by
alienating his marquisate of Namur and his lordship of Courtenay, he
contrived to return to the East with an army of 30,000 men. But the next
scene of his history exhibits him as the ally of the sultan of Iconium,
on whom he bestowed his niece, and of the Comans, in whose pagan rites
he did not hesitate to take part. His needs became more pressing, and he
bethought him of the sacred relics which still remained in the churches
of Constantinople. Of these the most precious was the crown of thorns
which had circled the brow of the Redeemer, and for which he received
from Louis IX. 10,000 marks of silver. At smaller prices he disposed
of the baby linen used by the Virgin Mary in the cave of Bethlehem, the
lance and sponge used in the Passion on Calvary, and the rod of Moses,
all of which, with some others, were transferred to the exquisite chapel
in Paris which still attests the munificence and perfect taste of the
sainted king of France.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1255. Death of Vataces.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1259. The envoys of Baldwin repelled by Michael
Paleologos.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1261. July. Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks.]
Meanwhile the power of Vataces was being extended on every side: and
only his submission to the Roman doctrine respecting the procession of
the Holy Spirit was needed to secure a papal declaration in his favour.
That submission was not made; and his death brought a respite to the
Latin emperor. But when Baldwin sent his envoys to see what territorial
concessions could be obtained from Michael Paleologos, the colleague
and guardian of John, the grandson of Vataces, they were curtly told
that he would yield them not a foot of land. By the payment of an
annual tribute amounting to the whole sum received from the customs
and excise of Constantinople the Latin Cæsar might secure peace: if he
refused these terms, he must prepare for war. The great quarrel was soon
decided. Michael had bestowed the title of Cæsar on his general Alexios
Strategopoulos; and by his orders this general went to keep close watch
on the capital, under the pledge that he would run no dangerous risks.
He failed to keep his promise, and when with a scanty band of followers
he clambered over the unguarded walls, he began to tremble at his own
rashness. But his volunteers (for so they were termed) would listen to
no arguments for retreat. The die was cast, and the result was victory.
The Greeks rose on all hands at the cry which called them to the rescue
of their ancient empire; the Genoese were not unwilling to take revenge
upon their Venetian enemies; and the Latin emperor with his chief
vassals, embarking on board the Venetian fleet, sailed first to Euboia
and thence to Italy. The capital of the Eastern empire was freed from
the presence and the yoke of its Western conquerors; but for thirteen
years longer Baldwin bore about with him an empty title which won for him
the commiseration or the contempt of thousands who could not be brought
to stir hand or foot in his service. His pretensions were maintained by
his son Philip, and through his grand-daughter Catharine passed to her
husband Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair of France.
[Sidenote: Permanent alienation of the East from the West.]
Next after, perhaps even before, the deliverance of the Holy Land and
the restoration of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the wish dearest to
the heart of Innocent III. was the recovery of the Greek communion to
the unity of the Church. He was also statesman enough to see that his
wishes would best be realized by a closer union between the subjects of
the Eastern and the Western empires. The death-blow to these hopes and
yearnings was dealt by his own crusade. In itself, and in the events
which followed it, not a single thing was lacking which could exaggerate
suspicion into vehement jealousy, and intensify dislike into burning
hatred. There was the merciless intolerance which regarded Christian
patriarchs with their clergy and their laity as heathens because they
questioned the supremacy of the pope and refused to add one word to one
proposition in the Nicene creed. There was the cruelty which intruded
strangers into the places of those who had taught and ministered to the
people, and which suppressed a ritual hallowed by the associations of
ages. There was the gross injustice which thrust Greeks out of every
high, or responsible, or lucrative office, and which imposed on them a
system of law utterly alien to their wishes, thoughts, and habits. There
was the savage fury which had made the streets of the capital run with
blood, and defiled its sanctuaries with blasphemy and massacre. Last, but
perhaps not least, was the brutality which had shattered or committed to
the flames all that was beautiful in art, costly in materials, exquisite
in workmanship, precious from its rarity or the absolute impossibility of
restoring it. The tombs of the emperors were burst open and rifled: the
masterpieces of ancient sculptors were thrown down and shattered. In the
Venetians alone the impulse to destroy was weaker than the temptation to
theft, and the horses of Lysippos, borne across the sea to Venice, still
stand above the gorgeous portals of the basilica of St. Mark. The Greeks
were left with a bitter hatred of the laws, the customs, the government
of Latin Christendom; and an impassable gulf remained yawning between the
churches of the East and the West, which no efforts have thus far been
able to close or to bridge over.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SIXTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Chief features of the sixth crusade.]
The infatuation by which in every instance the champions of the cross
had nullified or thrown away the advantages gained by their victories
was to be shown not less persistently in the sixth crusade. But the
short-sighted obstinacy of the mass was to be brought out in more
prominent relief by its contrast with the moderation and sagacity of
the great sovereign whose name is especially associated with this
enterprise. In the career of this remarkable man we have a picture in
which we see running together or side by side the lines which belong to
the old order of things with others which seem to belong exclusively to
the modern civilization of Europe. The struggle between Frederick II. and
Gregory II. anticipated in more than one of its features the struggle
between Leo X. and Luther.
[Sidenote: Depression of the Latins in Palestine.]
The famine which Dandolo urged on the leaders of the fifth crusade (p.
153) as a reason for delaying their voyage to Palestine till the spring
which followed the conquest of Zara, pressed less heavily on the Latin
Christians in the Holy Land than the destruction wrought by an earthquake
which laid many cities in ruins and which was regarded as a presage of
the last judgment. In spite of this belief much money and labour was
spent in repairing the shattered walls of Acre; and amongst the captives
impressed for the work was, it is said, the Persian poet Saadi.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. Truce between Saphadin and the Christians.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1206.]
Both sides in fact were greatly weakened and depressed: and the tidings
that Constantinople was in the hands of Boniface, Dandolo, and Baldwin
carried with them for Saphadin a conclusive reason for concluding a peace
of six years with the Christians. But before the six years had come to an
end the death of Almeric and his wife had left to Mary, the daughter of
Isabella and Conrad of Tyre, the titular sovereignty of Jerusalem. Unable
to find on the spot a man of sufficient energy and ability to share
with her the shadowy dignity, the barons invoked the aid of the French
king, Philip Augustus, to find her a husband. His choice fell on John of
Brienne, who promised to lead a powerful army to Palestine within two
years. The prospect of this formidable increase to the strength of his
enemies led Saphadin to propose a renewal of the peace, and to give as
guarantees of his good faith any ten castles which they might choose to
name. As we might expect, the approval of the Teutonic knights and the
Hospitallers called forth the angry protests of the Templars and the
clergy: and the decision was given for war.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1210. John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem.]
Three hundred knights only accompanied John of Brienne when he set out
for Palestine. In England the wretched John was defying the pope while
the kingdom for his sake lay under the papal interdict; the French king
was more anxious to turn that interdict to his own advantage than to
face once more the perils of a distant enterprise; and for the time even
Innocent III. felt that the chastisement of Christian heretics was a
more pressing duty than the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. Hence the
marriage of John of Brienne to Mary, and their coronation as king and
queen of Jerusalem, were soon followed by the sterner business of war.
In his encounters with Saphadin his exploits may have equalled those of
Tancred; but he was compelled to write and tell the pope that the Latin
kingdom was attenuated to the shadow of a shade.
[Sidenote: Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade.]
His entreaties roused in the pope the old crusading spirit. Innocent
revoked the indulgences which had made the crusade against the Albigenses
as attractive as the crusade against the Saracens; and in his encyclical
letter he declared that the Moslem power was tottering and ready to
vanish away. It had lasted 666 years, the mystic number which showed it
to be the Beast of the Apocalypse. A little while ago he had written to
the sultan of Aleppo to thank him for his moderation to the Christians
and his respect for their religion. He now demanded of Saphadin the
peaceable and immediate surrender of all Palestine, as a country from
which he was deriving far more of annoyance than of profit.
[Sidenote: Robert of Courcon.]
The crusade which Innocent now wished to set in motion was preached in
France by Robert of Courcon, an Englishman whom he had made his legate.
This pupil of Fulk of Neuilly had inherited all his earnestness with
some portion of his eloquence; nor, if the numbers whom he enrolled
as pilgrims be taken as a test, was his success much less splendid.
But in truth the barons and knights who engaged in these expeditions
were getting tired of the zeal which invited the maimed, the halt, the
blind, and the leper to take the kingdom of heaven by violence; and the
same charge which had been heard in the days of Fulk was now urged with
greater force against his disciple. Robert was convicted of diverting
to other purposes money given solely for the recovery of the Holy Land;
but he had a firm friend in Innocent who, in 1218, appointed him the
colleague of Pelagius, bishop of Albano, in his legatine commission.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1215. Fourth council of Lateran.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1216.]
[Sidenote: Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1217.]
A few months sufficed after the council of Clermont to get together and
send forth the armies of the first crusade: for these latter enterprises
the time of preparation was extending to years. In his sermons preached
before the fourth council of Lateran Innocent declared his intention
of accompanying the champions of the cross to the scene of their
exploits; and the troubadours in their songs extolled him as their
firm and courageous guide. But another year had passed before the king
of a people who had done what they could to bar the way of the first
crusaders was prepared to set forth on his eastward journey. The ships
of Venice conveyed Andrew, king of Hungary, first to Cyprus, and thence
to Palestine, where an unsuccessful attack on a tower or castle on Mount
Thabor seems to have disgusted him with the undertaking. He determined
to return to Hungary, and he reached home with scant glory, but rich in
relics gathered in Armenia and Greece.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1218. Siege of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: Death of Saphadin.]
[Sidenote: Terms of peace offered by Coradin.]
In the following year another force, which had been brought together
at Cologne and on its way had done some work in Portugal by taking
Alcazar from the Moors, joined the Templars and Teutonic knights who
had fortified a post on mount Carmel. These warriors now inclined to
the policy of Almeric I. which had aimed at attacking and recovering
Palestine through Egypt. The siege of Damietta was begun; the castle was
soon taken; and the Christians were still further aided by the disorders
which in Egypt followed the death of Saphadin, and which drove his son,
the Egyptian sultan Kameel, to take refuge in Arabia. In the crusaders’
camp success, as usual, produced arrogance and sloth. Their strength
was increased by the arrival of new bands from France under the counts
of Nevers and la Marche, from England under William Longsword, earl
of Salisbury, and from Italy under the bishop of Albano and Robert of
Courcon. The latter landed only to be cut off by sickness; and while
the other chiefs lay idle, Kameel was brought back to his throne by his
brother the Syrian sultan Coradin. At length the siege was resumed with
some vigour and good fortune: and Coradin, knowing the consequences
which the fall of Damietta would bring with it, dismantled the walls
of Jerusalem and then offered peace to the besiegers, pledging himself
to rebuild the walls which he had just thrown down, and to surrender
not only the piece of the true cross but the whole of Palestine, with
the exceptions of the castles of Karac and Montreal for the purpose of
protecting the pilgrims for Mecca.
[Sidenote: Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: 1219. Nov. 5. Fall of Damietta.]
All that the crusaders could even hope to accomplish was thus within
their grasp. But the eagerness of king John of Brienne, with the Teutonic
knights and the French, to seize the prize was for the Templars and
Hospitallers, with the Italians and the papal legate, a sufficient reason
for rejecting the proffers of the sultan with indignant contempt. Folly
carried the day. Damietta was taken, and the Christians hurried in to
plunder and to slay. The pillage was abundant enough; but in the work of
slaughter pestilence had been beforehand with them. Three thousand only
remained, it is said, of the 70,000 who were shut up in the city at the
beginning of the siege, and to these plague-stricken wretches life was
promised on condition that they should clear the streets and houses of
the dead bodies of their kinsfolk.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1220. March of the Christians for Cairo.]
[Sidenote: The old terms again rejected.]
[Sidenote: Ruin of the crusaders.]
The crusades had everything once more in their hands; but the winter was
allowed to pass by without further action. When spring came round the
legate, in opposition to the remonstrance of John of Brienne, insisted on
attempting the conquest of Egypt. On their march to Cairo they received
from the Sultan Kameel the same offers which they had rejected during
the siege of Damietta; and they rejected them again. But the Nile was
fast rising. The Egyptians opened the sluices; the camp of the crusaders
was inundated; their tents and baggage swept away. It was now the turn
of the legate to sue for peace, and he offered to surrender Damietta. In
the Saracen camp it was no easy task for the Sultan Kameel to repress
the stern indignation with which many of the chiefs demanded the utter
destruction of the enemy. He urged the vast importance of doing nothing
which should excite fresh crusades in Europe, while Syria was menaced and
ravaged by Tartar invasions, and of recovering Damietta without a blow
from a garrison strong enough to sustain a siege as long as that which
had come to an end a few months ago.
[Sidenote: Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1212.]
[Sidenote: The popes and the emperors.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1200.]
[Sidenote: Otho of Brunswick.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1214. Battle of Bouvines.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1216. Honorius III. pope.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1220.]
[Sidenote: Nov. 22.]
The triumph of the Egyptian sultan seemed to be complete; but he had now
to encounter an enemy of a very different temper. At the age of eighteen
Frederick, the son of the infamous Henry VI. and grandson of Frederick
Barbarossa, had been summoned by the pope to assume the imperial crown
which Otho of Brunswick, the son of Henry the Lion, was pronounced to
have forfeited by his misdeeds. It was the old story. The strife between
pope and anti-pope was but a reflection of the almost fiercer strife
of rival emperors; and in this struggle the pope naturally inclined to
that side from which the church was likely to reap the most advantage.
Otho, the nephew of Richard Cœur de Lion, came of a house which had been
generally loyal and faithful to the Roman pontiffs; his rival belonged
to the Swabian house of Hohenstaufen, at whose hands the popes had
experienced more of enmity than of friendship. The remembrance of the
days of Frederick Barbarossa was vivid in the mind of Innocent III., to
whom the two emperors appealed after their coronation. The deliberation
was grave and long; but the issue was not doubtful. Otho’s rival Philip
was ‘an obstinate persecutor of the Church’, and he was even then
scheming to deprive the pontiff of his kingdom of Sicily. He must be put
down before he could reach his full strength; and therefore the pope
declared himself for Otho, himself devoted to the Church, by his mother’s
side from the royal house of England, by his father from the duke of
Saxony, all loyal sons of the Church. ‘Him, therefore, we proclaim king;
him we summon to take on himself the imperial crown.’ Innocent, like the
frogs in the fable, was only exchanging king Log for king Stork. The
reign of Otho was a period of desperate strife and anarchy in Germany,
of desperate struggles on his part to throw off the papal yoke. The pope
turned his eye on the youthful Frederick, then basking in the sunshine
of his Sicilian paradise and giving promise of the brilliant qualities
of his nature which were afterwards to be sullied by darker lines of
angry passion. In 1212 Frederick was chosen emperor at Frankfort. In
1214 his victory at Bouvines shattered the power of Otho. The gratitude
of Frederick for the favour of the pope had been shown by taking the
crusader’s vow and pledging himself to lead an army for the recovery of
the Holy Land. While his rival Otho lived, it was impossible for him to
fulfil his promise. Two years before his death Innocent III. had passed
away from the scene of proud dominion and unceasing toil, and the more
moderate and kindly Honorius III. sat in his seat. In courteous language
which might pass for that of friendship, the pope besought him to march
to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre; but the dark shadows were already
stealing across the clear sky. Without asking the sanction of the pope
Frederick by a compact made with his vassals and prelates at the Diet of
Frankfort procured the election of his son Henry to the crown of Germany.
Honorius expressed his displeasure at a step which seemed designed
to unite permanently the Sicilian kingdom with the empire. Frederick
hastened to say that he had no such wish, and that Sicily should revert
to the pope if he should die without lawful heirs. When, a little while
later, he was crowned with his queen by the pope in the church of St.
Peter’s, Frederick promised that part of his army should be ready for the
crusade in March of the following year, while he himself would follow in
August with the rest.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1221. Loss of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1222. April.]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Ferentino.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1225. July. Treaty of San Germano.]
[Sidenote: Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem.]
But Frederick had enough, and more than enough, to do in dealing with the
turbulent barons of Apulia and in guarding against Saracen insurrection
in Sicily. A fleet of forty ships was sent to no purpose: and the tidings
of the loss of Damietta were construed as an expression of divine
displeasure for his slackness. It was clear that only a vast army under a
skilful general could turn the scale in favour of the Latin Christians of
Palestine: but nothing was said of the besotted folly which had more than
once flung aside all the advantages which could possibly be gained by the
most successful crusade. Such an army could not, however, be got together
in a month or in a year. The decision was postponed from a meeting at
Veroli to a meeting at Verona which never took place. When next the pope
and emperor met at Ferentino (March 1223), it was agreed that two years
more should be spent in preparations, and that Frederick, now a widower,
should marry Iolante, the daughter of the titular king of Jerusalem, and
thus as his heir go forth to the maintenance of his own rights. King John
of Brienne, who was present at the debate, started at once on a mission
in which he hoped to achieve a success not unlike that of the hermit
Peter, of Bernard, or Fulk of Neuilly. But the times were changed, and
king John could only report to the pope the impossibility of moving at
the time named in the treaty of Ferentino. A new agreement was made at
San Germano, postponing the departure of the army for two years longer.
Four months later Frederick married Iolante, and proceeded at once to
deprive his father-in-law of his shadowy royalty. John of Brienne, he
insisted, was king only by right of his wife: by her death the title had
passed to his daughter, and to him as her husband, and he, Frederick,
was thus king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem. John was furious, but
he could revenge himself only by accusations, whether true or false, of
gross and habitual profligacy on the part of the young emperor.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1227. Gregory IX. pope.]
‘Never did pope love emperor as he loved his son Frederick.’ Such were
the words of Honorius when he parted from him after his coronation at
Rome. Before the close of his pontificate in 1227 the gentle pontiff had
to address not a few stern remonstrances to his loving son. The real
struggle was reserved for the papacy of the cardinal Ugolino, a kinsman
of Innocent III., who assumed the triple crown at the age of eighty
years. To an eloquence unrivalled in his own day, to a profound knowledge
of the canon law and the decretals, Gregory IX. united the monastic
severity of Gregory the Great and the inexorable will of Gregory VII.
The sovereign with whom he had to deal was still a young man of only
thirty-three, a young man with whose wishes and dreams, with whose tastes
and accomplishments, Gregory had nothing whatever in common. Frederick
had been born and bred in Sicily; and in the voluptuous splendours of
that beautiful island, in the luxury of its sunshine, in the gorgeous
profusion and glory of its vegetation, his youth passed in a passion
of delight, fed by the charms of music, poetry, painting, and a rich
literature which laid at his feet the treasures of ancient knowledge.
From the lays of the troubadour and the company of noble knights and fair
women, Frederick could turn to men learned in the lore of the East and in
the philosophy of Alexandria and Athens. His life was far from faultless.
With more truth it may be described as one of license which cast to the
winds, at least for himself, the moral code of priests and monks, but
a license to which all grossness and coarse rioting, all unrefined and
boorish vices, were altogether abhorrent. Here in his southern paradise
Frederick could say, with a freedom horrifying to the sacerdotal spirit
of the age, that if God had seen his beautiful home he would never have
chosen the barren land of Judæa for the abode of his own people. Here
too he was subjected to influences which were likely to cultivate a
temper far more disliked and dreaded by popes and their followers than
irreverence or even blasphemous profanity. Around him were gathered
populations brought from many lands, all softened by the genial and
delicious climate. The Norman had here laid aside some of his northern
roughness, and become an apt disciple of the gay science in which
Frederick had won a foremost place. Even the Germans were toned down
to something like decency of demeanour and language: and in contrast
to these were numbers of Jews, who surpassed the Christians as much in
refinement and learning as in their wealth, and of Saracens not less
polished, not less cultivated, who delighted to call themselves subjects
of Frederick and to submit themselves peaceably to his rule. Frederick
was, in short, learning the dangerous lessons of toleration, and his eyes
were being gradually opened to the perilous views which have become the
orthodox creed of modern statesmen. As a ruler, he could survey without
dislike the mingling of different religions, and see that an empire
surpassing the wildest dreams of feudal grandeur could be achieved by
the extension and freedom of a commerce spread over all portions of
the earth. As a man of learning he could promote the cultivation of a
philosophy which, whatever might be its merit, could not fail to set
the mind working and accustom it to regard all questions as matters to
be settled by reason and evidence, not by authority. A picture more
repulsive to the mind of a man like Gregory IX. cannot well be imagined.
The light-hearted enjoyment and the liberal government of the one were
hopelessly opposed to the monastic gloom and ingrained despotism of the
other.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1227. Excommunication of the emperor.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1228.]
[Sidenote: Departure of Frederick from Brundusium.]
Frederick may have been slow in fulfilling his promise: there is no
evidence that he ever deliberately intended to break it. But he had no
intention of wading through a sea of blood if he could obtain his ends
without striking a blow. He had already had some friendly intercourse
with the Egyptian sultan: and from these relations he was hereafter to
reap good fruit. For the present they served only to excite the anger of
Gregory, whose patience was exhausted when at length Frederick gathered
his forces at Brundusium (Brindisi) only to see them decimated by fever,
and when he himself, having set out with his fleet, was compelled to
return after three days to the harbour of Otranto. On St. Michael’s day
the pope excommunicated Frederick with bell, book, and candle. In his
discourse to the Apulian bishops, the subjects of Frederick, he spoke
of the tender care with which the Church had nursed him in his infancy
and childhood in order that he might fight the serpents and basilisks
whom she had unwittingly fostered in her bosom. She had borne him on
her shoulders; she had rescued him from those who would have slain him;
she had hoped to find in him a protecting staff and support. These
hopes had been cheated. Frederick had purposely exposed his army at
Brundusium to pestilence, and after pretending to set off on his voyage
for Palestine had returned under a false plea of illness to the luxuries
of the baths of Puteoli. On St. Martin’s day and again on Christmas day
the excommunication was repeated with all its appalling ceremonies. The
sentence was by the pope’s orders to lie published in all churches of his
obedience. By one of the clergy of Paris, who professed to know merely
the fact of the quarrel and nothing of the merits of the case, it was
published as a sentence of condemnation against the one who might be in
the wrong. ‘I excommunicate the aggressor, and I absolve the sufferer.’
Frederick appealed not to the pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom.
His illness had been real, the accusations of the pope wanton and cruel.
‘The Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried
up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the pope
done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon
them to death or ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His
legates were everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping
where they had not strawed.’ But although he thus dealt in language as
furious as that of the pope, the thought of breaking definitely with
him and of casting aside his crusading vow as a worthless mockery never
seems to have entered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies together
again with all speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise only
brought him into fresh trouble with the pope, who in the Holy Week next
following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might
happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his
subjects were at once absolved from their allegiance. The emperor went
on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundusium. He was
met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he
had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn
Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the pope to
demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed
with contempt.
[Sidenote: Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1229. Feb. 13. Treaty between Frederick and the sultan
Kameel.]
In September the emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of the
pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy
and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters of the
military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners.
The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found friends in
the Teutonic knights under their grand-master Herman of Salza, as well as
with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of
Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid. The Templars refused to
stir, if any orders were to be issued in his name; and Frederick agreed
that they should run in the name of God and Christendom. But while the
enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death
of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little use to Frederick. The
Egyptian sultan Kameel was now in a position of greater independence, and
his eagerness for an alliance with the emperor had rapidly cooled down.
Frederick on his side still resolved to try the effect of negotiation.
His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of
the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to believe Arabian chroniclers,
in almost abject supplications. At length the treaty was signed. It
surrendered to the emperor the whole of Jerusalem except the Temple or
mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens;
but Christians under certain conditions might be allowed to enter it for
the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians the towns of
Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth.
[Sidenote: Frederick at Jerusalem.]
To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate
satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions, where
a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only
remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre.
But here also the hand of the pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely
Jerusalem but the Sepulchre itself passed under the interdict as he
entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches
closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian
emperor. On Sunday, in his imperial robes, and attended by a magnificent
retinue, Frederick went to his coronation as king of Jerusalem in the
church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take
part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof,
while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his
head. By his orders his friend Herman of Salza read an address in which
the emperor acquitted the pope for his hard judgment of him and for his
excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of the facts would have
led him to speak not against him, but in his favour. He confessed his
desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and
slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself
before God and before his Vicar upon earth.
[Sidenote: Moderation of the emperor.]
From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The kadi silenced a muezzin who
had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which
the emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, ‘How is
it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?’ Frederick
marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On
learning the cause he rebuked the kadi for neglecting on his account
his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him
in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no
dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that
Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any
displeasure when the Mahomedans in his train fell on their knees at the
times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was
supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out
the birds which might defile it, he asked, ‘You may keep out the birds;
but how will you keep out the swine?’
[Sidenote: Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX.]
In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing
the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the pen than by the
sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had raised up amongst
Christian and Moslem alike. By a few words on a sheet of parchment the
Christian emperor had deprived his people of the hope of getting their
sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers: by the same words the Moslem
sultan had prevented his subjects from ensuring an entrance to the
delights of paradise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes. From Gerold,
patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the pope, full of virulent abuse
of the emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and a robber; but even before
he received this letter Gregory had condemned what he chose to consider
as a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up
Mahomed as an object of worship in the temple of God. ‘The antagonist
of the cross,’ he wrote, ‘the enemy of the faith and of all chastity,
the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse
judgment, and by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting
disgrace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the martyrs who
have laid down their lives to purify the Holy Land from the defilements
of the Saracens.’
[Sidenote: Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe.]
[Sidenote: Renewed excommunication of the emperor.]
But Frederick in his turn could be firm and unyielding. He returned from
Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Ptolemais; and there learning that a
proposal had been made to establish a new order of knights, he declared
that no one should without his consent levy soldiers within his dominion.
Summoning all the Christians within the city to the broad plain without
the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the conduct of the patriarch
and the Templars, with all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that
all the pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once to
Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers took possession
of the churches; two friars who denounced him from the pulpit were
scourged through the streets; the patriarch was shut up in his palace;
and the commands of the emperor were carried out. Frederick returned to
Europe, to find that the pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to
rebel against him, and that the papal forces were in command of John of
Brienne, who may have been the author of the false news of Frederick’s
death, and who certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the
pope Frederick sent his envoys, Herman of Salza at their head. They were
dismissed with contempt; and their master was again placed under the
greater excommunication with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the
Arnoldists, and other heretics who in the eyes of the faithful were the
worst enemies of the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man
who had done more towards the re-establishment of the Latin kingdom in
Palestine than had been done by the lion-hearted Richard, and who, it may
fairly be said, had done it without shedding a drop of blood.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SEVENTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans.]
The number of the crusades might be largely extended if we gave the name
to all the minor expeditions to the Holy Land in the intervals between
the greater enterprises to which the term has been commonly applied. Yet
the expedition led by Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans and
brother of Henry III. of England, as being scarcely less remarkable than
that of Frederick II., and for the same reason, may fairly be reckoned as
the seventh of these extravagant and ill-starred enterprises.
[Sidenote: Charges of peculation against the papal collectors.]
Time had softened in some degree the spirit which had animated the first
crusaders; but in the events which follow the return of Frederick we see
something like an honest reaction against the diversion to other purposes
of money contributed for the deliverance of Palestine. These diversions
had become so frequent that the papal collectors regarded it as an
annoyance or an insult if any refused to commute by money payments their
engagements as crusaders.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1230. Opposition of the pope and the emperor to the new
crusade.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1236-1239.]
[Sidenote: Arrival of the French crusaders at Acre.]
[Sidenote: Their complete failure.]
The peace which the Egyptian sultan Kameel had made with Frederick was
little more than a truce. It was to last for ten years; but even during
that term the compact was kept with no rigid strictness perhaps on
either side. Thousands of Christians were slain, it is said, on their
passage from Acre to Jerusalem, and envoys were sent to Gregory IX. and
to Frederick, with whom he had been reconciled at Anagni, to entreat the
equipment of another crusade. The crusade was enjoined, accordingly, but,
as it seemed, with little sincerity; and when the French barons, headed
by Theobald, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, and Hugh, duke of
Burgundy, met in council at Lyons, they were commanded by the papal
legate to adjourn their discussions and to return home. The request was
peremptorily refused; but when their plans seemed to be in all respects
matured, the ambassadors of Frederick himself besought them to wait until
he could give them effectual help. Even to this appeal they turned a
deaf ear: and although Frederick charged his officers to withhold all aid
from the crusaders, these barons still insisted on carrying out their
design and found their way to Acre. Before they reached it, Kameel had
seized Jerusalem and dismantled the tower of David; and the crusaders had
before them a task not less arduous than that which Godfrey of Bouillon
and his followers had to encounter. Their failure was complete; it can
scarcely be said that they even attempted to grapple with it.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1240. The English crusade.]
[Sidenote: Treaty between Richard of Cornwall and the Egyptian sultan.]
The English crusade which under Richard of Cornwall and William Longsword
(son of the earl of Salisbury, but not earl of Salisbury himself)
embarked at Dover for France, and having journeyed across France set
sail from Marseilles in spite of a papal prohibition, was followed by
results far more solid. On reaching Acre, they found the affairs both of
Christians and Moslems in a state of strange confusion through treaties
which neither side was able strictly to carry out. But the quarrel
which had broken out afresh between the sultans of Egypt and Damascus
told greatly in their favor. The march of Richard to Jaffa led to
negotiations, and by the treaty which followed them the Egyptian sultan
granted him terms even more favourable than those which had been conceded
to Frederick II.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1242. Invasion of the Korasmians.]
[Sidenote: Alliance of the Templars and the Syrians.]
Palestine was once more virtually in the hands of the Christians, and
in their hands it virtually remained, until, two years later, the Latin
kingdom was again swept away by a foe more merciless than any which the
crusaders had yet encountered. The brutal hordes, which Genghis Khan
had set in motion from the remote wilds of Tartary, drove out from
the Korasmian territories myriads of myriads scarcely less brutal than
themselves. The fugitive Korasmians burst into Palestine. Jerusalem was
deserted by its garrison, and the savages hastened to glut themselves
with blood. The living were cut down, the dead torn from their graves,
and thousands of pilgrims, decoyed back to the city by the display
of crusading banners from the walls, furnished fresh victims for the
awful sacrifice. In this desperate strait the Templars made common
cause with the Syrians. A battle was fought in which the grand-masters
of the Templars and Hospitallers were slain, the only survivors being
thirty-three Templars, sixteen Hospitallers, and three Teutonic knights.
The Korasmians were for the present in league with the Egyptian
sovereign; but this harmony was soon followed by enmity. The Korasmians
were defeated and scattered, and the tempest of barbarian invasion came
to an end.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EIGHTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1245. Council of Lyons.]
The havoc wrought by the Korasmian inroad was alleged by pope Innocent
IV. as a reason for sending forth another crusade. In a council held
at Lyons, the bishop of Berytos dwelt on the miserable state of the
Christians in the Holy Land, and it was resolved that another effort
should be made for its deliverance. Honorius wrote to Henry III. of
England to impress upon him the duty of taking up the cross like his
lion-hearted predecessor; but Henry had in Simon of Montfort, earl of
Leicester, a more pressing antagonist than Egyptian sultans or Korasmian
savages. The pope found fuel more easily kindled in the heart of Louis
IX., king of France.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1226. Louis IX., king of France.]
This saint, the very type of royal monks and devotees, was ten years old
when on the death of his father Louis VIII. he succeeded to the throne.
By his mother, Blanche of Castile, the regent of the kingdom, the child
was brought up with a strictness to which he answered with unbounded
docility. In his early youth the beauty of some fair maidens drew from
him a glance expressive of some admiration: his mother told him that she
would rather see him dead than that he should entertain even a sinful
thought. His own will would have led him to assume the obligations of
the cloister; but the interests of the state demanded his marriage,
and his wife, Margaret of Provence, passed with her husband under the
rigid discipline of the queen-mother. His severity to himself grew with
his years. At night he would rise from his bed and pace his chamber in
the coldest season. A shift of the coarsest haircloth worn next to his
skin furnished a desirable torture. Fruit he tasted only once in the
year. On Fridays he never changed his dress, and never laughed. The iron
chain scourges which he carried at his waist in an ivory case drew blood
from his shoulders once every week of the year and thrice in every week
during Lent. He would walk for miles to distant churches wearing shoes
without soles. He would scarcely content himself with two, three, and
even four masses a day; and if he made a journey, his chaplain recited
the offices on the road. Even monks tried to check an asceticism almost
exceeding that which was demanded by the rules of Benedict, Dominic, or
Francis; the king asked whether he would have incurred the same rebuke
had he spent twice as much time in hawking and dicing. No reproach, no
sarcasm, no insult, could disturb the serenity of his humble soul. ‘You
are not a king of France,’ exclaimed a woman who was pleading her cause
before him; ‘you are a king only of priests and monks. It is a pity that
you are king of France. You ought to be turned out.’ ‘You speak truly,’
answered Louis. ‘It has pleased God to make me king: it had been well
had He chosen some one better able to govern this kingdom rightly.’ The
woman was sent away with a gift of money: and money was a thing on which
the king set little store, and which he seldom needed except for the
purchase of relics. Here his avarice was unbounded; and we have seen him
paying the enormous sum of 10,000 silver marks for the ‘genuine crown
of thorns’ preserved in the church of Sancta Sophia (p. 173). To such a
man absolute obedience and implicit trust not only in God but in every
article or proposition set forth as forming part of the Christian faith
were the first, the most indispensable of all virtues. Not one point in
all the theology of the Church was to be called into question; there was
not one which was not to be received as absolutely true. ‘Do you know the
name of your father?’ he asked his seneschal, the lord of Joinville, who
accompanied him to Palestine, and whose inimitable memoirs bring the man
and his age before us in living reality. ‘Yes,’ answered the seneschal;
‘his name was Simon.’ ‘How do you know that?’ again asked Louis. ‘Because
my mother has told me so many times.’ ‘Then,’ answered the king, ‘you
ought perfectly to believe the articles of the faith which the apostles
of our Lord have testified to you, as you have heard the Credo chanted
every Sunday.’ For questioning and argument his system had no place.
Under no circumstances could there ever be need of any. He related to
Joinville with hearty approval the conduct of a knight, who, during a
disputation between some Jews and the monks of the abbey of Clugny, asked
leave of the abbot to say a few words. With some difficulty his request
was granted. Raising himself on his crutches, the old warrior beckoned
the rabbi to draw near, and then put to him one question. ‘Do you believe
in the Virgin Mary, who bore our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that she was
a virgin when she was the mother of God?’ The Jew answered promptly that
he believed not one word of it. ‘Fool that thou art,’ replied the knight,
‘for daring to enter a Christian monastery when thou disbelievest these
things. For this madness thou shalt now pay.’ Lifting up his crutch,
he struck the man a blow on the ear which smote him to the ground. His
comrades fled away from the scene of controversy, while the abbot came
forward to reprove the knight for his folly. ‘Thou art the greater fool,’
was the retort, ‘in permitting an assembly from which good Christians
might by listening to their arguments have gone away unbelievers.’
The king, Joinville tells us, clinched the moral of the story in the
following words: ‘No one, however learned or perfect a theologian he
may be, ought to dispute with Jews. The layman, whenever he hears the
Christian faith impugned, should defend it with a sharp-edged sword which
he should drive up to the hilt into the bodies of the unbelievers.’
[Sidenote: Louis IX., the pope and the emperor.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1239.]
We cannot really know the history of an age, if we do not really know
some at least of the men who lived in it: and this fact gives in the
case of Louis IX. an importance to details which we might be tempted
to pass with a sigh, perhaps, or a smile. ‘Do you wash the feet of the
poor on Holy Thursday?’ he asked the lord of Joinville. ‘Oh, fie!’ was
the answer; ‘no, never will I wash the feet of such fellows.’ ‘It is
ill said, indeed,’ answered the king, ‘for you should never hold in
disdain what God did for our instruction; for He who is Lord and Master
of the universe did on that day, Holy Thursday, wash the feet of all His
apostles, telling them that He who was their Master had thus done, that
they in like manner might do the same to each other. I therefore beg of
you, out of love to Him first, and then from regard to me, that you will
accustom yourself to do so.’ Another sermon, the gentleness of which
makes us forget its tedious prosing, rebuked Joinville’s impetuosity
in saying that he would rather have committed thirty deadly sins than
be a leper. Louis was, in short, a man who would have loved all men,
had he not been taught to believe that unbelief, heresy, or even doubt
(honest doubt was for him, of course, a thing inconceivable), put the
unbeliever or doubter beyond the pale of Christian charity. For Jews,
then, or infidels he avowed the most burning hatred, although probably
this hatred would have vanished like morning mist before the sight of Jew
or infidel in dire distress or agony. But in spite of his bigotry and
narrowness, his stern asceticism, his incessant sermonizing, there was in
him a depth of sweetness and gentleness, a genuine goodness of heart and
life, which won for him the love of thousands who made little attempt to
follow his example. In an age infamous for its foulness of speech and the
profanity of its oaths the purity of his language was never tarnished.
In his quaint phrases Joinville says of him, ‘I never heard him, at any
time, utter an indecent word nor make use of the devil’s name, which
is now very commonly uttered by every one—a practice which, I firmly
believe, far from being agreeable to God, is highly displeasing to Him.’
Nay, more, these qualities were in him combined with a sound sense and
a firmness of will which made him in all cases of right and duty hard as
adamant, and effectually crushed the contempt which some might have been
tempted to feel for his superstitions. He could bear rebuke patiently:
but they who thought that they might take advantage of his devotion to
encroach on his rights as king or even on the rights of his neighbours
found themselves speedily undeceived. When Gregory IX., after his second
and final rupture with Frederick II., deposed him from his imperial
throne and offered the dignity to Louis’s brother Robert, the meek and
gentle king replied to the pope in the following words:—Whence is this
pride and daring of the pope, which thus disinherits a king who has no
superior, nor even an equal, among Christians,—a king not convicted of
the crimes laid to his charge? Even if these crimes were proved, no power
could depose him but that of a general council. On his transgressions
the judgment of his enemies is of no weight, and his deadliest enemy
is the pope. To us he has not only thus far appeared guiltless, he has
been a good neighbour: we see no cause for suspicion either of his
worldly loyalty or of his Catholic faith. This we know, that he has
fought valiantly for our Lord Jesus Christ both by sea and land. So much
religion we have not found in the pope, who endeavoured to confound and
wickedly supplant him in his absence, while he was engaged in the cause
of God.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1245. Assumption of the cross by Louis IX.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1244. Dec. 10.]
In this cause, as interpreted by the religion of the time, this guiltless
but stout-hearted champion of justice and right was now to peril limb and
life without a shade of fear and with as complete a lack of every quality
needed in a general and leader of armies. A more thorough contrast to
Frederick whom he thus valiantly defended it would be impossible to
imagine. To him the learning, the grace, the refinement of heathen
philosophers and poets, the music and the songs of all poets of all ages,
were beyond expression horrible. Of an intercommunion of nations founded
on commerce, learning, and art, he could have not the faintest notion.
To the best of his power he would administer justice in his own land
so long as he remained in it; when his duty as a champion of the cross
called him elsewhere, he would leave it with fifty thousand men in his
train, having formed no military plans, but under a profound conviction
that God whom he sought to serve would fight his battles, and that, if
it should not be so, the result would be due only to his own sins and
sinfulness. To the remonstrances of his mother, who sought to dissuade
him from the enterprise, his ear was utterly deaf. He was seized with
illness: life seemed to be gone; an attendant, thinking that it had gone,
drew a covering over his face. It was withdrawn by another, and the king
was heard to say, ‘God has raised me from the dead: give me the cross.’
The die was cast. Nine months later, he assumed the badge publicly in the
parliament of Paris; and at Christmas in the same year he distributed to
his courtiers his usual gift of a new robe to each. By his orders a red
cross had been embroidered on these garments between the shoulders, and
the nobles owned themselves fairly entrapped. They must accompany the
king.
[Sidenote: Departure of Louis from France.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1249.]
Two years more were spent in preparations. On the 12th of June 1248 Louis
received from the papal legate at the abbey of St. Denis his purse and
pilgrim’s staff with the Oriflamme or sacred banner of the saint. At the
end of August he sailed from France. Eight months were spent in Cyprus,
where his people were fed in great part by the emperor Frederick. The
kindness called forth a warm letter to the pope, pleading for the
absolution of a man who had thus befriended the soldiers of the cross.
His letter was treated with contempt. In the spring of the next year he
sailed for Egypt; and as soon as his fleet was off Damietta, his envoys
hastened to the sultan with alarming pictures of their master’s power,
and with a summons for immediate submission. The sultan replied that
his cause was just; that those who made war without just cause should
perish; and that mighty armaments had often been destroyed by a handful
of soldiers.
[Sidenote: Capture of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: June.]
The campaign began with a signal success. The garrison of Damietta,
struck with something like panic fear, fled at the sight of the fifty
thousand crusaders landing in the pomp of military parade. The place was
taken; but the people had hurried away to Cairo, having first set fire
to that quarter of the city in which they had stored their merchandise
and their most valuable property. This victory had its usual result
on the crusaders. The tenor of Louis’s saintly life was unbroken; but
within a stone’s throw of his tent his people were indulging in unbounded
debauchery.
[Sidenote: March of the army towards Cairo.]
[Sidenote: Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1250. The king taken prisoner.]
Later in the season an addition to their force was made by 200 English
knights under William Longsword (p. 194) now bishop of Salisbury; and in
November the army began its march towards Cairo. Their progress, never
easy, owing to the assaults of the enemy, was effectually checked at
the canal of Ashmoun. The causeways which they attempted to construct
were destroyed, and their machines burnt with Greek fire. At length
a Bedoween, for a large bribe, showed them a ford. The passage was
effected, and the enemy fled before them on the other side. With good
order and discipline the crusaders might now have achieved some solid
success. But the count of Artois, brother of the king, could not wait
to be joined by the main army. He must press on at once against the
fugitives. In vain the grand-master of the Templars reminded him of the
folly of trusting to a feeling of passing fear. The count deliberately
imputed his advice to systematic treachery. ‘Do you suppose,’ replied
the Templar with calm dignity, ‘that we have left our homes and our
substance, and taken the religious habit in a strange land, only to
betray the cause of God and to forfeit our salvation?’ The bishop of
Salisbury offered his mediation: it was rejected with a biting insult.
In thorough disorder the crusaders rushed into Mansourah; and seeing
their condition at a glance the Mamelukes rushed upon their prey. A
sufficient force was sent to cut off all communication between the men
with the count of Artois and the main army under the king. Boiling water,
stones, blazing wood, were hurled upon them from the houses. The count
of Artois was killed before he could see the full effects of his folly;
and his death was soon followed by that of William Longsword. The utter
destruction of his force was prevented only by succour from the king who,
feeble though he may have been as a general, showed in the hour of danger
a dauntless and unselfish bravery. Both sides had suffered fearfully;
but the king was cut off from Damietta, and sickness of a singularly
malignant kind began to waste his camp. Louis offered the enemy a treaty
based on the exchange of Damietta for the lordship of Jerusalem. The
negotiation failed, and retreat became inevitable; but at the river and
before the canal they had to fight at desperate disadvantage. The courage
of the king was unbroken; but his strength was gone. He sank down in a
state of exhaustion after exertions worthy of the English Richard, and
awoke to find himself a prisoner. Some there were, says Joinville, to
whom the idea of retreat was intolerable; and the thought of the age is
vividly marked in the story which tells us how James du Chastel, bishop
of Soissons, preferred to live with God to returning to the land of his
birth, how he made a charge on the Turks, as if he alone meant to fight
their whole army, and how they soon sent him to God and placed him in the
company of martyrs by forthwith cutting him down.
[Sidenote: Firmness of the king.]
[Sidenote: Terms of ransom.]
The crusade seemed to be closing in hopeless disaster. The queen at
Damietta was about to become a mother, when she heard the tidings of
her husband’s captivity. A premature birth followed. She called her
babe Tristan, the child of sorrow. Louis himself had to undergo greater
misery. Of 10,000 Christian prisoners in Mansourah those only who
embraced the faith of Islam were allowed to live. Some recanted, and
Louis had the bitterness of witnessing their apostasy: the vast majority
stood firm, and he had the agony of seeing them die. But at no time was
he known to exhibit a more unclouded trust in God, a more cool bravery
towards his enemy. Peace was offered to him if he would surrender all
the Christian fortresses in Syria. He answered that they were not his
to surrender, and that he could not dispose of that which belonged to
Frederick II. as king of Jerusalem. He was threatened with torture to
his limbs, with the degradation of being carried from city to city and
exposed for the gratification of sight-seers. He replied quietly, ‘I am
your prisoner. You may do with me as you will.’ At last it was arranged
that Damietta should be given up, that the king should pay one million
byzants for his own ransom, and half a million French livres for his
barons. He demurred to the amount for himself, but agreed at once to the
other. ‘The king of France,’ he said, ‘must not haggle about the freedom
of his subjects.’ Not to be outdone by his unselfishness, the sultan
Turan Shah struck off one fifth from his ransom.
[Sidenote: Murder of Turan Shah.]
[Sidenote: Release of Louis IX.]
It was almost the last act of the sultan’s life. His murder heightened
the dangers of the Christian captives; the firmness of Louis in refusing
to take an oath couched in what he pronounced to be blasphemous language
increased them still more. The difficulty was at length got over; and
after enduring sufferings for which the Saracens said (if we may believe
Joinville) that if they had had to undergo them they would have renounced
Mahomed, the king was free.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth.]
Still Louis, with the bare relics of his army, could not bring himself
to return home. He had written again and again to urge on Henry of
England the duty of coming himself with instant and effectual succour;
he could not think that Henry would disregard his entreaties, especially
when these were backed by offers of the surrender of Normandy. He still
fancied that the Vicar of Christ himself, having made up his long quarrel
with Frederick, would hasten to join his faithful children and lead them
in a supreme effort which could not fail of success. He was abandoned
by his brothers the counts of Anjou and Poitou; but with his faithful
seneschal he made a pilgrimage in sackcloth to Nazareth. The sight of
the Holy Sepulchre, the dearest longing of his heart, he firmly denied
himself. The permission to visit it was freely offered by the sultan
of Damascus: but Louis would not leave behind for future sovereigns a
precedent by which they might reap the fruits of an enterprise in which
they had failed. He returned to Europe like Richard of England, humbled
but not dishonoured;—rather, to speak more strictly, having won that
serene renown which was soon to place his name in the long catalogue of
the saints.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NINTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Comparison of the earlier and later crusades.]
Throughout the history of the crusades the wisdom of the general or the
statesman is conspicuous by its absence; and we may fairly compare the
long series of these wild enterprises with the erratic course and fitful
splendour of a comet which at the moment of its greatest brilliancy
rushes off into an ocean of darkness. They carried with them, as we
have seen (p. 107), not one of the elements of permanent success, while
they lasted long enough to impoverish myriads and carry misery and
grief to the homes of millions. But the qualities which had won for the
earlier crusaders whatever renown they may have acquired, were exhibited
in full measure to the end. Their absolute fearlessness, their firm
persistence in the faith which alone they could allow to be true, their
heroic endurance of the suffering which in hours of triumph they seldom
hesitated to inflict on others, are beyond question; but all these are
virtues which apart from the sagacity of the wise ruler may be brilliant
but must be eminently useless.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1259. Battle between the Templars and Hospitallers.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1263. Invasion of Palestine by the Mameluke Sultan
Bibars.]
This wisdom the Latin Christians of Palestine were destined never to
learn. Disunion ran perpetually into quarrels,—quarrel sometimes into
open warfare. Between the Venetians and the men of Pisa and Genoa there
was but at best but a hollow truce. The side which the Templars might
take in a dispute was not that which would be taken by the Hospitallers
or the Teutonic knights; and the schism of the two former of these orders
led in 1259 to a pitched battle from which scarcely a Templar escaped
alive. From slaughtering each other the champions of the cross passed
to the slaughter-houses of Saracen executioners. The savage warriors of
the Mameluke sultan Bibars seized Nazareth and Acre, torturing to death
those who had not been happy enough to fall on the battle-field. Ninety
Hospitallers held the fortress of Azotus! the last of them died when
at length their enemies stormed the walls. The castle of Saphouri was
surrendered by the Templars on the condition that the garrison, numbering
600 men in all, should be safely conveyed to the next Christian town. The
sultan flung the treaty to the winds, and gave them a few hours to make
their choice between death and apostasy. The prior and two Franciscan
monks besought their companions to stand fast in their faith; and when
the sultan demanded their answer, not a man shrunk from the penalty of
refusal. All were slaughtered, the prior with the two monks being flayed
alive.
[Sidenote: Loss of Antioch.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1268.]
At length the tidings reached Europe that Bohemond VI. had been
driven from Antioch and that his city had passed into the hands of
the unbelievers. The saintly Louis still yearned for the rescue of
the holy places; but the memory of his past disasters led him to fear
that his sinfulness or his bad generalship might again bring disgrace
on the Christian arms. His diffidence called forth the encouragement
of pope Clement IV., who with greater importunity urged Henry III. of
England to do his duty by taking the cross. Three years had passed
since the fatal defeat of Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, at
Evesham: but the country, although not in actual war, was by no means
in a state of repose, and we might wonder why at such a time the prince
who was afterwards to reign as Edward I. should pledge himself to the
new crusade, were it not clear that the enterprise was one which might
be used for the purpose of drawing away from England men who might be
troublesome or dangerous to his father or to himself. Edward took good
care that the earl of Gloucester whom he feared the most should share his
perils, if not his glory, in the East.
[Sidenote: Second crusade of Louis IX.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1270.]
[Sidenote: Death of the king.]
With sixty thousand men, Louis IX., accompanied by the counts of
Flanders, Brittany, Champagne, and other barons, left France to return to
it no more. A storm drove the fleet to Sardinia; and there it was decided
that the crusaders should in the first instance go to Tunis. Charles of
Anjou, the sovereign of Sicily, was anxious to maintain the rights of
Christendom by exacting a tribute paid formerly to his predecessors:
the devout Louis remembered, it is said, the messages by which the king
of Tunis had expressed his wish to embrace Christianity, and thought
that the presence of a large army would give him courage to make open
confession of the true faith. The army landed and had encamped, we are
told, on the site of Carthage, when a plague broke out, and amongst its
crowd of victims struck the king. His whole life had been a prayer: it
remained to the last a prayer for others rather than for himself. With
serene submission to the divine counsels he stretched himself on his
couch of ashes, and as he uttered the words, ‘I will enter Thy house, O
Lord, I will worship in Thy sanctuary,’ he died.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1271. Capture of Nazareth by Edward, son of Henry III.
of England.]
When the English Edward at last arrived in the camp, he saw that the
idea of reaching Palestine before the winter was impracticable, and made
up his mind to return to Sicily until the spring. When at length he
reached Acre, he found that his name carried with it much of the terror
associated with that of Richard Plantagenet. The Christians hastened to
his standard, and with 7,000 men he attacked and took Nazareth, slaying
the people with a massacre as pitiless as any which had sullied the
chronicles of the crusades. It was his first and his last victory in
Palestine. His campaign was cut short by sickness, and the dagger of an
assassin sent by the emir of Joppa as a bearer of letters touching his
conversion to Christianity well nigh cut short his life. Edward hurled
the murderer to the floor and stabbed him to the heart. But the dagger
was undoubtedly poisoned; and it needed more than ordinary skill on the
part of the surgeons to arrest the progress of the venom. The sides of
the wound were carefully pared away; and the strength of youth with the
tender nursing of his wife Eleanor did the rest. The romancers of a later
age framed the tale that he must have died, had she not with her lips
sucked the poison from the wound.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1272. Return of Edward to Europe.]
[Sidenote: Vain efforts of Gregory X. to stir up a crusade.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1274.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1276.]
It was clear that nothing more could be done in the Holy Land, and Edward
knew not how soon his presence might become indispensable in England.
A peace was made for ten years, and the English crusaders set out on
their homeward voyage. For a long series of years Europe had been making
vigorous efforts, and the result of these efforts had been nothing more
substantial or permanent than the lines left on the sea sand by an ebbing
tide. For one moment it seemed that the spirit of the dream might be
changed, when Theobald, archdeacon of Liege, the friend of the English
Edward, was summoned from Acre to fill the chair of St. Peter as Gregory
X. Theobald had been an eye-witness of the desperate calamities which
were crushing the Latins of Palestine, and he called the princes of
Europe to the rescue with a zeal worthy of Innocent III. or of Urban II.
A council held at Lyons decreed a new crusade. Rodolph of Hapsburg, not
yet firm in his imperial dignity, pledged himself to join it; and his
example was followed by Michael Paleologos who thirteen years earlier
(1287) had put down the Latin dynasty in Constantinople. But Gregory died
in less than two years after the assembly at Lyons, and his visions of
renewed conquests in Palestine died with him.
[Sidenote: Claims to the titular kingdom of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1289.]
In the Holy Land itself the miserable Christian remnant adhered to its
old tradition of fighting about shadows when the substance had been
already lost. Hugh III. of Cyprus had had himself crowned at Tyre as king
of Jerusalem. The Templars urged the claims of Charles of Anjou; the
Hospitallers insisted with more sense that the dispute might be postponed
until they had recovered the kingdom the title to which they were
debating. A few years later, when Henry II. of Cyprus held this shadowy
dignity, the grand-master of the Templars pleaded before Nicholas IV.
the wrongs of the Latins which could be avenged only by the blood of the
Saracens. But the power of the ancient spell was broken. Nicholas was
ready to furnish some men, but these were ruffians and criminals, the
very offscourings of the people: money he obstinately refused to give.
The grand-master was not more successful elsewhere; and the Italian
robbers formed the whole force with which he returned to Palestine.
[Sidenote: Loss of Acre.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1291.]
The last forlorn struggle was made at Acre. Here, as elsewhere, the
valour of the Templars shone conspicuous. The grand-master rejected the
bribes of the sultan; but the latter cared little whether he could work
on the venality of his enemies or whether he could not. His Mamelukes
were not less courageous than the Templars, and their numbers were
overwhelming. The assault began; the titular king of Jerusalem, Henry II.
of Cyprus, besought the Teutonic knights to occupy his post, promising to
return the next morning. His request was granted: but before the morning
came, Henry was on his way to Cyprus. The attack was renewed with greater
fury; but the Christians had lost all heart. The master of the Templars
had been killed by a poisoned arrow, and seven Knights Hospitallers
sailed away, the last remnant of the magnificent order which had braved
successfully a thousand dangers. The city was lost: but the horrors of
the siege were not ended. The people had hurried to the shore; a storm
prevented them from embarking; and the very sea was reddened by the blood
of the last victims of a wild and fanatical superstition.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS.
[Sidenote: Gradual decay and extinction of the crusading spirit.]
The crusades had come to an end. The embers smouldered on: but it was
to the last degree unlikely that they would be rekindled. The great
military orders withdrew to seek a field for their energies elsewhere;
the Teutonic knights to the dreary regions of Lithuania and Poland,—the
knights of the Hospital first to Cyprus, then to Rhodes where, after many
a hard fight with Greeks and Saracens, they achieved the conquest of the
whole island and settled down to repose in their earthly paradise. The
dream of returning to Palestine still haunted the mind of Edward I.,
who by his will left 30,000_l._ for the equipment and maintenance of
the knights who were to bear his heart to the Holy Land; but probably
the last reflection of the old fire is seen in the words by which Henry
V. in his dying moments asserted the bounden duty of princes to build
the walls of Jerusalem, and declared that, had he been spared for a
longer life, or had he lived in quieter times, he would have undertaken
this task of restoration. Even now, perhaps, the task was one of no
insuperable difficulty. Its practicability had been shown more than
once by its accomplishment; but it was one which must be taken in hand
in the spirit of that wise and tolerant statesmanship which seeks to
further the interests of the subject population, and to make one people
of the conquerors and the conquered. This idea was, as we have seen,
deliberately rejected by the first crusaders, and, with the single
exception of the emperor Henry at Constantinople (p. 170), by all who
followed them. There is no reason to suppose that the English Henry V.
would have been animated by a wiser spirit and a larger charity than the
companions of Godfrey and Tancred.
[Sidenote: Persecution and suppression of the Knights Templars.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1309.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1314.]
The soil of Palestine had been watered abundantly with the blood both of
Christians and of infidels. The soil of Europe, chiefly that of France,
was to drink the blood of that haughty but valiant order which had done
as much to destroy as to maintain the hold of Latin Christendom on
Palestine. Among all the monstrous iniquities which perjured kings and
godless statesmen have ever perpetrated, the lies and cruelties, the
persistent and diabolical injustice which attended the suppression of the
Knights Templars must hold very nearly the first place. These men may
have, nay undoubtedly they had, committed enormous crimes themselves;
but these were crimes done in the sight of the sun and shared by all
crusaders of every generation, the saintly Louis of France forming, it
would seem, the solitary exception. Now, when their services were no
longer needed or could no more be of use in Palestine, the benefits to be
derived from a confiscation of their properties became patent to Philip
the Fair, the brutal tyrant, the profligate murderer, the unscrupulous
thief, who bullied the pope, Clement V., into a recognition of charges
which at first he had rightly cast aside as absurd, extravagant, and
impossible. False witness, tortures, hunger, thirst, darkness, filth,
and disease in sunless dungeons, were all used with consummate skill and
pertinacity to subdue the warriors who in the field had never quailed.
Taken one by one, some made confessions which were drawn from them
by excruciating agonies, and which, when these agonies ceased, were
indignantly withdrawn. With his remaining comrades the last grand-master
died, solemnly asserting the innocence of his order—an innocence
unquestionably real, if we confine ourselves to the charges brought
against them by Philip and his myrmidons; and the kings of France, made
wealthier by their iniquities, laid up another count for the great
indictment to be brought against their luckless representative in the
French revolution. In England the proceedings against the Templars,
shameful though they were, fell infinitely short of the disgrace which
covered the king and the judges of France: but in both countries it was
seen what might be done by malignant lies uttered boldly under the plea
of maintaining the truth and the righteousness of God.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1208-1249. The Albigensian crusades.]
In this process we see, in fact, the legitimate result of the crusades.
The unbelief of the Saracen was a sufficient reason for wresting from him
a country which was regarded as the inalienable heritage of Christendom:
the alleged unbelief or profanity of Templars was a sufficient reason
for hounding on judges to their destruction; and the heresies truly
or falsely alleged against any persons whatsoever would be a thorough
warrant for carrying fire and sword through their land, if gentler means
failed to extort submission. The lesson had been soon learnt; and while
Dandolo and Baldwin were laying the foundations of the short-lived Latin
empire at Constantinople, Innocent was preaching a crusade against
the peaceable, although perhaps not strictly orthodox, subjects of
count Raymond of Toulouse. The attempt to put down error by force was
producing its natural fruits; and men like Bernard and Innocent were
brought to consider every means lawful, every weapon hallowed, against
the wretched enemies of Christ and of his Church. Horrible miscreants,
like the inquisitors Fulk of Marseilles and Arnold of Amaury, could
without a pang of remorse involve in one common slaughter the aged and
the young, the mother and the infant; and Simon of Montfort, cased in
the triple armour of a heart harder than the nether millstone, could
exult with savage joy over the massacres of his sword and the torments
of the Inquisition. In this awful chaos Frederick II., the enemy of the
pope, the friends of Saracenic philosophers, of Moslem women, joined
furiously in the fray. Near in its ideal, and similar in some points of
its development, as was the careless society of the troubadour to his own
luxurious civilization in Sicily, yet not a sign is there to show that
he regarded with the least emotion its rapid and terrible catastrophe.
His appreciation of their Gay Science, of their art, their refinement,
and their luxury, was chilled and quenched by the thought of the vile
crowd of Petrobrussians and other vulgar heretics, by whom these careless
voluptuaries were surrounded. Well may it be said that never in any
history were the principles of justice, the faith of treaties, common
humanity so trampled under foot as in the Albigensian crusade, ‘Slay
on; God will know his own,’ was the cry of the papal legate before the
walls of Beziers; and this easy method of settling a long controversy was
the moral logically drawn from the preaching of the hermit Peter and of
Bernard of Clairvaux.
[Sidenote: The children’s crusades.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1212.]
It is possible that the historian who seeks to account for all the
characteristics which mark the era of the crusades may connect these
expeditions with some events which should be traced to other causes. The
impulses which bring vast crowds together for any purpose are always more
or less contagious: and the middle ages exhibit, throughout, a series of
enthusiastic risings. The outbreak of the Pastoureaux, or Shepherds (so
called from their supposed simplicity), which for a time led astray even
Blanche of Castile (p. 196), took place, perhaps only by an accidental
coincidence, while Louis IX. was a captive in Egypt: but it was only
one of a thousand instances of what has well been termed superstition
set in motion. To this class belong probably the expeditions known as
the Children’s crusades, although these were started with the idea of
recovering the Holy Cross from the infidel. A few words may suffice to
tell the miserable story how in France under the boy Stephen 30,000
children encamped around Vendome; how 10,000 were lost or had strayed
away before they reached Marseilles a month later; how there they waited
under a conviction that the waters of the Mediterranean would be cloven
asunder to give them a passage on dry land; how at length two merchants
offered ‘for the cause of God and without charge’ to convey them in ships
to Palestine; and how the 5,000 children, who sailed from the harbour
chanting the hymn _Veni Creator Spiritus_, found themselves at the end of
their voyage in the slave markets of Alexandria and Algiers. A pendant
to this woful tale is found in the sufferings of the 20,000 German boys
and girls who set out in the same year from Cologne under the peasant lad
Nicholas 20,000 strong, and of whom 5,000 only reached Genoa. Of the rest
some had returned home: some marched to Brindisi, and, setting sail for
Palestine, were never heard of more. The fortune of those who found their
way to Genoa was more happy. Invited to settle there by the senate, many
became wealthy, and not a few, rising to distinction, founded some of the
noblest families in the state.
[Sidenote: Indirect results of the crusades.]
But as the motives which led to the crusades were complex, so their
results were complex also. The picture must not be presented only in its
darker aspects. We have seen the effect which they produced on the growth
of the temporal power of the popes. We must not forget that by rolling
back the tide of Mahomedan conquest from Constantinople for upwards
of four centuries they probably saved Europe from horrors the recital
of which might even now make our ears tingle; that by weakening the
resources and the power of the barons they strengthened the authority of
the kings acting in alliance with the citizens of the great towns; that
this alliance broke up the feudal system, gradually abolished serfdom,
and substituted the authority of a common law for the arbitrary will
of chiefs who for real or supposed affronts rushed to the arbitrament
of private war. Worthless in themselves, and wholly useless as means
for founding any permanent dominion in Palestine or elsewhere, these
enterprises have affected the commonwealths of Europe in ways of which
the promoters never dreamed. They left a wider gulf between the Greek
and the Latin churches, between the subjects of the Eastern empire and
the nations of Western Europe; but by the mere fact of throwing East and
West together they led gradually to that interchange of thought and that
awakening of the human intellect to which we owe all that distinguishes
our modern civilization from the religious and political systems of the
middle ages.
INDEX.
Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad, 15
Abelard, 88
Abubekr, 13
Acre, siege of, 127;
surrender of, 133
Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, 80
Adelais, 120
Adhemar, bishop of Puy, 44, 58, 69, 70
Albigensians, crusades against the, 222
Alexander II., pope, 2, 21
Alexandria, surrender of, to Almeric, 100
Alexios, brother of Isaac Angelus, 153, 159
Alexios emperor of the East, 17, 24, 51;
extorts the homage of the crusaders, 53;
his conduct to the crusaders, 54;
fails to aid them, 71;
benefited by the crusaders, 81;
death of, 83
Alexios, son of Isaac Angelus, 153, 156, 161
Alexios Strategopoulos, 180
Alfonso, king of Gallicia, 38
Almeric, king of Jerusalem, 98
Almeric of Lusignan, king of Cyprus and titular king of Jerusalem,
144, 183
Amalfi, merchants of, 18
Andrew, king of Hungary, 176, 186
Anna Comnena, 50, 54
Antioch, siege of, 60;
betrayed to Bohemond, 65;
fall of, 69
Arnold, chaplain of Bohemond, 68, 73
Arnold of Amaury, 221
Arthur of Brittany, 129
Artois, count of, 210
Ascalon, Battle of, 77;
fall of, 98
Assize of Jerusalem, 78, 170
Augustine, St., 8
Austria, Leopold, duke of, 133
Azan the Bulgarian, 179
Azotus, battle of, 132
Baghasian, 60, 63, 65
Baldwin I., brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, 43, 59
Baldwin II., emperor of the East, 175
Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, 84
Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, 85
Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 104
Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem, 104
Baldwin du Bourg, 84
Baldwin, lord of Edessa, 59;
king of Jerusalem, 80, 84
Baldwin of Flanders, emperor of the East, 163, 173
Baldwin of Hainault, 70
Barbarossa [Frederick I.]
Bela, king of Hungary, 121
Berengaria, 129, 130
Bernard, patriarch of Antioch, 70
Bernard, St., 86 _et seq._
Bertrand of Toulouse, 81
Blanche of Castile, 203, 223
Blondel, 138
Bodin, 53
Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, 23, 45, 52, 81
Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, 152, 172, 175
Bouvines, battle of, 189
Brienne, constable of Apulia, 23
Brienne, John of, 184, 199
Bulgarians, 173
Calo John, 173, 175
Charles of Anjou, 217
Charles the Great, 21
Chivalry, cause and effect of, 46
Chosroes [Khosru]
Christianity, the, of the first century, 3;
influence of paganism upon, 5;
modified by the Roman imperial tradition, 20
Cid, the, 38
Clement IV., pope, 215
Clement V., pope, 220
Cogni [Iconium]
Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, 142
Conrad, emperor of Germany, 90, 92, 142
Conrad of Tyre, 110, 127, 134
Constantia, heiress of Sicily, 125, 128
Constantine, church of, at Jerusalem, 8
Constantinople, first siege of, by the Latins, 158;
second siege and conquest of, 162;
Latin emperors of, 168;
Baldwin I., 163, 174;
Henry, brother of Baldwin, 175;
Peter of Courtenay, 176;
Robert, 177;
John of Brienne, 178;
Baldwin II., 179;
Latin empire of, 168;
recovery of, by the Greeks, 181
Coradin, sultan of Syria, 186
Council of Clermont, 29
Council of Lyons, 217
Council of Nice, 17
Council of Piacenza, 24
Councils of Lateran, 116, 185
Courtenay, Joceline of, 84, 97
Courtenay, Peter of, 176, 177
Courtesy, 48
Courts of Love, 95
Cross, discovery of the true, 7;
recovery of, 12
Crusaders, numbers of the, 56;
ferocity of the, 75
Crusades, causes tending to, 1 _et seq._;
financial effects of, 34;
effects of, on the power of the pope and the clergy, 35;
on the feudal system, 36;
not national enterprises, 37;
against the Albigensians, 222;
the Children’s, 222;
indirect results of the, 224
Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem, 78
Damascus, siege of, 95
Damietta, 116, 186, 209
Dandolo, Henry, doge of Venice, 163, 168, 172
Dargham, 98
David [Kilidje Arslan]
Demetrius, lord of Thessalonica, 178
Dorylaion, battle of, 58
Durazzo, 23, 81, 173
Edessa, conquest of, by Baldwin, 59;
by Zenghis, 85
Edward I., of England, 216, 217, 218, 219
Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Louis VII., 88, 92, 95;
marries Henry of Normandy, afterwards Henry II. of England, 95;
writes to Cælestine III., 138
Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 216
Emico, count of Leiningen, 40
Engelbert of Tournay, 74
Eugenius III., pope, 89
Eustace, count of Boulogne, 43
Fatimite sultans of Egypt, 14, 62, 98, 99, 102
Ferentino, treaty of, 190
Frederick I., Barbarossa, 124, 125
Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, 183 _et seq._, 207, 222
Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem, 85, 117
Fulk of Marseilles, 221
Fulk of Neuilly, 148
Genghis Khan, 201
Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 120
Geoffrey of Villehardouin, 150, 172, 175
Gerold, patriarch of Jerusalem, 198
Godfrey of Bouillon, 43, 49, 66, 72;
baron and defender of the Holy Sepulchre, 77;
reign and death of, 80
Gotschalk, the monk, 40
Greeks and Latins, antagonism between, 56, 168, 180
Gregory I., the Great, 10, 20
Gregory VII., pope [Hildebrand]
Gregory VIII., pope, 118
Gregory IX., pope, 191, 193, 200
Gregory X., pope, 217
Guelf, duke of Bavaria, 39
Guibert, abbot, 33
Guido, abbot of Vaux Cernay, 155
Guiscard, Robert, 24
Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, 104;
of Cyprus, 134
Hakem, 15
Harun-al-Reschid, 25
Helena, church of, at Bethlehem, 8
Henry II., king of Cyprus, 218
Henry II. of England, 117, 119, 120, 121
Henry IV., emperor, 25, 43
Henry V. of England, 219
Henry VI., emperor, 134, 138, 139, 140
Henry, Latin emperor of the East, 175, 176, 219
Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem, 134
Heraclius, emperor of the East, 11, 12
Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 117
Herakleios [Heraclius]
Herman of Salza, 127, 195, 197
Hildebrand [Gregory VII.], 2, 21 _et seq._
Hohenstaufen, house of, 188
Holy Land, growth of local traditions in the, 7
Honorius III., pope, 177, 189, 202
Hospitallers, or knights of St. John, 101, 108, 113, 141, 214, 217
Hugh III., king of Cyprus, 217
Hugh of Vermandois, 43, 49, 69, 83
Hungary, conversion of, 16
Iconium, sultan of, 58, 82
Ingulf, 16
Innocent II., pope, 88
Innocent III., pope, 145, 165, 189
Innocent IV., pope, 202
Isaac Angelus, emperor of the East, 119, 153
Isaac of Cyprus, 130
Isabella, sister of Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 127, 178, 183
James du Chastel, 211
Jerome, St., at Bethlehem, 9
Jerusalem, Assize of, 78, 170;
Latin kingdom of, 77;
Latin kings of, 77;
Godfrey, 77;
Baldwin I., 80;
Baldwin II., 84;
Fulk of Anjou, 85;
Baldwin III., 85;
Almeric, 98;
Baldwin IV., 104;
Baldwin V., 104;
Guy of Lusignan, 104;
Henry of Champagne (titular), 134;
Almeric of Lusignan (titular), 144
Jerusalem, captured by the Persians, 10;
by Omar, 12;
by Hakem, 15;
by the Seljukian Toucush, 17;
by the first crusaders, 72;
by Saladin, 105;
by Kameel, 196
Jews, persecution of the, 40, 91, 122
Jews, plunder of the, 119
Joanna, sister of Richard I., 128, 134
Joceline of Courtenay, 84, 97
John Comnenos, 50
John of Brienne, 178
John of England, 135
John, St., Hospital of, 18
John the monk, 96
Joinville, 206 _et seq._
Kameel, sultan of Egypt, 186;
treaty of, with Frederick II., 196, 200;
takes Jerusalem, 201
Kerboga, 66, 68, 69
Khosru II., 10
Khosru Nushirvan, 11
Kilidje Arslan, 42, 58, 66, 69
Knighthood, 47
Knights Hospitallers, 101, 108, 113, 141, 214, 218
Knights Templars, 90, 113, 214
Knights, Teutonic, 127, 214, 218
Korasmians, 202
Lance, discovery of the holy, 67
Lateran, councils of, 116, 185
Latin empire of Constantinople, 168;
kingdom of Jerusalem, 77;
emperors of Constantinople, 169;
kings of Jerusalem, 77, 144
Latins and Greeks, antagonism between, 55, 168, 181
Leo III., pope, 21
Letold of Tournay, 74
Lothair, cardinal [Innocent III.]
Louis VI., the Fat, 88
Louis VII., king of France, 92, 117
Louis IX., king of France, 203 _et seq._;
death of, 215
Lusignan, Almeric of, 144, 183;
Guy of, 104, 134
Lyons, council of, 217
Mahomed, embassy from, to Khosru II., 11
Mamelukes, 218
Manuel, emperor of the East, 93, 102
Marra, siege of, 71
Mary, niece of Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 184
Maynard, nephew of Conrad of Tyre, 137
Merovingian kings of France, 98
Moadhin, sultan of Damascus, 196
Montferrat, marquis of, 152
Montfort, Simon of, 150, 155, 158
Montfort, Simon of, earl of Leicester, 203
Morosini, Thomas, patriarch of Constantinople, 165, 167, 171
Mostadhi, caliph of Bagdad, 100
Mourzoufle, 161, 162, 173
Nicæa, Nikaia [Nice]
Nice, Seljukian sovereigns of, 17;
siege of, 57
Nicephorus III., emperor, 23
Nicolas IV., pope, 218
Nicolas, the child crusader, 223
Nineveh, battle of, 11
Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo, 98, 99, 103
Omar, the caliph, 12
Oriflamme, the, 208
Otho of Brunswick, emperor, 188
Pascal II., pope, 78
Pastoureaux, 222
Pelagius, bishop of Albano, 185
Peter Barthelemy, 68
Peter of Blois, 138
Peter of Capua, 154, 157
Peter the Chanter, 148
Peter of Courtenay, Latin emperor of the East, 176
Peter the Hermit, 26 _et seq._, 38, 62, 68, 73, 75
Philip Augustus, king of France, 119, 138, 171
Philip I., king of France, 25, 43, 81
Philip IV., the Fair, king of France, 220
Philip of Namur, 177
Philip of Swabia, 154, 156
Philip [titular], Latin emperor of the East, 181
Piacenza, council of, 24
Pilgrimage, growth of, 8
Pilgrims, tax on, at Jerusalem, 15
Phirouz, the renegade, 63
Placentia, council of, 24
Pontius, son of Bertrand of Toulouse, 81
Raymond, count of Toulouse, 45, 53
Raymond of Tripoli, 104
Rhazates, 12
Richard, earl of Cornwall, 197, 201
Richard I’st of England, 114, 117;
at Messina, 128;
at Rhodes, 130;
at Acre, 130;
retreats from Bethlehem, 135;
at Jaffa, 136;
imprisonment, 137;
return of, to England, 140
Robert, count of Flanders, 44
Robert, count of Paris, 52
Robert duke of Normandy, 44, 60, 63
Robert, Latin emperor of the East, 177
Robert of Courcon, 185, 186
Rodolph of Hapsburg, 217
Rodolph the Monk, 91
Roger, successor of Tancred, 82
Saadi, 183
Saladin tax or tithe, 119
Saladin, 99, 102;
enters Jerusalem, 110;
death of, 141
Samosata, 60
San Germano, treaty of, 191
Saphadin, 136, 141;
takes Jaffa, 143;
offers peace, 183;
death of, 186
Seljukian Turks, 17
Shawer, 98, 102
Shepherds of Pastoureaux, 222
Shiracouh, 98, 102
Sibylla, 104, 127
Sidon, conquest of, 84
Simon of Montfort, 150, 155, 158
Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, 203
Siroes, 12
Siward, 84
Sophronios, patriarch of Jerusalem, 12
Stephen, apostle of Hungary, 16
Stephen, count of Chartres, 44, 66, 80
Stephen Harding, 87
Stephen, the child crusader, 223
Tancred, 45, 59, 69, 75, 81
Tancred, son of Roger of Apulia, 129, 141
Tatikios, 62, 71
Templars, knights, 90, 113, 214, 218, 221
Teutonic knights, 127, 214, 218
Theobald, archdeacon of Liege, 218
Theobald, count of Champagne, 89, 150
Theodore Lascaris, 173
Thierry, count of Flanders, 95
Thoron, siege of, 142
Tiberias, battle of, 105
Toucush, 18
Trebizond, empire of, 173
Tristan, 211
Truce of God, 30, 47
Turan Shah, 212
Tyre, conquest of, 84
Ugolino [Gregory IX.]
Urban II., pope, at Piacenza, 24;
at Clermont, 25, 30;
death of, 78
Urban III., pope, 118
Vataces, John, emperor of Nicæa, 178, 179
Venice, growth of the power of, 164
Victor III., pope, 24
Villehardouin, Geoffrey of, 150, 174, 175
Vorylas, 175
Walter of Brienne, 150
Walter the Penniless, 40, 42
William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, 138
William Longsword, bishop of Salisbury, 201, 209
William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, 186
William of Melun, 62
William of Scotland, 117, 122
William of Tyre, 119
William the Conqueror, 2, 21
William Rufus, 39
Zara, expedition to, 153, 155
Zenghis, sultan of Aleppo, 85
Ziani, doge of Venice, 168
“_The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men who are
authorities in their respective fields._”—THE NATION.
EPOCHS OF HISTORY
=EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY= =EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY=
Eleven volumes, 16mo, each $1.00. Eighteen volumes, 16mo, each $1.00.
The Epoch volumes have most successfully borne the test of experience,
and are universally acknowledged to be the best series of historical
manuals in existence. They are admirably adapted in form and matter to
the needs of colleges, schools, reading circles, and private classes.
Attention is called to them as giving the utmost satisfaction as class
hand-books.
NOAH PORTER, _President of Yale College_.
“The ‘Epochs of History’ have been prepared with knowledge and
artistic skill to meet the wants of a large number of readers.
To the young they furnish an outline or compendium. To those
who are older they present a convenient sketch of the heads of
the knowledge which they have already acquired. The outlines
are by no means destitute of spirit, and may be used with great
profit for family reading, and in select classes or reading
clubs.”
CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS, _President of Cornell University_.
“A series of concise and carefully prepared volumes on special
eras of history. Each is also complete in itself, and has no
especial connection with the other members of the series. The
works are all written by authors selected by the editor on
account of some especial qualifications for a portrayal of
the period they respectively describe. The volumes form an
excellent collection, especially adapted to the wants of a
general reader.”
_The Publishers will supply these volumes to teachers at SPECIAL NET
RATES, and would solicit correspondence concerning terms for examination
and introduction copies._
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers
743-745 Broadway, New York
THE GREAT SUCCESS OF THE SERIES
is the best proof of its general popularity, and the excellence of
the various volumes is further attested by their having been adopted
as text-books in many of our leading educational institutions. The
publishers beg to call attention to the following list comprising some of
the most prominent institutions using volumes of the series:
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Univ. of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.
Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn.
Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass.
Bellewood Sem., Anchorage, Ky.
Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, Tenn.
State Univ., Minneapolis, Minn.
Christian Coll., Columbia, Mo.
Adelphi Acad., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Earlham Coll., Richmond, Ind.
Granger Place School, Canandaigua, N. Y.
Salt Lake Acad., Salt Lake City, Utah.
Beloit Col., Beloit, Wis.
Logan Female Coll., Russellville, Ky.
No. West Univ., Evanston, Ill.
State Normal School, Baltimore, Md.
Hamilton Coll., Clinton, N. Y.
Doane Coll., Crete, Neb.
Princeton College, Princeton, N. J.
Williams Coll., Williamstown, Mass.
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N. Y.
Illinois Coll., Jacksonville, Ill.
Univ. of South, Sewaunee, Tenn.
Wesleyan Univ., Mt. Pleasant, Ia.
Univ. of Cal., Berkeley, Cal.
So. Car. Coll., Columbia, S. C.
Amsterdam Acad., Amsterdam, N. Y.
Carleton Coll., Northfield, Minn.
Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, Mass.
Albion Coll., Albion, Mich.
Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, N. H.
Wilmington Coll., Wilmington, O.
Madison Univ., Hamilton, N. Y.
Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, N. Y.
Univ. of Wis., Madison, Wis.
Union Coll., Schenectady, N. Y.
Norwich Free Acad., Norwich, Conn.
Greenwich Acad., Greenwich, Conn.
Univ. of Neb., Lincoln, Neb.
Kalamazoo Coll., Kalamazoo, Mich.
Olivet Coll., Olivet, Mich.
Amherst Coll., Amherst, Mass.
Ohio State Univ., Columbus, O.
Free Schools, Oswego, N. Y.
Bishop J. F. HURST, _ex-President of Drew Theol. Sem._
“It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is strictly in
harmony with the philosophy of history—namely, that great movements
should be treated not according to narrow geographical and national
limits and distinction, but universally, according to their place in the
general life of the world. The historical Maps and the copious Indices
are welcome additions to the volumes.”
EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
_A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR
RELATIONS TO OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS._
_Edited by_
Rev. G. W. COX and CHARLES SANKEY, M.A.
Eleven volumes, 16mo, with 41 Maps and Plans.
Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00.
The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00.
=TROY—ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE.= By S. G. W. BENJAMIN.
“The task of the author has been to gather into a clear and very readable
narrative all that is known of legendary, historical, and geographical
Troy, and to tell the story of Homer, and weigh and compare the
different theories in the Homeric controversy. The work is well done.
His book is altogether candid, and is a very valuable and entertaining
compendium.”—_Hartford Courant._
“As a monograph on Troy, covering all sides of the question, it is of
great value, and supplies a long vacant place in our fund of classical
knowledge.”—_N. Y. Christian Advocate._
=THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS.= By Rev. G. W. COX.
“It covers the ground in a perfectly satisfactory way. The work is clear,
succinct, and readable.”—_New York Independent._
“Marked by thorough and comprehensive scholarship and by a skillful
style.”—_Congregationalist._
“It would be hard to find a more creditable book. The author’s prefatory
remarks upon the origin and growth of Greek civilization are alone worth
the price of the volume.”—_Christian Union._
=THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE—From the Flight of Xerxes to the Fall of Athens.= By
Rev. G. W. COX.
“Mr. Cox writes in such a way as to bring before the reader everything
which is important to be known or learned; and his narrative cannot
fail to give a good idea of the men and deeds with which he is
concerned.”—_The Churchman._
“Mr. Cox has done his work with the honesty of a true student. It shows
persevering scholarship and a desire to get at the truth.”—_New York
Herald._
=THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.= By CHARLES SANKEY, M.A.
“This volume covers the period between the disasters of Athens at the
close of the Pelopenesian war and the rise of Macedon. It is a very
striking and instructive picture of the political life of the Grecian
commonwealth at that time.”—_The Churchman._
“It is singularly interesting to read, and in respect to arrangement,
maps, etc., is all that can be desired.”—_Boston Congregationalist._
=THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE—Its Rise and Culmination to Death of Alexander the
Great.= By A. M. CURTEIS, M.A.
“A good and satisfactory history of a very important period. The maps are
excellent, and the story is lucidly and vigorously told.”—_The Nation._
“The same compressive style and yet completeness of detail that have
characterized the previous issues in this delightful series, are found
in this volume. Certainly the art of conciseness in writing was never
carried to a higher or more effective point.”—_Boston Saturday Evening
Gazette._
⁂ _The above five volumes give a connected and complete history of Greece
from the earliest times to the death of Alexander._
=EARLY ROME—From the Foundation of the City to its Destruction by the
Gauls.= By W. IHNE, Ph.D.
“Those who want to know the truth instead of the traditions that used to
be learned of our fathers, will find in the work entertainment, careful
scholarship, and sound sense.”—_Cincinnati Times._
“The book is excellently well done. The views are those of a learned and
able man, and they are presented in this volume with great force and
clearness.”—_The Nation._
=ROME AND CARTHAGE—The Punic Wars.= By R. BOSWORTH SMITH.
“By blending the account of Rome and Carthage the accomplished author
presents a succinct and vivid picture of two great cities and people
which leaves a deep impression. The story is full of intrinsic interest,
and was never better told.”—_Christian Union._
“The volume is one of rare interest and value.”—_Chicago Interior._
“An admirably condensed history of Carthage, from its establishment by
the adventurous Phœnician traders to its sad and disastrous fall.”—_New
York Herald._
=THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA.= By A. H. BEESLEY.
“A concise and scholarly historical sketch, descriptive of the decay of
the Roman Republic, and the events which paved the way for the advent
of the conquering Cæsar. It is an excellent account of the leaders and
legislation of the republic.”—_Boston Post._
“It is prepared in succinct but comprehensive style, and is an excellent
book for reading and reference.”—_New York Observer._
“No better condensed account of the two Gracchi and the turbulent careers
of Marius and Sulla has yet appeared.”—_New York Independent._
=THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES.= By the Very Rev. CHARLES MERIVALE, D.D.
“In brevity, clear and scholarly treatment of the subject, and the
convenience of map, index, and side notes, the volume is a model.”—_New
York Tribune._
“An admirable presentation, and in style vigorous and
picturesque.”—_Hartford Courant._
=THE EARLY EMPIRE—From the Assassination of Julius Cæsar to the
Assassination of Domitian.= By Rev. W. WOLFE CAPES, M.A.
“It is written with great clearness and simplicity of style, and is as
attractive an account as has ever been given in brief of one of the most
interesting periods of Roman History.”—_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
“It is a clear, well-proportioned, and trustworthy performance, and well
deserves to be studied.”—_Christian at Work._
=THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES—The Roman Empire of the Second Century.= By
Rev. W. WOLFE CAPES, M.A.
“The Roman Empire during the second century is the broad
subject discussed in this book, and discussed with learning and
intelligence.”—_New York Independent._
“The writer’s diction is clear and elegant, and his narration is free
from any touch of pedantry. In the treatment of its prolific and
interesting theme, and in its general plan, the book is a model of works
of its class.”—_New York Herald._
“We are glad to commend it. It is written clearly, and with care and
accuracy. It is also in such neat and compact form as to be the more
attractive.”—_Congregationalist._
⁂ _The above six volumes give the History of Rome from the founding of
the City to the death of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus._
EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY.
_A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT
SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA._
_Edited by_
EDWARD E. MORRIS.
Eighteen volumes, 16mo, with 74 Maps, Plans, and Tables.
Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00.
The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00.
=THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES—England and Europe in the Ninth
Century.= By the Very Rev. R. W. CHURCH, M.A.
“A remarkably thoughtful and satisfactory discussion of the causes and
results of the vast changes which came upon Europe during the period
discussed. The book is adapted to be exceedingly serviceable.”—_Chicago
Standard._
“At once readable and valuable. It is comprehensive and yet gives the
details of a period most interesting to the student of history.”—_Herald
and Presbyter._
“It is written with a clearness and vividness of statement which make it
the pleasantest reading. It represents a great deal of patient research,
and is careful and scholarly.”—_Boston Journal._
=THE NORMANS IN EUROPE—The Feudal System and England under the Norman
Kings.= By Rev. A. H. JOHNSON, M.A.
“Its pictures of the Normans in their home, of the Scandinavian exodus,
the conquest of England, and Norman administration, are full of vigor and
cannot fail of holding the reader’s attention.”—_Episcopal Register._
“The style of the author is vigorous and animated, and he has given a
valuable sketch of the origin and progress of the great Northern movement
that has shaped the history of modern Europe.”—_Boston Transcript._
=THE CRUSADES.= By Rev. G. W. COX.
“To be warmly commended for important qualities. The author shows
conscientious fidelity to the materials, and such skill in the use of
them, that, as a result, the reader has before him a narrative related in
a style that makes it truly fascinating.”—_Congregationalist._
“It is written in a pure and flowing style, and its arrangement and
treatment of subject are exceptional.”—_Christian Intelligencer._
=THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS—Their Relation to the History of Europe; The
Foundation and Growth of Constitutional Government.= By Rev. W. STUBBS,
M.A.
“Nothing could be desired more dear, succinct, and well arranged.
All parts of the book are well done. It may be pronounced the best
existing brief history of the constitution for this, its most important
period.”—_The Nation._
“Prof. Stubbs has presented leading events with such fairness and wisdom
as are seldom found. He is remarkably clear and satisfactory.”—_The
Churchman._
=EDWARD III.= By Rev. W. WARBURTON, M.A.
“The author has done his work well, and we commend it as containing in
small space all essential matter.”—_New York Independent._
“Events and movements are admirably condensed by the author, and
presented in such attractive form as to entertain as well as
instruct.”—_Chicago Interior._
=THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK—The Conquest and Loss of France.= By
JAMES GAIRDNER.
“Prepared in a most careful and thorough manner, and ought to be read by
every student.”—_New York Times._
“It leaves nothing to be desired as regards compactness, accuracy, and
excellence of literary execution.”—_Boston Journal._
=THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.= By FREDERIC SEEBOHM. With Notes,
on Books in English relating to the Reformation, by Prof. GEORGE P.
FISHER, D.D.
“For an impartial record of the civil and ecclesiastical changes
about four hundred years ago, we cannot commend a better
manual.”—_Sunday-School Times._
“All that could be desired, as well in execution as in plan. The
narrative is animated, and the selection and grouping of events skillful
and effective.”—_The Nation._
=THE EARLY TUDORS—Henry VII., Henry VIII.= By Rev. C. E. MOBERLEY, M.A.,
late Master in Rugby School.
“Is concise, scholarly, and accurate. On the epoch of which it treats, we
know of no work which equals it.”—_N. Y. Observer._
“A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical judgment.
There is hardly a better book of its kind to be named.”—_New York
Independent._
=THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.= By Rev. M. CREIGHTON, M.A.
“Clear and compact in style; careful in their facts, and just
in interpretation of them. It sheds much light on the progress
of the Reformation and the origin of the Popish reaction during
Queen Elizabeth’s reign; also, the relation of Jesuitism to the
latter.”—_Presbyterian Review._
“A clear, concise, and just story of an era crowded with events of
interest and importance.”—_New York World._
=THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR—1618-1648.= By SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER.
“As a manual it will prove of the greatest practical value, while to
the general reader it will afford a clear and interesting account of
events. We know of no more spirited and attractive recital of the great
era.”—_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
“The thrilling story of those times has never been told so vividly or
succinctly as in this volume.”—_Episcopal Register._
=THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First Two Stuarts, 1603-1660.= By SAMUEL
RAWSON GARDINER.
“The narrative is condensed and brief, yet sufficiently comprehensive to
give an adequate view of the events related.”—_Chicago Standard._
“Mr. Gardiner uses his researches in an admirably clear and fair
way.”—_Congregationalist._
“The sketch is concise, but clear and perfectly intelligible.”—_Hartford
Courant._
=THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to
the Peace of Nimwegen.= By OSMUND AIRY, M.A.
“It is crisply and admirably written. An immense amount of information
is conveyed and with great clearness, the arrangement of the subjects
showing great skill and a thorough command of the complicated
theme.”—_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
“The author writes with fairness and discrimination, and has given a
clear and intelligible presentation of the time.”—_New York Evangelist._
=THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western Europe.= By Rev. EDWARD HALE, M.A.
“A valuable compend to the general reader and scholar.”—_Providence
Journal._
“It will be found of great value. It is a very graphic account of the
history of Europe during the 17th century, and is admirably adapted for
the use of students.”—_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
“An admirable handbook for the student.”—_The Churchman._
=THE AGE OF ANNE.= By EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A.
“The author’s arrangement of the material is remarkably clear, his
selection and adjustment of the facts judicious, his historical judgment
fair and candid, while the style wins by its simple elegance.”—_Chicago
Standard._
“An excellent compendium of the history of an important period.”—_The
Watchman._
=THE EARLY HANOVERIANS—Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle.= By EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A.
“Masterly, condensed, and vigorous, this is one of the books which it is
a delight to read at odd moments; which are broad and suggestive, and at
the same time condensed in treatment.”—_Christian Advocate._
“A remarkably clear and readable summary of the salient points of
interest. The maps and tables, no less than the author’s style and
treatment of the subject, entitle the volume to the highest claims of
recognition.”—_Boston Daily Advertiser._
=FREDERICK THE GREAT, AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR.= By F. W. LONGMAN.
“The subject is most important, and the author has treated it in a way
which is both scholarly and entertaining.”—_The Churchman._
“Admirably adapted to interest school boys, and older heads will find it
pleasant reading.”—_New York Tribune._
=THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FIRST EMPIRE.= By WILLIAM O’CONNOR MORRIS.
With Appendix by ANDREW D. WHITE, LL.D., ex-President of Cornell
University.
“We have long needed a simple compendium of this period, and we have
here one which is brief enough to be easily run through with, and yet
particular enough to make entertaining reading.”—_New York Evening Post._
“The author has well accomplished his difficult task of sketching in
miniature the grand and crowded drama of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Empire, showing himself to be no servile compiler, but capable
of judicious and independent criticism.”—_Springfield Republican._
=THE EPOCH OF REFORM—1830-1850.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
“Mr. McCarthy knows the period of which he writes thoroughly, and the
result is a narrative that is at once entertaining and trustworthy.”—_New
York Examiner._
“The narrative is clear and comprehensive, and told with abundant
knowledge and grasp of the subject.”—_Boston Courier._
IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS.
=THE DAWN OF HISTORY. An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study.= New and
Enlarged Edition. Edited by C. F. KEARY. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.
This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man; of language,
its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-historic users of it; of
early social life, the religions, mythologies, and folk-tales, and of the
history of writing. The present edition contains about one hundred pages
of new matter, embodying the results of the latest researches.
“A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model of what a popular
scientific work should be.”—_Boston Sat. Eve. Gazette._
=THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS.= By Professor GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A. 12mo, with
maps, $1.00.
The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civilization in
Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The second part is an
examination of the ethnology of Genesis, showing its accordance with the
latest results of modern ethnographical science.
“A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful offset
to a great deal of the superficial current literature on such
subjects.”—_Congregationalist._
=MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use of Schools, Art Students, and General
Readers. Founded on the Works of Petiscus, Preller, and Welcker.= By
ALEXANDER S. MURRAY, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British
Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the Second Revised London Edition.
Crown 8vo, $1.75.
“It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject to be found in a
concise form, and as it embodies the results of the latest researches
and discoveries in ancient mythologies, it is superior for school
and general purposes as a handbook to any of the so-called standard
works.”—_Cleveland Herald._
“Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school use, or
for the general reader, the book will be found very valuable and
interesting.”—_Boston Journal._
=THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest Time to the Period of Its
Decline.= By Dr. THEODOR MOMMSEN. Translated by W. P. DICKSON, D.D.,
LL.D. Reprinted from the Revised London Edition. Four volumes, crown 8vo.
Price per set, $8.00.
“A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact and profound;
its narrative full of genius and skill; its descriptions of men are
admirably vivid.”—_London Times._
“Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History has appeared that
combines so much to attract, instruct, and charm the reader. Its style—a
rare quality in a German author—is vigorous, spirited, and animated.”—Dr.
SCHMITZ.
=THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. From Cæsar to Diocletian.= By THEODOR
MOMMSEN. Translated by WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D. With maps. Two
vols., 8vo, $6.00.
“The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture of the
conquest and administration of that great circle of peoples and lands
which formed the empire of Rome outside of Italy, their agriculture,
trade, and manufactures, their artistic and scientific life, through all
degrees of civilization, with such detail and completeness as could have
come from no other hand than that of this great master of historical
research.”—Prof. W. A. PACKARD, Princeton College.
=THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.= Abridged from the History by
Professor THEODOR MOMMSEN, by C. BRYANS and F. J. R. HENDY. 12mo, $1.75.
“It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen’s Rome are thus
brought within the easy reach of all, and the abridgment seems to me to
preserve unusually well the glow and movement of the original.”—Prof.
TRACY PECK, Yale University.
“The condensation has been accurately and judiciously effected. I
heartily commend the volume as the most adequate embodiment, in a single
volume, of the main results of modern historical research in the field of
Roman affairs.”—Prof. HENRY M. BAIRD, University of City of New York.
=THE HISTORY OF GREECE.= By Prof. Dr. ERNST CURTIUS. Translated by
Adolphus William Ward, M.A., Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge,
Prof. of History in Owen’s College, Manchester. Five volumes, crown 8vo.
Price per set, $10.00.
“We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius’ book better than by saying
that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen’s great work.”—_London
Spectator._
“As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no previous work
is comparable to the present for vivacity and picturesque beauty, while
in sound learning and accuracy of statement it is not inferior to the
elaborate productions which enrich the literature of the age.”—_N. Y.
Daily Tribune._
=CÆSAR: a Sketch.= By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.
“This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far the best account
of Julius Cæsar to be found in the English language.”—_The London
Standard._
“He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all that is known of
the personal, social, political, and military life of Cæsar; and with his
sketch of Cæsar includes other brilliant sketches of the great man, his
friends, or rivals, who contemporaneously with him formed the principal
figures in the Roman world.”—_Harper’s Monthly._
=CICERO. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero.= By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M.A., Q.C.
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