THE CRUSADES GEORGE W. COX, M.A. // AUTHOR OF HISTORY OF GREECE ' ' MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS ' ETC. WITH A MAP BOSTON ESTES AND LAURIAT 143 WASHINGTON STREET 1874 .iiTiii/rmns K> By Transfer CONTENTS. ( IIAPTER I. CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. PAGE The crusades a scries of popular wars . . . i Distinction between the crusades and other wars of the Middle Ages Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian traditions The Christianity of St. Paul .... The Christianity of the Roman empire Localism of heathen religions^ Influence of these local religions on Christianity Growth of local associations in Palestine . Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine 7 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. 10 Persian invasion of Egypt . . . , .11 622-625 Campaigns of the emperor Heraclius . . .11 627 Battle of Nineveh . . . . . . . ir 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 Chris- tians of Jerusalem 12 viii Contents. FACE 13 A.D. Omar and the patriarch Sophronios . Effects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to J salem z ~ Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage . . 14 1010 Ravages of the Egyptian sultan Hakem in Jerusalem 14 Persecution of Jews in Europe j r 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 . . . .16 1092 Division of the Seljukian empire . . . .16 Appeal of the Greek emperor Alexios to Western Christendom I7 1076 Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem . . . .17 Increased burdens of the Christian pilgrims . . 17 Decline of commerce with the East . . . .18 Oppression of the Christians of Palestine . . 18 General indignation felt in Western Christendom . 18 Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct this feeling Ig CHAPTER II. THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT. Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes . 19 Schemes and motives of Gregory VII. ... 21 1074 His circular letter to the faithful . . . .21 1 08 1 The Normans in Italy 22 1095 Council of Piacenza 23 Council of Clermont 25 1093 Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem . . 25 1094 The mission and preaching of the hermit . . 26 1095 Decrees of the council of Clermont prohibiting private wars and confirming the Truce of God ... 28 Speech of Urban II. before the people ... 29 The assent of the multitude 30 The cross and the vow of the crusaders . . .31 Motives of the crusaders 3I Contents. ix A. D. . PAGE Financial effects of the crusades . . . .33 Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and the clergy -,4 Dispensing power of the pope 34 Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal system -, . Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy . . 35 Alienation, and pledging or mortgaging, of lands . 35 The crusades not national enterprises . . .36 1085 Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II. -37 CHAPTER III. THE FIRST CRUSADE. 1096 Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless . . 38 Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk . . 39 Bloody persecutions of the Jews . . . .39 The Jews taken under the protection of the empire . 40 March of Walter and his followers through Hungary and Bulgaria 40 Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos . . 40 Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan . . 41 Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade 41 Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and Eustace 42 Hugh of Vermandois 42 Robert of Normandy 42 Robert of Flanders, and Stephen of Chartres . 43 Adhemar, bishop of Puy 43 Raymond of Toulouse 43 Bohemond 43 Tancred 44 Cause and effect of chivalry 44 Knighthood 46 Courtesy 47 x Contents. A.D. PAGE August Departure of the main army of the erusaders under Godfrey 47 Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois . . . .48 Christmas Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of Constanti- nople Policy of the emperor Alexios . Compact between Alexios and the crusaders Homage of the crusaders to Alexios Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Con- stantinople Refusal of Raymond to do homage 1097 Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders March Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and the Greeks ....... Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy . Numbers of the crusaders .... June Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia) July 4 Battle of Dorylaion March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch Quarrel between Godfrey and Tancred at Tarsus Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin October Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch Siege of Antioch Folly of the besiegers Famine in the crusading camp .... Arrival of envoys from the sultan of Egypt Their terms rejected by the crusaders 1098 Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks March Plans of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch June Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond . Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga . Desertion of Stephen of Chartres Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch Discovery of the Holy Lance . Fate of the discoverer .... June 28 Battle of Antioch Defeat of Kerboga ..... Antioch made a principality for Bohemond Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople Contents. XI A.D. PAGE Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy . . . .68 Siege and capture of Marra 68 1099, May March of the crusaders from Antioch . . .69 June Siege of Jerusalem 70 July Storming of the city 72 Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the Sepulchre 72 Exaltation of Peter the Hermit . . . -73 Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem . . 73 Comparison of Omar and Godfrey . . . .74 Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem 74 Battle of Ascalon 74 Return of the pilgrims to Europe . • • 75 CHAPTER IV. THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. 1099-1100 Reign of Godfrey . Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem Assize of Jerusalem . Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey 1100-1118 Baldwin I Death of Stephen of Chartres . Death of Raymond of Toulouse Sequel of the career of Bohemond Death of Tancred .... Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine Fresh swarms of pilgrims . Death of Hugh of Vermandois Death of the emperor Alexios 1118-1131 Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem 1115 Conquest of Sidon 1 124 Conquest of Tyre 1131-1144 Fulk, king of Jerusalem 1144-1162 Baldwin III. 1 1 45 Fall of Edessa . 1101 1 105 1101 1118 empire 75 75 76 76 77 73 78 73 79 79 So So Si Si 32 82 82 82 Xll Contents. CHAPTER V. THE SECOND CRUSADE. Bernard the apostle of the second crusade Sources of Bernard's influence . 1 137 Death of Louis VI. of France 1 146 Council of Vezelai . Easter Speech of Bernard . \ The Knights Templars . Reluctance of Conrad, emperor of Germany, to join the crusade 1 147 Meeting of Louis VII. and the pope at St. Denys Whitsun- Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk tide Rodolph Suppressed by Bernard March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at Constantinople .... Supposed treachery of Manuel Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis 1 148 Visit of the French king to Jerusalem March Resolution to attack Damascus Siege of Damascus . Treachery of the barons of Palestine Retreat of the army to Jerusalem Failure of the crusade Accusations against St. Bernard His answer .... 1 153 Death of St. Bernard PAGE 83 85 85 3b 87 87 87 89 90 90 91 91 91 92 92 92 92 93 93 CHAPTER VI. THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. Misuse of victory by the crusaders . 1 151 Death of Joceline of Courtenay 1 153 Siege and fall of Ascalon . 94 94 94 Contents. xiii A - D - TAGE 1162 Death of Baldwin III. Almeric elected king of Jerusalem q^ Relations of Almeric with the sultans of Egypt and Aleppo 9- Mission of Shiracouh and Saladin to Egypt . . 95 Siege and surrender of Shiracouh in Pelusium . . 96 1 163 Defeat of the Latins by Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo 96 Alliance of Almeric with the Egyptian sultan . . 96 1 167 Operations of Almeric against Shiracouh . . . 97 Real designs of Almeric ...... 97 1 168 Expedition of Almeric to Pelusium His ignominious retreat . Rise of Saladin to power in Egypt 1 169 Attempts to stir up a crusade 99 1171 Suppression of the Fatimite caliphat by Saladin . 99 Quarrel between Saladin and the sultan of Aleppo . '99 1 173 Death of Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo . . . 100 Character of Noureddin ...... 100 Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem .... 100 1 186 Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem ior Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem . . . . 101 Preparations of Saladin for the rc-conquest of Jeru- salem 101 1 187 Battle of Tiberias 102 July Capture of Guy of Lusignan 103 Loss of the True Cross ...... 103 Fruits of the victory of Saladin .... 103 Siege and fall of Jerusalem ..... 103 Terms of the capitulation 105 Departure of the Latins from the Holy City . . 105 Entry of Saladin into Jerusalem .... 106 Escape of Tyre under Conrad ..... 106 Further conquests of Saladin ..... 107 Causes of weakness in the kingdom of Jerusalem . 107 (1) Bad faith in dealing with the Moslem . . 107 (2) Disregard of rights of property . . . 107 (3) Lax military discipline 107 (4) Total lack of statesmanship . . . 108 (5) General immorality 108 (6) Desultory character of the crusades . . 108 xiv Contents. FACE (7) Quarrels and feuds of the Latin chiefs . 109 (8) Antagonistic jurisdictions of the civil power, the church, and the military orders . . 109 CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD CRUSADi:. Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of Eng- land . . . . . . . . .110 Real character of the actors in the third crusade . in Decay of the crusading spirit in Change in the character of the crusades . . .112 1 174 Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem 113 1187 Death of Urban III 114 Pontificate of Gregory VIII .114 118S Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip Augustus of France 115 Saladin tax or tenth 115 Feuds in the family of Henry II 115 1189 Death of Henry II. 117 July Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade . .117 Modes of raising money . . . . . .117 Persecution and massacre of Jews in England . .118 Fearful tragedy in York castle 118 1 190 Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai . . 120 Poetry and influence of the troubadours . . .120 March of Frederick I., Barbarossa, to Constanti- nople 120 The popes and the empire ..... 120 Death of Frederick 1 121 Re-occupation of Antioch 121 1189 Siege of Acre by the Latins of Palestine . . . 122 Rise of the Teutonic order . . . . .122 1190 Death of Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem . . . 123 Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem .... 123 Sept. 23 Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina . 123 Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily .... 124 Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus . .124 Contents. xv PAGE 1 191 War between Richard and the Comnenian emperor March of Cyprus Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre July 12 Surrender of Acre Return of Philip to France .... Massacre of five thousand Turkish hostages . Victory of Richard at Azotus .... Abortive negotiations with Saladin . Feud between the English king and the duke of Austria 1192 Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem March of Richard towards Jerusalem Retreat of the army from Bethlehem Relief of Jaffa Truce between the crusaders and Saladin Pilgrimage to Jerusalem Results of the third crusade .... Captivity of Richard I. in Austria . 1193 Exertions made for the liberation of Richard . Richard before the diet at Hagenau . 1 1 94 Release of Richard His return to England 125 126 127 127 127 128 128 129 130 130 130 131 131 131 132 132 133 134 135 135 CHAPTER VII r. THE FOURTH CRUSADE. Motives of the chief promoters of the fourth crusade 135 1 193 Death of Saladin and its consequences . . . 136 Encouragement given to the crusade by the emperor Henry VI 136 1 196 Death of Henry VI. 137 Arrival of his barons with their troops in the Holy Land 137 Capture of Jaffa by Saphadin 137 Arrival of fresh crusaders under Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim 137 1 197 Siege of the castle of Thoron ..... 137 Complete defeat of the crusaders .... 138 Capture of Jaffa, and massacre of the crusaders . 138 Almeric of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus 139 xvi Contents. CHAPTER IX. THE FIFTH CRUSADE. A.D. PAGE 1198 Election of Innoce t III 139 Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction of the pope 140 Weakening of the imperial power .... 141 Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples of Europe i.- Efforts of Innocent to remove this mistrust . . 14 Fulk of Neuilly 143 The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope . .144 Effects of his eloquence 144 1202 Death of Fulk ........ 145 1200 The chiefs of the fifth crusade ... . . . 145 1201 Mission from the French barons to Venice . . 145 Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to Palestine 146 1202 Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed on with the Venetians 147 Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition against Zara ........ 147 1 195 Mission to Rome to ask aid for the dethroned Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus . . . 148 Determination of the Venetians to insist on the expedition to Zara ...... 149 1202 Siege and conquest of Zara, Nov. 15 . . . 149 Proposal to divert the crusade to the restoration of Alexios at Constantinople 150 Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios 151 Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the interdict ........ 151 1203 Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition 152 Easter Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople . . . 153 Flight of the usurper Alexios 153 The crusaders are compelled to winter at Constanti- nople 154 Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the crusaders 155 Contents. xvii PAGE Deposition and death of Alexios . . . .155 Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constanti- nople I5 6 1204 Siege and conquest of Cc stantinople . . .156 April Horrible excesses of the crusaders . . . .157 Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, as emperor of the East z e8 Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Con- stantinople . \"Q Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the Pope I59 Answers of Innocent III. !6 Results of the crusade to the pope and to the Vene- tians 161 CHAPTER X. THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Contrast between the Greeks and the Latins . . 163 Attempt to upset the civilisation of the old empire . 163 Conduct of the pope towards the Greek clergy . 164 Opposition of the French clergy to the new patriarch 165 Partition of the empire among the crusading chiefs . 166 1204 Rise of new empires at Nice, Trebizond, and Du- razzo l67 1205 Massacre of the Latins in Thrace by order of the Bulgarian Calo-John xS 7 April Captivity of the emperor Baldwin . . . .168 Death of Baldwin z 68 1206-1216 Henry I., brother of Baldwin, emperor of Con- stantinople !6q 1207 Assassination of Calo-John 169 Wise government of the emperor Henry . . . 170 Death of Henry ....... 170 Peter of Courtenay, emperor of Constantinople . 170 1218 Captivity and death of Peter of Courtenay . . 171 1219 Robert, emperor of Constantinople . . . . i 7 r 1228 John of Brienne, emperor of Constantinople, . . 172 a xviii Contents. A.D. PACK 1235 Siege of Constantinople by Vataces . . .173 1237-1261 Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople . . .173 Efforts to raise money 173 Sale of relics 173 1255 Death of Vataces 174 1259 The envoys of Baldwin repelled by Michael Paleo- logos 174 1261 Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks . . 174 July Permanent alienation of the East from the West . 175 CHAPTER XI. THE SIXTH CRUSADE. Chief features of the sixth crusade .... 176 Depression of the Latins in Palestine . . . 177 1204 Truce between Saphadin and the Christians . . 177 1210 John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem . . 178 Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade . 178 Robert of Courcon 178 1215 Fourth council of Lateran 179 1216 Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary . . . 179 1218 Siege of Damietta ....... 180 Death of Saphadin 180 Terms of peace offered by Coradin .... 180 Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders . . 180 1219 Fall of Damietta, Nov. 5 180 1220 March of the Christians for Cairo .... 181 The old terms again rejected ..... 181 Ruin of the crusaders ...... 181 1212 Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa . . .181 The popes and the emperors 182 Otho of Brunswick 182 1214 Battle of Bouvines ....... 183 1216 Honorius III., pope 183 1221 Loss of Damietta 183 1222 Treaty of Ferentino 184 1225 Treaty of San Germano . . . . ' .184 Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem . 184 Contents. xix A. P. PAGE 1227 Gregory IX., pope 185 Excommunication of the emperor .... 187 1228 Departure of Frederick from Brundusium . . 18S Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais . . . .188 1229 Treaty between Frederick and the sultan Kameel . 189 Feb. 18 Frederick at Jerusalem 189 Moderation of the emperor 190 Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX. . . 191 Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe 191 Renewed excommunication of the emperor . . 192 CHAPTER XII. THE SEVENTH CSUSADE. Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans Charges of peculation against the papal collectors 1230 Opposition of the pope and the emperor to the new crusade ........ 1239 Arrival of the French crusaders at Acre . Their complete failure ..... 1240 The English crusade ...... Treaty between Richard of Cornwall and the Egyp tian sultan ....... 1242 Invasion of the Korasmians .... Alliance of the Templars with the Syrians CHAPTER XIII. Till: EIGHTH CRUSADE. 1245 Council of Lyons .... 1226 Louis IX., king of France Louis IX., the pope, and the emperor 1245 Assumption of the cross by Louis IX. 1248 Departure of Louis from France 1249 Capture of Damietta March of the army towards Cairo . 192 193 193 194 194 194 194 194 195 • 195 . 196 . 198 . 200 . 201 . 202 . 202 Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois 203 xx Contents. A.D. PAGE 1250 The king taken prisoner 203 Firmness of the king ...... 204 Terms of ransom . 204 Murder of Turan Shah 204 Release of Louis IX 205 Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth .... 205 CHAPTER XIV. THE NINTH CRUSADE. Comparison of the earlier and later crusades . . 206 1259 Battle between the Templars and Hospitallers . . 206 1263 Invasion of Palestine by the Mameluke sultan Bibars 207 Loss of Antioch ....... 207 1270 Second crusade of Louis IX 208 Death of the king 208 1271 Capture of Nazareth by Edward, son of Henry III. of England 208 1272 Return of Edward to Europe ..... 209 Vain efforts of Gregory X. to stir up a crusade . 209 Claims to the titular kingdom of Jerusalem . . . 210 1291 Loss of Acre 210 CHAPTER XV. THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. Gradual decay and extinction of the crusading spirit 211 Persecution and suppression of the Knights Templars 212 The Albigensian crusades 213 The Children's crusades 215 Indirect results of the crusades .... 216 MAP, General Map for the History of the Crusades To face title-page THE CRUSADES. CHAPTER I. CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. 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 The and the Sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of crusades— the unbeliever. The dream of such an enter- popular wars. prise had long floated before the minds of keen- sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts : it was realised for the first time when, after listening to the burning eloquence of Urban II. at the council A D Iog5 of Clermont, the assembled multitude with one Nov - 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 Christen- dom against enemies who lay beyond its pale. States- men (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 B 2 The Crusades. ch. i. 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. 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 between'the methods by which he chose to promote it. crusades and Tj n ol er the sacred standard sent to him by other wars ot * the Middle 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 gar- ments of his humiliation when the earthquake shattered ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 3 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. Thus the crusade preached by Peter the Hermit, and solemnly sanctioned by Pope Urban, was rendered pos- sible by the combination of papal authority Absence of with an irresistible popular conviction. That j ocal feeling- ... .. , r i in the earliest papal authority was the necessary result of the christian old imperial tradition of Rome ; the popular tradltlons - conviction was the growth of a tendency whjch haji charac- terised 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 momen- tous concerns . Before their generation should pass away, the Son of Man would return to judgement, and the dead should be summoned from their graves to his awful tri- bunal. Hence any vehement longing for one spot ot earth over another was wretchedly out of place for those 4 The Crusades. C h. i. who held that the time was short, and that it behoved 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. The image, therefore, of the great founder of Chris- tianity was for him purely spiritual. In the letters which _, _ . . he wrote to the churches formed by his con- The Chnsti- . .,-,,, anity of St. verts 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 Je- rusalem, 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. Such was the Christianity of St. Paul ; and with such weapons it went forth to assail and throw down the The Christi- strongholds of heathenism. Three centuries Roman" the * ater we ^ eno ^ Christianity dominant as the Empire. religion of the Roman Empire ; but in its outward aspect and in its practical working it has under- gone a vast and significant change. It cannot be sup- posed 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 Chris- tianity, 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 ch. i. Causes, leading to the Crusades. 5 ministry ; but this alone would never have sufficed to work the revolution which Christianity has manifestly undergone, even before we reach the age of Constan- tine. 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 Re- deemer 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 kin- dreds 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. These thoughts and feelings had been fed by that ten- dency to localise incidents in the supposed history of gods or heroes which is the most prominent Localism of characteristic of all heathen religions ; and heathen of the vast crowd of these heathen religions re lsl ° ns ' or superstitions there was, if we may trust the state- 6 The Crusades. ch. i. ments 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 (^Esculapius), of the Teutonic Baldur and Woden (Odin). The birthplace of these deities, the scenes associated with their traditional ex- ploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating legends, and not a few attracting to themselves vast gatherings of pilgrims. It was not wonderful therefore that the worshippers of these or other like gods should, on professing the faith of Influence of Christ, carry with them all that they could Jel^ionson retain of their old belief without utterly con- Christianity, tradicting 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 associa- tions 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 sepul- chre of Christ. ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 7 Thus for the Christians of the third century, if not of the second, Judaea or Palestine became a holy land ; and with the growth of devotion to the human Growth of person of Christ grew the feeling of reverence J°onstn S ° aa " for every place which He had visited and Palestine. 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 resurrec- tion, 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. The splendid churches raised by the devout zeal of Constantine and his mother Helena over the Growth of cave at Bethlehem and the sepulchre at pilgrimage Jerusalem became for the Christians that placet of 7 which the sacred stone at Mecca and the Palestine - 8 The Crusades. ch. i. 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 pil- grimages 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 accept- able 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 acces- ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 9 sible 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 Gradual feelings of a later age were behind those of spSalrefr the woman who in the crusade of St. Louis gion. 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 so- briety which in whatever degree must spring from it. The contagion spread. From almost every country of Europe wanderers took their way to Palestine, under the conviction that the shirt which they Encourage- wore when they entered the holy city would, "^j^f 1 if laid by to be used as their winding- ages. 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 re- I o The Crusades. cir. i. turned, 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 Trade in these pilgrims went, these fragments of the true relics. 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 given by a land rich in spices and silks, in gold tbcommfrce anc * jewels : and the keen-sighted merchant, with the looking to solid profits on earth, followed East closely on the steps of the devotee who sought his reward in heaven. 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 The long seven hundred years had marked the struggle twefn Rome between the powers of Persia and of Rome. and Persia; The kings of the restored Persian kingdom had striven to avenge on the West the wrongs com- mitted by Alexander the Great, if not those even of earlier invaders ; and the enterprise which Khosru Nushirvan had taken in hand was carried Capture' of on forty years later by his grandson byThePer- Khosru (Chosroes) II. Almost at the sian king, outset of his irresistible course Jerusalem Khosru II. r ., • i #• -i #- i •»-» • fell, nor was it the fault of the Persians that the great churches of Helena and Constantine were 572-627. Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 1 not destroyed utterly by fire. Ninety thousand Chris- tians, 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 south- . , . , , r T ^. Persian ward into Egypt, and the greatness of Khosru invasion of seemed to be unbounded, when from an un- gypt known citizen of Mecca he received the bidding to acknowledge the unity of the Godhead and to own Mahomet as the prophet of God. The Persian king tore the letter to pieces, and the man of Mecca, whose suc- cessors 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. 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 Campaigns tribute to the sovereign of Persia. But Hera- E m pe ror clius (Herakleios) woke suddenly from the Heraciius. 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 ; Battle of and during the battle of Nineveh, in which he Nineveh - 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. 12 The Crusades. CII. I. 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 Restoration cross. The great object of pilgrimage was crosslj^the thus restored to Jerusalem, and thither Hera- Persians, clius (Herakleios) during the following year a.d. 629. betook himself to pay his vows of thanks- Pilgrimage giving. With the pageant which marked this of Herachus ° ° , , , r ■, ■ tojeru- ceremony the splendour of his reign was saiem. closed. Before his death the followers of Mahomed had deprived him of the provinces which he had wrested from the Persians. Eight years only had passed after the visit of Hera- clius (Herakleios) to Jerusalem, when the armies which a.d. 637. had already seized Damascus advanced to SkstS by the sie & e of the Hol y Cit y- A blockade of four Omar. 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. The terms imposed by the caliph sufficiently marked the subjection of the Christians, but they imposed no Terms of the severe hardships and perhaps showed a large byOmTr ade toleration. The Christians were to build no with the nevv churches, and they were to admit Maho- Lhnstians of . ' '.. Jerusalem. medans into those which they already had, whether by day or by night. The cross was no longer to 637. Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 3 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 alto- gether 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. 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 abomina- the patriarch tion of desolation in the holy place. The hour s °P hronios - of prayer came, and Omar asked Sophronios where he might offer his devotions. 'Here/ answered the pa- triarch ; but Omar positively refused, and repeated his refusal when he was led away into the church of Con- stantine. 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. 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 Effects f ' the glory and the benefits of the enterprise : Arabian con- i i • r^ %• -i t quest on and, after all, the victory of Omar did little pilgrimage to more than share the holy city between two J erusalem - races each of which acknowledged its sanctity and rever- enced the relics of the righteous men whose bodies reposed 14 The Crusades. ck.r. 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. Nearly four centuries had passed away after the sub- mission of Sophronios to Omar ; and during this long Uninter- series of generations the West had without let timiance°of or hindrance sent forth its troops of pilgrims, pilgrimage. 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. ad. ioio. Nor was this state of things materially £ V E g6S ° f changed by the furious onslaught of Hakem, tian Sultan the mad Fatimite sultan of Egypt, when, Jerusalem. spurred on by a bigotry unknown to his predecessors, he resolved to destroy the Christian sanc- tuary 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 unbe- liever ; 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 Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 5 threatened ; but a cruel persecution of the Jews many Christian cities was a symptom of the temper which was placing a great gulf many Christian cities was a symptom of the temper which was placing a great gulf S^fiT between men who professed nevertheless to Eui "°P e - worship the same Almighty Father. 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 Jeru- Tax levied salem ; but this impost may have been °" P u g™ ms rather welcomed than resented by the Chris- of je^fakm. tians, as it gave to the richer among them an opportunity of discharging it for their poorer brethren, and so of secur- ing 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 A . D . iooo . Christendom was fluttering with the expecta- Ex pectation tion of immediate judgement. At the close the world. 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 con- tinued 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 the inexperienced, 1 6 The Crusades. CH. I. 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 a.d. 997. enterprise were as much smoothed down as in Conversion a rude and ill-governed age they could well of Hungary ° ° J under King be. The conversion of Hungary opened a Stephen. ^ Q 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. 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 Advance of menacing the existence of the empire itself, the Seiju- From the deserts of central Asia the Selju- kian Turks had advanced westwards, over- running the kingdoms of the Persian empire, and a.d. 1092. subjugating Asia Minor, the inheritance of Se1kiju- 0f the Caesars of Rome. In this task they re- kian empire, ceived no slight help from the neutrality of a great part of the Christian population, in whom financial exactions and ecclesiastical tyranny had awakened feel- ings 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 1076. Causes leading to the Crusades. \J was it long before the Turks were in a majority throughout Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Galatia, and were enabled suc- cessfully 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 Con- stantinople, chose as their abode that city of Nice (Nikaia, Nicaea) in which the first general council of ' ° A. D. 325. Christendom had defined the Catholic faith on the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. Here these fierce invaders proclaimed the mission of Mahometas 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. Moun- tains visible from the dome of Sancta Sophia Appeal of were already within the borders of Turkish the Greek J , Emperor territory. The danger seemed imminent, and Alexios to Alexios, the Emperor of the East, invoked ciSsten- the aid of Latin Christendom : but the fire dom. was not yet kindled, and for the time his appeal was made in vain. 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 A-u . I territory about the time when the better ap- August. .... . . Departure pointed armies of the crusaders were setting c f the main off on their eastward journey. The most dis- army , of the J J crusaders ciplined of these troops set out with a vast under God- following from the banks of the Meuse and rey ' 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 repeti- 48 The Crusades. CH. III. tion 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. At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey learnt that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the Greek Hifgho7° emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights Vermandois. m g id en armour, and who styled him- self the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Con- stantinople. 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 1096. The First Crusade. 49 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 completelv 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. From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexios, demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey re- A D I096 sumed his march, treating the land through Christmas. which he passed as an enemy's country, Godfrey be- until by way of Adrianople he at length ScSSS appeared before the walls of the capital at n °P le - 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 empero? ' e or nothing : but in Bohemond he saw one Alexlos - 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 re- sult of his own entreaties urged through his envoys be- fore 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 hate- ful presence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they might make in Syria. Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp ; but the quarrel was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier 50 The Crusades. CH. in. to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to restore friend- Compact be- ship. But it was of the first importance for SfSdtiS" Alexios that he should secure the homage crusaders. f 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 mediaeval historians. The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within him when on reaching Constantinople he found that his Homage of colleagues, instead of remaining indepen- the cmsa- ^ t c hj e f s h a d made themselves vassals of ders to Alex- ' ios. 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 1096. The First Crusade. 5 1 became the guest of the emperor, listened with compla- cency 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 indepen- dent principality, and turned with more genuine warmth to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This disinterested crusader was anxious only to fulfil his vows ; and Alexios felt that he was making no sacrifice and entering into no inconvenient engagements by adopting him as his son. The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome the opposition of Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of Tou- louse, who, though he had been the first to march of enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade. Toulouse to*" He should never make another journey, he Constanti- said, and he was determined to be well pre- nop e * pared. 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 plunder- ing others the crusaders found themselves harassed and their stragglers cut off by thieves and murderers. Ray- mond 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 re- sistance. At Scodra he entered into some sort of agree- ment 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. 5 2 The Crusades. ch. hi. 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. The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the French king. He was ready, he Refusal of sa '^> to ^ e ^ ie fri en d of Alexios on equal Raymond to terms ; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he was immov- able, 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 enthu- siast 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. While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less Conduct of anxiously occupied with the task of sending Alexios to the 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 wel- come than to get rid of them : and more than two months a.d. io 97 . had passed since Christmas, when the followers March. Q f 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 anion? marshes, and leave them there to starve : io97- The First Crusade. 53 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. 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 D . . _,_.. _ G Passage of the western shore. With great astuteness, the crusa- and at the cost of large gifts, Alexios in like &?££?** manner freed the neighbourhood of his capital v° TOS - 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. 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 25S3& thorough antagonism between Greeks and between the T . . crusaders Latins in modes of thought and habits of life, and the in the first notions of civilisation, law, and Greeks ' 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), 54 The Crusades. CH. III. 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 pro- perty 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 Contrast be- Latins could scarcely be said to have any Greek Sid conception. Nor must we forget the vast Latin clergy, 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 con- verted 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. Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the io97. The First Crusade. 5 5 Hellespont and the Bosporos a host, we may well believe more vast than that which Xerxes drove Numbers of before him for the invasion of Europe, and thecrusa- 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 exaggera- tion the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that the whole body of the crusaders amounted to not less than six millions. 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 j U ne. much complacency before the council of fon g of a x ice Clermont. The Sultan David, or Kilidje (Nikaia). 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 56 The Crusades. ch. in. 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 disappoint- ment 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, pro- fessed 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 con- j ul fronted with their adversary. The conflict Battle of 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 Ver- mandois, from bishop Adhemar of Puyand 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. The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, March to and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to the g pLidian enlist the services of his kinsmen. Mean- Antioch. while 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, io 9 7. The First Crusade. 57 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, Q uar relbe- Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the banner tween Baid- of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and Tancred at insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred Tarsus - 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 Tar- sus 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 mur- derous 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. A very small force would have sufficed to disorganise and rout them as they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, re- Conquest of covering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, Edessa by 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 58 The Crusades. ch.iii. 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. Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was ad- vancing towards the Syrian capital, that ancient and Arrival of luxurious city whose fame had gone over the the crusa- whole Roman world for its magnificence, its un- the Syrian bounded wealth, its soft delights, and its unholy Antioch. 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 a.d. 1097. in round numbers, a hundred thousand war- ° ct * riors hurried across to seize the splendid prize which now seemed almost within their grasp. But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to despise the Greeks, and who had not Siege of An- y et learnt to respect the valour of the Latins. tioch. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian governor Baghasian had sent away, as useless, if not mischievous, most of the Christians within the 1097- The First Crusade. 59 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 general- ship 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 move- ments of the Turks in this direction free. 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, Foll f t h e and the herds feeding in the rich pastures besiegers. 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. 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 Co The Crusades. CH. III. their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left them Famine in more and more unable to resist the pestilential the crusa- diseases which were rapidly thinning their mg camp. numDers# a foraging expedition under Bohe- mond 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. For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors from Egypt. To the Fatimite Arrival of caliph of that country the progress of the envoys from crusading arms had thus far brought with it the Fatimite . ..' .. . r _. , .,. sultan of but little dissatisfaction. The humiliation Egypt- f t h e 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. The arguments and threats of the caliph were alike Their terms thrown away. The Latin chiefs disclaimed th J e e C rusa by a ^ i nterest m the feuds and quarrels of rival ders. sultans and in the fortunes of Mahomedan sects. God Himself had destined Jerusalem for the io97 The First Crusade. 6 1 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 spec- tacle of disorder and misery. The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Caesarea, Aleppo, and Fierce war- other places, when they were cut off by Bohe- ^chHs- 6 " mond and Raymond who sent a multitude of tians and the 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 A D 8 the greater part of the besieging army. The March, 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 Chris- tians 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. 62 The Crusades. CH. III. 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 Plan of Bo- approach of a Persian army, and the besieged IhTreducdon under the P lea of wishin g to arrange of Antioch 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 Provencal Raymond : but this opposition was overruled, and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at once. There was need for so doing. Rumours spread within the city that some attempt was to be made to betray j une the place to the besiegers, and hints or open Betrayal of accusations pointed out Phirouz as the trai- Bohemond. tor. Like other traitors, the renegade thought it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards I0 98. The First Crusade. 63 of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal was received as indubitable proof of his inno- cence 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 be- sieged 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. The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance ; and their feasting was accom- panied by the wildest riot and the most filthy Arrival of debauchery. But if heedless waste may have J n e de ^| si J ns been one of the most venial of their sins, boga. 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 Chris- tians 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 64 The Crusades. CH. III. greater intensity ; and the doom of the Latin host seemed to be sealed. Stephen count of Chartres had deserted his com- panions before the fall of the city ; others now followed _ . .his example, and with him set out on their Desertion of L ' Stephen of return to Europe. In Phrygia Stephen en- artres * countered the emperor Alexios who was march- ing 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 war- riors not less than the Greeks were compelled to turn their faces westwards. In vain Guy, a brother of Bohe- mond, 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 omni- potent, He would not suffer such things to be done. In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair. Discipline had well nigh come to an Desperate end, and so obstinate was their refusal to cru^aderVirf ^ear arms an Y longer, that Bohemond re- Antioch. solved 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 experi- ment brought the men back to their duty : but so de- spondingly 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 ob- tained 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 1098. The First Crusade. 65 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, chap- lain 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 ^. A - 1 he disco- the fact that in the church of St. Peter lay very of the hidden the steel head of the spear which had ° y ance ' 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 im- parted 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. Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life for his fraud or his Fate of the superstition. A bribe taken by his master discoverer. Raymond brought that chief into ill odour with his F 66 The Crusades. CH. I) comrades, and let loose against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Ray- mond 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 ap- pealed 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 re- ceived fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence. The infidel was doomed ; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was Battle of sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the Antioch. 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 a.d. 1098. raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever June 28. heat . and on the fcast of St> Peter and St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remem- brance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Ray- mond 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 re- garded 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 skil) as well as strength I0 98. The First Crusade. 6j 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 re- mained 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, Defeat of broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat ; Kerb °s a - 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 them- selves Christians and were baptized ; those who refused to abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mahomedan territory. The city was the prize of Bohe- Amioch mond ; and in his keeping it remained, ™ ad , e a ? nn " 7 x- o j cipahty for although Raymond of Toulouse had made an Bohemond. 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. 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 68 The Crusades. CH. III. depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter Mission of waterless wastes at the end of a wSyrian Hugh of summer, and for the present they were con- to Constants tent to send Hugh of Vermandois and Bald- nopie. w j n f 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. Winter came ; but the chiefs still lingered at An- tioch. Some were occupied in expeditions against neigh- Death o'f bouring cities : but a more pressing care Adhemar was fa e plague which punished the foulness Puy. 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 Bohe- mond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jor- danic tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than c . , these feuds were the scenes witnessed dur- Siege and capture of ing the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the as- sailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, I0 98. The First Crusade. 69 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 for- ward. The weak and old he slaughtered ; the rest he sent to the slave-markets of Antioch. A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the cru- saders only spurred them to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea a.d. 1099. was in their hands, when he desired them March of the to await his coming in June. The chiefs, crusaders 1 • ii ^ -i • fromAnti- remembermg the departure of Tatikios och. (p. 60) 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), over- looked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the nar- row 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 wea- pons, they advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet /O The Crusades. ch. in. towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and his passion. But before their feelings of devotion could be in- dulged, there was other woik to be done. The chiefs took Tune U P th^ 1 " posts on those sides from which the Siege of nature of the ground gave most hope of a- jerusaem. succe ssful 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 ram- parts. 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 neighbour- hood would not supply fit materials for their construction. These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a dis- tance of thirty miles ; and the work of preparation was carried on under the guidance of Gaston of Beam 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 seek- ing for it over miles of desolate country they were ex- posed 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 1099. The. First Crusade. 7 1 drawing down upon them the judgements 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. 66) and the hermit Peter. The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested pro- bably 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 as- sault 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 occu- pied 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 cham- pions 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 Pro- vencals climbed the ramparts by ladders, and the con- J 2 The Crusades. ch. hi. quest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a T , little while ago to the crucifixes were avenged July. o & Storming of by Godfrey's orders in the massacre of hun- dreds ; 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. 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 Adoration of ... . r . , , . r , the crusa- lmen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness church of mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey the Sepul- 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 vouch- safed 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 de- 1099- The First Crusade. 73 served 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 elo- quence which had first called them to their now triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the ^ , . r ° ° ' Exaltation heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of Peter the of the Unbeliever in the birth-land of Chris- ermit - tianity. 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. 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 excite- Second and ment of victory : but it was resolved that on dehberate . ' massacre in the next day there should be offered up a Jerusalem. 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) 74 Tke Crusades. ch. in. were butchered when their work was ended we are not told. Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done, since Omar had entered Jeru- Compassion salem as a conqueror and knelt outside the of Omar and 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 chil- dren of the Holy Catholic Church. When, the business of slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had Election of won wlt ^ tne i r swords, one man only appeared Godfrey to to whom the crown could fitly be offered, relgnty of Baldwin was lord of Edessa ; Bohemond Jerusalem. ru i e d 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 blenching 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, Battle of As- Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts caion. Q f foe 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 [099- The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 75 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 Return of 300 knights under Tancred, only 2,000 foot the pilgrims soldiers for the defence of his kingdom ; t0 urope ' and so ended the first act in the great drama of the crusades. CHAPTER IV. THE LATIN KINGDOM 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, Reign of but for the foundation of a kingdom resting Godfre y- on an elaborate system of carefully defined laws. His conflict with the Fatimite caliph was followed by a con- flict 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 ^ . , J ' ' Daimbert, the victory of the crusaders,) Daimbert had patriarch of 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. We have seen Godfrey in the siege and conquest of Jerusalem wading with exultation through a sea of human y6 The Crusades. ch. iv. 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 sove- reign, 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 Assize of popularly known as the Assize of Jerusalem Jerusalem. was ^ ut a re fl ex i on f the general body of law in force throughout Western Christendom. Still the legislation of Godfrey and his successors is full of in- struction, 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. The legislation of this code on the relation of vassals Judicial to their overlords, on the subjects of wardship, courts msti- Q f j uc ]j c i a i combats, of villenage and slavery, tuted by J ' * J * Godfrey. may have been more minute and dehnite than the laws of Western Europe ; but it laid down no new uoo. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. yy 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 th^ 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 bur- gesses 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. 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 July 18. Bohemond. But Bohemond was now a cap- tive, 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 A D IIO0 _ sovereign. Baldwin reigned for eighteen IIlS - years, and long before those years had come to an end, 7 8 The Crusades. en. iv. the great chiefs of the first crusade had all passed away. In his second year he was compelled to resist an Egyp- tian invasion ; but his army was defeated in a battle near a.d. hoi. Ramlah, in which Stephen earl of Chartres Stepfen f f was ta ken prisoner and slain. He had been chartres. driven back from Europe by the reproaches of his wife Adela, a daughter of the Norman conqueror of England, and in her judgement at least he thus re- a.d. 1105. deemed his fame. Four years later Ray- Raymond of mond of Toulouse died in old age on the Toulouse. 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. The return of Bohemond to Antioch Avas soon followed by his capture in a petty expedition for the enlargement a.d. 1 103. of his principality ; but his place was well faTefofBo" filled h Y Tancred ; and when after two years hemond. f 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 fol- lowed 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 IIOO-UI2. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 79 to invite to his court the most redoubtable of the cham- pions of Christendom. Bohemond became the son-in-law of Philip, and sailed again for the land of I • 1 J 1 ■ "I -L 1 A - D - IX ° 6 - 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 1 • ir AD - iio 7- 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, AD might promise a long time of righteous go- Death of vernment for his people. But before three years had passed Tancred died childless, of a wound re- ceived in battle, and left his power to his kinsman Roger. 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 Effect of the the greatest mischief and annoyance. It was c ™- s ades on of the first importance to the safety of the tine empire. 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 (Tconium, 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 8o The Crusades. CH. IV 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 F , the Christians. It certainly cannot be said swarms of 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. 41). No better success attended the com- panies 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 a.d. hoi. journey of unspeakable misery came to an Hu at ho°/ver enc ^ m ^ e s l ave_mar kets of Bagdad and mandois. other great cities of the East. The counts of Nevers and of Poitiers reached Antioch on foot with a no i. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 81 few followers : Hugh of Vermandois managed to escape to Tarsus, and there he died. 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 Dea thofthe it may be said that successful dissimulation emperor 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 } - . . . . J A.D. IIl8. 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.' 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 A.D. IIIo— Eustace was absent in Europe ; and the crown "3*- was offered to his kinsman Baldwin du Bourg, kingof jeni- who had been recommended for the post by salem - the first king, and whose claim was urged by Joceline of Courtenay. In his gratitude Baldwin invested Joceline with the principality of Edessa. 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 82 The Crusades. CH. IV six weeks Sidon had fallen, in the days of the first Bald- win. In this blockade the Latins were aided Conquest of to good purpose by the fleet and army of the ,bidon. 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 reduc- tion 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, A.D. II24. _ & - ' Conquest of 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. The third successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jeru- salem was Fulk of Anjou, whose lot on the whole was a d iMi- more tranquil than that of his predecessors, "44- . although in attempting to aid Raymond count ofje'rusa? of Tripoli against Zenghis sultan of Aleppo, he lem - was shut up in the castle of Barin or Montfer- rat, and compelled to purchase his safety with gold. He was succeeded by his son Baldwin, a boy thirteen A.D. II44~ J 1 162. 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 principality of Joceline of Courtenay. For eighteen days the inhabitants of Edessa awaited in terrible sus- pense 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 1 1 5- 1 1 62. The Second Crusade. 8, in teaching his men that conquest brought with it the right of pillage. The Turks learnt the lesson A D Fall of Edessa. 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. 'OC CHAPTER V. 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 con- Bernard the tempt. The failure of that first ?reat enter- a P 0Stle of , r ° the second prise he ascribes to the wretched counsels of crusade. 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 mo- nachism 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 84 The Crusades. ch. v. Christ, to rebuke kings and statesmen, to warn and guide the faithful, to recall the wanderer to the fold, and to con- found 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-mortifi- cation. He established what he called a reform, if exist- ing rules appeared to him too indulgent to human weakness. Such was the life of St. Bernard. He was from first to ^ist a crusader, and the most pertinacious and successful MM 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 Mo- lesme 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 30- The Second Crusade. 85 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 sister 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. 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 „ ,,',,. . sources of unbelievers than he could call into question Bernard's in- his own mission against all ungodliness and fluence - 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 ne- cessary, 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 enter- prise, 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 in- vested 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. Three years before the council of Sens, which under the direction of Bernard condemned the propositions or heresies of Abelard, died the French king _ , e Death of Louis VI., surnamed the Fat, the monarch (if Louis VI. of so he might be called) of a scanty kingdom the France - enlargement of which would best be promoted by advanta- 86 The Crusades. ch. v. geous 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 Theo- bald count of Champagne, he had stormed and set fire to the castle of Vitry. To escape from his soldiers A.D. 1 IA2. . 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 : sick- ness followed, and he determined to work out his repent- ance 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. From this council the pope, Eugenius III., was absent. His place was more than supplied by his friend and a.d. 1 146. adviser, whose voice stirred the depths of Council of every heart. The letter of Eugenius held out Vezelay. t 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 mo- ment 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 1 130-1146. The Second Crusade. 87 members of that splendid order which was already astonishing the world with its valour and its Speech of haughtiness. Associated at first for the pro- Bernard - tection of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, they had established themselves in the Holy City itself, and received from Baldwin II. some ground Knights to the east of the Temple ; and the mosque of Tem P lars - 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 peace- able. 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. But if Louis was eager to depart, Conrad of Germany hung back. The emperor felt o^ConracT more anxious about the reduction of refrac- German °to tory princes than for the slaughter of un- join the cm- known infidels. Christmas came; and at Spires first, afterwards at Ratisbon, Bernard strove to im- press on him the paramount duty of the crusade. Conrad 88 The Crusades. ch. y. 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 judgement-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 con- victed 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 con- secrated 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 Whiteuntide. the pope at St. Denys, and received from Lou e is n vii f Eugenius at the altar the wallet and staff of and the pope the pilgrim, with the banner which was to lead him to victory. The wishes of the de- vout 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. When the followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless began their march along the Rhinelands, their Persecution crusading zeal vented itself first in horrible of the Jews cruelties practised on the Jews (p. 39). That stirredupby .. v . , __ , J , , u f yi , the monk vile example was followed by the bands now Rodoiph. gathered round the standard of the emperor. The appetite for blood was whetted by the wolfish howl- ings of the monk Rodoiph ; and the spell of bigotry enlisted on his side a man otherwise well deserving the H47. The Second Crusade. 89 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 Suppressed semblance of wrong could be charged ; and by Bernard - he refused to punish them now for the crimes of their fore- fathers 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. 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 March of the other chiefs of the crusade, among these crusaders -. • • • --it-. 1 tv r i ii under Con- being, it is said, Roger de Mowbray and the ra d and earl of Warren and Surrey from England. Louls - 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 „ m , , , , , , , . , Refusal of had been soon and vehemently excited against Conrad to the Greek emperor Manuel, grandson of ™f" M e a ! m " Alexios. These suspicions were so much nuel at Con- 1 i 1 r 1 11/— • stantinople. strengthened before he reached Constanti- nople that he refused all interviews with him and crossed the Bosporos without coming into his presence. The French king was more complaisant ; but if he was 90 The Crusades. ch. v. satisfied with the welcome given to him by Manuel in Supposed person, he was alarmed and indignant at the treachery of news that the Byzantine sovereign was in Manuel. . J .,,„,,., secret correspondence with the Turkish sultan of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion). His indignation was fully shared by his army ; and while some held that the para- mount duty which called them to Palestine should over- bear 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 cham- pions of the cross, should be swept utterly away. For the present the storm was lulled ; and the crusaders went on their way, to find that the guides with Disastrous which Manuel had furnished them led them Conradand mto ar *^ deserts or betrayed them directly to Louis. the enemy. Conrad had already lost thou- sands 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. 55) 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 II47 . The Second Crusade. 91 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. The arrival of the French king with his forces at Antioch caused no slight alarm to the Turks of Caesarea and Aleppo. But although he was earnestly visit of the pressed to take advantage of their dismay by t ^ r jerusa- ng striking a sudden blow, nothing could dis- km. suade him to put off his journey to Jerusalem ; and the entreaties of Eleanor, who was well content A . D . II4 8. to stay where she was, excited in him mingled March - feelings of resentment and suspicion. After disasters so terrible his entrance into Jerusalem bore too much like- ness to a triumph ; and after a council with Conrad, who had reached Ptolemais, the project of rescuing Reso ] ution Edessa, which had been the very purpose of to attack 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. With the aid of the Knights of the Temple and of St. John, the siege of this city was prosecuted siege of with a skill and vigour which seemed to leave Damascus. no doubt of the result. The Damascenes were in despair, 92 The Crusades. ch. v. 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 de- cision 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 Treachery of their crimes - Bribed by the Turks, they the barons of 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 Retreat of proposal that they should attack Ascalon was the army to 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 Faiiureofthe formed suspicions fully justified by certain crusade. judgements pronounced by her in Provencal Courts of Love. Only a few months more had passed before he obtained a divorce on the plea of consan- guinity, and Eleanor transferred her vast inheritance to her second husband the Norman duke Henry, afterwards Henry II. of England. So ended in utter shame and ignominy the second . . crusade. The event seemed to give the lie Accusations ° against St. 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 1 148. The Seco?id Crusade. 93 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 Hlsanswer: authority of God and of his vicegerent, and that the guilt of 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 de- bauchery and confusion ; and such abominations the Divine Righteousness could never tolerate. Nay, Ber- nard could even see now the folly, if not the iniquity, of allowing thieves and murderers to take part in an enter- prise 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 pil- grims had died with the exulting joy of martyrs at the thought of their deliverance from a wicked world j^and (that from the lips of St. Peter and St. John themselves he had the assurance that the ranks of the 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 Death*"' saints and angels, he said, were impatiently Bernard - waiting. Five years later, it was in his power to add that their desires and his had been fulfilled. 94 The Crusades. ch. vi. CHAPTER VI. THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. The second crusade not only failed in its purpose : it did nothing towards the maintenance of the waning ascen- Misuse of dency of the Latins. Even victories brought Ae'crusa^ W ^k tnem n0 solid result, and in not a few der s. 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 dan- a.d. 1151. gerous luxury of insult, and the renewed ?o?e t nne f of efforts of the enemy were rewarded by the Courtenay. capture of Joceline, his imprisonment 'and his 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. This inroad was, it is true, severely punished. The king was absent with his army : but the knights of the Siege and military orders who were in Jerusalem led out fail of As- 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 ad 1 ist ^ e seeme d t0 nav e turned again in favour of July. the Christians, when, after an obstinate siege which at one moment was all but abandoned, the city of Ascalon fell into their hands. But the change was one of appearance only. The n62. The Loss of Jerusalem. 95 interminable series of wars, or rather of forays and reprisals, went on ; and amidst such contests a .d. 1162. the life of Baldwin closed in early manhood, fciSTneru- He was thirty-three years of age : but in that salem. 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. Almost at the beginning of his reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom become complicated with those of Egypt ; and the Christians are seen fighting by the Relations of side of one Mahomedan race, tribe, or faction Almericwith against another. The divisions of Islam may Egyptand have turned less on points of theology, but AIc pp°- 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 D * 74I ~ 771 ' Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and Pepin. Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Koords. These Noureddin despatched Mission of into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. Sh i r c C ? ui ?- OJr and Saladin His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish into Egypt. offers to buy the aid of the Latins : but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shi- racouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat ; but with success came the fear that his supporters might g6 The Crusades. ch. vi. 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 Siege and Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with surrender of th hel f th f Almeric. The Latin Shiracouh in tr J Pelusium. 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 Defeat of the Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. fe- atins J^ But the Latin armies were transferred from Noureddin, sultan of 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. 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 Alliance of extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt, — in Aimenc with ot h er WO rds, to become lord of countries hem- the Egyp- 7 tian sultan. ming 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 over- whelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of 1 1 63. The Loss of Jerusalem. 97 Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyp- tians. Almeric received 200,000 gold pieces for the con- tinuance 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 Operations was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew of 4 lme ™c J r against Shi- Saladin ; the surrender of Alexandria on the racouh. 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. 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 R ea i designs the purpose of gaining time. Neither the of Alm eric. 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 com- munications with their enemy and his. The king oi Jerusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek em- peror, 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 lar°-e and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, pretending that his destination was the Syrian AD ' II68 * town of Hems : but after a while his march was suddenly H 98 The Crusades. ch. vi. turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium ; and the storm and capture of that city were followed of^AimeHc by a wanton carnage which served to in- to Peiusmm. creasej if anything could increase, the reputa- tion 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 Hisignomi- the frontier ; and Almeric found too late that mous retreat, -foe 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 igno- minious. 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. 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 dhfto power chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh him- m Egypt. se |£ ii ve d on iy t wo months ; and then, by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and lack of in- fluence 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 1 1 68. The Loss of Jerusalem. 99 at his command, that the new yoke became stronger than the old one. 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 Chris- tendom. But the time was not yet come for a .d. 1169. a third crusade ; and only from Manuel was ^" e ™ P a to any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins crusade, 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 Nou- reddin 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 Suppression offered in the name of the caliph of Bagdad ; of -* he r a V" . r o > mitecahphat but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism by Saladin. 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. 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 recognised and Quarrel be- confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on tween Saia- the score of this lieutenancy. But the new sultan of vizir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer AIe PP°- the summons of his old master ; and to his threat of chas- tisement 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 com- missioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head IOO The Crusades. ch. vi. off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speak- ing of it ; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the a. d. 1 1 73. present to smooth matters over. But the time Noureddin °^ q u i etness could not last long. The designs sultan of ' 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. In the sultan of Aleppo, as in the general who had risen to greatness through his favour, we have a man to Character of whom the chronicles of the time and of later Noureddin. ages delighted to ascribe the magnanimity and simplicity of Omar. It must at the least be ad- mitted that the ideal of Moslem courtesy and chivalry is more refined and generous than that of Western Chris- tendom, 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. The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas ; and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to under- take 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 a.d. 1173. years longer than that of his predecessor Bald- km d of 1 IV ' w * n ' k ut it nac * teen long enough to win for Jerusalem. him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV., was a 1 1 73-1 186. TJie Loss of Jerusalem. I o I 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 AD ' " 3 ' 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 a .d. u86. by the infant Baldwin V. ; and in the renewed j^of" V '' strife consequent on these events Guy of Jerusalem. Lusignan managed to establish himself by right of his wife king of Jerusalem. He was still quite A D ii86 a young man, but he had earned for himself Guy of an evil name. The murderer of Patric, earl of king of jeru- Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II. salem - 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.' Guy was king : but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Ray- mond made a treaty with Saladin. But Pre ; Saladin was now minded to seize a higher of Saladin prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt : conquest of he was resolved that the Crescent should once J erusalem - more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pre- texts 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 102 The Crusades. ch. vi. 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 in- vader 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 dis- interestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide. 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 ad. 1187. Saladin were already distressed by heat and Battle of Ti- tn i rst when they encountered the Latin army berias. 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 ihirst, 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 Galilsean fishermen had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the words 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 deter- u87- The Loss of Jerusalem. 103 mine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs ; and for these re- c apture of treat ended in massacre. The king and the GuyofLu- grand-master of the Templars were taken Slgnan- prisoners ; the holy relic which had spurred Loss of the them on to desperate exertion fell into the truecross - hands of the infidels. The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cassarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism Fruits of the of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first victory of 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. 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, Si and and the armies which should have defended fall of jeru- it were gone. Their presence would not, pro- bably, 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, re- sources, 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 1 04 The Crusades. ch. vi. 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 pur- poses 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 1187. The Loss of Jerusalem. 105 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 agree- ment 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. In the exasperation of a religious warfare now ex- tended over nearly a century these terms were very mer- ciful. It may be said that this mercy was Terms of the the right of a people who submitted to the capitulation, 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 super- fluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the same submission had been offered to the first cru- saders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused. 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 Departure of or leading their children, the men bearing fl^Se 115 such of their household goods as they were Holy City, 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 consola- tion. Cheered by his generous language, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they 106 The Crusades. ch.vi. 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 re- mained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand ; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which has but as yes/ y terday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent warsy/ The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of triumph. Amidst the waving of Entry of Sa- banners and the clash of martial music he ladininto advanced to the mosque of Omar on the Jerusalem. . _ ... . * . . . ... 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. _ Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to Escape of surrender even when Saladin himself assailed Tyre under its walls, The siege was raised : and the next Conrad. , - . _, personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted 1 1 87. The Loss of Jemsalem. 107 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 further con- nobly defended them. But the escape of quests of Sa- 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. Eighty-eight years had passed away since the cru- saders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during all Causes of those years the Latin kingdom had seldom weakness in rested from wars and forays, from feuds and f Jerusa- dissensions of every kind. From the first it lem< 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 u) Bad faith / kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of jj^fhe 2 wind by the constant breach of solemn com- Moslem. pacts made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pas- turage 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 shep- herds, 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 recognised no title ,^ Disre . to property except in those who professed the gard of rights faith of Christ, and the power to commit ° properl injustice with practical impunity tended still further to demoralise the people. (3) It gave full play ,^ Lax mii; . to the passions of men in random wars and tary disci- petty forays, while it did nothing to keep up p me ' or to promote either military science or the discipline io8 The Crusades. ch.vi. without which that science becomes useless. (4) It was , v T , , marked by an almost total lack of statesman- (4) Lack of ' . statesman- ship. In a country so circumstanced a wise ship ' 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 con- trast 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 aban- (5) General doned through mere lust of gold. (5) It had immorality. t0 deal with an i mm0 rality 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 (6) Desultory involve grave and imminent peril. (6) It was of a th a e C cru- the misfortune of this kingdom that it was sades. 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 war- riors 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 per- j lS7 The L oss of Jerusalem. 1 09 sonal character of these enterprises led to the perpetua- tion and multiplication of private and personal ( 7 ) Quarrels interests, and thus to the endless divisions ^ e d L a "? n sof and feuds between the barons of the kingdom, chiefs, 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 ^ Antagon _ growth of societies which arrogated to them- isticjurisdic- & ..... , , tions of the selves an independent jurisdiction, and thus civil power, rendered impossible a central authority of Sd^S. sufficient coercive power. The origin of the tary orders, 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 irreconcileable conflict of claims was the inevitable conse- quence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy com- 1 1 o The Crusades. ch. vii. plaining 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 ex- communication, 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 dif- ferent 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. A HALO of false glory surrounds the third crusade from the associations v/hich connect it with the lion-hearted Fictitious or king °^ England. The exploits of Richard I. romantic have stirred to enthusiasm the dullest of Richard i° of chroniclers, have furnished themes for jubilant England. 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 1 190. The Third Crusade. 1 1 1 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. 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 re- ReaI c h arac deeming the savage brutalities of Godfrey and ter of the the first crusaders is displaced by base and thiSVru- sordid greed, by intrigues utterly of the earth sade - 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, strate- gically, 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 com- pared 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 civilised people ; but in no sense have they a better title to be re- garded as scourges of mankind. Undertakings which depend on the temper and re- sources of individual men are not likely to be carried out with unswerving persistence; and this ebb Deca f h and flow of purpose and energy is especially crusading manifest in the history of the crusades. spiriL With any marked success comes a feeling of self-com- placency in the thought that a vow has been strictly ful- 1 1 2 The Crusades. ch. vii. filled 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. The impulse (it can scarcely be dignified with the name of policy) which led Almeric (p. 9 ) 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 import- ance 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 Jeru- Changein salem at best only the second. In short, the character these expeditions had in strictness of speech of the cru- x \ . sades. 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 har- mony indispensable for success is sacrificed for quarrels and deadly feuds which would do credit to the society of savages. 1 1 79- 1 1 8 5 . The TJi ird Crusade. 1 1 3 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 He n of neither easy nor successful. The crusading England and . . • tt tt rr- the patriarch spirit was never strong in Henry II. of Eng- f Jerusa- land, and even after the quarrel with Becket lem- 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 ..... . . . . .. A.D. Il8o. short this design, brought no bitter dis- appointment to Henry ; but when, some five years later, Heraclius (Herakleios), patriarch of Jeru- i i- ■, r \ • -ii -A.D. 1 185. salem, 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 1 114 The Crusades. cava contribute 50.000 marks for the needs of the Latin king- dom 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 him- self as he had dealt with the martyr Thomas of Can- terbury, 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. 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 Death of Ur- hear of it, pope Urban III. died at Verona, ban in. 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 VI 1 1., whose short ponti- ficate was ended in less than two months, Pontificate , .. , . . „ of Gregory bewailed the event as a catastrophe affecting VIIL the whole of Christendom ; but he was pro- bably 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 successi /ely 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. Pope Gregory died on a journey undertaken for the 1 1 74- n 88. The Third Crusade. 115 purpose of making peace between the republics of Genoa and Pisa, whose fleets were of the first import- A . D . XI 8s. ance for the carrying- out of the scheme which Assumption J ° 01 the cross he had at heart. A few weeks later the broad by Henry II. plain between Gisors and Trie witnessed the Augustusof meeting of Henry of England and Philip Augus- Fran ce. tus the young French king, to hear the cause of the Chris- tians 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 fol- lowed 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 North- amptonshire the imposition of a tax called the Saladin tithe. Every one who refused to join the Saladin tax- crusade was to pay a tenth of all his goods or tenth - movable or immovable. The sum thus raised was 70,000/.; but it is astonishing to learn that a sum almost as large, 60,000/., 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 have passed away. 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 empe- family S ror, to request a safe transit and free market Henr >' n - for his followers. The demand was granted; but Henry now had other concerns to occupy him. The wretched quarrels which were an inevitable consequence of petty principalities and the complicated tenures of feudalism 1 1 6 The Crusades. CH. VII. 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 repu- tation. The tyranny of Richard in Aquitaine was mon- strous 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 nS8. The Third Crusade. WJ 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 his 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 , ,. • A - D - 1189. 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 a .d. 1189. head was the name of his own son John. He ^l th of read no further. A raging fever came on, Henry II. during which he heaped curses on his unnatural children; and in a week he died. Richard was now king of England ; but he was not the man to fix his thoughts on the wider schemes which had filled the mind of his father. The power Preparations and wealth of his kingdom were things to be foV^cru- 1 ' used for spreading his own renown, and this sade. 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 broad- sword. It was the ambition of a ruffian, gilded ovet with a thin varnish borrowed from the chivalry of Tan- cred (p. 44) ; and he proceeded to gratify it at the ex- pense 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 eco- nomy had amassed in the treasury at Salisbury. jj odes f Richard sold the earldom of Northumberland raising mo- for 1,000/. to the bishop of Durham for the term of his life : for 3,000/. he received into favour his brother Geoffrey, now archbishop of York : for 10,000/. he resigned 1 1 3 The Crusades. en. vn. 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. Both the first and the second crusade had been marked at their outset by persecutions and massacres of Persecution the Jews. The third was to furnish no excep- and mas- ti The j ews f England felt probably that sacreofjews J & r J in England, 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 mur- dered. 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 Fearful goods into the castle. At Lincoln they found tragedy in 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 ngg. The Third Crusade. 119 the Premonstratensian order, who hounded on the mob to 1 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 chil- dren 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 ex- ample 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 es.cape across the Scottish border ; and justice even in the matter of the robber}' was baffled. Richard, having filled his coffers so far as he could, met Philip Augustus at Vezelai where, forty-four years be- 120 The Crusades. ch. vn, fore, the pleadings of St. Bernard had seemed to stir the a.d. 1 1 90. heart of Christendom to efforts which must Meeting of be successful. The voice which now had Richard and . _ . Philip at most power was not that of the priest, the Vezeiai. hermit, or the saint. It was that of the trou- influenc^of ^adour ; and if for the present his harp might the trouba- 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. While Philip and Richard were on their way to Sicily, Frederick I., emperor of the West, commonly known as March of Barbarossa or Red Beard, was on his way Frederick I. t Constantinople. He had fought a long Barbarossa . r & *> to Constan- battle with the pope or the man who called tmople. 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 The popes ' ° and the em- this carnage Pascal III. had placed the pire ' crown on the head of the empress Beatrice, and had blessed again the diadem of' Frederick. He 1190. The Third Crusade. 121 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 Barba- rossa 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. 90), refused to enter. The Byzantine Csesar 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. The steadier discipline, the more decent order which marked the army of Barbarossa seemed to promise a better result to his enterprise. They had De ath of defeated the Turks in a general battle, and Frederick 1. had taken the Seljukian capital of Cogni (Iconium), (p. 79) ; 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 tion°of Upa ~ a tenth of the number which crossed the Antloch - Bosporos lived to enter Antioch. The few who made 122 The Crusades. ch.vii. their way thus far found a city almost deserted by the Turkish soldiers, and Antioch once more had a Christian government. But while the sovereigns of the West were thus pre- paring for another great effort on their behalf, the Latins a d n8 °f P a l estme were struggling hard to win back Siege of their lost supremacy, and were aided by crowds of armed pilgrims, whose immense numbers have to be taken into account if we wish to realise 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 sup- posed, 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 thou- sands. In the midst of this misery a few German merchants* from the coasts of the Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering by running up the sails of their ships as tents Teutonic 6 for the sick and dying. The happy results order. which followed their work led to an organisa- tion 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 1 1 90. The Third Crusade. 123 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. 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 Bald- A D o win IV., and wife of Guy of Lusignan, was P. eath of • , rr 1 , , TT , .,\ Sibylla, carried off by the plague. Her two children queen of died with her, and her husband found himself J erusalem - 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 Al- Conrad, meric, Conrad claimed the sovereignty of tlC " larkin g ' _ o J ofjeru- Jerusalem, and the decision of the point was saiem. reserved for the kings of England and France. 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 voyage of at Lisbon, where his forces found a crusade the English ready to their hands. The town of Santarem, bon and 1S forty miles above Lisbon, was blockaded by Messma - the Saracen emir. With the aid of the English the Por- tuguese raised the siege and then found themselves com- pelled to fight with their deliverers in the streets of Lisbon. The crusaders thought that they carried with them a 124 Tlie Crusades. ch. vn. 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 a.d. 1 190. coming to an end when Richard, having Sept. 23. 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. Then, as through almost the whole of its chequered history, Sicily was a prize for which contending kings and Conduct of adventurers intrigued, or fought. It was now Richard I. 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. 121). Hewas foiled by Tancred, who took the further precaution of im- prisoning 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 accom- panied by robbery and violence, and his followers has- tened 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 inter- preted 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. Quarrel be- The dispute with Tancred was made up tween by the betrothal of his infant daughter to Phdi^Au" Arthur, duke of Brittany, that luckless victim gustus. f t i ie cru elty of John whom Shakspeare has [90. The Third Crusade. 1 2 5 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 produ- cing 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 fixed hatred that alliance which in its early days had led them to eat at the same table and rest in the same bed. 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. r & o A.D. II91. Richard went to Rhodes, and while he re- March, mained there sick, he heard that some of his tween Rich- people had been wrecked on the coast of Cy- l rd and the r r J Comnenian prus, robbed of their goods, and imprisoned emperor of by Isaac the Comnenian prince who called yprUb ' himself emperor of the island. His demand for compen- sation 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. Here, in the town which under the name of Paphos 126 The Crusades. ch.vii. 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 Arrival of to complicate old feuds with new strifes. The Phi!i ar at and s * e S e na d lasted nearly two years. In the Acre. 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 con- front 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 mattrass to point the balistas which by discharging stones served in some measure 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 July 12. some thousands of hostages were to bedetained for the payment, within forty days, of 200,000 pieces of / 1 191. The Third Crusade. 127 gold. The surrender was made. Richard took up his abode in the palace, Philip went to the house of the Tem- plars, and the flags of the two kings floated Surrender of from the ramparts. Philip now regarded him- Acre - self as absolved from his vow, and he announced his determination to return to France. Richard parted from his ally with undissembled anger phiS™to and contempt, and Philip, sailing to Tyre, France - gave to Conrad that half of the city of Acre which had been reserved for himself. The forty days were on. Saladin would net 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 j.^Turk- he kept his word. On the fortieth day two ish hosta § es - 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 Bur- gundy, the representative of Philip Augustus. 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 128 The Crusades. ch. vn. enemy, in a country the fortresses of which he had dis- mantled, without fighting any pitched battles. In this way the crusaders and their enemies had reached the neighbourhood of Azotus (Ashdod), when Richard re- solved 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. Victory of _.,... r . Richard at The disposition of the battle showed some Azotus. 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. His next move was to Jaffa, although he had wished to go on to Ascalon. The French barons insisted on the Abortive ne- necessity of rebuilding the walls of Jaffa : wtlfsafa- and in s P ite of the sluggishness which with din. 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. 101). 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 a.d. 1 191. time, and Richard determined to advance November. U p 0n 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. i9i. The Third Crusade. 129 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 Feudbe- insult done to the Austrian banner, which tween the -r> • 1 i • j ,1 English kino Richard, on seeing it raised upon the ramparts, and the duke seized and flung into the ditch. The hatred of Austna - 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 dis- organisation 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 sur- render 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 encourage- ment 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 K 130 The Crusades. ch.vii. 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 a.d. 1 192. Conrad by two of the fraternity known as the April 27. Assassins drew on Richard a storm of indig- nation ; but evidence for the crime there was none. A more popular claimant appeared in Henry, count of Henr of Champagne, whose election to the throne ot Champagne Godfrey was followed by his marriage to the of jerusa- g widow of Conrad. The grief of Guy was ,em - 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. • Disunion and bad generalship had practically sealed the doom of the crusade ; but for Richard the capture of March of Jerusalem still had greater charms than the Richardto- punishment of his brother John. In June, saiem. 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 Retreat of that he might see Jerusalem : he held up his the army shield before his face as being unworthy to from Beth- . ° J lehem. behold the city which he had failed to wrest from the power of the infidel. The army was broken up. 1 192. The Third Crusade. 1 3 1 Some went to Jaffa, more to Acre ; and Saladin, ad- vancing 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 Relief of retreated in confusion, to learn presently with - ,aruu 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 multi- tude, there were not lacking some, it is said, in which it excited a chivalrous admiration. Richard was dismounted, I we are told, in the thick of the fight, and Saladin's brother K 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 Truce be- three years and eight months. Ascalon was tween the J ° crusaders to be dismantled : but the Christians were to and Saladin. remain in possession of Jaffa and Tyre with the country between them ; and all pilgrims were to have the right of entering Jerusalem untaxed. Of this privilege the French at Acre desired to avail themselves. Richard indignantly refused their request. They had done nothing to secure the peace Rwima e or to deserve it ; and their allies only should to Jem- & be suffered to enter the Sacred City. Among sa em ' 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 K 2 132 The Crusades. ch.vil who could be put into comparison with the Syrian sultan and the English king. So ended the third crusade, with its work barely more than begun, or rather marred by the infatuated waste of Results of splendid opportunities ; yet not with an extre- me third mity 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 re- newed contest, and much had been done to neutralise the effects which without doubt Saladin had anticipated from his victory at Tiberias and his conquest of Jeru- salem. On the morning after his embarkation at Acre, Richard turned to take a last look on the fading shores of Pales- Ca tivit of tme - ' M° st h°ly l an( V he exclaimed with Richard I. 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 his 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 trad- ing 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 Barba- rossa, owed him a grudge for his alliance with Tancred of Sicily (p. 124). 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, II9 2. „ The Third Crusade. ^ 133 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 goin^riome from Jerusalem. May- nard looked long at the^fby, 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 a .d. 1192. chief ; and that chief hastened to take charge Dec - "■ 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/. ; and Richard, as the prisoner of Henry VI., was closely guarded in a Tyrolese castle. 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. A D t Of these two princes the former prepared to ^"j^ h fight for the crown, and after the first reverse liberation of accepted an armistice : the latter, having Rlchard - sent to Richard to renounce his allegiance, invaded Nor- mandy, and met with a complete repulse at Rouen. At length the place of Richard's imprisonment was dis- covered by William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, the English chancellor ; or, as the romance would have it, by 134 The Crusades. CII. VII. 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 Cselestine III. of his debt of gratitude to so faithful a son of the Church. His mother Eleanor wrote to him in less mea- sured 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 Cadestine was full of zeal for Richard's cause : he was only waiting with true papal caution for Richard's deliverance to express his zeal em- phatically. At length, after nearly four months, Richard was brought before the diet at Hagenau. The captive might Richard be- have pleaded the incompetence of the tribu- at r Hage- diet nal 5 he chose to answer the charges brought nau - 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 ( ii94- The Fourth Crusade. 135 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/. for every month during which the imprisonment of Richard might be pro- longed ; but there was a limit to the patience of the Ger- man barons, and their words convinced Henry A . D . 1194. that this limit had been reached. Richard J{^ e of was released, hostages being given for that Richard, portion of his ransom which was not paid on the spot. His deliverance set free the tongue of pope Caclestine, 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, His return and Richard after four years' absence landed to En s tand - 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. 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 Motives of might turn against himself was of supreme the chief - , . promoters of importance, — of an emperor whose conscious- the fourth ness of ill desert made him catch eagerly at crusade - 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 136 The Crusades. ch. vm. against the warnings and protests of the Latin Christians in Palestine. Saladin, the chivalrous antagonist of the lion-hearted Richard, was dead ; and the fabric of his empire soon a.d. 1 193. showed signs of decay. His brother Sapha- Death of din, upheld by Saladin's soldiers, maintained Saladin and n . . . . . . _ _, , itsconse- his ground against the competition of Sala- quences. din'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 Caelestine 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 Caesars ; but for the time he was busied with the less pleasing task of wringing money from im- poverished subjects. But if pope Caelestine 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. 124) ; and the ment given force which Germany might bring together SdebyThe for the reconquest of the Holy Land could be emperor made available for strengthening the imperial power in Southern Europe. Thus the enter- prise received his strongest approval, and his encourage- ment stirred up a throng of barons, knights, and prelates to assume the cross. But he had no intention of journey- 1 196-7. The Fourth Crusade. 137 ing 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, A D 6 and was besieging a Sicilian castle, when his Death of 11 1 r 1 • i Henry VI. own imprudence brought on a fever which cut short at the age of thirty a career shameful for its merci- less and wholesale tyranny. His barons with their followers reached the Holy Land at a time when, although the truce made with Saladin (p. 131) had expired, the Latin Christians were Arrival of his not disposed to renew hostilities. But the barons with ,, - r , their troops Germans had come to fight, not to debate ; in the Holy and their energy was to be tested by Saphadin, Land- who resolved to be first in striking a blow. Jaffa was taken before any succour could reach it from capture of Acre, its inhabitants slaughtered by hundreds J alTa b y 11 , ■> ■ r -r • 1 Saphadin. or by thousands, and its fortifications, the work on which Richard and his soldiers had toiled so hard (p. 128), 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, fresh cm- provisions stored up for three years, and the Conrad!"^ power and confidence of the conquerors b i^, P, of . ii- j 1 1 • i r Hildesheim. were largely increased by the arrival 01 a third body of armed pilgrims led by Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, chancellor of the empire. The crusaders were, in all seeming, in the a .d. 1197. full career of victory : but the advantages ^gg ^ f f the which they had gained were lost almost in Thoron. a moment by their own infatuated bloodthirstiness. 13S The Crusades. ch.viii. They had besieged the castle of Thoron, and so under- mined 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 French, men 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 Com lete savages who but a little while ago had been defeat of the crying out for their blood. The disorganisa- tion 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 dis- persion 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 enter- prise, by recalling to Germany those princes who had an interest in the election of the emperor. Capture of Those who remained behind took refuge in nJ^sacreof Jaffa, only, however, to meet their doom a the crusa- 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 n 9 8. The Fifth Crusade. 139 St. Martin by drinking themselves into a state of helpless stupidity. 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. 130), his widow Isabella was advised by the grand-master of the Hospi- AlmerIc of tallers to marry Almeric of Lusignan who Lusignan had recently succeeded his brother Guy as saltan? king of Cyprus. Isabella showed no unwil- c vP rus - lingness 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 re- presented 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. At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade ex- hibits something like a return to the spirit of the age which gave so vast a force to the preaching of the her- mit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II. In the chair of St. Peter there was now seated a man of a .d. 1198. far greater power than 'the pope who stirred fnnocent° f the Western world to a fever of enthusiasm at HI. the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven — an age without example perhaps in the annals of the 140 The Crusades. CH. IX. 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 wfao 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 pon- tiff whose e>e surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny the troubled scene of European politics. 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 en- Effect of the , . . 111 crusades terpnses the popes had a pretext ready to hand Sle jSisdfc? f° r interfering with the affairs of every nation tion of the 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 refrac tory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were fillei with the love of Christ must long to take part in the hoi o • s h ■ H98. The Fifth Crusade. 141 work of rescuing his sepulchre from the hands of the un- believers. If any were careless or indifferent to a duty thus constraining, it must be because theirdives 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 t^e vicars of Christ and of the prince of the apostles mustmake 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 excommuni- cation ; and excommunication, not removed, meant death here and hereafter. — — *v 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 weaken- . ing of the imperial power, without which such f the im- a supremacy as that of Innocent III. over the P enal P° vver - 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 judgement day (p. 88) : 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 re- newed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only in his cradle when the cardinal Lothair began his career as pope. 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 be- mistrust of gan at the same time to undermine it. At no R^e by the time had the Roman court possessed a high peoples of r . \ . Europe. reputation for pecuniary probity ; more com- 14 2 The Crusades. CH . ix. monly 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 ener- gies 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 pur- poses. 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. This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enter- prise which Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of Efforts of the Holy Land, — nay, for that of all Christians removed whether of the East or the West. Not even mistrust. Urban II. had been more fervent in his ex- hortations, more lavish in his promises of eternal happi- ness, more stern in his threatenings of endless perdition. Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to de- fences against charges of personal corruption, and to ap- point for the management of the crusading revenues com- mittees 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 1 1 89. The Fifth Crusade. 143 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 hardhearted indeed must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of love and mercy. But the indifference with which his words were every- where received furnishes a fresh proof that the work of H a genuine crusade can be set in motion only FuIk of by the combination of authority with the Neuilly. enthusiasm of the demagogue. So it had been in the days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of the sjiint who had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, hap- 7 pily 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 4 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 realised. Peter was seized by a fatal ill- ness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the mission which he had himself received from 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 im- pulse. 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 144 The Crusades. ch. ix. 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 a.d 1 198. °f Capua, go up and down the land calling The mission on all men to repent and to give proof of Fulk . . I,-,* sanctioned of penitence by hastening to the land of by the pope. promise! Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher had appeared whose powers were not inferior to those of Effects of his St. Bernard. His miracles were not indeed eloquence. S o 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 by- 1 ^ stander had caused him special annoyance. He turned! to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed^J 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 en- dowed with miraculous power. 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 indispu- table 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 1 198-1202. The Fifth Crusade. 145 the whole waning : but he was not to see the beginning of the enterprise which he had so strenuously A D promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly Death of while the crusaders were still at Venice, and his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin. 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 a .d. czoo. goal was well nigh reached already. With him Jf^ 1 }^ Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his crusade. 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. 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 AT - • r _ Mission desperate risks to be encountered in the land from the journey across Europe and the Lesser Asia, barons to One state alone there was which was fully equal Venice - 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 in- creased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in Europe a general desire for eastern products which in- sured the continuance of this widespread 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 L 146 The Crusades. ch. ix. 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 Cham- pagne, ' 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, Compa-tfor the envoys were told that for four marks of the convey- silver for each horse and two for each man the crusaders to republic would furnish ships, provisioned for Palestine. n j ne mont hs, for the conveyance of 4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,000 in- fantry. 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. 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. 1202. The Fifth Crusade. 147 But it was not until the following year that the crusading forces were fairly in motion : and 1 • 1 1 , r 1 • A - D - I2 ° 2 - their lack of cohesion was at once seen in all Failure of its mischievous effects. Venice may have ders C tomake driven — thereis no just ground for thinking that u p the sum she had driven — a hard bargain ; but as it was with the Ve- certain that from her terms she would make no netians - abatement, it was clear that the interests of the crusaders should lead them to adhere to or to 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 ad- vance, 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. 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 commute the strictly a holy war, directed only against the ^ex^di- 7 infidel for the rescue of lands which formed tion against 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 L 2 148 The Crusades. ch. ix. 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 pil- grims 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. A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some years past the palace of the Byzantine Caesars had been defiled by a series of bloody murders or of M?ssion 5 to mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after Rome to emperor had been put to death or blinded seek aid for r L the dethron- and thrust into a dungeon. The latter penalty eipemr 1 !"" was the doom of Isaac Angelus when his Isaac Ange- throne was usurped by his brother Alexios, a tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, laxly guarded, was able to communicate with his parti- sans ; 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 bring- ing 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. • Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was des- tined for a time to realise may have floated before the 1202. The Fifth Crusade. 149 mind of Dandolo, as he listened to their earnest plead- ings ; but for the present he confined himself _ . . . . Determina- to words of encouragement and sympathy, tion of the The task immediately before them was the con- JgfJE^jSJ quest of Zara ; and Venice stuck to her bond expedition to Zara. with inflexible pertinacity. In vain the abbot Martin, who with his followers had crossed the Tyrolese Alps, protested against the invasion of territories belong- ing 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 Inno- cent 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. 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 sieoe and everything before it. The people of Zara, conquest of 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 sum- mons for the envoys came from the doge's tent, they were nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into the 1 50 The Crusades. en. ix. 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 a.d. 1202. besieged ; on the sixth it fell. The doge Nov. 15. t00 j_ possession, but he divided the spoil with his allies. 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 deter- Proposal to . , , . . divert the mined to guard his conquest against attacks the restart from the Hungarian king. Winterwas coming tion of on . the- countries of Western Asia were suffer- Alexios at . . . Constanti- l'ng grievously from famine, and a voyage then nople- 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 Con- stantinople 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 pro- mote 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 1202. The Fifth Crusade. 151 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. 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 Resolution to Syria only would they go. But though he to accept the was firmly seconded by his partisans, there posed by° was practically no reply to the retort that in Alexios - 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 Negotiations the barons resolved to send envoys who with the pope should assure Innocent that the diversion to movaUrfthe Zara. which they and he alike lamented, was to interdlct - 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 Vene- tians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they pru- dently 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 atone- ment for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter 152 The Crusades. ch.ix. 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 for- giveness 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 de- nounced 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 Caesar 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. 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 Mont- Easter. J fort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigotry, has- Vain at- tened away to join the king of Hungary, the innocenf to faithful servant of the pope. The other chiefs oppose the went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps expedition. , , . . , , . x \ 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 203. The Fifth Crusade. 153 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. About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian fleet anchored in the Propontis nine miles to the west ot the imperial city. A few days later the army A D ioo „ was at Scutari, where thev received a message Arrival of r . . . ., , . . the fleet at from the reigning emperor Alexios promising Constanti- them aid in their passage through Asia Minor, nople ' 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. 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 Flight of the of open war. The struggle presents few usurper features of real interest : as a series of mili- tary 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 154 The Crusades. ch. ix. 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. The tasks of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be now done. Their heralds announced to the Egyptian The crusa- sultan that they would soon take summary dersare vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy compelled to . spend the Land. The Pisans who had aided the Conslanti- usurping Alexios made up their quarrel with nopie. Venice. The French barons asked the for- giveness of the pope for the attack made upon Constanti- nople, 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 risks of a voyage during the winter : and even if they went, they could do nothing against the Turks until the spring. He would then see I2 o3. Tlic Fifth Crusade. 155 that nothing should be left undone towards furthering the success of the crusade. 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 anta- gonism ran out into brawls and fights. An accidental conflagration preyed for eight days on the __ i 1 r t ■ r^. Efforts of streets and houses of the city. Ihe rage Mourzcufle excited by these losses was increased by the Jtedosfiom exactions to which the young Alexios was the crusa- 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 utter- ance 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. During the night following the day in which he re- ceived this warning Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships against the Venetian fleet. The danger was Deposition great : but the Venetian sailors were as prompt and death of , , r™ 1 ' 11 1 • Alexios. 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 Caesar showed some aptitude for war, but he 156 The Crusades. ch. ix. 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. 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 Resolution Latin emperor on the seat of the Eastern Latin d P ' a Caesars. The compact was accordingly drawn nasty in Con- up. The booty to be obtained within the stantinople. dty was tQ be shared equally between the French and the Venetians ; and a committee of twelve, half French, half Venetian, should elect the new sove- reign, 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. The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of interest as the first. The success of the Greeks on the a.d. 1204. fi rst day wa s followed by a series of disasters April. which on the fourth day enabled the Latins Siege and to force their way through the gates. Mour- conquest of , J ° ° Constanti- zoufle shut himself up in his palace. A third nope ' 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 con- tinued resistance ; but when they presented Theodore Lascaris to the people as their emperor, their silence 1 204. The Fifth Crusade. 157 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 Horriblc ex _ flung aside, and the warriors of the cross cesses of the 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 obla- tion, 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 1 5 8 The Crusades. ch. ix. naked hideousness iniquities which it would be a sin to describe. 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 Baldwin, of the Holy Spirit. The six French electors Flanders as were a ^ ecclesiastics, — the abbot of Loces, emperor of 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 man best 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 princi- pality at the foot of the Alps, could be no object of Venetian jealousy, while his age and character well quali- fied him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the age of thirty-two, was in the first flush of vigorous man- hood ; 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 Caesar. 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. i?o4. The Fifth Crusade. 159 Three weeks later he was crowned by the papal legate, the new patriarch not having been yet elected. 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 Election of might become an insignificant dependency of Moroslni as a vast empire ; and they set to work with their patriarch of 1 -Tii r~T Constanti- usual promptitude and coolness. The cano- nopie. nical 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 no- blest houses and a man highly esteemed by Innocent III. 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 gmbas * submission of the Eastern church. No sooner from Bald- had he fled, than Innocent reminded his vSetUns to nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience the pope - 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 Bald- win 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 har- vest, 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 Con- stantinople. They could not bring themselves to believe 160 The Crusades. ch. ix. that the people of Zara were really under his protection, and hence they had determined to bear with the excommu- nication 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. 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 excom- Answers of .. ...._ . . . innocent mumcation 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 as- surance 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 com- mentary on the parables of the talents and the vineyard. The Greeks had done nothing with the good things com- mitted 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; 1204. The Fifth Crusade. 161 and they had now paid the penalty by seeing their inhe- ritance 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 Moro- sini'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 cer- tain 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. 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, R esu i ts f and had subdued a spiritual rebellion which the crusades had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ, and to^hef But if the pope was a gainer, Venice had Venetians - secured to herself advantages, more solid perhaps, cer- tainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had laid the foundations of her vast commercial empire ; and 1 62 The Crusades, ch. ix. 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 anta- gonism 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 sanc- tion 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 Byzan- tine 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 recognise their archbishop, and he insisted on their sub- mission 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. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 163 CHAPTER X. THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. We have already (p. 53) marked the broad contrast between the character of the Greeks and that of the Latin and Teutonic nations of Western Contrast be- Europe; between the centralised and legal G^eksand government of the one and the feudalism of the Latins. 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 Caesars unable to cope with rougher and ruder spirits except with the weapons supplied by cunning, fraud, and treachery. The crusaders liad come to a people which to a large extent might be de- scribed as in a state of decrepitude, but to a land never- theless which was not less Christian than Italy or France, nay, which boasted churches of an antiquity more vener- able 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. This time-honoured civilisation the Western champions of the cross now fancied that they could crush or sweep away. Not one of them cared to think that A Attempt to he was dealing with Christians or with the upset the subjects of the ancient empire of Octavius or o^ToS" of Constantine. For them the land, not less em P' re - than Syria and Egypt, was a part of heathendom; the people 1 64 The Crusades. ch. x. 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 inter- marriage 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 repre- sented 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 Constanti- nople what Godfrey and his allies had done in Palestine. The code of Justinian gave place to the Assize of Jeru- salem (p. 76), and not a single Greek was permitted to take part in the administration of this law. As it was with the secular order of things, so was it with the spiritual. The pope annulled without scruple Conduct of tne election of Morosini by self-chosen or the pope to- state-appointed canons : but he did so only Greek ' because his own authority was imperilled, not clergy. at a |j b ecause they were invading the juris- diction 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. 159), 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 The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 165 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 trans- ferred 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 riders. The order of things so set up lasted a little longer than the Latin principality of Edessa (p. 57). It was essentially the piece of new cloth patched Opposition into the old garment, the new wine poured oftheFrench into old leathern bottles only to burst them. new & patH- In its relation to the conquered race it had arch- no more stability than the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (p. 107) ; and in itself it 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 com- pelled to abjure this promise, to swear that Venetians 1 66 The Crusades. ch. x. 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 in- trigues 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. The conquerors had indeed won for themselves a domain almost appalling in its extent ; and the sharing of Partition of tne P r ^ ze was soon followed by the quarrelling the empire of robbers over their booty. Not three months cmsafing 6 after the fall of Constantinople the emperor chiefs. Yed 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 main- land and in the islands of the Adriatic and the Archi- pelago. 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 Thes- salonica : but his wanderings did not end here. Thebes, Athens, Argos, received his followers within their gates ; i204. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 167 and the resistance of Corinth and Napoli was speedily overpowered. The count of Blois received the dukedom of Nicaea (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 mar- shal of Romania as well as of Champagne, found a splen- did home on the banks of the Hebros. But the power of the old Byzantine Caesars was rather divided than crushed by the Latin crusaders. The wretched Mourzoufie, caught by the Latins, was hurled from the Theodosian column ; but Rise of new Theodore Lascaris, the son-in-law of the N^Trebi- Alexios who dethroned Isaac Angelus, estab- zond > and lished himself at Nicaea 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 Caesars. 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 specially associated with the history of Bohe- mond. 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 Constanti- nople was rapidly lessened when their dispersal betrayed their scanty powers of cohesion, and when encounters in the field proved them to be not always irresistible. The storm burst on the Latins from a i-ii -it -.,-./- . Massacre of quarter in which they had not looked for it. the Latins The chief of the Bulgarians, John or Calo- %££%&? John, had at first greeted Baldwin with the Bulgarian freedom of an equal as well as the heartiness 1 68 The Crusades. ch.x. of a friend ; but the retort that in the count of Flanders he must recognise 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 a.d. 1205. count of Blois who was himself surprised and April. slain, while the emperor Baldwin became a Captivity of . ' the emperor prisoner. The army was saved by the wis- Baidwm. dom ^ 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 shores 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 re- Death of quest was, he said, beyond mortal power to Baldwin. 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 fol- lowed it. i207. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 169 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 (brother of old. It began in darkness and gloom, it was ^ n a ' d e N r0 r' f followed by a time of overwhelming disasters: Constanti- 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 Bald- win 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. 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 Assass i na . and their laws, found that they were dealing tion of . , ' . , ° Calo-John. 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 dan- gerously 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 170 The Crusades. ch. x. an honourable peace ; a treaty with the Greek sovereigns of Nice and Epirus (Epeiros) left to him undisturbed pos- session of an ample territory ; and the rest of his life was spent in conscientious efforts for its just and orderly Wise government. Clearly seeing the fatal folly of government that exclusive system which was so dear to peror the hearts of crusaders generally, Henry re- Henry, solved 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 re- pressed the use of the Eastern liturgy and thrust on the people a theological dogma he opposed a passive resist- ance : to the theory of papal supremacy he gave a signifi- cant 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. Henry died at Thessalonica ; and with him the male line of the counts of Flanders came to an end. But the a.d. 1207 daughter of Henry's sister Yolande was mar- Death of ried 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 ncattractions for Andrew : and the offer of the crown was in a fatal hour accepted by Peter of Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, the hus- Courtenay band of Yolande herself, who had won his emperor of . . _ , , Constanti- spurs in a crusade not against Turks and nople. 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 be reached Rome, the pope, Honorius III., careful to 1207-19. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 171 avoid anything which might seem to recognise 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 A D I2i8 than that of Bohemond, and his miserable Captivity march from Durazzo led him into trackless ptterof mountains, amongst which he fell into the Courtenay. hands of his enemies. With him the papal legate became a captive. At once the pope threatened to place the Epirot sove- reign 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 Caesar. While Peter of Courtenay pined in his dungeon, his wife Yolande, in the midst of her grief, anxiety, and appre- hension, 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 sub- stance of his principality for the shadow of Robert, an empire. The crown was offered to her emperor of r Constanti- seconds on Robert, who set out on his journey, nopie. by way of Germany and the Danube, through the territo- ries of his brother-in-law the king of Hun- gary. He was crowned by the patriarch in A ' D * I21Q ' Justinian's church ; but the pageant preceded an endless line of disasters. Demetrius, the son and successor of 172 The Crusades. ch. x. 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 A.D. 1224. ' Nicaean 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 disas- ter 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 A.D. 1228. J & was a burden beyond his strength. Death relieved him from the duty of obedience to the papal order. Baldwin, the youngest son of Yolande, was a child only seven years old when Robert died ; and the barons of johnofBri- the Latin empire felt that the imperial power, penS ofCon- shadowy though it had become, could not staminopie. yet be entrusted to his hands. They re- solved 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. 139) and Conrad of Montferrat, and granddaughter 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 cf 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 122S-61. TJic Latin Empire of Constantinople. 173 till 1231, two years after his election : and the Greek tra- ditions are silent about the exploits which he K D ' is said by the Latins to have performed during Siege of a siege of the city by the forces of Vataces nopieby 1 " and the Bulgarian chief Azan. On his death Vatace& 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 a.d. 1237- for his sorrows and raising alms to relieve his Baldwin needs. His success was not equal to his im- n., empe- t/- 1 m e t ! • , ror of Con- portumties. If at the council of Lyons which staminople. 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 Efforts to the pontiff loaded him with indulgences and raise money, 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 Con- stantinople. 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 Co- mans, 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 Sale of in the churches of Constantinople. Of these rellcs - the most precious was the crown of thorns which had circled the brow of the Redeemer, and for which he re- ceived 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 Betlehem, 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 i;?4 The Crusades. CII. x. chapel in Paris which still attests the munificence and perfect taste of the sainted king of France. 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 DeatJfoT Spirit was needed to secure a papal declara- Vataces. t j on - m j^ s f avour# That submission was not made ; and his death brought a respite to the Latin em- peror. But when Baldwin sent his envoys to see what territorial concessions could be obtained from Michael Paleologos, the colleague and guardian of John the grand- a.d. 1259. son of Vataces, they were curtly told that he SbSSS? would yield them not a foot of land. By the repelled by payment of an annual tribute amounting to Michael , , , • j r ■. Paleologos. the whole sum received from the customs and excise of Constantinople the Latin Caesar 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 Ca?sar 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 a.d. 1261. emperor with his chief vassals, embarking on Recovery of board the Venetian fleet, sailed first to Euboia Constant!- and thence to Italy. The capital of the Eastern Greeks 7 empire was freed from the presence and the yoke of its Western conquerors ; but for thirteen years 1 26 1. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 175 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 ser- vice. His pretensions were maintained by his son Philip, and through his granddaughter Catharine passed to her husband Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair of France. 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 Permanent Innocent III. was the recovery of the Greek a , liei, . ation of , ' the Ease from communion to the unity of the Church. He the West. was also statesman enough to see that his wishes would best be realised by a closer union between the subjects of the Eastern and the Western empires. The deathblow 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 Chris- tian 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 mate- 1 76 The Crusades. ch. xi. rials, exquisite in workmanship, precious from its rarity or the absolute impossibility ot restoring it. The tombs of the emperors were burst open and rifled : the master- pieces of ancient sculptors were thrown down and shat- tered. 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 cus- toms, 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. The infatuation by which in every instance the champions of the cross had nullified or thrown away the advantages Chief gained by their victories was to be shown not tfckbcd/* ^ ess P ers istently in the sixth crusade. But crusade. 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 civilisation of Europe. The struggle between Frederick II. and Gregory IX. anticipated in more than one of its features the struggle between Leo X. and Luther. • 1204- The Sixth Crusade. lyy The famine which Dandolo urged on the leaders of the fifth crusade (p. 150) as a reason for delaying their voyage to Palestine till the spring which fol- De . lowed the conquest of Zara, pressed less of the Latins 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 judgement. In spite of this belief much money and labour was spent in repairing the shat- tered walls of Acre ; and amongst the captives impressed for the work was, it is said, the Persian poet Saadi. Both sides in fact were greatly weakened and de- pressed : and the tidings that Constantinople was in the hands of Boniface, Dandolo, and Baldwin A _ ' A.D. 1204. carried with them for Saphadin a conclusive Truce be- r it r tweenSapha- reason for concluding a peace of six years din and the with the Christians. But before the six years Christians. 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 for- midable 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 ap- proval 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. Three hundred knights only accompanied John of Brienne when he set out for Palestine. In England the N 178 The Crusades. ch. xi. 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 advan- tage than to face once more the perils of a distant enter- prise ; and for the time even Innocent III. felt that the chastisement of Christian heretics was a more A.D. I2IO. John of pressing duty than the deliverance of the Holy riSE? king Sepulchre. Hence the marriage of John of of Jerusalem. B r j cnnc 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 king- dom was attenuated to the shadow of a shade. His entreaties roused in the pope the old crusading spirit. Innocent revoked the indulgences which had Zeal of In- m ade the crusade against the Albigenses nocent in. attractive as the crusade against the Saracens ; SngTnew and in his encyclical letter he declared that crusade. t ^ e 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. The crusade which Innocent now wished to set in Robert of motion was preached in France by Robert of Courcon. 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 1210-1217. The Sixth Crusade. jyg 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 12 1 8, appointed him the colleague of Pelagius, bishop of Albano, in his legatine commission. A few months sufficed after the council of Clermont to get together and send forth the armies of the first crusade : for these later enterprises the time of preparation was extending to years. In his sermons preached a .d. 1215. before the fourth council of Lateran Innocent Fourt !l . council of declared his intention of accompanying the Lateran. 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 A '°' I2I< done what they could to bar the way of the first crusaders was prepared to set forth on his eastward Crusade of journey. The ships of Venice conveyed jf in dre fH Andrew, king of Hungary, first to Cyprus, and gary. 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. 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 forti- fied a post on mount Carmel. These warriors now in- 1 80 The Crusades. ch. xi. clined to the policy of Almeric I. which had aimed atattack- a d 1218 m & ana ^ recovering Palestine through Egypt. sie.^e of 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 Death of the death of Saphadin, and which drove his Saphadm. son ^ t jj e 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 Terms of walls of Jerusalem, and then offered peace to peace offered 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 exception of the castles of Karac and Montreal for the purpose of protecting the pilgrims for Mecca. Mad rejec- All that the crusaders could even hope to terms b^the accomplish was thus within their grasp. But crusaders. the eagerness of king John of Brienne, with the Teutonic knights and the French, to seize the prize Nov was f° r t ^ ie Templars and Hospitallers, with Fall of 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 i22o. The Sixth Crusade. 181 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. The crusaders had everything once more in their hands ; but the winter was allowed to pass by without further action. When spring came round A . D . I220 . the legate, in opposition to the remonstrances chJSj-^* 6 of John of Brienne, insisted on attempting for Cairo. the conquest of Egypt. On their march to Cairo they received from the sultan Kameel the same The old offers which they had rejected during the terms again siege of Damietta ; and they rejected them re)ec again. But the Nile was fast rising. The Egyptians opened the sluices ; the camp of the crusaders was inundated; their tents and baggage swept Ruin of the away. It was now the turn of the legate to crusaders - 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 re- covering 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. The triumph of the Egyptian sultan seemed to be complete ; but he had now to encounter an Frederick enemy of a very different temper. At the age JJ^ of^Bar- of eighteen Frederick, the son of the infamous barossa. Henry VI. and grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, had 82 The Crusades. CH. XI. 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 antipope was but a reflexion of the almost fiercer strife of rival emperors ; and in this The popes struggle the pope naturally inclined to that and the em- side from which the Church was likely to reap the most advantage. Otho, the nephew of Richard Cceur 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 delibera- tion 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 Otho of king Log for king Stork. The reign of Otho Brunswick. was a p er i d of desperate strife and anarchy in Germany, of desperate struggles on his own 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 I200-I22I. The Sixth Crusade. by darker lines of angry passion. In 12 12 Frederick was chosen emperor at Frankfort. In 12 14 his victory at Bouvines shattered the power of Otho. The gratitude of Frederick for the favour of Rutted the pope had been shown by taking the cru- Bouvines - sader'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 un- ceasing toil, and the more moderate and HonoriSs' kindly Honorius III. sat in his seat. In IIL pope ' 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 A '°' I22 °' 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 Nov ' 22 * 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. But Frederick had enough, and more than enough, to do in dealing with the turbulent barons of Apulia and in guarding against Saracen in- Loss '(J 21 ' surrection in Sicily. A fleet of forty ships Damietta - was sent to no purpose : and the tidings of the loss of 1 84 The Crusades. ch. xi. Damietta were construed as an expression of divine dis- pleasure 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 a.d. 1222. decision was postponed from a meeting at April. Veroli to a meeting at Verona which never took place. When next the pope and emperor met at Treaty of Ferentino (March 1223), it was agreed that Ferentmo. tw0 years more should be spent in prepara- tions, 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 impossi- bilitv of moving at the time named in the treaty of Feren- tino. A new agreement was made at San A.D 1225. & July. Germano, postponing the departure of the SanGer- army for two years longer. Four months mano. ] ater Frederick married Iolante, and pro- ceeded 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 Frederick, * ' king of he, Frederick, was thus king of Naples, cily^Sd l " Sicily, and Jerusalem. John was furious, but Jerusalem. j^ cou id revenge himself only by accusations, whether true or false, of gross and habitual profligacy on the part of the young emperor. 1 222-1227- The Sixth Crusade. 185 ' 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 07 A.D. 1227. III., who assumed the triple crown at the age Gregory IX. of eighty years. To an eloquence unrivalled pupe ' 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 vege- tation, 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 fault- less. 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 Judasa for the abode of his own people. Here too 1 86 The Crusades. ch.xi. he was subjected to influences which were likely to cul- tivate 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 Chris- tians as much in refinement and learning as in their wealth, and of Saracens not less polished, not less culti- vated, 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 evi- dence, 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. Frederick may have been slow in fulfilling his promise: there is no evidence that he ever deliberately intended tc break it. But he had no intention of wading through 1 22 7. The Sixth Crusade. 187 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 a .d 1227. gathered his forces at Brundusium (Brindisi) Exramn f l ' n /' ° V / cation 01 the only to see them decimated by fever, and emperor. when he himself, having set out with his fleet, was com- pelled 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 pre- tending 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 appal- ling ceremonies. The sentence was by the pope's orders to be 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 ap- pealed not to the pope, but to the sovereigns of Christen- dom. His illness had been real, the accusations of the pope wanton and cruel. ' The Christian charity which 1 88 The Crusades. ch.xl 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 AD. 1228. 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 Departure of contempt, his subjects were at once absolved from Bran- ^ rom tne ^ r allegiance. The emperor went on dusium. 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 inter- dict ; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt. In September the emperor landed at Ptolemais ; but the emissaries of the pope had preceded him, and he Landing of found himself under the ban of the clergy Frederick at and shunned by their partisans. The pa- Ptolemais. . . , , r , ... . triarch 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 pil- 1228. The Sixth Crusade. 189 grims 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 ne- gotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of the Fe^. 7z. 9 ' Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to be- ^eeWred- lieve Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject erick -™dthe supplications. At length the treaty was signed. Kameel. 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. 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. jSiS^L"* 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 Jeru- salem 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 190 The Crusades. ch. xr. 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 judge- ment 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. From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The kadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of Moderation prayer from a minaret near the house in which of the em- 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 king- dom 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 ? ' In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the splendid success which he had 1229- The Sixth Crusade. 191 achieved rather by the pen than by the sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had raised Condemna- up amongst Christian and Moslem alike. By ^"ty iy° a few words on a sheet of parchment the Gregory IX. 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 pa- radise 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 mon- strous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up Mahomed as an object of worship in the Temple cf God. l 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 judgement, and by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting dis- grace 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.' But Frederick in his turn could be firm and unyielding. He returned from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Pto- lemais ; and there learning that a proposal had R eturn of been made to establish a new order of knights, the emperor he declared that no one should without his crusaders consent levy soldiers within his dominion. to Eur °P c - 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 92 The Crusades. CH. XII. him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets ; the patriarch was shut up in his palace ; and the com- mands of the emperor were carried out. Frederick re- turned to Europe, to find that the pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the Renewed papal forces were in command of John of cation of' the Brienne, who may have been the author of emperor. 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 excommunica- tion 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 to- wards the re-establishment of the Latin kingdom in Pa- lestine 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. The number of the crusades might be largely extended if we gave the name to all the minor expeditions to the Richard, ^ ol y Land in the intervals between the earl of greater enterprises to which the term has Cornwall. king of the been commonly applied. Yet the expedition Romans. led by Richardj earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans and brother of Henry III. of England, as being 1 230-1236. The Seventh Crusade. 193 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. Time had softened in some degree the spirit which had animated the first crusaders; but in the events which followed the return of Frederick we see some- Charges of thing like an honest reaction against the di- peculation . r . against the version to other purposes of money contn- pa pai col- buted for the deliverance of Palestine. These lectors - 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. 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 a .d. 1230. perhaps on either side. Thousands of Chris- S- p t p h ° e S popl tians were slain, it is said, on their passage and the from Acre to Jerusalem, and envoys were the new cm- sent to Gregory IX. and to Frederick, with sade - 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 A D I23& _ sincerity ; and when the French barons, "39- 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 in- O IQ4 The C? -usades. ch. xir. sisted on carrying out their design and found their way Arrival of to Acre. Before they reached it, Kameel had the French seized Jerusalem and dismantled the tower of Acre. David ; and the crusaders had before them a task not less arduous than that which Godfrey of Bouillon Their com- an d his followers had to encounter. Their piete failure, failure was complete ; it can scarcely be said that they even attempted to grapple with it. The English crusade which under Richard of Cornwall a d 1240 and William Longsword (son of the earl of The English Salisbury, butnot earl of Salisbury himself) em- barked at Dover for France, and having jour- neyed 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 between the sultans of Egypt and Damascus Cornwall told g«atiy in their favour. The march of the Egyp- 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. Palestine was once more virtually in the hands of the Christians, and in their hands it virtually remained, until, a.d. 1242. two years later, the Latin kingdom was again theKora£ f swept away by a foe more merciless than mans. an y 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. 1230-1245. TJic Eighth Crusade. 195 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 Alliance of desperate strait the Templars made com- the Tem - , ..,,,. . , plars and the mon cause with the Syrians. A battle was Syrians. fought in which the grand-masters of the Templars and the 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. The havoc wrought by the Korasmian inroad was alleged by pope Innocent IV. as a reason for sending forth another crusade. In a council Council of 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 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. 196 The Crusades. en. xni. This saint, the very type of royal monks and devotees, was ten years old when on the death of his father Louis ad. 1226. VIII. he succeeded to the throne. By his tin-of X " mother, Blanche of Castile, the regent of the France. 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 mar- riage, 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 (.hew 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 The Eighth Crusade. 197 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 un- bounded ; 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 abso- lutely 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 198 The Crusades. ch.xiii. 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 argu- ments 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.' We cannot really know the history of an age, if we do not really know some at least of the men who lived in Louis IX., it ; and this fact gives in the case of Louis IX. l i t i 1 ] e 1 ^ e ^ n an importance to details which we might be peror. 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 The Eighth Crusade. 199 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 ser- monising, 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 effec- tually 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., 200 The Crusades. en. xm. after his second and final rupture with Frederick II.. de- posed him from his imperial throne and offered A D 12^0 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 judgement 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.' In this cause, as interpreted by the religion of the time, this guileless but stout-hearted champion of justice a.d. 1245. and right was now to peril limb and life trS^Tvo" without a shade of fear and with as complete by Louis IX. 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 1 239- 1 249. The Eighth Crusade, 201 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 a. d. 1244. had gone, drew a covering over his face. Dec - 10 - 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. Two years more were spent in preparations. On the 1 2th of June 1248 Louis received from the papal legate at the abbey of St. Denis his purse and Departure of pilgrim's staff with the Oriflamme or sacred Louis from 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 1 -i i \ r t- 1 A - D - I2 49- 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 202 The Crusades. CM. XIII. that mighty armaments had often been destroyed by a handful of soldiers. The campaign began with a signal success. The garrison of Damietta, struck with something like panic Capture of fear, fled at the sight of the fifty thousand Damietta. 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 pro- perty. 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 in- dulging in unbounded debauchery. Later in the season an addition to their force was made by 200 English knights under William Longsword March of the (P- J 9-0 now bishop of Salisbury; and in army to- November the army began its march towards wards Cairo. _ . _/ . 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 fugi- tives. In vain the grand-master of the Templars re- minded 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 1249- The Eighth Crusade. 203 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 Tota i defeat hurled upon them from the houses. The of the forces count of Artois was killed before he could coumof 6 see the full effects of his folly ; and his death Artols - 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 daunt- less 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 A .r>. i25 o. courage of the king was unbroken : but his Seenm*. strength was gone. He sank down in a soner - 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 return- ing 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 204 The Crusades. cn.xin. him in the company of martyrs by forthwith cutting him down. 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, Firmness of ano - ne h ac * tne a g on >' °f seeing them die. the Icing. 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 sur- render 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 Terms of limbs, with the degradation of being carried ransom. from city to city and exposed for the gratifi- cation of sightseers. 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 de- murred 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 out- done by his unselfishness, the sultan Turan Shah struck off one fifth from his ransom. Murder of * l W2LS anTlost tne ^ ast act of tne Sultan's Turan Shah. 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 1250. The Eighth Crusade. 205 blasphemous language increased them still more. The difficulty was at length got over; and after enduring suffer- ings for which the Saracens said (if we may be- Release of lieve Joinville) that if they had had to undergo Louis IX - them they would have renounced Mahomed, the king was free. 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 ofLouis'to succour ; he could not think that Henry would Naz:ireth - disregard his entreaties, especially when these were backed by offers of the surrender of Normandy. He still fan- cied 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 per- mission to visit it was freely offered by the sultan of Da- mascus : but Louis would not leave behind for future so- vereigns 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. 206 The Crusades. ch.xiv. CHAPTER XIV. THE NINTH CRUSADE. Throughout the history of the crusades the wisdom of the general or the statesman is conspicuous by its Comparison absence ; and we may fairly compare the °^ h ^ t e e a r rher long series of these wild enterprises with the crusades. 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 perma- nent success, while they lasted long enough to impoverish myriads and carry misery and grief to the homes of mil- lions. 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 sel- dom 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. 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 at best but a hollow truce. The side which the Templars might take in a dispute was not that which Battle be- would be taken by the Hospitallers or the Teu- Templars tonic knights ; and the schism of the two former and Hospi- 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 1259-1265. The Ninth Crusade. 207 passed to the slaughterhouses 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 A .n. 1263. last of them died when at length their enemies [, nvasi . on of stormed the walls. The castle of Saphouri theiiime^ hike sultan lobars. was surrendered by the Templars on the con- dition 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 compa- nions 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. 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 Amfo?h. the holy places ; but the memory of his past disasters led him to fear that his sinfulness or his bad ge- neralship might again bring disgrace on the Aa I268 - Christian arms. His diffidence called forth the encourage ment 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 defetat of Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, at Eve- sham : but the country, although not in actual A-D " I265 " 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 208 The Crusades. ch. xiv. from England men who might be troublesome or dange- rous 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. 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 ?ade of storm drove the fleet to Sardinia ; and there Louis IX. j t was decked t h at t he crusaders should in the first instance go to Tunis. Charles of Anjou, the so- vereign of Sicily, was anxious to maintain the rights of Christendom by exacting a tribute paid formerly to his predecessors : the devout Louis re- membered, 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 Death of the submission to the divine counsels he stretched king- 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. 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 a.d. 1271. Acre, he found that his name carried with NaSrShby it much of the terror associated with that Edward son f Richard Plantagenet. The Christians has- ofHenrvIII. & of England. tened to his standard, and with 7,000 men he attacked and took Nazareth, slaying the people with 1270-1274- The Ninth Crusade. 209 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 talc that he must have died, had she not with her lips sucked the poison from the wound. 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 A .„. i272 . peace was made for ten years, and the English £ eturn , of r J ' ° Edward to crusaders set out on their homeward voyage. Europe. For a long series of years Europe had been making vigorous efforts, and the results 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- Vain efforts witness of the desperate calamities which were ° f(;r cgoryX. 1 to stir up a crushing the Latins of Palestine, and he called crusade. 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 A "°" I274 ' of Hapsburg, not yet firm in his imperial dignity, pledged himself to join it ; and his example was followed by P io The Crusades. CII. XIV Michael Palcologos who thirteen years earlier (1287) na chiefly that of France, was and suppres- to drink the blood of that haughty but valiant Kn'igius 10 order which had done as much to destroy as Templars. t0 ma j n t a in the hold of Latin Christendom on Palestine. Among all the monstrous iniquities which perjured kings and godless statesmen have ever perpe- trated, 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 con- fiscation of their properties became patent to Philip the Fair, the brutal tyrant, the pro- fligate murderer, the unscrupulous thief, who bullied the 1309. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 213 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, dark- ness, 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 11 11 • i • r i • A - D - x 3 r 4- 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. 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 A D I2o8 _ country which was regarded as the inalienable ^ Albi . heritage of Christendom : the alleged unbelief gensian cru- 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 what- soever 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 214 The Crusades. (II. XV. 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 mis- creants, 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 friend of Saracenic philosophers, of Moslem women, joined furiously in the fray. Near in its ideal, and similar in some points of its developement, as was the careless society of the troubadour to his own luxurious civilisation 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 (jay Science, of their art, their refinement, and their luxury, was chilled and quenched by the thought of the vile crowd of Pctrobrussians 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. i 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. 1 2 12. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 215 It is possible that the historian who seeks to account for all the characteristics which mark the era of the cru- sades may connect these expeditions with The Child . some events which should be traced to other ren's cm- _,, . ..... sades. 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 mer- chants 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 Vent Creator Sp/ri/us, 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 2i6 The Crusades. ch. xv. 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. But as the motives which led to the crusades were complex, so their results were complex also. The picture Indirect re- m ust not be presented only in its darker suits of the aspects. We have seen the effect which they crusades. , ... _ 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 Constanti- nople 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 arbitra- ment of private w T ar. 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 civilisa- tion from the religious and political systems of the middle ages. \ INDEX. ABB A BEASSIDE caliphs of Bagdad, I ■**■ 14 Abelard, 85 Abubekr, 12 Acre, siege of, 122 ; surrender of, 1 27 Adela, daughter of William the Con- queror, 78 Adelais, 116 Adhemar, bishop of Puy, 43, 56, 66, 68 Albigensians, crusades against the, 213 Alexander II., pope, 2, 20 Alexandria, surrender of, to Almeric.,97 Alcxios, brother of Isaac Angel u», 148, T 53 Alexios, emperor of the East, 17, 23, 49 ; extorts the homage of the cru- saders, 50 ; his conduct to the cru- saders, 52 ; fails to aid them, 64 ; benefited by the crusaders, 79 ; death of, 81 Alexios, son of Isaac Angelus, 148, 150, 156 Alexios Strategopoulos, 174 Alfonso, king of Gallicia, 37 Almeric, king of Jerusalem, 95 Almeric of Lusigaan, king of Cyprus and titular king of Jerusalem, 139, 177 Amalfi, merchants of, 18 Andrew, king of Hungary, 170, 179 Anna Comnena, 48, 52 Antioch, siege of, 58 ; betrayed to Bo- hemond, 62 ; fall of, 66 Arnold, chaplain of Bohemond, 65, 71 Arnold of Amaury, 214 Arthur of Brittany, 124 Artois, count of, 202, 203 Ascalon, battle of, 74 ; fall of, 94 Assize of Jerusalem, 76, 164 Augustine, St., 8 Austria, Leopold, duke of, 129 Azan the Bulgarian, 173 Azotus, battle of, 128 ■DAGHASIAN, 58, 61, 63 ■^ Baldwin I., brother of Godfrey . of Bouillon, 42, 57 Baldwin II., emperor of the East, 173 | Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, 81 I CON Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, 82 Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 100 Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem, 101 Baldwin du Bourg, 81 Baldwin, lord of Edessa, 57 ; king of Jerusalem, 77, 81 Baldwin of Flanders, emperor of the East, 158, 168 Baldwin of Hainault, 68 Barbarossa [Frederick I.] Bela, king of Hungary, 115 Berengaria, 125, 126 Bernard, patriarch of Antioch, 67 Bernard, St., 83 et set/. Bertram! of Toulouse, 78 Blanche of Castile, 197, 215 Blondel, 134 Bodin, 51 Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, 22, 43, 50, 78 Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, 146, 166, 169 Bouvines, battle of, 1S3 Brienne, constable of Apulia, 23 Brienne, John of, 177, 192 Bulgarians, 167 r*ALO JOHN, 167, 169 ^ Charles of Anjou, 208 Charles the Great, 20 Chivalry, cause and effect of, 44 Chosroes [Khosru] Christianity, the, of the first century, 3 ; influence of paganism upon, 5 ; modified by the Roman imperial tradition, 19 Cid, the, 37 Clement IV., pope, 207 Clement V., pope, 213 Cogni [Iconium] Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, 137 Conrad, emperor of Germany, 87, 90, 141 Conrad of Tyre, 106, 123, 129 Constantia, heiress of Sicily, 121, 124 Constantine, church of, at Jerusalem, 7 Constantinople, first siege of by the Latins, 154 ; second siege and con- quest of, 156 ; Latin emperors of, 2l8 Index. COR 163; — Baldwin I., 158, 16S ; Henry, brother of Baldwin, 169 ; Peter of Courtenay, 170; Robert, 172; John of Brienne, 172 ; Baldwin II., 173 : — Latin empire of, 165 ; recovery of by the Greeks, 174 Coradin, sultan of Syria, 180 Council of Clermont, 28 Council of Lyons, 209 Council of Nice, 17 Council of Piacenza, 23 Councils of Lateran, 113, 179 Courtenay, Joceline of, 81, 94 Courtenay, Peter of, 170, 171 Courtesy, 47 Courts of Love, 92 Cross, discovery of the true, 7 ; recovery of, 12 Crusaders, numbers of the, 55 ; fero- city of the, 73 Crusades, causes tending to, 1 ct seq. ; financial effects of, 33 ; effects of, on the power of the pope and the clergy, 33 ; on the feudal system, 34 ; not national enterprises, 36 ; against the Albigensians, 213; the Children's, 215 ; indirect results of the, 216 T~)AIMBERT, patriarch of Jeru- J -^ salem, 75 Damascus, siege of, 91 Damietta, 112, 180, 202 Dandolo, Henry, doge of Venice, 160, 166, 168 Dargham, 95 David [Kilidje Arslan] Demetrius, lord of Thessalonica, 171 Dorylaion, battle of, 56 Durazzo, 22, 79, 167 T^DESSA, conquest of, by Baldwin, -^ 57 ; by Zenghis, 82 Edward I., of England, 207, 208, 209, 211 Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Louis VII., 86, 89, 91 ; marries Henry of Nor- mandy, afterwards Henry II. of England, 92 ; writes to Cadestine HI., 134. Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 209 Emico, count of Leiningen, 39 Engelbert of Tournay, 71 Eugenius III., pope, 86 Eustace, count of Boulogne, 42 "pATIMITE sultans of Egypt, 14, 60, 95, 96, 99 Ferentino, treaty of, 184 ING J Frederick I., Barbarossa, 120, 121 Frederick II., grandson of Barba- rossa, 1S1 ct seq., 200, 214 j Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem, 82, 113 I Fulk of Marseilles, 214 j Fulk of Neuilly, 143 I fENGHIS KHAN, 194 ! ^-* Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 117 I ( leoffrey of Villehardouin, 145, 167, 169 ! Ceroid, patriarch of Jerusalem, 191 I Godfrey of Bouillon, 42, 47, 61, 72"; baron and defender of the Holy Se- pulchre, 74 ; reign and death of, 75 I Gottschalk, the monk, 39 Greeks and Latins, antagonism be- tween, 54, 163. 175 Gregory 1., the Great, 9, 20 Gregory VII., pope [Hildebrand] Gregory VIII., pope, 114 Gregory IX., pope, 185, 19 ry X., pope, 209 Guelf, duke of Bavaria, 37 ( iuibert, abbot, 32 Guido, abbot of Vaux Cemay, 159 Guiscard, Robert, 22 Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, 101 ; of Cyprus, 130 TTAKEM, 14 - 1 * Haroun-al-Reschid, 24 Helena, church of, at Bethlehem, 7 Henry II., king of Cyprus, 210 Henry II. of England, 113, 115, 116,117 Henry IV., emperor, 24, 41 Henry V. of England, 211 I Henry VI., emperor, 132, 135, 136, 137 j Henry, Latin emperor of the 169, 170, 211 j Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem, 130 I Heraclius, emperor of the East, 11, 12 j Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 113 Herakleios fHeraclius] 1 Herman of Sal/a, 122, 188, 190 ! Hildebrand [Gregory VII.], 2, loetseq. 1 Hohenstaufen, house of, 182 ; Holy Land, growth of local traditions in the, 7 Honorius III., pope, 170, 183, 105 Hospitallers, or knights of St. John, 97, 105, 109, 136, 206, 211 Hugh III., king of Cyprus, 210 Hugh of Vermandois, 42, 40, 67, Go Hungary, conversion of, 16 TCONIUM, sultan of, 56, 79 1 Ingulf, 16 Index. INN Innocent II., pope, 85 Innocent III.. po pe, 139, 160, 1S3 Innocent IV., pope, 195 Isaac Angelus, emperor of the East 115, 148 Isaac of Cyprus, 125 Isabella, sister ,,f Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 123, 172, 177 TAMES du Chastel, 203 J Jerome, St., at Bethlehem, 8 Jerusalem, Assize of, 76, 164; Latin kingdom of, 75 ; Latin kings of, 75 ; -(.odfrey, 75 ; Baldwin I., 77 ; Baldwin II. 81; Fulk of Anjou, 82 .'Baldwin III., 82; Almeric, 95; Baldwin IV., 100; Baldwin V., 101 ; Cuy of Lusignan, 101 ; Henry of Cha m p a g ne ft ltu lar\ 130; Almeric of Lusignan (titular), 139 Jerusalem, captured by the Persians 10; by Omar, 12 ; by Hake.n, 1 . ; by the Seljukian Toucush, 17 • by the first crusaders, 7 r ; by Saladin, 103 ; by Kameel, 194 Jews, persecution of the, -59, 88 n8 Jews, plunder of the, 115" Joanna, sister of Richard I , 125 1-0 Jordino of Courtenay, 81, 94 John Comnenos, 48 John of Brienne, 177 John of England, 133 John, St., Hospital of, 18 John the monk, 93 Joinville, 197 et seq. 219 PHI Letold of Tournay, 71 Lothair, cardinal [Innocent III 1 Louis VI., the Fat, 85 Louis VII., king of France, 88, ir- Louis. IX., king of France, 196^ seq. ; death of, 208 Lusignan, Almeric of, 139, 177 • Guy of, 101, 130 J Lyons, council of, 209 M A ™ MEI ?' r ****** from, to Khosru II., ir Mamelukes, 210 Manuel, emperor of the East, 89, 09 Marra, siege of, 6S -M.uy. niece of Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 177 n Maynard, nephew of Conrad of Tyre 132 J ' Merovingian kings of France, 9 s Moadhin, sultan of Damascus, 189 Montferrat, marquis of, i 4 6 Montfort, Sim,,. ,,f, i 45< I4 „ 2 Montfort, Simon of. earl of Leicester At 195 • Qi, Thomas, patriarch of 1 stantinople, 159, 161, 165 hi, caliph of Bagdad, 06 Mourzoufle, 155, 156, 167 T^AMEEL, sultan of Egypt, 180 • treaty of, with Frederick II ' 189, 193; takes Jerusalem, 104 Kerboge, 63, 66, 67 Khosru II., 10 Khosru Nushirvan, 10 Kilidje Arslan, 41, 56, 63, 67 is-nishthood, 45 Knights Hospitallers, 97, 105, 109, 136 200, 211 Knights Templars, 87, 109, 206 Knights, Teutonic, 122, 206, 211 Korasmians, 194 JANCE, discovery of the holy, 65 Lateran, councils of, 112, 179 Latin empire of Constantinople, 165 • kingdom of Jerusalem, 75 ; emperors of Constantinople, 166; kings of Jerusalem, 75, 139 Latins and Greeks, antagonism be- tween, 54, 163, 175 •L.CO til., pope, 20 JJICiEA, Nikaia[Nice] Nice, Seljukian sovereigns of, 17 : siege of, 55 Xicephorus 1 1 1. , emperor, 22 N11 olas IV., pope, 210 Nicolas, the child crusader, 21=; Nineveh, battle of, n Xoureddin, sultan of Aieppo, 95,96, 100 QMAR, the caliph, 12 Oriflamme, the, 201 Otho of Brunswick, emperor, 1S2 pASCAL II., pope, 75 Pastoureaux, 215 Pelagius, bishop of Albano, 179 Peter Barthelemy, 6s Peter of Blois, 134 Peter of Capua, 149, i 5 i Peter the Chanter, 143 Peter of Courtenay, Latin emperor of the East, 170 Peter the Hermit, 25 et seq., 38, 60, 66, 71, 73 Philip Augustus, king of France, 11 « x 33> 165 ' lwv P h'r k \ ng ^ f France ' 2 4- 4i, 7 3 H ] !Pl y-