"l .Q rr} i iti a '^. i!^ of ^ I'M) M^ m THE HOLY StPULCHRE. PHILADELPHIA: LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. HISTORY THE CRUSADES m, irogrtss, iraiJ BY yt- ,3/r MAJOR PROCTOR, OP THE ROYAL 3IILITARY ACADEMY. WITH OYER Ols'E HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS. PHILADELPHIA: LINDSAY & BLAKISTON 18 54. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S54, by LINDSAY & BLAKISTOX, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States fbr the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. STEREOTYPED BT L. JOHXSON A CO. FQILADELPUIA. '? CKLSADKHS IN SKillT of .1 KKUSALKM. I'Hjre li5. ^^§))»«»+- At the present time, when a misunderstanding concerning the Holy Places at Jerusalem has given rise to a war involving four of the great Powers of Europe, the mind naturally reverts to the period when nearly all the military power of Europe made a descent on Palestine for the recovery of them from the possession of the infidels. It would seem that the interest in these places is still alive ; and the history of the Holy Wars of Palestine during a considerable portion of the Middle Ages, may be supposed to form an attractive theme for the general reader. Under this impression Major Proctor's excellent "History 3 4 PREFACE. of the Crusades" has been carefully revised, some additions made, a series of illustrative engravings, executed by iBrst-rate artists, introduced, and the edition is now respectfully sub- mitted to the public. The editor, in the performance of liis duty, has been struck with the masterly, clear, and lucid method in which the author has executed the work — a work of considerable difficulty, when we consider the long period and the multiplicity of important events embraced in the history; nor has the editor been less impressed with the vigorous style, and the happy power of giv- ing vividness, colour and thrilling interest to the events which he narrates, so conspicuous in Major Proctor's history. No other historian of the Crusades has succeeded in comprising so complete and entertaining a narrative in so reasonable a compass. American Editor. CHAPTER I. %]lt imi €xni\lt Section I. Causes of the Crusades Page 17 Section II. Preaching of the First Crusade 41 Section III. Peter the Hermit. — The Crusade undertaken by the People 55 Section IV. The Crusade undertaken by Kings and Nobles 65 5 6 CONTENTS. Section V. The First Crusaders at Constantinople Page 79 Section' VI. The Siege of Nice 96 Section VII. Defeat of the Turks.— Seizure of Edessa 105 Section VIII. Seige and Capture of Antioch by the Crusaders 119 Section IX. Defence of Antioch by the Crusaders 130 Section X. Seige and Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders 153 CHAPTER II. Section I. State of the Latin Kingdom 176 Section II. Origin of the Orders of Religious Chivalry 194 Section III, Fall of Edessa. — Preaching of the Second Crusade 205 Section IV. Louis VII. and Conrad III. in Palestine 214 CONTENTS. 7 CHAPTER III. Section I. The Rise of Saladin Page 224 Section II. Battle of Tiberias, and Fall of Jerusalem 238 Section III. The Germans undertake the Crusade 248 Section IV. Richard Coeur de Lion in Palestine 257 CHAPTER IV. Section I. The French, Germans, and Italians unite in the Crusade 285 Section II. Affairs of the Eastern Empire , 298 Section III. Expedition against Constantinople 311 Section IV. Second Siege of Constantinople 327 4 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. Ik 'fast imx (Ln\$i\his- Section I. History of the Latin Empire of the East Paije 342 Section II. The Fifth Crusade 361 Section III. The Sixth Crusade 380 Section IV. The Seventh Crusade 401 Section V. The Eighth Crusade 428 CHAPTER VI. Consequences of the Crusades 453 ■'rusaders in sight of Jerusalem Frontispiece. The Holy Sepulchre Title. Head-piece to Preface page 3 Head-piece to Contents 5 Head-piece to Hlustrations 9 Pope Urban II. preaching the First Crusade, at the Council of Cler- mont 13 Head-piece to Chapter 1 17 Ornamental Letter 17 A Norman Knight 21 The Normans conquering Sicily 22 Charlemagne 26 Mohammed 30 Early Career of Mohammed 31 Gregory VII 36 9 10 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Robert Guiscard ordering his ships to he burned 38 Tail-piece 40 Peter the Hermit 41 Ornamental Letter 41 Peter the Hermit and the Patriarch of Jerusalem 42 Peter the Hermit preaching the First Crusade 45 Norman Armour 55 Ornamental Letter 55 Peter the Hermit leading the First Crusaders ^. 58 Tail-piece G4 Armour 05 Henry IV 08 Godfrey of Bouillon 09 Siege of Rome 71 Robert of Normandy and his Father 72 A Crusader 79 Ornamental Letter 79 The Emperor Alexius 90 Regalia 90 Ornamental Letter 90 Tail-piece 104 Head-piece 103 Ornamental Letter 105 A Turkish Encampment 110 Baldwin seizes Edessa 110 Tail-piece 117 ILLUSTRATIONS. 11 PAGE Antioch 118 Ornamental Letter 118 KaraHissar 124 Capture of Antioch by the Crusaders 128 Robert of Normandy slaying the Turk 129 Head-piece 130 Ornamental Letter 130 Bishop Adhemar blessing the Crusaders 141 Tail-piece 152 Jerusalem 153 Ornamental Letter 153 Mount Sion 157 Godfrey of Bouillon 101 Capture of Jerusalem 1G4 Godfrey of Bouillon elected King of Jerusalem 172 Tail-piece 175 Ascalon 176 Ornamental Letter 176 Tancred 181 Funeral of Baldwin I., King of Jerusalem 188 Ruins of Tyre 190 Tail-piece 193 Institution of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem 194 Armour 1 94 Ornamental Letter 195 12 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Grand-Master of the Knights of Malta 108 Grand-Marshal of the Knights of Malta 199 Malta -01 Knights Templars 203 Head-piece 205 Ornamental Letter 205 Queen Eleanor of Aquitaiue 211 St. Bernard preaching the Second Crusade 211 Tail-piece 213 Head-piece 214 Ornamental Letter 214 Conrad III 217 Passage of the Meander 218 Louis VII. defending himself against the Turks 219 Damascus 221 Tail-piece 223 Arab Encampment 224 Ornamental Letter 224 Noureddin marching on Antioch 228 Shiracouch 231 Saladin 23G Tail-piece 237 Head-piece -38 Ornamental Letter 238 Mecca 240 Tail-piece 247 ILLUSTRATIONS. 13 PAGE Head-piece 248 Ornamental Letter 248 Frederic Barbarossa 252 Head-piece 257 Ornamental Letter 257 Richard Coeur De Lion 260 Rhodes 202 Siege of Acre 204 Movable Towers 205 Capitulation of Acre 206 Tower and Battering-ram 206 Richard Cceur'de Lion at Antiocli. 207 Richard I. at Azotus 272 Hebron 275 Richard Coeur de Lion at Jaffa 280 General View of Jerusalem 284 Head-piece 285 Ornamental Letter..^ 285 Henry VI., Emperor of Germany 287 Place of St. Mark's, Venice 293' Street in Constantinople 298 Ornamental Letter 298 Isaac Angelus 304 Tail-piece 310 Dandolo, Doge of Venice 311 - Ornamental Letter 311 14 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Theodore Lascaris u27 Ornamental Letter 327 Desecration of the Churclits 334 Tower of St. Mark's, Venice 335 - Ceremony of raising an elected King ou a buckler 337 Tail-piece, Gethsemene 341 Baldwin I., Emperor of the East 342 Ornamental Letter 342 Baldwin II 354 Head-piece 3G1 Ornamental Lcttir 3G1 William Longespee, Earl of Salisbur}- 3G4 Capture of Damietta by the Crusaders 367 Emperor Frederic II 372 Head-piece 380 Ornamental Letter 380 Richard, Earl of Cornwall 382 Frederic II 385 Zingis Khan 391 Tail-piece 400 View on the Nile 401 Ornamental Letter 401 Blanche of Castile 403 Ilaco, King of Norway 404 Ships of the 13th Century 405 St. Louis in captivity 416 ILLUSTRATIONS. 15 St. Louis entering Ptolemais 419 Tail-piece 427 Head-piece 428 Ornamental Letter 428 Death of St. Louis 431 Edward L of England 432 Attempt to assassinate Edwari] 435 Funeral of Robert Guiscanl 452 Head-piece 453 Ornamental Letter 453 Tail-piece 4G8 ■ T -.>-« POTK I KI5AN Jl. I'KKA(lll.N(i TlIK ClUSADE AT <;JiEH.MONT. HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. CHAPTER I. t lirst Crttsabt FROM A. D. 1095 TO A. D. 1099. SECTION I.— CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. ^HE term Crusade is derived from the French word Craisade, and is employed to designate that series of extraordinary expeditions undertaken by the Western nations of Europe, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens and Turks. The space of time consumed in these strange enterprises 2 17 18 THE FIRST CRUSADE. extends over nearly, if not quite, two hundred years, and in whatever light we contemplate them, they con- stitute one of the most interesting chapters that is to be found in the annals of mankind. Nothing like them had been seen before in either the ancient or the modern world, and nothing like them has been seen since ; and it is the object of the present volume to investigate the causes which led to them, to de- scribe the incidents by which they were accompanied, and to estimate the consequences that followed from them. The predisposing circumstances wdiich led to those famous enterprises, and thereby impressed such singu- lar features on the history of the period, are to be sought rather in the general aspect and feelings of society during the ages immediately antecedent, than in the occurrence of any particular events. Amid the lawless violence which preceded and attended the settlement of the feudal system, the voice of religion could seldom be heard above the perpetual din of armed rapine; and her influence, instead of being habitually exercised over the consciences of men, was felt only with startling remorse in some brief interval of sickness or calamity. Then, the rude and super- stitious warrior, with the same untempered energy of passion, was prepared to rush at once from the perpe- tration of atrocious crime to seek its atonement in exercises of the severest penance. Equally among churchmen and laity, the devotional spirit of the CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 19 times, such as it was, knew no other mode of recon- cilement with offended Heaven, than in these acts of mortification. But, if many sought to expiate their guilt in the passive austerities of the cloister, it was more congenial to the restless and enterprising charac- ter which marked the Northern mind, to embrace the encounter with fatigue and peril, as the surest test and the most acceptable tribute of repentant faith. The Romish clergy, therefore, probably only indulged instead of creating a popular inclination, when, in the eighth and ninth centuries, they began to commute the more ancient penances enjoined by the canons of the church, for pilgrimages to Rome, to the shrines of various saints, and above all to Jerusalem. The desire of visiting the places where celebrated events have occurred, seems, indeed, a curiosity too deeply implanted in our nature to belong to any particular time or condition of man ; but the associations con- nected with the hallowed scene of human redemption were calculated to sanctify this feeling with peculiar interest, and had rendered journeys to Jerusalem not uncommon in some of the earliest ages of Christianity. When this practice was communicated to the Gothic nations, the love of pilgrimages gradually became almost a universal passion; and though its objects were deformed by the grossness of superstition, and its course much diverted to Rome itself, and to those shrines in different countries at which pretended mi- racles were wrought, especially that of St. James at 20 THE FIRST CRUSADE. Compostella, in Spain, the stream of mistaken yet sincere devotion continued to set steadily toward the shores of Palestine. But the impulse which, above all others, had a tend- ency to increase the ardour for pilgrimages, arose from a growing belief, early in the tenth century, that the end of the world was at hand. It was imagined that the thousand years mentioned in the Apocalypse would speedily be fulfilled ; that the reign of Anti- christ approached ; and that the terrors of the last judgment would immediately follow.* In proportion as this erroneous interpretation of sacred prophecy gained wider credence, the Western World became violently agitated with fearful forebodings of the destruction which awaited the earth ; every delusive form of propitiation for sin, in penance and pilgri- mage, "was eagerly embraced ; and, as it was concluded that to visit the scenes of redemption was both a meritorious and a preservative act, multitudes annu- ally flocked to Jerusalem, to revive and recover those hopes of salvation which withered under the remem- brance of habitual guilt. When an expedient so qui- eting to the consciences of men in a state of society * 6%ron.Guil.Godelli, (in RecuetldesJIistoriensFran^ais, vol. x.,) p. 2G2. De Vic et de Vaisette, Hist, de Languedoc, vol. ii. p. 86-117, &c. As E-obertson has remarked, (^ITist. of Charles V., vol. i. note 13,) even many of tlio charters of the tenth century have for preamble, '^ Appropinquante mundi tcrmino," &c., (seeing that the end of the world is at hand.) CAUSES OF TDE CRUSADES. 21 A Norman Knight. equally fruitful of crime and superstition, had once been discovered, inducements were not wanting for its repetition ; and the custom surpassed and survived its original impulse and occasion. Throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries, the passion for pilgrim- ages was ever on the increase ; and it is recorded of a single company which visited the Holy Sepulchre, about the middle of the latter age, that its numbers were no fewer than seven thousand persons.* * Ingulfus, Historia, p. 903, 904. oo THE FIRST CRUSADE. The Normans conquering Sicily, Foremost amoiiG: the devotees, as amoiiir the war- riors of the times, were the Normans. That singular and high-spirited people, in every respect the most remarkable of the barbarian races, had no sooner be- come converts to Christianity, than they strangely infused into their religious profession the same wild and enthusiastic temper, the same ardour for adven- turous enterprise, which had distinguished their pagan career. The conquest of Southern Italy, which ori- ginated entirely in the casual return of their pilgrims from the Holy Land through that theatre of Saracen warfare,'"' is, in itself, a striking memorial both of their addiction to such religious journeyings, and of the * Leo Osticnsis, Chron. Man. Cassiii, lib. ii. c. 37. Giaunone, Is- ioria di NapoU, vol. ii. p. 7. CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 23 equal readiness for either devout or martial achieve- ment by which they were animated. Traversing Italy in the route between their own land and the Mediterranean ports which communicated with Pales- tine, in small but well-armed bands, the Norman pil- grims were prepared alike, either to crave hospitality in the blessed name of the Cross, or to force their way at the point of the lance. Their victorious establish- ment in Italy tended to increase their intercourse with the East; their daring assaults upon the Byzantine empire, though foreign to our present subject, attest their undiminished thirst of enterprise ; and we shall find the sons of the Norman conquerors of the Sicilies and England figuring among the chief promoters and warriors of the First Crusade. Such a union of religious and martial ardour, how- ever, was by no means confined to the Normans ; and the eleventh century was marked, throughout Western Europe, by the general expansion of a spirit, of which the organized result may be numbered among the most active and powerful causes of the crusades. This was the institution of chivalry. The rude origin of a state of manners so extraordinary in itself, and so restricted to the descendants of the great Northern race,* is obviously to be found in those ceremonies * The want of all resemblance to the spirit of chivalry in the man- ners and sentiments of classical antiquity is so obvious, that it might seem a work of supererogation to insist on the fact ; if an accom- plished modern writer (Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 482) had I 24 THE FIRST CRUSADE. ■which, among their ancestors in the German forests, attended the assumption* of arms by the youthful not, in rather an elaborate passage, cited the Achilles of Homer as a beautiful portraiture of the chivalric character " in its most general form." On this position it may, in the first place, be remarked as singular, that Mr. Hallam should number "a calm indifference to the cause in which he was engaged" among the qualities of the Homeric hero, as suggesting a parallel with the knightly character ; of which, enthusiastic and loyal devotion in enterprise formed the peculiar attri- butes. In the next place, the resentment of Achilles for the loss of Briseis merely as his captured property, is utterly repugnant to that principle of respectful idolatry for the fair, which every true knight cherished as an indispensable article in his creed of love and honour. In fact, the most irreconcilable distinction between the manners of the classical and Gothic ages rests, as we have before had occasion to remark, on the totally opposite estimation of woman. Finally, his conduct of Achilles, both in suffering the inferior herd of Greeks to strike the corpse of Hector, and in dragging the lifeless body of the noble and fallen antagonist at his chariot wheels, would have been held utterly abhorrent from chivalric ideas of courtesy; and Mr. Hallam, a few pages farther on, has quoted a passage from a chro- nicler of the thirtcceth century, which denounces the act of insulting the dead body of an enemy as the lowest depth of infamy. Thus, altogether, to say nothing of the absence of that dedication of the sword to the cause of Heaven, which, mistaken as it was, gave a religious impression to the knightly character, the portraiture of Achilles is completely destitute of those qualities of loyalty, devoted- ness to woman, and courtesy to enemies, which Mr. Hallam himself justly specifies as virtues essential to chivalry. That lofty energy of the soul which is inspired by contempt of death and thirst for glory, and displayed in daring and magnanimous achievement, con- stitutes, indeed, the vital essence of heroism under every form of society ; but into this lifespring of action, common to the Grecian and the Gothic warrior, it was the singular peculiarity of the chival- ric spirit to infuse the triple incentive and sentiment of religious, social, and amatory obligation ; and, instead of sustaining the parallel CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 25 warrior.* In subsequent ages the same forms of mar- tial investiture, with little addition or variation, were preserved among the conquerors of the Roman empire, and perpetuated in every kingdom which they had founded. In the Lombard annals ; in a recorded act, as well as occasionally in the capitularies of Charle- magne ; and in the chronicles of the Anglo-Saxon era, are to be found sufficient evidencef of a common prac- tice in the ceremonial investiture of knighthood. We may here overleap the chain of circumstances which, in later connection with feudal and social obligations, imparted to the spirit of chivalry, which in the outset was only essentially martial, its more graceful virtues of loyalty and honour, courtesy and benevolence, generosity to enemies, protection to the feeble and the oppressed, and respectful tenderness to woman. To trace the growth of these beautiful attributes of chi- valry, as a moral and social system, belongs not to our present inquiry ; and it will suffice to notice in this place that admixture of religious ideas and duties with a military institution, which converted it into a ready engine of superstitious excitement, and singularly suggested, the Homeric representation, abounding as it does in native sublimity of conception, might, with more propriety, be selected for a sufficient example of the contrast between the heroic character in the two great romantic ages of the ancient and modern world. * Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum, c. 13. ■}■ Paulus Diaconus, De Gcstis Langohard, c. 23, 24. Vita Lu- dovici Piif ad Ann. 791. Malmsbury, lib. ii. c. 2. 26 THE FIRST CKUSADE. Charlaviagne. disposed the public mind of Europe for any enterprise of fanatical warfare. The exact epoch at which chivalry acquired a reli- gious character, it is neither easy, nor is it material, to ascertain. In the age of Charlemagne, and in his empire at least, the form of knightly investiture was certainly unattended by any vows or ecclesiastical CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 27 ceremonies.* But, in the eleventh century, it had be- come common to invoke the aid of religion in the in- auguration of the knight ; his sword was laid on the altar, blessed, and even sometimes girded to his side, by the priest ; and his solemn vow dedicated its use to the service of Heaven, in the special defence of the church, as well as the general protection of the weak and the oppressed. The more complete conversion of the whole process of investiture into a religious ceremonial; the previous vigils, confession, prayer, and receipt of the sacrament ; the bath and the robe of white linen, as emblems of purification; all those preparations, in short, by which the entrance into the knightly career, was designedly assimilated to that into the monastic profession, formed the growth of rather later times.f But there is abundant proof of the suc- cess of the church, before the Crusades, in infusing some religious principle into the martial spirit of chivalry. J For this, justice has scarcely been extended to the motives of the Romish clergy by different classes of writers, who, whether from indignation at the real corruptions of that church, or from hostility to the cause of Christianity itself, can discover only unmin- gled evil in the ecclesiastical policy of the Middle Ages. But, apart from the lower and more interested purpose, in itself surely not unjustifiable, of converting the * Vita Lriidov. Pii, uLi siijjrd. f Dm Cange, Glossarium in vv. Anna, Miles, &c. J Du Cange, in v. Miles. Muratori, Antiq. Med. jEvi. Diss. liii. 28 THE FIRST CRUSADE. martial temper of lawless communities into a means of defence for the church, the clergy of the eleventh century appear to have laboured with a zeal and sin- cerity above suspicion, in mitigating a spirit which they could not subdue. Their efforts to soften the ferocity and harmonize the feelings of the times by their reprobation of private wars and judicial com- bats, are deserving of all praise ;* and there seems no reason to doubt that, in covering the ceremonies of chivalry with the sanction of religion, their policy was originally animated by a principle equally praise- worthy. In the same knightly vows which they de- manded or registered at the altar, engagements to ab- stain from secret perfidy and open wrong, to shield the oppressed, and to do justice to all Christian men, were at least mingled with the obligation of fidelity and protection to the church itself. The ultimate ex- tension of these pledges into the imaginary duty of warring to the utterance against all infidels, was, in- deed, as incompatible with the generally peaceful de- signs of the clergy, as it was repugnant to every genu- ine precept of the gospel. But, in a period so turbulent that even the ordinary social virtues could be no bet- ter exercised and protected than at the sword's point, a warlike and ignorant race passed, by an easy and obvious transition, into the monstrous error of believ- ing that the sincerity of their faith and the cause of * Gibbon, Decline and Fall, he burned. his resistance was gallant and vigorous, his defeat by the Norman in the great battle of Durazzo, shook the tottering fabric of Byzantine power to its centre. In this war Robert Guiscard ordered his ships to be burned on the hostile shores of Illyria, to prevent his soldiers from having any hopes of retreat ; and this, too, in the face of an almost innumerable host of the Eastern empire gathered together for the defence of Durazzo. The distraction of an Italian war arrested Guiscard in the subjugation of Greece, and, perhaps, saved Constan- tinople from his assaults : * but his enterprise had fa- voured the progress of the Turks in the eastern pro- vinces of the empire ; and Alexius was compelled to purchase their forbearance by the formal cession of * Anna Commena, Alexias, lib. iii.-v. &c. Galfridus Malatcrra, Hist, (in Muratori, Scrij). Rcr. Ital. vol. v.) lib. iii. c. 2-1-39. CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 39 Asia Minor. The establishment in that wealthy re- gion, of the subordinate Seljukian kingdom of Roum, or of the Romans — a title in itself insulting to the proud pretensions and fallen majesty of the successors of Constantine — contracted the eastern frontiers of their empire to the shores of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont. The residence of Solyman, the Sultan of Roum, was fixed at Nice in Bythynia, within a hundred miles of Constantinople; and the Turkish outposts were separated only by the strait from the imperial capital. A hollow pacification did not pre- vent Solymon from meditating the passage of that channel ; and his preparation of a naval armament filled Alexius with reasonable alarm for the safety of the European remnant of his dominions.''' Following the example of Michael VII., he addressed the most earnest entreaties for succour to the Pope and the temporal princes of Western Christendom.-j- The inde- pendent partitions of the Seljukian conquests on the death of Malek Shah, and the decline of the Turkish power through intestine dissensions, relieved the pressure on the Byzantine empire ; and Alexius was enabled" even to recover some portion of Asia Minor from the successor of Solyman ; but his envoys were * For tlie history of the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor, &c., vide De Guignes, vol. i. p. 244, vol. ii. p. 1-12. Also the original ac- count of William of Tyre, lib. i. c. 9, 10. f Guibert Abbat. Hist. Hicrosol. p. 475, 476. (Gesta Dei per Francos.) 40 THE FIRST CRUSADE. yet resident at the Papal Court, when, by an instru- ment apparently far more powerless, that spark was struck into the enthusiasm of Europe which threw its combustible elements into one jxeneral conflagration of religious warfare. r:;.0^ ■Sr-jU" PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 41 Peter the Hermit. SECTIOIT n. PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. ^^II^^M HE name and story of the ex- '^ traordinary individual who lit up this unquenchable flame ' of fanaticism, must be fa- miliar to every reader. Peter the Hermit was a poor gentle- ; man of Picardy, who, after following in arms his feudal lord, Eustace de Bouillon, and vainly attempting to improve his fortunes by an alliance with a lady of noble family, had, in some moment either 42 THE FIRST CRUSADE. Pcicr the Hermit and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. of disappointed ambition or of awakened remorse for deeper guilt, escaped, from a profitless service and a distasteful marriage, to the refuge of the cloister. But the resistless fervour of spirit, which afterward produced effects so memorable, led him shortly to de- sert the monastic profession for a life of absolute soli- tude ; and to the character of an anchorite he next superadded that of a pilgrim to the Holy Land. The scenes which he witnessed, the sufferings which he endured, in this expedition, were of a nature to con- firm the mental distemper which had been nourished in his cell. At Jerusalem his indignation w^as ex- cited by the cruelties of the Turks to the Christian residents and pilgrims : his piety was shocked at the profanations with which the Holy Sepulchre was in- PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 4o suited by those barbarian infidels. He fancied him- self inspired by Heaven to eftect its deliverance from their hands ; and, in a conversation with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, he declared his purpose to rouse the princes and people of the West to avenge the disgrace of Christendom/'' He possessed many qualities which, notwithstanding an unpromising exterior, peculiarly fitted him for the task to which he thoroughly devoted himself. He was inspired with the genuine spirit of enthusiasm : regardless of bodily privation and fa- tigue, steadfast in purpose, ardent in imagination, and, above all, animated by that admixture of pious inten- tions with personal vanity, which has deluded the fanatic of every age. When he first emerged from obscurity, and burst upon the world as the preacher of a religious war, he is described as emaciated by self-inflicted austerities and wayfaring toil; diminu- tive in stature ; mean in appearance ; and clad in those coarse weeds of a solitary, from whence he derived his surname of the Hermit. But his eye beamed with fire and intelligence ; he was fluent in speech; and the vehement sincerity of his feelings supplied him with the only eloquence which would have been intelligible to the popular passions of his times.-]- * Willermus Tyr. lib. i. c. 11. Guibert Abbat. p. 482. f Willermus Tyr. p. 637. The archbishop's lively portraiture of the fanatic has often been quoted : — Erat autem hie idem staturd ])usillus, et quantum ad exteriorem hom!neni,personae coniemjitabilis. 44 THE FIRST CKUSADE. Having obtained from the Patriarch of Jerusalem letters of credence and supplication for the cause which he had undertaken, Peter, on his return to Europe, repaired at once to the Papal Court, and found in Urban II. an astonished but ready listener to his magnanimous project. The pope recognised, and, perhaps, sincerely credited, the Divine authority of his misabn ; but the views of Gregory VII. were not forgotten by his successor ; and motives of ambi- tion, sufficiently strong to induce his assent, must have been suggested by the embassy of Alexius, and the desire of extending the authority of the Papal See over the churches of the East. The probability that schemes of mere worldly policy were at least mingled with the religious impressions of Urban II. is increased by the assertion of a well-informed writer of his times,'^' that he had recourse to a temperate counsellor, who had in his own person proved the weakness of the Byzantine empire. This was Boemond, natural son of Robert Guiscard, who had attended his father in his daring invasion of Greece, and whose ambitious spirit was now impatiently restrained within the narrow limits of a Neapolitan fief The Norman prince, Srd major in exicjuo rcfjnahat corjwre virtus. Vivaci's enim ingenii craty ct oculum hahens j^ei-sjnroccm ; yratumque, ct qM7ite jJucns ei non deerat cloqnium. (This man was little in stature and contempt- ible in appearance ; but there reigned within that slight body a very courageous spirit. He possessed a lively genius, and had a quick, clear eye ; nor was he wanting in agreeable and ready eloquence.) * Malmsbury, p. 407 yy :^,y.^yyy,y^/; ,^_i5. - V*. PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 45 whose selfish and wily character strikingly developed itself in the subsequent events of the Crusade, was little influenced by the devotional fervour of the age ; and, if his advice determined Urban to direct the enthusiasm of Europe to the shores of Palestine, we may readily believe the chronicler that it was founded more upon political than religious considerations.* However this may have been, the Hermit of Picardy quitted the Papal Court strengthened by the approba- tion and the promises of the spiritual chief of Christen- dom ; and, travelling over Italy and France, he every- where proclaimed the sacred duty of delivering the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidels. Unless we bear in mind the prodigious influence of those superstitious and martial feelings which together absorbed the passions of a fierce and ignorant age, it is difficult to conceive the recorded effects of the Her- mit's preaching ; and language has been exhausted in describing, after contemporary authorities, the innu- merable crowds of all ranks which thronged cities and hamlets, churches and highways, at his voice ; the tears, the sighs, the indignation excited in these mul- titudes by his picture of the wrongs of their Christian brethren, and the sacrilegious defilement of the Holy Sepulchre ; the shame and remorse which followed his reproaches at the guilty supineness that had aban- * Pandul. Pisanus, Vita Urhanii II. (in Script. Rerum Ital. vol. iii.) p. 352. Willermus Tyr. p. 638. Malmsbury, uhi supra. 46 THE FIRST CRUSADE. doned the blessed scenes of redemption to the insults of infidels; the eager reception of his injunctions to every sinner to seek reconcilement with Heaven by devotion to its cause ; and the rapture which his de- nunciations of vengeance against the Saracen enemies of God awakened in the stern hearts of congregated warriors. The fanatical austerity of the preacher, which was proclaimed in his withered form, his squalid attire, and his abstemious diet ; the voluntary poverty which distributed to the indigent the arms vainly de- signed for its own relief; the rude eloquence of speech and gesture, which flowed from impassioned sincerity, were all in deep unison with the religious sentiments of his hearers : the appeal to arms roused, with irre- sistible strength, that double excitement of devotion and valour which animated, as with a blended and in- separable principle, the Christian chivahy of Europe.* The pope had dismissed the Hermit with the as- surance that he would strenuously support his great design ; and the enthusiasm which Peter had awakened by his preaching was restrained from bursting into action, only by eager expectation of the fulfilment of the pledge. At Piacenza, Urban first convoked the prelates of Italy and the neighbouring regions ; four thousand inferior clergy, and thirty thousand lay per- sons, are computed to have flocked to the scene; * Willermus Tyr. p. 638. Guibert, p. 482. Fulcherius Carno- tensis, (^Gcsta Dei per Francos,') p. 381. PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 47 [a. d. 1095, March;] and, the legates of the Eastern Emperor having been admitted into the assembly to expose the dangers which menaced their country and all Christendom from the progress of the Turks, and to implore the aid of the nations of the West against the infidels, it was resolved to promote the demand, and to mature the design of a holy war, by the au- thority of a more general Council.'^ Urban was di- rected, in his choice of a place for its assemblage, by the partialities of birth, by the predominant martial and religious spirit of his native country, France, and by the special invitation of Raymond, Count of Thoulouse. Clermont, the capital of Auvergne, was appointed for the seat of the Council, at which the pope in person presided, and an immense multitude of clergy and laity of all ranks, from France, Italy, and Germany, gave their .attendance. [Nov. 1095.] During the first week after the opening of the Council, its deliberations were chiefly engaged in the enactment of some general pro- visions for the improvement of morals and the repres- sion of private war ; but, on the ninth morrow of the session, the pope himself ascended an elevated pulpit in the open air, and preached the sacred duty of re- deeming the sepulchre of Christ from the infidels, and the certain propitiation for sin by devotion to this meritorious service. His fervent exhortations were addressed to a multitude already deeply imbued with t P. Pisan. Vila Urban, p. 353. Labbe, Concilia, vol. x. p. 499, &c 48 THE FIRST CRUSADE. fanatical purpose ; his inference of a divine command for the holy war was interrupted by one universal and tumultuous cry of '- It is the will of God ;" and the slightly varied acclamations of Deus vuJt, Dieux el volt, and Deus lo volt, expressed the common enthusiasm of the clergy and the people, while it marks the pure retention of the Latin tongue in the familiar speech of ecclesiastics, and the popular corruptions which it had undergone into the two great northern and provengal dialects of France. At the instant when their cries resounded throughout the vast assembly, the figura- tive injunction of Scripture to the sinner, to take up the cross of Christ, suggested to Urban the idea that all who embraced the sacred enterprise should bear on their shoulder or breast that symbol of salvation. The proposal was eagerly adopted ; the Bishop of Puy first solicited the pope to affix the holy sign in red cloth^' on his shoulder ; and the example being imme- diately followed, the cross became the invariable badge of the profession, while it gave an enduring title to the warfare of the Croisse or Crusader. The first temporal prince who assumed the cross was the Count of Thoulouse; and his offers, through his ambassa- * It has been observed by Gibbon, after Du Cange, that although in the first Crusade red was the general colour of the cross, different hues were subsequently adopted as national distinctions : red by the French, green by the Flemings, and u-hite by the English. Yet the red cross of St. George was early our national emblem, and still proudly floats on that banner which ''a thousand years has braved the battle and the breeze." PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 49 dors, to devote his powerful resources, as well as his person, to the cause, were hailed with admiration. Before the Council broke up, Adhemar, the Bishop of Puy, was invested by Urban with full authority as papal legate for the conduct of the expedition ; and the following spring was appointed for the period of its departure to the East.''-' The decision of the Council of Clermont was wel- comed throughout the Latin world with joyful assent ; and Europe echoed with the clang of warlike prepara- tion for the sacred enterprise. France, Italy, and Germany were inspired with a common ardour ; the same spirit was communicated to the British Islands, and penetrated the remoter region of Scandinavia ;f and, if Spain did not equally respond to the call, it was only because the Christian chivalry of Castile and Arragon were already occupied on a nearer theatre of religious hostility, in the long contest with their Sara- * Willcrmus Tyr. p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478^80. Fuleher. p. 382. Baldricus Arch, (also in Gcsta Dei,) p. 79-88. Labbe, Concilia, vol. x. •|" Malinsbury wbimsically involves bis picture of the universal ex- tent of the crusading ardour, in an allusion to national habits : " The Welshman forsook his hunting; the Scot his companionship with vermin ; the Dane his carouse ; and the Norwegian his raw fish," p. 416. Among the distinguished personages who joined the first Crusade from our own island, were Stephen, the English Norman Earl of Albemarle, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, (Dug- dale, Baronage, vol. i. p. 23, 61,) and perhaps {11 Art de Verifier les Dates, vol. i. p. 842) a son- of Malcolm Ceanmore, King of Scot- land. 4 50 THE FIRST CRUSADE. cen enemies.''' In every country, and among all ranks and conditions of men, the master passions of fanatical and martial zeal were fed by various impulses of ac- tion. The chief inducement, beyond doubt, was a canon of the Council of Clermont, by which the per- formance of the crusading vow was accepted as a full equivalent for all ecclesiastical penances. This decree is memorable in itself as having first suggested, or at least rapidly extended, the idea of granting plenary indulgences : the sale of which for money was after- ward converted, by the cupidity of the popes, into so profitable an expedient for replenishing their cofiers, and became the most scandalous practical corruption of the Romish Church.f To the feudal nobility and their followers, the com- mutation of penances for a military enterprise was peculiarly grateful. The anathemas of the church * The sacred and meritorious character of the warftare against the Spanish Saracens had been already recognised by the popes. In the conquest of Toledo, (a. d. 1085,) Alfonzo VI. had been assisted by many foreign knights ; and, when pressed in the following year by the African Saracens, he was succoured by the chivalry of France. It has even been contended (Mailly, Esprit des Croisades, vol. ii. p. 91) that their auxiliary expedition should be numbered as the first of the Crusades ; and there is no doubt that is was considered as a holy war, and must have familiarized the French nobles with the idea of such enterprises — though its memory has been eclipsed by the superior importance of the subsequent design for the redemption of the Sepulchre. f hahhe, Concilia, \o\. x. p. 507. Moshcim, Ecclcs. Hist. Cent, xii P. 2. c. 3. Muratori, Aiitiq. Med. JEvi. Diss. Ixviii. PREACHING OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 51 against private wars, the enforcement of the truce of God, and the prohibition to bear arms, or to mount on horseback, which the clergy often employed as a form of penance, were all grievous to an order in whom the love of arms and rapine struggled with the terrors of superstition. An injunction to religious warfare, which relieved their fears, while it promised free in- dulgence to their favourite pursuits, was gladly em- braced as the very easiest mode of reconciling their usual course of life with expiation for its disorders ; and so admirable, in the judgment of the age, ap- peared this discovery of a mode of atoning for its prevalent crimes by their very repetition, that a chro- nicler emphatically eulogizes it as a new kind of salva- tion.* Nor were there wanting the worldly incentives of avarice, ambition, and renown, still further to ani- mate the mistaken sense of religious duty. The exaggerated tales of pilgrims and traders were filled with pictures of oriental wealth ; the subjugation of Asia seemed an easy and glorious achievemnt ; and the chivalry of Europe already shared in imagination the countless treasures and fertile provinces of the gorgeous East.f By the remaining classes of society, the same min- gled influence of spiritual and temporal motives was equally felt. While numbers of the clergy sincerely * '■^ Novum salutis genus y Guibert, p. 471; (a new kind of sal- vation.) f Idem, p. 554, 555. 62 THE FIRST CRUSADE. shared the general fanaticism, the conquest of Asia opened prospects of wealthy estabhshments to the higher order of ecclesiastics ; the monks found at least a meritorious occasion of escape from the irksome restraint of the cloister, and the peasantry from feudal bondage to the soil. Under the pretence of a holy purpose which it was decreed sinful to prevent, debt- ors were protected both from the present demands of their creditors and the accumulation of interest during their absence ; criminals were permitted to elude the pursuit of justice ; and offenders of every degree, under the special safeguard which the church threw over the performance of their vows, were enabled to defy the vengeance of the secular law.'-' Lastly, even the speculations of an infant commerce assisted the general excitement; and the merchants of Italy, in particular, engaged with avidity in enterprises from which, in effect, they alone, by the estabUshment and extension of a lucrative maritime trade, derived any solid and durable advantage. Yet all these were but the secondary motives of that one mighty impulse, under which all the ordi- nary considerations of life, all the tics which bind men to home and country, to kindred and possessions, were alike disregarded. To ol^tain funds for so dis- tant and expensive an enterprise, princes and high nobles mortgaged, or even alienated their vast do- * Sec Du Cange, in v. Crucis Pri'vilegiitm, and the authorities there cited. PREACHING OF THE FIEST CRUSADE. 53 mains ; warriors of inferior rank either wholly aban- doned their feudal estates and obligations, or pre- pared to follow their lords in voluntary service ; lands were everywhere converted into money ; horses, arms, and means of transport were collected at exorbitant prices ; and valuable property of all kinds was reck- lessly sacrificed on the most inadequate terms to colder or craftier dealers. Yet, even among such, the irresistible force of example often prevailed ; the awakening conviction of duty, the thirst of glory, or the dread of reproach, was gradually imparted to every bosom not wholly insensible to religion and honour; and the prudent or designing purchaser in one hour, was himself the deluded seller in the next. Nor was the contagion of fanatical adventure confined to the chivalric order. Not only ecclesiastics deserted their benefices, and monastic recluses their cells, but mechanics and rustics forsook their occupations, and exchanged their implements of industry for weapons of offence ; and women of all ranks, with an aban- donment of the more timid and becoming virtues of their sex, which produced equal misery and scandal, either left their husbands behind them, or, with their children, swelled and encumbered the unwieldy masses of helpless pilgrims.* Moreover, the superstitious * Guibert, p. 481. Albertus Aquensis, (^Gesfa Dei 2^er Francos,) p. 185. Guibert has a passage wliich too curiously illustrates the madness of the prevalent fanaticism to be passed without notice in this place. Deluded rustics yoked their oxen, shod like horses, to 54 THE FIRST CRUSADE. confidence of atonement for past crimes, and the ex- pectation of license for future enormities, equally attracted the vilest portion of mankind. Robbers, murderers, and other criminals of the deepest dye, professed their design to wash out their guilt in the blood of the enemies of God.'-' The aggregate of the immense multitudes who thus assumed the cross could scarcely be accurately computed, in an age so unfa- vourable for collecting the details of statistical calcu- lation. By one chronicler it is vaguely estimated at six millions of persons ; f hy a less credulous contem- porary it is denied that all the kingdoms of the West could supply so vast a host ; J but even the exaggera- tion proves that the original design of enthusiasm would have totally depopulated Europe; and, after making every deduction for the influence of delay, returning reason, and the accidents of life, in cooling the first burst of fanatical fervour, the numbers which actually fulfilled their purpose justify the assertion that whole nations rather than the mere armies of "Western Christendom, were precipitated upon Moham- medan Asia. carts, in which they placed their families and goods to perform the sacred journey ; and it vfusjilanh joco aptisslmum (very amusing) to hear the children inquiring, as they approached any city, whether that were Jerusalem, p. 482. * Wilermus Tyr. p. 6-11. Albertus Aquensis, uhi mjjrdi. f Fulcherius Carnot. p. 386. X Guibert, p. 556. CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 55 Norman Armour, SECTIOIS' m PETER THE HERMIT— THE CRUSADES UNDERTAKEN BY THE PEOPLE. ONG before the season, the end of spring,''' fixed by the Pope 'for the depart- ure of the Crusaders had expired, the impatience of the ruder mul- titudes of people grew too vio- lent for restraint, [a. d. 1096, ■ March.] Soon after the com- mencement of the new year, an immense concourse of pilgrims, chiefly of the lowest orders, had thronged * And not the " Feast of the Assumption in August," as Gibbon has stated. See the interesting version of the speech of Urban, in the Council of Clermont, as given by William of Malmsbury. The first detachment under Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, set out by way of Hungary in March, 1096. 56 THE FIRST CRUSADE. around Peter the Hermit on the western frontiers of France, and urged him, as the original preacher of the sacred enterprise, to assume its conduct. Ap- parently unconscious of his utter unfitness for com- mand, the fanatic rashly accepted the perilous charge; and, under his guidance, the accumulating torrent began to sweep over Germany.* Its immense tide overflowed the ordinary channels of communi- * Before ^ve accompany the. disorderly march of thq mob ■which thus commenced the First Crusade, it behooves us to specify our principal guides throughout the expedition. These are the original authorities contained in the great collection of Bongarsius, which he printed at Hanover, in two folio volumes, in 1611, under the general title of Gesta Dei i^r Francos; a designation which Jortin pithily proposed to change into Gcsta Diaboli, &c. The actual eye-witnesses of the First Crusade, whose relations are to be found in the collection of Bongarsius, were, 1. Bobcrt the Monk, (^Jlist. IHcrosoli/mitana;') 2. Raymond de Agiles, chaplain to the Count of Thoulouse, during the Crusade, (^Ilht. Francorum ;) and 3. Fulcher, also a chaplain, who accompanied the Count of Chartrcs, and afterward attached him- self to Baldwin, brother of the great Godfrey, and second king of Jernsalcm, (^Gesta Fcrer/rmaniium Francorum) ; 4. next in the order of testimony is the work of an archbishop. Baldric, (^Ilist. Hieroso- Ij/m.,) who assisted at the Council of Clermont, and whose relation, although he did not himself accompany the expedition, is declared to have been revised by an abbot who did so; 5. Albert of Aix, (^Ilist. Ilierosol. Expedidonis ;) and 6. Guibert, (the title of whose Chronicle, Gesla Dei per Francos, it was that Bongarsius adopted for the whole collection,) were contemporaries, and the latter was a keen observer and lively nan-ator; 7. and lastly, William, Archbishop of TjTe, already so often (juoted, whose history, although he was not contem- porary with the First Crusade, is, perhaps from the materials of in- formation to which he had access, and tlie judgment with which lie compiled them, the most valuable document in the whole collec- tion. CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 57 cation; and devastation marked its course. The roads were obstructed by the multitude of passengers ; the country through which they moved was oppressed by their excesses; the means of subsistence were ex- hausted by their wants; and Peter was compelled to exhort them to separate into smaller masses. Under the command of Gualtier, or Walter, a Burgundian knight, whose poverty procured for him the surname of Sans-Avoir, or the Pennyless, and who accepted the office of lieutenant to the Hermit, a body of twenty thousand pilgrims preceded the march of the main host through Hungary and Bulgaria toward Con- stantinople. The wretched quality of the adven- turers who composed this advanced guard is suf- ficiently indicated by the fact that there were only eight horsemen in the whole number, and their con- duct was as reckless as their condition was deplorable. Through Hungary, they were indebted for a safe though toilsome passage, to the friendly disposition of its king, Carloman, and Christian people ; but, on their entrance into the still wilder regions of Bulgaria, which were governed by a lieutenant of the Byzantine empire, they encountered every possible obstacle, both from the treacherous policy of the imperial officers, who forbade the supply of their necessities, and from the ferocious temper of the natives. Hunger com- pelled the crusaders to resort to violence; the Bul- garians flew to arms, and the route of Walter and his followers was tracked in blood and flames. But in 58 THE FIRST CRUSADE. every day's inarch, the natives cut off hundreds of the miserable rabble; and the destruction of the whole host, before it reached the southern confines of Bul- garia, was so complete, that only Walter and a few survivors succeeded, b}'^ a flight through the forests, in reaching the Court of Constantinople. '"^ The second division of the crusading mob, under Peter the Hermit himself, amounting to forty thou- sand men, women, and children, followed on the traces of the first body. Aided by the good offices of the Hungarian king, their march through his country was abundantly supplied, and tranquilly pursued, until they reached Malleville, the modern Zemlin, on its southern confines, where the triumphant exhibi- tion on the walls of the spoils of some of their precur- sors who had been slain in an affray with the inhabit- ants, roused them to a furious vengeance. The ram- parts of the city were scaled; thousands of its people were slaughtered, and for several days the survivors were exposed to all the horrors of violation and rapine. The approach of Carloman with a large army to punish their perfidious ingratitude, accele- rated the departure of the crusaders ; and their hasty and disorderly passage of the Save exposed them to a heavy loss from the attacks of the savage hordes, who awaited their landin": on the Bulgarian bank of that * Fulchcr, p. 384. Albert. Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 483. Willermus Tyr. p. G42. CRUSADES BY THE PEOPLE. 59 river. Though they finally repelled these new ene- mies, they found Bulgaria a wasted solitude. The natives had retreated to their fastnesses and strong- holds ; the fortified towns were closed against them ; and the purchase of provisions for their march, under the walls of these places, was the only intercourse which the imperial officers would permit the inhabit- ants to hold with them. Their excesses again pro- voked a more open and fatal hostility. Enraged at some outrages, the people of Nissa pursued and mas- sacred their rear-guard ; the efforts of Peter could not dissuade the whole host from returning to avenge this quarrel ; and, in an ineffectual attempt to renew the same scenes as at Zemlin, the assailants were repulsed from the walls with immense slaughter. The triumph- ant garrison and inhabitants issued forth upon them ; a general and total rout ensued ; and, in the onset, the sally, and the pursuit, above ten thousand of the cru- saders perished. Their camp was abandoned and plun- dered ; and despoiled of their baggage, of their money, and of their arms, the wretched herd of fugitives continued its journey toward Constantinople.* When they had ceased to be formidable, their helpless misery extorted some compassion; Alexius interposed his protection, and their remains at length reached his capital, where they were reunited to Wal- * Albert. Aquensis, p. 186-188. Guibert, p. 484. Willermus Tyr. p. 643-645. Peter and his horde of banditti reached the neigh- bourhood of Constantinople in August, 1096. 60 THE FIRST CRUSADE. ter and the survivors of the first division. But they were no sooner refreshed, than they repaid their hos- pitable benefactor by new acts of insolence, licentious- ness, and pillage ; and Alexius gladly acceded to their desire to be transported across the Bosphorus. Under the conduct of Peter and his lieutenant Walter, they were landed in Asia Minor; but here, neither the exhortations of the Hermit could restrain their out- rages against the religion and property of the subjects of Alexius, nor the advice of the emperor himself to await the arrival of the more disciplined chivalry of Europe, prevent their headlong advance. Peter, find- ing himself totally unable to control them, used a decent pretext for escaping back to Constantinople; but Walter, whose more martial spirit was really asso- ciated with qualities for command deserving of a bet- ter fate, was compelled to yield to their clamorous demand to be led against the infidels. Des2:)ite of his prudential warnings, they divided their forces to plun- der the Turkish provinces, and reunited only on a report artfully circulated by the Sultan of Roum, that Nice, his capital, had fallen into the hands of an ad- vanced body of their associates. Allured by the pros- pect of sharing in its spoils, they blindly rushed into the heart of a hostile country ; but when they de- scended into the plain of Nice, instead of being wel- comed by the sight of the Christian banners on its walls, they found themselves surrounded by the Turk- ish cavalry. In the first onset, Walter fell bravely, CRUSADE BY THE PEOPLE. 61 covered with wounds, while vainly discharging, by intelligence and example, the twofold duties of the leader and the warrior. The disorderly multitude of his followers was immediately overwhelmed and slaugh- tered ; a remnant, no more than three thousand, escaped the general destruction by flight to the near- est Byzantine fortress ; and a huge mound, into which the savage victors piled the bones of the slain, formed an ominous monument of disaster for succeeding hosts of crusaders.* The disorders and destruction of these first two divisions of the crusading rabble were, indeed, but a prelude to more atrocious scenes of guilt, and more enormous waste of human life. Stimulated by the example of Peter, a German monk, named Godeschal, preached the Crusade through the villages of his native land with so much effect, that he allured about fifteen thousand of the peasantry to follow him to the East. This third division took the same route as the two preceding ; but, on their arrival in Hungary, they ex- perienced a far different reception from its sovereign, who was justly exasperated at the outrages with which his hospitality had been repaid. At first he prudently supplied them with the means of accele- rating their passage through his kingdom ; but their march was attended with an aggravated repetition of * Albert, p. 189-193. Baldricus Arcliiepiscopus, p. 89. Gui- bert, p. 485. Willermus Tyr. p. 645-647. Anna Comnena, p. 226, 227. 62 THE FIRST CRUSADE. the worst crimes which had been perpetrated by the followers of the Hermit; the whole population of Hungary rose in arms against them, and Carloman was at length provoked to deliver them over to the vengeance of his subjects. For this purpose he had recourse to a cruel act of perfidy, which deeply sul- lied the merit of his earlier forbearance. Before the walls of Belgrade, his promise of forgiveness and pro- tection induced them to lay down their arms; and this act of submission was immediately followed by their ruthless massacre.* But the numbers, the gross superstition, the licen- tious wickedness, and the miserable extirpation of these fanatical hordes, all sink into insignificance before the features displayed in the composition and conduct of the fourth and last division of the rabble of Europe. From France, from the Bhenish Pro- vinces and Flanders, and from the British Islands, there gathered on the eastern confines of Germany one huge mass of the vile refuse of all these nations, amounting to no less than two hundred thousand per- sons. Some bands of nobles, with their mounted fol- lowers, were not ashamed to accompany their march, and share their prey ; but their leaders are undistin- guishable ; and the most authentic contemporary records of their proceedings compel us to repeat the incredible assertion that their motions were guided * Albert, p. 194. Willermus Tyr. p. 648. CRUSADE BY THE PEOPLE. 63 by ca goat and a goose, which were believed to be di- vinely inspired. If we impatiently dismiss a circum- stance so revolting to every pious mind, and so de- grading to the pride of human intellect, we find their actions as detestable as their superstition was blind and unholy. The unhappy Jews in the episcopal cities of the Rhine and Moselle were the first victims of their ferocity. Under the protection of the eccle- siastical lords of these commercial places, colonies of that outcast race had long enjoyed toleration and accumulated wealth. Their riches tempted the cu- pidity of fanatics, who professed a zeal for the pure religion of the gospel, only that' they might violate its most sacred precepts of mercy and love. Under the pretence of commencing their holy war by extir- pating the enemies of God in Europe, they sought the blood and spoils of a helpless and unoffending people. To the honour of the Romish Church, the Bishops of Mayence, Spires, and other cities, courage- ously endeavoured to shield the Jews from their fury and rapine ; but their humane efforts were only par- tially successful, and thousands were either barbar- ously massacred, or, to escape the outrages and dis- appoint the cupidity of their enemies, cast themselves, their women and children, and their precious effects, into the waters or the flames. Sated with murder and spoliation, the ruffian host pursued its march from the Rhine to the Danube ; and the continued in- dulgence of its brutal sensuality attested that it 64 THE FIKST CRUSADE. needed not the impulse of fanaticism for the commis- sion of every atrocity. But it was at length over- taken by the vengeance of God and man. In the hour of danger, the unruly and "wicked multitude proved as dastardly against an armed enemy as it had been ferocious toward the defenceless Jews. It ef- fected the passages of the Danube only to encounter a tremendous defeat from the Hungarian army which had collected for the national defence ; some sudden and inexplicable panic produced a general flight, and unresisted slaughter; and so dreadful was the carnage, that the course of the Danube was choked with the bodies, and its waters dyed with the blood of the slain. The contemporary chronicler, who was appa- rently best informed of their execrable crimes and well-merited fate, asserts that very few of the im- mense crusading multitude escaped death from the swords of the Hungarians or the rapid current of the river; and it is certain that, whatever remnant sur- vived, saved their lives only by flight and dispersion.* * Albert. Aquensis, p. 195, 196. Fulcher. p. 386. Willermus Tyr. p. 649, 650. CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. SECTION IV. THE CRUSADE UNDERTAKEN BY KINGS AND NOBLES. Before twelve months had expired since the spirit of crusading was roused into action by the Council of Clermont, and before a single advantage had been gained over the infidels, the fanatical enthusiasm of Europe had already cost the lives, at the lowest com- putation, of two hundred and fifty thousand of its people.* But such were the stupid ignorance and headlong folly which misguided these wretched multi- tudes, and still more, so dark and grovelling was their superstition, so cruel and demoniacal their fanaticism, and so flagitious their licentiousness, that all pity for their fate is lost in the disgust and horror Avith which we recoil from the contemplation of brutality and * Mills, Hhtory of tlio Crusade!^, vol. i. p. 81. 66 THE FIRST CRUSADE. guilt. The picture is relieved by no exhibition ol dignified purpose or heroic achievement ; the myriads ■uho had perished in Ilungarj^, in Bulgaria, and in Asia Minor, were animated by none of the loftier sen- timents of the age ; they were composed chiefly of the coarser rabble of every country ; and in their de- struction we behold only the ofTscouring of the popu- lar ferment of Europe. But, while the first disasters of. the Crusade were sweeping this mass of corruption from the surfiice of society, the genuine spirit of reli- gious and martial enthusiasm was more slowly and powerfully evolved. With maturer preparation, and with steadier resolve than the half-armed and irreiru- lar rabble, the mailed and organized chivalry of Eu- rope was arraying itself for the mighty contest ; and a far different, a splendid and interesting spectacle, opens to our view. In the characters, the motives, and the conduct of the princely and noble leaders who achieved the design of the first Crusade, we are no longer presented with the revolting sameness of a mere brutal ferocity. Their zeal, although mingled with superstition, and not unstained by cruelty, was also elevated by the generous pursuit of martial fame; their resolves were inspired by the twofold incentive of spiritual duty and temporal honour ; and their fa- naticism was regulated by foresight and prudence. In entering on their purpose, they had, indeed, been more or less infected with the general madness of the age ; but, in the guidance of the holy war, many of them CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 67 proved themselves as politic in counsel, as skilful in expedients, and as patient and constant under difficul- ties, as they were adventurous in danger and courage- ous in combat. The wildness of their enterprise is condemned by our calmer reason ; the justice of their cause may be impeached on every true principle of divine and human law ; but, from the magnanimous devotion of their spirit, and the fearless heroism of their exploits, it is impossible to withhold our sym- pathy and admiration. It has been deemed worthy of remark, that none of the principal sovereigns of Euro^^e engaged in the first Crusade; but their absence was determined by the accidents of individual character and position. Pope Urban II. declined the personal command of the ex- pedition, on the plea of his engrossing functions in the general government of the church, and his duty of re- pressing the schism created by the Antipope Clement; or, perhaps, on the more reasonable excuse of his age and infirmities;'*' but he deputed his spiritual autho- rity to his legate Adhemar, the Bishop of Puy. The Emperor Henry IV., the personal enemy of Urban, and protector of the antipope, of course refused to recognise the authority by which the Crusade was preached. Philip I. of France was absorbed in sen- sual indulgence ; and to renew the excommunication * Belli Sacri Hint, (by an anonymous chronicler, in Mabillon, Mas. Ital vol. i.) p. 135. 68 THE FIRST CRUSADE. Henry IV. already passed upon him was one of the acts of Urban at the very Council of Clermont. The crafty and irreligious character of William II. of England (Rufus) also led him rather to minister to his brother's reck- less enthusiasm, by purchasing the mortgage of Duke Robert's Normaji dominions, than to join himself in the holy war. But the cause rejected by these monarchs was eagerly embraced by the most dis- tinguished feudal princes of the second order : by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of the Lower Lorraine or Brabant, with his two brothers, Eustace and Baldwin, and a kinsman also of the latter name ; Hugh, styled the Great Count of Vermandois, and Robert, Duke of Normandy, brothers of the French and English kings ; Robert, Stephen, and Raymond, Counts of Flanders, CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 69 Godfrey of Bouillon. Chartres, and Tlioulouse; and the Norman Boemond, son of the Guiscard, Prince of Tarento, with his cousin Tancred, whom history and romance have equally delighted to exhibit as the brightest examplar of knightly virtue. In dignity and character, however, in the conduct and the results of the Crusade, the highest place of honour must be conceded to the Duke of Brabant. Godfrey of Bouillon was descended through females from Charlemagne; and ranked, alike by his great possessions and personal qualities, among the most powerful feudatories of the German Empire. His reputation for wisdom in counsel and prowess in arms was deservedly high; and, during the war between the empire and papacy, in which he adhered to Henry IV., he had specially distinguished himself, both at 70 THE FIRST CRUSADE. the battle of Merseburg and at the siege of Rome. His political importance was increased by the position of his states on the frontiers of France and Germany ; and his consequent familiarity with the popular dialects of both countries, as well as his acquisition of the Latin, the customary language of the church, facilitated his intercourse, and promoted his personal influence, among the nations of Europe. But the se^'ere integrity of his character disdained the selfish exercise of these advantages; and, amid the gross and violent disorders of the times, his life was regu- lated by the strictest principles of morality and re- ligion. His manners were gentle, pure, and benig- nant; his conduct was just and disinterested; and his piety, though mistaken, was sincere and fervent. These virtues might have qualified him rather for the cloister than the camp, if they had not been asso- ciated with energies capable of the loftiest designs : with a head to conceive and a hand to execute the most arduous enterprises which his conscience ap- proved; with resolution, tempered by reflection and judgment, which no difficulties could shake; and with valour, calmed only by moderation, which no perils could deter. Since the siege of Rome his frame had been consumed by a slow fever; his illness dic- tated the renewal of an early purjDOse of performing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem : and he no sooner heard of the projected Crusade, than, as if inspired with new life, he suddenly shook off' disease from his limbs, and CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 71 Siege of Rome. sprang with renovated health and youth from a sick- couch to engage in so glorious and meritorious a work/^ The transcendent merits and accomplishments which adorned the principal hero of the first Crusade have demanded an especial portraiture : the few fea- tures in the characters of the remaining leaders, which varied their general resemblance in devout zeal and warlike excellence, may be more briefly sketched. In Hugh of France these qualities, though supported by other attributes not unworthy of his royal birth, were destitute of the religious humility and modest demeanour of Godfrey ; and the great Count of Ver- '■* Malmsbury, p. 44S. Guibert, p. 485. Willermus Tyr. p. 651. 72 THE FIRST CRUSADE. Robert of Normand;/ and his Father. mandois was remarkable chiefly for an arrogant and haughty deportment.f Robert of Normandy was generous and merciful, eloquent in debate, and well skilled in military expedients; but profuse in ex- pense, dissolute in morals, and equally rash and unsteady in resolve. His rashness and insubordi- nation had nearly made him a parricide, as he had unhorsed his own father, William the Conqueror, in battle, and had only been prevented from putting him to death, by his father's exclaiming and making him- self known. Although, therefore, his conduct during f Anna Comnena, p. 227. Robertus Monachus, p. 34. Guibert, p. 485. CRUSADE BY KINGS AND NOBLES. 73 the Crusade was thought in some measure to atone for the irregularities of his earher life, and his ex- ploits often attracted the general admiration, his instability of mind prevented his maintaining the respect of his more illustrious compeers.* His name- sake of Flanders resembled him in headlong valour, without sharing any portion even of his abortive talents. The Count of Chartres, one of the wealthiest and most potent feudal princes of France, w\as also deemed the most learned in all the literate and prac- tical knowledge of the age, experienced and wise in his suggestions, clear and persuasive in discourse. These intellectual acquirements peculiarly fitted him for directing the general design of the war; and he was accordingly chosen to preside in the council of its leaders. In the field, the superiority of his tactical skill was equally recognised; but he was deficient in vigorous enterprise; and in the eyes of the fiery champions of the Cross, his fame was tainted by the questionable quality of his valour. The veteran and sagacious Count of Thoulouse,f whose youth had been habitually exercised in arms * A well-known instance of Robert's careless spirit was the above- mentioned mortgage of his duchy to his brother William for five years, at the inadequate price of ten thousand marks, to equip him- self for the Crusade. Chron. Sax. p. 204. Will. Gemeticensis, p. 673. f The history of this prince is very obscure. His original title was Count of St. Gilles in Languedoc ; whence Anna Comnena cor- rupted his name into Sangeles, and under that appellation exagge- 74 THE FIRST CRUSADE. against his Saracen neighbours in Spain, had brought from that warfare a deadly hatred of the Mussuhnan name, and was more fiercely animated than the other crusading princes by the spirit of religious intolerance. His master passion was umitigated fanaticism ; and the devotion of his old age, the abandonment of his extensive dominions, and the appropriation of his great riches to the service of the Crusade, might have protected his motives from the suspicion of worldly ambition and avarice, if their sincerity had not been attended by a cold and selfish nature, a proud and vindictive temper, which denied him the friendship of his noble confederates, and alienated the affections of his own native followers. To the purely fanatical zeal which predominated in the character of the Pro- vencal prince, may be opposed the unscrupulous am- bition and deep hypocrisy of the Norman Boemond, the Ulysses of the war. To him alone, perhaps, of all the movers and warriors of the Crusade, may be attributed a systematic design of rendering the popu- lar enthusiasm of Europe subservient to views of mere personal interest. If his versatile and unprincipled genius enabled him to feel or to feign'*'' some share in rates his rank, as if he had been the principal personage of the Cru- sade. In what manner he had acquired the extensive fiefs of Thou- louse and Provence, and arrogated the title of Duke of Narbonne, which he also bore, seems undetermined. L^ Art do Yirijicr ks Dates, vol. ii. p. 280-294, &c. * Boemond pretended to receive with surprise and admiration the news of the design of Urban, which it is more than probable that he CRUSADES BY KINGS AND TEOPLE. 7o the prevalent sentiment of his time, the whole re- corded tenor of his conduct betrays the settled and absorbing pursuit of temporal aggrandizement. Fa- miliar with all the arts of dissimulation, and no less rapacious than perfidious, he exhibits, among the heroes of the holy war, the singular spectacle of a cool and crafty politician. His vices were odiously contrasted with the generous qualities of his youthful cousin Tancred," whose frank and courteous bearing, no less than his love of glory and high-minded disdain of wTong and perfidy, rendered him the mirror of European chivalry .f had secretly prompted. At the siege of Amalfi, he embraced the Crusade in an apparent transport of zeal : excited the fanatical ardour of his confederates and followers by an eloquent harangue; and, while their enthusiasm was at its height, rent his own robe into pieces in the shape of crosses for the soldiery. This curious and characteristic anecdote is told by Guibert, p. 485. * Tancrcd was the son of Matilda, sister of Kobert the Gruiscard, and therefore the cousin of Boemond, (Radulphus Cadomensis, de Gestis Tancredi, c. 1,) and not either his brother or nephew, as some of the writers in the Gesta Dei, less correctly informed than the biographer of the hero, and Gibbon and Muratori after them sup- posed. The father of Tancred was an Italian marquess, Odo. Ralph of Caen was the personal friend and companion of Tancrcd in Pales- tine after the Crusade. f " pivi bel di maniere e di sembianti piu eccelso ed intrepido di core," &c. La Gerusal. Llherata. can. i. 45. But the poet has here only echoed the praises which the qualities of Tancred extorted even from the Greek princes, never unwilling to detract from the virtues of a Latin, above all a Norman name. — Anna Comncna, p. 277. ioii. the two remaining sides presented the only accessible points of operation. Before these fronts the besiegers impatientl}^ pitched their camp. The Count of Thoulouse chose his station from Mount Sion along the western side ; Eustace of Boulogne extended his troops from the conclusion of the Provencal lines toward the north, until he adjoined the quarters of his brother. Duke Godfrey, whose standard was planted on the north- western angle at the foot of Mount Calvary ; and the two Roberts and Tancred continued the blockade from that point to the .verge of the Eastern precipices. In 158 THE FIRST CRUSADE. the first confidence of their fanatical valour, the cru- saders, fully expecting the miraculous aid of Heaven, rushed, on the fifth morning after the investment, to a furious assault of the walls of Jerusalem, without battering engines, without scaling ladders, without any of the ordinary applications of the besieging art. The astonishing impetuosity of their rash onset, de- spite of every probability and obstacle, had nearly delivered the city into their hands. Disregarding the superior numbers, the safe position, and the deadly missiles of the garrison, they burst through the barbi- can, or lower outward gate, and even penetrated to the foot of the main rampart. But here they were arrested, less by any efforts of the panic-stricken infi- dels, than by the mere inaccessible height of the bul- warks and the absence of all means of escalade. The Mussulmans, perceiving the inability of the assailants to approach them, recovered their courage; hurled down every destructive variety of projectiles on the heads of the exposed and devoted Christians; and finally beat them back with slaughter and confusion to their camp. The leaders of the Crusade, awakened from their fanatical delusion by this repulse, now prepared to pro- secute the siege by the rules of art. They resolved to construct the usual machines for breaching or over- towering the walls; but the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem afibrded no timber sufficiently large for these works ; and the surrounding country' was ex- CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 159 plored for materials. It was only at the distance of thirty miles that, in the grove of Sichem,* trees could be found of suitable dimensions; and, under the di- rection of the indefatigable Tancred, these being felled were transported by the painful but zealous labour of the soldiery to the camp. Competent artificers were yet wanting, when the fortunate arrival of some Ge- noese galleys at Jaffa supplied this deficiency. So general a superiority in mechanical skill had the commercial people of Italy attained over the igno- rance of the times, that the whole Latin host were dependent on the fortuitous services of these mariners. The crews were landed at Jaffa ; an escort of troops was despatched to bring them up from the coast ; and, as soon as they reached the camp, they undertook the construction of three great movable towers, with pro- per engines for throwing missiles, undermining the ramparts, and battering or scaling the walls. The army awaited the completion of their labours in anx- ious suspense ; for now again were the sufferings of their former sieges repeated under a new variety of horror. The country round Jerusalem was destitute of water ; the rocky soil yielded few springs ; the * A city of Canaan, and subsequently of Samaria, and the burial- place of the patriarch Jacob, frequently mentioned in Scripture. It was situated on Mount Ephraim, where afterward stood the Flavia Neapolis of Herod, now the Nablous of the Arabs. It was one of the cities of refuge appointed by Joshua, (xx. 7,) and was the enchanted grove of the poet Tasso. (Gerusal. Liberata. canto xii.) 160 THE FIRST CRUSADE. fountains and reservoirs had been destroyed by the infidels ; and the streams of Siloe and Kedron were dried up b^' the intense heats of summer. The be- siegers were agonized by thirst ; a scanty supply of water could be procured only at a distance of several miles ; and the poorer multitude, who could not pay for its transport in gold, were obliged to wander in quest, of the springs, at the hazard of being cut off by the fleet Mussulman hordes which scoured the whole country. Numbers, by abstaining from food, endea- voured to lessen the intolerable thirst which consumed them ; and so extreme was the distress, that many gasping wretches were fain to lick up the dews of night from the rocks, and to excavate holes in the earth that they might but press their lips against the moister soil.'='' For forty days, amid this horrid drought, had the siege endured, before the readiness of their engines of assault enabled the crusaders to put a triumphant con- summation to their labours. When the lofty mova- ble towers, each of three stories, were completed, two, respectively manned and worked by the troops of Godfrey and Raymond, w^ere slowly moved forward toward the walls. The former leader chose his point of attack where the rampart had least elevation, and the great depth of the ditch had rendered the garrison negligent of its defence. Three days were laboriously * These expressive proofs of the height of the people's sufferings are given by Robert the Monk, p. 75. CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 161 Godfrey of Bouillon. consumed in filling up this fosse ; and the tower was then successfully rolled over the new level. Mean- while the Provencals had been less skilful or fortu- nate ; for their tower was repeatedly damaged by the besieged with projectiles and fire. But several ap- proaches were prepared against different fronts of the main ramparts of the place with battering and raining engines ; and the eager warriors only awaited the sig- nal of final attack. On the eve of the day appointed for a general assault of the city, the whole host, in full armament, and preceded b}^ the clergy, made a religious procession round the walls to invoke the 11 . ' 1G2 THE FIRST CRUSADE. divine aid. Instead of banners, crucifixes were borne aloft at the head of the troops ; every instrument of martial music was hushed; and the only sounds to which the army moved were sacred chants of psalm- ody. Ascending the Mounts of Olives and of Zion, the crusaders halted on each of those holy places, and knelt in prayer; and when these solemn rites had elevated the devotional and warlike enthusiam of the soldiery to the highest pitch of excitement, the spec- tacle which was presented from the walls still further inflamed their fanatical feelings with a deadly thirst of revenge against the infidels. The garrison, dis- playing crucifixes on the ramparts, derided those re- vered emblems of salvation, and covered them with filth ; and the crusaders with shouts of fury vowed to wash out these impious insults in the blood of the perpetrators. Thus animated by every incentive of natural va- lour, religious hope, and fanatical vengeance, the cru- sading host advanced on the following dawn to the assault of Jerusalem. While showers of arrows and stones from the archers and balistic engines were di- rected against the defenders on the ramparts to cover the principal operations, the battering and mining machines and huge movable towers — all the stages of the latter filled with chosen bodies of knights and men-at-arms — were impelled toward the walls. But the onset was received by the Moslems with a courage guided by skill, and sustained by confi- CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 163 dence or despair. From behind the defences, their incessant flights of missiles replied with murder- ous effect upon the more exposed bodies of the Latin archers ; masses of rock were successfully hurled upon the machines of the besiegers ; and the dreadful Greek fire was poured in liquid streams against the movable towers. During the day the struggle raged without intermission, and the event still hung in tremendous expense. But, at even, the slaughter among the cru- saders far exceeded that of the infidels ; the great tower of Count Raymond had been partially burned and disabled ; many of the other engines of assault had been destroyed; and the besiegers were reluc- tantly compelled to desist for the night from further efforts. Yet their heroic spirit was undismayed, their confidence unabated, their labour indefatigable. Though The Provencal tower had been arrested in its advance, that of Duke Godfrey was undamaged, and had been brought into threatening contiguity to the rampart ; and on other fronts of attack the walls of the city were shaken, and already imperfectly breached in several places, by the violent strokes of the battering-rams and the more insidious use of the sap. At daylight, the assault and defence were re- newed increased with fury ; at noon, tlie desperate conflict was still balanced in appalling indecision; but, at the third hour of the evening, the barbican having been beaten down, the tower of Godfrey was forced sufficiently near to the inner rampart to enable 164 THE FIRST CRUSADE. Capture of Jerusalem.^ the iron-nerved chivalry of Europe to close hand to hand for the mastery, with the less vigorous warriors of the East. In that moment, so critical for the sus- pended cause of Christendom and Islam, the spirit a^d strength of the Mussulman defenders of Jerusa- lem, despite of their superior numbers and securer footing, quailed before the personal prowess of the champions of the cross. The frail drawbridge of the tower was let down upon the solid rampart ; two bro- thers, Letoldus and Englebert, of Tournay, in Flan- ders, were the first and second of the crusading war- CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 165 riors who sprang upon the battlements ; and Godfrey of Bouillon^ himself the third, planted his banner on the walls.* His victorious example was followed with irresistible energy ; in quick succession the Duke of Normandy, the Count of Flanders, and Tancred, burst through the gate of St. Stephen into the city ; and at every breach in the works a passage was im- petuously forced by their emulous associates and fol- lowers. Meanwhile, the Count of Thoulouse, dis- daining to enter the place in the train of his more successful confederates, gallantly inspired his Proven- cals to carry the rampart in their front by escalade ; the defenders, appalled by the defeat of their bre- thren, wavered and fled ; and, in all quarters, the ensign of the cross floated over the towers of Jeru- salem. Abandoning all further hope, the fleeing multitude of the Moslems thronged to die under the sacred domes of their Mosques. The victors pursued them with a relentless fury, which consigned men, women, and children to indiscriminate slaughter. The pas- sive and unresisting despair with which the helpless and miserable crowds awaited their fate, neither awakened the pity nor satiated the bloody vengeance * The author of L' Esprit des Croisades arranges the series of the successful assailants somewhat differently, viz. thus : — Godfrey, Eu- stace, Baldwin de Burgh, Bernard de St. Valier, De Guicher, and De Raimbaud Croton. These took the lead in the order in which they are named, followed closely by D'Amanjeu d'Albret, and Leo- told and Englcbert of Tournay ; iv. 420. 166 THE FIRST CRUSADE. of their savage destroyers. The outrages which the Infidels had formerly inflicted on the Christian pil- grims, and the insults with which they had recently derided the cross, were sternly remembered and fear- fully avenged; the very sight of the sacred places which they had profaned with their false worship served to heighten the fanatical rage of the conquer- ors against the fugitives who sought shelter in those edifices; and it was the boast of the Latin princes, in a public letter which they addressed to the pope,"''' that, in the splendid mosque erected by the Khalif Omar on the site of the Temple of Solomon,-)* they rode up to their horses' knees in the blood of the Infidels. In that principal sanctuary alone, ten thou- sand persons were massacred ; every minor retreat in the city was explored with equally fierce diligence by the swords of the crusaders; and the horrid computa- tion of the total carnage on the battlements, through- out the streets, and in the churches and houses, has been variously extended to an incredible number of both sexes and all ages.J * Martcnne, Thesaurus Novus, vol. i. p. 281. f D'Aiiville, Diss, sw VAncicnne Jerusalem, ^. 42-53. t By the IMussulman writers (De Guiges, vol. ii. p. 99, and Abul- feda, apud KcLskc, vol. iii. p. 319), the numbers massacred are stated as high as seventy or even one hundred thousand souls : but these were traditional estimates long after the event; and the last probably exceeds the amount of the whole population of Jerusalem at the period. William of Tyre, who alone of the Latin chroniclers attempts a precise enumeration, gives twenty thousand as the number CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 1G7 These dreadful scenes of fanatical cruelty, from which reason and humanity equally revolt, were fol- lowed by a sudden transition of passion, as strangely but less painfully characteristic of the times; and, the events of the single day on which Jerusalem way stormed, forcibly exemplify the unnatural union of those motives of martial achievement, ferocious in- tolerance, and fervent piety, which produced the Cru- sade. The mailed warriors who had sworn and ac- complished the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre in arms, hastened, as humble and repentant pilgrims, to complete their vows of adoration, at that hallowed monument of redemption. Duke Godfrey, after him- self staining the example of heroic courage with merciless slaughter, threw aside his reeking sword, washed his bloody hands, exchanged his armour for a white linen tunic, and, with bare head and feet, re- paired in pious humiliation to the Church of the Sepulchre. The same religious impulse was quickly communicated to his fellow-warriors; the inhuman fanaticism which had so lately steeled their hearts against every softer emotion, was all at once relaxed into a flood of contrite and tearful devotion ; and the whole host in turn, discarding their arms and purify- ing their persons from the signs of recent slaughter, moved in procession to the Hill of Calvary, and in mingled penitence for their sins, and thanksgiving for of victims in the first massacre, of whom one half fell in the Mosque of Omar. 168 THE FIRST CRUSADE. their victoiy, wept over the tomb of the Saviour of the world. After these religious exercises, a loose was given to the general joy both of the Latin con- querors and the native Christians, who had either been retained in the city during the siege, or had gathered in the crusading quarters. Among the latter was the Patriarch of Jerusalem; wdio, after seeking a retreat from the Mussulman tyranny in Cyprus, had lately arrived in the camp. lie in- structed his flock to honour, in the person of Peter the Hermit, the faithful missionary whose indignation and piety had been moved by the spectacle of their bondage to the Infidels, and whose holy zeal had roused the nations of the Western World to under- take their deliverance. The grateful multitudes pros- trated themselves before the poor Solitary of Amiens, as a revered and chosen servant of God ; and, if the sincerity of the fanatic, who, to perform this service, had twice traversed Europe and Asia, may be mea- sured by his indefatigable labours in the imaginary cause of Heaven, the spiritual triumph which re- warded his success must have surpassed the most ex- quisite enjoyment of temporal ambition. '=' Among the conscious offences which humbled the * It is singular that, after his reception of this public homage, the name of the Hermit occurs not again in any contemporary or authentic record ; and history has altogether forgotten to notice the subsequent fate of the man who had moved the population of Europe from its foundations. CAPTUIIE OF JERUSALEM. 169 souls of the crusaders in contrition and prayer before the altar of the Sepulchre, they were so far from numbering their cruelties to the Infidels, that they deemed the late work of slaughter a meritorious offer- ing to the God of Mercies. To every pious and en- lightened mind there can be few subjects of contem- plation more offensive and painful than this alliance of a devotion, which, though mj^taken, was sincere, with so ferocious and dark a superstition. Scenes of bloodshed similar to those which had preceded, also followed the interval of worship; and, on the morning after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusaders delibe- rately renewed the massacre of the Infidel garrison and inhabitants. The Jews of the city were burned alive in their synagogues; the Mussulman captives who had been spared by the lassitude, and the fugitives who had eluded the first search of the victors, were now dragged from their prisons and hiding-places, and remorselessly butchered. All — even women, children, and infants at the breast — shared the same fate, except a few wretched Mussul- mans, who owed their escape from the general slaughter, not to the humanity, but to the covetous- ness of the Count of Thoulouse, who rescued them for sale as slaves, and incurred the censure of the army by preferring the indulgence of his avarice to that of his fanaticism. With the rest of the crusaders, the former passion was only second to their cruelty; and the work of pillage proceeded simultaneously with 170 THE FIRST CRUSADE. that of bloodshed. By previous agreement, the rich plunder of the mosques, which abounded with lamps and vases of gold and silver, was dedicated to the ser^dce of the church and the relief of the poor ; but each house became the property of the first warrior who burst its door, and suspended his shield from its walls.'^ The infidel inhabitants of Jerusalem had been ex- tirpated ; and the law of conquest supplied a new and Christian population. When the victorious soldierj- had divided the possession of the Holy City, her streets were cleansed from the horrid pollution of" recent slaughter by the labour of some Mussulman slaves; the churches and mosques were delivered up to the clergy and dedicated afresh, or now first con- verted to the purposes of Christian worship ; and. tenanted by the various population of her martial citizens from every Western nation, Jerusalem pre- sented the novel aspect of an European settlement. After the occupation of the city, the earliest care of the leaders of the Crusade was given to the duty of *In the Mosque of Omar, no fewer than seventy massive lamps of gold and silver were found by Tancred, and surrendered to the pre- scribed uses of religion and charity; but not, if wc may believe Malrasbury, (p. 443,) before the costliness of the prize had seduced the hero, in a moment of unwonted frailty, to forget the usual purity of his virtue. He attempted to secrete the spoils for his private profit, until he was driven, either by the reproaches of his own con- science, or dread of public censure, to make restitution of his booty to the Ecclesiastical Treasury. CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 171 securing their conquest. The establishment of a feudal kingdom in Palestine was obviously suggested by the familiar example of the same form of polity in the Western monarchies, and by the necessity of organizing a martial system of tenures for the de- fence of the Christian state and the protection of the Holy Sepulchre. On the eighth day, therefore, after the capture of the city, the princely and noble chief- tains of the crusading host assembled to confer, by their free voices, tlie feudal sovereignty of Jerusalem, with its future dependencies, upon one of their bod}^ The accidents of war had diminished the number of those great leaders of the European chivalry wdio, by their hereditary rank, the strong array of their re- tainers, or the influence of personal character, were entitled to aspire to this honour. Boemond and Baldwin were already seated in the principalities of Antioch and Edessa, and had withdrawn themselves from immediate participation in the crowning glories of the Holy War; the great Count of Vermandois and the Count of Chartres had, with deeper reproach, altogether deserted the sacred expedition ; and al- though, in chivalric fame, Tancred was at least their equal, the princes of sovereign rank who remained with the army were four only in number; the two Roberts, of Normandy and of Flanders, the Count of Thoulouse, and the Duke of Brabant. Of these princes, if w^e may believe our Anglo-Norman waiters, the crown of Jerusalem was offered first to the brave 172 THE FIRST CRUSADE, but prodigal son of the Conqueror, and declined by his modest distrust of his own merits, by his less praiseworthy indolence, or by his preference of his European Duchy. If, on the other hand, we credit the Proven9al chroniclers of the Crusade, the same proffer and refusal of the regal dignity must be ascribed to the Count of Thoulouse."'' But the tale of Robert's election is entirely discredited by the silence of every immediate chronicler of the Crusade ; and the grasp- ing ambition and selfish cupidity ever displayed by the Count of Thoulouse, both before and after the fall of Jerusalem, are not only incompatable with the dis- interestedness imputed to him by his adherents, but are expressly stated by a better authority-j- to have occasioned the rejection of his claims. Between Robert of Flanders and his friend the Duke of Bra- bant, if there existed any rivalry in pretension, there was at least no equality of merit ; and, in opposition to the intrigues of the wily and jealous Provencal, the general voice of the assembly proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon as the most deserving, both by his prowess and piety, among all the princely champions of the Cross, to receive the crown of Jerusalem and the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre. The spirit of Godfrey was too magnanimous to shrink from the perilous and unquiet charge which intrusted to him * Raymond dcs Agiles, p. 179. Albert. Aquensis, p. 283. Gui- bert, p. 537. fWillermusTyr. 763. GODFREY OF BOUILLON ELECTED KING OF JERUSALEM. CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 173 rather the sword of the crusader than the sceptre of a feudal king. [July 23, 1090.] He was immedi- ately conducted in solemn procession to the church of the Sepulchre, and there inaugurated in his new office; but, with the pious humility which distin- guished his character, he refused to have a regal diadem placed on his brows in that city, wherein his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns; and modestly declining the name with the decoration of a king, he would accept no prouder title than that of Advocate or Defender of the tomb of Christ. '=' The estimation in which Godfrey was held by the army, may be known from the universal lamentation which prevailed when he met with a disaster in Asia Minor. When alone in the dense part of a forest, the duke heard the cries of a poor pilgrim, who had been attacked by a bear, while cutting wood. Godfrey hastened to his relief, when the bear quitted his vic- tim to attack his new enemy. He seized the duke by the cloak and dragged him to the ground. His sword being entangled between his legs, Godfrey wounded himself severely in the thigh in attempting to draw it. Ho continued the fight, however, till the noise 1) rough t others to the spot. A knight, named Hase- quin, despatched the bear with his sword, and the * The title of Advocate or Defender of a church or monastery was familiar to the age of Godfrey : when, under that term, it was cus- tomary for ecclesiastical bodies to purchase the protection of some prince or powerful noble. But see Du Cenge v. Advocaius. 174 TUE FIRST CRUSADE. almost exhausted duke was borne to the camp, where the loss of a battle would scarcely have spread more consternation than the unhappy spectacle he afforded to the eyes of the Christians. From the election of Godfrey of Bouillon may be dated the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jeru- SELEM.'=' By that event, stability was given to the recent conquests of the crusaders; and Jerusalem, which, after a possession of more than four hundred and fifty years since its surrender to Omar, had been wrested out of the hands of the disciples of Moham- med, was converted into the capital of a Christian state. After the worthy choice of a sovereign to de- fend and govern their conquests, it remained for the crusaders only to secure their maintenance and exten- sion by regulating the martial, civil, and ecclesiastical institutions of the new kingdom. The religious zeal * Robertus Mon. p. 74-77. Albertus Aquensis, p. 275-289. Biildricus Arch. p. 132-134. Kaymond dcs Agiles, p. 175-178. Kadulphus Cad. p. 320-324. Fulchrius. Carnot, p. 396-400. Guibert, p. 533-537. Willermus Tyr. p. 746-703, &c. These references embrace the original autliorities for all the details jriven in the test of the siege and capture of Jerusalem. But, throughout the above narrative, the present compilation is also largely indebted to the labours of our modern English historians of the same events : to the LVIIIth chapter of Gibbon, which, though not exempt from some errors of fact and more obliquities of sentiment, offers a masterly sketch of the spirit and transactions of the First Crusade; and to the more recent and ample work of Mr. W\\h, who {Historij of the Crmades, vol. i. c. 1-6) has industriously exhausted the stores of the Latin chroniclers, and executed his design with equal truth and ability. CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 175 and the prudential policy of the conquerors were yet to be exercised in providing for its defence ; but their vows were already accomplished; and the great de- sign of the First Crusade had been concluded in the triumphant recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. 176 THE SECOND CRUSADE. CHAPTER n. %\ft .§cf0nij (irusabf. SECTION I.— STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. ITIIIN a short month after his elec- tion to fill the throne of Jerusalem, the pious and gallant Godfrej' of Bou- illon was summoned into the field to .... 3 sustain that arduous office of defender of the Holy Sepulchre, which his modesty had pre- ferred to the regal title. The Khalif of Egypt, roused to equal indignation and alarm by the intelligence of the fall of Jerusalem, had immediately despatched a STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 177 great army into Palestine; and the influence of a common religion and cause attracted numerous hordes of Turks and Saracens to the Fatimite standard. The usual exaggeration of the Latin chroniclers has swollen the infidel host into countless myriads : their more authentic record of the Christian force shows that the bands of the crusaders had already dwindled, since the capture of the Holy City, to five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot-soldiers. But the champions of the cross, however inferior in numbers, were flushed with recent victory, and animated by the unconquera- ble energy of religious and martial enthusiasm. The- armies met at Ascalon ; [August 12, 1099 :] and the organized and mail-clad chivalry of Europe once more triumphed over the disorderly multitudes of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. The Fatimites fled at the first charge of Godfrey and Tancred ; and the only resist- ance which the crusaders encountered was from a band of five thousand black Africans ; who, after the discharge of a galling flight of arrows from an am- bush, astonished the Latins by a novel mode of close combat with balls of Iron fastened to leathern thongs, which they swung with terrific effect. But, after the first moment of surprise, the desperate courage and rude weapons of these barbarians were vainly opposed to the sharp lances and physical weight of the Chris- tian gens-d'armerie ; and their destruction or flight completed the easy and merciless victory of the cru- saders. Of the infidel host, the incredible numbers 12 178 THE SECOND CRUSADE. of thirty thousand in the battle, and sixty thousand in the pursuit, are declared to have been slaughtered : while of the Latins scarcely a man had been killed. An immense booty, the spoils of the Egyptian camp, fell into the hands of the victors ; and the standard and sword of the khalif, being alone reserved from the division of the plunder, were piously suspended by Godfrey over the altar of the Sepulchre at Jeru- salem.* The victory of Ascalon was the last combined ex- ploit of the heroes of the first Crusade. Having ac- comjDlished their vow, and bidden a farewell to their magnanimous leader, most of the surviving princes and chieftains of the holy war departed for Europe. Boemond was established at Antioch, and Baldwin at Edessa; but of all his compeers, Godfrey could in- duce only the devoted Tancred to share his fortunes ; and no more than three hundred knights, and as many thousand foot soldiers, remained for the defence of Palestine. But the terror of the Christian arms proved, for a season at least, a sufficient protection to the new state ; the Mussulmans were easily expelled from the shores of Lake Genesareth ; and the emirs of Ascalon, Caisarea, and Acre, hastened to deprecate the hostility of the crusading king by submission and tribute. The remainder of Godfrey's brief reign was disturbed only by the intrigues of Daimbert, Arch- * Albertus Aquensis, p. 290-294. Willermus Tyr. p. 763-773. STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 179 bishop of Pisa, who had been appointed by Pope Pas- cal 11/'' to succeed Adhemar of Puj as legate of the holy see, and had now been invested with the patri- archate of Jerusalem. As chief, in this double capa- city, of the Latin church in the East, Daimbert auda- ciously claimed the disposal of those acquisitions which the heroes of the Crusade had carved out with their own good swords ; and both Godfrey and Boe- mond condescended to receive from his hands, as vas- sals of the church, the feudal investure of the states of Jerusalem and Antioch. But even this submission did not satisfy the pride and cupidity of Daimbert ; he claimed the entire possession of Jerusalem and Jaffa; and Godfrey, who shrank with superstitious horror from the idea of a contest with the church, was glad to compound with the demand of the rapa- cious prelate,f by the surrender of the whole of the * According to the vulgar belief, Pope Urban 11. died of joy on learning the conquest of Jerusalem; but, as Mr. Mills has observed, (^Hist. of the Crusades, vol. i. 268,) the decease of that pontiflF oc- curred only fifteen days after the capture of the city, and therefore too soon to have been produced by the receipt of the glad intelli- gence in Italy. ■|" Even the Archbishop of Tyre, despite of the zeal for the su- premacy of the church which he may be supposed naturally to have felt, is disgusted by the audacious pretension of the patriarch, and relates the tale with indignant candour. Willermus Tyr. p. 771. The truth is, however, that besides the intense and disinterested de- votion of Godfrey to the church, and which was one of the charac- teristics of the age, he could not dispense with the aid of the Pisans and Genoese, who were wholly under the control of Daimbert, nor 180 THE SECOND CRUSADE. latter city, and a portion, including the sepulchre itself, of the sacred capital. The patriarch further extorted the monstrous condition, that the unreserved dominion of all Jerusalem should escheat to his see, in case Godfrey died without issue. [July 11, A. D. 1100.] That event occurred too shortly for the hap- piness of a people whom the good prince governed with paternal benevolence; and to the sorrow not only of the Christian inhabitants of Palestine, but even of their Mussulman tributaries, he breathed his last at the early age of forty years, five days pre- ceding the first anniversary of his reign.* On the death of Godfrey, the barons of the Latin kingdom of Palestine indignantly refused to ratify the promised cession which the patriarch demanded ; and it was resolved that the unimpaired rights of the crown over Jerusalem should be bestowed with its temporal sovereignty. Tancred desired that the election should fall on his relative Boemond, Prince of Antioch ; but that prince had, at this critical junc- ture, been made prisoner by an Armenian chieftain, whose territories he had unjustly invaded; and a general feeling that some preference was due to the claims of the house of Bouillon, decided the choice of venture upon a quarrel with the Holy See, whose emissary the pa- triarch was. He had no alternative, but to act as he did act, or to abandon his newly acquired kingdom. * Albert, p. 294-299. Guibert. p. 537-554. Will. Tyr. p. 773- 775. STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 181 Tancred.. the barons in favour of Baldwin, Prince of Edessa. Resigning his principality to his relative and name- sake, Baldwin du Bourg, the brother of Godfrey, hastened to the Holy City; and, after some fruitless opposition, the patriarch solemnly crowned the new King of Jerusalem in the church of Bethlehem. The memory of the wrongs which he had sustained from Baldwin, inspired Tancred with a more excusable and lasting repugnance to his pretensions 5 and refusing to swear allegiance to au enemy, the Italian chieftain 182 TUE SECOND CRUSADE. retired from Jerusalem to Antioch, of which he assumed the regency during the captivity of Boe- mond. But an accommodation was eflected by the good offices of the barons; and the king and the re- gent of Antioch were left at leisure to provide for the security of their states against the common Mussul- man enemy.'-' The character of Baldwin rose with his elevation; and, on the throne of Jerusalem, he, who during the Crusade had disgusted his compeers by a selfish and treacherous ambition, displayed a dis- interested and magnanimous devotion to his regal duties, which won the respect and love of his people, and proved him no unworthy successor of his brother. During a reign of eighteen years, he not only sus- tained with zeal and ability the arduous office of defending the Latin state from the assaults of the Infidels, but extended its limits and increased its security. In these effi)rts he was much assisted by the re- mains of several armaments from Europe, which may be regarded as a supplement to the first Crusade. The spirit which had animated that enterprise still Imrned with undiminished intensity; and, in the course of a few years, Hugh of Vermandois, and Stephen of Chartres — the same leaders who had re- tired with little honour from their first expedition — the Dukes of Aquitaine and of Bavaria, the Counts of * Albert, p. 300-308. Will. Tyr. p. 775, 77G. STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 183 Burgundy, of Vendome, of Nevers, and of Parma, and of other princes, severally conducted into Asia whole armies of French, Gascon, Flemish, German, and Italian crusaders, whose aggregate has been computed by a modern writer at the astonishing number of little less than half a million of men.* These suc- cessive hosts took the same route, and encountered the same sufferings and disasters, from the dubious faith of the Byzantine court, the incessant attacks of the Turks, and the triple scourge of the sword, famine, and pestilence, which had swept off the myriads of their precursors. f But a very small proportion of those who had reached the Bosphorus, survived the horrors of the passage through Asia Minor : yet the remnant which entered Syria still fed the Christian cause in Palestine with a constant supply of veteran warriors; and by their aid, and more especially by * Mills. Hist, of Crusades, vol. i. 290, note. J Both the Counts of Vermandois and of Chartres, who found themselves compelled by the public contempt of a chivalrous age to return to Palestine, perished in the attempt to redeem the fame which they had lost by the former abandonment of their crusading vows. The great Count of Vermandois died at Tarsus of wounds received in battle with the Turks of Cilicia; and the Count of Chartres only survived his second march into Palestine to be taken prisoner and murdered in the frontier warfare by the Egyptian Mus- sulmans. He had been driven to engage in the supplementary Cru- sade by the high-spirited reproaches of his Countess Adela, daughter of the Norman conqueror, who had sworn to allow him no peace until he should repair his dishonour. He was father to Stephen, the English usurper. Orderic Vital, p. 790-793. Will. Tyr. 781-787. Albert, p. 315-325. Anna Comnena, lib. ix. p. 331. 184 THE SECOND CRUSADE. that of some maritime expeditions from the European shores, many Mussuhnan invasions were repelled, and many conquests achieved. In the third year of his reign, Baldwin I.,'-' after reducing Azotus, was enabled to form the siege of Acre; and by the opportune arrival of an armament of seventy Genoese galleys, filled with crusaders, in the following spring, that valuable conquest was completed after a protracted resistance. [A. 0.1104.] Beritus and Sarepta were also reduced and converted into Christian lordships; and Sidon became the next object of assault. With an interval of four years, two fleets of Scandinavian *In the preceding year, the King of Jerusalem had narrowly escaped captivity or death, through a rash assault which he ventured upon the Egyptian invaders of Palestine with a vanguard of only a few hundred horse. His followers were overwhelmed by superior numbers, and almost all cut to pieces ; and it was on this occasion that the Count of Chartres was taken and murdered. The story of Baldwin's escape presents one of the few gleams of generous senti- ment which relieve the dark picture of a fanatical and savage war- fare. Upon some former occasion, Baldwin had captured a noble Saracen woman, whose flight was arrested by the pangs of childbirth, and, after humanely rcnderingher every attention, had released her and her infant in safety. The husband was serving in the Mussulman ranks, when Baldwin, after the slaughter of his followers, with difficulty reached a castle, whither the victors immediately pursued him. The place was surrounded, and the capture of the King would have been inevitable, if the grateful Emir had not secretly approached the walls at midnight, announced his design of delivering the preserver of his wife and child, and, at the hazard of his own life, conveyed him in safety from the castle, which Baldwin had scarcely quitted when it was stormed, and the whole gai-rison put to the sword. Will. Tyr. p. 787, 788. For the details of this romantic incident, see Michaud, vol. i. 279. STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM, 185 crusaders, who had performed the long voyage from the Baltic through the Straits of Gibralter to the Syrian shores, [a. d. 1115;] co-operated with the Christian forces of Palestine in the siege of that city ; and although the first attempt was repulsed, the second proved successful/-' All these acquisitions were incorporated into the Idngdom of Jerusalem. But a more important exten- sion of the Christian territories in Syria had mean- while been effected, and added to the number of dis- tant principalities. The veteran Count of Thoulouse prevailed upon some of the French princes whom, in the supplemental Crusade, he had guided with the remains of their forces through Asia Minor, to subju- gate Tortosa, on the coast of Syria, for his benefit. The nucleus of a new state was thus formed, which Raymond employed his Provencal troops in extend- ing ; but he died before he could accomplish the re- duction of the city of Tripoli, the object of his ambi- tion, and the destined capital of his Oriental domi- nions. Some years afterward, that conquest was ef- fected for his eldest son Bertrand, by the King of Jerusalem, seconded by all the Latin princes of the East, and a Pisan and Genoese fleet. Tripoli, with its surrounding district and dependencies, was then erected by Baldwin into a county for the house of Thoulouse ; [a. d. 1109 ;] and this new state, which, * Albert, p. 345-365. Will. Tyr. p. 791-805. 186 THE SECOND CRUSADE. although feudally subject to the crown of Jerusalem, partook in extent and dignity rather of the charac- ter of a sovereign principality than of a mere fief, contributed much b}^ its position between the territo- ries of Antioch and Palestine to secure and cement the communication and strength of the Christian power.'-' But the affairs of Antioch were perpetually embroiled by the restless ambition of its prince. During his captivity in Armenia, the government of that state was ably administered by Tancred; but, after obtaining his release, Boemond by his refusal to acknowledge the feudal superiority of the Eastern Emperor Alexius, involved himself in a new war, in which he was assisted by the Pisans. The Byzantine arms prevailing by land, Boemond sailed to Europe to plot a diversion against the Grecian territories of his ancient enemy ; and, having succeeded by his martial reputation in assembling a large army of crusaders in France and Italy, he landed at Durazzo. Alexius was then glad to conclude an accommodation with him; and the crusading forces pursuing the usual route through the Byzantine territories to Palestine, the Prince of Antioch returned to Italy, where he died in the following year. After his decease, the noble minded Tancred continued to rule the Syrian prin- cipality, until his chivalrous career was appropriately terminated by a mortal wound which he had received * Will. Tyr. p. 701 -79G. STATE OF TUE LATIN" KINGDOM. 187 in battle ; and, after some uninteresting revolutions in the government of Antiocli, the eldest son of Boe- mond, who bore his name, finally arrived in Asia, and successfully claimed the principality as his inheritance.'^' Meanwhile, the isolated state of Edessa, surrounded on all sides by Armenian and Turkish enemies, was only preserved from destruction by the heroic valour of its count, Baldwin du Bourg, and his relative, Jos- celyn de Courtenay, a member of a noble French house, which was rendered more illustrious by his exploits in the East than by the subsequent alliance of a collateral branch with the royal blood of France, and a succession of three emperors to the Latin throne of Constantinople.-!* * Radulphus Cad. p. 327-330. Fulcher. p. 419, 420. Albert. p. 340-354. Will. Tyr. p. 792-807. Anna Comnena, lib. xiv. p. 329-419. f The adventure and vicissitudes of fortune which Joscelyn de Courtenay underwent in the East, as well as his chivalrous deeds, might form the groundwork of a tale of romance. He had ori- ginally accompanied the Count of Chartres from Europe in the sup- plementary Crusade, and settled at Edessa with his relation Baldwin, together with whom he was taken prisoner in a defeat which the crusaders sustained from the Emir of Aleppo. After five years' cap- tivity, the friends were released by the stratagem of some Armenian partizans, who, entering the fortress in which they were confined, in the disguise of monks and traders, surprised and slew the Turkish garrison. Baldwin then bestowed a portion of the Edessine territo- ries in sovereignty upon Courtenay. But, upon some jealousy, Jos- celyn was treacherously lured to Edessa by his benefactor, put to the torture, and compelled to resign his domains. Indignant at this treatment, Courtenay withdrew to Jerusalem, where his services against the infidels were rewarded by Baldwin I. with the Tiberiad 188 THE SECOND CRUSADE, By the death of his kinsman, Baldwin I., the Count of Edessa was called to receive the crown of Jerusalem. On the junction of new bands of crusaders from Eu- rope, Baldwin I. had been encouraged to revenge the incessant attacks of the Fatimite khalifs of Egypt, by an invasion of that country; and his career of victory on this expedition was cut short only by the hand of death."^ Leaving no issue, he, with his last breath, recommended his cousin Baldwin du Bourg for his successor; [A. d. 1118;] and, after the retreat of the crusading host into Palestine, which was the immediate consequence of the dejection pro- duced by his death, the Latin prelate and barons were induced, by respect for his memory, and the claims of consanguinity, as well as by the advice of Joscelyn de Courtenay, to confirm his choice. Bald- for a fief. Notwithstanding the wrongs by which his patron had cancelled former benefits, Joscelyn generously promoted his elevation to the throne of Jerusalem, and received the county of Edessa from his gratitude. Baldwin a second time falling into the hands of the infidels, after he had become king, Joscelyn obtained his liberation among the consequences of the fall of Tyre. The death of the hero at an advanced age was a worthy termination of his exploits. Being unable to sit on horseback, he was carried in a litter to the field ; the Mussulmans fled at the very report of his presence ; and he died giving thanks to Heaven that the mere fame of his ancient prowess suflaced to scatter the enemies of God. Will. Tyr. p. 853. * At El-Arish, supposed to be the ancient Rhinocorura, a frontier town of Syria and Egypt, in the year 1118, on his return from an expedition against the Soldan of Egypt. On his death-bed he re- quested that his body might be deposited beside that of his brother Godfrey at Jerusalem. ' ' ' hlll'lll ' l' STATE OF THE KINGDOM. 189 win du Bourg was therefore elected without opposition to fill the vacant throne, and immediately recompensed the services of Courtenay by resigning to him the pos- session of the county of Edessa. The principal event in the reign of Baldwin II. was the reduction of Tyre. The Doge of Venice, Ordelafo Falieri, who had led the navy of his republic on a martial pilgrimage to the coast of Palestine, was induced, after . bargaining for the possession and sovereignty of one third of that city,* to co-operate in the undertaking ; and by a siege of five months the difficult conquest was achieved. [A. D. 1124.] Tyre was erected into an archbishopric under the patriarchate of Jerusalem ; and by the cap- ture of a city, which, though fallen from its ancient grandeur, was still the most opulent port on the Sy- rian coast, and had formed the last strong-hold of the Mussulmans in Palestine, the Latin power may be * All the maritime republics of Italy, with their characteristic mercantile cupidity, extorted great commercial advantages as the price of their services to the crusaders. At Acre, the Grenoese obtained a street and many privileges in return for the aid of their fleet in the siege, (Will. Tyr. p. 791;) the Pisans, by treaty with Tancred, were rewarded in like manner for their services to the state of Antioch, with the property of a street both in that capital and in Laodicea, (Muratori, Aniiq. Ital. Med. jEvi, Diss. 30 ;) the Venetians, in ad- dition to their settlement at Tyre, received by stipulation a church and street at Jerusalem ; and throughout the Christian possessions in Palestine and Syria generally, the three republics contended, often with bloodshed, for the right of establishing places of exchange, and enjoying the common or exclusive privileges of trade. Sabellicus, Hist. Venet. dec. i. lib. vi. Marini, Storia Civ. e Polit. del. Com- mercio de' Veneziani, vol. iii. lib. i. cap. 4-6, &c. 190 THE SECOND CRUSADE. Ruins of Tyre. said to have attained its greatest consolidation and security.* When the kingdom of Jerusalem had thus acquired its utmost extent, it embraced all the country of Pa- lestine between the sea-coast and the deserts of Ara- bia, from the city of Beritus on the north to the fron- tiers of Egypt on the south : forming a territory about sixty leagues in length and thirty in breadth; and exclusive of the county of Tripoli, which stretched * Albert, p. 365-377. Fulcher. p. 423-440. Will. T>r. p. 805- 846, passim. STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 191 northward from Beritus to the borders of the Anti- ochan principality. The whole territory, both of the kingdom and county, was occupied by the warriors of the cross, upon the strictest principles of a feudal set- tlement, with all the subdivisions and conditions of tenure which belonged to that martial polity. Its adoption was suggested* not more by every feeling and custom of the age which the conquerors had * The institution of the feudal code of Jerusalem dates from the first year of the Latin conquest, and its compilation was directed by Grodfrey de Bouillon himself; who, with the advice of the patriarch and barons, appointed several commissioners among the crusaders most learned in the feudal statutes and customs of Europe to frame a body of similar laws for the new kingdom. Their digest was so- lemnly accepted in a general assembly of prelates and barons ; and, under the title of the Assises de Jerusalem, became thenceforth the recognized code of the Latin state. The original instrument, which was deposited in the Holy Sepulchre, and revised and considerably enlarged by the legislation of succeeding reigns, is said to have been lost at the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin; but, during the last agony of the expiring state, the provisions of the code, which had been preserved by traditionary and customary authority, were again collected in a written form, A. D. 1250, by Jean d'Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, one of the four great barons of the kingdom ; and a second and final revision was prepared in Cyprus, A. D. 1369, by sixteen commissioners, for the use of the Latin kingdom in that island. From a MS. of this Cypriot version, in the Vatican library, was pub- lished at Paris, A. D. 1690, by Thaumassi^re, the edition of the Assises de Jerusalem, to which we are indebted for our acquaintance with this " precious monument," as a great writer has justly termed it, "of feudal jurisprudence." But for the history of the code, see Assises de Jerusalem apud Thaumassiere, Preface. Consult also Gibbon, xi. 91-98 for a summary, and L'Esprit des Croisades, iv. 484. 192 THE SECOND CRUSADE. brought with them from Europe, than by the obvious necessity of such a state of perpetual preparation for the public defence against the incessant assaults of their infidel enemies ; and it is almost needless to repeat, that, under no other form of settlement, pro- bably, could the Latin conquests have been preserved by the scanty array of their resident defenders in so unremitting a warfare with the myriads of Turkish and Egyptian Mussulmans. At its highest computation, indeed, the feudal force of the kingdom of Jerusalem would appear very inadequate to its protection. The four great fiefs of Jaffa, Galilee, Caesarea, and Tripoli, with the royal cities of Jerusalem, Tyre, Acre, and Naplousa, and the other lordships in chief of inferior extent, which composed the whole kingdom, owed and could furnish the services of no more than two thou- sand five hundred knights or mounted men-at-arms ; and their followers, with the contingent of the eccle- siastical and commercial communities, all of which were bound to render aid to the king on lower feudal tenures than the knights' fees, constituted a militia, for the greater part, probably, of archers on foot, not exceeding twelve thousand in number.''* It may be * Gibbon (ch. Iviii.) has fallen into an error in estimating the number of knights' fees in the whole kingdom of Jerusalem, exclu- sive of Tripoli, as six hundred and sixty-six, and appears to have confounded the contingent of the four royal cities, •which alone, ac- cording to the Assises, furnished that number, with the total knightly array of the realm. Pie cites Sanutus, indeed, (^Secreta FiJdium STATE OF THE LATIN KINGDOM. 193 inferred that the whole population of martial colonists from Europe could scarcely supply even this provi- sion, scanty as it was, for the public defence ; and the policy or the domestic Avants of the conquerors encou- raged the settlement in Palestine of the native Chris- tians of Syria and Armenia, and even of Mussulman tributaries for the cultivation of the soil and the sup- ply of mechanical labour. From the commingling of blood between the crusaders and all these people in the enfeebling climate of the East, was produced a spurious and effeminate race, contemptuously desig- nated by the writers of their age as Pidlani, or Pou- Jahhs, who had so utterly degenerated from the valour of their European fathers, as to fill the land without contributing to the strength of the state.* Cmcis, lib. iii.) as stating the number of knights' fees in each of the great baronies of Jaffa, Galilee, and Cassarea, at one hundred only, but the very superior authority of the Assises rates them expressly at five hundred each. Assises, c. 324-331. * Vide Du Cange, Gloss, v. Pullani. 13 194 THE SECOND CRUSADE. sectio:n' n. ORIGIN OF THE ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. HE feudal army of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the casual reinforcement of new crusaders from Europe, formed not the only defences of Palestine. The union of fanatical and martial ardour gave birth to two famous orders of religious chivalry, which were specially enrolled under the banners of the Cross; and the Christian cause in the East was long sustained by the emulous valour, though not unfrequently injured by the less worthy rivalry, of the Knights of the hospital of St. John and of the Temple of Solomon. The origin of both these re- markable institutions, which rose to celebrity by '' ^.M>llM^ l'''ffTTv. \i'^^i'Hlil,il,|»^ INSTITUTION OF THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. J95 martial achievement, may be traced to purposes simply of pious and practical benevolence. Long- before the era of the Crusades, some Italian merchants purchased a license from the Mussulman rulers of Jerusalem to found in that city an hospital, together with a chapel, which they dedicated to St. John the Eleemosynary — a canonized patriarch of Alexandria — for the relief and wayfaring entertainment of sick and poor pilgrims. By the alms of the wealthier Chris- tian visitants of the Sepulchre, and by charitable con- tributions which the merchants of Amalfi zealously collected in Italy, and as religiously transmitted to Jerusalem, the establishment w\as supported ; and its duties were performed by a few Benedictine monks, with the aid of such lay brethren among the European pilgrims as were induced to extend their penitential vows to a protracted residence in the Holy Land.'-' Perhaps through the habitual respect of the Mohammedan mind for charitable foundations, the Hospital of St. John might escape, but certainly it was suffered to outlive, the storms of Egyj^tian and Turkish persecution; and when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the crusaders, the house was joyfully opened for the reception and cure of the wounded warriors. The pious Godfrey and his companions were edified by the active and self-denying benevo- lence of the brethren of the hospital, who not only de- *Will.Tyr.p.934,935. 196 THE SECOND CRUSADE. voted themselves to the care of the suffermg, but were contented with the coarsest fare, while their patients were supplied with bread of the purest flour. By the grateful munificence of Godfrey himself, the hospital was endowed with an estate in Brabant, its first foreign possessions ; many of the crusaders, from religious motives, embraced its charitable service; and the society speedily acquired so much respect and importance, that the lay-members, separating from the monks of the Chapel of St. John the Almo- ner, formed themselves into a distinct community, assumed a religious habit, — a long black mantle with a white cross of eight points on the left breast — and placed their hospital under the higher patronage of St. John the Baptist. [A. d. 1113.] By the patriarch of Jerusalem, their triple monastic vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, were accepted; and a bull of Pope Paschal II. confirmed the institution, received the fraternity under the special protection of the Holy See, and invested it with many valuable privi- leges.* The next transition of the Order to a military cha- racter is less accurately recorded; but the change may be referred in general terms to the reign of Bald- win II.: since the services in arms of its brethren under that prince are acknowledged in a papal buU.f * See the Statutes of the Order iu Vertot, Eist. dcs Chevaliers de St. Jean de Jerusalem. Appendix. t Ibid. ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. 197 In fact, the constant jeopardy in which the Latin State was placed by the assaults of the Infidels, ad- mitted, as we have seen, of no exemption to any com- munity in the kingdom, whether lay or ecclesiastical, from actively contributing to the public defence; and the martial habits and feelings of the crusaders of knightly ranlc who had enrolled themselves in the fraternity of the Hospital, would naturally suggest the honourable preference of a personal to a deputed service. The revenues of the Order, by the increase of its endowments, were already far more than suf- ficient to supply the charitable uses of the Hospital ; and it was magnanimously resolved to devote the surplus to the defence of the state. The former soldiers of the Cross resumed their military, without discarding their religious garb and profession ; the union of chivalric and religious sentiment, however discordant in modern ideas, was equally congenial to the spirit of the age, and proper to the great cause of the Crusades; and thenceforth the banner and the battle-cry of the knights of St. John were seen and heard foremost and loudest in every encounter with the Paynim enemy. The government of the Order was vested in the grand-master and general council of the knights, all of whom were required to be of noble birth ; a distinct body of regular clergy was provided for the offices of rehgion ; and a third and inferior class of sergeants, or serving brethren, both swelled the martial array of the knightly fraternity, and dis- 198 THE SECOND CRUSADE. (Inind-Mtialrr (/ /V Knighift of Malta. cli.arged the civil duties of the hospital.* The re- nown which the order acquired in the fields of Pales- tine soon attracted the nobility from all parts of Europe to its standard ; admiration of both its pious and chivalric purposes multiplied, throughout the West, endowments of land and donations of money ; * Vertot iihi supra. ORDERS OF RELIGIOUS CHIVALRY. 199 Grand- Marshal of the Knights of Malta. and the rents of nineteen thousand farms, adminis- tered by jDreceptories or commanderies, as the prin- cipal houses were termed, which the knights esta- bhshed in every Christian country, supplied a per- petual revenue to their hospital in Palestine, and served to maintain its regular military force."^' * Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. 200 THE SECOND CKUSADE. When the Christians were driven from Palestine, the knights of St. John settled on the island of Cyprus, whence they were soon driven by the Turks. They then went to the Island of Rhodes. [1310.] From thence they were driven to Malta, which was given to them by Charles V. in 1530. Their position on this island has been retained to the present day, and they bear the name of Knights of Malta. The institution of the Order of the Temple of Solo- mon was of later date than the adoption of a military character by the friars of St. John; [A. u. 1118 ;] and the Templars in their pristine state of humility and poverty owed more obligations to the Hospitallers, by whom they were originally fed and clothed, than their successors, in the days of their pride and power, cared to acknowledge or strove to repay. The ori- ginal design of their association differed from that of the Hospital, in having united from the outset the martial with a charitable profession. Even after the conquest of the Holy Laud by the crusaders, the roads to Jerusalem from the ports and northern frontiers of Palestine continued to be infested by bands of Turks, who indulged at once their thirst ol" plunder and their hatred of the Christian name, by the robbery and murder of the numerous defenceless pilgrims from Europe. The dangers which beset these poor votaries to the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre 202 THE SECOND CRUSADE. from the cruelty of the Infidels, roused the pious com. passion and chivalric indignation of Geoffroy de St. Aldemar, Hugh de Payens, and other French knights in Palestine, who bound themselves mutually by oath to devote their lives to the relief and safe conduct of all pilgrims. As their association partook of a re- ligious character, they followed the example of the fraternity of the Hospital by assuming the monastic vows and garb; and when Baldwin I. marked his ap- probation of their purpose by assigning them part of his own palace for a residence at Jerusalem, the title which they adopted of the poor soldiery of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, was suggested by the con- tiguity of their quarters to the site of that sacred edifice. The maintenance which they at first received from the charity of the Hospital of St. John was soon more independently provided by the respect which was won for their order throughout Christendom through the grateful report of the pilgrims; with the increase of their means and numbers they aspired to extend their humbler service of guarding the roads of Palestine to the more glorious adventure of offensive warfare against the Infidels; and, thenceforth, in wealth, privileges, and power, and in heroic enter- prise, the history of their rise differs little from that of the Hospitallers. The constitution of the two orders was similar; and the number of preceptories and estates possessed by the Templars in every king- 204 THE SECOND CRUSADE. dora of Europe/^ were immense sources of influence and opulence, second only in degree to those of the elder fraternity .f But in honourable estimation and martial renown, no superiority could with justice be claimed by either order; and admission into tlio ranks of both was sought with equal avidity by the flower of the European chivalry. In externals, the knights of the Temple were distinguished from their rivals by their use of a long white cloak or mantle, with a straight red cross on the left breast. The banner and seal of the order in the maturity of its splendour also bore a cross gules in a field argent : for its earlier and well-known device, presenting the singular emblem of two men on one horse, although intended by the pious humility of its founders to com- memorate the original poverty of the brotherhood, was not long permitted to survive the condition which it had expressed.J * In England, both orders early acquired laru'C possessions. The principal preceptory of each was established in London : that of the Hospitallers at Clcrkenwell, and of the Templars in Ilolborn, whence it was removed into Fleet Street. Stow, lib. iv. 02. Dudgale, Origines Jurld. c. 57. f Both Hospitallers and Templars were prohibited from possessing any private property ; but their vow of poverty, by a convenient interpretation, was only personal, and did not extend to their enjoy- ing in common the enormous wealth of their orders. J For the rise of the Order of Templars, see jKf.s.si/», the twelfth book of William of Tyre. Also Knyghton, p. 2382, Brompton, p. 1008, and Matt. Paris {IHst. Minor.) p. 410, &c. FALL OF EDESSA. 205 SECTIOJ^ m. FALL OF EDESSA.— THE FREACHING OF THE SECOND CRUSADE. ,, URING the reign of Bald- win II. the safety and ex- tension of the kingdom of Palestine were largely in- debted to the prowess of the knights of the Hospital and Temple; and before the decease of that mo- narch, the two orders had become the most powerful champions of the Latin 206 TlIK SECOND CRUSADE. power. As Baldwin II. had no sons, he obtained the consent of his nobles and prelates to nominate, as his successor, Foulques, Count of Anjou, whom he had married to his eldest daughter Melisinda. [a. d. 1131.] In his 3'outh, Foulques had visited Palestine as a cru- sader, at the head of one hundred knights and men-at- arms, and had left so favourable an opinion of his chi- valric qualities on the mind of Baldwin that, nine years afterward, when he had become a widower, the king invited him from France to receive the hand of the princess. Dazzled by the prospect of a royal alliance and a matrimonial crow^n, the Count aban- doned his extensive French fiefs to his son;"'' and on his arrival in the Holy Land, his nuptials with Me- lisinda were solemnized, and he Avas immediately acknowledged as the heir to the throne. The death of Baldw^in, which shortly ensued, gave him the undis- * That son was Geoffroy Plantagenet, the husband of the Empress Matilda, and father of Henry II. It is strange that William of Tyre, the eulogist of Foulques, should represent him as sixty years of age when he arrived in Palestine for the second time to celebrate h'\e. nuptials with Melisinda; for the learned Benedictine authors of V Art de verifier les Dates (Article, Comtes d' Anjou) prove that ho was born only A. D. 1092; and his reign in Palestine commenced A. D. 1131. His family had long been famous for their passion of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land; and one of them, who travelled thither before the era of the Crusades, having bound hi.i servants by oath to do whatsoever he should ref|uire, compelled them publicly to scourge his naked back before the altar of the Sepulchre, while in penitential cries he implored the pardon of Heaven for his sins. Malmsbury, p. 807. FALL OF EDESSA. 207 puted possession of the crown; and, during a reign of thirteen years, Foulques, without performing any bril- liant achievement, sufficiently emulated the courage and virtues of his predecessors in the defence and government of the kingdom. His decease left the state in the hands of his widow Melisinda, and their son Baldwin III., then only thirteen years old, who were crowned together; and it w^as soon after the martial sceptre of the house of Bouillon had thus de- volved upon a woman and a minor, [A. d. 1144,] that the Christian power in the East received the first dis- astrous shock from the Mussulman arms. Since the death of Joscelyn de Courtenay, the defence of the principality of Edessa had been feebly sustained by his son, who inherited neither his valour nor ability. But its safety was more fatally compromised by the selfish indifference or still more criminal treachery of the princes of Antioch, who coolly witnessed the dan- ger of a state which, by its position beyond the Euphrates, formed the great advanced post of the Latin settlements in Syria; and which, therefore, every motive of honour and policy should have im- pelled them to succour. Profiting by the disunion of the Christians, Zenghi, the Turkish Emir of Mosul or Aleppo, whose martial activity and skill had already rendered his power formidable during the life of Joscelyn de Courtenay, suddenly entered the State of Edessa with an overwhelming force ; laid siege to its capital; and, before the levies of the kingdom of 208 TUE SECOND CRUSADE. Jerusalem could march to its relief, took the city by storm/'' The intelligence of the fall of Edessa startled the Christian residents in Palestine from lethargic indif- ference to an alarming discovery of the renovation of the Turkish power on that frontier; [a. d. 1145 ;] and the first burst of shame and consternation excited among the guardians of the Ploly Land by the dis- graceful loss and impending danger, was naturally fol- lowed by earnest solicitations for succour from Europe. Throughout every country of Western Christendom, the appeal was received with a general enthusiasm little inferior to that which, half a century before, had stimulated the great design of the first Crusade. The martial and religious feelings of Europe were provoked to indignation by the report of the triumph of the infidels; and this universal spirit was already pre- pared for a second mighty efibrt of fanaticism, when it was roused into action by the master mind of the age. [114G.] The report of the calamity which had befallen, and of the increasing perils which threat- ened, the Christian cause in Palestine, affected his ardent temper with powerful emotions of religious zeal ; and his resolution to preach a new Crusade was supported by the private friendship and the public wishes of Pope Eugenius III., as well as by the re- t Will. Tyr. p. 844-893. For the exploits of Zenghi, sec also De Guignes, Hist. G6ii. c/es Huns, vol. ii. lib. xiii., and the Arabic writers therein abridged. FALL OF EDESSA. 209 spect and influence which his virtues and talents had deservedly acquired throughout Europe. Not less than the distinguished part which he had already filled in ecclesiastical affairs, do the nobility of his birth, the uniform sanctity of his life, and the really great attainments of his genius and learning, place him at an immeasurable height of personal dig- nity above the obscure and ignorant fanatic who had first lighted up the flame which he now rekindled. But St. Bernard could only emulate the successful mission, though he might slight the memory,'-' of the Hermit Peter; the impassioned oratory of the pro- found theologian could not produce more astonishing results than the rude eloquence of the Solitary of Amiens ; and, in the relation of its effects, the preach- ing of the second Crusade forms but a copy of that of the first. Louis VII. of France, by his firmness in repressing the rebellious feuds of his turbulent vassals, had se- curely established the royal authority ; and the tran- quil condition of his kingdom left him at liberty to gratify, in a foreign and sacred enterprise, the thirst of glorious adventure natural to a young and success- * In one of his extant epistles, St. Bernard speaks contemptu- ously of his predecessor the Hermit, as vir quidam, Petrus nomine, cujus et vos, (ni fallor,^ ssepe. mentionem audistis, &c.; (a certain man, by name Peter, of whom, if I mistake not, ye have often heard men- tion made ;) and attributes to his misconduct the destruction of the people in the first Crusade. Opera Sancti Bernardi, Ep. 863. Ed. Mabillon, Venet. A. D. 1750. 14 210 THE SECOND CRUSADE. ful monarch. But even the strong desire of chival- rous achievement was secondary in the mind of this religious prince to motives of piety, however mis- taken ; and feelings of deeply cherished remorse for his involuntary share in the horrible catastrophe at Vitry, and of less reasonable compunction for a long disregard of the papal anathemas, powerfully impelled Louis to offer" that atonement, which a false supersti- tion deemed most acceptable to Heaven, by embarking in the great warfare against the infidel assailants of the Holy Land. When, therefore, St. Bernard an- nounced his mission, it was eagerly promoted by the French king ; and, in the great assembly of his nobles and people which he convoked at Vezelay, the same spectacle was repeated, which had been witnessed at the Council of Clermont before the first Crusade. From the innumerable multitudes which filled the plain and covered the neighbouring heights of Vezelay to their summit, cries of " The cross, the cross ! it is the will of God !" rent the air and interrupted the vehement appeal of the preacher ; and, before the assembly broke up, Louis himself, with his queen, the too famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a host of the nobility and knighthood of his realm, had been signed with the sacred emblem of their vows. From France, St. Bernard with indefatigable zeal proceeded into Germany ; [March 31, 1146 ;] and his course from the Rhine to the Danube, and from the recesses of the Swiss mountains to the plains of Northern Italy, was 2:-^^^'- ^ FALL OF EDESSA. 211 Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. everywhere signalized by the same successful exertions of his fervid zeal and impetuous eloquence. At his soul-stirring exhortations, the great feudatory princes of Bavaria, Bohemia, Carinthia, Piedmont, and Styria, with a crowd of inferior chieftains, assumed the cross ; and the conversion of the Emperor Conrad III., after some struggle between the sense of political interest and of religious duty, completed the triumph of the pious orator.''' * Odo de Diagolo, (apud Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. I^rangois,} vol. xii. 91-93. Otto Frisingensis, (apud Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital.) vol. vi. c. 37. These two writers, the first a Frenchman, and the latter a German, who himself accompanied the emperor Conrad to Palestine, form — together with the anonymous author of the 212 THE SECOND CRUSADE. The personal motives of St. Bernard were disinte- rested, pure, and elevated ; his zeal was equally free from all alloy of gross fanaticism, selfish ambition, or worldly vanity ; and its mistaken direction was the only error which he shared with the most virtuous and devout of his contemporaries. But the intrinsic greatness of his mind is not the less perceptible through this fatal delusion ; and in nothing is his superiority to the spirit of the age in which he lived more conspicuous, than in the wisdom and humanity which tempered his enthusiasm. The first of these qualities was signally displayed in his refusal to ac- cept the command of the intended expedition to the Holy Land, as a station which he felt and confessed his own unfitness to fill from want of martial expe- rience and bodily health. His humane exertions to avert from the Jews in France a repetition of the hor- rid persecution which their fathers had suffered from the fanaticism of the first crusaders, attest his libe- rality, and were extended to the protection of that unhappy people, with earnest and consistent benevo- lence, in Germany and other countries. He sternly silenced, by the exertion of his delegated authority from the pope, the preaching of a fanatical German monk, who had endeavoured to provoke a general massacre of the Jews; and his injunctions in circular Gesta Inidovici Regis YII. (in Duchesne, vol. iv.) — our chief con- temporary authorities for the transactions of their respective country- men in the second Crusade. FALL OF EDESSA. 211 letters to the crusaders to abstain equally from the murder and spoliation of an unoffending people, breathe the genuine Christian precepts of mercy and justice. The doctrines thus inculcated, indeed, were so new to his age, that fully to appreciate the virtu- ous and truly pious efforts of St. Bernard in his labour of charity, they must be contrasted with the mon- strous opinion then prevalent among all orders of society, that to shed the blood and despoil the wealth of infidels was an allowable vengeance, and even a positive duty, against the enemies of God. The prac- tical application of this inhuman and impious belief to the plunder and slaughter of a rich, usurious, and defenceless race, offered too tempting a prey to the cupidity of the bigoted populace and the yet more malignant instigation of numerous debtors, to be wholly averted even by the eloquent and powerful denunciations of the preacher whose voice had awakened all Europe to arms. Notwithstanding the anathemas of St. Bernard, the Jews were in many places robbed and murdered ; and in Germany espe- cially they were saved from extermination only by the imperial protection.* * Pfeffel, Hist, d' AUemagne, vol. i. 309. 214 THE SECOND CRUSADE. **»v3;* * Will. Tyr. p. 955-974. De Guignes, lib. xiii. 230 THE THIRD CRUSADE. jugation of the country wliich he had protected from the Turks. A pretence for this aggression was found or framed on the report of a secret negotiation be- tween the Vizir Shawer and Noureddin ; and Ahneric, drawing together one of the most numerous and best appointed armies which had ever been assembled under the Christian banners in Palestine, suddenly crossed the Egyptian frontiers, attacked Pelusium, sacked that city with horrible cruelty, and from thence advanced to the gates of Cairo. But his per- fidy and the ferocious conduct of his followers roused the unwarlike Egyptians to desperation; and while the people of Cairo prepared for a vigorous defence, and implored the distant aid of their ancient Turkish enemies for their deliverance, the Vizir Shawer baited the avarice of the king of Jerusalem by the gift of an hundred thousand pieces of gold, and the promise of nine times that amount as the price of peace. The greedy Almeric suffered himself to be amused by these negotiations, until Shiracouch with a large army appeared on the frontiers, and the crafty vizir, then throwing off the mask, joined the Turks with his troops, and recommenced hostilities. The Christian army was now unable to cope vvith the united forces of the Egyptian and Syrian Moslems ; the Greek em- peror had failed in rendering the promised co-opera- tion of his navy; and the king of Jerusalem closed his iniquitous scheme of conquest by a disgraceful re- treat into Palestine. But the Egyptian vizir imme- RISE OF SALADIN. 231 Shiracouch. diately fell a victim to his own tortuous policy. For, now jealous of the influence which the victorious Turk had acquired over the feeble mind of the Khalif? he conspired against the life of so dangerous a rival; and Shiracouch, anticipating his treachery, caused him to be seized and put to death, and himself to be invested with the dignity of vizir*. * Will. Tyr. p. 974-980. 232 THE THIRD CRUSADE. The new ruler of Egypt survived his elevation only two months ; and his death prepared the rise of his nephew, the famous Sallah-u-deen or Saladin. This scourge of the Christian fortunes in Palestine had attended his uncle in all his expeditions into Egypt ; and in the second of those campaigns had particularly distinguished himself by a skilful and resolute, though unsuccessful, defence of Alexandria. But the politi- cal genius and ambition of the young Curdish chief- tain had remained concealed from the world, and, per- haps, from himself, in the pursuit of licentious plea- sures ; and, on the death of Shiracouch, when the haughty pretensions of elder leaders to the vizirship alarmed the jealousy of the feeble Khalif of Egypt, the aj)parent weakness of Saladin induced that sove- reign to nominate him to the vacant dignity. If the disgust and disaffection of the disappointed emirs at first rendered Saladin the powerless servant of the khalif, his skilful use of the royal treasures soon pur- chased for him the return, and Avon the affections of his former rivals ; and the new vizir, from the minis- ter, easily became the master of the khalif, and the real lord of Egypt. A single bold measure, favoured by the mortal illness of the Khalif Adhed, was now sufficient to complete the Turkish conquest of that country. One of the followers of Saladin, taking pos- session of the principal pulpit of Cairo, substituted the name of the Khalif of Bagdad for that of the Egyptian sovereign in the public prayers, as the true RISE OF SALADIN. 233 commander of the fliithful ; the people, from indiffer- ence or fear, silently acquiesced in the change ; and the green emblems of the sect of Ali were everywhere displaced by the black ensigns of the Abassidan tenets. The natural death of Adhed, who expired in ignorance of the event, in a few days completed this great politi- cal and religious revolution, by w^liich the Fatimite dynasty of Egypt was extinguished, and that country, after a schism of two centuries, was restored to the orthodox communion of Islamism. The Abassidan Khalif of Bagdad, whose dignity as the spiritual chief of that faith was still revered, and whose nominal functions of temporal sovereignty were dictated by his Turkish masters, was made to sanctify the usurpation of Saladin, as the vizir of the Sultan of Damascus in Egypt ; and, as long as Noureddin lived, the youthful conqueror was overawed by his power, and, though not without some symptoms of impatience, affected a duteous submission to his will. But, when the death of the sultan* released him from the necessity of fur- * The character of Noureddin is among the brightest in Moham- medan history ; for political ability and valour were the least of his great qualities. A Mussulman writer declares that the catalogue of his virtues would fill a volume; and among these, his justice, cle- mency, and piety extorted a still stronger testimony even from his Christian foes, who had sufficient reason to fear and detest so powerful and deadly an enemy. Thus William of Tyre, after numbering him among the bitterest persecutors of the Christian name and faith, adds, ■princeps tamen Justus, vafcr, pjrovidns, et secundum gentls suse tra- ditiones rcligiosus. (Nevertheless he was a just, crafty, and far-see- ing prince, and religious according to the traditions of his race.) A 234 THE THIRD CRUSADE. ther dissimulation, Salaclin threw off the mask ; gra- dually extended his influence and dominion over Syria and parts of Arabia and Armenia ; and deposing the young and helpless sons of Noureddin, finally united the Mussulman states from the Nile to the Tigris under his single empire." [a. d. 1173.] By every motive of religion and policy, the new and puissant lord of Syria and Egypt was urged to attempt the expulsion of the detested enemies of his faith from the intervening territory of Palestine ; hut he was long obliged to suspend his ultimate designs against the Christians, by the more immediate neces- sity of consolidating his dominion over his Mussulman opponents. Meanwhile, the Latin kingdom, through its intestine disorders, was fast falling into a state of weakness, which promised to deliver it an easy prey to so vigorous an assailant. On the death of Almeric, which shortly followed that of Noureddin, the crown trait of the frugal and rigid integrity with which he abstained from applying the public treasures to his domestic uses, has often been repeated from the pages of D'Herbelot. To some expensive request from the best beloved of his wives, this absolute lord of the gorgeous East would only reply, " Alas ! I fear God, and am no more than the treasurer of his people. Their wealth I cannot appropriate ; but three shops in the city of Hems are yet my own, and those you m:iy take, for those alone can I give." Bihliothbque Oricntalc, Art. Noureddin. » Will. Tyr. p. 980-995. Bih. Orient. Art. Salahrddin. Also Bohadin, Vita Sahidiniy (Schultens,) p. 1-10. Abulfcda, (in Ex- cerpt Schultens,) p. 1-13. De Guignes, lib. xiii. (vol. ii. p. 201- 211.) RISE OF SALADIN. 235 of Jerusalem devolved on his son, Baldwin IV.; but this prince was afflicted with leprosy, and felt himself so unequal to the toils of government, that he com- mitted the regency of the kingdom to his sister Sybilla and her second husband Guy de Lusignan. [A. D. 1173,] a French knight,* to whom she had given her hand after the death of her first lord, a Count of Montferrat. But Lusignan was destitute both of talent and courage ; his despicable character and unmerited elevation provoked the scorn and in- sulted the pride of the barons of Palestine ; their dis- affection was fomented by the intrigues of Raymond II., Count of Tripoli, a man himself capable of every perfidy; and the whole kingdom w^as distracted by the selfish conflict of factions. To terminate their struggle, the royal leper was at length compelled to make a new settlement of his realm, by which, abdi- cating the crown in favour of his infant nephew, Bald- win v., the son of Sybilla by her first husband, he committed the person of his young successor to the * Lusignan was a native, or at least a subject, of the French do- mains of Henry II. of England, who banished him for the treacherous murder of the Earl of Salisbury, on which he assumed the cross, the usual resource of malefactors, and came to seek his fortune in Pales- tine. So contemptible was the estimation in which he was held even by his own kindred, that when his brother heard of his subsequent elevation to the throne of Jerusalem, he ironically exclaimed, " Surely, since the barons of Palestine have made Mm a king, they would have made me a god if they had known me." Hoveden, p. 514. 236 THE TIIIUD CRUSADE. Saladin. protection of liis relative, Joscelyn de Courtena}', titu- lar Count of Edessa/-' the custody of the fortresses of Palestine to the two military orders, and the general regency of the kingdom to the treacherous Count of Tripoli. Baldwin IV. survived this disposition only three years ; his own decease was quickly followed by the suspicious death of his nephew ; and Sybilla, sup- ported by the patriarch and the grand-master of the Templars, who hated Raymond of Tripoli, obtained * This Joscelyn de Courtenay was the gramlson of the hero, and the last of the three counts of Edessa, who bore the same name. After the loss of the Edessene territory, and the marriage of his sister with Almeric, the royal favour had invested him with exten- sive fiefs in the kingdom of Palestine ; but, leaving no son, the male line of the Asiatic branch of the Courtenays became extinct on his death. Lignagcs assim. 428 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. SECTION V. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. "^'HE appalling intelligence of the dreadful catastrophe which had extinguished the Christian State of Antioch, roused the Papal Court from a long and selfish apathy to the affairs of the East; and the unabated zeal with which Louis IX. of France had already contemplated a re- newal of his pious services on the imaginary cause of Heaven, was now quickened by the approbation of Clement IV. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 429 The piety of Louis was sincere and ardent, and in another age it would, doubtless, have taken a more rational direction, but in the thirteenth century it was the mere embodiment of a passion for the de- livery of the Holy Sepulchre, which neither his past experience nor his sufferings, great as the latter had been, could eradicate; and after thirteen years spent at home in the wise and temperate exercise of his regal functions, he resolved again to devote his men- tal energies and his material resources to the organi- zation of a new Crusade. Three years were consumed in preparations for this final effort to recover Pales- tine, and on the 4th of July, 1270, he set sail with his fleet from the port of Aigues-Mortes, and in a few days reached the roadstead of Cagliari in Sardinia, where he anchored, and called a council of war of his barons and counts to deliberate on the course it was most proper to pursue ; when it was determined by a majority, and in obedience to the king's secret wishes, to attempt the reduction of Tunis, the king of which country and his people Louis hoped to convert to Christianity. The circumstances which led to this extraordinary resolution are but imperfectly known, though they may probably be as safely referred to the intensely devotional temperament of the monarch, as to the interested representations of his brother, Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, whose subjects were molested by the piratical practices of the Moors ; but however this may be, the desire to visit Tunis, 430 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. and to reclaim its inhabitants had taken so deep a hold on the mind of Louis, that he was heard to say, before he left France, that he would willingly spend the rest of his life in a dungeon, away from the light of the sun, if, by such a sacrifice, he could accomplish this cherished object.'^* Many of his wisest advisers tried to turn him from this fatal determination, but in vain; and the good but mistaken king landed his army on the Tunisian territory on the 24th of July, and encamped it on the site of the ancient Carthage. The Moors did not oppose its debarkation, but on the approach of the fleet fled in dismay, and the Saracenic prince, for whose special benefit this detour had been made, treated the Frankish monarch as an enemy, and threatened, at the head of a hundred thousand men, to drive him into the sea. No encounter, how- ever, took place between the hostile troops, for, beside that Louis avoided one as incompatible with the spiritual design of his mission, the Moors had no wish to measure swords with the Christian chivalry; but they harassed the Christian army by desultory attacks on outposts and stragglers, and by intercept- ing their supplies ; and these distractions, aided by the heat of the climate, the want of water, and the neces- sity of feeding on salted provisions under an African sky, caused a pestilence to break out in the crusading camp, which, in a few short weeks, nearly decimated * Micliaud, iii. p. 35. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 431 the hapless army. Night and day the Frankish soldiers were under arms, but the enemy was fugi- tive, and when sought was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile death sped his way through the ranks. Fatigue, famine, and disease did their work but too surely. The dead were so numerous that it was found impossible to bury them. The ditches of the camp were filled with carcasses thrown in by the heap. The stench emitted corrupted the air, and de- spair and misery overwhelmed the unhappy cru- saders. The Count de Vendome, the Count de la Marche, Gaultier, de Nemours, the Lords de Mont- morency, de Pienne, de Bressac, and many others of the highest condition, fell before the fatal epidemic ; and when the Duke de Nevers, the king's son, who had been born at Damietta during the captivity of his father, died, the hero and the monarch yielded to the man and the father, and he wept bitterly. At length the king himself fell ill; the rude medical art of the age did its best for him, but in vain — the hand of fate was on Louis of France — and he expired tran- quilly in his camp, on the shores of the ancient Numidia, on the afternoon of the 25th of August, 1270. — Let us now return to the progress of the Eighth and last Crusade. In the defence of a land and a cause which, during two centuries, had continually exercised the valour,' and prodigally wasted the blood of the chivalry of Christendom, the last successful exploits of heroism 432 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. Ediicnd I I ) Liifflimd were reserved for an English prince, the descendant of those ilhistrious houses of Normandy and Planta- genet, whose prowess had so often been signalized on the same ensanguined field. Prince Edward, the future monarch of England, accompanied by his faith- ful consort Eleanor, and attended by his kinsman Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, four other earls, four barons, and a gallant but slender train of knights and soldiers, which did not exceed one thou- sand men, had joined the French army in Africa be- fore the death of Louis IX. ; and the abandonment of the Crusade by their allies, which followed that event, might have absolved the small English force from the prosecution of their vows. But their valiant and THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 433 magnanimous leader swore, that though every other follower should desert him, he would still proceed to Palestine, attended only by his groom ;* his spirit was emulated by every English heart ; and after refresh- ing their strength during the winter in Sicily, he sailed in the spring with his gallant band to Acre.-j- The arrival of Edward in that port once more re-' kindled the hopes of the desponding Latins ; and the long memory of the prowess of Coeur de Lion had still retained sufficient influence in the East to appal the spirit of the Moslems at the intelligence, that another hero of the lion-hearted race approached to uphold the banner of the Cross. The Sultan Bondocdar, who had carried his ravages to the gates of Acre, imme- diately retired in discouragement at the report. J The broken remains of the Latin chivalry of Palestine eagerly gathered around the standard of Plantagenet ; and though the total force which the Christian State * "Juravit solito Juramento per sanguinem Domini, inquiens; Quamvis omnes commilitiones et patriotae mei me deserant, ego tamen, Fowino custode palufridi mei, (sic enim vocabatur curator equi sui,) intrabo Tholomaidam." (He swore by his usual oatb, the blood of the Lord, saying: — "Although all my fellow-soldiers and compatriots desert me, yet I, with Fowin, the keeper of my palfrey, will enter Tolamais.") Kishanger, Contin., Matt. Paris, p. 859. f Rishanger, p. 858, 859. Matt. Westminster, (Ed. Francofurti, A. D. 1601,) p. 400. Chronica de 3IatIros, (apud Gale et Fell, vol. iii.,) p. 241. Chronicon Thomse Wikes, p. 94. Chronica Walteri Hemingford, p. 590. (Both in Gale, vol ii.) J Both Rishanger and Matthew of Westminster (ubi supra) de clare that, but for the opportune arrival of Edward, Acre was to have been surrendered to the sultan within four days. 28 434 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. could muster, including his English followers, did not exceed seven thousand men, Edward boldly mar- shalled this scanty army for offensive hostilities against the infidels. Advancing from Acre, his achievements justified the general expectation both of his enterprising courage and of his military skill. His first exploit, the surprise and defeat of a large body of the Mussulman forces in the field, was suc- ceeded by the assault of Nazareth ; and in the dread- ful slaughter which preceded and followed the capture of that city, he equally emulated the chivalric valour and the fanatical cruelty of the earlier champions of the Cross.* But the reduction of Nazareth closed his brief career of victory ; his English followers fell rapid victims to the Syrian climate, and the hero himself was already stretched on a sick couch, when he nar- rowly escaped death from the poisoned dagger of an assassin. Whether the villian was the mere hired emissary of a Mussulman emir, or one of the few sur- vivors of that fanatical sect of the mountain chief, which the Moguls were supposed to have extirpated,^ * In liis first surprise of the infidels, Edward "invenit Sarraccnos et usores eorunl cum parvulis suis in lecto: quos omnes," coolly con- tinues the chronicler of Melrose, " ut hostes Christians fidei occidlt in ore gladii," — (he found the Saracens with their wives and little ones in bed — all of whom, as enemies of the Christian faith, he slew with the point of the sword.) P. 242. f The destruction of the Syrian assassins by the Tartars is noticed by Matt. Paris, p. 821, (^ad an. 1257.) ''Circulo ejusdem anni, Tartar! detestabiles Assassinos detestabiliores, &c., destruxerunt," — THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 435 Attempt to a.sn.issinale Edward. is uncertain; but he easily obtained a private audience of Edward under pretence of a confidential mission ; and, while the prince was reading his cre- dentials, he drew a hidden poniard, and aimed a blow at his intended victim. The attack was so unex- pected, that Edward received several wounds before he recovered from the surprise, when, vigorously strus^ciinof with the assassin, he felled him to the floor, and instantly despatched him with his own (In the course of this year the detestable Tartars destroyed the more detestable assassins.) In the first part of a tedious Dissertation on the Assassins, by M. Falconet, read before the French Academy of In- scriptions, and of which a translation is printed in Johnes's Joinville, (vol. ii. p. 287-328,) an attempt is made to prove that Paris was in error ; that it was only the assassins of Persia, a kindred and more numerous sect, which the Tartars destroyed ; and that those of Syria, according to Abulfeda, were extirpated by the Mamelukes about A. D. 1280. 436 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. dagger. As the weapon had been poisoned, the life of the prince was for some time in imminent danger; but a leech in his service undertook to cut away the infected flesh from his wounds, and the operation was successful.* After his own restoration to health, the wasting effects of disease among his followers ; the total inade- quacy of his remaining force to any further enterprise of importance; the failure of other Christian princes to despatch their promised succours to his aid; and intelligence from England of his father's dangerous illness and anxiety for his return rj" all conspired in inducing Edward to listen to overtures for peace, which were extorted from the Sultan of Egypt, not less by the experience of his prowess than by some new troubles which had broken out in the Mussulman * Rishanger, p. 859, 8G0. Matt. West. p. 401. Cliron. de Mailros, (which suddenly breaks off in the midst of its tale of the attempt to assassinate Edward,) p. 241, ad Jin. Wikes, p. 96-98. Heming- ford, p. 590-592. Not one of these writers, who were contemporary, or nearly so, with the event, knew any thing of that beautiful fiction, the creation of a much later age, which ascribes the recovery of Edward to the affectionate devotion of his consort Eleanor in sucking the venom from his wounds. Hemingford, whose account is very circum- stantial, and has principally been followed in the text, notices the presence of Eleanor, the demand of the leech that she should be re- moved from the chamber of her lord before the operation was per- formed for his cure, and the gentle violence which was necessary to withdraw her from the scene. P. 591. f The letter from Henry III., pressing his son's return, may be seen in Rymer, (Ed. by royal command, 1816,) vol. i. p. 487. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 437 States. The mutual necessities of the sultan and of the English prince, therefore, produced the conclusion of a truce between the infidels and the Christians in Palestine for ten years; and after a residence of four- teen months in the Holy Land, and the accomplish- ment of a seasonable treaty, which had alone arrested the progress of the Mameluke arms and prolonged, for another brief period, the precarious existence of the Latin State, Edward bade adieu to the Syrian shores, and sailed, with his few surviving followers, for his native land.* [A. d. 1272.] After the departure of the English prince, and while the remaining Christian possessions on the coast of Palestine were left in the peace which he had won, some last abortive efforts were used to interest Europe in their preservation. Pope Gregory X., who was re- siding in Palestine when he was surprised with the news of his elevation to the tiara, [a. d. 1274,] and who had been a sorrowing witness to the helpless con- dition of the Latin State, made an earnest endeavour, immediately after his arrival in Europe, to arouse the sovereigns and nations of Christendom to the prepa- ration of a new Crusade. But the solitary example, given by one pontiff, of a deep sincerity in the cause, only served to prove the utter extinction of the cru- sading spirit. Notwithstanding his labours, seconded by the authority of a general council of the church * Matt. West, p. 402. Wikes, p. 99. Hemiogford; p. 592. 438 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. which he assembled at Lyon, he could only obtain hollow promises of devotion to the service of the Cross from those princes who desired to perpetuate his favour, and who, after his death, evaded the fulfil- ment of their reluctant vows. Meanwhile, however, the Christians in Palestine, during eight years, were permitted, by the good faith or distraction of the Mus- sulman councils, to enjoy unmolested a peaceful re- spite of their fate ; and that interval was filled only by the struggle of royal pretensions in the expiring Latin kingdom. Since the death of the Emperor Frederic IL, the baseless throne of Jerusalem had found a claimant in Hugh de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, who, as lineally descended from Alice, daughter of Queen Isabella, was, in fact, the next heir, after failure of issue by the marriage of Frederic and lolanta de Brienne. His claims were opposed by the partisans of Charles of Anjou, King of the Sicilies; that wholesale speculator in diadems, who, not con- tented with the iniquitous acquisition of his Italian realms, and the splendid dream of dismembering the Greek Empire, extended his grasp to the ideal crown of Palestine. He rested his claim upon the double pretensions of a papal title to all the forfeited dignities of the imperial house of Hohenstauffen, and of a bar- gain with Mary of Antioch; whose rights, although she was descended only from a younger sister of Alice, he had eagerly purchased. But the prior title of the house of Cyprus was more generally recognisod in THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 439 Palestine; the coronation of Hugh had been cele- brated at Tyre ; and the last idle pageant of regal state in Palestine was exhibited by the race of Lu- signan.''' At length the final storm of Mussulman war broke upon the phantom king and his subjects. It was twice provoked by the aggressions of the Latins them- selves, in plundering the peaceable Moslem traders, who resorted, on the faith of treaties, to the Christian marts on the Syrian coast. After a vain attempt to obtain redress for the first of these violations of inter- national law, Keladun, the reigning sultan of Egypt and Syria, revenged the infraction of the existing ten years' truce by a renewal of hostilities with over- whelming force ; yearly repeated his ravages of the Christian territory ; and at length, tearing the city and county of Tripoli — the last surviving great fief of the Latin kingdom — from its dilapidated crown, dic- tated the terms of peace to its powerless sovereign. [a. d. 1289.] The example of this punishment, and * Mr. Hallam, following Giannone, has fallen into some inaccuracy, on no very important matter, indeed, in stating (^Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 371, 8vo. ed.) Mary of Antiocli to have been the legitimate heiress of Jerusalem in 1272, while the royal line of Cyprus, descended from Alice, eldest sister of her naother, Melesinda, had, of course, a better title. Until that race should be extinct, the house of Anjou could only rest their pretensions on the lapsed rights of Frederic II. ; but these had expired with his posterity; and, in short, as observed by Mr. Mills, (^Crusades, vol. ii, p. 269,) "the House of Anjou had no juster claim to the throne of Jerusalem, than they had to the throne of the Two Sicilies." 440 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. the authority of a feeble government, were insufficient to prevent a repetition, two years later, on the part of the lawless inhabitants of Acre, of similar outrages upon the property and persons of the Mussulman merchants; and the Sultan Kliatil, the son of Ke- ladun, was provoked, by a new denial of justice, to utter and enforce a tremendous vow of extermination against the perfidious Franks. At the head of an im- mense army of two hundred thousand men, the Ma- meluke prince entered Palestine, swept the weaker Christian garrisons before him, and encamped under the towers of Acre. [A. d. 1291.] That city, which, since the fall of Jerusalem, had been for a century the capital of the Latin kingdom, was now become the last refuge of the Christian population of Palestine. Its defences were strong, its inhabitants numerous; but any state of society more vicious, disorderly, and helpless than its condition, can scarcely be imagined. Within its walls were crowded a promiscuous multi- tude, of every European nation, all equally disclaim- ing obedience to a general government, and enjoying impunity for every crime under the nominal jurisdic- tion of independent tribunals. Of these there were no less than seventeen ; in which the papal legate, the king of Jerusalem, the despoiled great feudatories of his realm, the three military orders, the colonies of the maritime Italian republics, and the representatives of the princes of the West, all arrogated sovereign rights, and all abused them by the venal protection of of- THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 441 fenders. When, therefore, the devoted city was in- vested by the infidels, we need not wonder that, amid the common danger, her councils were without concert, and that, with an immense population, the vast circuit of her walls was inadequately manned. All the wretched inhabitants who could find such opportunites of escape, thronged on board the numerous vessels in the harbour, which set sail for Europe ; and the last defence of Acre was abandoned to about twelve thou- sand men, for the most part the soldiery of the three military orders."^' From that gallant chivalry, the Moslems encoun- tered a resistance worthy of its ancient renown and of the extremity of the cause for which its triple fra- ternity had sworn to die. But the whole force of the Mameluke empire, in its yet youthful vigour, had been collected for their destruction. During thirty-three days, the beseigers incessantly plied a long train of balistic and battering engines of huge dimensions and prodigious power against the defences of the city; various parts of its double wall were beaten down or undermined; and at length the fall of a principal work, of which the fatal importance is expressed in the original relations of the siege by its title of ^' the Cursed Tower," opened a yawning breach into the heart of the place. At this awful crisis, the recreant Lusignan, who wore the titular crown of Jerusalem, * De Gruignes, lib. xxi. Sanutus, lib. iii., pars, xiii., c. 20. Gio- vanni Villani, {in Script. Rcr. Ital., vol. xiii.,) lib. vii. c. 144. 442 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. basely abandoned his duty, and proved himself desti- tute of the only qualities which might have conferred lustre upon his ideal dignity. Secretly withdrawing in the night from his post, he seized a few vessels in the port, and sailed away with his followers to Cyprus. Even his cowardly flight could not shake the con- stancy of the Teutonic knights whom he had deserted in the Cursed Tower, and who continued to guard its ruins. But, with the following dawn, their post was attacked by the infidels in immense force ; several times were the assailants repulsed with dreadful car- nage, and as often were the slain replaced by fresh bands of the Moslems. At length, after most of the German cavaliers had fallen in the breach, the infidels, in overpowering numbers, forced a passage over their lifeless bodies ; a torrent of assailants pouring into the place swept its few surviving defenders before them ; and Acre was irretrievably lost. Bursting through the city, the savage victors pursued to the strand the unarmed and fleeing population, who had wildly sought a means of escape, which was denied not less by the fury of the elements than by the want of suf- ficient shipping. By the relentless cruelty of their pursuers, the sands and the waves were dyed with the blood of the fugitives ; all who survived the first hor- rid massacre were doomed to a hopeless slaverj^ ; and the last catastrophe of the Crusades cost life or liberty to sixty thousand Christians. Even in the fatal hour in which Acre fell, the he- THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 443 roes of the Hospital and Temple preserved and dis- played their unconquerable spirit. Led by their grand-master, the knights of St. John sallied from the devoted city, carried havoc into the heart of the in- fidel leaguer, and when, overpowered by numbers, all but seven of their order, with a few followers, had been left on the field, this gallant remnant fought their way to the coast, and efiected an embarkation. Meanwhile, for three days after the fall of the city, the Templars continued to defend their monastic for- tress within its Avails. Their valiant grand-master, Pierre de Beaujeu, whose military skill and personal heroism had been conspicuous throughout the siege, was killed by a poisoned arrow ; but the obstinate re- sistance of his brethren obtained from the sultan the promise of a free and honourable retreat. When the Red Cross-Knights issued from their fortress on the faith of this assurance, they were assailed by the law- less insults of the Mussulman hosts ; they impatiently renewed the contest ; and most of their number were slain on the spot. The few who escaped forced a pas- sage with their swords through the Mameluke lines, fled into the interior country, and even there resumed the war, until they were ultimately driven again to the coast, and efiected their escape by sea to Cyprus. Theirs was the last effort for the defence of Palestine ; the Christian population of the few maritime towns which had yet been retained fled to Cyprus, or sub- mitted their necks, without a struggle, to the Moslem 444 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. yoke; and, after a bloody contest of two hundred years, the possession of the Holy Land was finally abandoned to the enemies of the Cross.* The fall of Acre closes the annals of the Crusades. But the mere loss of that last possession of the Latins on the Syrian shore would not have put a term to the hopes and efforts of Christendom for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, if the spirit itself which prompted every preceding enterprise for the same object had not already expired. A century earlier, the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin had sufficed to fill all Europe with grief and horror, and had impressed the three greatest monarchs of the aore with the conviction that the demands of religion and honour rendered it equally imperative upon them personally to revenge the dis- grace of Christendom, and to chastise the insolence of the enemies of God. At a still later epoch, even the fall of a remote dependency of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem had awakened the most intense anxiety and alarm in Europe for the safety of the Holy Se- pulchre ; and the catastrophe of Edessa had attracted the sovereigns and national chivalry of France and Germany to the plains of Asia. At every cry for succour from the Christians in Palestine, until the fatal issue of the Fifth Crusade, myriads of warlike and fanatical volunteers, of the noblest as well the meanest blood of Europe, had eagerly responded to * Sanutus, lib. iii. pars. xii. c. 21-23. De Guignes and G. Villani, uhi supra. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 445 the call ; and their devotion to the cause was much more frequently chilled and diverted from its support by the tortuous and sordid policy of the papal see, than by any lack of sincerity or change of purpose in themselves. Yet, after the fall of Acre, no exhorta- tions which succeeding pontiffs strenuously repeated for fifty years, could rouse the princes and people of the West to any earnest design for the revival of the Crusades.* Nor was it that Europe had become less martial or restless in the fourteenth than it had been in the twelfth century. Warfare still constituted the only serious occupation of her princes and nobles — its pursuit the only path of honourable distinction, its image almost their only pastime; and the flame of chivalry — which we have elsewhere characterized, after a great writer, as at once a cause and conse- quence of the Crusades — never burned so brightly as in the age which immediately succeeded the extinction of those enterprises. The cessation of the Crusades was assuredly, then, not produced by any abatement of the love of arms, or of the thirst of glory in the chivalry of Europe. But the union with these martial qualities of that fanatical enthusiasm which inspired the Christian * An enumeration of these abortive eiforts of the popes to rekindle the enthusiasm of Europe would be superfluous in this place, but may be found in Mr. Mill's History of the Crusades, vol. ii. ch. vii. — a work to which we take this last occasion of expressing our great obligations. 446 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. warriors of the eleventh century, had been slowly dis- solved ; and the abandonment of Palestine to the un- disturbed possession of the Moslems is clearly to be traced to the gradual but total exhaustion in the European mind of the same superstitious phrensy which, pervading every rank of society, had wrought such stupendous efforts for the possession of the Holy Land. The long duration of this wild passion, indeed, is far more astonishing than its final decay ; and, in- stead of being a subject of surprise that it at length expired, it may rather provoke our wonder that so strange an enthusiasm should so tenaciously have sur- vived all experience of disappointment and calamity. In the thirteenth century, however — a full generation before the fall of Acre — we begin clearly to discern the decline of the crusading spirit in the evidence both of historical and poetical literature ; and when the pious follower of St. Louis, and faithful chronicler of his deeds, refused to accompany him in his second ex- pedition,* — when the religious obligation of wresting * " The King of France and the King of Navarre pressed me strongly to put on the Cross, and undertake a pilgrimage with them; but I replied, that when I was before beyond sea, on the service of Grod, the officers of the King of France had so grievously oppressed ray people that they were in a state of poverty, insomuch that we should have great difficulty to recover ourselves; and that I saw clearly, were I to undertake another Croisade, it would be the total ruin of my people. I have heard many say since, that those who had advised him to this Croisade had been guilty of a great crime, and had sinned deadly." Joinville, (Johnes's Edition,) vol. i. p. 241. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 447 the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidels became the subject of bold and jocular denial in a popular poem/' — we may feel assured that the noble and the minstrel already spoke the altered sentiments of their times. The causes to which this extinction of fanatical zeal in Europe may be referred are obvious, and have often been exposed. Among them, the most immediate was, assuredly, a growing conviction of the hopelessness of success. After the signal and tremendous failure of the Fifth Crusade in Egypt, it may be doubted whether any mighty armament could ever again have been directed to the same scene, if the personal cha- racter and influential example of St. Louis, rather than the spontaneous ardour of his nobles, had not produced his two calamitous expeditions. In the in- termediate enterprise of the Emperor Frederic II., his tardy if not reluctant voyage to the Holy Land, as well as the whole tenor of his conduct respecting the affairs of his Eastern kingdom, was evidently induced * In the Fahliaux of Le Grand d'Aussy, (vol. ii. p. 163,) trans- lated in the kindred work of Way, (vol. ii. p. 227,) is preserved a very curious specimen by Rutuboeuf, a French rhymer of the age of St. Louis, in ■which a crusader and non-crusader are made to discuss the duty of assuming the Cross. Throughout this dialogue, under pre- text of rebuking the levity of the non-crusader, it is evident that the sly minstrel intended to ridicule the expiring folly of his times ; nor would it be easy, in more serious terms, to offer a better exposure of the practical evils which the Crusades had inflicted upon their vo- taries, than is presented in this lively satire. 448 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. much more by political than religious considerations ; and the efforts of our two English princes, Richard of Cornwall, and his nephew Edward, if inspired by a more generous motive of glory or devotion, were un- sustained examples of individual heroism, w^hich served only to prove that their spirit was no longer supported by the popular enthusiasm and hopes of their age. None of those leaders were followed by the immense and various array of the Western nations, which had thronged around the consecrated banners of their precursors in the first five Crusades ; the defence of Palestine itself was abandoned almost entirely to the military orders ; and perhaps it was only the institution of those martial and religious fraternities, and the revolutions and consequent weak- ness of the Mohammedan States, which protracted the struggle through the last seventy years of its duration. But, beyond all question, the primary cause which both defeated the object of the Crusades, and awakened Christendom from its long dream of fa- natical madness, was the conduct of the papal see. Sincere as Pope Urban II. and some of his successors undoubtedly were in the promotion of these under- takings, the temptation of diverting the general en- thusiasm to the profit of its own spiritual and tem- poral power soon became too strong to be resisted by the selfish ambition and cupidity of the court of Rome. Accordingly, the service of the Cross became THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 449 the frequent pretence for pecuniary exactions to fill the papal coffers f next, crusaders were allowed and even encouraged to commute their vows for money ; and, finally, the same spiritual indulgences, or pardons for sin, which had been the great inducement to persons of all ranks to engage in the earlier Crusades,f were openly and shamelessly sold. Moreover, by an' easy enlargement of the crusading principle, the sacred duty and merit of combating the infidel foes of God was first extended to the extirpation of heresy among Christians by the sword ; and this doctrine re- quired to be stretched but a point further, to reach all the temporal enemies of the church, or, in other words? every political opponent of the reigning pontifil Innocent III. was the first of the popes who applied the religious enthusiasm of Europe to this double object of taxation and persecution. The Crusade which he directed against the Albigenses, was the earliest diversion of the martial fanaticism of the Middle Ages from its original object; and the in- dulgences which he lavished upon all who assumed * Sufficient examples of this fact, in the case of England, have already heen cited in the present chapter from Matthew Paris, p. 339, 461, 463, &c. ; nor can it be doubted that the same conduct was pursued in other parts of Europe. f The promise of spiritual indulgences and pardons is expressly mentioned by Villehardouin as among the primary motives of the warriors who engaged in the Fourth Crusade. Et mult $en croisi- erent, porcr, que li pardons ere si gran. Par. No. 1. (And many took the Cross because that the pardons were so great.) 29 450 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. the Cross in that atrocious warfare, were more ex- tensive than any which had been promised for the de- liverance of the Holy Sepulchre. The conduct of In- nocent in converting the Saladine tithe, which had been first levied by general and voluntary consent throughout Europe, into a compulsory tax upon the clergy, was, indeed, more legitimate in its purpose. But though, as we formerly observed, that loftiness of spirit which characterized that celebrated pontiff may redeem his memory from any suspicion of mean or sordid motives, the example which he thus set had very important results under his successors, not only in disgusting the ecclesiastical orders with the prosecu- tion of holy wars, which were made the pretext of plundering their revenues, but also in encouraging that spirit of resistance to the papal exactions which may be numbered among the remote causes of the Reformation.''' It can scarcely be necessary, in this j)lace, to remind the reader of the more flagrant abuses of the cru- sading principle which w^ere so frequently committed by the successors of Innocent III. During a period of forty years, every war in which they pursued their * This is evidently the opinion of a writer of great research and celebrity, though he shrinks from stating it broadly : Peut-on en con- clure que les Croisades soient la cause de la guerre des Hussites et de la Reformation de Luther ? (May we not then conclude that the Crusades were the cause of the war of the Hussites, and of the Reformation of Luther ?) Heeren, Essai sur Vlnfiuence des Croi- sades, Paris, 1808, p. 176. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 451 unrelenting hostility against the imperial house of HohenstaufFen, from the first excommunication of Frederic II. until the fall of his grandson Conradin, was audaciously invested with the title of a Crusade, and its supporters were rewarded with the same privi- leges as the Christian warriors in Palestine. One of these pontiffs, Clement IV., during the contest be- tween Charles of Anjou and Manfred for the crown of the Sicilies, even prevented large bodies of cru- saders from proceeding to the Holy Land, by inviting them, with the promise of equal indulgences, to ex- change the perilous fulfilment of their vows in the East, for the lighter service of attacking his political enemy in Italy. It would be a waste of words to enlarge upon the serious injury sustained by the Christian cause in Palestine through these abuses, or to describe the ridicule and scandal which were thrown upon the crusading principle itself, by its prostitution to pur- poses too grossly temporal long to delude even the blindest superstition. Nor were the shameless ex- pedients less palpable by which the papal court and its agents, in the same age, frequently impeded the religious enteriDrises, and disappointed the zeal of society, in order to embezzle the immense sums which were collected for the ostensible service of the Cross. Of the extent of these frauds we have cited abundant evidence, even from the monastic annalists of our own country j and their effects could not fail to extinguish 452 THE LAST FOUR CRUSADES. in disgust the last fitful gleams of the crusading fanaticism, since such fruitless exactions fell less severely on the jDOor and ignorant commonalty, than on those ecclesiastical and noble orders who, by their riches and intelligence, were more interested, and better qualified to expose and resent the dishonest artifices of the papal policy.* * The popular belief, -which held that pilgrimages to various shrines of Europe were scarcely less efl&cacious than the more arduous journey to the Holy Land, has sometimes been numbered among the causes of the decline of the crusading spirit ; but it seems to have been rather a consequence of the impossibility of visiting Je- rusalem. At least, the institution of the sacred festival of the jubilee by which Pope Boniface VIII. drew an immense concourse of pil- grims to Rome, in the last year of the thirteenth century, to receive a general pardon for their sins, must be regarded only as a profitable expedient consequent upon the loss of the holy places in the East, which had previously attracted the stream of devotion. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 453 CHAPTER VI. OTons^unuts at i\it €xu^)in. HE causes which produced and ex- tinguished the Crusades are so evident, as to have led most inquirers to a com- mon conclusion on their nature and operations; but, in their estimate of the consequences of these memorable expeditions upon the political, moral, and religious aspect of society, scarcely two historians of eminence are agreed. 454 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. If we are to believe one celebrated writer, the most sanguinary and destructive wars which fanaticism ever produced, were the sources of unmingled good ;* if we are to adopt the judgment of another, yet more dis- tinguished, the principle and effects of the Crusades were analogous in their baneful tendency, and equally injurious in their influence upon knowledge and civili- zation.f According to a third reasoner, those enter- prises enormously augmented the papal power, and aggravated the prevailing superstitions;! by a fourth they are numbered, with some hesitation, indeed, among the beneficial causes of the great reformation of religion. II Again, though the first writer to whom we have here alluded thought he could discern in these wild expeditions the earliest gleams of light, which tended to dispel barbarism and ignorance, and w^as led to discover in them the dawn of all social im- provement in Europe, the ablest historian of the Cru- sades in our own times has denied almost all per- manence to their effects."[[ And lastly, while a disci- ple of the blind school of fatalism has seen in the con- * Robertson, History of Charles V. dr., Introduction, sec. 1. f Gibbon, Decline and Fall, &c., ch. Ixi. I Mosbeim, Eccles. History, Cent. xi. p. i. c. 1. sec. 8. II Heeren, Essai sur V Influence des Croisades, p. 139-176. ^ Mills, History of the Crusades, vol. ii. c. 8. Sucb seems also to be the opinion of Mr. Hallam ; altbougb it is to be gathered less from expressed reasoning than from the absence of much reference to the effects of the Crusades, in his View of the Progress of Society during the Middle Ages. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 455 flict of Europe and Asia only some fortuitous advan- tages,* the eloquent champion of a religious philo- sophy of history has, with a far happier spirit of reverential inquiry, been contented to trace the bene- ficial designs of Omnipotence through the mingled evil and good of this, like every other, convulsion of the political and moral world.f The value of these various and conflicting opinions may perhaps best be ascertained by a distinct, though, within our narrow limits, necessarily a brief exami- nation of the forms in which the Crusades were likely to act upon the condition of Europe: in their influ- ence upon religion, upon international power, upon internal government, upon commerce and learning, and lastly upon social morals and civilization in general. I. With respect to religion, when we consider that the Crusades were the sources of a vast increase of power and wealth, and consequently of luxury and corruption, in the Romish Church; when we re- member that the detestable establishment of the In- quisition, and the scandalous trafiic of indulgences for sin at least originated in the perversion of the crusad- ing enthusiasm; it is impossible to deny the conclu- sion, that the immediate effects of that fanatical s|)irit were extremely j^ernicious. And it is probably the superficial view of these temporary evils which has * Heider, Outlines of a PMlowpliy of the History of Man, quoted in ■j" Miller, Philosophy of Modern History, vol. iii. lect. xxiv. 456 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. misled many writers who, in natural and well-founded disgust at the cruelty and impurity with which they stained the holiness of Christianity, have overlooked the salutary reaction which they necessitated. Such inquirers, in fact, in passing an unqualified judgment on the mischievous results of the Crusades, have not distinguished between the proximate and ultimate consequences of those enterprises. For if, as they un- doubtedly did, the corruptions of the Church of Kome produced the reformation of religion, the very evils engendered by the Crusades, in nurturing and matur- ing the intolerable growth of ecclesiastical abuses, must have essentially hastened the season of their correction. II. The consequences of the Crusades, in affecting the distribution of international power, is a question which admits of less doubt. The opinion, once enter- tained, that those expeditions were instrumental in arresting the progress of the MMiammedan arms, seems universally exploded; nor can it be proved that they ultimately produced the least change in the ex- ternal disposition of any of the European states, except the maritime Italian republics. We have seen, indeed, that applications from the Greek Empire to the pope and the western potentates, for succour against the Seljukian Turks, preceded the First Cru- sade ; and it is true that Alexius Comnenus profited * Hallam, Middle Ages. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 457 by the successes of the Latins, to recover a con- siderable part of Asia Minor from the infidels. But, before the crusaders traversed that region, the Selju- kian power had already obeyed the usual fate of Asiatic dynasties, in internal decay and partition; and the real peril of Constantinople from the Turks in that age was already past, when her emperor was oppressed by the arrival of allies scarcely less danger- ous. The temporary advantages which the Greek Emperor extracted from the victorious passage of Godfrey of Bouillon and his compeers were never re- newed; and we may agree with a judicious historian,* that whatever obligations might be due to the first crusaders from the Eastern Empire, were cancelled by their descendants one hundred years afterwards, when the fourth in number of those expeditions was turned to the subjugation of Constantinople itself. Certain it is, that the Byzantine Empire never recovered from the shock and dismemberment which attended the Latin conquest; and the silent revival and growth of the new Turkish power in the mountains of Asia Minor, which finally overthrew the Greek Empire and planted the banner of the Crescent on the towers of Constantinople, were in no degree connected with, and could not be retarded by, the contest of the cru- saders with the Sultans of Damascus and Cairo for the possession of the Syrian shore. Li Western Europe * Hallaiu, Middle Ayes, vol. ii. p. 182. 458 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. itself, the Crusades left absolutely no consequences in the political connection of the Latin kingdoms; and we have only to compare their extent at the close of the 11th and of the loth centuries, to assure ourselves that neither the fate of a single dynasty, nor the boundaries and relative strength of nations, had at all been affected by the vicissitudes of the fanatical con- test in which they had shared. „ III. The influence of that contest on the internal government and constitution of the feudal kingdoms of Europe is a distinct and more difficult problem. Among the benefits, in these respects, which had been attributed to the Crusades, are the firmer establish- ment of regal authority, the depression of the feudal aristocracy, the gradual deliverance of the rural popu- lation from predial servitude, and the growth of mu- nicipal freedom. The era of the Crusades was as- suredly one of active and rapid improvement in social order and civilization; but, so far as opposite changes are discernible in the feudal kingdoms at the close of the Crusades, such results can scarcely, upon any sound principle of reasoning, be referred to a single and common cause in the influences of those enter- prises. Now, the same period witnessed the triumph of the crown over feudalism in France, the foundation of constitutional freedom upon the ruins of royal tyranny in England, and the completion of the aris- tocratic and municipal privileges of Germany. In the first of these countries, it has been proved, that of all V CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 459 the great and arriere fiefs, the annexation of which to the crown consoHdated the royal power during the Crusades, not one lapsed by the extinction of a feudal house in those wars, and only one, the county of Bourges, appears clearly to have been acquired by purchase from a chieftain who had taken the Cross.* In England, on the contrary, if the Crusades had any ^ effect upon the regal authority, it was injurious. The sale of the royal domains by Richard I. to defray the cost of his expedition to Palestine, tended, indeed, to throw the crown, by the dimunition of its revenues, into dependence upon the aristocracy; but the cir- cumstances which favoured the struggle of that body against his successors — the mingled tyranny and pu- sillanimity of John, and the total incapacity of his feeble son — were altogether foreign to the present subject of inquiry. In Germany, it is needless to re- mind the reader, that the fall of the house of Ilohen- stauffen, and the consequent extinction of the imperial authority, were as totally unconnected with the result of the Crusades. In a word, how is a belief in the general depression of the feudal aristocracy, through their share in those costly and distant enterprises, to be reconciled with their triumph, in the same ages, over the royal and imperial power in England and in Germany ? * Heeren, Essai sur V Influence des Croisades, p. 181-185 ; Mills, Hisiorij of the Crusades, yo\. ii. pp. 351-354 ; and the authorities there cited. 460 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. Equally difficult would it be to show any percept- ible amelioration in the condition of the peasantry of Europe through the influence of the Crusades; for, at the close of the 13th century, the chains of feudal tyranny remained unbroken ; the mass of the rural population was still in bondage to the soil, and, in the following age, the frightful insurrections of the populace in France and England reveal the con- tinuance of that wretched state of servitude which goaded their order to desperation."^' There is, there- fore, neither a shadow of evidence, nor even a proba- bility, to warrant the hypothesis, that the condition of the serfs of the feudal system was improved by the events of the Crusades; scarcely any contemporary though accidental changes, in this respect, can be traced in the same period; and the relaxation of predial servitude must be referred altogether to later ages. There is, however, more reason to conclude, though * It is singular that Gibbon, while denying in general all beneficial consequences to the Crusades, and contending that they checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe, should number them "among the causes which undermined the Gothic edifice" of Feu- dalism ; and assert that the poverty of the barons, whose estates were dissipated in these expeditions, extorted from them " those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, and secured the farm of the peasant." Of such manumission there is no evidence whatevc r. It is no less singular that the great historian, in adopting this fanciful theory, should have overlooked, or at least omitted, all consideration of the real and positive benefits which accrued to commerce from the Crusades. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 461 rather from general deductions than special proofs, that the growth of municipal independence was at least favoured by the Crusades. Not that even this assertion is to be received without great qualifica- tion; for the liberties of the inland cities of Northern Italy arose before the commencement of those enter- prises, and were lost before their conclusion;* in Germany, also many towns on the Rhine had already, in the 11th century, obtained important privileges from Henry IV., in reward for their fidelity to that emperor, during his disastrous contest with the papacy ;f and in our own country, the chartered rights of cities flowed exclusively from the crown under circumstances which bear no imaginable rela- tion to crusading incidents. But, throughout the continent north of the Alps, and in Germany espe- cially, during the 12th and loth centuries, there ap- pears so remarkable an advance in the liberties and consequent jorosperity of numerous towns, that it is natural to attribute some share in the successful struggle of their inhabitants against aristocratic op- pression to the frequent absence of the most active and enterprising of their feudal seigneurs and neigh- bours in the holy wars ; and still more to the com- * " At the latter end of the 13th century, there were almost as many princes in the north of Italy, as there had been free cities in the preceding age." Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 407. f Heeren, Sur VlnjlxLenee des Croisades, p. 247, 248, with the authorities there quoted. 462 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. mercial impulse which was excited by those enter- prises. IV. If on any point, indeed, we may safely dissent from the conclusions of those historians who have seen no beneficial results in the Crusades, it will be in remarking the obvious effect of the Latin expe- ditions to the East, in enlarging the commerce of Europe. The rapid extension of the trade of the maritime Italian republics is clearly referable to their share in the Crusades, not only in the mere transport of warriors and pilgrims for hire, but in the warlike naval co-operation which won for them numerous lucrative establishments in the Levant. Thence they drew and poured into Europe the rich products of the East, and accumulated a commerce which, though not previously altogether unattempted, had acquired little activity until the commencement of the Crusades. Nor were its benefits by any means confined to Italy, or even to the shores of the Mediterranean; for, by inland communication, they were spread among the free cities of Germany, and, through the Straits of Gibraltar, to those English and Flemish ports, which formed the only entrepots for the mer- chandise of the Italian republics, and of the Hanse Towns of the North. It is not, therefore, too strong an assertion, that the Crusades were more instru- mental in the dissemination of commerce throughout Europe, than any other circumstances, until the dis- CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 463 covery of the New World, and the accomplishment of a maritime passage to India. V. But no kindred injQuence of the Crusades can be traced in the diffusion of lettered knowledge. If^ in- deed, those enterprises had enriched the Western World with the precious stores of the ancient Greek literature, the result would more than have com- pensated for the political injuries which the crusaders inflicted upon the worthless and tottering edifice of Byzantine power. But the spirit of the ignorant Latins was still too barbarous to profit by a collision with the more cultivated, though perverted, intellect of the Greeks; the mutual hatred and contempt of the two races disdained all communion ; and so far were the literary treasures of Constantinople from awaken- ing the curiosity of her French captors, that the de- struction of many of the Greek classics, still extant in the loth century, is notoriously ascribable to the three calamitous conflagrations which attended the Latin conquest of the Eastern capital.* Nor, even, was any knowledge of the language of Greece imported into the West by the crusaders; and the true restorers of Greek learning in the Latin world were Petrarca and Boccaccio, whose exertions, in the next century after the Crusades, were aided by circumstances upon which those wars could have left no control. Nor * See the authenticated catalogue of these losses in Heeren, pp. 413, tl4. 464 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. can any part of the illumination for which Europe was indebted in the Middle Ages to the letters and science of the Arabians, be more correctly ascribed to the occupation of Palestine by the Franks. For the intellectual splendour of the eastern khalifate was extinct before the First Crusade; the rays of light diffused from that source had long previously pene- trated into the West through Spain and Italy ; many Latin translations of the Arabic writers had been pre- pared in those countries; and Toledo, Salerno, and Cassino were flourishing schools for the transmuted philosophy and learning of the Mohammedans.* Lastly, if the Crusades had exercised any decided influence on letters, we might expect to find its traces in the native and romantic poetry of the West, of which the darling theme was most congenial to the chivalric spirit of such enterprises. Apart, however, from the general and connecting link of chivalry, the subjects even of Trouveur and Troubadour contem- porary song do not much abound with references to the adventures of Paynim war. Some oriental colour- ing was, no doubt, transfused through the strains of the numerous minstrels who followed their lords to Palestine; but it is a singular fact, that, except in two, which relate the deeds of Godfrey of Bouillon and Richard Coeur de Lion, the Crusades do not form the subject of the romances of chivalry.f It has * Mills, Crusades, vol. ii. pp. 360-364. ■\ Idem, vol. ii. p. 367, and Dunlop, History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 140. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 465 been acutely remarked, that those expeditions were, perhaps, too recent, and too much matters of real life, to admit the decorations of fiction;* but neither do they appear to have engrossed more attention, as sub- jects of authentic narrative, than the other political events of the times; nor to have particularly quick- ened that fervour of historical composition which is usually awakened by great events, and tends by its excitement to stimulate the intellect of an age. In this respect, notwithstanding the natural interest and richness of their materials, and the spirit-stirring cha- racter of their details, the Crusades did not elicit any striking improvement; and though there is no lack of chroniclers of the Holy Wars, they are scarcely more numerous, or of higher merit, than the contem- porary national annalists of the same ages. VI. That the new blending of so many masses of men of various climes and manners in a common cause — the commingling, as it were, for the first time, of the great family of nations — and the general habit of foreign and distant travel — must altogether have given a mighty impulse to society, and dispelled many clouds of ignorance, in which the previous stagnation of intercourse had thickly shrouded the countries of the West — can hardly, v/e think, be doubted by any inquirer whose judgment has not been misled to the maintenance of some preconceived and favourite Dunlop, iibi siqmi. 30 466 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. theory. But, it has been triumphantly asked,* if some benefits were thus necessarily communicated to Europe, what were they? Specific proof may, in this spirit, be vainly demanded of a general consequence, which, from its very nature, admits of none. Yet no man has denied the striking and steady progress of civilization after the 11th century; and our historian of the Middle Ages, in his view of society, has even marked the close of that century which is identical with the commencement of the Crusades, as the point which separates the extreme darkness of barbarism in Europe, from the dawn of a progressive renovation.* If the Crusades, by the stimulus which they gave to the commercial and general communion of nations, were not the principal causes of this nascent improve- ment during the 12th and 13th centuries, what other attributes, peculiar to the times, can be pointed out, which may be believed to have exercised so strong and universal an influence, as those enterprises with all their attendant circumstances? It has been said that the Crusades were altogether pernicious to morality, and that the absurd and cruel principles of superstition and fanaticism which they fostered were equally detrimental to religion. But here again is room for a caution against the confounding of proxi- mate and ultimate consequences. As the dissolute, as well as the pious, enlisted under the banner of the * Berington, Literari/ History of the Middle Ages, p. 269. t Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. 372. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. 467 Cross, the habits of the worst portions of society were not likely to be improved by the license of crusading camps; but the myriads, who perished amid their ex- cesses in the East, at least relieved their native lands of the burden and curse of their presence. The stern spirit of religious persecution, encouraged by an ex- terminating warfare against infidels, is the darkest feature in the operation of the Crusades upon the feel- ings and happiness of their times. The justice of the principles upon which those enterprises were either originally undertaken or subsequently perverted, is utterly indefensible upon all the laws of God and man ; nor were there, perhaps, ever any human contests, in themselves more thoroughly misguided and iniquitous than those holy wars. But in their fruits when time had purified the soil in which the wild and bitter stock of superstition was planted, they became very salutary to mankind. The union of a religious with a martial spirit, however incongruous in its origin, has tended, more than any other combination of senti- ment, to humanize not only warfare itself, but the ordinary relations of civilized life ; and, as the insti- tutions of chivalry were matured and perpetuated by the Crusades, we owe to those enterprises the cultiva- tion of all the moral qualities, of personal honour and fidelity to obligations, of courtesy to the one sex and respectful tenderness to the other, which have de- scended upon the modern gentleman, and survive to dignify and adorn the intercourse of polished society. ■iob CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES. Ill conclusion, then, we may venture to affirm, of the influence and consequences of the Crusades, that, upon the state of religion, they were at first per- nicious, but ultimately beneficial ; that, upon the dis- tribution of national power in the European system, they were, altogether, or nearly, immaterial; that upon the internal government and constitution of the feudal kingdoms, they are no otherwise discernible than in favouring the growth of municipal freedom; that, in the diffusion of commerce, they were most important and valuable, but in that of learning absolutely null; that, in the commingling of nations, they must have given a strong and general impulse to the progress of civilization ; and, finally, that, at least by the promotion of chivalric sentiment, they were an obvious, though indirect and distant means of amelio- rating the social morals and manners of Europe. CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. TnE predisposing causes of those famous enterprises are generally attributed to the impulsive influence of religion upon the barbaric mind, the institution of chi- valry, the union of martial and superstitious feelings, and the influence of fanatical enthusiasm. But the proximate causes are seen in the persecuting frenzy of Hakcm, the third Fatimite khalif, and in the fanatical cruelties of Seljukian Turks. The re- ports of returned pilgrims respecting the insulting and savage cruelty of the latter, as well as the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by the former, excited general indignation ; but it was not till the return of Peter Gautier, an officer of Amiens, who had renounced his profession in order to undertake a pilgrimage, that any proposal was made for attempting the expulsion of the infidels from the Holy Land. Peter (the Hermit) laid before Pope Urban II. a project ho had formed for expelling the infidels from Palestine; which, being backecl by the complaints of the Greek emperor, Alexis, and the urgent appeals of Peter, the pope was induced to espouse the projected enterprise; accordingly lie rccuuinicnded to all Christian princes, first at the Council of Placentia, and afterward at that of Clermont, the duty of zealously engaging in this holy war. At the latter council the pope obtained from the ambassadors present a commission for Peter Gautier to proceed forthwith in the prosecution of his chivalric design. The ensuing spring (1096) was appointed for the departure of the first army. TJie Crusades — Abortive Expeditions. 1096 Peter the Hermit, issues from the western frontiers of France, lead- ing an immense concourse of the lowest orders. The rabble multitude is divided : — The first division, of 20,000, is led by Walter, the Pennyless, through Hungary. In Bulgaria they are all destroyed, except Walter and a few who escape to Constantinople. The second division, of 40,000 un- der Peter the Hermit, advance into Hungary. They destroy Malleville (Zemlin) and slaughter its inhabitants. Carloman, King of Hungary marches against them. The Bulgarians cut them off by thousands. At Nissa they are routed with great slaughter ; their camp is despoiled and their baggage plun- dered, &c. The remnant arrive at Constanti- nople in great distress ; they pass into Asia Minor. 1096 They are nearly all cut oflf by the Turks in the plain of Nice ; only 3000 escape. Fall of Walter, the Pennyless. Third division, of 15,000, from Germany, under Gondeuschal, a German monk. Their atrocious wickedness in Hun- gary ends in their ruthless mas- sacre at Belgrade. Fourth division, of 200,000, com- posed of one huge mass of the vile refuse of France, Flanders, the Rhenish Provinces, and England. They are guided by two " divinely inspired" animals — a goat and a goose. Massacre of Jews at Mayence and Spires, and other places in Ger- many. The Crusaders overthrown in Hun- gary. [" So dreadful the carnage that the course of the Danube was choked with the bodies, and its waters dyed with the blood of the slain." " Before twelve months had expired since the 469 470 CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. spirit of crusading was roused into action by the Council of Clermont, and before a single advantage had been gained over the infidels, the fanatical en- thusiasm of Europe had already cost the lives, at the lowest com- z:^--- putation, of 250,000 of its people. But while the first disasters of the Crusade were sweeping this mass of corruption from the sur- face of society, the genuine spi- rit of religious and martial en- thusiasm was more slowly and powerfully evolved. With ma- turer preparation, and with stea- dier resolve, than the half-armed and irregular rabble, the mailed and organized chivalry of Europe was arraying itself for the mighty contest ; and a far different, a splendid and interesting spec- tacle opens to our view." — Proc- ter.] THE FIRST CRUSADE. 1096 Though not undertaken by any of the crowned heads of Europe, was eagerly embraced by the most distinguished feudal princes of the second order, viz. : — Godfrey of Bouillon, with his two brothers, Eustace and Baldwin, and a kinsman also named Bald- win ; Hugh, Count of Vermau- dois, and Robert of Normandy, brothers of the French and Eng- lish Kings; Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Chartres, and Ray- mond of Thoulouse — the first temporal prince who assumed the crown ; Boemond, son of Robert Guiscard, Prince of Ta- rento, and his cousin Tancred. Order of Departure. The first division, under Godfrey consisted of the nobility of the Rhenish provinces and the North of Germany. Godfrey receives assistance from Carloman of Hungary and the Emperor Alexius : he peaceably arrives with his army on the fer- tile plains of Thrace. The second division, under the Counts of Vermandois and Char- tres, embraced the chivalry of Central and Northern France, the British Isles, Normandy, and Flanders. Their passage from Italy is op- posed by the Emperor Alexius, and Hugh is made prisoner at Durazzo. 1096 Thrace ravaged by the Crusaders, under Godfrey, in retaliation for the opposition offered Hugh of Vermandois, by the Emperor Alexius. The third division, under Boemond and Tancred, composed of South- ern Italians — 10,000 horse, and 20,000 foot. The fourth division, under the Count of Thoulouse, includes his own vassals and native confede- rates, comprehended under the general appellation of Provencals. 1097 Godfrey at open war with Alexius: seizure of the bridge of Blacher- naj ; attack upon Constantinople. Hugh of Vermandois mediates. Messages from Boemond and the Count of Thoulouse, requesting Godfrey to defer negotiations till they should arrive. Godfrey submits ; hence an Accommodation between the wily Alexis and the crusading princes ; the latter swears fealty, the former delivers his son as hostage. Approach of the third division to the Byzantine capital. Boemond at first refuses to do ho- mage to Alexius, but afterward submits. The fourth division next ap- proaches — its leader, Raymond, sternly refuses homage to Alexius whom he menaces. Alexius craftily gains the ascen- dency over the mind of the aged, though stern, Raymond. Muster of the several divisions in the plain of Asia Minor ; numbers estimated — including 100,000 mailed cavalry, and a prodigious number of priests, women, and children — at about 700,000. Siege of Nice, June 20 ; it falls into the hands of the Greeks by stratagem. Battle of Dorylasum in July; ulti- mate victory of the Crusaders. Evacuation of Asia Minor by the Sultan of Roum. Triumphant entry of the crusading hosts into Syria. Battle between Tancred and Bald- win. Baldwin separates from the main body and proceeds eastward, victoriously overrunning the CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 471 whole country as far as the Eu- phrates. 1097 The Crusaders lay siege to Antioch. Famine and pestilence in the Chris- tian camp ; desertion of great numbers to Baldwin in Mesopo- tamia, &c. ; cowardice of the Duke of Normandy, Count of Chartres, the Viscount of Melun, and Peter the Hermit. 1098 The Latin j^rindpaUty of Edcssa founded by Baldwin. Siege of Antioch renewed ; the Turks defeated, through the treachery of Phirouz ; city sur- prised and captured ; the Turk- ish garrison escape within the citadel. The Sultan of Persia unites the Turks against the Christian in- vaders; twenty-eight emirs lead a force of from 3000 to 4000 ca- valry to relieve the garrison in the Citadel of Antioch. Blockade of the Crusaders in the city. Second famine ; horrible distress, attended by cannibalism, and vice of every kind. Alexius abandons their relief. The despairing Crusaders are called into action by superstition and the imposture of a priest. Great battle of Antioch ; the Turks routed with terrible slaughter. Foundation of the Latin princi- p)ality of Antioch ; Boemond its ruler. Disunion among the crusading princes. Third famine and pestilence in Antioch, which sweep off 100,000 persons — cannibalism again re- sorted to. 1099 The Crusaders, now numbering only 1500 cavalry and 20,000 infantry, and an equal number of unarmed camp followers, Ac, proceeded from Antioch to Jaffa by sea. Jerusalem invested by the Cru- saders, June. Sufferings of the besieged from thirst. Arrival of Genoese galleys in Jaffa; the mariners are brought to the camp to construct three mova- ble towers. Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders, July 15; frightful massacre of the Mussulmans and Jews. Extirpation of the Mussulman in- habitants; the law of conquest supplies to Jerusalem a new and Christian population. 1099 Foundation of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem ; its first king is Godfrey of Bouillon, elected by the army. He modestly declines the title of king, accepting only that of " Defender of the Tomb of Christ." [Thus the great design of the first Crusade had been accomplished, in the triumphant recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.] Foundation of the Knights of St. John of Jertisalem — the origin of which was an hospice founded in Jerusalem, in 1048, by a few merchants of Memphis, for the accommodation of pilgrims from Europe. An hospital for the sick was afterward added, hence the term — knights hospitallers ; the members of which are also known as the Knights of Rhodes. AVhen the Crusaders entered Je- rusalem, many of the chevaliers determined on joining the order — Godfrey granted a donation, which example was followed by other princes. To the usual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedi- dience, was added a vow to be always ready to fight against Mohammedans, and all who for- sook the true religion. Thus was the chivalric institution — the ofl'spring of feudalism — m.ade subservient to the interests of the church. See 1118. Flourishing period of chivalry. [On the continent, the lowest te- nant, by military service, was fully included in the pretensions and privileges of nobility, ex- cept in the case of imperial feuds, which were not accounted noble beyond the third degree of sub- infeiTdation. Hence the land which bristled with fortresses afforded as many titles of no- bility; and every country was filled with a numerous order of minor counts, barons, and vavas- sors — the vassals of the greater feudatories, and themselves each the chieftain of a train of knight- ly dependants. The least of these last, who was bound or en- titled to serve his lord as a horse- man or chevalier — from whence 472 CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. are derived the original distinc- tion, and the very name of Chi- valry — was a member of the same aristocracy as the duke or count, the privileges of which order, according to feudal cus- toms, formed an impassible line between it and the commonalty. The exact epoch at which Chi- valry acquired a religious cha- racter, it is not easy to determine. In the age of Charlemagne, the form of knightly investiture was certainly unattended by any vows or ecclesiastical ceremonies ; but in the eleventh century, it had become common to invoke the aid of religion in the inaugura- tion of the knight. There is abundant proof, however, of the success of the church, before the Crusades, in infusing some re- ligious principle into the martial spirit of Chivahy. The original obligations of this institution in- cluded loyalty and honour, cour- tesy and benevolence, generosity to enemies, protection to the feeble and the oppressed, and respectful tenderness to wo- man.] 1099 Approach of a great Fatimite army, swelled by Turks and Saracens. Battle of Ascalon ; the Crusaders victorious ; they acquire much booty. The princes depart for Europe, ex- cept Tancred, who remains with Godfrey. Daimbort, patriarch of Jerusalem. 1100 Capture of Eoemond, prince of An- tioch, by an Arminian chieftain. Death of Godfrey, aged 40, five days preceding the tirst anniver- sary of his reign. Baldwin I. prince of Edessa, elected king of Jerusalem : he resigns to Baldwin du Bourg, the brother of Godfrey, the principality of Edessa. 1101 First Crusade by land; or Supplementary Crusade under Counts Vermandois aad Char- tres. 1102 Vermandois is wounded in a battle with the Mussulmans of Cilicia; dies at Tarsus; Rash assault by a vanguard upon the Egyptian invaders ; Chartres taken and murdered; Baldwin rescued from death by a grateful emir. A. D. 1103 1104 1106 llOS 1109 1111 1112 1113 1117 1118 Azotus reduced by Baldwin ; the siege of Acre formed. Arrival of 70 Genoese ships with Crusaders, which results in the Conquest of Acre by Baldwin I. The Count of Tholouse is joined by several French princes, who had arrived in the Supplemental Cru- sade, (1101.) Tortosa taken by Raymond. Bertrand, son of Raymond, effects the conquest of Tripoli. Tripoli and its vicinity erected into a county, by Baldwin, for the house of Thoulouse. Hence " County of Tripoli." The Crusaders take Berytus. Sidon captured by the Crusaders. [With an interval of four years, two fleets of Scandinavian cruis- ers, who had performed the long voyage from the Baltic, through the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Syrian shores, co-operated with the Christian forces of Palestine, in the siege of Sidon. Although the first attempt was repulsed, the second proved successful.] Critical position of the State of Edessa, surrounded by Arme- nians and Turks. Heroic exploits of its prince, Bald- win du Bourg, and his relative, Joscelyn de Courtenay. Arrival of largo numbers of pil- grims and Crusaders from Eu- rope. The order of Knights Hospitallers of St. John confirmed by Papal Bull. The Suljuk Turks of Aleppo, Da- mascus, and Iconium, aided by Mohammedans of Arabia, Egypt, and Persia, harass and often de- feat the Crusaders. Birth of Noureddin, the younger son of Zenghi, second of the At- tabek princes. Expedition against Egj'pt conduct- ed by Baldwin. Death of Baldwin I. (in March) on his march toward Egypt; his cousin. Baldwin II. (Prince of Edessa) King of Jerusalem. The order of Knights Hospitallers of the order of St. John (called also Knights of Malta) becomes a military order. Hence Knights Templars : institution of the order of the Temple of Solo mon. CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 4:7. [The object of the institution of this order was to act in a mili- tary capacity to protect pilgrims. See T099. [The military orders were, in the first instance, subjected to the rule of St. Augustin ; modified, of course, in some degree, by the peculiar object of their institution. The most ancient of these was the order of the Knights Hospi- tallers of St. John of Jerusalem, established in the first instance (1048) for the reception and care of pilgrims visiting the holy city. This order became monastic in 1092, and in 1118 added the military qualification.] 1120 Zenghi, governor of Mosul, (1145, 1146.) 1124 Tyre reduced by Baldwin II., aided by the Doge of Venice, who ob- tains the sovereignty of one-third of the city. [All the maritime republics of Italy, with their characteristic mercan- tile cupidity, extorted great com- mercial advantages, as the price of their services to the Crusaders. And throughout the Christian possessions in Palestine and Syria generally, the three re- publics of Genoa, Pisa, and A^e- nico contended, often with blood- shed, for the right of establishing places of exchange, and enjoying the common or exclusive privi- leges of trade.] Archbishopric of Tyre established. Extension of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, from the sea-coast to the deserts of Arabia, and from the city of Beritus, on the north, to the frontiers of Egypt, on the south, forming a territory about 60 leagues in length, and 30 in breadth ; and exclusive of the county of Tripoli, which stretched northward from Beritus to the borders of the Antiochian princi- pality. 1131 Abdication of Baldwin, with the consent of his nobles and prelates, in favour of his son-in-law. Foulques (of Anjou) King of Jeru- salem. Baldwin retires to a convent. 1144 Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, (13 years old,) in conjunction with his mother, Melesinda. [Soon after the martial sceptre of the house of Bouillon had de- volved upon a woman and a minor, the Christian power in the East began to decline.] 1145 Fall of Edessa; Zenghi, the Turk- ish emir of Aleppo, takes it by storm. Indignation excited in Europe by the event. St. Bernard preaches a Second Cru- sade, which is promoted by Louis of France. [At the soul-stirring exhortations of St. Bernard, the great feuda- tory princes of Bavaria, Bohe- mia, Carinthia, Piedmont, and Styria, with a crowd of inferior chieftains, assumed the cross ; and the conversion of the empe- ror Conrad III., after some strug- gle between the sense of political interest and religious duty, com- pleted the triumijh of the pious orator.] Decline of the power of the Cru- saders. 1146 Zenghi murdered by his own troops at the siege of Jabbar ; his son, Noureddin, the third of the dynasty of the Attabeks of Syria, becomes King of Aleppo and Damascus, lie maintains war against the Cru- saders. 1147 The Second Crusade; led by the Emperor Conrad III., and by Louis VII., King of France. [The number of the Crusaders has been estimated as approaching near to a million ; of which 70,000 were mailed cavalry, and 250,000 were trained infantry, the rest were clergy, pilgrims, women, and camp followers.] Treacherous policy of Comnenus, the Greek emperor; he harasse."; the crusaders in their march through Bulgaria. Conrad, on arriving at Constanti- nople, indignantly refuses to have an interview with Comne- nus. Louis arrives at Constantinople after the departure of Conrad; ho accepts the apologies, and is in- duced to delay his march, by the treacherous emperor. Almost total destruction of the im- perial army in the passes of Ly- c.aonia by the Sultan of Iconium. Louis encamps at Nice ; here he is joined by Conrad and the rem- nant of the imperial army. 474 CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. A. D. ]147 1148 1149 1150 1151 1153 1162 The united forces come to Ephe- sus ; here they separate — the Germans proceed by sea to Pa- lestine ; the French by land. Sanguinarj' defeat of the Turks by Louis, on the banlis of the Meander. Surprise and defeat of Louis in the mountains between Pisidia and Phrygia; narrow escape of the king. Retreat upon the port of Attalia. Louis transports his nobles and knights by sea to Palestine. The infantry and pilgrims left be- hind perish, either by the cime- tars of the Turks, or the unnatu- ral cruelty of the Greeks. The sovereigns of Jerusalem, Ger- many, and France, resolve on re- ducing Damascus. Great victory of Saladin over the Christians at Antioch ; Ray- mond is killed, Joseelyn do Courtenay made prisoner. Unsuccessful siege of Damascus. Return of Louis ; he lands at St. Gilles on the Rhone, in October. [Louis left Metz in 1147, at the head of 70,000 knights, mounted and armed, and a band of in- fantry and camp followers, amounting to about 200,000. lie returned a fugitive, with about .300 followers, in barks furnished by Sicily.] Return of Conrad with the misera- ble remnant of his armj\ [Thus ended abortively the second Crusade, leaving the Christian cause in Palestine again desert- ed, save by the scanty bands, but enduring courage of its ha- bitual defenders.] Increasing danger of the Latin kingdom of Palestine from the arms of Noureddin, the Attabek of Aleppo. Victory of Baldwin III. over the Turks at Jericho. Ascalon falls by the chivalry of Baldwin. Death of Baldwin III. : his brother Almen'c, succeeds as King of Je- rusalem. [Though Baldwin was destitute of any high degree of ability,.his character was graced by many noble and chivalric qualities. As he left no children, he was succeeded by his brother Almo- ric, whose equal mediocrity of 1102 11G3 1167 1168 1169 1171 1173 1176 1177 1183 1186 1187 talent was unrelieved by the same virtues.] Almeric neglects immediate dan- gers, and wastes his energies in projects for the conquest of Victory of Almeric over Shira- couch. Pelusium besieged and taken. Surprise and sanguinary defeat of Almeric, near Artesia, by Nou- reddin. Second signal defeat of Shiracouch on the Egyptian frontiers; the Turks capitulate and engage to evacuate Egypt. Project of Almeric for the perma- nent subjugation of Egypt. Pelusium taken, and cruelly sacked by Almeric. He advances before the wall of Cairo. Death of Noureddin. Failure of the project of Almeric, owing to the faithlessness of the Greek Emperor and the craft of the vizier Shaweer. Retreat of Almeric into Palestine. Rise of Sallah-u-deen, or Saladin — the scourge of the Christian fortunes in Palestine. Saladin deposes the sons of Nou- reddin, and unites under his sway all the Mussulman states from the Kile to the Tigris. Dissensions and weakness of the Latin kingdom of Palestine. Death of Almeric ; his son Baldwin IV. (a leper) King of Je- rusalem. Regency of the king's sister, Sy- billa, and her husband, Guy de Lusignan. Disaffection of the barons of Pales- tine. Siege of Alexandria. Defeat of Saladin before Jerusalem. Abdication of Baldwin IV. ; his nephew Baldwin V. (an infant) under the protection of Joseelyn de Courte- nay. Raymond, regent of the kingdom. Subjugation of Aleppo by Saladin. Death of the ex-king, Baldwin IV. Suspicious death of Baldwin V. Guy de Lusignan, King of Jeru- salem. Civil war; Raymond of Tripoli allies himself with Saladin against Lusignan. Saladin demands redress for an CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. 475 outrage perpetrated by Reginald de Chatillon. Lusignan refuses justice, where- upon Saladin invades Palestine with an army of 80,000 horse and foot. Battle of Tiberias ; sanguinary de- feat of the Crusaders ; Guy de Lusignan made prisoner; Cha- tillon decapitated by Saladiu himself, and 230 of the Knights of St. John taken prisoners and inhumanly murdered by his orders. [The Christians were betrayed by the Count of Tripoli. See 1086.] Fall of Csesarea, Acre, Jaffa, and Beritus. Tyre besieged; Saladin abandons the siege and marches against Jerusalem. Saladin takes Jerusalem, October 2. [Thus after a possession, by the Christians, of 88 years, Jeru- salem was again defiled by the religion and empire of the vota- ries of Mohammed.] Fall of Bethlehem, Nazareth, As- calon, and Sidon. Tyre, defended by Conrad of Mont- ferrat, holds out against Saladin. [The news of the fall of Jerusalem, &c., filled all Western Christen- dom with horror and grief.] A " Saladine" tithe is exacted in Europe for fitting out armaments for Palestine. 1188 Popular expeditions preceding THE THIRD CRUSADE — by Sea. ["AH the principal sovereigns of Europe, except those of Spain, vowed to lead their national forces to the recovery of Jeru- salem ; but even their earnest preparations were too tardy for popular impatience."] Myriads arrive in Palestine from the ports of Italy, the Baltic, the North Sea, England, and the Mediterranean, at their own ex- pense. 1189 Siege of Acre commenced; 100,000 Crusaders, led by many noble- men and prelates under Lusig- nan appear before the city. [" On both sides the frightful con- sumption of human life was fed by new arrivals ; and during nearly two years the strength of Christendom and Islam was con- centrated and exhausted in an indecisive conflict before the single city of Acre."] 1189 Departure of King Richard from England, Dec. 11. 1190 Richard L of England, and Philip- Auguste of France, assemble their forces (amounting to 100,000 men) on the plain of Vezelay, July 1. Louis departs from Genoa for SicUy. Richard's army sails from Mar- seilles. Violent proceedings of King Ri- chard toward Tancred, &c., in Sicily. Dissensions between Louis and Richard. Frederic (Barbarossa) defeats the Sultan of Iconium, who sues for peace. Death of Frederic — drowned while attempting to swim across the river Calycadnus in Cilicia, June 10. The Duke of Suabia takes the com- mand. Antioch taken by the imperial army. Fearful destruction of life in the army of the German Crusaders. Institution of Teutonic Order of knights. [About GO years before this time, a German crusader and his lady founded hospitals in Jerusalem for poor pilgrims, of both sexes, of their nation; and when sub- sequent endowments had en- riched these houses, the male brethren devoted themselves to military, as well as charitable services. But their efforts had obtained little distinction ; and their fraternity was dissolved by the expulsion of the Christians from Jerusalem. Its purposes were now recalled to the na- tional attention by the private charity of some individuals among the German army, who opened their tents for the recep- tion of their sick and wounded countrymen. A number of knights having joined this be- nevolent association, the Duke of Suabia seized the occasion to incorporate them into a regular order of religious chivalry. Nolo to 1099. Arrival of Philip of France before Acre from Sicily. 47G CHRONOLOGY OF THE CRUSADES. Conquest of Cyprus by King Richard. Richard's fleet dispersed by a storm. 1191 A Mussulman troop-ship, manned by 1,500 hands, destroyed by Richard. Arrival of the English before Acre, June 10. King Richard insults Leopold of Austria before Acre. Acre capitulates, July 12,- 5,000 hostages left by Saladin, till the ransom money of 200,000 pieces of gold should be paid. [The conquest was dearly acquired by the loss of 100,000 Chris- tians.] Cold-blooded massacre of the Mus- sulman hostages; followed by the retaliating slaughter of the captive Christians by Saladin. Open rupture between Richard and Philip. Philip of France retires from the crusade, leaving 10,000 of his troops under the Duke of Bur- gundy. Conrad, Prince of Tyro, King of Jerusalem. Assassination of Conrad ; followed by Marriage of Henry, Count of Cham- pagne, with Conrad's widow; hence Heart/, of Champagne, King of Je- rusalem. The kingdom of Cyprus found. King Richard departs from Acre at the head of the combined army, 30,000 strong. The Crusaders winter on the coast. 1192 Arrival of the Christian host in the valley of Ilebron ; terror of the infidels. The Austrians desert the Crusade ; also the Duke of Burgundy and the French. Unexpected retreat of the Crusaders from before Jerusalem. Jaffa seized by Saladin. (iallant exploits of Richard at Askelon, &c. Battle of Askelon, (called by some battle of Ashdod or Azotus;) de- feat of Saladin; 20 emirs and 40,000 Turks and Saracens (in- cluding 7000 cavalry) killed, September 7. Ascalon, Jaffa, Cossarea, and other places, fall into the hands of the Crusaders. ?192 1192 Truce for three years between Sala- din and Richard; the latter dis- mantles Ascalon, and the former engages not to molest Tyre, Acre, Jaffa, Antioch, and Tripoli, and to grant free access to all Christians visiting Jerusalem. Departure of Richard's fleet, hav- ing on board his queen, sister, and the daughter of the captive king of Cyprus. Richard sails from Acre, October, 9. End of the third Crusade. Richard lands at Corfu in Novem- ber, and leaves it about the middle of the same month. Death of Saladin, March 4. [He is perhaps, the brightest ex- emplar in history of an Asiatic hero ; and his virtues, like the dark traits which obscured them, exhibit the genuine lineaments of his clime and race.] Division of Saladin's empire; his brother. Saphadin reigns in S3Tia, while his three sons erect distinct thrones at Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo. 1194 A new Crusade preached in Ger- many. 1195 Crusade of German chivalry j three great armaments under the guid- ance of nobles and prelates sue- sessively arrive at Acre. Union of the Mussulman powers of Egypt and Syria against the Crusaders. 1190 Indecisive results of this campaign. Jerusalem still in the hands of the infidels. 1197 Death of Henry, nominal king of Jerusalem. Almeric of Lusignam marries the widow of Henry, and is recog- nised King of Jerusalem and Cyprus, (1191.) A fourth Crusade promoted by In- nocent III. 1198 Folques of Neuilly atones for a life of sin by preaching a new Cru- sade. [" Without the rude originality of Peter the Hermit, or the learning of St. Bernard, he, nevertheless, kindled the flame of religious enthusiasm throughout Flanders and France."] 1200 Many French barons,