Glass. Book B \S 2 .C^jS PRESENTED BY Epochs of History EDITED BY EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A. THE CRUSADES. G. W. CO^, M.A. EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. Edited by Rev. G. VV. Cox and Charles Sankey, M. A. Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, if 11. 00. Troy— Its Legend, History, and Literature. By S. G. W. Benjamin. The Greeks and the Persians. By G. W. Cox. The Athenian Empire. By G. VV. Cox. The Spartan and Theban Supremacies. By Charles Sankey. The Macedonian Empire. By A. M. Curteis. Early Rome. By W. Ihne. Rome and Carthage. By R. Bosworth Smith. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla. By A. H. Beesley. The Roman Triumvirates. By Charles Merivale. The Early Empire. By W. Wolfe Capes. The Age of the Antonines. By W. Wolfe Capes. EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. Edited by Edward E. Morris. Eighteen volumes, i6mo, with 77 Maps, Plans, and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. ^ The Beginning of the Middle Ages. By R. W. Church. The Normans in Europe. By A. H. Johnson. The Crusades. By G. W. Cox. The Early Plantagenets. By Wm. Stubbs. Edward 111. By W. Warburton. The Houses of Lancaster and York. By James Gairdner. The Era of the Protestant Revolution. By Frederic Seebohm. The Early Tudors. By C. E. Moberly. The Age of Elizabeth. By M. Creighton. The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. By S. R. Gardiner. The Puritan Revolution. By S. R. Gardiner. The Fall of the Stuarts. By Edward Hale. The English Restoration and Louis XIV., By Osmond Airy. The Age of Anne. By Edward E. Morris. The Early Hanoverians. Bv Edward E. IVIorris. Frederick the Great. By F. W. Longman. The French Revolution and First Empire. By W. O'Connor Morris. Appendix by Andrew D. While. The Epoch of Reform, laao-iaso. By Justin Macarthy. ^*. General jVIap for the ERA OF THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES -r*e*(B«Mw^>''«:' iiS^ PV GEORGE W. pox, K.A. r-i'H-.' - AUTHOR OF 'history of GREECE* 'MYTHOLOGY OF THE A^'^.M* ■* TIONS ETC. W/TB A MAP NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 1890. MAY % 7 1904 D of C&L I f£6IIOS CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. The crusades a series of popular wars Distinction between the crusades and other wars of the Middle Ages Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian traditions The Christianity of St. Paul .... The Christianity of the Roman empire . Localism of heathen religions Influence of these local religions on Christianity Growth of local associations in Palestine Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine Gradual decay of spiritual religion Encouragement given to pilgrimages Trade in relics ...... Stimulus given by pilgrimages to commerce with Ibe East The long struggle between Rome and Persia . 6ii Capture of Jerusalem by the Persian king Khosiai II Persian invasion of Egypt .... 622-625 Campaigns of the emperor Heraclius 627 Battle of Nineveh 628 Restoration of the True Cross by the Persians 629 Pilgrimage of Heraclius to Jerusalem . 637 Conquest of Palestine by Omar . Terms of the treaty made by Omar with the Chris tians of Jerusalem Omar and the patriarch Sophronios Ettects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to Jeru salem vii. PAGE. I 3 4 4 6 6 7 8 9 9 10 10 10 II II II II 12 12 12 13 13 Vlll Contents. A. D. PAGE. Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage . .14 loio Ravages of the Egyptian sultan Hakem in Jerusalem 14 Persecution of Jews in Europe . . . .15 Tax levied on pilgrims at the gates of Jerusalem . 15 Expectation of the end of the virorld A. D. 1000 . 15 997 Conversion of Hungary under king Stephen . . 16 Advance of the Seljukian Turks . . . .17 1092 Division of the Seljukian empire . . . .17 Appeal of the Greek emperor Alexios to Westerr. Christendom ...... 1076 Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem . . • . Increased burdens of the Christian pilgrims . Decline of commerce with the East Oppression of the Christians of Palestine General indignation felt in Western Christendom Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct this feeling 19 CHAPTER n. THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT. Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes Schemes and motives of Gregory VII. 1074 His circular letter to the faithful . 1 08 1 The Normans in Italy . 1095 Council of Piacenza . . . Council of Clermont 1093 Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem 1094 The mission and preaching of the hermit 1095 Decrees of the council of Clermont prohibiting private wars and confirming the Truce of God . Speech ol Urban II. before the people The assei t of the multitude . The cross and the vow of the crusaders Motives of the crusaders Financial effects of the crusades . 20 22 22 2d •■^4 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 32 34 Contents. IX io8s Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and the clergy 35 Dispensing power of the pope . . . • 3b Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal system 35 Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy . 36 Alienation, and pledging or mortgaging, of lands . 36 The crusades not national enterprises . . •37 Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II. '38 CHAPTER III. THE FIRST CRUSADE. 1096 Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk . Bloody persecutions of the Jews , . . . The Jews taken under the protection of the empire March of Walter and his followers through Hun- gary and Bulgaria ..... Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and Eustace Hugh of Vermandois Robert of Normandy Robert of Flanders, and Stephen of Chartres Adhemar, bishop of Puy Raymond of Toulouse Bohemond Tancred . Cause and effect of chivalry Knighthood Courtesy . Augtist Departure of the main army of the crusaders under Godfrey ....,.». 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 43 44 4^ 44 45 45 45 46 47 48 ^9 X Co?itenti. A. D. PAGE Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois . . -49 Christmas Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of Constanti- nople 50 Policy of the emperor Alexios . . . .51 Compact between Alexios and the crusaders . 51 Homage of the crusaders to Alexios . . '52 Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Con- stantinople 53 Refusal of Raymond to do homage . . .53 1097 Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders . . .54 March Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos . . 55 Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and the Greeks 55 Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy . 56 Numbers of the crusaders . . . . .56 June Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia) . . . .57 July 4 Battle of Dorylaion 58 March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch . . 58 Quarrel between Godfrey and Tancred at Tarsus . 59 Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin . . . .59 October Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch. 60 Siege of Antioch 60 Folly of the besiegers ...... 61 Famine in the crusading camp . . . .62 Arrival of envoys from the sultan of Egypt . . 62 Their terms rejected by the crusaders • . .63 1098 Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks. 63 March Plans of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch . 64 June Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond . . . .65 Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga . . .65 Desertion of Stephen of Chartres . . . .66 Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch . . 66 Discovery of the Holy Lance . . . .67 Fate of the discoverer ...... 68 June 28 Battle of Antioch 68 Defeat of Kerboga ... . . . 6g Antioch made a principality for Bohemond . . 69 Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople. 70 Contents. xi A. D. rAGB Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy . . , .70 Siege and capture of Marra 71 1099, May March of the crusaders from Antioch . , .71 June Siege of Jerusalem 72 July Storming of the city 74 Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the Sepulchre Exaltation of Peter the Hermit Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem Comparison of Omar and Godfrey . . Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem Battle of Ascalon Return of the pilgrims to Europe . CHAPTER IV. THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. I099-1100 Reign of Godfrey Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem . Assize of Jerusalem .... Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey 1100-1118 Baldwin I iioi Death of Stephen of Chartres . 1 105 Death of Raymond of Toulouse Sequel of the career of Bohemond . 1 1 12 Death of Tancred .... Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine empire Fresh swarms of pilgrims lioi Death of Hugh of Vermandois 1118 Death of the emperor Alexios II18-1131 Baldwin H., king of Jerusalem 1 1 15 Conquest of Sidon . 1 1 24 Conquest of Tyre . 1131-1144 Fulk, king of Jerusalem I144-1162 Baldwin HI. 1 145 Fall of Edessa 74 75 75 76 76 77 71 77 78 78 79 80 80 80 81 82 82 82 83 83 84 84 84 85 85 8S 3L11 Contents. CHAPTER V. THE SECOND CRUSADE, II37 1146 Easter 1 147 •Vhitsun- tide 1148 Vlarch "53 Bernard the apostle of the second crusad e Sources of Bernard's influence Death of Louis VI. of France Council of Vezelai . Speech of Bernard The Knights Templars . Reluctance of Conrad, emperor of Germany, to join the crusade Meeting of Louis VH. and the pope at St. Denys Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk Rodolph Suppressed by Bernard .... March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at Constantinople .... Supposed treachery of Manuel Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis Visit of the French king to Jerusalem Resolution to attack Damascus Siege of Damascus Treachery of the barons of Palestine Retreat of the army to Jerusalem . Failure of the crusade . Accusations against St. Bernard His answer ..... Death of St. Bernard . . . • 90 90 91 91 92 92 92 93 93 94 94 95 95 95 95 97 1151 1153 1162 CHAPTER VL THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. Misuse of victory by the crusaders . , Death of Joceline of Courtenay .... Siege and fall of Ascalon ..... Death of Baldwin HL Almeric elected king of Jerusalem ,......, 97 97 97 Contents, xi;i 1163 1167 1168 1 169 1171 1 173 1186 1187 July PACK Relations of Almeric with the sultans of Egypt and Aleppo 98 Mission of Shiracouh and Saladin to Egypt . . 99 Siege and surrender of Shiracouh in Pelusium . 99 Defeat of the Latins by Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo 99 Alliance of Almeric with the Egyptian sultan . 99 Operations of Almeric against Shiracouh . . 100 Real designs of Almeric 100 Expedition of Almeric to Pelusium . . . loi His ignominious retreat 101 Rise of Saladin to power in Egypt . . . 102 Attempts to stir up a crusade .... 102 Suppression of the Fatimite caliphat by Saladin . 102 Quarrel between Saladin and the sultan of Aleppo 103 Death of Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo Character of Noureddin Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem . Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem Preparations of Saladin for the re-conquest of salem ..... Battle of Tiberias . Capture of Guy of Lusignan . Loss of the True Cross . Fruits of the victory of Saladin Siege and fall of Jerusalem . Terms of the capitulation Departure of the Latins from the Holy City Entry of Saladin into Jerusalem Escape of Tyre under Conrad Further conquests of Saladin Causes of weakness in the kingdom of Jei-usalem (i) Bad faith in dealing with the Moslem (2) Disregard of rights of property (3) Lax military discipline (4) Total lack of statesmanship (5) General immorality . (6) Desultory character of the crusades Jeru- 103 103 104 104 104 105 105 106 106 107 107 109 109 no no no III III III III III 112 iia xiv Contents. PAGE (7) Quarrels and feuds of the Latin chiefs . 112 (8) Antagonistic jurisdictions of the civil power, the church, and the military orders . • 113 CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD CRUSADE. Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of England 114 Real character of the actors in the third crusade . 115 Decay of the crusading spirit . . . .115 Change in the character of the crusades . .116 1174 Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem 117 1187 Death of Urban III 118 Pontificate of Gregory VIII 118 1188 Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip Augustus of France . . . . . .119 Saladin tax or tenth . . . . . .119 Feuds in the family of Henry II 119 1189 Death of Henry II 121 July Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade . . 121 Modes of raising money ..... 122 Persecution and massacre of Jews in England . 122 Fearful tragedy in York castle . . . '122 1 190 Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai . . 124 Poetry and influence of the troubadours . . 124 March of Frederick I.,Barbarossa, to Constantinople 124 The popes and the empire . . . . .125 Death of Frederick I. . .... 125 Re-occupation of Antioch , . . . . 126 1189 Siege of Acre by the Latins of Palestine . . 126 Rise of the Teutonic order ..... 127 1190 Death of Sybilla, queen of Jerusalem . . . 127 Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem . . 128 Sept. 23 Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina 128 Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily .... 128 Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus . 129 1191 War between Richard and the Comnenian emperor March of Cyprus 130 Contents. xV A. D. PAGH Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre . . . 130 July 12 Surrender of Acre ....... 131 Return of Philip to France 131 Massacre of five thousand Turkish hostages . . 131 Victory of Richard at Azotus .... 132 Abortive negotiations with Saladin . . . 133 Feud between the English king and the duke of Austria ........ 133 1192 Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem . 134 March of Richard towards Jerusalem . . . 135 Retreat of the army from Bethlehem . . . 135 Relief of Jaffa 135 Truce between the crusaders and Saladin . . 136 Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 136 Results of the third crusade ..... 136 Captivity of Richard I. in Austria . . . 137 1 193 Exertions made for the liberation of Richard . 138 Richard before the diet at Hagenau . . . 139 1 194 Release of Richard ...... 140 His return to England 140 CHAPTER VIH. THE FOURTH CRUSADE. Motives of the chief promoters of the fourth crusade 140 1193 Death of Saladin and its consequences . . .. 141 Encouragement given to the crusade by the em- peror Henry VI 1196 Death of Henry VI Arrival of his barons with their troops in the Holy Land ....... Capture of Jaffa by Saphadin Arrival of fresh crusaders under Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim ; . ..... 142 1197 Siege of the castle of Thoron .... 142 Complete defeat of the crusaders .... 143 Capture of Jaffa, and massacre of the crusaders . 143 Almeric of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus 144 141 142 Z42 142 xvi Contents. CHAPTER IX. THE FIFTH CRUSADE. A. D. PAGK 1198 Election of Innocent III. . . ; . . 144 Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction of the pope ........ 145 Weakening of the imperial power . . . 146 Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples of Europe ...... 146 Effects of Innocent to remove this mistrust . . 147 Fulk of Neuilly 148 The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope . 149 Efforts of his eloquence . . . . .149 1202 Death of Fulk ....... 150 1200 The chiefs of the fifth crusade .... 150 1201 Mission from the French barons to Venice . . 150 Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to Palestine ........ 151 1202 Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed on with the Venetians ..... 152 Proposal to commute the payment by an expedi- tion against Zara. ...... 153 1195 Mission to Rome to ask aid for the dethroned Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus . . . 153 Determination of the Venetians to insist on the expedition to Zara ...... 154 1202 Siege and conquest of Zara, Nov. 15 . . . 155 Proposal to direct the crusade to the restoration of Alexios at Constantinople .... 155 Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios 156 Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the interdict ....... 157 1203 Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition 158 Easter Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople . . . 158 Flight of the usurper Alexios .... 159 The crusaders are compelled to winter at Constanti- nople - . . . 160 Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the crusaders .... ... 160 Co?itents. XV ii A. D. PAGR Deposition and death of Alexios , . . i6i Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constanti- nople ... o .... • i6l 1204 Siege and conquest of Constantinople . . 162 April Horrible excesses of the crusaders . . . 162 Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, as em- peror of the East ...... 163 Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Con- stantinople ........ 164 Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the pope 165 Answers of Innocent III. ..... 166 Results of the crusade to the pope and to the Vene- tians 167 CHAPTER X. THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Contrast between the Greeks and the Latins . 168 Attempt to upset the civilization of the old empire 169 Conduct of the pope towards the Greek clergy 170 Opposition of the French clergy to the new patriarch 171 Partition of the empire among the crusading chiefs 172 1204 Rise of new empires at Nice, Trebizond, and Durazzo 173 1205 Massacre of the Latins in Thrace by order of the Bulgarian Calo-John ...... 173 April Captivity of the emperor Baldwin . . . 174 Death of Baldwin ...... 174 I206-1216 Henry I., brother of Baldwin, emperor of Con- stantinople 175 1207 Assassination of Calo-John . . . , , 175 Wise government of the emperor Henry , . 176 Death of Henry 176 Peter of Courtenay, emperor of Constantinople . 176 1218 Captivity and death of Peter of Courtenay . . 177 1219 Robert, emperor of Constantmople . . .177 1228 John of Brienne, emperor of Constantinople . 178 K XVIU Contents. A. D. PAGB 1235 Siege of Constantinople by Vataces , , . 179 1237-1261 Baldwin II,, emperor of Constantinople , . 179 Efforts to raise money ...... 179 Sale of relics ........ 179 1255 Death of Vataces . 180 1259 The envoys of Baldwin repelled by Michael Paleo- logos 180 1261 Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks . , 181 July Permanent alienation of the East from the West , iSi CHAPTER XI. THE SIXTH CRUSADE. Chief features of the sixth crusade . , , . 183 Depression of the Latins in Palestine , , . 183 1204 Truce between Saphadin and the Christians , .183 1210 John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem , . 184 Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade . 184 Robert of Courcon 185 1215 Fourth council of Lateran 185 1216 Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary . . . 186 1218 Siege of Damietta 186 Death of Saphadin . . . . . ,186 Terms of peace offered by Coradin * . . 187 Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders . . 187 1219 Fall of Damietta, Nov. 5 187 1220 March of the Christians for Cairo .... 187 The old terms again rejected 187 Ruin of the crusaders 188 1212 Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa ... 188 The popes and the emperors .... 188 Otho of Brunswick 189 1214 Battle of Bouvines . , , , . . 189 1216 Honorius III., pope 189 1221 Loss of Damietta . 190 1222 Treaty of Ferentino .,..•• tgo 1225 Treaty of San Germano ..... 191 Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem . 19J Contents. XiX A. D. 1227 J-AGB Gregory IX., pope 191 Excommunication of the emperor .... 193 Departure of Frederick from Brundusium . . 195 Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais . . . 195 Treaty between Frederick and the sultan Kameel . 196 Feb. 18 Frederick at Jerusalem 196 Moderation of the emperor 197 Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX. . . 198 Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe 198 Renewed excommunication of the emperor . . 199 1228 1229 1230 1239 1240 1242 124s 1226 124s 1248 1249 CHAPTER XII. THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans Charges of peculation against the papal collectors . Opposition of the pope and the emperor to the new crusade ...... Arrival of the French crusaders at Acre Their complete failure .... The English crusade .... Treaty between Richard of Cornwall and the Eg>'p- tian sultan Invasion of the Korasmians . Alliance of the Templars with the Syrians 199 200 200 201 201 201 :20i ;202 CHAPTER XIII. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. Council of Lyons .... Louis IX., king of France Louis IX., the pope, and the emperor Assumption of the cross by Louis IX. Departure of Louis from France . Capture of Damietta March of the army towards Cairo Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois 21a R 20a 203 205 207 208 209 209 XX Contents. 1250 1259 1263 1270 1271 1272 1291 I212 The king taken prisoner Firmness of the king . , Terms of ransom . Murder of Turan Shah . Release of Louis IX. Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth PAGE. . 211 . 211 . 211 . 212 . 212 . 212 CHAPTER XIV. THE NINTH CRUSADE. Comparison of the earlier and later crusades . 213 Battle between the Templars and Hospitallers . 214 Invasion of Palestine by the Mameluke sultan Bibars ........ 214 Loss of Antioch ....... 214 Second crusade of Louis IX. .... 215 Death of the king 216 Capture of Nazareth by Edward, son of Henry III. of England ....... 216 Return of Edward to Europe .... 217 Vain efforts of Gregory X. to stir up a crusade . 217 Claims to the titular kingdom of Jerusalem . . 217 Loss of Acre ........ 218 CHAPTER XV. THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. Gradual decay and extinction of the crusading spirit 219 Persecution and suppression of the Knights Temp- lars 220 The Albigensian crusades 221 The Children's crusades . . . . . 222 Indirect results of the crusades .... 224 MAP, General Map for the History of the Crusades To face title-page. THE CRUSADES. CHAPTER I. CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. 1 SE Crusades were a series of wars, waged by men who wore on their garments the badge of the Cross as a pledge binding them to rescue the Holy Land and the Sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of crusades— the unbeliever. The dream of such an enter- popular prise had long floated before the minds of '^^^^- keen-sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts : it was realized for the first time when, after listening to the burning eloquence of Urban H. at the council a. d. 1095. of Clermont, the assembled multitude with ^°^- one voice welcomed the sacred war as the will of God. If we regard this undertaking as the simple expression of popular feeling stirred to its inmost depths, we may ascribe to the struggle to which they thus committed themselves a character wholly unlike that of any earlier wars waged in Christendom, or by the powers of Christen- dom against enemies who lay beyond its pale. States- men (whether popes, kings, or dukes) might have availed themselves eagerly of the overwhelming impulse impart- ed by the preaching of Peter the Hermit to passions long pent up ; but no authority of pope, emperor, or king, could suffice of itself to open the floodgates for the waters which might sweep away the infidel. In this sense only were men stirred, whether at the council of 2 The Crusades. CH. i. Piacenza in 1094, or in that of Clermont, to a strife of a wholly new kind. If Urban II. gave his blessing to the missionaries who were to convert the Saracens at the point of the sword, the papal benediction A. D. 1066. Ill • 11- T r had been given nearly thirty years before at the instigation of Hildebrand to the expedition by which the Norman William hoped to crush the free English people and usurp the throne of the king whom they had chosen. But the movement of the Norman duke against Eng- land was merely the work of a sovereign well awake to his own interest and confident in the methods Distinction . between the by which he chosc to promote it. Under the other Warhol- sacrcd Standard sent to him by Pope Alex- the Middle andcr 11. he gathered, indeed, a motley host of adventurers ; but the religious enthusiasm by which these may have fancied themselves to be ani- mated had reference chiefly to the broad acres to which they looked forward as their recompense. The great gulf which separated such an undertaking from the cru- sade of the hermit Peter lay in the conviction, deep even to fanaticism, that the wearers of the Cross had before them an enterprise in which failure, disaster, and death were not less blessed, not less objects of envy and long- ing, than the most brilliant conquests and the most splen- did triumphs. They were hastening to the land where their Divine Master had descended from his throne in heaven to take on Himself the form of man — where for years the everlasting Son of the Almighty Father had patiently toiled, healing the sick, comforting the ifflicted, and raising the dead, until at length He carrieahis own Cross up the height of Calvary, and having offered up his perfect sacrifice, put off the garments of his humi- liation when the earthquake shattered the prison-house CH. I. Causes leading to the Crusades. 3 of his sepulchre. For them the whole land had been rendered holy by the tread of his sacred feet : and the pilgrim who had traced the scenes of his life from his cradle at Bethlehem to the spot of his ascent from Olivet, might sing the Nunc dimittis^ as having with his own eyes seen the divine salvation. Thus the crusade preached by Peter the Hermit, and solemnly sanctioned by Pope Urban, was rendered pos- sible by the combination of papal authority xVoscncc oT with an irresistible popular conviction. That local feeling , , . ^, , ^ in the earliest papal authority was the necessary result of christian the old imperial tradition of Rome; the ^'■^^'"o"^- popular conviction was the growth of a tendency which had characterized every religion professed by Aryan or Semitic nations ; and both these causes were wholly un- connected wdth the teaching of Christ and of his dis- ciples, as it is set before us in the New Testament. Far from ascribing special sanctity to any one spot over another, the emphatic declaration that the hour was come in which men should worship the Father not merely in Jerusalem or on the Samaritan mountain, proclaimed a gospel which taught that all men in all places are alike near to God in whom they live, move, and have their being. If we turn to the narrative which relates the Acts of the Apostles, we shall find not a sign of the feeling which regards Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, or thebanksof the Jordan, as places which of themselves should awaken any enthu- siastic or passionate feeling. The thoughts of the disciples, if we confine ourselves to this record, were absorbed with more immediate and momentous concerns. Before their generation should pass away, the Son of Man would re- turn to judgment, and the dead should be summoned from their graves to his awful tribunal. Hence any 4 The Crusades. ch. i. vehement longing for one spot of earth over anothei was wretchedly out of place for those who held that the time was short, and that it behooved those who had wives to be as though they had none, those that bought as though they possessed not, and those that wept and re- joiced as though they wept and rejoiced not. Nay, more, with a feeling almost appl-oaching to impatience, the great apostle of the Gentiles could put aside the yearnings of a weaker sentiment and declare that although he had known Christ in the flesh, yet hence- forth he would so know Him no more. The image, therefore, of the great founder of Chris- tianity was for him purely spiritual. In the letters v/hich „, ^, . . he wrote to the churches formed by his con- 1 he Lhristi- _ _ •' anityofSt. vcrts there is not a sign that the thought or the sight of Bethlehem or Nazareth would awaken in him any deeper feeling than places wholly destitute of historical associations. If he speaks of Jeru- salem, he never implies that it had for him any special sanctity. His mission was to preach a faith altogether independent of time and place, and not only not need- ing but even rejecting the sensuous aid afforded by visible memorials of the Master whom he loved. Such was the Christianity of St. Paul ; and with such weapons it went forth to assail and throw down the The Christi- strongholds of heathenism. Three centuries anity of the later we behold Christianity dominant as the Reman ■' Empire. religion of the Roman Empire ; but in its outward aspect and in its practical working it has under- gone a vast and significant change. It cannot be sup- posed that this change Vv^as wrought at once by the mere fact of its recognition \yj the temporal power. The endless debates, which fill the history of early Chris- tianity, on the relations of the Persons of the Trinity and CH. I. Causes leading to the Crusades. 5 on the mystery of the Incarnation, may in some degree have helped to fix the minds of men on the land where the Saviour had lived, and on the several scenes of his ministry ; but this alone would never have sufficed to work the revolution which Christianity has manifestly undergone, even before we reach the age of Constan- tine. The victory won over heathenism, if not merely nominal, was at best partial. The religion of the empire knew nothing of the One Eternal God, who demands from all men a spontaneous submission to his righteous law, and bids them find their highest good in his divine love. That rehgion rested on the might of the Capitoline Jupiter and the visible majesty of the Emperor ; but the real influences which were at v/ork from the first to modify the Christianity of St. Paul lay in the lower strata of society, in the modes of thought and feeling prevalent among the masses who furnished the converts of the first two or three centuries. In these converts we cannot doubt that there was wrought a real change, — a change manifest chiefly in the conviction that the divine law is binding on all, and that the state of things in the Roman world was unspeakably shameful. In the Jesus whom Paul preached they beheld the righteous teacher who condemned the iniquities of godless rulers and a cor- rupt people, the avenger of their unjust deeds, the loving Redeemer in whose arms the weary and heavy-laden might find rest, the awful Judge who should be seen at the end of the world on his great white throne, with all the kindreds of mankind awaiting their doom before Him. The personal human love thus kindled in them turned only into a different channel thoughts and feel- ings which it would need centuries to root out. These thoughts and feelings had been fed by that ten- dency to localize incidents i^. the supposed history of 6 The Crusades. CH. i. sods or heroes which is the most prominent Localism of . . heathen reli- characteristic of all heathen religions ; and ^'^"^" of the vast crowd of these heathen religions or superstitions there was, if we may trust the statements of Roman writers, scarcely one which had not its ad- herents and votaries at Rome. Here were gathered the priests and worshippers of the Egyptian Isis, the virgin mother of Osiris, the god who rose again after his cruci- fixion to gladden the earth with his splendour ; here might be seen the adorers of the Persian sun-god Mi- thras, born at the winter solstice, and growing in strength until he wins his victory over the powers of darkness after the vernal equinox. But this idea of the death and resurrection of the lord of light was no new importation brought in by the theology of Egypt or Persia. The story of the Egyptian Osiris was repeated in the Greek stories of Sarpedon and Memnon, of Tithonos and As- klepios (yEsculapius), of the Teutonic Baldur and Woden (Odin). The birthplace of these deities, the scenes as- sociated with their traditional exploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating legends, and not a few attracting to themselves vast gatherings of pilgrims. It was not wonderful therefore that the worshippers of these or other like gods should, on professing the faith of Christ, carry with them all that they could these ^ocaf re- retain of their old belief without utterly con- ii|ions on tradicting the new ; that his nativity should Christianity. ° ' _ •' be celebrated at the tim.e when the sun begins to rise in the heavens, and his resurrection when the victory of light over darkness is achieved in the spring. The worshipper of the Egyptian Amoun, the ram, carried his old associations with him when he be- :ame a follower of the Lamb of God ; and the burst of light which heralded the return of the Maiden to the CH. I. Causes leading to tJie Crusades. 7 Mourning Mother in the Greek mysteries of Eleusis was reproduced in the miracle still repeated year by year by the patriarch of Jerusalem v/hen he announces the de- scent of the sacred fire in the sepulchre of Christ. Thus for the Christians of the third century, if not of the second, Judaea or Palestine became a holy land ; and with the growth of devotion to the human ^ „, . , ,1 r ^• c Growth of local person of Christ grew the leelmg 01 reve- associations in rence for every place which He had visited P^^^^'^i'^^- and every memorial which He had left behind Him. The impulse once given soon became irresistible. Every incident of the gospel narratives was associated with some particular spot, and the certainty of the verification was never questioned by the thousands who felt that the sight of these places brought them nearer to heaven and was in itself a purification of their souls. They could follow the Redeemer from the cave in which He was born and where the Wise Men of the East laid before Him their royal offerings, to the mount from which He uttered his blessings on the pure, the merciful, and the peacemakers, and thence to the other mount on which He offered his perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The spots associated with his passion, his burial, his resurrection, called forth emotions of passionate ven- eration which were intensified by the alleged discovery of the cross on which He had suffered, together with the two crosses on which the thieves had been condemned to die. If the presence of the tablet containing the title inscribed by Pontius Pilate still left it uncertain to which of the crosses that tablet belonged, and to which there- fore the homage of the faithful should be paid, all doubt was removed when a woman at the point of death on whom the touch of two of these crosses had no effect was restored to strength and youth by the touch of the third, 8 The Crusades. ch. i. The splendid churches raised by the devout zeal of Constantine and his mother Helena over the grimlge to the cavc at Bethlehem and the sepulchre at Paiesune"^ °^ Jerusalem became for the Christians that which the sacred stone at Mecca and the tomb of the prophet at Medina became afterwards for the followers of Islam ; nor can we be surprised if the emperor whose previous life had been marked by special devotion to the Grefek and Roman sun-god transferred the characteristics of Apollon (Apollo) to the meek and merciful Jesus whose teaching to the last he utterly mis- apprehended. The purpose which drew to Palestine the long lines of pilgrims, which each year increased in numbers, was not the mere aimless love of wandering which is supposed to furnish the motive for Tartar pil- grimages in our own as in former ages. The Aryan, so far as we know, was never a nomadic race ; but we can understand the eagerness even of a stationary population to undertake a long and dangerous journey, if the mere making of it should insure the remission of their sins. Nothing less than this was the pilgrim led to expect, who had traversed land and sea to bathe in the Jordan and offer up his prayers at the birthplace and tomb of his Master. A few men, of keener discernment and wider culture, might see the mischiefs lurking in this belief, and protest against the superstition. Augustine, the great doctor whose * Confessions ' have made his name familiar to thousands who know nothing of his life or teaching, might bid Christians remember that righteous- ness was not to be sought in the East nor mercy in the West, and that voyages are useless to carry us to Him with whom a hearty faith makes us immediately present. In these protests he might be upheld by men like Gre- gory of Nyssa and Jerome ; but Jerome, while he dv/elt CH. I. Causes leadmg to the Crusades. 9 on the uselessness of pilgrimage and the absurdity of supposing that prayers offered in one place could be more acceptable than the same prayers offered in an- other, took up his abode in a cave at Bethlehem, and there discoursed to Roman ladies, who had crossed the sea to listen to his splendid eloquence. Heaven, he in- sisted, was as accessible from Britain as from Palestine : but his actions contradicted his words, and his example exercised a more potent influence than his precept. The purely spiritual faith on which Jerome laid stress was as much beyond the spirit of the age as the ^ ^ , , ■' ^ ° _ Gradual decay moral feelings of a later age were behind of spiritual those of the woman who in the crusade of "^"^ ^ ' St. Louis was seen carrying in her right hand a porringer of fire, and in her left a bottle of water. With the fire she wished, as Joinville tells us, to burn paradise, with the water to drown hell, so that none might do good for the reward of the one, nor avoid evil from fear of the other, since every good ought to be done from the per- fect and sincere love which man owes to his Creator, who is the supreme good. Such a tone of thought was in ludicrous discord with the temper which brought Jerome himself to Bethlehem, and which soon began to fill the land with those who had nothing of Jerome's culture and the sobriety which in whatever degree must spring from it. The contagion spread. From almost every country of Europe wanderers took their way to Palestine, under the conviction that the shirt which they ^ Encourage- wore when they entered the holy city would, ment given to if laid by to be used as their winding-sheet, ^' srimae-cs. convey them (like the carpet of Solomon in the Arabian tale) at once to heaven. An enterprise so laudable roused the sympathy and quickened the charity of the lo The Crusades. ch. i. faithful. The pilgrim seldom lacked food and shelter, and houses of repose or entertainment were raised for his comfort on the stages of his journey as v/ell as in the city which was the goal of his pilgrimage. Here he was welcomed in the costly house which had been raised for his reception by the munificence of Pope Gregory the Great. If he died during his absence, his kinsfolk envied rather than bewailed his lot : if he returned, he had their reverence as one who had washed away his sins, and still more perhaps as one who had brought away in his wallet relics of value so vast and of virtue so great that the touch of them made the journey to Palestine almost a superfluous ceremony. Wherever these pilgrims Trade in went, these fragments of the true cross relics. might be found ; and the happy faith of those who gave in exchange for them more than their weight in gold never stopped to thjnk that the barren log which was supposed to have produced them must in truth have spread abroad its branches wider than the most magnificent cedar in Libanus. Nor probably, even in the earliest ages, was the traffic consequent on these pilgrimages confined to holy things. The East ^ . , . was not only the cradle of Christianity, but btimulus given ... . . by pilgrimages a land rich in spices and silks, in gold and to commerce . , i i i • i i i with the jewels: and the keen-sighted merchant, East. looking to solid profits on earth, followed closely on the steps of the devotee who sought his re- ward in heaven. The first interruption to the peaceful and prosperous fortunes of pilgrims and merchants was caused by one of the periodical ebbs and flows which for nearly seven ^, , hundred years had marked the struggle be- The long ^ _ ^^ struggle be- twccn the powcrs of Persia and of Rome. and Persia. The kings of the restored Persian kingdom CH. I. Causes leading to the Crusades. ii had striven to avenge on the West the wrongs com- mitted by Alexander the Great, if not those even of earher invaders; and the enterprise which Khosru Nushirvan had taken in hand was carried A. D. Oil. on forty years later by his grandson Khosru Capture of Je- , _, \xTAi 1 ri- rusalem by the (Chosroes) 11. Almost at the outset oi his Persian king, irresistible course Jerusalem fell, nor was it ^^^^"^ ^^• the fault of the Persians that the great churches of Helena and Constantine were not destroyed utterly by fire. Ninety thousand Christians, it is said, were put to death : but, according to the feeling of the age, a greater loss was sustained in the carrying off of the true cross into Persia. From Palestine the wave of Persian conquest spread southward into Egypt, and the great- ^ . ^ o./ X- ' o Persian ness of Khosru seemed to be unbounded, invasiofrof when from an unknown citizen of Mecca he received the bidding to acknowledge the unity of the Godhead and to own Mahomed as the prophet of God. The Persian king tore the letter to pieces, and the m.an of Mecca, whose successors were to carry the crescent to Jerusalem and Damascus, to the banks of the Nile and the mountains of Spain, warned him that his kingdom should be treated as he had treated his letter. For the present the signs of this catastrophe were not to be seen. The Roman emperor was compelled to sign an ignominious peace and to pay a yearly Campaigns tribute to the sovereign of Persia. But Hera- ^f''^'^ ° Jbmperor clius (Herakleios) woke suddenly from the Heraciius. sluggishness which marked the earlier years of his reign. The Persians were defeated among the defiles of Mount Taurus, and the destruction of the birthplace of Zoroaster offered some com- ^ A. D. 627. pensation for the mischief done to the Battle of churches of Helena and Constantine. Two A. D. 622-625. 1 2 TJie Crusades. years later the Roman emperor carried his arms into the heart of the enemy's land ; and during the battle of Nine- veh, in which he won a splendid victory, he slew with his own hands the Persian general Rhazates. Khosru fled across the Tigris ; but he could not escape from the plots of his son, and his death in a dungeon ended the glories of the Sassanid dynasty, under whom the Persian power had, in the third century of our era, revived from the death sleep into v/hich it had sunk after the conquests of Alex- ander. With Siroes, the son and murderer of Khosru, the Roman emperor concluded a peace which not merely delivered all his subjects from captivity, but repaired the loss which the church of the Holy Sepulchre had sustained by the theft of the true ^ . cross. The great object of pilgrimage was Restoration ° -^ r & & of the true thus restored to Jerusalem, and thither Hera- Persiai^. ^ clius (Herakleios) during the following year A D 62 betook himself to pay his vows of thanks- Piigrimage giving. With the pageant which marked this ofHeraclius . to Jem- ceremony the splendour of his reign was ^^^"^' closed. Before his death the followers of Mahomed had deprived him of the provinces which he had wrested from the Persians. Eight years only had passed after the visit of Hera- clius (Herakleios) to Jerusalem, when the armies which A. D. 637. had already seized Damascus advanced to PakS by the siege of the Holy City. A blockade of Omar. fg^r months convinced the patriarch Sophro- nios that there was no hope of withstanding the force of Islam : but he demanded the presence of the caliph him- self at the ratification of the treaty which was to secure a second sacred capital to the disciples of the Prophet. After some debate his request was granted ; and Omar, 637' Causes leading to the Crusades. 13 who on the death of Abubekr had been chosen as the vicegerent of Mahomed, set out from Medina on a camel, which carried for him his leathern water-bottle, his bags of corn and dates, and his wooden dish. The terms imposed by the caliph sufficiently marked the subjection of the Christians, but they imposed no severe hardships and perhaps showed a large Terms of the toleration. The Christians were to build no by Omar^ ^ new churches, and they were to admit Maho- chJSg J^ns of medans into those which they already had, Jerusalem. whether by day or by night. The cross was no longer to be seen on the exterior of their buildings or to be paraded in the streets. The church-bells should be tolled only, not rung. The use of saddles and of weapons was alto- gether interdicted, and the Christians, distinguished from their conquerors by their attire, were to show their respect for the latter by rising up to them if they were sitting. On these conditions the Christians were not only to be safe in their persons and fortunes, but undisturbed in the exercise of their religion and in the use of their churches. For the observance of this last stipulation the rugged and uncouth conqueror showed a greater care than the patriarch who regarded his presence in the _ , , 1 1 r 1 T. • 1 1 • Omar and the church of the Resurrection as the abomma- patriarch So- tion of desolation in the holy place. The ^ hour of prayer came, and Omar asked Sophronios where he might offer his devotions. ' Here,' answered the pa- triarch ; but Omar positively refused, and repeated his refusal when he was led away into the church of Con- stantine. At last he knelt down on the steps outside that church, and afterwards told the patriarch that had he worshipped within the building, the document secur- ing its use to the Christians would have been worthless. His words were verified by the zeal of his followers, who x^. The Crusades. ch. i. insisted on inclosing within a mosque the steps on which he had prayed : but the mosque which bears Omar's name rose over the great sacrificial altar of the temple, which passed for Jacob's stone. This second conquest may have again checked the rush of pilgrims to the Holy Land ; but the difficulties which it placed in their way only added to bian^ conquest the glory and the benefits of the enterprise : to je?us?lS^^^ ^^'^' ^^^^^ ^' ^^ victory of Omar did little more than share the holy city between two races each of which acknowledged its sanctity and reve- renced the relics of the righteous men whose bodies re- posed beneath its sacred soil. Nor had the Christians any stronger ground of complaint than that the Saviour whom they worshipped was regarded by their conquer- ors as a prophet only inferior, if not equal, to the founder of Islam. Nearly four centuries had passed away after the sub- mission of Sophronios to Omar ; and during this long series of generations the West had without Uninterrupted i • i r i • r -i continuance of let or hmdrancc sent forth its troops of pil- pi gnmage. griiyis^ in whose train merchants may have found sources of profit for more worldly callings. If the palmy days during which the wanderers might regard themselves as practically lords of the land through which they travelled had passed away, they underwent at the worst nothing which could greatly excite their anger or rouse the indignation of Christendom. Nor was this state of things materially A. D. lOIO. _ ® •' Ravages of the changed by the furious onslaught of Hakem, tan Hakem In the mad Fatimite sultan of Egypt, when, Jerusalem. spurred on by a bigotry unknown to his predecessors, he resolved to destroy the Christian sanc- tuary in Jerusalem. The rule of these earlier sovereigns loio. Causes leadijig to the Crusades. 15 of Egypt had been more beneficial to the Christians than that of the Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad. But Hakem cared nothing for the worldly interests of his kingdom or of the profits to be derived from trade with the unbe- liever ; and his soldiers were busied on the dignified task of demolishing the church of the Resurrection, and in attempts to destroy with their hammers the very cave in which, as it was supposed, the body of the Saviour had been laid. In this task they had but a very partial suc- cess, and to Hakem probably the suspension for a single year of the descent of the sacred fire scarcely outweighed the risks of a combined attack from the maritime powers of Christendom. For the present no such alliance was threatened ; but a cruel persecution of the Jews in many Christian cities was a symp- jewsTnEurope^ tom of the temper which was placing a great gulf between men who professed nevertheless to wor- ship the same Almighty Father. After this violent but transient storm the condition of the pilgrims became much what it had been before, ex- cept that a toll was now levied on each pilgrim before he wa« suffered to enter the gates of Jeru- -p^x levied salem ; but this impost may have been rather °" pilgnms ' c J at the gates welcomed than resented by the Christians, of Jerusalem, as it gave to the richer among them an opportunity of discharging it for their poorer brethren, and so of secur-* ing for themselves a higher degree of merit. The world, too, seemed to have taken a new lease of existence, and everything appeared to promise a long continuance of comparative peace. Ten years before, all ^ ^ ^^^^ Christendom was fluttering with the expecta- Expectation •=> ^01 the end of tion of imm.ediate judgment. At the close the world, of the millenium, which came to an end with the year Tooo, a belief almost universal looked forward to the c 1 6 The Crusades, CH. i. summons which would call the dead from their graves and cut short the course of a weary and sin-laden world. But the tale of years had been completed, the sun con- tinued to rise and set as it had risen and set before, and the flood of pilgrims soon began to stream towards the East in greater volume than ever. Men of all ranks and classes left their homes to offer up their prayers at the tomb of Christ : bishops abandoned their dioceses, princes their dominions, to visit the scenes where the Redeemer had suffered and where He had achieved his triumph. More numerous, more earnest, more zealous than all, were the Franks or the Frenchmen, whose name became henceforth in the East the common designation of all Europeans. For the weak and inexperienced, for the women and the youths, who pledged themselves to the enterprise, there might be special and grave dangers ; nor were the strongest assured against serious, if not fatal, disasters. With thirty horsemen fully equipped. Ingulf, a secretary of William the Conqueror, set out on his journey to the Holy Land. Of these twenty returned on foot, with no other possessions than their wallet and their staff. But their losses had been caused probably by no human enemies, and the men who had died could claim the credit of martyrdom only in the sense in which it is accorded to the Holy Inno- cents massacred by the decree of Herod. On the whole, the difficulties of the enterprise were as much smoothed down as in a rude and ill-governed a^e thev A. D. 997. ^ S3 J Conversion of could Well be. The conversion of Hungary under King Opened a Safe highway across the heart of Step en. Europe, and the pilgrims had a defender, as well as a friend, in St. Stephen, the apostle of his king- dom. But a change far greater than that which had been 1076. Causes leading to the Crusades. 17 wrought by Omar was to be effected by a power which had been working its way from the distant East and menacing the existence of the Empire itself. ^ , ^ '■ _ Advance of From the deserts of Central Asia the Selju- the Seiju- kian Turks had advanced westwards, over- running the kingdoms of the Persian empire, and sub- jugating Asia Minor, the inheritance of the ^ ^ 1092. Caesars of Rome. In this task they received ^'he^SeFu-"* no slight help from the neutrality of a great kian empire. part of the Christian population, in whom financial exactions and ecclesiastical tyranny had awakened feel- ings of strong discontent, if not of burning indignation. The rulers of Byzantium had, indeed, done all that they could to make the way smooth for the invaders. The accumulation of land in the hands of a few owners had dangerously diminished the number of inhabitants ; nor was it long before the Turks were in a majority through- out Cappadocia, Phrygia and Galatia, and were enabled successfully to resist the crusading hosts in countries which they had conquered but as yesterday. The Selju- kian sovereigns who had advanced thus far on the road to Constantinople, chose as their abode that city of Nice (Nikaia, Nicaea) in which the first general council of Christendom had defined the Catholic faith on the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. Here these fierce invaders proclaimed the mission of Mahomet as the prophet of God, and issued the decrees which assigned Christian churches to profanation or de- struction, and Christian youths and maidens to a dis- graceful and shameful slavery. Mountains visible from the dome of Sancta Sophia were already . , ^ , ' _ ■' Appeal of the within the borders of Turkish territory. The Greek Em- , 1 • • . 1 A 1 • .1 peror Alexio= danger seemed immment, and Alexios, the to Western Emperor of the East, invoked the aid of Christendom. 1 8 The Crusades. ch. i. Latin Christendom : but the fire was not yet kindled, and for the time his appeal was made in vain. No long time, however, had passed before the Selju- kian Toucush was master of Jerusalem ; and the Chris- tians learnt to their cost that servitude to Seijuidan con- the fierce wanderers from the northern de- sSlm.°^ J^"^" serts was very different from submission to the rugged and uncultured Omar. The law- ful toll levied on the pilgrims gave way before a system of extortion and violent robbery carried out Increased bur- . ^ dens and suf- in cvery part of the land ; and the mere ciirifdan piN journey to Jerusalem involved dangers from gnms. which the bravest might well shrink. In- sults to the persons of the pilgrims were accompanied by insults, harder to be borne, offered to the holy places and to those who ministered in them. The sacred offices were savagely interrupted, and the patriarch, dragged by his hair along the pavement, was thrown into a dun- geon, pending the payment of an exorbitant ransom. For the pilgrims themselves there might be dangers as they made their way through Europe : but these were increased tenfold on the eastern side of the Hellespont. Thus far they had journeyed in compara- Decline of com- merce with the tive Security, and the merchants who- sought to combine profit with devotion added to that security by their numbers and their prudence. The Easter fair of Jerusalem had drawn to the ports of Pales- tine the fleets of Genoa and Pisa, and had sufficiently rewarded the munificence of the merchants of Amalfi, the founders of the hospital of St. John. But commerce has no liking for perils of flood and field : and with the risk of disaster these fleets disappeared and the caravans were confined to those for whom the sanctuary of Jeru- salem was a goal to be reached at all costs. These went 1 076-1095* T^^^ Cou7icil of Clermont. 19 forth still by hundreds ; they returned by tens or units to recount the miseries and wanton cruelties . , , Oppression o/ which they had undergone, and to draw the christians fearful pictures of the savage tyranny exer- ^ ^ esune. cised over the Christians of Jerusalem and of the East generally. The church of Christ was in the iron grasp of the infidel, and the blood of his martyrs cried aloud for vengeance. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom a fierce indignation was stirr- ing the hearts of men, and the pent-up waters nadorT feU 'fii needed only guidance to rush forth as a ^ndom^^^"^' flood over the lands defiled by the unbe- liever. But unless the enterprise was to run to waste in random efforts, it must have the solemn sanction of reli- gion. The people might be ready, but popular fury act- ing by itself will soon spend its strength like the hurry- ing tempest. Princes might be willing for a time to abandon, their dominions : but the pressure of difficulties abroad and at home would soon make them grow weary of the task. There must be a constraining power to keep them to their vows by sanctions which ^, , , ^ . Need of a reh- stretched beyond the present life to the life gious sanction -11 1,-, ^. ., to sustain and after death ; and these sanctions could come direct this feel- only from him who held the keys of the ^°^" kingdom of heaven, and whose seat was the rock of Peter, Prince of the Apostles. CHAPTER II. THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT. The Pope is the bishop of Rome, and the traditions of the papacy delight in recalling the humble origin of his 20 The Crusades. ch. il i^ast monarchy, at once spiritual and tempo- Influerxceof , , . / , , ^ , ^^ , ^ Roman im- ral, ecclesiastical and secular. It the poor fh"ea,rly °" GaHlasan fisherman ever entered the Eter- popes. jjg^j City, it was as a stranger who had come to be the guide and friend of a small knot of men who saw and hated and wished to keep themselves aloof from the abominable corruption of Roman society. But if Christianity itself, as we have seen (p. 6), was, when It had once taken root in the West, modified by the popular feelings and old associations of the converts, the constitution of the church was in like manner insensibly modified by the political forms of the state with which it had at first to wage a terrible conflict. Rome was not as other cities : and the bishop of Rome could not long remain like the presidents of other churches. He was dealing with the subjects, and he lived in the heart, of the empire. It was inevitable that the imperial tradition should fasten on the object of their worship ; nor was it long before the exulting cry went up to heaven, Christ lives, Christ rules, Christ is emperor (Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat). As the vicars of this invisible emperor, the popes acquired gradually a power which overshadowed that of the mightiest sovereigns. It was exercised A. D. 587-604. . , ^ . ^ . , ^ with monastic austerity by Gregory the Great ; it was wielded with the ability of a consummate general by Gregory VII., Hildebrand. The A. D. I073-I085. ^ / to y ' first Gregory was a monk, therefore also a Manichean ; in other words, one who believed in the essential impurity of all matter ; but this philosophy, if it had any attractions for Gregory VII,, was wholly sub- ordinate to the one absorbing passion of ecclesiastical dominion. His aim was to subdue the world by a spiritual army : but the issue of his conquest was not to io73~io85- The Council of Clermont. 2\ be confined to spiritual influence. It was to give him ■power over kingdoms, dictation over princes, the com- mand of their weapons and their weakh. It was to humble civil polity under priestly autocracy ; it was to prove, what Hildebrand scrupled not to assert, that the civil rule was in itself the mere development and work- mg of the evil principle. The foundations had long been laid ; but Hildebrand left to his successors not much to do towards completing the fabric of papal empire. His predecessors had learnt to avail themselves dexterously of popular feeling or the ambition of princes, to direct v/ide-spread movements, if not to create them. It was the papal sanction which had aided to depose the degenerate Merovingian ; it was the papal chrism which had anointed the first Caroiingian king. It was the dia- dem of the ancient Caesars, bestowed by the hand of Leo III., which rested on the head of Charles the Great. It was Hildebrand himself, who, by the hands of his instrument, Alexander II., had transferred the crown of England from the son of Godwine to William the Bastard of Normandy. It has been well remarked, that although the name had not yet been heard, yet in truth it was now that the first crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the liberties of England. We may note further that the preacher was a pontiff, who, v/hen he found it convenient to thank the Sultan of Morocco for some indulgences granted to Christians in his territories, could assure that infidel ruler that both worshipped the same God and held the same faith, though their modes of worship and their expressions of devotion might be different. The popes had become capable of setting vast armies in motion, and of raising to a white heat the fire of a popular sentiment which had ah-eady been kindled. 22 The Crusades. CH. ii. These two conditions were needed before the bcnemes and motives of power of Europe could be precipitated on regory . ^^^ infidel conquerors of Syria ; and the in- ability of the popes to accomplish this end if they were not in accord with the prevalent feeling of the people is strikingly shown in the history of Gregory VI I. Eight years after he had helped to slay Harold at Hastings, A. D. 1074. Hildebrand addressed a letter to all who ktter'S'tlf/ loved and cared to defend the Catholic faith, faithful. beseeching them to put aside all other tasks in favour of the great work of chasing the hordes of the Seljukian Turks beyond the bounds of the Eastern em- pire. Constantinople, the new city of the Seven Hills, was even now threatened by these barbarians ; nor could any say hov/ soon the danger might not menace Rome itself. It could not be doubted that the faith, the energy, the warlike skill of Christendom would sweep away these undisciplined unbelievers ; and the victory of the faithful would be followed by very solid gain to the popes. The price to be paid by the emperor for his deliverance from the Turks was his submission as a vassal to the see of Rome ; in other words, the pope was to become absolute lord both of East and West, and the claims of the Byzan- tine patriarch to a co-ordinate dignity with the successor of St. Peter should no longer be made with impunity. But although the scheme thus carefully drawn out was to promote the interests of a spiritual power, for the great mass of Latin Christians it was purely a political enter- prise. The fears and distresses of the Eastern emperor could excite no sympathy ; the Caesar of Constantinople was not a being who had exhibited the image of super- human love or shed his blood for those who had taken delight in torturing him ; and the excommunication which Hildebrand had imprudently hurled against the emperor 1081-1085. The Council of Clermont. 23 Nicephorus (Nikephoros) III., had left behind it in the East a feehng not favourable to the designs of the Roman pontiff. The letter of Hildcbrand appealed to no religious associations ; it said nothing of abominations committed in the holy places, of terrible crimes wrought on the per- sons of faithful pilgrims ; it was silent about the eternal reward which the bare act of pilgrimage would win for the believer. It was of little use to say in passing that more than 50,000 warriors longed to rise up under his guidance against the enemies of God and reach the se- pulchre of their Lord. He had not struck the right chord, and Hildebrand failed to see the West gird itself for the great conflict with the enemies of the faith. For a time he may have supposed that the great fire was already kindled, when with a fleet of 1 50 ships and an army of 30,000 men Robert Guiscard set a. d. 1081. sail from Brundusium (Brindisi). But the mans in"^" conqueror who had done so much in Italy ^'^^^y- was to do but little to the east of the Adriatic. While his army put forth its whole strength before the walls of Oyrrhachium (Durazzo), his fleet under the command of his son Bohemond was miserably defeated ; and nothing but the wretched jealousy felt by the emperor Alexios for his general Paleologos saved the army of Guiscard from ruin and turned the threatened disaster into victory. When, being compelled to return to Italy, he left Bohemond to carry on his enterprise, the latter overran Epeiros and had well nigh succeeded in reducing the Thessalian Larissa, when he too was compelled to hasten to Italy for reinforcements both in men and money. In his absence his deputy, Brienne, the constable of Apulia, was con- strained to abandon the siege of Kastoria and '^ A. D. 1085. to bind himself not to invade again the tern- 24 The Crusades. CH. ii. tories of the Byzantine emperor. Not many months later Robert Guiscard gathered another armament for the con- quest of the East. He raised the siege of Corfu (Kor- kyra), and had reached Cefalonia (Kephallenia), when his career was cut short by death anc iiis scheme for the time seemed utterly brought to naught. The war which Hildebrand sought to stir up against the Mahomedan powers was not less vigorously preached by his successoi Victor III., who promised remission of sins ■ °* ^° ^' to all who might engage in it ; but his words called forth no bands of warriors for the recovery of Jeru- salem. The fleets of Genoa and Pisa swept the African coasts, and gained in the shape of booty a harvest which was to fall to the lot of few among the myriads who were soon to leave their homes for the Holy Land. Ten years after the death of Hildebrand three or four thousand of the clergy and thirty thousand laymen were gathered to meet pope Urban II. at the A. D. 1095. ° _ _ ^ ^ Council of Pia- council of Piaccnza (Placentia). So vast a throng could find standing ground in no building, and the business of the council was transacted in the plain outside the city. The envoys of the Eastern emperor, Alexios Comnenos, were there to plead his dis- tresses and beseech the strenuous aid of the faithful. The policy of checking the progress of the Turks while they were still at a good distance from Italy may have influenced the more statesmanlike of their hearers ; the more vehement and enthusiastic among them',* were moved to tears by the pathetic recital of the Byzantine ambassadors, and demanded loudly to be led against the enemy. But Urban, with his heart more determinately set upon the enterprise than any man present, felt that the hour for the supreme decision had not yet come. He was m a country torn by intestine divisions, where 1095- The Council of Cler?nonf. 25 bis own claim to the papacy was disputed by an anti-pope whom with his adherents it was here his especial busi- ness to excommunicate. He had to deal with other matters also. Some of the clergy still refused to aban- don their wives ; and the wife of the emperor Henry IV. was present to complain of treatment unimaginably mon- strous on the part of her husband. Both emperor and clergy must be condemned, and brought into obedience ; and Urban felt that after such business as this it would be well to reserve his eloquence for another scene. He therefore dismissed the envoys of Alexios with the assur- ance that when the hosts of Western Christendom ad- vanced to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre they would not forget that they had work to do near Constantinople. From Piacenza Urban made his way across the Alps to the realm of the great Charles, whose intercourse with the ambassadors of the Caliph Harun-al- A. D 70Q Reschid may have laid the foundation for the myth, expanded into a systematic fiction in the lying Chronicle of Turpin, that he had himself smitten down the unbelievers under the shadow of the Church of Con- stantine. On the northern side of the Alps Urban could breathe more freely. The sentence of excommunication was impending, it is true, over Philip the First, who called himself or was called King of France ; but the great- grandson of Hugh Capet, powerful though he might be within his own dominion of Paris and Orleans, was little more than nominal lord of the vast throng A. D. logs. The of feudal chiefs who lay beyond its borders, council of Cler- From his old home in the great monastery of Clugny, Urban set off in the autumn for Clermont in the territories of the Count of Auvergne. Before he could reach the city, thousands of tents were pitched without the walls for those who could find no shelter zS The Crusades. ch. ii, within them ; and the eight days during which the council held its sessions were spent in regulating the en- terprise about which the pope had spoken with so much reserve at Piacenza, and in prescribing the measures to be taken for the safety of those who might remain at home during the absence of their natural protectors. There was now no more need for hesitation. Popular feeling to the north of the Alps was far more deeply Pilgrimage of rnoved by the woes of the pilgrims and the Peter^t™"^ conquests of the infidels than on the southern Jerusalem. side of the great mountain barriers ; and the wrath of the people had been fanned into an ungovern- able flame by the preaching of the hermit Peter. This man, born at Amiens in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and laid aside the sword which he wielded in the service of the Counts of Boulogne, to follow the council of per- fection in silence and solitude. Like others, he felt him- self drawn by an irresistible attraction to A. D. 1093. ■' ■ r-\ • the Holy Land; but if his passionate yearn- ings were rewarded by the privilege of offering up his prayers before the tomb of the Redeemer, his very heart was stirred by the sight of things, the mere recital of which had awakened his wrath at a distance. The Sanctuary was in the hands of the infidels ; the patriarch was reduced practically to the state of a slave, and the pilgrim was happy who returned from the Holy City without undergoing humiliations and buffetings scarcely deserved by the worst of criminals. The murder of many Christian men, the deadly wrongs done to many Christian women, called aloud for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow that, with the help of God, these things should cease. His conversations with the patri- arch Simeon brought out only confessions of the inca- pacity of the Greek Emperor and the weakness of his I094- The Council of Clermont. 27 empire. ' The nations of the West shall take up arms in your cause,' said the hermit ; and with the patriarchal benediction Peter hastened to obtain for the mission which he now saw before him the sanction of the man who claimed to be at the head of Eastern and Western Christendom alike. Before the Roman pontiff Peter poured forth his story of the wrongs which called for immediate redress ; but no eloquence was needed to stir the heart of T- A. D. 1094. Urban. The zeal of the pope was probably The mission , J and preaching as smcere as that of any others who engaged of the her- in the enterprise ; but it could not fail to '""^' derive strength from the consciousness that, whatever might be the result to the warriors of the cross, his own power would rest henceforth on more solid foundations. His blessing was therefore eagerly bestowed on the fer- vent enthusiast who undertook to go through the length and breadth of the land, stirring up the people to the great work for the love of God and of their own souls. His eloquence may have been as rude as it was ready ; but its deficiencies were more than made up by the earnestness which gave even to the glance of his eye a force more powerful than speech. Dwarfish in stature and mean in person, he was yet filled with a fire which would not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon his soul were those which would most surely stir the conscience and rouse the wrath of his hearers. Hi? fiery appeals carried everything before them. Wherever he went, rich and poor, aged and young, the knight and the peasant, thronged round the emaciated stranger, who with his head and feet bare rode on his ass, carry- ing a huge crucifix. That form, of which they beheld the bleeding sign, he had himself seen ; nay, he had re- ceived from the Saviour a letter which had fallen down 28 The Crusades. CH. ii. from heaven. He appealed to every feeling which may- stir the heart of mankind generally, to every motive which should have special power with all faithful Chris- tians. He called upon them for the deliverance of the land which v/as the cradle of their faith, for the punish- ment of the barbarian who had dared to defile it, for the rescue of the brethren who were the victims of his tyranny. The vehemence which choked his own utter- ance became contagious : his sobs and groans called forth the tears and cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his words, and who greedily devoured the harrow- ing accounts of the pilgrims whom Peter brought forward as witnesses to the truth of his picture. Motives more earthly may have mingled with his austere call in the minds of some who heard him. Of these motives the hermit said nothing : but there is no doubt that he iiiade his last and most constraining appeal to that notion of mechanical religion which the prophet Micah puts into the mouth of Balak the king of Moab. The consciences of some amongst his hearers might be weighed down by the burden of sins too grievous almost for forgiveness. He besought them to remember that such fears were altogether misplaced, if only they made up their minds to take part in the redemption of the Holy Land. If they chose to become the soldiers of the cross, their sab vation was at once achieved. There was no sin, however fearful, which would not be cancelled by the mere taking of the vow ; no sinful habits which would not be condoned in those who might fall in battle with the unbelievers. The excitement of the moment, the frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind of the hermit, was by him com- municated to his hearers, threw, we cannot doubt, a specious colouring over a degrading morality and a hopelessly corrupting religion ; but as little can we doubt I095- The Council of ClcrniopJ. 29 that the whole temper which stirred up and kept alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned atmosphere which could be cleared only by the storms and tempests of the reformation. The preaching of the hermit predetermined the results of the council of Clermont ; but Urban and the throng of bishops and abbots who were gathered Decrees of the round him were well aware that something- council of cier- ■^ mont, prohibit- more was needed than the enlisting of an ing private army of zealots for distant warfare. With firming the our settled laws and orderly government it ir^ceofGod. is almost impossible for us to realize the condition even of the most advanced states of Christian Europe in an age when the power of the king over his vassals meant simply that which the strength or the weakness of the vassals made it, and when the vassal, if he owed alle- giance to his lord, was bound by no ties to his fellow vassals. The system of feudalism could not fail to feed the worst passions of human nature ; and the absence of an authority capable of constraining all alike involved for those who felt or fancied themselves aggrieved an irresistible temptation to take the law into their own hands. But the practice of private war thus set up would sooner or later assume the form of a trade, and in the words of William of Malmcsbury things had now come to so wretched a pass that feudal chiefs would take each other captive on little or no pretence, and would set their prisoners free only on the payment of an enor- mous ransom. This military violence of the laity was accompanied by corruption on the part of the clergy, showing itself in a shameless traffic of benefices and dignities which, in brief phrase, fell to the lot of the highest bidder. In such a condition of things to drain off to distant lands a large proportion of the men who at 30 The Crusades. CH. ii. home might do something to check, if not to repress, the mischief, would be to leave those who remained behind defenceless. Decrees were therefore passed condemning private wars, confirming the Truce of God which sus- pended all hostilities during four days of each week, and placing the women and the clergy under the protection of the Church, which in an especial manner was ex- tended to merchants and husbandmen for three years. When, the business of the council being ended, Urban ascended a lofty scaffold and began his address to the people, he spoke to hearers for whom argu- ban II. before mcnts wcrc no longer needed, but who were e peop e. ^^^^ pleased to hear from the chief of Chris- tendom words which carried with them comfort and en- couragement. Three forms or versions of this speech have been preserved to us ; one in the pages of William of Tyre, a second in those of William of Malmesbury, a third from a manuscript in the Vatican. It is possible that they may represent three different speeches : but the substance of all is the same, and we are left in no doubt of the general tenor of his words. With some incon- sistency he dwelt on the cowardice of the barbarians who had contrived to conquer Syria and whose tyranny called forth the appeal which he now made to them. The Turk, shrinking from close encounters, trusted to his bow and arrow ; and the venom of his poisoned shaft, not the bravery of a valiant warrior, inflicted death on the man whom it struck. Their fears, he added, were justified, for the blood which ran in the veins of men born in countries scorched with the heat of the sun was scanty in stream and poor in quality as compared with that which coursed through the bodies of men belonging to more temperate regions. ' In these temperate regions you were born,' he pleaded, * and you have therefore a I095- '^^i^ Council of Clermont. 31 title to victory which your enemies can never acquire. You have prudence, you have disciphne, you have skill and valour, and you will go forth, through the gift of God and the privilege of St. Peter, absolved from all your sins. The .consciousness of this freedom shall soothe the toil of your journey, and death will bring to you the benefits of a blessed martyrdom. Sufferings and tor- ments may perhaps await you. You may picture them to yourselves as the most exquisite tortures, and the pic- ture may perhaps fall short of the agony which you may have to undergo ; but your sufferings will redeem your souls at the expense of your bodies. Go then on your errand of love, of love for the faithful who in the lands overcome by the infidel cannot defend themselves, of love which will put out of sight all the ties that bind you to the spots which you have called your homes. Your homes, in truth, they are not. For the Christian all the world is exile, and all the world is at the same time his country. If you leave a rich patrimony here, a better patrimony is promised to you in the Holy Land. They who die will enter the mansions of heaven, while the liv- ing shall behold the sepulchre of their Lord. Blessed are they who, taking this vow upon them, shall inherit such a recompense : happy they who are led to such a conflict, that they may share in such rewards.' It was no wonder that words thus striking chords of feeling already stretched to intensity should be inter- rupted with the passionate cry ' It is the will of God ! It is the will of God !' which broke the^ muidtude. from the assembled multitude. ' It is, in truth, his will,' added the pontiff, 'and let these words be your war-cry when you unsheath your swords against the enemy. You are soldiers of the cross : wear, then, on your breasts or on your shoulders the blood-red sign 32 The Crusades. CH. ii. of Him who died for the salvation of your souls. Wear it as a token that his help will never fail you : wear it as the pledge of a vow which can never be recalled.' By these words the war now proclaimed against the Turks received the name which has become a general title for all wars or hostile undertakings car- The cross and . ^ . , r ^■ ■ -ru A the vow of the ried on m the name of religion, i housands crusa ers. hastened at once to put on the badge and so to take their place among the ranks of the crusaders. The rival claims of the anti-pope withheld Urban himself from taking the pledge to which he was clamorously invited ; and worldly prudence alone may have suggested the wisdom of standing aloof from a conflict in which disaster to a Roman pontiff would certainly be regarded as a visible sign of the divine displeasure. Of the clergy, the first to assume the cross was Adhemar (Aymer), bishop of Puy, and as his reward he received the powers and dignity of papal legate. At the head of the laity Raymond, count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence, promised through his ambassadors to be ready by the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, next following the council, the day fixed for the depar- ture of the crusading hosts for Constantinople. Thus was the die cast for a venture which in the eye of a keen-sighted general or a far-seeing statesman Motives of the should have boded little good, but which crusaders. j^^^^ ^^^ irresistible attractions for the great mass of the people, — attractions which continued to draw hundreds and thousands still to the unknown and mysterious East, w^hen a long series of disasters had proved that the journey to Jerusalem was in all likeli- hood a journey to the grave. For the really sincere and devout, whose lives had been passed without reproach and who could await the future with a clear conscience, I095- T^ff-'^ Council of Clei-mont. 33 there was tlie deep sense of binding duty, the yearning to be brought nearer whether on earth or in heaven to the Master whom they loved. For the feudal chieftain there was the fierce pastime of war which formed the main occupation and perhaps the only delight of his life, with the wild excitement produced by the thought that the indulgence of his passions had now become a solemn act of religion. There was also the prospect of vast and permanent conquest ; and the duke or count who left a fair domain behind him might look forward to the chance of winning a realm as splendid as A- D. I05S-9. that which Robert Guiscard and his Nor- mans had won in Apulia and Sicily. For the common herd and those whom gross living had rendered moral cowards, there was the offer of a method by wdiich they might wipe away their guilt without changing their char- acter and disposition. Not a few might be caught by the philosophy of the abbot Guibert, who boldly drew a parallel between the crusades and holy orders or mona- chism. That height of perfection which ecclesiastics might reach in their own sphere was now attainable by laymen through an enterprise in which their usual license and habits of life would win them the favour of God not less than the most unsparing austerity of the monk or the priest. It was, in short, a new mode of salvation, and they who were hurrying along the broad road to destruction now found that the taking of a vow converted it into the narrow and rugged path to heaven. Nor was the number few of those for whom this convenient arrangement was combined with some solid temporal advantages. The cross on the breast or shoulder set free from the clutches of his lord the burgher or the pea- sant attached to the soil, opened the prison doors for malefactors of every kind, released the debtor from the 34 The Crusadts. ch. it. obligation of paying interest on his debts while he wore the sacred badge, and placed him beyond the reach of his creditors. Lastly, the episode of a crusade might be for the priest a pleasant interruption to the dull routine of parochial work, to the monk an agreeable change from the wearisome monotony of his conventual life. The usurer and the creditor might fancy himself to be ^. . , somewhat hardly treated. Yet they were t inancial ■' •' effect of the amongst the few to whom the crazy enter- prise (crazy not from the impracticability of its objects, but from the way in which these were fol- lowed,) brought a solid benefit. The unthinking throng might rush off to Palestine without making the least pre- paration for their journey or their maintenance, in the blind faith that they would be fed and clothed like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the field. But for those who could judge more soberly, and for those who were not willing to forego their luxuries or their pleasures, there was the need of providing a store of the precious metals by means of which alone their wishes could be gratified. The duke, who had to maintain a vast and brilliant retinue, was compelled to mortgage his domi- nions ; and thus for the sum of ten thousand marks, wrung from the lower orders in the English state, Wil- liam Rufus obtained from his brother Robert the govern- ment of his dukedom for five years, and took care that the prize so won should not slip again from his grasp. Nobles and knights, setting off on the crusade, all wished to sell land, all wished to buy arms and horses. The arms and horses therefore became ruinously dear, the lands ridiculously cheap. It is easy to see that the prudent trader, the cautious merchant, the landowner whose eye was fixed on the main chance, would stand at an enormous advantage. CH. II. The Council of Clermont. 35 But if these were gainers, the gains of the pope and the sacerdotal army of which he was the chief were greater still. If the proclamation of the crusader rendered all private warfare a treason against Christendom, if it set free even the noble from the power of the £f|-gj.j5 ^f ^^e overlord, and made the latter incapable of crusades on 1 J -r ^-L the power of summonmg his vassal to his standard, it tne the pope and crusader, as the soldier of the Church, was ^ ^ "^ ^^^'' released from every other obligation, these tremendous changes had been wrought wholly by the power of the pope and his hierarchy. In placing the dominions of all crusading princes under the protection of the Church, the council of Clermont may have provided for those chiefs a most inadequate defence ; but it placed the pope on a level above all earthly princes, and the power which with- held the arm of the creditor from falling upon _ . ^ ' Dispensing his debtor became a vast dispensing autho- power of the rity, the possession of which would have de- lighted the heart and realized the highest longings of Hildebrand. Urban did not go to Palestine : but even there he was present in the person of his legate Adhemar, and thus claimed the guidance of a war sanctified by his blessing and undertaken in the cause of the Church. The vows of the crusader were taken, again, by many who had no present intention of fulfilling them. Sickness, or misfortune, or qualms of conscience might lead them to assume the fatal sign ; but from that moment until they set off on their journey they put themselves in the power of the pope, who sometimes used with cruel effect the hold thus obtained over emperors and kings. Kings, it is true, reaped no small benefit from the im- pulse which drove their vassals to the Holy Sepulchre; and the absorption of the smaller into lara^er ^ , . . . Tendency fiefs and of these again into royal domain, ofthecru- 3^ The Crusades. ch. il brSk up the tended to that extension of the sovereign feudal power which ultimately broke up the feudal system. -r-i i system. But these results were far distant : the immediate harvest was gathered by the pope. Thus far he had appeared by his representatives in general or local councils ; by these he had interfered in the settlement of disputes, through these he weaitr^of the ^ad negotiated with princes. But the preach- cler^ ^^"^ ^^^ ^^S ^^ t^^ crusades furnished a reason or a pretext for sending his legates into every land. Their primary business was to stir up the hearts of the faithful or to keep them up to fever heat : but scarcely less important was the task of collecting money for the support of the crusading armies. On the clergy, whether secular or regular, and on the monastic orders, the pope had a claim which they dared not to call into question, and the subsidies exacted or enjoined for this purpose were paid with a real or a feigned cheerfulness. To the laity the prayer for voluntary alms assumed practically the form of a demand. Refusal would imply lukewarmness in the faith, if not positive heresy ; and the imputation could not be incurred without peril of temporal and even of eternal ruin. Both for the clergy and the laity the charge for a special and temporary purpose became a permanent tax, the proceeds of which the pope might expend on any objects, and in the theory of the time he could spend them on none which were not good. But for the impost thus laid upon them the clergy had a compensation which by the nature of the case could not be enjoyed by the laity. If a bishop Alienation and ,.i i -1^1 ij piedgin'3- or Put on the cross he might lay a burden on mortgagmg of i;^jg estates, but he could not alienate them lands. ' ' as his right over them ceased with his death; CH. iio Tiic Council of Clermont. 37 but in point of fact it was chiefly the prelates and the monastic houses that became guardians or mortgagees of lands belonging to men who had betaken themselves to the Holy Land, The Jews, who amassed immense profits on their loans to needy crusaders, had nothing to do with the cultivation of the soil, and in most countries could not be owners of it. But the Church was every- where ready with its protection and its money ; nor were there wanting enthusiasts who, as they fixed the blood- red cross on their garment, gave up all their lands and worldly goods to the spiritual body whose prayers they regarded as a more than sufficient recompense. Even they who left the Church merely the guardian of their estates in their absence might die in the East ; and if they died without heirs the guardians became absolute owners. If they came back, toil and disappointment had often so worn them down that they took refuge in a cloister and handed over to the fraternity whatever of their property might still remain to them. The vast gains thus accruing were all over and beyond the ac- cumulations amassed from the bequests of ordinary or extraordinary penitents on their death-beds or the gifts of enthusiastic devotees during their lifetime ; and all the land so gained to the Church was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the sovereign who professed to rule the country, and thus formed a kingdom within a king- dom, the spiritual domain threatening constantly to ab- sorb that of the secular monarch. A collision, followed by violent and iniquitous spoliation, became inevitable ; and when the time was come the great fabric of eccle- siastical wealth was plundered and demolished. In the enterprise to which Latin Chris- „,, , * J he crusades tendom thus stood committed, the several not national cn- , terprises. nations or countries of Europe took very 38 The Crusades. ch. ii, equal parts ; or, rather, no nation, as such, took any part in it at all ; and in this fact we have the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent or average generalship, which is commonly seen in national under- takings. For the crusade there was no attempt at a com- missariat, no care for a base of supplies ; and the cru- sading hosts were a collection of individual adventurers who either went without making any provisions for their journey or provided for their own needs and those of their followers from their own resources. The number of these adventurers were naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from which they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the anti-pope went far towards chilling enthusiasm ; and the recruits for the crusading army came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahomedan dominion which had once A. D. 1085. threatened to pass the barriers of the Py- Europe in the rcnccs and Carry the Crescent to the shores time of Urban ^f ^^ -^^MxQ Sea. About ten years before the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled by Alfonso, king of Gallicia : the kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither and thither through the countries of northern Europe, the Christians of Spain were winning victories in Mur- cia, and the land was ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar, By the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was re- ceived with comparative coldness ; the partisans of em- perors, who had been humbled to the dust by the pre- aecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehe- 1096. The First Crusade. 39 mently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelf of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey : not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. In Eng- land the English were too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much oc- cupied in strengthening their position, and the king, William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert thr^n to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands ex- tending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure ; and tens of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom. CHAPTER III. THE FIRST CRUSADE. Little more than half the time allowed for the gather- ing of the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women, ^ ^ jQ^g neither caring nor thinking about the means •R^P"^"'"^ "=• '^ of the first by which their ends could be attained, in- rabble of cm- 11 11 • T-> 1 111 11 saders under sisted that the hermit Peter should lead them Peter the at once to the holy city. Mere charity may S'aiSr th""^ justify the belief that some even amongst Penniless, these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good ; that the vast majority looked upon their vow 40 The Cmsades. ch. hi. as a license for the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt ; that they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise, is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance, Peter undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some preten- sions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together. At Cologne they parted company ; and 15,000 under the penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onwards a host which swelled gradually on the march to about 40,000. Another army or horde of perhaps 20,000 marched un- der the guidance of Emico, count of Leiningen, a third Second rab- undcr that of the monk Gotschalk, a man Emkcfand ^^^^ notorious for the purity or disinterested- Gotschaik. ness of his motives. Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of 200,000 men, women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have sup- posed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde no pretence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands through which they marched, while 3,000 horsemen, headed by some counts and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to share their spoil. But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers -^. , of the cross by plundering, torturing, and secutions of slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk the Jews. . . . ,. - was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the descendants of those who had 1096. The First Crusade. 41 crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and Treves, and of the great cities on the Rhine, ran red with the blood of their victims ; and if some saved their Hves by pretended conversions, many more cheated their per- secutors by throwing their property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming fires. Thus auspiciously began the mighty enterprise on which pope Urban had insisted as the first duty of all Christians ; and thus early did the result of his preaching tend to revive the waning power of the emperor, who interposed his authority to this merciless onslaught on a ^„ ^ . " 1 he Jews peaceable and useful class of his subjects, taken under The Jews were taken under the protection uo'n^of the of the empire, and for the time the change ^"^p""^- was a real relief. Their posterity found to their cost that their guardian might in his turn become their plunderer and tormentor. A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and Constantinople ; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the Penniless strug- ]\iarch of ^led on, destitute of money, and rousing ^Y^'/*:,'' ^"^ ^ ' •' ' ° his followers the hostility of the inhabitants whom they through robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their mis- andBul- deeds provoked reprisals which threatened s^"^- their destruction ; and none perhaps would have reached Constantinople, if the imperial commander at Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These succours involved some costs ; and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men amongst the pilgrims, and especially of the women and children, who were seized to provide the necessary funds- Of those who formed the train of the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Constantinople. 42 The Crusades, ch. hi. Of such a rabble rout the Emperor Alexios needed not to be afraid. He had already seen and encountered Passage of far larger armies of Normans, Turks, and across A^r^ Romans ; and he now extended to this van- Bosporos. guard of the hosts of Latin Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the arrival of their fellow crusaders ; and consulting the safety of his people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporos, and pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest from the unbelievers. Alexios wished simply to be rid of their presence : they had to deal with an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian Sultan David, whose sur- name Kilidje Arslan marked him out as the Sword of ^, . the Lion. The vagrants whom Peter and 1 heir utter ^ destmction by Walter had brought thus far on the road to ^ ' Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food ; and it was no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that their companions had carried the walls of Nice (Nikaia), and Avere revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city ; and a vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedition not less, it IS said, than 300,000 human beings had already paid the penalty of their lives. Still the first crusade was destined to accomplish mure than any of the seven or eight crusades which followed 1096. The Fi7'st Crusade. 43 it ; and this measure of success' it achieved „ , Rank and probably because none of the great European character of .1 ^ • •, ri-1 -nr , the leaders of sovereigns took part in it. The Western the first cm- emperor, Henry IV., the representative of ^^^^• Charles the Great was the enemy of the pope ; Philip I., king of France, had been excommunicated by Urban in the council of Clermont ; the sovereigns of Denmark, Scotland, Sweden and Poland were as yet scarcely brought within the community of European monarchs ; the Spanish kings had their crusades ready made at home ; and we have already seen that the English William II., was more intent on acquiring dukedoms than on run- ning the risk of a blessed martyrdom at the gates of Jeru- salem. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Pales- tine was to be achieved by princes of the second order. Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illus- trious was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kins- man of the counts of Boulogne, and duke of ^, ,^ ^ Godfrey of Lothringen (Lorraine). In the service of the Bouillon and TT TTr i-u *u • h's brothers emperor Henry IV., the enemy or the vie- Baldwin and tim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to Eustace, mount the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city ; he might hope that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he ex- ercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life, an influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than 80,000 infantry and 10,000 horse- men, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace, count of Boulogne. Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was Hugh, count of Vermandois, whose surname the Great has been ascribed by some to his birth Huph of as the brother of Philip I., the French king, Vermandois. 44 The Crusades. ch. hi. by others merely to his stature as ' Hugh the long.' With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, Robert of whose carelessness had lost him the crown Normandy. Qf England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The picture drawn of him is indeed not unlike that of the forefather of the Edomite tribes. Careless of the future, open in his friendship or his enmity, free from duplicity in himsell and unsuspicious of treachery in others, charming others and injuring himself by his light-hearted cheerfulness and his lavish generosity, Robert was a man whom the total lack of the qualities which marked his iron-hearted father brought to a horrible captivity and death in the dungeons of Cardiff Castle. The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert of Robert, count of Flanders, whom his fol- Flanders and lowers laudcd as the Sword and Lance of btepnen oi Chartres. the Christians, and of Stephen, count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, the possessor, if we choose to believe the tale, of 365 castles, and as rich in his elo- quence as in his fortresses. The same arithmetic would have us think that the minor chiefs were more numerous than the champions whom Agamemnon led to the Tro- jan war; and the assertion is perhaps as niuch and as little to be credited as the catalogue of Greek warriors in the Ihad. Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the southern bands, was the papal legate Adhemar Adhemar (Aymer) bishop of Puy — a leader op o uy. j-g^-j-^gj- g^g gliding the counsels of the army than as gathering soldiers under his banner, A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the great- 1096. The First Crusade. 45 ness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Raymond of count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and '^'^"l"*^^^- Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare, and won for himself a mingled reputation for wisdom and haughti- ness, obstinacy and greed. Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his com- rades, and certainly more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guis- „ , Ijohcmond. card, whom we have seen fighting at Dyrr- hachium and victorious at Larissa (p. 23), looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the Egean. Nay, if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recov- ering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in part of enabling the pontiff to suppress all oppo- sition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern emperor. Far above his companion Bohemond, rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert ^ r^ . J J •( • • Tancred. Guiscard ; and his reputation comes not from his wealth or the greatness of his following, but from the qualities of mind and person which raised him indefinitely nearer than his fellows to the standard of the ' very gentle perfect knight' of Chaucer. In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted mar- vellous strength and splendour. 46 The Crusades. ch. hi. When in the council of Clermont pope Urban dwelt on the cowardice and ignoble fears of the Turks, he probably touched a chord which grated on Cause and '- , , . . effect of chi- the more generous and enthusiastic amongst ^^ '^^' his hearers, and was in fact speaking as a priest when with greater wisdom he should have used the language of a general. There can be little doubt that the finer spirits of the age were moved by the eager desire of rescuing a crowd of helpless Christians from conquerors whose might it was impossible for them to resist, and who were worthy antagonists even for the noblest knights of Latin and Teutonic Christendom. The rescue of this feeble multitude could be effected only at the cost of a great sacrifice, — the sacrifice of houses and lands, of luxuries and pleasures : and the conscious- ness of large sacrifices, cheerfully made for the weak and suffering, is amongst the highest feelings which may be awakened in the human heart. Thus in the most noble- minded and disinterested of the crusading champions there was distinctly a combination of two ideas, seemingly discordant, yet working together to produce one definite moral result. These were the indignation with which they regarded the tyranny exercised over the Christians of the East, and the involuntary respect and even admi- ration which they felt for the conquerors as the most re- doubtable warriors of the age next to the foremost knights of Christendom. The former feeUng would impel them to the most desperate efforts for the recovery of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre ; the latter would place checks dimly recognized and not always heeded on the ferocious warfare with which they would without scruple seek to sweep away all meaner or more savage enemies. So far as he was actuated by such motives, the crusader was cultivating in himself the germs of forbearance and 1096. The First Crusade. 47 toleration which must at once to whatever extent soften the horrors of war and which would in the end yield more solid and satisfying fruits. In this same direction the influence of the Church was felt with constantly in- creasing power. It had been her aim to curb, when she could not repress, the violence of her children, and to establish by a solemn sanction that Truce of God which prevented the practice of private war from becoming a burden too heavy for the earth to bear. But in the expe- dition for the delivery of the Holy Land war itself was sanctified ; and the knight, initiated even in past years by rites, which, heathen in their origin, had been made sacred by the Church, was raised almost to the level of the priest and the monk. Henceforth the young aspirant for the knightly dignity and office was treated much as the catechumens had been treated in the first ,. , , . . . Knighthood. Christian centuries. He must enter on his work with clean thoughts and pure conscience, and the spotless garment of the catechumen, purified by his long fast, was reproduced in the white robe which the young squire put on after cleansing his body in the bath, while the profession of baptism was repeated in the knightly vow which (after a special confession of sin followed by absolution) pledged the young man to deal justly, truly, and generously, defending the oppressed, succouring the needy and helpless, and everywhere showing himself the unsparing antagonist of all tyrants and evil-doers. In an especial degree he was to be the champion of women, the protector of children ; and he rose from his knees before the assembled clergy, dubbed a knight by the sword of his godfather in the names of God, of our Lady, and of St. Michael, or St. George. The nearest to the heart of those who uttered this formula, as to that of the young knight, was the name of the Virgin Mother, 48 The Crusades. ch. hi. Avhose name, it would seem, has fascinated multitudes without curing them of savage treachery and blood- thirsty ferocity. In feudal phrase she was his Lady (Notre Dame), as the crucified Jesus was his Lord (Notre Seigneur) ; and the adoring and humble love which he bore for her was held to sanctify and to be reflected in the devotion which he felt for every noble lady and more especially for the one favoured dame who became the idol of his heart, a star to be worshipped at a distance, if not a queen at whose feet he might throw himself in an ecstacy of passion. This being whom he delighted to picture to himself as the peerless ideal of womanhood might be the wife of another man ; and these extravagant fancies produced not unfrequently the most lamentable and ruinous results. But the knightly or chivalrous spirit, thus sometimes led astray, tended nevertheless to impose moral checks on rude and savage minds which had never felt them before ; and the growth of this spirit was ensured chiefly by the crusaders. The iniquities wrought by the soldiers of the Cross were fearful indeed ; but the horrors of the warfare were in some small measure softened by the honour which the foremost vv^arriors on both sides paid each to the bravery and good faith of the other ; and this feeling expressed itself in a word which even now has by no means lost its meaning. The quality of courtesy so named displayed itself in the Courtesy. "^ '■ readiness to give place to another where strength and power might have refused all concessions. It was closely allied to the Christian qualities of meekness and mercy, and any approach to this heavenly temper was a gain indeed in a brutalized and ferocious age. The highest glory of the crusading knight was to be a mirror of courtesy : and this glory is especially associated with the name of Tancred. Tancred lived, fought, and con- 1096. The First Critsade. 49 quered : the Rinaldo whom Tasso paints in his epic poem on the dehverance of Jerusalem is a being oi cloudland like the Greek Achilleus, the Trojan Hektor, and the Persian Rustam. The miserable remnant of 3,000 men who escaped from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian Sultan (p. 41), found a refuge in Byzantine territory about the time when the better ap- August.' De- . . parture of the pomted armies of the crusaders were settmg main army of rr ^i_ • ,. J • --m ^ the crusaders on on their eastward journey. The most under God- disciplined of these troops set out with a ^'"^y- vast following from the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon who led them safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against the ad- vance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repeti- tion of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Plermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian king demanded as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general : the demand was refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for a free passage and a free market ; but although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The mis- chief might have been much worse, had not the Hunga- rian calvary, acting professedly as a friendly escort but really as cautious warders kept close to the crusading hosts. At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey learnt that Hugh of Vcrmandois, whose comin;^ had been announced to the Greek ^ . . - •^ captivity of emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights Hnijh of Vcr- in golden armour, and who styled liimself lii:u\(l(HS. 50 The Crusades. CK. iii. the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Frank- ish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constanti- nople. With Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flan- ders, with Stephen of Chartres and some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy ; and the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal. With little regard to order the chiefs deter- mined to cross the sea as best they might. Hugh em- barked at Bari ; and if we may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the worshipper of her father Alexios, his fleet was broken by a tempest which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenos, the nephew of the emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good pleasure of Alexios should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw at once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders conducted with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completely won by the charm of manner which Alex- ios well knew how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he could to induce others to follow his example. From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexios, demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey re- A. D. 1096. ^ Christmas. sumcd his march, treatmg the land through Godfrey'before which he passed as an enemy's country, Conrtanti- ^ Until by way of Adrianople he at length ap- nople. peared before the walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexios wer& aroused J 096. The Fh'st Crusade. 51 by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable : they quickened into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their way under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact ^ ,. , , ■' . Policy of the of his mission as a crusader, he knew little emperor or nothing : but in Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert into open enemies, was the re- sult of his own entreaties urged through his envoys be- fore Urban II. in the council of Piacenza ; and his mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to their destination and so to rid himself of their hatefu] presence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they might make in Syria. Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp ; but the quarrel was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to restore friendship. But it was of the first import- Compact be- ance for Alexios that he should secure the tween Aiexios and the cru- homage of the princes already gathered saders. round his capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexios pledged them his word that he would supply them with food and aid them in their east- ward march, and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On the other hand the crusad- ing chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the emperor as their liege lord only for the im: during which they might remain within his borders, and undertook to restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from the empire. In order to secure this treaty Alexios had been compelled to go 52 The Crusades. CH. iii. through the fatigue of interminable audiences with the Western warriors and to put up with not a httle inso- lence. The effrontery of a crusader, who flinging him- self on the imperial throne declared that he saw no reason for standing while one rustic remained seated, was denounced as intolerable rudeness even by his com- panions ; but Robert, count of Paris, if indeed it was he, closed a brief career not many weeks later, and is more conspicuous in modern romance than in the pages of mediaeval historians. The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within him when on reaching Constantinople he found that his colleagues, instead of remaining indepen- Homage of the o ' o jt crusaders to dent chicfs, had made themselves vassals of the Byzantine monarch. But Alexios was vigorously aided by Robert of Flanders, whose friendly offices were the result of an alliance made with his father eight years before ; and Bohemond soon saw that he must in appearance follow the example of his com- rades, wha.tever course it might suit him to take here- after. He became the guest of the emperor, listened with complacency to his flatteries, accepted a magnificent gift or bribe, and accompanied his submission with a re- quest for the office of Grand Domestic, or general of the East. The emperor put him off" with the promise of an independent principality, and turned with more genuine warmth to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This dis- interested crusader was anxious only to fulfill his vows ; and Alexios felt that he was making no sacrifice and en- tering into no inconvenient engagements by adopting him as his son. The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome the opposition of Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of Toulouse, who, I097- "^^^ First Crusade. 53 though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade. He should ma^rdi of" never make another journey, he said, and he ,if^yi"ond of •^ •' i oulouse to was determined to be well prepared. Wish- Constanti- ing to avoid, so far as he could, the lines of march chosen by the chiefs who had preceded him, he took the road through Lombardy. Thus far his march was easily accomplished : but things wore a different look when he reached the savage mountains and desolate valleys of Dalmatia and Slavonia. The people had driven their cattle (and their cattle formed practically their whole property) into inaccessible glens: and instead of plundering others the crusaders found themselves ha- rassed and their stragglers cut off by thieves and murder- ers, Raymond retaliated by cutting off the hands and noses of all who were taken prisoners and putting out their eyes; and the wrath of the natives was roused to desperate resistance. At Scodra he entered into some sort of agreement with the Servian chief Bodin ; but the country could yield little for the support of this vast army, which was compelled to struggle onwards under dire difficulties. It is astonishing to hear that Raymond could still speak of himself as the leader of a hundred thousand warriors, when he refused flatly to do homage to the Greek emperor. The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the French king. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexios on equal ^ ^ , ^ ^ Refusal of terms ; but he would not declare himself to Raymond to be his man. On this point he was immov- ° o^age. able, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat, which was never forgiven, that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found on the side of the emperor. But Alexios soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal 54 The Crusades. ch. hi. with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, and winning the heart of the old warrior, although he failed to compel his obe- dience, he confessed to him his dislike of the rude and noisy habits of the Franks and his deep-seated fears of Bohemond. The admiration of Anna Comnena was as great as the esteem professed for him by her father. Ray- mond in her fervent language shone among the barba- rians as the sun among the stars of heaven. While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less ,. , ^ anxiously occupied with the task of sending; ( onduct of -^ ^ *= Alexios to the across the Bosporos the swarms which might soon become an army of devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them a wel- come than to get rid of them : and more than two months A. D. 1097 had passed since Christmas, when the follow- March. gj-g Qf Godfrey found themselves on the soil of Asia. It was well to place even a narrow strait of sea between himself and these dangerous friends, who had threatened him at first with all the horrors of savage war. The rumour had got abroad that Alexios meant to hem them in among marshes, and leave them there to starve ; and an assault of the crusaders on the suburbs showed the emperor what he might expect, if these suspicions were not quieted. Probably he had not intended to en- trap them to their death : but he had felt less scruple in submitting them to cheatings with debased coin and to extortions which carried with them no sense of novelty for his own people. Even these he found it politic to abandon, and so zealously did he employ an opposite method that for the time the crusaders seemed to have become his mercenaries. Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the ro97« The First Crusade. 55 eastern side of the Bosporos, than all the vessels which had transported them were brout^ht back P3.SS32rG of tllG to the western shore. With great astute- crusaders across ness, and at the cost of large gifts, Alexios '^ ^ osporos. in like manner freed the neighbourhood of his capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came, they were hurried across, and the emperor breathed more freely when, on the feast of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore. The danger of conflict had throughout been immi- nent ; and the danger arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men, march- ^„ 1 IT Ihorough an- mg through the country of professed allies, tagonism be- but from the thorough antagonism between saders and^the Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and Greeks, habits of life, in the first notions of civihzation, law, and duty. For the Greeks feudalism was a thing of the re- mote past ; in other words, was a thing unknown. To get at a state resembling that of Western Europe they would have had to go back for nearly twenty centuries — to the days of Solon and of the Thessalian and Theban nobility, who were among the most efftcient allies of Xerxes. For the crusading armies or rather for theii chiefs (of the common herd there was no need to take any account), nothing was so hateful as a central au- thority which pressed on all orders in the state alike : nothing was so precious as local tyranny and the right of private war, which respected neither person nor pro- perty. For the subjects of the Eastern empire the pro- tection of person and property was everything, and in order to secure this they were willing to put up with a large amount of oppression and of corruption in their governors. In a sense not so high perhaps as that which the words bore in the days of Herodotos, law was still 56 The Crusades. ch. hi. their king ; and of public law the Latins could scarcely be said to have any conception. Nor must tween^he ^' we forget the vast gulf which separated the Greek and Eastern from the Western clergy. The Latin clergy. "-' latter were now becoming well broken into the yoke of celibacy which had been finally thrust upon them by Damiani and Hildebrand ; for the former mar- riage was a condition for the very reception of their orders. The Latin clergy had by this change been con- verted into a close order or caste, which looked up to the Roman pontiff as their head and hated the thought of allegiance to any temporal ruler. This empire within an empire was an idea which had not dawned on the Greek or the Eastern mind ; and the clergy of the West despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their ferocity. Harmony between nations and races under such conditions is as hopeless as the volun- tary mingling of oil and water ; and the result of contact was an exasperation of the suspicion, jealousy, and hatred which the one side felt instinctively for the sup- posed treachery, lying, and violence of the other. Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the Hellespont and the Bosporos a host, we may well believe more vast than that which Xerxes drove crusaders °^ ^'^ before him for the invasion of Europe, and leaving behind it in utter insignificance the scanty force with which Alexander attempted and achieved the conquest of Asia. When tribes or a nation pour out their whole population, men, women, and chil- dren alike, there is practically no limit to the numbers I097' 'r^^^^ First Crusade. 57 which may be set in motion ; nor is it any tax on oui credulity to believe that a hundred thousand horsemen, fully armed in the light coats of mail worn during the first crusading age, were marshalled on the Bithynian plains, even if \r^ put aside as an absurd exaggeration the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that the whole body of the crusaders amounted to not less than six millions. Their strength and valour were soon to be tested. They were now face to face with the Turks on whose cowardice Urban II. had enlarged with so j^^e. much complacency before the council of ^j-^^f ^g"^ ^^^^ Clermont. The Sultan David,* or Kilidje (Nikaia). Arslan (p. 41), placed his family and treasures in his capital city of Nice (Nikaia), and retreated with 50,000 horsemen to the mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of the Christians. By these his city was formally invested ; and for seven weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was pro- tected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had command of this lake they felt them- selves safe. But Alexios sent thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a double blockade, submitted to the emperor, who was in no way anxious to see the crusaders masters of the pkpce. The crusaders were making ready for the last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the walls. Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or un- believers, for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles : but Alexios, with gifts, which added 58 The Crusades. CH. iii. force to his words, professed that his only desire now, as it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they to go many stages before they found themselves again confronted with their adversary. The conflict took place near the Phrygian Battle of Dorylaion, and seemed at first to portend oryaion. dire defeat to the crusaders. More than once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the in- domitable personal bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond ; and when even those seemed likely to be borne down, they received timely succours from Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from bishop Adhemar of Poy and from Raymond, count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed like- ly that they would long hold out, when the appearance of the last division of Raymond's army filled them with the fear that a new host was upon them. The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, March to ^^^ Kilidjc Arslan was hurrying away to Cogni and enlist the services of his kinsmen. Mean- the PisiGian Antioch, while the Latin hosts were sweeping on- wards, passing Cogni (Ikonion, Iconium), Erekli (Hera- kleia), and the Pisidian Antioch. Their dangers were great ; their sufferings terrible. The son of Kilidje Arslan had hurried on before them with ten thousand horsemen, and declared before the gates of each city that they came as conquerors, not as fugitives. They had ravaged the lands as they came along ; in the town they sacked the churches, plundered the houses, emptied the granaries ; and the crusaders who followed them had to journey over a naked soil under the burning Phrygian sun. Hundreds died from the heat : and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage horses which had 1097- ■^^ First Crusade. 59 perished. At length Tancred with his troop found him- self before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the crusaders. Fol- lowing rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw q^^^^^^, ^^^ with keen jealousy the banner of the Italian tween Baid- j . . J win and chief floatmg on its towers, and msisted on Tancred at taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded i^^^^us. the choice of the people and his own promise to protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their humour, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at private war be- tween Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred were overborne. So early was the first harvest of murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the cross. It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main army again began its march, to undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and peril. A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and rout them as they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, re- q^^^^^^^^^^ covering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, Edessa by . , . -,. . 1 , Baldwin. suffering from wounds inflicted by a bear, have done much to help them. But for the present their enemies were dismayed ; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened with eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the Greek or Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As Alexios had done to his brother, so this chief welcomed Baldwin as his son ; but Baldwin, having once entered into the city, cared nothing for the means which had brought him thither, and the death of his adoptive father was followed by the establishment at Edessa of a Latin principality whicli lasted for fifty -four, 6cr The Crusades. CH. iii. or, as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samo- sata ; but the Turkish governor had some of the Edes- senes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterwards fell into Baldwin's hands, and was put to death. Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was ad- vancing towards the Syrian capital, that ancient and Arrival of the luxurious city whosc fame had gone over the fore thelyrlan wholc Roman world for its magnificence, its Antioch. unbounded we?Jth, its soft delights, and its unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendour had passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins ; its buildings were in some parts crumbling away or had already fallen ; but against assailants utterly ignorant and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of cities it was still a formidable position. Nor could they invest it until they had passed the iron bridge (so called from its iron-plated gates) of nine stone arches, which spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of nine miles from the city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge of Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of Godfrey ; and in the language of an age which de- A. D. 1097. lighted in round numbers, a hundred thou- sand warriors hurried across to seize the splendid prize which now seemed almost within their grasp. But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to despise the Greeks, and who had Siege of An- not yet learnt to respect the valour of the '^'°'^^" Latins. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian governor Baghasian had sent away, as useless, if not mischievous, most of the Chris- I097- '^h^ First Crusade. 6i tians within the town ; and the crusading chiefs had begun to discuss the prudence of postponing all opera- tions till the spring, when Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted that delay would imply fear, and that the imputation of cowardice would ensure the paralysis of their enterprise. The city was therefore at once invested, so far as the forces of the crusaders could suffice to encircle it ; and a siege began which in the eyes of the military historian must be absolutely without interest, and of which the issue was decided by parox- ysms of fanatical vehemence on the one side, and by lack not of bravery but of generalship on the other. Of the eastern and northern walls the blockade was com- plete ; of the west it was partial ; and the failure to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of the five gates of the city, left the movements of the Turks in this direction free. But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of death. The wealth of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible tempta- tions, and the herds feeding in the rich pas- u°'-^ °^ ^^^ ' <=> -t besiegers. tures seemed to promise an endless feast. The cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted with besotted folly, while the Turks within the v/alls re- ceived tidings, it is said, of all that passed in the crusa- ding camp from some Greek and Armenian Christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge they availed themselves in planning the sal- lies by which they caused great distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and devices seemed to produce no result beyond the waste of time, and who felt perhaps that they had done something when they blocked up the gate of the bridge with huge stones dug from the neigh- bouring quairies. 62 The Crusades. CH. in. Three months passed away ; and the crusaders found themselves not conquerors but in desperate straifs from famine. The winter rains had turned the land round their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left them ^ . . , more and more unable to resist the pesti- s amine in the . . . _ ^ crusading lential diseases which were rapidly thinning vheir numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and Tancred filled the camp with food: it was again recklessly wasted. The second famine scared away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor Alexios ; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps still more disgusted by the desertion of William of Melun, called the Carpenter, from the sledge-hammer blows which he dealt out in battle. Hunger obtained a victory even over the hermit Peter, who was stealing away with William of Melun, when he with his companion was caught by Tancred and brought back to the tent of Bohe- mond. For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that country the progress of the voyrfrom the crusadiug arms had thus far brought with it Fadmite sultan ^^ jj^^j dissatisfactiou. The humiliation oi Egypt. of the Seljukian Turks could not fail to bring gain to himself, if the flood of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back in time. His generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre ; and when the Fatimite once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the crusaders' camp to announce the deliverance of the Holy Land from its oppressors, to assure to all unarmed and peacea- ble pilgrims a month's unmolested sojourn in Jerusalem, and to promise them his aid during their march, on con- dition that they should acknowledge his supremacy Vvithin the limits of his Syrian empire. 1098. The First Crusade. 63 The arguments and threats of the caliph were ahke thrown away. The Latin chiefs disclaimed ii', -•^iri 1 , ^ . Their terms re- all mterest m the feuds and quarrels of rival jcctcd by the sultans and in the fortunes of Mahomedan ''■""^''^'■^- sects. God Himself had destined Jerusalem for the Christians, and if any held it who were not Christians, these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion or their death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer, and still more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence of a camp in which they had expected to see a terrible spectacle of disorder and misery. The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Cassarea, Aleppo, and other places, when they were cut off by Bohe- Swe'enThf '' mond and Raymond, who sent a multitude ^^^ristians and ■' the iurks. of heads to the envoys of the Fatimite caliph, and discharged many hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch. The Turks had their opportunity for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and Genoese ships at the mouth of the Oron- ^ ^ ^^^ tes drew off the greater part of the besieging J^^^rch. army. The crusaders were returning with provisions and arms, when their enemies started upon them from an ambuscade. The battle was fierce : but the defeat of Ray- mond which threatened dire disaster was changed into victory on the arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert, whose exploits equalled or surpassed, if we are to believe the story, even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram, Hundreds, if not thousands, of Turks fell. Their bodies were buried by their comrades in the cemetery without the walls : the Christians dug them up, severed the heads from the trunks, and paraded the ghastly trophies on their 64 The Crusades. CH. in, pikes, not forgetting to send a goodly number to the Egyptian caliph, by way of showing how his Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The picture is disgusting; but if we shut our eyes to these loathsome details, the truth of the history is gone. We are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is right that we should know this. The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce quarrel about a splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift for the former, had been seized by an Armenian .chief and sent to the latter. But there was now more serious business on hand. Rumour spoke of the near Plan of Bohe- approach of a Persian army, and the besieged reduction^o/ ^ Under the plea of wishing to arrange terms Antioch. Qjf capitulation obtained a truce which they sought probably only for the sake of gaining time. The days passed by, but no offers were made ; and their dis- position was shown by seizing a crusading knight in the groves near the city, and tearing his body in pieces. The Latins returned with increased fury to the siege : but the defence, although more feeble, was still protracted, and Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud might suc- ceed where force had failed, but that from fraud he might reap not safety merely but wealth and greatness. His plans were laid with a renegade Christian named Phirouz (high in the favour of the governor), with whom he had come into contact either during the truce qx in some other way. By splendid promises he ensured the zeal- ous aid of his new ally, and then came forward in the council with the assurance that he could place the city in their hands, but that he could do this only on condition that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. His claim was angrily opposed by the ProvenQal Ray- mond: but this opposition was overruled, and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at once. 1098. The Fh'st Crusade. 65 There was need for so doing. Rumours spread within the city that some attempt was to be made to betray the place to the besiegers, and hints or open June, accusations pointed out Phirouz as the trai- Andoch u) tor. Like other traitors, the renegade thought Bohemond. it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal was received as indubitable proof of his innocence and his faithfulness ; but he had made up his mind that Antioch should fall that night, and that night by means of a rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty followers (the ropes broke before more could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing ten towers of which all the guards were killed, they opened a gate, and the Christian host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of the towers ; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a carnage began in which at first the assailants took no heed to distinguish between the Christian and the Turk. In the awful confusion of the moment some of the be- sieged made their way to the citadel, and there shut themselves in, ready to resist to the death. Of the rest few escaped : ten thousand, it is said, were massacred, Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the be- siegers' lines ; but fainting from loss of blood he fell from his horse, and his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his groans, and striking off his head, car- ried the prize to the camp of the conquerors. Phirouz lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his career as a thief. The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance; and their feasting was accompa- nied by the wildest riot and the most filthy Arrival of debauchery. But if heedless waste may have jJ^nde^'^Ker^ been one of the most venial of their sins, ^og^- 66 The Crusades. ch. hi. it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which spoke of the approach of the Persians were not false. The Turks within the citadel suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged, and that the Chris- tians were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga prince of Mosul and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan. The old horrors of famine were now repeated, but in greater intensity ; and the doom of the Latin host seemed to be sealed. Stephen count of Chartres had deserted his com- panions before the fall of the city ; others now followed his example, and with him set out on their Stephen of rctum to Europc. In Phrygia Stephen en- Chartres. countered the emperor Alexios, who was marching to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but with a force of well appointed pilgrims who had reached Constantinople after the departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The story told by Stephen drove out of his head every thought except that of his own safety. The order for retreat was given ; and the pilgrim warriors not less than the Greeks were compelled to turn their faces westwards. In vain Guy, a brother of Bohemond, pleaded his duty and his vow. His words were unheeded ; and his indignation wrung from him the desperate assertion that if the Divine Being were omni- potent. He would not suffer such things to be done. In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair. Discipline had well nigh come to an Desperate end, and so obstinate was their refusal to crusade°rs^kf bear arms any longer, that Bohemond re- Antioch. solvcd to burn them out of their quarters. These were consumed by the flames, which spread so rapidly as to fill him with fear that he had destroyed not only their dwellings but his whole principality. His ex- 1090. The First Crusade. 67 periment brought the men back to their duty : but so de- spondingly was their work done that but for some signal succour the end, it was manifest, must soon come. In a credulous age such succour at the darkest hour, if ob- tained at all, will generally be obtained through miracle. A Lombard priest came forward, to whom St. Ambrose of Milan had declared in a vision that the third year of the crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem ; an- other had seen the Saviour Himself, attended by his Virgin-Mother and the Prince of the Apostles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders for yielding to the seductions of pagan women (as if the profession of Christianity altered the colour and the guilt of a vice], and lastly had received the distinct assurance that in five days they should have the help which they needed. The hopes of the crusaders were roused ; with hope came a return of vigorous energy ; and Peter Barthelemy, chap- lain to Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for recounting a vision which was to be something more than a dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed ^, ,. 1 he disco- the fact that in the church of St. Peter lay very of the hidden the steel head of the spear which had ^ ^ pierced the side of the Redeemer as He hung upon the cross ; and that Holy Lance should win them victory over all their enemies as surely as the spear which im- parted irresistible power to the Knight of the Sangrcal. After two days of special devotion they were to search for the long-lost weapon : on the third day the workmen began to dig ; but until the sun had set they toiled in vain. The darkness of night made it easier for the chaplain to play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the 'Antiquary,' assigns to Herman Doustcrswivel in the ruins of St. Ruth. Barefooted and with a single garment the priest went down into the pit. For a time the strokes of 68 The Crusades, ch. in. his spade were heard, and then the sacred rehc v/as found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The priest proclaimed his discovery ; the people rushed into the church ; and from the church throughout the city spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm. Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life for his fraud or his superstition. A Fate of the bribe taken by his master Raymond brought discoverer. ^^^ ^j^-^^ -^^^ -^ odour with his comradcs, and let loose against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Raymond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk ; and Arnold boldly attacked him in his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance. Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire„ He passed through the flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel his flesh, and were vehement in their rejoicings at the result which vindicated his integ- rity. He had really received fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence. The infidel was doomed ; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was Battle of sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the Antioch. alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on the faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city and territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of the hermit A. D. 1098. raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever June 28. -j^gg^^ . g^j^ J Qj^ ^^ fgg^g^ ^^ g^^ p ^ ^ ^ j. ^^^ Q^^ ^ Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remem- brance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Ray- 1098. The First Crusade. 69 mond of Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, bishop of Puy ; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now regarded as a sign assuring them of the divine favour. They were prepared to see good omens in everything ; and they went in full confidence that departed saints would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and smite down the infidel. The fight (one of brute force on the Christian side, of some little skill as well as strength on the other) had gone on for some time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the aid of Bohemond who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan ; and Kerboga was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in white armour and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen on the neighbouring heights. 'The saints are coming to your aid,' shouted the bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with a force and fury which were now irresistible. Theii calvary could do little. Two hundred horses only re- mained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of iron, and the Turks gave way, Defeat of Ker- broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat ; ^°s^- and with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men, women, and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some declared them- selves Christians and were baptized ; those who refused to abandon Islam were taken to the nearest . . , Autioch made Mohamedan territory. The city was the a principality r T , 1 J J • V • 1 • for Bohemond prize of Bohemond ; and m his keeping 70 The O'usades. CH. iii. it remained, although Raymond of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils taken from the infidel. The Greek patri- arch was again seated on his throne : but he held his office at the good pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the bishop of Puy. Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter ,^. . ^ waterless wastes at the end of a Syrian sum- Mission of •' Hugh of mer, and for the present they were content to Constanti- to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin "°P^^" of Hainault as envoys to the Greek em- peror, to reproach him with his remissness or his want of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexios, for in the v/eakening of both lay his own strength ; and he saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded him. Winter came ; but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were occupied in expeditions against neighbouring -r^ 1 r . , cities : but a more pressing care was the Death of Ad- . . hemar, bishop plague whicli punishcd the foulness and dis- ^' order of the pilgrims. A band of 1,500 Ger- mans, recently landed in strong health and full equip- ments, v/ere all, it is said, cut off; and among the vic- tims the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of discouragement was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs 1098. The First Crusade. 71 vainly entreated the pope to visit the city where the dis- ciples of St. Peter first received the Christian name ; the people were disheartened by the animosities and the sel- fish or crooked pohcy of their chiefs. Raymond still hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted that Bohemond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jordanic tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes ^.^ ^ ^^^ witnessed during the siege and after the capture of conquest of Marra, Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings^ The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to avoid falHng into the hands of the Christians ; to some Bohemond, tempted by a large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun, he ordered these to be brought forward. The w^eak and old he slaugh- tered ; the rest he sent to the slave-markets of Antioch. A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the crusaders only spurred them to more May'nwch of vigorous efforts. They had already left An- '^^^ ASch' tioch, and Laodicea was in their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June. The chiefs, remembering the departure of Tatikios (p. 62) with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus, re- torted that he had broken his compact, and had there- fore no further claims on their obedience. Hastening on their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Bey- rout), overlooked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence the great Pheni- cian cities had sent their seamen and their colonists, 72 The O'usades. ch. hi. with all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adria- tic and the gates of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders came in sight of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the scene hallowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the cru- saders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their armour and their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and his passion. But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged, there was other work to be done. The chiefs took up their posts on those sides from which the jerusaknf^ °^ nature of the ground gave most hope of a successful assault. On the northern side were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and Robert of Normandy ; on the west Raymond with his Provencals, On the fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and trusting to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls. Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very rashness of their attack struck terror for a moment into their enemies. But the garrison soon rallied, and the invaders were all driven back or hurled from the ram- parts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more formal manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive of the immediate neighbourhood would not supply fit materials for their construction. 1096. The First Crusade. 73 These were obtained from the woods of Shcchcm, a dis- tance of thirty miles ; and the work of preparation was carried on under the guidance of Gaston of Beam by the crews of some Genoese vessels which had recently anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days, days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At An- tioch they had been distressed chiefly by famine : in place of this wretchedness they had here the greater miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every place which might serve as a receptacle of water ; and in seeking for it over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the harassing attacks of Moslem horse- men. Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals or discipline of the camp ; and the ghost of Ad- hemar of Puy appeared to rebuke the horrible sins which were drawing down upon them the judgments of the Almighty, Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred, who made up his quarrel with Raymond ; and the enthusiasm of the crusaders was again roused by the preaching of Arnold (p. 68) and the hermit Peter. The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested probably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns preceded the laity round the walls of the city. The Saracens on the ramparts mocked their devotions by throwing dirt upon crucifixes : but they paid a terrible price for these insults. On the next day the final assault began, and was carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute force and carnage which marked all the operations of this merciless war. The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat was suspended, but the besieged were inces> santly occupied in repairing the breaches made by the as- sailants, while these were busied in making their dispo- sitions for the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that 74 The Crusades. ch. hi. deadly struggle, when it seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent, a knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. ' It is St. George the Martyr who has come again to help us,' cried Godfrey, and at his words the crusaders started up without a feeling of fatigue and carried every- thing before them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the hour was three in the afternoon (the moment at which the last cry from the cross announced the accom- plishment of the Saviour's passion), when Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the cross, on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother Engelbert : the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the two Roberts stormed the gate of St. Stephen ; the Provencals climbed the ramparts by lad- ders, and the conquest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little while ago to the cruci- of thecitv"^'"^ fixes Were avenged by Godfrey's orders in the massacre of hundreds ; the carnage in the mosque of Omar swept away the bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood. The Jews were all burnt alive in their synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up to the porch of the temple, were (so the story goes) up to the knees in the loathsome stream; and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing the bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on the sermon of Urban at Clermont. From the duties of slaughter these disci- Adoration of pies of the Lamb of God passed to those of the crusaders ^ _ ^ in the church dcvotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad of the Sepul- . , ^ , . ,. chre. m a robe oi pure white Imen, m an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with pro- found contrition, Godfrey entered the church of the Holy 1098. The First Crusade. 75 Sepulchre and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which had vouch- safed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined, led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good will towards all men. With departed saints were mingled living men who de- served all the honour which might be paid to them. The backsliding of the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered only the fiery elo- quence which had first called them to their now trium- phant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had ^ , . ^ r' f> o ' Exaltation of stirred the heart of Christendom to cut short Peter the the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birth- land of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave thanks to God who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more. On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hun- dred captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee of ^ , . y. ■ r c. V • , , Second and their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a deliberate ,■• r ii- J »T'i_ massacre in crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The Jerusalem, massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by 76 The Crusades. CH. iii. the ungovernable excitement of victory : but it was re- solved that on the next day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered ; and the wrath of Tancred was roused not by their fate but by an act which called his honour into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness, old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigour, all were mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse ; his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the slave-market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners ; but whether these (like the women servants whom Odysseus strung up like sparrows after the slaughter of the suitors) were butchered when their work was ended we are not told. Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done, since Omar had entered Jerusalem as Compassion ^ conqueror and knelt outside the church of of Omar and Coustautine, that his followers might not Godfrey. . ° trespass within it on the privileges of the Christians (p. 13). The contrast is at the least marked between the caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy Catholic Church, When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only ap- Godfrey to pcarcd to whom the crown could fitly be refgnty^of offered. Baldwin was lord of Edessa; Bo- Jerusaiem. hemond ruled at Antioch ; Hugh of Verman- dois and Stephen of Chartres had returned to Europe ; I099- The First Crusade. 77 Robert of Flanders cared not to stay ; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had mortgaged ; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem, nor take the title of king. He would tvatch over his Master's grave and the interests of his worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and De- fender of the Holy Sepulchre ; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed to do Battle of As- battle with the hosts of the Fatimite caliph <^^^o"- of Egypt, who now felt that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword and standard of the sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. _, . , . , _, Return of He retamed, with 300 knights under Tan- the pilgrims cred, only 2,000 foot soldiers for the defence ^"^ ^rope. of his kingdom ; and so ended the first act in the great drama of the crusades. CHAPTER IV. THE LATIN KINGDOxM OF JERUSALEM. The reign of Godfrey fell short by five days even of the brief period of a single year; but it sufficed not only for the discomfiture of the Egyptian sultan, Rergn of Qd. but for the foundation of a kinijdom rcstinsf ^'^'^^ ' 78 The Crusades. CH. iv. on an elaborate system of carefully defined laws. His conflict with the Fatimite caliph was followed by a con- flict with Daimbert, bishop of Pisa, the new Latin patri- arch of Jerusalem. As legate of the pope Pascal II. ^ (Urban had died a fortnight after the fall of the Holy City, in other words, before he could hear of patriarch of the victory of the crusaders,) Daimbert had Jerusalem. invested Godfrey and Bohemond with their feudal possessions, and he lost no time in asserting the papal claim by demanding immediate recognition as the lord of Jerusalem and Jaffa. In each of these cities a quarter was at once assigned to him, and the whole was to pass into his hands if Godfrey should die without children. Such was the compact made by the Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre ; but it was not to pass unchallenged. We have seen Godfrey in the siege and conquest of Jerusalem wading with exultation through a sea of human blood, seizing infants by their feet and dashing them against the walls or whirling them over the battlements, or aiding and abetting those who did so. But a few days or a few weeks later this man was to be seen seated as an impartial judge among men whom he, the king and sove- reign, regarded as his equals, setting about the grave task of compiling a code of laws on the only basis which can serve as the foundation of true constitutional government, — the sanction, namely, of the laws by the men who are to obey them. There was little enough of freedom in the feudal system ; and the system embodied in the code Assize of Jem- popularly known as the Assize of Jerusalem salem. -^^s but a reflection of the general body of law in force throughout Western Christendom. Still the legislation of Godfrey and his successors is full of in- struction, not merely as showing with what success the iioo. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 79 system of one country may be transferred to another, but even as throwing a clearer light on the working of feudalism in Western Europe. The story went that the code thus drawn up with the advice of the Latin pilgrims was deposited in the Holy Sepulchre and was lost with the fall of the city. The tale lies open to grave suspicion. The whole code would form no heavy weight for a beast of burden, while it would be an object utterly valueless in the eyes of the Mahomedan conquerors. It is of more importance to remark that the traditions which this lost record was supposed to have preserved continued to guide the Latin principalities of the East, until in a. d. 1369, having undergone a final revision, they became the laws of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus. The legislation of this code on the relation of vassals to their overlords, on the subject of wardship, of judicial combats, of villenage and slavery, SStecTby''^ may have been more minute and definite ^^^'^^''^y- than the laws of Western Europe ; but it laid down no new principles. A more important feature is to be found in the judicial courts which owed their institution to the first Latin king of Jerusalem^ In the court of the barons or peers the king himself was the president ; in that of the burgesses he was represented by the viscount, and it is in this court that we find the popular element which was hereafter to give a new character to the history of Europe. It consisted of a number of the citizens chosen for their trustworthiness and their wisdom. Popular election, indeed was wanting ; but an assembly of bur- gesses sworn to judge according to the laws in all the concerns of their equals was a germ from which good fruit might have been looked for, if the seed had been sown in fitting soil. Not less wise was the institution of a third court which dealt with Syrian Christians through So Tfie Crusades. CH. iv. the Syrians themselves. But although the legislative work of Godfrey and his successors was not wholly in vain, it was an exotic which could live only with the ascendency of the Latins. It was sown in blood, nursed amid storms, and uprooted by the tempest which swept the Western Christians from Palestine. The death of Godfrey raised in the patriarch Daimbert hopes which were to be disappointed. The subjects of Godfrey had no mind to be governed by a July i8. priest, and Tancred offered the throne to Baldwin I. Bohemond. But Raymond was now a cap- tive, and popular favour inclined to Baldwin, Godfrey's brother, the lord of the Mesopotamian Edessa. Resign- ing his principality to his kinsman of the same name, Baldwin hastened to Jerusalem, and was there chosen king. At first Daimbert held aloof in sullen displeasure ; but his opposition was at length overcome, and the A D iioo— patriarch poured the anointing oil over the ii^S- sovereign. Baldwin reigned for eighteen years, and long before those years had come to an end, the great chiefs of the first crusade had all passed away. In his second year he was compelled to resist an Egyp- tian invasion ; but his army was defeated in a battle near A D iioi Ramlah, in which Stephen earl of Chartres Death of y^^js, taken prisoner and slain. He had been btephen of ^ Chartres. driven back from Europe by the reproaches of his wife Adela, a daughter of the Norman conqueror of England, and in her judgment at least he thus re- A. D. 1105. deemed his fame. Four years later Raymond Death of of Toulouse died in old age on the sea-coast, Kaymond of •^ . . Toulouse. having satisfied probably neither his ambi- tion nor his avarice. He had conquered Tortosa and there founded a principality: but the possession of Tri- polis which he had coveted was reserved for his son IIOO-I2. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 8i Bertrand. Bertrand enjoyed his new fief for two years only, and was succeeded by his son Pontius, to whom Tancred left his widow as a bride. The return of Bohemond to Antioch was soon followed by his capture in a petty expedition for the enlargement of his principality ; but his place was well a. d. 1103. filled by Tancred; and when after two years car^.^^f^,! ' of imprisonment Bohemond came back in hcmond. spite of all the efforts of Alexios to get possession of his person, he found himself master not only of Antioch but of Laodicea and Apameia. In the open war which fol- lowed with the Byzantine emperor, Bohemond was de- feated by land, but with the aid of the Pisans was victo- rious at sea. His thoughts were running probably on another crusade when his help was invoked by Daimbert the patriarch of Jerusalem, who took refuge at his court from what he chose to call the tyranny of Baldwin. With the prelate, Bohemond sailed for Italy, leaving Tancred to rule at Antioch. His ' ' ^°^' name had gone before him, and Philip I. the French king hastened to invite to his court the most redoubtable of the champions of Christendom. Bohemond became the son-in-law of Philip, and sailed again for the land of his old exploits with 5,000 horse and 40,000 foot. Once more he attacked Durazzo ; but the bribes of Alexios foiled his enterprise, and Bohemond was constrained to content ' ' °^' himself with a treaty which admitted him to the imperial presence as the peer of the Byzantine sovereign. He went back to Italy and was making ready the next year for his return to Antioch when death ^' °' "*^' cut short his vehement and stormy career. Tancred re- mained lord of his principality. He was still in the prime of his manhood, and a disposition which, as compared 82 The Crusades. CH. ii. with that of his fellows, was generous and Death of' merciful, might promise a long time of Tancre . righteous government for his people. But before three years had passed Tancred died childless, of a wound received in battle, and left his power to his kins- man Roger. The only man who had derived permanent benefit from these crusading expeditions was the man to whom Effect of the it might be supposed that they had caused thrByHndne ^he greatest mischief and annoyance. It was empire. Qf ^^ f^j-gt importance to the safety of the Byzantine empire that the Turks should be drawn away from the nearer countries of Bithynia and Phrygia. This great result the crusade fully achieved. The capital of the Turkish sultan of Roum was transferred from Nice to the remote and obscure city of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion ;) the authority of the Greek emperor was re-established over all the maritime regions of Asia Minor ; and the existence of his empire prolonged for nearly 350 years. But Alexios, with his crafty and scheming temper to which incessant occupation in tasks serious or trifling brought a sense of self-importance, was pre-eminently a man to think more of annoyances than of grave disasters. For him accordingly it was grief of spirit that Latin chiefs should fail to do him homage for distant conquests, the possession of which could bring him no good ; and he had a standing ground of quarrel and complaint in the trouble given or the alarm caused by the hosts of pilgrims which Europe poured out upon the East as soon as the tidings were brought that Jerusalem was in the hands of Fresh swarms the Christians. It certainly cannot be said of pilgrims. ^^^^ ^^ pilgrims left Alexios much time for idleness. A rabble more disorderly than that of Walter the Penniless followed the armies of Godfrey and his I TOO. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusale7n. Zt^ confederates. These were Lombards headed by the archbishop of Milan ; and when Alexios insisted on their crossing the Bosporos before more should come, they brolie out into open war and attempted to storm the quarter of Blachernai. These were followed by a better appointed force under the count of Blois and the consta- ble of the emperor of Germany, who spoke with confi- dence of attacking Bagdad and destroying the caliphat. But the dress of the Greek clergy in some Phrygian town excited their wrath. Priests and others were massacred; and the sequel of the expedition was as disastrous as that of the hordes cut off by Kilidje Arslan at the hill of bones (p. 42). No better success attended the compa- nies gathered under the standards of the count of Nevers, the count of Poitiers, and Hugh of Vermandois. With the last of these chiefs came hundreds of ladies who looked for nothing less than a triumphal march from Constantinople to Jerusalem : for almost all of these a journey of unspeakable misery came to an end in the slave-markets of Bagdad and Death of Hugh other great cities of the East. The counts of Nevers and of Poitiers reached Antioch on foot with a few followers : Hugh of Vermandois managed to escape to Tarsus, and there he died. An endless series of wars, some of which were forced upon him while others were mere blunders, was to occupy the life of Alexios to its close. Throughout • , 1 r ^ ^- ■ f ■ Death of the it may be said that successful dissimulation emperor and even successful treachery brought him greater delight than the most decisive victory in the field. Some of his worst faults are recorded as consti- tuting his greatest merits in the turgid pages of his daughter Anna : but she and her mother Irene were to learn, as he lay almost at the last gasp, that they too 84 The Crusades. CH. ii. could be sufferers by his astuteness. He al- A. D. II18. lowed his son John to frustrate at the last moment their most cherished scheme, and his wife bade him farewell with the plain-spoken phrase, ' You die, as you have lived, — a hypocrite.' While the days of Alexios were drawing to an end at Constantinople, Baldwin king of Jerusalem was dying in Egypt, whither he had gone in the hope of crippling the power of the Fatimite sultan. His body was embalmed, brought back to Jerusalem, and laid in the sepulchre of Godfrey. On the day of his funeral the great council met to elect his successor. His brother A. D. II18 1131- Eustace was absent in Europe ; and the kingofjeni- crown was offered to his kinsman, Baldwin saiem. ^^^ Bourg, wlio had been recommended for the post by the first king, and whose claim was urged by Joceline of Courtenay. In his gratitude Baldwin in- vested Joceline with the principality of Edessa. It may be enough to say of this king that during his reign, as in that of his predecessor, the limits of the Latin power were being gradually extended, the new acquisitions being bestowed on princes who held them as fiefs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. After a siege of six weeks Sidon had fallen, in the days of the first Bald- win. In this blockade the Latins were aided A. D. 1115. Conquest of to good purposc by the fleet and army of the Norwegian Siward. Nine years later the Venetian doge Michael came to worship at the Holy Sepulchre, and offered the help of his fleet for the reduc- tion of Ascalon or Tyre, The choice fell upon Tyre, and the doge stipulated that one half of that city should remain to himself in absolute sovereignty, A. D. II24. _ O y » Conquest of while the Venetians should also have a church, a street, and other privileges in Je- 1 1 15-62. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 85 rusalem. The siege lasted five months, when the still great, and once peerless, Phenician city was compelled to yield and become the seat of a Christian archbishop- ric. But if the crusading dominions were thus enlarged, it is perhaps of little use to speak of the greatest extent reached by a kingdom almost as restless and as change- ful as the sea. The third successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jeru- salem was Fulk of Anjou, whose lot on the whole was more tranquil than that of his predecessors, ^ ^ A. D. II31 — although in attempting to aid Raymond 1144- count of Tripoli against Zenghis, sultan of Jerusalem. Aleppo, he was shut up in the castle of Barin or Montferrat, and compelled to purchase his safety with gold. He was succeeded by his son Bald- win, a boy thirteen years of age, who was 1162. soon to see what the prowess of the West ^ ^'° could do in a second •crusade. The feuds of the Chris- tian princes of Antioch and Edessa gave to Zenghis an opportunity of attacking the principalities of Joceiine of Courtenay. For eighteen days the inhabitants of Edessa awaited in terrible suspense the result of a siege in which for them surrender meant death. The deeds of Godfrey and his fellows on the fall of Jerusalem were still fresh in the memory of their enemies, and the heralds of Zenghis were not slack in teaching his men that con- quest brought with it the right of pillage. The Turks learnt the lesson in spirit as well as in letter ; and on the fall of Edessa the deeds of blood Fall of and cruelty showed that Moslems might be apt pupils in the horrible school in which the Christians had attained a standard of ideal excellence. The story told once needs not to be told again. The murder of Zenghis awakened in Joceiine of Edessa the hope that 86 The Crusades. ch. v. the lost city might be recovered. The attempt issued in a second disaster ; and nothing remained but an appeal to the religious enthusiasm of Western Christendom. CHAPTER V. THE SECOND CRUSADE. What Peter the Hermit had been for the first crusade, that St. Bernard was for the second ; and on Peter, Bernard the Bernard lookcd down with undisguised con- apostle of the tempt. The failure of that first great enter- second cru- ^ ° sade. prise he ascribes to the wretched councils of the fanatical guide whose name he supposes that his hearers or correspondents have sometimes heard. To the holy war which he felt himself called upon to kindle, he looked forward without the least misgiving, and the proud confidence which he feels and everywhere ex- presses may be taken as a special characteristic of West- ern monachism in its palmiest days. While the monks of the East were losing themselves more and more in the mists of dreamy or useless speculation, the cell of the Western monk became an imperial chamber from which went forth the letters which were to cheer or counsel the Vicar of Christ, to rebuke kings and statesmen, to warn and guide the faithful, to recall the wanderer to the fold, and to confound the unbeliever. For these high offices he had a commission higher than that of any earthly authority. They fell within the range of his duty as the member of a society, the soldier of an army, which was to fight the battles of the King of kings. He was the knight sheathed in the impenetrable armour of the Spirit, and he bore in his hand the invincible sword of faith. He had learnt the language, and transferred to his 1115-1162. The Second Crusade. 87 monastic life the images and terms, of feudalism. For him action was everything ; solitude with its essential idea of rest was in comparison of this as nothing. He fled from his home to the cloister, because he could there fight better against material and spiritual corruption. He chose the most severe schools which he could find for the exercise of his self-discipline. He withdrew from these into wilder deserts, if they failed to meet his ideal of self-mortification. He established what he called a reform, if existing rules appeared to him too indulgent to human weakness. Such was the life of St, Bernard. He was from first to last a crusader, and the most per- tinacious and successful of his crusades was against the peace and quiet of his own family. His mother had made a secret vow to devote all her children to God ; and Bernard held it among the first of his duties to see that her vow should be fulfilled. Power, wealth, and dignity in the world were within his grasp : he threw them all aside. The holy house of Molesme had sent forth some of its most austere members under an Englishman named Stephen Harding, and these found a ruder and more savage home on the borders of Cham- pagne and Burgundy, at Citeaux, the cradle of the great Cistercian order. Thither came Bernard in his early manhood, and there he remained until he in his turn went forth to found a new house in the gloomy and ill- famed valley to which he gave a name associated for ever with his memory. Here at Clairvaux his father took the habit of a monk, and died in his arms. His brothers and his sisters had made their profession before him, — not all without a struggle ; but who should resist the Divine Will? The wife of one of his brothers re- fused to make the sacrifice of her husband's love : but a sudden illness convinced her of the pciils of disobe- S8 The Crusades. CH. v. dience, and like her husband she found her home in a convent. This was the man whom the tidings of the fall of Edessa filled with profound emotion. He could no more Sources of , Louis VII. and wallet and staff of the pilgrim, with the the pope at St. banner which was to lead him to victory. The wishes of the devout turned naturally to Bernard rather than to others of whose earnestness they could not have equal assurance ; but to their prayers that he would head the enterprise he replied that he was no general and that they must find some one to lead them who was skilled in the handling of earthly armies. When the followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless began their march along the Rhinelands, their crusading zeal vented itself first in horrible cruelties practised on the Jews (p. the Jews stir- 40). That vile example was followed by j^^'.^C^i^'?,^ the bands now gathered round the standard of the emperor. The appetite for blood was whetted by the wolfish bowlings of the monk Rodolph ; and the spell of bigotry enlisted on his side a man otherwise well deserving the reverence of all ages, Peter the Ven- erable, abbot of Clugny. But the fanaticism of Bernard 92 The Crusades. ch. v. could not fasten itself on men against whom Bernard^*^^ ^^ ^^^ even a semblance of wrong could be charged ; and he refused to punish them now for the crimes of their forefathers in the days of Pontius Pilate. ' God has punished the Jews,' he said, ' by their dispersion ; it is not for man to punish them by murder.' Rodolph was sent back to his monastery : but it was no easy task to repress the fury of a multitude already drunk with the blood of hundreds of victims in all the great Rhine cities. Conrad and Louis had met at Mainz. With Louis came his wife Eleanor ; and here he was joined by the counts of Toulouse, Nevers, Flanders and crusaders Other chiefs of the crusade, among these radand°Louis ^^^^§' ^^ ^^ said, Robert de Mowbray and the earl of Warren and Surrey from England. The story of the enterprise is soon told. The numbers of the host were vast, but numbers, never easily ascer- tained, are least of all to be depended upon in such expe- ditions as these. The order of disciplined armies may have lessened the perils and lightened the hardships of the passage across Europe ; and the troop of women who with spear and shield, headed by the Golden-footed Dame, marched on, as they thought, to conquest, may have congratulated themselves on the pleasantness of their task. The real danger began when they had passed from Europe into Asia. The suspicions of Conrad Conrad to had been soon and vehemently excited J'eroVMa'nTei against the Greek emperor Manuel, grand- at Constant!- gon of Alexios. These suspicions were so nople. 11/^ much strengthened before he reached Con- stantinople that he refused all interviews with him and crossed the Bosporus without coming into his presence. The French king was more complaisant ; but if he was 1 147- ^^^ Second Crusade. 93 satisfied with the welcome given to him by Manuel in person, he was alarmed and indignant at the ,1 , ,•■ -i^ ^. • . Supposed news that the byzantme sovereign was m treachery of secret correspondence with the Turkish sul- ^^""^^• tan of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion). His indignation was fully shared by his army ; and while some held that the paramount duty which called them to Palestine should overbear the avenging of all private wrongs, others in- sisted that a power which had allowed the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land itself to slip from its grasp, and had only placed hindrances in the way of the pilgrims and champions of the cross, should be swept utterly away. For the present the storm was lulled ; and the crusa- ders went on their way, to find that the guides with which Manuel had furnished them led them into ^. Disastrous arid deserts or betrayed them directly to the march of Con- enemy. Conrad had already lost thousands or tens of thousands in Lykaonia, when the French king, who had been cheated with false tidings of his trium- phant progress, received on the shores of the Askanian lake (p. 57) the news of his great disaster. Conrad himself soon followed the miserable fugitives v/ho had told his dismal story, and the two sovereigns resolved to strike off from the beaten path and make their way through the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Egean Sea. They had advanced as far as the Lydian Philadelphia, when the threatening appearance of things impelled many to return to Constantinople, and Conrad himself embarked near Ephesus. Louis with his people pressed on to the banks of the Meander, where the Turks who hastened to attack them were signally defeated. This defeat was more than avenged in the mountain passes beyond Laodicea whence after fearful slaughter the French reached the Pamphylian Attalcia. From this 94 The Crusades. ch. v. seaport it was proposed that all, whether soldiers or pilgrims, should go by sea to Antioch. It was decided that the latter only should take ship, as Louis urged that the warriors ought to follow in the steps of the con- querors of Jerusalem. But the ships promised by the governor of Attaleia proved to be wholly insufficient for this purpose. The king embarked with his army, and the pilgrims with the sick were left in charge of the count of Flanders. The guard was inadequate ; the sick were murdered by the people of Attaleia ; the Turks bore down hardly on the pilgrims. The count of Flanders escaped by sea, and seven thousand miserable wanderers struggled onwards on the road by which they hoped to reach Jerusalem. Their journey was soon ended by the martyrdom which according to the promise of Urban and Eugenius was to ensure their salvation. The arrival of the French king with his forces at An- tioch caused no slight alarm to the Turks of Csesarea ,,. . ^ ^ and Aleppo. But although he was earnestly Visit of the ^^ ° . . •' French king prcsscd to take advantage of their dismay by tojerusaem. g^j-^].jj^g a suddcu blow, nothing could dis- suade him to put off his journey to Jerusalem; and the entreaties of Eleanor, who was well content A. D. II48. . . ^ . March. to Stay where sne was, excited m him min- gled feelings of resentment and suspicion. After disasters so terrible his entrance into Jerusalem bore too much likeness to a triumph ; and after a council with Conrad, who had reached Ptolemais, the project of rescuing Edessa, which had been the very Resokition to ^ ■, 1 r ^.i. j.- attack Damas- purpose of the crusade, was tor the time '^'^' abandoned for the siege, and, as it was hoped, the conquest, of the more important and nearer city of Damascus. With the aid of the Knights of the Temple and of St 1 148. The Second Crusade. 95 John, the siege of this city was prosecuted with a skill and vigour which seemed to Damascus. leave no doubt of the result. The Damas- cenes were in despair, and not a few turned theii thoughts to flight as the only means of safety : but with incredible infatuation the king of the French and the German emperor took counsel not for the completion of the enterprise but for the disposal of the city when it should have been conquered. The decision that it should be given to Thierry, count of Flanders, roused the indignation of the barons of Palestine, who now scrupled not to add treachery to the long catalogue of their crimes. Bribed by the Turks, they as- ^ ■' ■' ireachery of sured the sovereigns that they would have the barons of Palestine better success by attacking the city from an- other quarter than from that on which their toil had been all but rewarded by its capture. Abandoning their for- mer position in the rich gardens before the town, they soon found themselves on barren soil, with scanty sup- plies or none, and with a hopeless task before them. It was easier to suspect than to punish the treachery of their advisers ; and possibly on account of this treachery the proposal that they should attack Ascalon „ ^ , . , ^, Retreat of the was rejected. The army retreated to Jeru- army to Jeru- salem. Conrad went back with the remnant ^^^"^' of his troops to Europe. A year later his example was followed by the French king and his wife, of whose con- duct Louis had formed suspicions fully ^ ., ... , Failure of the justified by certam judgments pronounced crusade. by her in Provencal Courts of Love. Only a few months more had passed before he obtained a divorce on the plea of consanguinity, and Eleanor trans- ferred her vast inheritance to her second husband the Norman duke Henry, afterwards Henry II. of England, H 96 The Crusades. CH. v. So ended in utter shame and ignominy the second crusade. The event seemed to give the He Accusations . . - . - against St. to the glowmg promises and prophecies of St. Bernard. So vast had been the drain of population to feed this holy war that, in the phrase of an eye-witness, the cities and castles were empty, and scarcely one man was left to seven women ; and now it was known that the fathers, the husbands, the sons, or the brothers of these miserable women would see their earthly homes no more. The cry of anguish charged Bernard with the crime of sending them forth on an errand in which they had done absolutely nothing and had reaped only wretchedness and disgrace. For a time Bernard himself was struck dumb : but His answer. he soon remembered that he had spoken with the authority of God and of his vicegerent, and that the guilt or failure must lie at the door of the pilgrims. Like those who had gone before them, these men had given loose to their passions and filled their camps with debauchery and confusion ; and such abominations the Divine Righteousness could never tolerate. Nay, Ber- nard could even see now the folly, if not the iniquity, of allowing thieves and murderers to take part in an enter- prise in which only the devout and faithful were worthy to share. But such considerations were too cold to satisfy permanently the temper of the age. The thoughts of the many, if not of the few, went back into the old channel, when the monk John declared that the slaugh- tered pilgrims had died with the exulting joy of martyrs at the thought of their deliverance from a wicked world ; and that from the lips of St. Peter and St. John them- selves he had the assurance that the ranks of fallen angels had been filled up with the spirits of those who had died as champions and pilgrims of the cross whether 1 15 1. The Loss of Jci-usakm. 97 in the Holy Land or on the journey across the mtcrvcnnig countries. r or Jicrnard Death of also the saints and angels, he said, Avcre impatiently waiting. Five years later it was in his power to add that their desires and his had been ful- tilled. CHAPTER VI. THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. The second crusade not only failed in its purpose : it did nothing towards the maintenance of the waning ascen- dency of the Latins. Even victories brought ,, ^ . . . Misuse of vic- with them no solid result, and in not a few tory by the cm- instances victory was misused with a folly closely allied to madness. The success of Joceline of Courtenay in a battle with Noureddin, son of Zenghis and sultan of Aleppo, might have recovered for him his lost city of Edessa : he chose rather to indulge in the dangerous luxury of insult, and the renewed efforts of the enemy were rewarded by the Death of joce- capture of Joceline, his imprisonment and ''""^ °^ Courte- death. His widow, by the advice of Bald- win HI., king of Jerusalem, surrendered to the Greek emperor for a stipulated sum such places as still re- mained in her possession ; and the dangers gathering round the Latin kingdom were seen in an inroad of Turcomans who reached the Mount of Olives. This inroad was, it is true, severely punished. The king was absent with his army : but the knights of the military orders who were in Jerusalem led out such of the people as could be got under oriscalon ^^ arms and set fire to the camp of the enemy. gS The Crusades. ch. vi These on their retreat were intercepted by Baldwin, and in the conflict 5,000 of their number, it is said, were slain. The tide seemed to have turned again in ^uiy ^^^^ favour of the Christians, when, after an ob- stinate siege which at one moment was all but abandoned, the city of Ascalon fell into their hands. But the change was one of appearance only. The interminable series of wars, or rather of forays and re- ., prisals, went on ; and amidst such contests A. D. I162. Al- ^ meric, king of the life of Baldwin closed in early manhood, jerusaem. ^^^ ^^^ thirty-three years of age: but in that short time he had won such love as his subjects had to bestow, together with the admiration of his enemies. He died childless, and although some opposition was made to the choice, his brother Almeric was elected to fill his place. Almost at the beginning of his reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the Relations of *, ^ . . Almeric with side of One Mahomcdan race, tribe, or faction the sultans of . , , ,^-, ,. . . r ^ ^ Egypt and agamst another. The divisions 01 islam may Aleppo. have turned less on points of theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom ; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite caliph of Egypt, when Shawer the grand vizier of that caliph came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the deposition of the vizier was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves A. D. 741-771. 1 • 1 .1_ were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Mar- tel and Pepin. Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and 1 1 63. The Loss of Jerusalem. 99 his nephew Saladin (Sahih-ud-dcen) of the shepherd tribe oftheKoords, These Noureddin despatched Mission of into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. fnd'sXdin His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish '"'^'^ %ypt- offers to buy the aid of the Latins : but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shi- racouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat ; but with success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with Siege and surrender of the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin Shiracouh in king after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home ; and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his pri- Defeat of the soners. But the Latin armies were transferred Noureddin from Egypt only to undergo a desperate de. sultan of feat at the hands of Noureddin in the terri- tory of Antioch, and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy. Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch from the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek emperor. He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt, — in Alliance of other words, to become lord of countries thrEg>'pdaji hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south sultan, as well as to the north ; and it was precisely this danger which king Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best colour on his design, Noureddin LofC. loo The Crusades. CH. vi. obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the war attests the valour of both sides, under the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin king had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was over- whelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyp- tians. Almeric received 200,000 gold pieces for the con- tinuance of his help, with the promise that 200,000 more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies ; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign whose consent was never asked for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining events of the campaign were a Operations of battle in which a part of the army of Almeric against Shi- was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew racouh. Saladin ; the surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh ; and the blockade of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the A. D. I167. Turk the pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him. The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite caliph waved together on the walls of Alexandria ; but on either side Real desit^ns ^^ peace or trucc was a mere makeshift for of Almeric. -(-j^g purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin king nor the sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of Egypt ; and Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into com- munication with their enemy and his. The king of Je- 1 1 6 8 . The Loss of Jerusalem . i o i rusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek emperor, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitallers was easily obtained, while (some said, on this account) that of the Knights Templars was refused. At length with a large and powerful army Almeric left ^ ^ „68. Jerusalem, pretending that his destination was the Syrian town of Hems : but after a while his march was suddenly turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium ; and the storm and capture of that , . Expedition of city were followed by a wanton carnage Almeric to which served to increase, if anything could increase, the reputation of the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers of the vizir Shawer for help were now directed as earnestly to the Turkish sultan as they had once been to the Latin king of Jerusalem ; but his envoys were also sent to Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth part was produced on the spot. Almeric took the bribe ; and when his army looked for nothing less than the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle while the rest of the money was being collected. The vizir took care that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached the frontier; and Almeric found too late that he was caught Hisignomi- in the trap which his own greed had laid for "^°"^ retreat. him. He could himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek emperor could not be punished ; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found in the grand-master of the Hos- pitallers, who was deprived of his dignity by his knights, The triumph of Shiracouh brought v/itli it the fall of I02 TJt.e Crusades. ch. vi. the vizir Shawer, who was seized and put to death, while ,^ , the man whose aid he had invoked, was Rise of Sala- din to power chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh him- gyp • ggj£ |^yg(j only two months ; and then, by way of choosing*one whose love of pleasure and lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignifi- cance, the Fatimite caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The caliph was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Koords, and so used the treasures which his office placed at his command, that the new yoke became stronger than the old one. To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern emperor and the princes of Western , , Christendom. But the time was not yet A. D. I169. At- •' tempts to stir come for a third crusade ; and only from up a ru a . ]\/[a]^ugi ^g^g ^ccvj help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta ; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo in ruins and shat- tered the walls of Antioch saved them from A. D. II71. attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in spite of conspira- cies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Sala- din was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pepin dealt with that of the Merovingians. The last Fatimite sultan, then pros- trate in his last illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the name of the the'^'^Fadmite caliph of Bagdad ; but Saladin had the glory Sa^adin*^^^ of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two swords. iiyS. The Loss of Jerusalem. 103 But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another. Saladin was the servant of the sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on IweTn*^ Saladin the score of this heutenancy. But the new „? Aleppo""'''' vizir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer the summons of his old master ; and to his threat of chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war. His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of re- sistance, but in speaking of it ; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over. But the time of quietness could not last long. The designs of Saladin became con- cJath of Nou- tinually more manifest, and Noureddin was ^f^Ak' q"'*^^" on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus. In the sultan of Aleppo, as in the general who had risen to greatness through his favour, we have a man to whom the chronicles of the time and of later ages delighted to ascribe the magnanimity Noured^drn ^^ and simplicity of Omar. It must at the least be admitted that the ideal of Moslem courtesy and chivalry is ijiore refined and generous than that of Western Christendom, and that the truth of the picture drawn of Noureddin receives some support from the en- thusiastic eulogies of William, archbishop of Tyre. ' I fear God,' he replied to his queen who complained that she had not enough even for her wants ; ' I am but the treasurer of the people. But 1 have three shops in Hems ; these you may take, and this is all that I have to lo4 The Crusades. CH. vi. give.' He made it his business to provide everywhere mosques, hospitals, schools, and resting-places for trav- ellers ; and justice, it is said, was as impartially admin- istered in his time as in the days of the English Alfred. The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas ; and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to under- take the siege. A bribe to abandon it was at first re- fused, A fortnight later it was accepted : but Almeric returned to Jerusalem only to dico His life had lasted only five years longer than that of his pre- Baidwin ^ IV., dccessor Baldwin ; but it had been long sailn^'^^'^" enough to win for him a reputation for con- summate avarice and meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV., was a leper ; and his disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to dele- gate his authority to another. His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla; but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised A. D. I183. . . his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Si- bylla by her first marriage, Raymond II., count of Tri- poli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper king died, followed soon after by the Baid%vinV. infant Baldwin V.; and in the renewed strife king of Jem- consequent on these events -Guy of Lu- salem. t^ / signan managed to establish himself by right of his wife king of Jerusalem. He was still quite a young man, but he had earned for himsell Guyo"Lu- a-n evil name. The murderer of Patric, signan king of g^^.^ Qf Salisbury, he had been banished by Jerusalem. -' ' _ ^ Henry II., from his dominions in France : and the opinion of those who knew him found expres- 1 187. The Loss of Jerusalem. 105 sion in the words of his brother Geoffrey, ' Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god,' Guy was king : but Raymond of Tripoh refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Ray- mond made a treaty with Saladin. But Preparations Saladin was now minded to seize a higher "[^aiadmfor o the reconquest prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt : of Jerusalem. he was resolved that the Crescent should once more dis- place the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abun- dance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem : but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the inva- der to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand-master of the Templars fas- tened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide. Had it been Baldwin III. to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence ; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and a. d. 1187. thirst when they encountered the Latin army {■ffcias"'''" °^ io6 The Crusades. CH, vi. from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fight' ing was undecided ; but the heat of a Syrian summei night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy.- Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilaean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life. But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favour yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on either side ; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far out- numbered those of the Latin chiefs ; and Capture of -i i • r^^ GuyofLusig- for these retreat ended m massacre. The king and the grand-master of the Templars Loss of the were taken prisoners; the holy relic whicTi true cross had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels. The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Csesarea, Jaffa opened their ^ . , , gates ; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism Fruits of the ° ' ■' ^ victory of of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honourable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted. The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin, It v/as crowded 1 1 87- The Loss of Jerusalem. 107 with people : but the crarrison was scanty, „. , . Siege and and the armies which should have defended fall of jem- it were gone. Their presence would not, pro- ^^ ^'^' bably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege ; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, re- sources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down ; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery. Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero ; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and pur- poses words of the same meaning. The offer, honourable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter. Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The Christians had done what they could to destroy the military engines of their enemies ; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down and turned into money ; but no solid io8 The Crusades. cii. vi. advantage was gained by all their efforts. The con- viction of the Christian that death brought salvation to the chainpions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to those who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants and to the fearful- ness of the carnage. At length the besieged discovered that the walls near the gate of St, Stephen had been un- dermined, and at once they abandoned all hope of safety except from miraculous intervention. Clergy and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city were treat- ing with the enemy. The remembrance of Saladin's offer now came back with more persuasive power ; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once sur- render the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the nobles and fighting men should be taken to Tyre which still held out under Con- rad ; that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for each child ; and that, failing this ransom, they should remain slaves. On the sick and the helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights of the Hos- pital were among the most determined of his enemies, he would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their attendance on the sufferers who could not be moved away. In the exasperation of a religious warfare now ex- 1 1 87. The Loss of Jei'usalem. 109 tended over nearly a century these terms were very mer- ciful. It may be said that this mercy was „ i--.r ,, 1.-,, Terms of the the right 01 a people who submitted to the capitulation. invader, and that in the days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to the last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused. Four days were allowed to the people to prepare for their departure. On the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women carrying or leading their children, the men bearing the Latins such of their household goods as they were Holy City. able to move. On the approach of the queen and her ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to them words of encourage- ment and consolation. Cheered by his generous lan- guage, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to them their fathers, their hus- bands, and their brothers. Saladin granted their request, added his alms for those who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, and remitted a portion of the ran- som appointed for the poor. In this way the number of those who remained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand ; and Saracenic slavery, al- though degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which has but as yesterday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent wars. The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of triumph. Amidst the waving of no The Cf'usades. ch. vi. _ - ^ banners and the clash of martial music he iLntry of Sa- iadin into advanced to the mosque of Omar on the erusaem. gummit of which the Christian cross still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled down to the earth and dragged through the mire. For two days it underwent this indignity, while the mosque was purified from its defilements by streams of rose- water, and dedicated afresh to the worship of the One God adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of the Christian sanctuaries, which had been carefully stowe-d away in four chests, had fallen into the hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin to send them to the caliph of the Prophet as the proudest trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, 52,000 golden byzants, was paid by Richard ot England. Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even when Saladin himself as- EsCS-DC of Tyre under Sailed its walls. The siege was raised : and Conra . ^^^ neyX personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the city. The grand-master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was short and decisive. The people would own no other master than the gallant knight quests of Sa- who had SO nobly defended them. But the ^ ^^' escape of Tyre had no effect on the general issue of the war. Town after town submitted to Saladin ; and the long series of his triumphs closed when he en- tered the gates of Antioch. iiSy. The Loss of Jeri^salem. iii Eighty-eight years had passed away since the cru- saders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City ; and during all ,, Causes of those years the Latin kingdom had seldom weakness in rested from wars and forays, from feuds and of Jem^a-'" dissensions of every kind. From the first it ^*""- displayed no characteristics which could give it any stability ; from the first it exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall, (i) It sanctified treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith was to ,^. g^^j j-^j^j^ be kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing 'n dealing ^ ' ° with the of wind by the constant breach of solemn Moslem. compact made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pasturage round Paneas had been granted to the Ma- homedans by Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their sheep, the Christian troops burst in, murdered the shepherds, and drove away their flocks, — ■ not with the sanction, we may hope, of the most high- minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem. (2) It recog- nized no title to property except in those who 1 1 r • 1 r ^1 • 11 (^^ Disregard professed the faith of Christ, and the power of rights of to commit injustice with practical impunity P^°P^^'y- tended still further to demoralize the people. (3) It gave full play to the passions of men in random 1 r 1 -1 • T -1 1 • (3) Lax mili- wars and petty forays, while it did nothing tary^disd- to keep up or to promote either military ^ '"^" science or the discipline without which that science be- comes useless. (4) It was marked by an almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country so cir- . . . , , ■ (4'> Lack of cumstanced a wise ruler would strain every statesman- nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to ^ '^" strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over I 112 The Crusades. ch. vi. to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture, it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course which prudence called upon them to take ; and even here this course was followed with miserable inde- cision, a,nd at last disgracefully abandoned through mere (5) General ^'^^t of gold. (5) It had to deal with an im- immorality. morality not of its own creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it should have striven to keep well in check. No such efforts were made, and the words of William of Tyre (even if taken with a qualifi- cation), when he speaks of the Latin women, point to a state of things which must involve grave and (6) Desultory . . ■■, 1 ^\ -t 1 • r e character of immmcut peril. (6) It was the misfortune of the crusades. ^^^-^ kingdom that it was called into being by troops of adventurers banded together (it cannot be said, confederated) for a religious rather than a political purpose ; in other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It started therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who engaged in the enter- prise might abandon it when they thought that they had fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance of their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political success of the undertaking. (7) The private and personal character of these enter- prises led to the perpetuation and multiplication of pri- , . Quarrels "^^^^ "^^^ personal interests, and thus to the and feuds of eudlcss divisious and feuds between the the Latin 1 • 1 chiefs. barons of the kingdom, which were a con- stant scandal and menace and which led frequently to deliberate treachery. (8) It encouraged, or permitted. 1 1 87- The Loss of Jerusalem, 113 or was compelled to tolerate the growth of ^g-, Antagon- societies which arrosrcited to themselves an isticjurisdic- '^. tions oi the independent jurisdiction, and thus rendered civil power, impossible a central authority of sufficient and the miif- coercive power. The origin of the military '^^''^ orders. orders may have been in the highest degree edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guar- dians of the Holy Places : the Knights Hospitallers may have been the poor brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims of the cross. But in a land where they might at any time encounter a merciless or at the least a detested ene- my, they were justified in bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the need of discipline ; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become formidable. The natural strength of these orders was increased by immunities and privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in greater part by the popes. The Hospitallers, as bestowing their goods to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed froin the obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to inter- dicts even if these were laid upon the whole countryt while it was expressly asserted that no patriarch or pre- late should dare to pass any sentence of excommunica- tion against them. In other words, a society was called into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable con- sequence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights, not content with the im- munities secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sen- tence of excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection. But if the Knights of the IIos- 114 The Crusades. CH. vii. pital had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the Templars, With different interests and different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious action, or with- held its aid when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the state. Thus we have the triple discord of the king and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house divided against itself shall not stand. CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD CRUSADE. A HALO of false glory surrounds the third crusade from the associations which connect it with the lion-hearted „. . . king of England. The exploits of Richard Fictitious or ° . ^ ^ romantic I. have Stirred to enthusiasm the dullest of Richard I. of chroniclers, have furnished themes for jubi- Engiand. X'a.Vi'i eulogics, and have shed over his life that glamour which cheats even sober-minded men as they read the story of his prototype Achilleus in the tale of Troy. They have done even more, for, if we may believe the narrative, they excited the same vehe- ment admiration in his most redoubtable enemy ; and the romance of youth or even of maturer age fastens on the picture which exhibits the brother of Saladin in the thick of mortal fight as sending to him two Arabian chargers by way of lauding the hero for dealing wounds and death on a multitude of his people. 1190. The T]urd Crusade. 115 When we turn from the picture to the reahty, we shall see in this third crusade an enterprise in which the fiery zeal which does something towards re- Real charactei deeming the savage brutalities of Godfrey J'hfthird'cru-" and the first crusaders is displaced by base sade. and sordid greed, by intrigues utterly of the earth earthy, by wanton crimes from which we might well suppose that the sun would hide away its face ; and in the lead- ers of this enterprise we shall see men in whom, morally, there is scarcely a single quality to relieve the monoto- nous blackness of their infamy, in whom, strategically, a very little generalship comes to the aid of a blind brute force, and in some of whom, personally, an animal cou- rage or ferocity, which fears no danger and knows no fatigue, surmounts a thousand difficulties and charms the vast multitudes who find their highest delight in the worship or idolatry of mere power. As a military leader Richard I. of England is beneath contempt when com- pared with the first Napoleon ; but he may fairly compete with him as a criminal. Alaric the Goth and Attila the Hun never professed to be sovereigns of a civilized people ; but in no sense have they a better title to be re- garded as scourges of mankind. Undertakings which depend on the temper and re- sources of individual men are not likely to be carried out with unswerving persistence ; and this ebb ^ , , ^ ^ ' . . Decay of the and flow of purpose and energy is especially cmsading manifest in the history of the crusades. ^^'" ' With any marked success comes a feeling of self-com- placency in the thought that a vow has been strictly ful- filled or a duty thoroughly discharged ; and the result is either slackness or total indifference to matters which thus far seemed in their importance to leave everything else in the shade. Assurcdlv there was little indeed in II 6 The Crusades. CH.vii. the lives of the later Latin kings of Jerusalem to keep alive the enthusiasm which had been roused by the preaching of the hermit Peter ; and for the time a change seems to pass over the spirit of the dream which for nearly a hundred years had been beguiling Western Christendom. The impulse (it can scarcely be dignified with the name of policy) which led Almeric (p. loo) to fix his thoughts on the conquest of Egypt, is the nearest approach to the temper of the true statesman and general exhibited in the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It aimed not only at preventing a combination of hostile powers to the north and south fraught with fatal dangers for any dominion which might lie between them, but it seemed to promise the possession of a country of immense importance to the merchant and the trader. This advan- tage was clearly seen and eagerly aimed at by the third Lateran council, which insisted that the conquest of Damietta should be the first object of every crusade, the maintenance of the kingdom of . , Jerusalem at best only the second. In Change in the character of short, tlicsc expeditions had in strictness of speech ceased to be crusades, unless an ex- ception is to be made in the case of the sainted Louis IX. of France. With him, as with Godfrey and the first crusaders, the religious motive absorbed every other. In the rest the professed object of the scheme is made an excuse for roving forays or political conquests, or is feebly carried out as an irksome or even repulsive task, while the harmony indispensable for success is sacrificed for quarrels and deadly feuds which would do credit to the society of savages. But until the Cross had been thrust aside for the Cres- cent on the mosque of Omar, the task of stirring up the ii79~'S5' The TJdrd Crusade. 117 Western princes for another crusade was neither easy nor successful. The crusading Engird and spirit was never strong- in Henry II, of the patriarch ol ^ <=> J Jerusalem. England, and even after the quarrel with Becket had come to an end with his death, he had a convenient excuse for staying at home in the dangers which menaced his dominions from the north. But with the captivity of his enemy ' ' ^^^'^' William this pretext vanished. The Scottish king swore to hold his kingdom as a fief of the English crown; and Henry, unable any longer to resist the argu- ments or entreaties of the French king, Louis VII., prom- ised to combine his forces as duke of Nor- mandy with those of his liege lord for the succour of the Christians in the Holy Land. The death of Louis, which cut short this desig-n, brought , . ,. . ^^ '=' A.D. 1180. no bitter disappointment to Henry ; but when, some five years later, Heraclius (Herakleios), patriarch of Jerusalem, kneeling before him with the count of Tripoli and the grand- master of the Hospitallers, placed in his hands the sceptre of his kinsman Fulk of Anjou and of the kings who had succeeded him, with the keys of the Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre, the English monarch was care- ful to address them in words which conveyed encourage- ment while they committed him to nothing. He would ask the advice of his council ; and his question was so put as to show clearly what he would wish the answer to be. He desired to know whether his duty called him to govern and guard his subjects at home or to break Lances with Saracens to prop up the tottering sway of a distant sovereign. There was no doubt in the mind of his barons and prelates that the nearer work had a paramount call on him; and the promise of Henry to ii8 The Crusades. ch. vii. contribute 50,000 marks for the needs of the Latin king- dom in Palestine was received by the patriarch with a dissatisfaction which manifestly excited the king's anger. Not a whit abashed, Heraclius bade him deal with him- self as he had dealt with the martyr Thomas of Canter- bury, and expressed himself as not less ready to die by his hands than by those of the less cruel Saracens. This ridiculous taunt was allowed to pass without rebuke, and Heraclius departed unhurt after consecrating the church of the Knights Templars in the city of London. But the fall of Jerusalem cast a new colour over ques- tions of policy and duty, A few days after that event, and in all likelihood before he could have A. D. I187. . Death of Ur- heard of It, pope Urban III. died at Verona, oppressed with grief not for a disaster of which he was ignorant, but for the death struggle which seemed imminent between the papal and the imperial power. His successor Gregory VIII., whose short ponti- ficate was ended in less than two months, Gregoiy^viii. bcwailcd the event as a catastrophe affect- ing the whole of Christendom ; but he was probably not unconscious that for the papacy it might create a diversion which might rescue it from dire peril, if not destruction. The few days of life which remained to him were spent in writing letters to reawaken the spirit which had been roused successively by the hermit Peter and the sainted Bernard. The divine wrath was to be appeased by a fast of five years, and the con- sciousness of shameless corruption and venality inspired the cardinals to promise that they would take no more bribes for the furtherance or perversion of justice, and that they would never mount again on horseback until the land once trodden by the Saviour should have ceased to be polluted by the feet of the unbeliever. 1 1 74 -'88. The Third Crusade. 119 Pope Gregory died on a journey undertaken for the purpose of making- peace between the republics of Genoa and Pisa, whose fleets were of the first importance for the carrying out of the Assumption of scheme which he had at heart. A few g:,<;;Ti.^Ld weeks later the broad plain between Gisors fJ^^^^P^f^'jl^sus- and Trie witnessed the meeting of Henry of England and Philip Augustus, the young French king, to hear the cause of the Christians in Palestine pleaded by William, archbishop of Tyre, the historian of the first and second crusades. The two sovereigns assumed the cross, and their example was followed by the count of Champagne, the count of Flanders, and a crowd of barons and knights. It was agreed that the English cross should be white, and the Flemish green, the French retaining the red. Henry hastened to England, and ob- tained from a council held at Geddington in Northamp- tonshire the imposition of a tax called the Saladin tithe. Every one who refused to join the crusade ,^,11. J 11 Saladin tax or was to pay a tenth of all his goods movable tenth. or immovable. The sum thus raised was 70,- 000/. ; but it is astonishing to learn that a sum almost as large, 60,000/., was extorted from the scanty company of Jews settled in England. Whether the burden pressed heavily upon them, we cannot tell. Worse things were in store for them before many months should pass away. It is possible that Henry may now have really intended to fulfil a promise with which thus far he had only dal- lied. He sent messengers to the Hungarian ^ , . , ° *^ reuds in ihc kin"" Bela, and Isaac Angelus, the Eastern family of emperor, to request a safe transit and free market for his followers. The demand Avas granted : but Henry now had other concerns to occupy him. The wretched quarrels which were the inevitable consequence I20 The Crusades, . ch. vii. of petty principalities and the complicated tenures of feudalism had assumed their most hateful form among the princes of the house of Anjou. Of the legitimate sons of Henry II., Henry, Richard, and John, it is hard to say which led the most disgraceful life and earned the most shameful reputation. The tyranny of Richard in Aquitaine was monstrous even in an age notorious for its cruelty and its treachery ; but it was probably no dis- interested sympathy for his victims which brought against him the forces of his elder brother Henry, and of his half-brother Geoffrey, the son of that Rosamond Clifford into whose history the popular talk of that or of a later day introduced a tale common to the folk- lore of many lands. The strife was for the time ap- peased by their father, against whom these dutiful chil- dren now turned their arms. The day fixed A. D. I183. ^ for the battle was drawing nigh when the young prince or king Henry (he had been crowned A. D. 1 1 69 by the bishops excommunicated by Thomas of Canterbury shortly before his martyrdom) was cut off by a sudden attack of fever ; and Richard, as the eldest surviving son, looked on himself as heir to the crown of England. But it soon became plain that the affections of his father were fixed on his younger son John, one of the most despicable of cowards and most contemptible of traitors. The discovery led Richard to renew his in- timacy with the French king, Philip Augustus, to whose sister Adelais or Alix he had long since been betrothed. That princess had passed into the custody of the English king, and had, it was said, borne him a child ; but of this Richard for the present took no count, as backed by Philip Augustus, he insisted on her sur- A. D. 118S. •' r- & ' render and on receiving the fealty of the barons as his father's heir-apparent. On this second 1 1 89. TJie Tiiird Cnisade. 121 point the king's answer was ambiguous ; and Richard, exclaiming indignantly that he now believed what be- fore he had thought impossible, knelt down at the feet of Philip, and, demanding from him protection in his just rights, did homage to him for all his father's do- minions in France. In the war which followed Henry- was driven from the castles of Mans, Amboise, and Tours. His body was wasted with disease, and he was induced to meet his son and the French A. D. I189. kmg on a plam near Tours. A thunder- storm, in which the lightning twice fell near them, un- nerved him still more. He agreed to pay 20,000 marks to Philip, to surrender Adelais, and to allow his vassals to swear fealty to Richard, and asked only to see the list of the names of barons who had joined the con- federacy of the French king. At the head , . , . ^ A. D. I186. was the name of his own son John. He July. read no further. A raging fever came on, Henry n. during which he heaped curses on his un- natural children ; and in a week he died. Richard was now king of England ; but he was not the man to fix his thoughts on the wilder schemes which had filled the mind of his father. The power Preparations and wealth of his kingdom were things to be ?or dlfcm^- ^' used for spreading his own renown, and this ^^'^'^• renown could be won and extended nowhere so well as in the Holy Land, and in no other way so gloriously as in cleaving the bodies of unbelievers with his deadly broad- sword. It was the ambition of a ruffian, gilded over with a thin varnish borrowed from the chivalry of Tan- cred (p. 45) ; and he proceeded to gratify it at the ex- pense of the real interests whether of the kingdom or of himself. The sum which he needed for his enterprise far exceeded the 100,000 marks which his father's g-reed or 2 22 TJie Crusades. CH. vir. economy had amassed in the treasury at raising mo- SaHsbury. Richard sold the earldom of ^* Northumberland for i,ooo/. to the bishop of Durham for the term of his life : for 3,000/. he received into favour his brother Geoffrey, now archbishop of York : for 10,000/, he resigned to William the Scottish king all the rights over Scotland which the latter had conceded to Henry, together with the castles of Roxburgh and Ber- wick ; and then departed for Normandy on the same errand of plunder and exaction. Both the first and the second crusade had been marked at their outset by persecutions and massacres of the Persecution Jcws. The third was to furnish no excep- cre of Jews tiou. The Jc^s of England felt probably that in England. ^ stomi was gathering, and they hastened to conciliate the king with costly presents. Their eagerness unhappily outran their discretion. Richard, knowing the feeling of the people, had ordered that no Jews should appear before him on the coronation day. Disregarding this command, some of them, mingling with the crowd, entered the palace, were thrust out by the mob, and mur- dered. The fire, thus kindled, spread furiously. Every Jew in the streets was cut down : every house belonging to a Jew was plundered and burnt. Some attempt was made to check the slaughter. Three men were hanged ; but they were charged, not with murdering Jews, but with robbing Christians under pretence that they were Jews, or with setting houses on fire to the danger or hurt of the property of Christians. The iniquity was not confined to London. The same things were done in all the great cities. At York, as at Lincoln, the wealthy Jews hurried ^ ^ , with their goods into the castle. At Lincoln Fearful ° ., tragedy in they found Safety : at York they unhappily interpreted the departure of the governor 1 1 89. The Third Crusade. 123 from the castle as a sign that he was plotting against them with the Christians of the town, and closed the gates against him on his return. In his anger he induced the sheriff of the county to order his armed bands to the as- sault : and these were joined by the populace whose fury showed at once that they meant much more than the mere recovery of the castle. The besieged could hear the fierce cry of a canon regular, of the Premonstratensian order, who hounded on the mob to ' destroy the enemies of Christ.' They knew that their doom was sealed ; but if they must die, they might still choose the mode of their death. In a council summoned to debate the matter, the rabbi urged that they should avoid frightful insults and barbarous torments for their wives and children as well as for themselves by voluntarily rendering up their souls to the Creator, and falling by their own hands. The deed, he urged, was both reasonable and sanctioned by their law, ks well as made famous by the men who in the deadly struggle between Jerusalem and Rome had slain themselves at Massada. To some his counsel seemed wise, to others a hard saying. The rabbi cut the discus- sion short by bidding all to depart in peace who could not approve his counsel. A few only left the chamber. In a few hours the work of death was done, and the castle was left in flames. The few, who could not summon courage to follow the example of their brethren, offered from the walls to open the gates and submit to baptism, if their lives should be spared. The terms were granted and the surrender was made ; and by way of keeping faith the Christians rushing in slaughtered every living thing within the walls. These were venial offences ; but the men of York added to them an act which was a real crime, and one of the deepest dye, in the eyes of king Richard. They hastened to the cathedral, and seizing on 124 The Crusades. ch. vii. all the bonds and obligations which had been laid up in the archives burnt them in the nave. These bonds on the death of those who held them would all have escheated to the king; and the bishop of Ely, the chancellor, was commissioned to search out and punish the offenders. But the ringleaders had made their escape across the Scottish border; and justice even in the matter of rob- bery was baffled. Richard, having filled his coffers so far as he could, met Philip Augustus at Vezelai where, forty-four years A. D. 1190. before, the pleadings of St. Bernard had Meeting of seemed to stir the heart of Christendom to Richard and Philip at Vezc- efforts which must be successful. The voice which now had most power was not that of fluence of the"' ^^^ pricst, the hermit, or the saint. It was troubadours. that of the troubadour ; and if for the present his harp might be attuned to lofty measures, and his words might convey lessons almost as austere as those of pope Urban II., there was at least the danger that a very moderate measure of success might lead the min- strel to arouse emotions of a less devout sort and tempt his hearers to less exalted delights than those of prayer and meditation. The forces of the two kings amounted, it is said, to 100,000 men. The discipline which kept them together may be pictured from the rules which enacted that murderers should be tied to the bodies of their victims and hurled into the sea, that they who drew their swords in anger should lose their hands, and that thieves should be tarred and feathered and in that plight put on shore. While Philip and Richard were on their way to Sicily, Frederick I., emperor of the West, commonly known as March of Fred- Barbarossa or Red Beard, was on his way rossa to Con-^' ^o Constantinople. He had fought a long stantinople. battle with the pope or the man who called 1 199* ^^ Third Crusade. i-5 himself pope. He had himself set up an anti-pope, as the imperialist popes were called ; and with the sanction of this anti-pope, who styled himself Pascal III., he had attacked Rome, beaten down the gates of St. Peter's with hatchets and axes, and seen his troops advance filling the church with blood as they fought their way to the high altar. In the midst of this carnage The popes and Pascal III. had placed the crown on the the empire, head of the empress Beatrice, and had blessed again the diadem of Frederick. He had had to contend with a miightier enemy than the pope in the fearful pestilence which broke out within his camp ; and his flight from Rome had ensured the victory of pope Alexander III., the somewhat hesitating friend of Thomas of Canterbury. But although the warfare of previous years was suc- ceeded by an apparent peace, Frederick lost no oppor- tunity of strengthening himself against the papacy ; and in the days of Urban III. he had gained much by secur- ing for his son Henry the hand of Constantia, heiress of the kingdom of Sicily. The old strife might have been renewed ; but the heart of Barbarossa was stirred by the tidings from the Holy Land or the letters of Gregory VIII. , and his armies advanced under his standard through Hungary towards the capital of the Eastern empire. That capital Barbarossa, like his predecessor Conrad (p. 93), refused to enter. The Byzantine Cassar had with scant courtesy allowed him the privilege of buying food for his men ; he had studiously withheld from him the titles which implied a divided empire. The steadier discipline, the more decent order which marked the army of Barbarossa seemed to promise a better result to his enterprise. They had , - , , _ , . ^ , , •' Death of defeated the Turks m a general battle, and Frederick I. had taken the Seljukian capital of Cogni 126 The Crusades. ch. vii. (Iconium), (p. 82) ; but a great disaster, nothing less than the loss of their leader himself, awaited them. Frederick was drowned in a Pisidian river, as some said A. D. II90. while he was crossing it ; as others had it, from the effects of bathing. The misery and suffering which had fallen to the lot of the earlier crusaders now weighed heavily upon them : and the Re-occupa- . , ,. tion of wretched story is sufficiently told, if it be true that not a tenth of the number which crossed the Bosporos lived to enter Antioch. The few who made their way thus far found a city almost deserted by the Turkish soldiers, and Antioch once more had a Christian government. But while the sovereigns of the West were thus pre- paring for another great effort on their behalf, the Latins of Palestine were struggling hard to win A. D. I189. t.t, & Siege of back their lost supremacy, and were aided by crowds of armed pilgrims, whose im- mense numbers have to be taken into account if v/e wish to realize the extent of the drain to which the population of Europe was thus subjected. Too impatient to wait, these wanderers hurried, with whatever motives, to the scenes where, as they supposed, honour could not fail to be won, even if wealth and happiness should not be their portion. The conflict now turned on the possession of Acre, the key of the whole region lying to the west of the Jordan. It had opened its gates to Saladin soon after the battle of Tiberias ; and before Richard of Eng- land and Philip Augustus set foot on the Holy Land it had been besieged for nearly two years by Guy of Lu- signan, titular king of Jerusalem, with an army which the influx of pilgrims from Europe had raised, it is said, to 100,000 men. But the besiegers had little generalship, and the mischief done to their effectiveness by vice and 1 190. The Third Crusade. 127 debauchery was completed by a fearful pestilence which swept them away by thousands. In the midst of this misery a few German merchants, from the coast of the Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering by running up the sails of their ships as J ^ r r Rise of the tents for the sick and dying. The happy Teutonic results which followed their work led to an organization similar to that of the orders of the Temple and the Hospital. Like those orders, the Teutonic knights rose to power and distinction, and in the history of the crusade of Frederick II., we shall find their grand-master, Herman of Salza, in high favour both with the emperor and with the pope, his implacable antagonist. With the failure of the crusades in the East the order was transferred to the more forbid- ding regions which had sent forth its founders, and their crusade was turned against the heathen of the Lithuanian, Prussian, Esthonian, and other tribes. They preached the gospel with the sword, and their efforts were followed at least by military success. Their grasp on the lands which they overran was never relaxed, and the last grand-master became the sovereign of a state which has grown into the modern kingdom of Prussia. The sickness and vice which wasted the forces of the crusaders before Acre were powerfully aided by feuds among the chiefs. Sibylla, the sister of Bald- ° •' A. D. II90. win IV., and wife of Guy of Lusignan, was Death of carried off by the plague. Her two children queen^of died with her, and her husband found him- Jerusalem, self stripped of the privilege which had made him at least the shadow of a king. Isabel, the sister of his wife, still lived, and having got rid of her first husband Humphry, lord of Thoron, was now married to Conrad, K 128 The Ci'usades. CH. vii. Conrad, Hiarquis of Tyre. As thus wedded to the titular heiress of Almeric, Conrad claimed the king oi ' Jerusalem. Sovereignty of Jerusalem, and the decision of the point was reserved for the kings of England and France. These kings were now on their way to the East. Richard had journeyed by land to Genoa, while his fleet, Vo a e of having crossed the bay of Biscay, anchored the English at Lisbon, where his forces found a crusade bon and ready to their hands. The town of Santarem, Messina. f^j^y j^j^gg a^Qve Lisbon, was blockaded by the Saracen emir. With the aid of the English the Por- tuguese raised the siege and then found themselves com- pelled to fight with their deliverers in the streets of Lisbon. The crusaders thought that they carried with them a license for universal plunder and insult ; and it was not without difficulty and much bloodshed that they were persuaded by their leaders to reserve the application of their theory for more distant lands. The summer was coming to an end when Richard, having A. D. 1190. ... Sept. 23. joined his fleet on the Italian coast, entered Messina almost in the guise of a conqueror, to the terror of the Sicilians and the disgust of the French king Philip. Then, as through almost the whole of its chequered history, Sicily was a prize for which contending kings and ^ , ^ adventurers intrigued, or fought. It was now Conduct of ° Richard I. held by Tancred, an illegitimate son of the 1 1 y. Apulian duke Roger. His sister Constantia, the legitimate daughter of Roger, was the wife of Henry, son of Frederick Barbarossa, who wished to make the island a portion of his own imperial realm (p. 125). He was foiled by Tancred, who took the further precaution of imprisoning Joanna, the widow of his predecessor iigo. The TJm-d Crnsade. 129 William called the Good. Joanna was the sister of the English Richard, who was not slow in demanding her freedom, her dower, and the legacies which William the Good had left to his father Henry II. His demands were accompanied by robbery and violence, and his followers hastened to imitate his example. They came to open strife with the people in the streets of Messina ; and the battle was followed by the plundering of the town. But the raising of the English standard on the walls was in- terpreted as an insult by Philip Augustus, and Richard was constrained to appease his wrath by placing the city in the charge of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers. The dispute with Tancred was made up Quarrel be- by the betrothal of his infant daughter to anrph^iip^''"''^ Arthur, duke of Brittany, that luckless vie- Augustus, tim of the cruelty of John whom Shakespeare has made famous. But the quarrels of these champions of the cross are tangled like links in a twisted chain. By way of showing his friendly feeling, Tancred placed in Rich- ard's hand a letter bearing the signature of the French king and inviting Tancred to a private alliance against Richard. The latter charged Philip Augustus with the treachery, and was charged in turn with producing forged letters by way of devising an escape from his engage- ment with his sister Adelais. Richard had offered to marry Berengaria, daughter of Sancho, king of Navarre, and with studied coarseness he told Philip that he could have nothing to do with the mother of his father's child. So was changed into mortal hatred that alliance which in its early days had led them to eat at the same table and rest in the same bed. Thus passed away the winter in disgraceful quarrels and in lavish outlays of money scarcely less disgraceful. In the spring the French king sailed for Acre. 130 The Crusades. ch. vii. A. D. 1191. Richard went to Rhodes, and while he re- War^etween Hiained there sick, he heard that some of his Richard and people had been wrecked on the coast of Cy- the Comne- r r ^ ^ j nian emperor prus, robbed of their goods, and imprisoned by Isaac the Comnenian prince who called himself emperor of the island. His demand for compen- sation was unheeded. The English fleet appeared before Limasol, the southernmost town of the island : and the English troops were soon masters of the city. Isaac entered into a treaty which bound him to serve with 500 knights in the crusade, and in the event of good behaviour Richard promised him the restoration of his kingdom. But fear got the better of his prudence. He made his escape, and again met the English king in battle. The fight was followed by his surrender, and Richard ordered him to be kept in a castle on the coast of Palestine. Here, in the town which under the name of Paphos had won for itself a pre-eminence in vice and folly, Richard was married to Berengaria of Navarre. Here also he received and promised to take up the cause of Guy of Lusignan, the weightiest argument for so doing being found in the fact that Philip Augustus had taken up that of Conrad. Thus the two kings reached Acre only to Arrival of Complicate old feuds with new strifes. The Phiiip'^at^" siege had lasted nearly two years. In the ^^"^^^ plain was gathered the crusading host, still magnificent in its appointments ; on the heights were assembled the Turkish armies under the black banner of Saladin. Richard had loitered on the road as long as it suited his fancy or his ambition to do so ; and he had overwhelmed with a torrent of reproach and abuse the envoys from the chiefs before Acre who dared to con- front him at the Cyprian Famagosta with the reproof that his business was not to dethrone Comnenian princes and 1 1 9 1 . The Third Crusade, 131 take their kingdoms, but to do battle with the Turk for the sacred heritage of Christendom. He reached Acre, prostrated with intermittent fever ; but indifference to the enterprise had given way to a fiery zeal. He had him- self carried out on a mattress to point the balistae which by discharging stones served in some measures the pur- poses of modern artillery. But at first the two kings would not act together, and this division of forces enabled the besieged to stand out. Their reconciliation, whether real or seeming, led to a combined action which was soon rewarded by the offer of surrender. The terms now proposed were rejected, and Saladin cheered the besieged with the hope of succours to be received from Egypt. The help came not, and Saladin was compelled to assent to a harder compact. The piece of the true cross was to be given up, the Christian prisoners set free, ^ ^ ^ and some thousands of hostages were to be J"'y ^^• detained for the payment, within forty days, of 200,000 pieces of gold. The surrender was made. Richard took up his abode in the palace, Philip went to the house of the Templars, and the flags of the two kings Surrender of floated from the ramparts. Philip now re- ^^"^^^ garded himself as absolved from his vow, and he an- nounced his determination to return to 1 • n • 1 Return of trance. Richard parted from his ally with Philip to undissembled anger and contempt, and Philip, sailing to Tyre, gave to Conrad that half of the city of Acre which had been reserved for himself. The forty days wore on. Scdadin would not or could not restore the relics of the true cross or make up the 200,000 pieces. Richard warned him what 1 r ^ 111 1 Mdls.ncrc of the consequences of neglect would be ; and 5,-?/ r ' barons with not disposcd to rcucw hostilities. But the inThe Hdy Germans had come to fight, not to debate ; Land. ^.^^ their energy was to be tested by Sapha. din, who resolved to be first in striking a blow. Jaffa was taken before any succour could reach it from Jaffa by Acrc, its inhabitants slaughtered by hun- ap a in. drcds or by thousands, and its fortifications, the work on which Richard and his soldiers had toiled so hard (p. 132), utterly demolished. The arrival of a second body of German crusaders seemed to justify a fresh movement which was directed against Berytos. Saphadin compelled them to fight between Tyre and Sidon : but he did so to his grievous cost. His army was for the time broken, and Jaffa with Sidon and other cities came again into the possession of the Chris- Arrlval of ^ , \. . . . . fresh cm- tiaus. In the town of Berytos they found, it Conrad"" ^'" IS Said, provisions stored up for three years, bishop of ^^^ ^j^g power and confidence of the con- Hudesheim. J^ querors were largely increased by the arrival of a third body of armed pilgrims led by Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, chancellor of the empire. . ,, „„ The crusaders were, in all seeming, in the A. B. II97. ^ Siege of the fuU career of victory ; but the advantages castle of -1 • •• 1 1 • Thoron. which they had gamed were lost almost m a moment by their own infatuated bloodthirstiness. They had besieged the castle of Thoron, and so under- 1 197- The FoiirtJi Crusade. 143 mined the rocks on which it rested, that the garrison, foreseeing the inevitable end, agreed to surrender on the single stipulation that they should be allowed a free passage into Moslem territory. The terms were accept- ed ; but so loud were still the threats of vengeance, so persistent, it is said, the assurances which the French- men gave to the besieged of the deadly intentions of the Germans, that the miserable garrison resolved to fight to the death rather than fall into their hands. They lined the passages which the besiegers had scooped out in the rock, and their desperate resistance filled with dismay the savages who but a little while ago had ^ ^ ^ Complete de- been crying out for their blood. The dis- feat of the 1 . , , , . Crusaders. organization which had not once or twice disgraced the armies of the earlier crusaders was seen again in even greater degree. The chiefs fled from the camp in the night, and their followers woke to find themselves deserted. A confusion ensued so utter and helpless that an enemy might have won a victory almost without striking a blow ; but the Saracens were scarcely less exhausted than the Christians, and these on being gathered after their dispersion were able to accuse each the other of obstinacy, cowardice, or treachery. Conrad of Hildesheim, hastening to Jaffa with the purpose of restoring its walls, had won a battle fought against Sa- phadin at a cost fully equal to any profit which might accrue from it. The tidings of the death of Henry VI. dealt the final blow to the enterprise, by recalling to Germany those princes who had an interest in the elec- tion of the emperor. Those who remained behind took refuge in Jaffa, only, however Captureo^fjaffa, to meet their doom a few months later at ^"'* massacre of the crusaders. the hands of a Moslem host which suddenly attacked and stormed the city, while the Cicrnians wore L 144 ^^^^ Crusades. ch. ix. showing their devotion to St. Martin by di inking them- selves into a state of helpless stupidity. In spite of these disasters the mockery of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was still carried on. On the death of Henry of Champagne (p. 134), his widow Isabella was advised by the grand-master of the Hospi- Almenc of ■' a i • r t • i Lusignan tallers to marry Almeric of Lusignan who safe^^and™' had recently succeeded his brother Guy as Cyprus. king of Cyprus. Isabella showed no unwil- lingness to follow this counsel, and with her fourth hus- band she added the title of queen of Cyprus to that of queen of Jerusalem. If the politics of the time repre- sented Cyprus as a convenient retreat in cases of emer- gency, such considerations have little interest or none. The only valid plea for keeping up the fiction of the Lat- in kingdom in Palestine would be found in the likelihood that the abandonment of the title would be regarded throughout Europe as a confession of defeat, and would be followed by the complete extinction of the crusading impulse. CHAPTER IX. THE FIFTH CRUSADE. At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade exhi- bits something like a return to the spirit of the age which gave so vast a force to the^reaching of the hermit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II. In the chair of St. Pe- ter there was now seated a man of far great- A. D. II98. Election of er power than the pope who stirred the Wes- tern world to a fever of enthusiasm at the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven — an age without example, perhaps, in the annals of the papacy — Lothair, of the house of Conti, cardinal of St. Mark, had been chosen pope by the unanimous voice of all the car- 1198. The Fifth Crusade. 145 dinals who were present, at a time when every other power seemed to be tottering, if not in the very throes of dissolution. The Byzantine empire was in its decrepi- tude ; the Latin kingdom of Palestine was reduced to a mere strip of coast; an infant was king of Naples; the French king Philip Augustus was paying in whatever mea- sure the penalties of an evil life ; the man who was hoping to wear the English crown was the vindictive and despi- cable John, whose treachery had slain his father. Every- where was disunion, faction, and deadly hatred : and in the midst of this chaos appeared the one man whose se- rene tranquillity, based on the consciousness of a super^ human commission and on the sanction of a divine law, was undisturbed by the storms raging around him. The influence, righteously acquired by Leo and Gregory the Great, and vastly extended (not altogether by the most righteous means) by Gregory VII. (p. 20) was wielded with even greater effect by the youthful pontiff whose eye surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny the troubled scene of European politics. To this exalted position the undefined claims of pre- vious popes would probably never have raised Innocent III., had it not been for the crusades. In ^^ ' . Effect of the these enterprises the popes had a pretext crusades ready to hand for interfering with the affairs the jurisdic- of every nation and country, for suspending popg or annulling civil jurisdiction, for levying taxes under the name of alms, for releasing barons froix the allegiance due to their sovereigns, inferior tenant! from their chiefs, debtors from their creditors. The cru- sade became a task which the popes might impose foi their souls* health on refractory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were filled with the love of Christ must long to take part in the holy work of rescuing his sepulclire 146 The Crusades. ch. ix. from the hands of the unbehevers. If any were careless or indifferent to a duty thus constraining, it must be be- cause their Uves were not as pure, their faith not so sound as it should be, and by such men the divine power for re- buke and even chastisement committed to the vicars of Christ and of the prince of the apostles must make itself felt. If kings and great feudal chiefs would prove them- selves to be good Christians, they must put on the cross : and the assumption of the badge imposed an obligation from which, if the popes were bent on keeping them to it, it would be almost, if not altogether, hopeless for them to escape. If they resisted, their sentence was excom- munication ; and excommunication, not removed, meant death here and hereafter. The effect of this policy (for such, however sincere some of the popes may have been, it assuredly must be called) showed itself especially in the weak- Weakening ' , . . , . , 1 • 1 of the im- ening of the imperial power, without which peria power, g^^,]^ ^ supremacy as that of Innocent III. over the sovereigns of his age would have been an im- possibility. The emperor Conrad had been driven to take the cross by the awful pictures which Bernard drev/ of the judgment day (p. 90) : he came back shorn prac- tically of all his power. Barbarossa had obeyed the papal bidding, only to die in a distant land ; and the struggle was to be renewed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only in his cradle when the cardinal Lothair began his career as pope. But if the crusades and the undefined powers which they brought to the popes carried to its ut- mistmsf of most height the fabric of their supremacy, Rome'by the they began at the same time to undermine peoples of 'y^^ ^^ j-^Q \\x^^ had the Roman court pos- t,urope. sessed a high reputation for pecuniary 1189. The Fifih Crusade. 147 probity ; more commonly it had been known as the seed-bed in which venahty, jobbery, and corruption flourished with rank luxuriance. All at once, owing to the new impulse given to the energies of Christendom, the popes became the possessors or administrators of revenues more vast than any of which in earlier ages they could have ventured to dream. Then as in these enterprises failure followed on failure, and the results attained seemed wholly inadequate to the outlay, the suspicion was awakened that the funds obtained for the crusades were sometimes diverted to other purposes. The suspicion might be unjust, and the popes might appoint barons and bishops not belonging to their court to be trustees of revenues which were not even to be kept in Italy. Still in spite of these precautions the old sayings were repeated, and they came not unfrequently with chilling force just when the crusading enthusiasm had been fanned into the fiercest flame. This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enter- prise which Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of the Holy Land, — nay, for that of all ^^ . / ' ■^' Efforts of Christians whether of the East or the West. Innocent to Not even Urban II. had been more fervent mistrust. in his exhortations, more lavish in his promises of eternal happiness, more stern in his threat- enings of endless perdition. Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to defences against charges of personal corruption, and to appoint for the manage- ment of the crusading revenues committees to which it was supposed that suspicion could not possibly attach itself. More than this, the pope and his cardinals must show themselves ready to bear to the full the burdens which they sought to lay upon others. A tenth of all vheir revenues would be devoted to the rescue of the i4^ The C7'usades. CH. ix. Holy Land from the power of the infidel. The clergy in all other countries were to contribute at least a fortieth part, and the laity should be everywhere urged to con- tribute to the utmost of their power. The funds so raised were to be put into a safe place, the amount only being notified at Rome : and hard-hearted indeed must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of love and mercy. But the indifference with which his words were every- where received furnishes a fresh proof that the work of Fuik of 2. genuine crusade can be set in motion only Nemlly. |^y ^j^g combination of authority with the enthusiasm of the demagoguCo So it had been in the days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of the saint who had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, hap- pily for Innocent, it was now, when Fulk, a parish priest of Neuilly near Paris, was smitten with the crusading fever. Even as a priest he had for a time led a life of miserable slackness, if not of gross vice ; but his heart was touched with the penitence which was kindled in Mary Magdalene or Mary of Egypt. He had striven to atone for his sins by the severest asceticism, and to remedy his deplorable ignorance by attending the lectures of Peter the Chanter, in whom Innocent hoped to find the most eloquent preacher of his crusade. This hope was not to be realized. Peter was seized by a fatal ill- ness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the mission which he had himself received from the pope. Even before the death of Peter, Fulk had preached in the streets and lanes of the great city, and his words had melted the most obdurate and evil-lived ^' "' " ^" sinners to tears. Still the spell of his oratory seemed to be losing its power, and he had gone back to his parish work at Neuilly when the last charge of iigS. The Fifth Crusade. 149 Peter the Chanter animated him with an irresistible im- pulse. He came forward now not merely as the preacher of a crusade, but as the stern reprover of vice and of spiritual wickedness in high places. Like Urban and Eugenius, Innocent saw his opportunity. He wrote to Fulk, expressing his hearty approbation of his work, and biddin him, in concert with some of the Black and White monks, and with the sanction of the legate Peter of Capua, go up and down the land calHng ^ ^ ^ g on all men to repent and to give proof T^f: mission ol . '- ox- P^jIj, sanc- of penitence by hastening to the land of tioned by the pope. promise. Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher had appeared whose powers were not inferior to those of St. Bernard. His miracles were not indeed Effects of his so numerous, nor, for the most part, of the ^^<^i"<^nce. sort which ascribed to Bernard the excommunication of troublesome flies, who under this potent sentence fell dead from the ceiling, and were swept up from the floor by shovelfuls. His humour was not less ready than his eloquence. His hearers strove for pieces of his clothing to be kept as sacred relics. One noisy by- stander had caused him special annoyance. He turned to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed his own garments, but that he would bless those of this man. In a moment the man's clothes were in tatters, and the fragments carried off in triumph as relics en- dowed with miraculous power. Yet, taken at its best, the effect of Fulk's preaching was not equal to that of Bernard or of Peter the Hermit. His words might enjoin high austerities : his appearance might not belie his words, but it did not convey indispu- table evidence of their truth. He looked and lived much like other men ; and, what was worse, he had to do ^5° The Crusades. ch. ix.. battle with the fatal suspicion which Innocent had striven with the utmost earnestness to shake ofif. He became the receiver of vast sums of money ; and murmurs would make themselves heard which asserted that all these moneys were not used as they ought to be. His influence was on the whole waning : but he was not to see the beginning A. D. I202. of the enterprise which he had so strenuously Death of Fulk. promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly, while the crusaders were still at Venice, and his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin. Other preachers also girded up their loins for the great work, and their words told especially on some of the younger men among the French princes. Foremost among these was Theobald, count of Champagne, who had seen only twenty summers, and whose The chiefs goal was well nigh reached already. With crusade^'^'^ him Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his lot, followed by Simon of Montfort, the infamous leader of the yet future Holy War against the Albigensians, Walter of Brienne, and with many others, last but not least Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, the historian of the crusade. Some months later the badge was assumed by Baldwin, count of Flanders, by Hugh of St. Pol, by the count of Perche, and many more. The followers of these chiefs amounted already to a formidable army. But the leaders had no adequate navy at their command, and the history of all the pre- ceding expeditions had convinced men at SJl'^FrenSr' ^^st of the desperate risks to be encountered barons to in the land journev across Europe and the Venice. •' Lesser Asia. One state alone there was which was fully equal to all demands that might be made upon it for ships ; and of the crusades this state at least 1198-1202. The FiftJi Crusade. 151 had no just reason to complain. These armed pilgrim- ages had vastly increased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in Europe a general desire for eastern products which insured the continuance of this wide- spread trade. To Venice accordingly the ^ . ^ -^ A. D. I20I. eyes of the crusading chiefs were turned, and the envoys of the counts of Blois, Flanders, and Champagne appeared there in the first week of Lent before the doge, or duke, Henry Dandolo, venerable in his age of more than ninety years, and the victim of that Byzantine cruelty which had almost, if not wholly, de- prived him of his sight. ' Sire,' said Villehardouin, the ambassador from the count of Champagne, ' we are come in the name of the great barons of France, who are pledged to avenge by the conquest of Jerusalem the insults offered to our Lord Jesus Christ. From no other state can they obtain the help which they desire, and they implore you for the sake of the Holy Cross and the Holy Sepulchre to furnish them with ships and all other things necessary for conveying their men across the sea.' ' On what terms ?' asked the doge. ' On any that you may name,' was the reply, ' so long as we may be able to bear them.' The doge promised an answer at the end of eight days ; and when these were passed, the envoys were told that for four marks of _, ■' Compact for silver for each horse and two for each man the conveyance , , ,. ,,-.,,. .of the crusad- the republic would furnish ships, provi- ers loPalestine. sioned for nine months, for the conveyance of 4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,- 000 infantry. The total cost would be 85,000 marks of silver ; but the republic would further join the expedi- tion with 50 galleys of its cwn. The terms were not un- reasonable, and the envoys departed, some homewards, some to seek further aid from Genoa and Pisa. Here 152 The Crusades. CH. ix. they fared but ill ; and Villehardouin reached Troyes only to find Theobald the count of Champagne prostrate with hopeless sickness. In his joy at seeing him, the young man mounted his horse : but it was for the last time. In a few days he died, and the count of Perche soon followed him to the grave. The count of Champagne was to have been the chief of the enterprise. The offer of the command was now refused by the duke of Burgundy as by many others : it was accepted at last by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. But it was not until the following year that the crusading forces were fairly in motion ; and their lack A. D. 1202. - , . . „ . . Failure of ot cohcsiou was at once seen m all its mis- ders to make chicvous cffects. "V cnicc may have driven — up the sum there is no just ground for thinking that she agreed on . . . with the had driven — a hard bargain ; but as it was certain that from her terms she would make no abatement, it was clear that the interests of the crusa- ders should lead them to adhere to or give up the compact in a body. To divide their forces was merely to lay a heavier burden on those who should still seek the aid of Venice. But of two courses the crusaders were well nigh sure to choose the worse, and while some sailed across the bay of Biscay and through the straits of Gibraltar, others embarked at Marseilles. Others again found their way to ports in Southern Italy, leaving Villehardouin to deplore at Venice the wretched mischief wrought by these deser- tions. It seemed at first that they had dealt a death-blow to the enterprise. The Venetian fleet was ready, in per- fect order and magnificently equipped : but the price, the 85,000 silver marks, must be paid in advance, and the counts of Flanders and St. Pol and the marquis of Mont- ferrat could only make up 51,000 after selling all theif plate and putting the utmost strain upon their credit. I202. The Fifth Cries ade. 153 Of this dilemma the doge proposed a solution which at first excited the astonishment, the dismay, and even the disgust of the crusaders. The war which T ^ 1 J ^ • 1 ■ ,, Proposal to pope Innocent had striven to kmdle was commute the strictly a holy war, directed only against the an^expedi^^ infidel for the rescue of lands, which formed ^°" against the inalienable heritage of Christendom. But the Venetian doge now announced that the 34,000 marks might be discharged by conquering for the republic the town of Zara, which had been, so he averred, unjustly seized by the king of Hungary. The summer wore on. The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin had come round, when Dandolo, ascending the pulpit in the church of St. Mark, declared his readiness to hve or die with the pil- grims of the cross, and then, going to the high altar, fixed the blood-red badge on his high cotton cap. The sight called forth the tears and wakened the enthusiasm of all who were present. The less pleasant features of the compact lost their repulsive aspect ; and the interests of Venice were further consulted by the agreement that she should have one half of all conquests that might be made. A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some years past the palace of the Byzantine Caesars had been defiled by a series of bloody murders or of mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after Mission to emperor had been put to death or blinded seelTaid for and thrust into a dungeon. The latter tyt^'^^^lL penalty was the doom of Isaac Angelus P'^'"'^''' ^^^^^ Anfirelus, when his throne was usurped by his brother Alexios, a tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, laxly guarded, was able to communicate with his parti- sans ; his son Alexios, having contrived to make his escape in a Pisan vessel to Ancona, appeared to plead 154 The Crusades. ch. ix. his cause before Innocent at Ronxe. He received no genial welcome. The pope had perhaps a better hope of bringing about the submission of the Eastern to the Western church through the possessor of a throne than through claimants or pretenders. He was better received at the court of his brother-in-law, the Swabian chief Philip ; and his messengers now appeared in Venice to implore the help of the commercial republic and the high chivalry of Western Christendom. Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was des- tined for time to realize may have floated before the mind of Dandolo, as he listened to their earnest plead- ^ . . ings ; but for the present he confined himself Determination of the Vene- to words of encouragement and sympathy, on the expe- The task immediately before them was the dition to Zara. conquest of Zara ; and Venice stuck to her bond with inflexible pertinacity. In vain the abbot Martin, who with his followers had crossed the Tyrolese Alps, protested against the invasion of territories belong- ing to the Hungarian king who had himself assumed the cross. They were told that the schem.e might be given up on the payment of the 34,000 silver marks. In vain Innocent sent his cardinal legate Peter of Capua with orders to interdict the Venetians from assailing Zara even with their own forces, and to lead the army of the pilgrims himself to Palestine. The legate was told that he might embark in their fleet if he pleased, but that he must not dare to exercise his legatine authority when he had done so. The indignant cardinal hastened to Rome. Some few drew back from the enterprise : and the marquis of Montferrat pleaded pressing engage- ments which withheld him at present from taking the command. But with the main body of the crusaders the Venetian I202. The Fifth Crusade. 155 fleet set sa.il, in a magnificent order and with a display of power which seemed capable of sweeping everything before it. The people of Zara, ^^^^^x. oTzara!" dismayed at the sight of the armament, of- fered at once to surrender on the best terms which they could get. The doge promised to consider the matter with the barons : but while they were thus in council, Simon of Montfort, the destined hero of a bloody crusade against heretical Christians, upbraided the Zarans with their cowardice, and assured them that the conquest of Zara was no part of the crusading plan. When the sum- mons for the envoys came from the doge's tent, they were nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into the city, and the walls had been manned for a siege. In the camp Guido, the abbot of Vaux Cernay, warned the army that they were pilgrims of the cross, under oath not to make war against Christians in communion with the Holy See. In high wrath Dandolo insisted that the barons should keep to their engagements. Few dared, perhaps few wished, to gainsay him. For five days Zara was be- sieged ; on the sixth it fell. The doge took possession, but he divided the spoil with his ^ov. 15?^ allies. The reduction of Zara raised hopes which were to be speedily disappointed. The crusaders wished to sail at once for the Holy Land. The doge was de- . Proposal to di- termmed to guard his conquest agamst at- vert the cm- tacks from the Hungarian king. Winter restoration of was coming on ; the countries of Western Aiexios at Con- ^ ' stantinople. Asia were suffering grievously from famine, and a voyage then undertaken would bring with it the miseries of starvation. The only course was to make Zara their winter quarters. The proposal called forth vehe- ment opposition, which was not suppressed without 156 The Crusades. ch. ix. ^ , bloodshed. The arrival of the marquis of December. '■ Montferrat to take the chief command gave promise of more harmonious action ; but the crusade was to be a second time diverted from its original purpose. Envoys came from the Byzantine Alexios and the Swa- bian Philip urging that the purposes of the expedition would be better achieved by placing Alexios on the throne of Constantinople than by attempts, which would certain- ly be in vain, to wrest Palestine from the Saracens. They insisted that the crusader's vow was really a vow to promote in every way the cause of God, of right, and of justice ; and in noway would this cause be more sure- ly furthered than by restoring the disinherited prince to the throne of which he had been robbed by an usurper. They pleaded that in this instance interest and duty went hand in hand. It would be the first business of Alexios after his restoration to bring the Eastern church into sub- mission to the Roman church and see ; his next task would be to aid the crusaders to the best of his power in the work which they had most at heart. He would not only feed the whole army and give them 400,000 silver marks : but he would also join them in person, or send 10,000 men at his own charge. The announcement of this proposal drew from the abbot of Vaux Cernay the passionate rejoinder that they were in arms only against Saracens, and accepuhT ^° 'Ci\2X to Syria only would they go. But terms proposed though he was firmly seconded by his by Alexios. y •' _ •' partisans, there was practically no reply to the retort that in Syria they could do nothing, and that Jerusalem could be won only through Constantinople or Egypt. Words and tempers ran high : but the treaty with Alexios was accepted by the m.arquis of Montferrat and the count of Flanders, and the destination of the I202. The Fifth Crusade. 157 army was fixed. The numbers of that army were slowly diminished through the weeks of winter. The terrors of the papal interdict hung like a cloud over ^^ . . r r <=• Negotiations the host, and the barons resolved to send with the pope envoys who should assure Innocent that the of the interdict. diversion to Zara, which they and he ahke lamented, was to be laid wholly to the charge of those faithless knights who by departing from other ports left their comrades without the means of paying the money due to the Venetians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they prudently said nothing : and Innocent, while he agreed to suspend the interdict till the arrival of his legate Peter of Capua, insisted that the barons must still make atonement for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter excommunicating these ma- rauders. The marquis Boniface received the brief, but, instead of publishing it, he wrote to Innocent, sending the submission of the barons and saying that the Vene- tians were about to entreat his forgiveness for the con- quest of Zara. No such entreaties came : and Innocent issued fresh orders that his brief should be placed in the hands of the doge. If this was done, it produced no re- sult : and Innocent was startled, if not dismayed, when he learnt that the spoilers of Zara were making ready to sin on a larger scale. He denounced the whole scheme with seemingly vehement indignation. The em- peror of Constantinople may have been guilty of bhnd- ing his brother and usurping his throne ; but his empire, he insisted, was under the special protection of the Holy See. It was no part of their business or their vow to avenge the wrongs of the prince Alexios ; it was their first and paramount duty to avenge the wrongs done to their Redeemer, the sign of whose cross they bore upon 158 The O'lisades. ch. ix. their shoulders. Nay, more, the Byzantine emperor had, at the special request of the pope, promised to furnish provisions for the crusaders : and the promise of the Eastern Caesar might be trusted. If it should fail, then they might forcibly take what they wanted, at the same time paying or promising to pay the value in money. Dandolo was in no mood to have his course checked by either papal pleadings or papal threats. The day of embarkation had arrived, and Simon of A. D. 1203. Easter. Montfort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigot- Vam attempts ry, hastened away to join the king of Hun- oppdseThe ex° g^^Y' ^^^ faithful Servant of the pope. The pedition. Other chicfs went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps a shrewd suspicion that their success would be followed by a marked change in the tone and language of the pope. But whatever might be his desire to keep on good terms with the reigning monarch, his long- ing to see the Byzantine church brought back to Roman subjection was altogether more intense. This submis- sion would be the immediate result of the enthronement of Alexios, and the crusaders would depart for the Holy Land, (the vision of a Latin empire at Byzantium had not yet dawned upon their minds,) rich not only in the blessing of the pope, but in a wealth of sacred relics which, now stored up in the churches of the capital, ought to pass into the hands of the faithful children of the Roman obedience. About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian fleet anchored in the Propontis nine miles to the west of the Im.perial city. A few days latter the A. D. 1203. ^ . . Arrival of army was at Scutari, where they received a Cmistontt- message from the reigning emperor Alexios "^P^"^- promising them- aid in their passage through Asia Minor, on the condition that during their stay on 1303- The Fifth Crusade. 159 the shores of the Bosporos they should do his subjects no harm. The reply was a summons to the usurper to descend from his throne, with a promise that on this con- dition they would obtain for him the pardon of his ne- phew, the rightful sovereign. This young prince was paraded by the Venetian fleet in front of the walls ; but the proclamation which called upon the people to acknowledge him as their sovereign was received with contemptuous silence or with showers of arrows, and no alternative remained but „, , 1 r ^1 , Flight of the that of open war. The struggle presents usurper few features of real interest : as a series of military operations it has httle value or none. The im- perial fleet consisted, it is said, of only twenty ships, and these useless, the anchors, cables, and sails having been sold by the admiral, a brother of the empress. The army exhibited all the pageantry of war, and lacked almost every soldierly quality. The port of Constantinople and the town of Galata were soon in the possession of the invaders, and the siege of the city was begun, so far as the efforts of a force which could assail but an insignifi- cant extent of wall deserves the name, The first flao- planted on one of the towers was placed there by the men of Dandolo's ship ; and Dandolo himself, setting fire to the surrounding houses, kept off the imperial troops while his crew fortified themselves in their posi- tion. The Latins and the Greeks were now face to face. The splendid ranks of the Byzantine army stood, as it might seem, ready for battle, when Alexios gave the sig- nal for retreat and sealed his own downfall. That night he fled from the city. The blind Isaac Angelus, drawn from his dungeon, was again clad in the imperial robes, and his son Alexios was admitted to share his imperial dignity. M i6o The Crusades. ch. ix. The task of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be now done. Their heralds announced to the Egyptian The crusa- sultan that they would soon take summary Jompdfedto vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy spend the Land. The Pisans who had aided the winter at Constanti- usurping Alexios made up their quarrel "*^ ^' with Venice. The French barons asked the forgiveness of the pope for the attack made upon Constantinople, and Innocent replied that it must de- pend on the fulfilment of the promises made by Alexios. This prince, having paid part of the money which he had sworn to give them, bade them remember how dear must be to himself the cost of alliance with them, and how greatly he must need their help to stem the tide of unpopularity. In short, he let them know that in or near Constantinople they must find their winter quarters. It was absurd to think of encountering the risk of a voy- age during the winter : and even if they went, they could do nothing against the Turks until spring. He would then see that nothing should be left undone towards furthering the success of the crusade. The northern pilgrims received these proposals with murmurs of anger. But the decision lay really with Dandolo, and Dandolo declared that at this ceason of the year the ships of the republic should not be exposed to useless dangers. The army remained where it was : but new troubles came thick and fast. Religious anta- gonism ran out into brawls and fights. An accidental conflagration preyed for eight days on the Efforts of ^ , , ^ ^ - - * . -Li Mourzoufle to Streets and houses of the city, i he rage from^he crusa- excited by these losses was increased by the ^^^^- exactions to which the young Alexios was driven in order to meet his engagements with the crusa- ders, and was lashed into madness when his officers 1203- The Fifth Crusade. 161 stripped the churches of their gold and silver ornaments. The indignation of the people found utterance in the vehement eloquence of Alexios Ducas, called Mourzoufle from his dark and shaggy eyebrows ; and his protests so far swayed the youthful emperor as to make him remiss in carrying out his compact with his allies. These told him plainly that to that compact he must strictly adhere, or, failing in this, must prepare himself for war. During the night following the day in which he re- ceived this warning Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships against the Venetian fleet. The danger was ^ . . Deposition great ; but the Venetian sailors were as and death of prompt as they were brave. The deadly ships were turned aside into open water, and a Pisan merchant ship was the only vessel set on fire and de- stroyed. It was the last exploit of Alexios. Another revolution hurled him from the throne, which after one or two more emperors had been set up and put down passed to Mourzoufle. The new Caesar showed some aptitude for war, but he preferred to try the effect of negotiations with Dandolo. The old doge retorted that with an usurper he could have no dealings, and that, if he sought peace, he should replace his master Alexios on the throne. Mourzoufle resolved that this demand should not be made a second time : and that night Alex- ios was slain in prison. For the fate of their former ally the crusaders professed to feel a profound sympathy ; and their grief prompted the resolution of cutting the evil at its root by placing a Latin emperor on the seat of the Eastern ^ , . Resolution to Caesars. The compact was accordmgly set up a Latin drawn up. The booty to be obtained within Constami" the city was to be shared equally between the "'^p^'^- French and the Venetians ; and a committee of twelve, 1 62 The Crusades. ch. ix. half French, half Venetian, should elect the new sove- reign, who was to have one-fourth part of the city with the palaces of Blachernai and Boukoleon, the rest of the city being shared by the two allied powers. Venice, freed from all feudal obligations to the Greek empire, should be equally free from all feudal dependence on the Latin sovereign, while the Latin patriarch should be chosen from the nation to which the emperor might not belong. The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of in- terest as the first. The success of the Greeks on the first day was followed by a series of disas- A. D. 1204. April. ters which on the fourth day enabled the qJTeltofCon- Latins to force their way through the gates, stantinople. Mourzouflc shut himsclf up in his palace. A third conflagration desolated the city. In the morn- ing the conquerors learnt that the usurper had fled with many of the inhabitants. The Latin conquest was ac- complished. The Byzantine clergy alone urged con- tinued resistance ; but when they presented Theodore Lascaris to the people as their emperor, their silence showed that the appeal was made in vain. Then, see- ing that nothing more could be done, the patriarch John Kamateros fled from the sight of the awful scenes which disgraced the triumph of the Latins. The three West- ern bishops had strictly charged the crusaders to respect the churches and the persons of the clergy, the monks, and the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the frantic excitement of victory all restraint was Horrible ex- ^ . . , , . ^ , cesses of the flung aside, and the warriors 01 the cross crusa ers. abandoned themselves with ferocious greed to their insatiable and filthy lewdness. With disgusting gestures and in shameless attire an abandoned woman screamed out a drunken song from the patriarchal chair 1204- The Fifth Crusade. 163 in the church of Sancta Sophia, the magnificent work of Justinian. Wretches blind with fury drained off draughts of wine from the vessels of the altar : the table of obla- tion, famed for its exquisite and costly workmanship, was shattered : the splendid pulpit with its silver orna- ments utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the churches to bear away the sacred treasures ; if they fell, they were lashed and goaded till their blood streamed upon the pavement. While the savages were employed on these appropriate tasks, the more devout were busy in ransacking the receptacles of holy relics, and laying up a goodly store of wonder-working bones or teeth to be carried away to the churches of the great cities on the Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. ' How,' asks the pope, ' shall the Greek Church return to ec- clesiastical unity and to respect for the Apostolic See, when they have seen in the Latins only examples of wickedness and works of darkness, for which they might justly loathe them worse than dogs ?' The question might well be asked : and we may be well assured that Innocent would not be likely to over-colour the picture in favour of the Greeks, and that his informers would not care to put before him in their naked hideousness ini- quities which it would be a sin to describe. The first task of the conquerors was to elect a chief and share the spoil. The committee of twelve met in the chapel of the palace and invoked the „, . . ^ ^ Llection of aid of the Holy Spirit. The six French Baldwin, count electors were all ecclesiastics, — the abbot cmpc-ror of 'the of Loces, the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, "^'''' Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, and the archbishop-elect of Acre. Their first choice fell on Dandolo. His wis- dom, his energy, his undaunted courage, seemed to point him out as the best man fitted to rule the empire in the 164 The Crusades. ch. ix. winning of which he had played the chief part. But the old man cared little for the office, and to the Venetians the combination of the powers of emperor and doge in the same person probably boded ill for the best interests of the commercial republic. There remained only two who could well be placed in competition for the prize. The marquis of Montferrat, the lord of a petty principal- ity at the foot of the Alps, could be no object of Vene- tian jealousy, while his age and character well qualified him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the age of thirty-two, was in the first flush of vigorous manhood ; he was come of the race of Charles the Great, and the French king was his cousin. He was also the feudal sovereign of a wealthy territory and the leader of a powerful army raised among his own people. The elec- tors came to an unanimous decision, and this decision announced to the barons, who were waiting outside, that the count of Flanders was the Eastern Caesar. Boniface of Montferrat at once did homage to him as his lord ; and the old doge was the only man not called upon to make this act of submission. Borne on the shields of his comrades Baldwin was carried to the church of Sancta Sophia and there was invested with the purple buskins. Three weeks later he was crowned by the papal legate, the new patriarch not having been yet elected. This election was to the Venetians a subject of greater anxiety than the choice of a temporal sovereign. There Election of was no room here for the fear that Venice Morosini as might bccomc an insignificant dependency ConstInti-°^ of a vast empire ; and they set to work with nople. their usual promptitude and coolness. The canonical regularity of the election was, as they sup- posed, ensured by the appointment of Venetian priests to be canons of Sancta Sophia ; and these canons were I204. The Fifth Crusade. 165 placed under oath to elect none but a Venetian. Their choice fell on Thomas Morosini, a member of one o{ their noblest houses and a man highly esteemed by In- nocent III. The Roman pontiff played his part with consummate skill. While the usurping Alexios was on the throne, he had striven to secure through his help the , . . - . _, , -T- Embassies submission of the Eastern church. No sooner from Biiid- had he fled, than Innocent reminded his Venetians to nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience ^^^ P"?*^- which he had personally made, and urged the crusaders to insist on the immediate fulfilment of this promise. In no other way could they justify themselves for diverting to other purposes the forces which had been enrolled solely for the redemption of the Holy Land. He had now to deal with a new order of things. The emperor Baldwin had prayed him to ratify the compact made with the Venetians, to stir up afresh the zeal of Western Europe for the maintenance of the Latin empire in the East, to send forth new armies who in the countries now brought under Latin sway would assuredly reap an abun- dant harvest, and to reinforce the Latin clergy by a mul- titude of new recruits. The Venetians had besought his forgiveness for attacking Zara, his sanction of the con- quest of Constantinople. They could not bring them- selves to believe that the people of Zara were really under his protection, and hence they had determined to bear with the excommunication in patient silence until the pontiff should learn the truth. For what they had done at Byzantium the young Alexios was chargeable, not they. He had tried to send fire-ships among their fleet, and it was indispensable for their own safety and that of their allies to deprive him of tho power of doing fuithci mischief. 1 66 The Crusades. ch. ix= The satisfaction which Innocent felt, and avowed that he felt, was expressed in carefully guarded terms. He was rejoiced to be able to revoke the excom- Answers oi . . Innocent munication of the Venetians, and so his^h III ... was his admiration of the valour and wisdom of Dandolo that he could not comply with the prayer of the venerable doge to be relieved from further obligation under his vow. The hero who could bear so lightly the burden of ninety winters must not deprive the crusade of services which would ensure success to the enterprise and a glorious reward for himself. To the delicate praise which thus took the form of a command he added the assurance that he had taken the Latin empire under his special protection, and had prayed the sovereigns and prelates of the West to exert themselves to the utmost in its behalf. He had felt himself bound to pass a stern condemnation on the deeds of horrible violence and lewdness committed by the crusaders in the sacking of a Christian city ; but he could not withhold the admission that the history of the conquest was a memorable com- mentary on the parables of the talents and the vineyard. The Greeks had done nothing with the good things com- mitted to their trust : far from aiding, they had seriously hindered, the warriors of the cross and even done their best to destroy them. They had kept up a causeless schism ; they had turned a deaf ear to all entreaties which called upon them to come back to the unity of the Church ; and they had now paid the penalty by seeing their in- heritance in the hands of better husbandmen who would bring forth fruit in due season. But if Innocent was thus complaisant with the secular empire, he laid a heavy hand on the spiritual power which the Venetians hoped to secure as their special portion. The pope had a stern censure for the conduct both of the Venetians and the 1204- The Fifth Crusade. 167 French in daring to seize on the temporahties of the Eastern church and to portion out along with other lands and property all that might remain over and above the amount deemed sufficient for the maintenance of the Latin clergy. Nor could he allow the validity of Moro- sini's election, whether by a self-constituted chapter or by priests chosen by a purely secular authority. The election, in short, was null and void ; but so great was his regard for the Venetians, so high his esteem for Morosini, that he would himself appoint to the Byzantine patriarchate the man whom they had chosen, and invest him with singular privileges. These privileges involved a reservation of certain appeals to the pope ; and the very plenitude of the powers thus bestowed served only to show with the greater clearness the paramount sove- reignty of the Roman pontiff to whom he owed his dig- nity and his jurisdiction. The great crusade promoted by Innocent had thus produced results very different from those which he had looked for. It had not touched the power of the Syrian sultans ; it had not struck a blow on the soil of Palestine. But on the whole he had no cause to complain. It had widely extended the limits of his supremacy, / Results of and had subdued a spiritual rebellion which the crusades had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ. and\^o^he^ But if the pope was a gainer, Venice had "^'^netians. secured to herself advantages, more solid perhaps, cer- tainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had laid the foundations of her vast commercial empire ; and her factories at Pera needed only the defence of her fleets, while the Latins in Byzantium had to guard them- selves against attacks by land. She had her settlements in the richest islands of the Egean, and in every harbour ivas seen the flag of the maritime republic. This growth 1 68 The Crusades. CH. x. of her commerce was, moreover, fostering in her a spirit of antagonism to ecclesiastical authority, of which Inno- cent seems to have foreseen the issue, and which he sought with all his power to crush. The abbot of St. Felix in Venice was consecrated, by the command of Ziani, the successor of Henry Dandolo, to the archbishop- ric of Zara, the sanction of the pope not being first asked. The wrath of Innocent blazed forth at once. He reviewed in the harshest terms the general policy of the Venetians in the conduct of the crusade. It was true that they had taken Zara, and even that they had over- thrown the Byzantine empire : but what would not an army, which had won such victories, have achieved in the Holy Land ? Had the crusaders fulfilled their vows, not only must Egypt have been subdued, and the cross replaced on the dome of Omar, but Syria itself must have been swept clear of all Saracen dominion. That this glorious result had not been brought about already, was the fault of the Venetians and of them alone. He could not therefore recognize their archbishop, and he insisted on their submission under pain of the censures which were ready to fall upon them. There is no evidence to show that the Venetians took the reproof to heart, or that they vouchsafed any reply. CHAPTER X. THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. We have already (p. 55) marked the broad contrast between the character of the Greeks and that of the Contrast be- Latin and Teutonic nations of Western Greeks and Europe ; between the centralized and legal the Latins. government of the one and the feudalism of the other: between the restlessness and ambition which The Latin Efiipire of Constantinople. 169 in the West ran out into constant private war, and the habit of ahriost unreflecting obedience which had left the subjects of the Eastern Caesars unable to cope with rougher and ruder spirits except with the weapons supplied by cunning, fraud, and treachery. The crusaders had come to a people which to a large extent might be de- scribed as in a state of decrepitude, but to a land never- theless which was not less Christian than Italy or France, nay, which boasted churches of an antiquity more vene- rable than those of Milan, Ravenna, and Rome itself, — to a land ruled by a system of law which has affected the legislation of every nation in Europe, — to a land w^here Antony and Basil had reared the fabric of mona- chism long before the days of the Nursian Benedict or the Scottish Columba, — to a land where the ritual of the Church had taken root while Christianity was in its cradle, and had moulded the Ufe, the thoughts, the very being of all its members. This time-honoured civilization the Western champions of the cross now fancied that they could crush or sweep away. Not one of them cared to think that Attempt to IT • 1 ^1 • . • -^1 ii upset the civil- he was deahng wath Christians or with the izaiionofthe subjects of the ancient empire of Octavius or ""^^ empire, of Constantine. For them the land, not less than Syria and Egypt, was a part of heathendom ; the people sava- ges to be brought under a yoke as heavy as that of the Western serfs; their patriarchs, their bishops, their priests, and their monks were ministers of a false faith beyond the pale of charity or mercy. Wiser conquerors might have mingled with the people, and through inter- marriage might have infused new vigour into the feeble mass. By Baldwin and his allies a rigid line was drawn separating the present from the past. All dignities, offices, and lands were forfeited ; all were shared exclu- lyo The Crusades. ch. x. sively among the conquerors. If they were still under an emperor, this emperor was not the autocrat who repre- sented the majesty of Rome, but a mere feudal chief whose barons, although owing him homage, regarded themselves as practically his peers. In short, Baldwin and his comrades held that they might do at Constanti- nople what Godfrey and his allies had done in Palestine. The code of Justinian gave place to the Assize of Jeru- salem (p. 78), and not a single Greek was permitted to take part in the administration of this law. As it was with the secular order of things, so was it with the spiritual. The pope annulled without scruple Conduct of the the election of Morosini by self-chosen or the^Greek^ ^ statc-appoiutcd canons : but he did so only clergy. becausc liis o\.'n authority was imperilled, not at all because they were invading the jurisdiction of a patriarch whose throne was as ancient as that of Inno- cent himself. Just as though they had been mere priests of Baal or Mahomedan Imams, the Greek clergy were all driven from their churches (p. 163), and the people compelled to abandon their venerable liturgy for that of the Church of Rome. The emperor besought the pope to send out bands of priests as though for the conversion of a heathen country, and to furnish Dominican and Cistercian monks for the purposes of reforming the ste- reotyped monachism of the East. Innocent was indeed full of exultation. His letters everywhere called on the faithful to succour the devoted missionaries who were preaching the Gospel in the churches of Constantinople and bringing home to the people the enormity of the heresy which denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father. ' Samaria,' he said, 'had now returned to Jerusalem; God had trans- ferred the empire of the Greeks from the proud to the Tlic Latin Eiiipi?'e of Constantinople. 171 lowly, from the superstitious to the rehgious, from the schismatics to the Cathohcs, from the disobedient to the devoted servants of God.' He was impressed with the needfulness of sending young men from the schools of Paris to strengthen themselves by the learning of the East : Phihp Augustus summoned young Greeks to Paris to receive instruction in the creed and ritual of the Wesc. Both were playing with edged tools. The pope and the king were both encouraging that intercourse of thought which was in the end to scatter to the winds the theory of the divine right of temporal despots and the infalli- bility of spiritual rulers. The order of things so set up lasted a little longer than the Latin principality of Edessa (p. 59). It was essenti- ally the piece of new cloth patched into the osition old garment, the new wine poured into old of the French 1 1*" 1 1 11 1 T • cleriry to the leathern bottles only to burst them, in its new patri- relation to the conquered race it had no ^^^ ' more stability than the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (p. Ill); and in itself gave play to all the jealousies and quarrels which disgraced the feudal states of Western Europe. The strife began before the landing of Moro- sini. While yet at Rome, he had been warned by the pope to have nothing to do with the schemes of Venetian statesmen, and to show no preference in his new home for men of Venetian birth. In Venice he was compelled to abjure this promise, to swear that Venetians alone should be canons of Sancta Sophia, and that, so far as his power might extend, he would strive to secure to a Venetian the succession to his patriarchate. Nothing more would be needed beyond the rumours of these in- trigues to rouse the suspicions of the French clergy ; and accordingly, when Morosini approached the shore, not one obeved his summons. To the Greeks the sleek and 172 Tke Crusades > CH. x. beardless prelate and his coarse-looking and beardless priests were alike repulsive. Morosini Avas left almost alone. He threatened with excommunication the clergy who would not admit his authority ; his menaces were treated with indifference or contempt. The conquerors had indeed won for themselves a do- main almost appalling in its extent ; and the sharing of ^ . . - the prize was soon followed by the quarrel- Partition of . ^ . "^ ^ the empire ling of robbers over their booty. Not three crasading^ months after the fall of Constantinople the chiefs. emperor led his forces against his vassal Bon- iface of Montferrat, now the lord of Thessalonica: and the quarrel which was for >lhe time made up was a signi- ficant token of the future history of his empire. The time was come for carrying out the compact made before the conquest. The aged Dandolo became despot of Roma- nia, and in his new sovereignty he died, leaving to his countrymen the task of strengthening and extending their commercial empire by means of a chain of facto- ries along the mainland and in the islands of the Adria- tic and the Archipelago. The task was too costly even for the resources of Venice : and the commercial repub- lic was constrained to govern her possessions by that feudal system to which her constitution was utterly oppo- sed. For Boniface, the chivalrous rival of Baldwm, the lordship of Crete had less attractions than the kingdom of the Macedonian Thessalonica : but his wanderings did not end here. Thebes, Athens, Argos, received his followers within their gates ; and the resistance of Co- rinth and Napoli was speedily overpowered. The count of Blois received the dukedom of Nicaea (Nikaia, Nice), the count of St. Pol the lordship of Demetria, a city about twenty miles to the south of Adrianople, while Geoffrey of Villehardouin, now marshal of Romania as well as oi 1 204. The Latin Empire of Co?istantiiiople. 173 Champagne, found a splendid home on the banks of the Hebros. But the power of the old Byzantine Caesars was rather divided than crushed by the Latin crusaders. The wretched Mourzoufle, caught by the Latins, was hurled from the Theodosian column ; Rise' of new but Theodore Lascaris, the son-in-law of the N^SrTrebi- Alexios who dethroned Isaac Ano;elus. es- ^°"^' ^"'^ ^"' *=" ' razzo. tabhshed himself at Nicasa first as despot then as emperor, and in no long time had extended his power from the Bosporos to the banks of the Meander. Other parts of the empire were likewise in revolt against the new Caesars. The governors of Trebizond, without changing their titles at first, became sovereigns of their province, and laid the foundations of their later empire. A power not less formidable sprung up in Epirus (Epeiros) and had its centre within the walls of that city of Du- razzo which is especially associated with the history of Bohemond. The conquerors were now to feel the effects of feudal subordination, which was only another name for real anarchy. The terror which they had inspired when their combined forces assailed the walls of Con- stantinople was rapidly lessened when their dispersal betrayed their scanty powers of cohesion, and when en- counters in the field proved to be not always irresistible. The storm burst on the Latins from a , . , , , , , . , ^ . Massacre of the quarter m which they had not looked for it. Latins in The chief of the Bulgarians, John or Calo- ordeTofYhe John, had at first greeted Baldwin with the i^^'garian •' ° Calo-John. freedom of an equal as well as the hearti- ness of a friend ; but the retort that in the count of Flanders he must recognize his emperor roused a resent- ment which led him to make common cause with the insurgent Greeks. Waiting until Baldwin's brother 174 '^^1'^ Crusades. CH. x. Henry had with a large force crossed the Hellespont, ' he gave the signal for slaughter, and the Latins were forthwith cut down in the towns and villages of Thrace. Baldwin at once sent a messenger to recall his brother ; but before he could return, he set out with 140 knights and their retinues, followed by the aged Dandolo. The force was perilously small ; but good order and disci- pline might have more than compensated this disad- vantage. All desultory action was forbidden ; the order was disregarded by the count of Blois who was himself surprised and slain, while the emperor Aprif.Ca°ptivuy Baldwin became a prisoner. The army was of the emperor g^yed by the wisdom, fortitude, and hero- Baldwin. -' ism of Villehardouin, whose masterly retreat is perhaps the only piece of true generalship in the whole military history of the crusades. But the empire was already little more than the shadow of its former self. A few fortresses on the shore of the Propontis now formed with the capital the imperial domain of the Latins. Calo-John was in the full tide of success. The pope, for whom he had but a little while ago professed a deep devotion, entreated him to have mercy on his enemies and to release the emperor. This last request was, he said, beyond mortal power to grant. Death of Bald- Baldwin had already died in prison. How, no one ever knew. Stories grew up which told of horrible barbarities practised on the defenceless captive ; and the common belief that great men cannot die brought forward twenty years later in Flanders a man who gave himself out as the true sovereign of the country, and won from thousands a faith not to b e shaken by the discovery of his imposture and the ignominious death which followed it. The career of Alexander the Great and of Baldwin 1207. The Latui Empire of Constantinople. 175 was cut short at the same early age. The reign of Bald- win's younger brother Henry was extended over ten years, and closed when he was (broth'er of forty-four years old. It be^jan in darkness Baldwin,) ^ ■' ^ emperor of and gloom, it was followed by a time of Constanti- . . nople. overwhelming disasters : but in itself it is the only period in the history of the Latin empire on which our thoughts may rest with anything approaching to satisfaction. Twelve months had passed while he acted as regent for his brother before he could be brought to believe that Baldwin no longer lived, and to assume the imperial title. Dandolo had already ended his long life at Constantinople. Boniface of Mont- A. D. 1205. ferrat was soon to follow him, after his dis- putes with the emperor on points of homage had been settled by the marriage of Henry to his ? ,. - . A. D. 1207. daughter Agnes. Boniface died m a war with Calo-John ; and with him his friend Geoffrey of Villehardouin disappears from history. But the tide was now to turn against the Bulgarian chief. The Greeks, who had looked to Calo-John as to one who would restore to them their freedom their laws, found that they were dealing tion of Calo- with a savage whose mind ran on massacre "" and on those wholesale deportations of conquered tribes which have in all ages delighted the hearts of Eastern despots. The cruelties of the tyrant taught them that in the Latin emperor they might perhaps find a friend. At their prayer for help Henry took the field with a dan- gerously scanty force ; and the retreat of Calo-John was probably caused less through fear of the Latin army than by the desertion of his Comans. Not long after- wards the Bulgarian chief was killed in his tent, while besieging Thessalonica. With his successor Vorylas 176 The Crusades. CH. x. Henry made an honourable peace ; a treaty with the Greek sovereigns of Nice and Epirus (Epeiros) left to him undisturbed possession of an ample territory ; and the rest of his life was spent in conscientious efforts for its just and orderly government. Clearly seeing the Wise govern- fatal folly of that exclusive system which ment of the ^g^g gQ ^^-^x to the hearts of crusaders ffene- emperor o Henry. rally, Henry resolved to govern Greeks through Greeks. The great offices of the state were thrown open to them, in great part filled by them. To the tyranny which repressed the use of the Eastern liturgy and thrust on the people a theological dogma he opposed a passive resistance : to the theory of papal su- premacy he gave a significant answer by having his throne placed on the right hand of the patriarch's chair in the church of Sancta Sophia. His presumption was rebuked by Innocent III.; but Henry was none the more deterred from prohibiting the alienation of fiefs which was adding only to the wealth and power of the clergy. Henry died at Thessalonica ; and with him the male line of the counts of Flanders came to an end. But the daughter of Henry's sister Yolande was A. D. 1207. Death of married to Andrew, king of Hungary ; and ^^^' to the Latins it seemed that the choice of a powerful sovereign as their emperor might be the salva- tion of their dynasty. The prize had no attractions for Andrew : and the offer of the crown was in a fatal hour accepted by Peter of Courtenay, count of Peter of ^ ' -" Courtenay Auxerre, the husband of Yolande herself, emperor of i i_ j 1 • • i ^ Constanti- who had v/on his spurs m a crusade, not nopie. against Turks and Saracens, but against the Albigensian heretics of Provence. To raise a decent force which might guard him on the march to his capital Peter was compelled to sell or mortgage the best part of 1207-19- The Latiji Empire of Constantinople. 177 his territories ; and when he reached Rome, the pope, Honorius III., careful to avoid anything which might seem to recognize his authority over the old imperial city, crowned him in a church without the walls. The means of transport across the sea he had been obliged to seek from the Venetians. They were granted, but under conditions similar to those which had been im- posed on Baldwin and his allies. He must recover Durazzo for the republic, as for her they had conquered Zara. His success was not greater than . ° A. D. 1218. that of Bohemond, and his miserable march Captivity from Durazzo led him into trackless moun- Peter of tains, amongst which he fell into the hands of Courtenay. his enemies. With him the papal legate became a captive. At once the pope threatened to place the Epirot sove- reign under his ban ; but it soon became evident that his anxiety was for the legate, not for the emperor. The former was released ; the latter was probably murdered in prison ; and the successor of Henry died without see- ing the city of which he was the Caesar. While Peter of Courtenay pined in his dungeon, his wife Yolande, in the midst of her grief, anxiety, and appre- hension, gave birth to Baldwin, the luckless child with whom the Latin dynasty was to reach its close. Death soon brought relief from her sorrows ; and the barons had again before them the task of choosing an emperor, Namur, the inheritance of Yolande, had passed to her eldest son Philip, who was too prudent to change the sub- stance of his principality for the shadow of ^ , Robert, empc an empire. The crown was offered to her rorofConstan- second son Robert, who set out on his jour- ney, by way of Germany and the Danube, through the territories of his brother-in-law, the kin r crusaders. away. It was now the turn of the legate to sue for peace, and he offered to surrender Damietta. In the Saracen camp it was no easy task for the Sultan Kameel to repress the stern indignation with which many of the chiefs demanded the utter destruction of the enemy. He urged the vast importance of doing nothing which should excite fresh crusades in Europe, while Syria was menaced and ravaged by Tartar invasions, and of re- covering Damietta without a blow from a garrison strong enough to sustain a siege as long as that which had come to an end a few months ago. The triumph of the Egyptian sultan seemed to be ^ , , complete ; but he had now to encounter an Frederick ^ II., grand- enemy of a very different temper. At the barossa. ' age of eighteen Frederick, the son of the in- famous Henry VI. and grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, had been summoned by the pope to assume the imperial crown which Otho of Brunswick, the son of A. D I2I2 Henry the Lion, was pronounced to have forfeited by his misdeeds. It was the old story. The strife between pope and anti-pope was but a reflection of the almost fiercer strife of rival emperors ; and in this _ struggle the pope naturally inclined to that The popes ^^ ^ . ■' and the em- sidc from which the church was likely to perors. reap the most advantage. Otho, the nephew of Richard Coeur de Lion, came of a house which had been generally loyal and faithful to the Roman pontiffs ■, his rival belonged to the Swabian house of Hohenstaufen, at whose hands the popes had experienced more of enmity than of friendship. The remembrance of the days of Frederick Barbarossa was vivid in the mind of I200-2I. TJie Sixth Crusade. 189 Innocent III., to whom the two emperors . A. D. 1200 . appealed after their coronation. The dehb- eration was grave and long ; but the issue was not doubt- ful. Otho's rival Philip was ' an obstinate persecutor of the Church,' and he was even then scheming to deprive the pontiff of his kingdom of Sicily. He must be put down before he could reach his full strength ; and there- fore the pope declared himself for Otho, himself devoted to the Church, by his mother's side from the royal house of England, by his father from the duke of Saxony, all loyal sons of the Church. Him, therefore, we proclaim king ; him we summon to take on himself the imperial crown.' Innocent, like the frogs in the fable, was only exchanging king Log for king Stork. The ^ , *'*=*'*' ^ Otho of reign of Otho was a period of desperate Brunswick, strife and anarchy in Germany, of despe- rate struggles on his part to throw off the papal yoke. The pope turned his eye on the youthful Frederick, then basking in the sunshine of his Sicilian paradise and giv- ing promise of the brilliant qualities of his nature which were afterwards to be sullied by darker lines of angry passion. In 1212 Frederick was chosen emperor at Frank- fort. In I2i4his victory at Bouvines shat- tered the power of Otho. The gratitude of Battle of Frederick for the favour of the pope had ^°"^"'^'- been shown by taking the crusader's vow and pledging himself to lead an army for the recovery of the Holy Land. While his rival Otho lived, it was impossible for him to fulfil his promise. Two years before his death Innocent III. had passed away from the scene of proud dominion and unceasing toil, and the more J 1 1 • 11 T • A. D. I216. moderate and kindly Hononus III. sat in Honorius his seat. In courteous language which ' ^'^^'" might pass for that of friendship, the pope besought him 190 The Crusades. ch. xi. to march to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre ; but the dark shadows were already stealing across the clear sky. Without asking the sanction of the pope Frederick by a compact made with his vassals and prelates at the Diet of Frankfort procured the election of his son A. D. 1220. Henry to the crown of Germany. Honorius expressed his displeasure at a step which seemed de- signed to unite permanently the Sicilian kingdom with the empire. Frederick hastened to say that he had no such wish, and that Sicily should revert to the pope if he should die without lawful heirs. When, a Nov. 22. . . - . , , . little while later, he was crowned with his queen by the pope in the church of St. Peter's, Freder- ick promised that part of his army should be ready for the crusade in March of the following year, while he himself would follow in August with the rest. But Frederick had enough, and more than enough, to do in dealing with the turbulent barons of Apulia and in guarding against Saracen insurrection in A. D. I22I. ^ rt Loss of Sicily. A fleet of forty ships was sent to no purpose : and the tidings of the loss of Damietta were construed as an expression of divine dis- pleasure for his slackness. It was clear that only a vast army under a skilful general could turn the scale in favour of the Latin Christians of Palestine : but nothing was said of the besotted folly which had more than once flung aside all the advantages which could possibly be gained by the most successful crusade. Such an army could not, however, be got together in a month or in a year. The A D 1222 decision was postponed from a meeting at ■^P'^'^- Veroli to a meeting at Verona which never took place. When next the pope and emperor met at Treaty of Fcrcntino (March 1223), it was agreed that Ferentino. ^^q ygars iiiore should be spent in prepara- 12 22-27- The Sixth Crusade. 191 tions, and that Frederick, now a widower, should marry lolante, the daughter of the titular king of Jerusalem, and thus as his heir go forth to the maintenance of his own rights. King John of Brienne, who was present at the debate, started at once on a mission in which he hoped to achieve a success not unlike that of the hermit Peter, of Bernard, or Fulk of Neuilly. But the times were changed, and king John could only report to the pope the impossi- bility of moving at the time named in the treaty of Feren- tino. A new agreement was made at San a. d. 1225. Germano, postponing the departure of the of San Ger-^*^^ army for two years longer. Four months "lano. later Frederick married lolante, and proceeded at once to deprive his father-in-law of his shadowy royalty. John of Brienne, he insisted, was king only by right of his wife : by her death the title had passed to his daughter, and to him as her husband, and he, Fred- Frederick, erick, was thus king of Naples, Sicily, and sicny.'^^Td^*''' Jerusalem, John was furious, but he could Jerusalem, revenge himself only by accusations, whether true or false, of gross and habitual profligacy on the part of the young emperor. ' Never did pope love emperor as he loved his son Frederick.' Such were the words of Honorius when he parted from him after his coronation at Rome. Before the close of his pontificate in 1227 the gentle pontiff had to address not a few stern remonstrances to his loving son. The real struggle was reserved for the papacy of the cardinal Ugolino, a kinsman of Inno- A. D. 1227. cent 111., who assumed the triple crown at Gregory ix. the age of eighty years. To an eloquence ^°^^' unrivalled in his own day, to a profound knowledge of the canon law and the decretals, Gregory IX. united the monastic severity of Gregory the Great and the inexora- 192 Tlie Crusades. ch. xi. ble will of Gregory VII. The sovereign with whom he had to deal was still a young man of only thirty-three, a young man with whose wishes and dreams, with whose tastes and accomplishments, Gregory had nothing what- ever in common. Frederick had been born and bred in Sicily ; and in the voluptuous splendours of that beauti- ful island, in the luxury of its sunshine, in the gorgeous profusion and glory of its vegetation, his youth passed in a passion of delight, fed by the charms of music, poetry, painting, and a rich literature which laid at his feet the treasures of ancient knowledge. From the lays of the troubadour and the company of noble knights and fair women, Frederick could turn to men learned in the lore of the East and in the philosophy of Alexan- dria and Athens. His life was far from faultless. With more truth it may be described as one of license which cast to the winds, at least for himself, the moral code of priests and monks, but a license to which all grossness and coarse rioting, all unrefined and boorish vices, were altogether abhorrent. Here in his southern paradise Frederick could say, with a freedom horrifying to the sacerdotal spirit of the age, that if God had seen his beautiful home he would never have chosen the barren land of Judaea for the abode of his own people. Here too he was subjected to influences which were likely to cultivate a temper far more disliked and dreaded by popes and their followers than irreverence or even blas- phemous profanity. Around him were gathered popula- tions brought from many lands, all softened by the genial and delicious climate. The Norma.n had here laid aside some of his northern roughness, and become an apt disciple of the gay science in which Frederick had won a foremost place. Even the Germans were toned down to something like decency of demeanour and 1227. The Sixth Crusade. 193 language : and in contrast to these were numbers of Jews, who surpassed the Christians as much in refine- ment and learning as in their wealth, and of Saracens not less polished, not less cultivated, who delighted to call themselves subjects of Frederick and to submit themselves peaceably to his rule. Frederick was, in short, learning the dangerous lessons of toleration, and his eyes were being gradually opened to the perilous views which have become the orthodox creed of modern statesmen. As a ruler, he could survey without dislike the mingling of different religions, and see that an em- pire surpassing the wildest dreams of feudal grandeur could be achieved by the extension and freedom of a commerce spread over all portions of the earth. As a man of learning he could promote the cultivation of a philosophy which, whatever might be its merit, could not fail to set the mind working and accustom it to re- gard all questions as matters to be settled by reason and evidence, not by authority. A picture more repulsive to the mind of a man like Gregory IX. cannot well be ima- gined. The light-hearted enjoyment and the liberal government of the one were hopelessly opposed to the monastic gloom and ingrained despotism of the other. Frederick may have been slow in fulfilling his promise : there is no evidence that he ever deliberately intended to break it. But he had no intention of wading through a sea of blood if he could obtain his ends without strik- ing a blow. He had already had some friendly inter- course with the Egyptian sultan : and from these rela- tions he was hereafter to reap good fruit. For the pre- sent they served only to excite the anger of Gregory, whose patience was exhaust- Exxommunica^ ed when at length Frederick gathered his ^'''^^^ ^^^ ^^' forces at Brundusium (Brindisi) only to see 194 '^Ji^ Cj'usades. CH. xi. them decimated by fever, and when he himself, having set out with his fleet, was compelled to return after three days to the harbour of Otranto. On St, Michael's day the pope excommunicated Frederick with bell, book, and candle. In his discourse to the Apulian bishops, the subjects of Frederick, he spoke of the tender care with which the Church had nursed him in his infancy and childhood in order that he might fight the serpents and basilisks whom she had unwittingly fostered in her bosom. She had borne him on her shoulders ; she had rescued him from those who would have slain him ; she had hoped to find in him a protecting staff and support. These hopes had been cheated, Frederick had pur- posely exposed his army at Brundusium to pestilence, and after pretending to set off on his voyage for Pales- tine had returned under a false plea of illness to the luxuries of the baths of Puteoli. On St. Martin's day and again on Christmas day the excommunication was repeated with all its appalling ceremonies. The sentence was by the pope's orders to be published in all churches of his obedience. By one of the clergy of Paris, who professed to know merely the fact of the quarrel and nothing of the merits of the case, it was published as a sentence of condemnation against the one who might be in the wrong. ' I excommunicate the aggressor, and I absolve the sufferer.' Frederick appealed not to the pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom. His illness had been real, the accusations of the pope wanton and cruel. * The Christian charity which should hold all things to- gether is dried up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the pope done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon them to death or ruin ? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were everywhere, gathering where 12 28. TJie Sixth Crusade. 195 they had not sown, and reaping where they had not strawed.' But although he thus dealt in language as furious as that of the pope, the thought of breaking definitely with him and of casting aside his crusading vow as a worthless mockery never seems to have en- tered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies to- gether again with all speed, and to set oiT on his expedi- tion. His promise only brought him into fresh trouble with the pope, w^ho in the Holy Week next ^ ^ ' ■' A. T>. 1228. following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his sub- ^ . Departure of jects were at once absolved from their al- Frederick from kry-i ^ i j-1 Brundusium. glance. Ihe emperor went on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundusium. He was met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to ''eave Italy until he had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the pope to demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt. In September the emperor landed at Ptolemais ; but the emissaries of the pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy ^ . . Landing of and shunned by their partisans. The pa- Frederick- at triarch and the masters of the military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners. The charge was given to w illing servants : but Frederick found friends in the Teutonic knights under their grand-master Herman of Salza, as well as with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid. The Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to ho issued in his Pxame ; and Frederick agreed igo The Crusades. ch. xi. that they should run in the name of God and Christen- dom. But while the enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death of the Damas- cene sultan Moadhin v/as of little use to Frederick, The Egyptian sultan Kameel was now in a position of greater independence, and his eagerness for an alliance with the emperor had rapidly cooled down. Frederick on his side still resolved to try the effect of negotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to A. D. 1229. . . Feb. 13. the complete restoration of the Latm kmg- tween^Frede- dom, and ended, if we are to believe Ara- suk n^Kameef t)ian chroniclcrs, in almost abject supplica- tions. At length the treaty was signed. It surrendered to the emperor the whole of Jerusalem ex- cept the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens ; but Christians under certain conditions might be allowed to enter it for the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Chris- tians the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a rea- son for legitimate satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten ^ , . , back to his own dominions, where a papal I'rederick a^ . Jerusalem. army was ravagmg Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre. But here also the hand of the pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely Jerusalem but the Sepulchre itself passed under the interdict as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian emperor. On Sunday, in his imperial robes, and attended by a magnificent retinue, Frederick went to his coronation as king of Jerusalem in the church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take part in the cere- 1229. The Sixth Crusade. 197 mony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof, while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his head. By his orders his friend Herman of Salza read an address in which the emperor acquitted the pope for his hard judgment of him and for his excommunication, and added that a real know- ledge of the facts would have led him to speak not against him, but in his favour. He confessed his desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself before God and before his Vicar upon earth. From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The kadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour ot prayer from a minaret near the house in ^^ , ^ ■' Moderation which the emperor lodged, because he of the em- added to his call the question, ' How is it ^^'^°'^' possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary ?' Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he re- buked the kadi for neglecting on his account his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahomcdans in his train fell on their knees at the times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might defile it, he asked, ' You may keep out the birds ; but how will you keep out the swine?' In dowin'j terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of 198 The Crusades. CH. xi. Europe, announcing the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the pen than by the sword. He Condemnation scarcclv knew what a rock of offence he of the ]-ia(i raised up amongst Christian and Mos- treatyby . . Gregory IX. lem ahke. By a few words on a sheet of parchment the Christian emperor had deprived his people of the hope of getting their sins forgiven by mur- dering unbelievers : by the same words the Moslem sul- tan had prevented his subjects from ensuring an en- trance to the delights of paradise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes. From Ceroid, patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the pope, full of virulent abuse of the em- peror as a traitor, an apostate, and a robber ; but even before he received this letter Gregory had condemned what he chose to consider as a monstrous attempt to re- concile Christ and Belial, and to set up Mahomed as an object of worship in the temple of God. ' The antago- nist of the cross,' he wrote, the enemy of the faith and of all chastity, the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse judgment, and by an intoler- able insult to the Saviour, to the lasting disgrace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the martyrs who have laid down their lives to purify the Holy Land from the defilements of the Saracens.' But Frederick in his turn could be firm and unyielding. He returned from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Pto- Returnofthe Icmais ; and there learning that a proposal tKruIadS tiad been made to establish a new order of to Europe. knights, he declared that no one should without his consent levy soldiers within his dominion. Summoning all the Christians within the city to the broad plain without the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the conduct of the patriarch and the Templars, with all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that all the 1329. The Seventh Crusade. 199 pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once to Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers took possession of the churches ; two friars who denounced him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets ; the patriarch was shut up in his palace ; and the commands of the emperor were carried out, Fred- erick returned to Europe, to find that the pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the papal forces were in command of Renewed ex- n of Brienne, who may have been the tionofthe author of the false news of Frederick's emperor. death, and who certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the pope Frederick sent his envoys, Herman of Salza at their head. They were dismissed with contempt ; and their master was again placed under the greater excommunication with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Arnoldists, and other heretics who in the eyes of the faithful were the worst enemies of the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man who had done more towards the re-establishment of the Latin kingdom in Palestine than had been done by the lion- hearted Richard, and who, it may fairly be said, had done it without shedding a drop of blood. CHAPTER XIL THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. The number of the crusades might be largely extended if we gave the name to all the minor expeditions to the Holy Land in the intervals between the Richard, carl greater enterprises to which the term has i^ins oV'the ' been commonly applied. Yet the expedition R^^ans. led by Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans 200 The Crusades. ch. xii. and brother of Henry III. of England, as being scarcely less remarkable than that of Frederick IL, and for the same reason, may fairly be reckoned as the seventh of these extravagant and ill-starred enterprises. Time had softened in some degree the spirit which had animated the first crusaders ; but in the events which follow the return of Frederick we see some- Charges of . . peculation thmg like an honest reaction against the papai^coU^ diversion to other purposes of money con- lectors, tributed for the deliverance of Palestine. These diversions had become so frequent that the papal collectors regarded it as an annoyance or an insult if any refused to commute by money payments their en- gagements as crusaders. The peace which the Egyptian sultan Kameel had made with Frederick was little more than a truce. It was to last for ten years ; but even during that term the A. D. 1230. compact was kept with no rigid strictness of'the^pope perhaps on either side. Thousands of and the em- Christians were slain, it is said, on their pas- peror to the ' ' " new crusade, sage from Acrc to Jerusalem, and envoys were sent to Gregory IX. and to Frederick, with whom he had been reconciled at Anagni, to entreat the equip- ment of another crusade. The crusade was enjoined, A. D. 12-6— accordingly, but, as it seemed, v/ith little ^^39- sincerity ; and when the French barons, headed by Theobald, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, and Hugh, duke of Burgundy, met in council at Lyons, they were commanded by the papal legate to adjourn their discussions and to return home. The re- quest was peremptorily refused ; but wdien their plans seemed to be in all respects matured, the ambassadors of Frederick himself besought thein to wait until he could give them effectual help. Even to this appeal they 1242. TJic Seventh Crusade. 201^ turned a deaf ear : and although Frederick charged his officers to withhold all aid from the crusaders, these barons still insisted on carrying out their design and found their way to Acre. Before they Arrival of reached it, Kameel had seized Terusalem ^"^"^ French ■' crusaders at and dismantled the tower of David ; and Acre. the crusaders had before them a task not less arduous than that which Godfrey of Bouillon and ^ 1 • r -1 Their com- his followers had to encounter. Their fail- piete failure, ure was complete ; it can scarcely be said that they even attempted to grapple with it. The English crusade which under Richard of Corn- wall and William Lonarsword (son of the ^ ^ , A. D. 1240. earl of Salisbury, but not earl of Salisbury The English himself) embarked at Dover for France, and having journeyed across France set sail from Marseilles in spite of a papal prohibition, was followed by results far more solid. On reaching Acre, they found the affairs both of Christians and Moslems in a state of strange confusion through treaties which neither side was able strictly to carry out. But the quarrel which ^^^^^ ^^ had broken out afresh between the sultans tween Richard ^ , . of Cornwall of Egypt and Damascus told greatly m and the Eg^^p- their favor. The march of Richard to Jaffa "^" led to negotiations, and by the treaty which followed them the Egyptian sultan granted him terms even more favourable than those which had been conceded to Frederick II. Palestine was once more virtually in the hands of the Christians, and in their hands it virtually remained, un- til, two years later, the Latin kingdom was ' ■' ' ^ A. D. 1242. again swept away by a foe more merciless Invasion of 1 1 • 1 % 1 11 i^"^ Koras- than any which the crusaders had yet en- mians. countered. The brutal hordes, which Genghis Khan 202 The Cf'usades. ch. xiii. • had set in motion from the remote wilds of Tartary, drove out from the Korasmian territories myriads of myriads scarcely less brutal than themselves. The fugi- tive Korasmians burst into Palestine. Jerusalem was deserted by its garrison, and the savages hastened to glut themselves with blood. The living were cut down, the dead torn from their graves, and thousands of pil- grims, decoyed back to the city by the display of crusa- ding banners from the walls, furnished fresh victims for Alliance of ^^^ awful Sacrifice. In this desperate strait the Tern- ^^ Templars made common cause with the plars and the ^ Syrians. Syrians. A battle was fought in which the grand-masters of the Templars and Hospitallers were slain, the only survivors being thirty-three Templars, sixteen Hospitallers, and three Teutonic knights. The Korasmians were for the present in league with the Egyptian sovereign ; but this harmony was soon fol- lowed by enmity. The Korasmians were defeated and scattered, and the tempest of barbarian invasion came to an end. CHAPTER Xni. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. The havoc wrought by the Korasmian inroad was alleged by pope Innocent IV. as a reason for Council of sending forth another crusade. In a council Lyons. h.Q\d at Lyons, the bishop of Berytos dwelt on the miserable state of the Christians in the Holy Land, and it was resolved that another effort should be made for its deliverance. Honorius wrote to Henry III. of England to impress upon him the duty of taking up the cross like his lion-hearted predecessor ; but Henry had in 12 26. The Ei'^hth Crusade. 20?. Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, a more pressing antagonist than Egyptian sultans or Korasmian savages. The pope found fuel more easily kindled in the heart of Louis IX., king of France. This saint, the very type of royal monks and devotees, was ten years old when on the death of his father Louis VIII. he succeeded to the throne. By his A. D. 1226. mother, Blanche of Castile, the regent of the Louis ix., kingdom, the child was brought up with a '"^° strictness to which he answered with unbounded docility. In his early youth the beauty of some fair maidens drew from him a glance expressive of some admiration : his mother told him that she would rather see him dead than that he should entertain even a sinful thought. His own will would have led him to assume the obligations of the cloister ; but the interests of the state demanded his mar- riage, and his wife, Margaret of Provence, passed with her husband under the rigid discipline of the queen-mother. His severity to himself grew with his years. At night he would rise from his bed and pace his chamber in 'the coldest season. A shift of the coarsest haircloth worn next to his skin furnished a desirable torture. Fruit he tasted only once in the year. On Fridays he never changed his dress, and never laughed. The iron chain scourges which he carried at his waist in an ivory case drew blood from his shoulders once every week of the year and thrice in every week during Lent. He would walk for miles to distant churches wearing shoes with- out soles. He would scarcely content himself with two, three, and even four masses a day ; and if he made a journey, his chaplain recited the offices on the road. Even monks tried to check an asceticism almost exceed- ing that which was demanded by the rules of Benedict, Dominic, or Francis; the king asked whether he would 204 The Crusades. CH. xiii. liave incurred the same rebuke had he spent twice as much time in hawking and dicing. No reproach, no sarcasm, no insult, could disturb the serenity of his hum- ble soul. ' You are not a king of France,' exclaimed a woman Avho was pleading her cause before him ; ' you are a king only of priests and monks. It is a pity that you are king of France. You ought to be turned out.' 'You speak truly,' answered Louis. ' It has pleased God to make me king: it had been well had He chosen some one better able to govern this kingdom rightly.' The woman was sent away with a gift of money : and money was a thing on which the king set little store, and which he seldom needed except for the purchase of relics. Here his avarice was unbounded; and we have seen him paying the enormous sum of 10,000 silver marks for the ' genuine crown of thorns ' preserved in the church of Sancta Sophia (p. 173). To such a man absolute obedience and implicit trust not only in God but in every article or proposition set forth as forming part of the Christian faith were the first, the most indispensable of all virtues. Not one point in all the theology of the Church was to be called into question ; there was not one which was not to be received as absolutely true. 'Do you know the name of your father?' he asked his seneschal, the lord of Joinville, who accompanied him to Palestine, and whose inimitable memoirs bring the man and his age before us in living reality. 'Yes,' answered the seneschal; 'his name was Simon.' 'How do you know that ?' again asked Louis. ' Because my mother has told me so many times.' 'Then,' answered the king, ' you ought perfectly to believe the articles of the faith which the apostles of our Lord have testified to you, as you have heard the Credo chanted every Sunday. For questioning and argument his system had no place. 12 26. TJie Eij^h/h Crusade. 205 Under no circumstances could llicrc ever be need of any. He related to Joinville with hearty approval the conduct of a knight, who, during a disputation between some Jews and the monks of the abbey of Clugny, asked leave of the abbot to say a few words. With some difficulty his request was granted. Raising himself on his crutches, the old warrior beckoned the rabbi to draw near, and then put to him one question. ' Do you believe in the Virgin Mary, who bore our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that she was a virgin when she was the mother of God ?' The Jew answered promptly that he believed not one word of it. ' Fool that thou art,' replied the knight, ' for daring to enter a Christian monastery when thou disbelievest these things. For this madness thou shalt now pay.' Lifting up his crutch, he struck the man a blow on the ear which smote him to the ground. His comrades fled away from the scene of controversy, while the abbot came fon^^ard to reprove the knight for his folly. ' Thou art the greater fool,' was the retort, 'in permitting an assembly from which good Christians might by listening to their argu- ments have gone away unbelievers.' The king, Joinville tells us, clinched the moral of the story in the following words : * No one, however learned or perfect a theologian he may be, ought to dispute with Jews. The layman, whenever he hears the Christian faith impugned, should defend it with a sharp-edged sword which he should drive up to the hilt into the bodies of the unbelievers.' We cannot really know the history of an age, if we do not really know some at least of the men who lived in it : and this fact gives in the case of Louis IX. .^ ^^ an importance to details which we might be the pope and the emperor. tempted to pass with a sigh, perhaps, or a smile. ' Do you wash the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday?' he asked the lord of Joinville. 'Oh, fie! 2o6 TJie Crusades, CH. xiii. was the answer; ' no, never will I wash the feet of such fellows.' ' It is ill said, indeed,' answered the kine. 'for you should never hold in disdain what God did for our instruction ; for He who is Lord and Master of the uni- verse did on that day, Holy Thursday, wash the feet of all His apostles, telling them that He who was their Master had thus done, that they in like manner might do the same to each other. I therefore beg of you, out of love to Him first, and then from regard to me, that you will accustom yourself to do so.' Another sermon, the gentleness of which makes us forget its tedious prosing, rebuked Joinville's impetuosity in saying that he would rather have committed thirty deadly sins than be a leper. Louis was, in short, a man who would have loved all men, had he not been taught to believe that unbelief, heresy, or even doubt (honest doubt was for him, of course, a thing inconceivable), put the unbeliever or doubter beyond the pale of Christian charity. For Jews, then, or infidels he avowed the most burning hatred, al- though probably this hatred would have vanished like morning mist before the sight of Jew or infidel in dire distress or agony. But in spite of his bigotry and narrowness, his stern asceticism, his incessant ser- monizing, there was in him a depth of sweetness and gentleness, a genuine goodness of heart and life, which won for him the love of thousands who made little attempt to follow his example. In an age infamous for its foulness of speech and the profanity of its oaths the purity of his language was never tarnished. In his quaint phrases Joinville says of him, ' I never heard him, at any time, utter an indecent word nor make use of the devil's name, which is now very commonly uttered by every one — a practice which, I firmly believe, far from being agreeable to God, is highly displeasing to Him.' 1239-12 45 • 'J^^i^ Eighth Crusade. 207 Nay, more, these qualities were in him combined with a sound sense and a firmness of will which made him in all cases of right and duty hard as adamant, and effec- tually crushed the contempt which some might have been tempted to feel for his superstitions. He could bear rebuke patiently : but they who thought that they might take advantage of his devotion to encroach on his rights as king or even on the rights of his neighbours found themselves speedily undeceived. When Gregory IX., after his second and final rupture with Frederick XL, deposed him from his imperial throne and *• A. D. 1239. offered the dignity to Louis's brother Robert, the meek and gentle king replied to the pope in the fol- lowing words : — Whence is this pride and daring of the pope, which thus disinherits a king who has no superior, nor even an equal, among Christians, — a king not con- victed of the crimes laid to his charge ? Even if these crimes were proved, no power could depose him but that of a general council. On his transgressions the judg- ment of his enemies is of no weight, and his deadliest enemy is the pope. To us he has not only thus far ap- peared guiltless, he has been a good neighbour : we see no cause for suspicion either of his worldly loyalty or of his Catholic faith. This we know, that he has fought valiantly for our Lord Jesus Christ both by sea and land. So much religion we have not found in the pope, who endeavoured to confound and wickedly supplant him in his absence, while he was engaged in the cause of God. In this cause, as interpreted by the religion of the time, this guiltless but stout-hearted champion of justice and right was now to peril limb and life without ° ^ A. D. 1245. a shade of fear and with as complete a lack Assumption r , . -I 1 • 1 1 of the cross 01 every quality needed m a general and by Louis IX. leader of armies. A more thorough contrast to Frederick 2o8 The Ci'usades. ch. xiii. whom he thus valiantly defended it would be impossible to imagine. To him the learning, the grace, the refine- ment of heathen philosophers and poets, the music and the songs of all poets of all ages, were beyond expression horrible. Of an intercommunion of nations founded on commerce, learning, and art, he could have not the faintest notion. To the best of his power he would ad- minister justice in his own land so long as he remained in it ; when his duty as a champion of the cross called him elsewhere, he would leave it with fifty thousand men in his train, having formed no military plans, but under a profound conviction that God whom he sought to serve would fight his battles, and that, if it should not be so, the result would be due only to his own sins and sinful- ness. To the remonstrances of his mother, who sought to dissuade him from the enterprise, his ear was utterly deaf. He was seized with illness : life seemed to be gone ; A. D. 1244. "^"^ attendant, thinking that it had gone, drew Dec. 10. ^ covering over his face. It was withdrawn by another, and the king was heard to say, ' God has raised me from the dead : give me the cross.' The die was cast. Nine months later, he assumed the badge publicly in the parliament of Paris ; and at Christmas in the same year he distributed to his courtiers his usual gift of a new robe to each. By his orders a red cross had been embroidered on these garments between the shoulders, and the nobles owned themselves fairly en- trapped. They must accompany the king. Two years more were spent in preparations. On the 1 2th of June 1248 Louis received from the papal legate ^ /.at the abbey of St. Denis his purse and pil- Departure of . Louis from grim's Staff with the Oriflamme or sacred banner of the saint. At the end of August he sailed from France. Eight months were spent in 1249' ^-^'^ Eighth O'usade. 209 Cyprus, where his people were fed in great part by the emperor Frederick. The kindness called forth a warm letter to the pope, pleading for the absolution of a man who had thus befriended the soldiers of the cross. His letter was treated with contempt. In the A, D. 1249. spring of the next year he sailed for Egypt; and as soon as his fleet was off Damietta, his envoys hastened to the sultan with alarming pictures of their master's power, and with a summons for immediate sub- mission. The sultan replied that his cause was just; that those who made war without just cause should perish ; and that mighty armaments had often been de- stroyed by a handful of soldiers. The campaign began with a signal success. The garri- son of Damietta, struck with something like panic fear, fled at the sight of the fifty thousand cru- ^ ° _ •' Capture of saders landing in the pomp of military Damietta. parade. The place was taken ; but the people had hur- ried away to Cairo, having first set fire to 1 r ^ • ■ 1 • 1 ■. June. that quarter 01 the city m which they had stored their merchandise and their most valuable pro- perty. This victory had its usual result on the crusaders. The tenor of Louis's saintly life was unbroken ; but within a stone's throw of his tent his people were in- dulging in unbounded debauchery. Later in the season an addition to their force was made by 200 English knights under William Longsword (p. 194) now bishop of Salisbury ; and in No- ' , , . -^ , March of the vember the army began its march towards army towards Cairo. Their progress, never easy, owing to the assaults of the enemy, was effectually checked at the canal of Ashmoun. The causeways which they at- tempted to construct were destroyed, and their machines burnt with Greek fire. At length a Bedoween. for a 2IO The Crusades. ch. xiii. large bribe, showed them a ford. The passage was ef- fected, and the enemy fled before them on the other side. With good order and discipHne the crusaders might now have achieved some sohd success. But the count of Artois, brother of the king, could not wait to be joined by the main army. He must press on at once against the fugitives. In vain the grand-master of the Templars reminded him of the folly of trusting to a feel- ing of passing fear. The count deliberately imputed his advice to systematic treachery. * Do you suppose,' re- plied the Templar with calm dignity, ' that we have left our homes and our substance, and taken the religious habit in a strange land, only to betray the cause of God and to forfeit our salvation ?' The bishop of Salisbury offered his mediation : it was rejected with a biting in- sult. In thorough disorder the crusaders rushed into Mansourah-; and seeing their condition at a glance the Mamelukes rushed upon their prey. A sufficient force was sent to cut off all communication between the men with the count of Artois and the main army under the king. Boiling water, stones, blazing wood, were Total defeat of , , j , •• r .^ ^ t-l the forces hurled upon them from the houses. The of ArtS''°''"^ count of Artois was killed before he could see the full effects of his folly ; and his death was soon followed by that of William Longsword. The utter destruction of his force was prevented only by succour from the king who, feeble though he may have been as a general, showed in the hour of danger a dauntless and unselfish bravery. Both sides had suf- fered fearfully ; but the king was cut off from Damietta, and sickness of a singularly malignant kind began to waste his camp. Louis offered the enemy a treaty based on the exchange of Damietta for the lordship of Jeru- salem. The negotiation failed, and retreat became ine- 1250. llie Eighth Crusade. 2H vitable ; but at the river and before the canal they had to fight at desperate disadvantage. The ^ ^ ^^^^ courao-e of the king was unbroken ; but his The king taken ^3 1 J • prisoner. Strength was gone. He sank down in a state of exhaustion after exertions worthy of the Enghsh Richard, and awoke to find himself a prisoner. Some there were, says Joinville, to whom the idea of retreat was intolerable ; and the thought of the age is vividly marked in the story which tells us how James du Chastel, bishop of Soissons, preferred to live with God to return- ing to the land of his birth, how he made a charge on the Turks, as if he alone meant to fight their whole army, and how they soon sent him to God and placed him in the company of martyrs by forthwith cutting him down. The crusade seemed to be closing in hopeless disaster. The queen at Damietta was about to become a mother, when she heard the tidings of her husband's captivity. A premature birth followed. She called her babe Tris- tan, the child of sorrow. Louis himself had to undergo greater misery. Of 10,000 Christian prisoners in Man- sourah those only who embraced the faith of Islam were allowed to live. Some recanted, and Louis had the bit- terness of witnessing their apostasy : the vast majority stood firm, and he had the agony of seeing ,. ,-, . 11 . Firmness of them die. But at no time was he known to ^he king. exhibit a more unclouded trust in God, a more cool bravery towards his enemy. Peace was offered to him if he would surrender all the Christian fortresses in Syria. He answered that they were not his to surrender, and that he could not dispose of that which belonged to Frederick II. as king of Jerusalem. He was threatened with torture to his limbs, with ,1 1^. ri- -jr -i. Terms of ran* the degradation of being carried fi-om city ^^^ to city and exposed for the gratification of 212 The Crusades. CH. xiii. sight-seers. He replied quietly, ' I am your prisoner. You may do with me as you will.' At last it was ar- ranged that Damietta should be given up, that the king should pay one million byzants for his own ransom, and half a milhon French livres for his barons. He de- murred to the amount for himself, but agreed at once to the other. 'The king of France,' he said, 'must not haggle about the freedom of his subjects.' Not to be outdone by his unselfishness, the sultan Turan Shah struck off one fifth from his ransom. It was almost the last act of the sultan's Murder of -i-i ii Turan Shah. life. His murder heightened the dangers of the Christian captives ; the firmness of Louis in refusing to take an oath couched in what he pronounced to be blasphemous language increased them still more. The difficulty was at length got over ; and after enduring sufferings for which the Sara- Louirix. cens said (if we may believe Joinville) that if they had had to undergo them they would have renounced Mahomed, the king was free. Still Louis, v/ith the bare relics of his army, could not bring himself to return home. He had written again and ^, . again to urge on Henry of England the dutv Pilgrimao-e . ^ of Louis^'to of coming himself with instant and effectual succour; he could not think that Henry would disregard his entreaties, especially Avhen these were backed by offers of the surrender of Normandy. He still fancied that the Vicar of Christ himself, having made up his long quarrel with Frederick, would hasten to join his faithful children and lead them in a supreme effort which could not fail of success. He was abandoned by his brothers the counts of Anjou and Poitou ; but with his faithful seneschal he made a pilgrimage in sack- cloth to Nazareth. The sight of the Holy Sepulchre, 1250. TJie Ninth Crusade. 213 the dearest longing of his heart, he firmly denied him- self. The permission to visit it was freely offered by the sultan of Damascus : but Louis would not leave behind for future sovereigns a precedent by which they might reap the fruits of an enterprise in which they had failed. He returned to Europe like Richard of England, humbled but not dishonoured ; — rather, to speak more strictly, having won that serene renown which was soon to place his name in the long catalogue of the saints. CHAPTER XIV. THE NINTH CRUSADE. Throughout the history of the crusades the wisdom of the general or the statesman is conspicuous by its absence ; and we may fairly compare the Comparison long series of these wild enterprises with the °^^^^ earlier erratic course and fitful splendour of a comet crusades. which at the moment of its greatest brilliancy rushes off into an ocean of darkness. They carried with them, as we have seen (p. 107), not one of the elements of per- manent success, while they lasted long enough to im- poverish myriads and carry misery and grief to the honics of millions. But the qualities which had won for the earlier crusaders whatever renown they may have acquired, were exhibited in full measure to the end. Their absolute fearlessness, their firm persistence in the faith which alone they could allow to be true, their he- roic endurance of the suffering which in hours of triumph they seldom hesitated to inflict on others, are beyond question ; but all these are virtues which apart from the sagacity of the wise ruler may be brilliant but must be eminently useless. 214 The Crusades. CH. xiv. This wisdom the Latin Christians of Palestine were destined never to learn. Disunion ran perpetually into quarrels, — quarrel sometimes into open warfare. Be- tween the Venetians and the men of Pisa and Genoa there was but at best but a hollow truce. The side which A. D. 1259. ^^^ Templars might take in a dispute was Battle be- j^q^ ^^<^ wliich would be taken by the Hos- tween the ^ Templars pitallcrs or the Teutonic knights ; and the and Hospi- ^ taiiers. schism of the two former 01 these orders led in 1259 to a pitched battle from which scarcely a Templar escaped alive. From slaughtering each other the champions of the cross passed to the slaughter-houses of Saracen executioners. The savage warriors of the Mameluke sultan Bibars seized Nazareth and Acre, tor- turing to death those who had not been happy enough to fall on the battle-field. Ninety Hospitallers held the fortress of Azotus ! the last of them died A. D. 1263. , , , . . . , Invasion of when at length their enemies stormed the the Mame/ walls. The castle of Saphouri was surren- ^ke Sultan dered by the Templars on the condition that the garrison, numbering 600 men in all, should be safely conveyed to the next Christian town. The sultan flung the treaty to the winds, and gave them a few hours to make their choice between death and apostasy. The prior and two Franciscan monks besought their companions to stand fast in their faith ; and when the sultan demanded their answer, not a man shrunk from the penalty of refusal. All were slaughtered, the prior with the two monks being flayed alive. At length the tidings reached Europe that Bohemond VI. had been driven from Antioch and that his city had passed into the hands of the unbelievers. L'iss of Antioch. The Saintly Louis still yearned for the rescue 1270. The Ninth Crusade. ii»i5 of the holy places ; but the memory of his past dii.iSters led him to fear that his sinfulness or his bad generalship might again bring disgrace on the Christian arms. His diffidence called forth the en- couragement of pope Clement IV., who with greater im- portunity urged Henry III. of England to do his duty by taking the cross. Three years had passed since the fatal defeat of Simon of Montfort, earl of Leices- A. D. 1265. ter, at Evesham : but the country, although not in actual war, was by no means in a state of repose, and we might wonder why at such a time the prince who was afterwards to reign as Edward I. should pledge him- self to the new crusade, were it not clear that the enter- prise was one which might be used for the purpose of drawing away from England men who might be trouble- some or dangerous to his father or to himself. Edward took good care that the earl of Gloucester whom he feared the most should share his perils, if not his glory, in the East. With sixty thousand men, Louis IX., accompanied by the counts of Flanders, Brittany, Champagne, and other barons, left France to return to it no more. ^ Second cru- A storm drove the fleet to Sardinia; and sadc of Louis IX there it was decided that the crusaders should in the first instance go to Tunis. Charles of Aniou, the sovereign of Sicily, was anxious •^ ° ^ . A. D. 1270. to maintain the rights of Christendom by exacting a tribute paid formerly to his predecessors : the devout Louis remembered, it is said, the messages by "w^hich the king of Tunis had expressed his wish to cm- brace Christianity, and thought that the presence of a large army would give him courage to make open con- fession of the true faith. The army landed and had encamped, wc are told, on the site of Carthage, when a 2i6 The Crusades. ch. xiv. plague broke out, and amongst its crowd of victims struck the king. His whole life had been a prayer : it remained to the last a prayer for others rather than for Death of the himself. With serene submission to the ^'"*- divine counsels he stretched himself on his couch of ashes, and as he uttered the words, ' I will enter Thy house, O Lord, I will worship in Thy sanctuary,* he died. When the English Edward at last arrived in the camp, he saw that the idea of reaching Palestine before the winter was impracticable, and made up his mind to return to Sicily until the spring. When at length he reached A. D. 1271. Acre, he found that his name carried with Na^amh°by it much of the terror associated with that of S-^Henry Til. Richard Plantageuct. The Christians has- of England. tcncd to his Standard, and with 7,000 men he attacked and took Nazareth, slaying the people with a massacre as pitiless as any which had sullied the chronicles of the crusades. It was his first and his last victory in Palestine. His campaign was cut short by sickness, and the dagger of an assassin sent by the emir of Joppa as a bearer of letters touching his conversion to Christianity well nigh cut short his life. Edward hurled the murderer to the floor and stabbed him to the heart. But the dagger was undoubtedly poisoned ; and it needed more than ordinary skill on the part of the surgeons to arrest the progress of the venom. The sides of the wound were carefully pared away; and the strength of youth with the tender nursing of his wife Eleanor did the rest. The romancers of a later age framed the tale that he must have died, had she not with her lips sucked the poison from the wound. It was clear that nothing more could be done in the Holy Land, and Edward knew not how soon his presence 12 J 2-^6. The NintJi Crusade. 217 A. I). 1272. Return of ]'^dward lo might become indispensable in England. A peace was made for ten years, and the English crusaders set out on their homeward Europe. voyage. For a long series of years Europe had been making vigorous efforts, and the result of these efforts had been nothing more substantial or permanent than the lines left on the sea sand by an ebbing tide. For one moment it seemed that the spirit of the dream might be changed, when Theobald, archdeacon of Liege, the friend of the English Edward, was summoned from Acre to fill the chair of St. Peter as Gregory X. Theo- bald had been an eye-witness of the des- vain efforts perate calamities which were crushing the °^ Gregory X. '- _ ° to stir up a Latins of Palestine, and he called the princes crusade. of Europe to the rescue with a zeal worthy of Innocent III. or of Urban II. A council held at Lyons A. D. 1274. decreed a new crusade. Rodolph of Haps- burg, not yet firm in his imperial dignity, pledged him- self to join it ; and his example was followed by Michael Paleologos who thirteen years earlier (1287) had put down the Latin dynasty in Constantinople. -r> /^ T 1 • 1 A. D. 1276. But Gregory died m less than two years after the assembly at Lyons, and his visions of renewed conquests in Palestine died with him. In the Holy Land itself the miserable Christian rem- nant adhered to its old tradition of fighting about shadows when the substance had been already lost, qx^^^^^^^ to th Hugh III. of Cyprus had had himself crown- titular king- 1 ^Y . ^ . dom of Jcru- cd at Tyre as kmg of Jerusalem. The Tem- saiem. plars urged the claims of Charles of Anjou ; the Hospitallers insisted with more sense that the dispute might be postponed until they had recovered the king- dom the title to which they were debating. A few years later, when Henry II. of Cyprus held this shadowy 2i8 The Crusades. ch. xiv. dignity, the grand-master of the Templars A. D. 12 9. pigaded before Nicholas IV. the wrongs of the Latins which could be avenged only by the blood of the Saracens. But the power of the ancient spell was broken. Nicholas was ready to furnish some men, but these were ruffians and criminals, the very offscourings of the people : money he obstinately refused to give. The grand-master was not more successful elsewhere ; and the Italian robbers formed the whole force with which he returned to Palestine. The last forlorn struggle was made at Acre. Here, as elsewhere, the valourof the Templars shone conspicuous. The grand-master rejected the bribes of the T os'^ OT A ctg sultan ; but the latter cared little whether he could work on the venality of his enemies or whether he could not. His Mamelukes were not less courageous than the Templars, and their numbers were A. D. 1291. . . overwhelmmg. The assault began ; the titular king of Jerusalem, Henry II. of Cyprus, besought the Teutonic knights to occupy his post, promising to return the next morning. His request was granted : but before the morning came, Henry was on his way to Cyprus. The attack was renewed with greater fury ; but the Christians had lost all heart. The master of the Templars had been killed by a poisoned arrow, and seven Knights Hospitallers sailed away, the last remnant of the magnificent order which had braved successfully a thousand dangers. The city was lost : but the horrors of the siege were not ended. The people had hurried to the shore ; a storm prevented them from embarking ; and the very sea was reddened by the blood of the last victims of a wild and fanatical superstition. 1276-91. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 219 CHAPTER XV. THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. The crusades had come to an end. The embers smoul- dered on : but it was to the last degree unlikely that they would be rekindled. The great military or- ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ders withdrew to seek a field for their ener- and extinction • , ■ 1 .of the cnisad- gies elsewhere ; the Teutonic knights to the ing spirit. dreary regions of Lithuania and Poland, — the knights of the Hospital first to Cyprus, then to Rhodes where, after many a hard fight with Greeks and Saracens, they achieved the conquest of the whole island and set- tled down to repose in their earthly paradise. The dream of returning to Palestine still haunted the mind of Ed- ward I., who by his will left 30,ock)/. for the equipment and maintenance of the knights who were to bear his heart to the Holy Land ; but probably the last reflection of the old fire is seen in the words by which Henry V. in his dying moments asserted the bounden duty of princes to build the walls of Jerusalem, and declared that, had he been spared for a longer life, or had he hved in quieter times, he would have undertaken this task of restoration. Even now, perhaps, the task was one of no insuperable difficulty. Its practicability had been shown more than once by its accomplishment ; but it was one which must be taken in hand in the spirit of that wise and tolerant statesmanship which seeks to further the interests of the subject population, and to make one people of the con- querors and the conquered. This idea was, as we have seen, deliberately rejected by the first crusaders, and, with the single exception of the emperor Henry at Con- stantinople (p. 170), by all who followed them. There is no reason to suppose that the English Henry V. would 2 20 The Crusades. CH. xv. have been animated by a wiser spirit and a larger char* ity than the companions of Godfrey and Tancred. The soil of Palestine had been watered abundantly with the blood both of Christians and of infidels. The soil of Europe, chiefly that of France, was to Persecution . ^ ^ and suppres- drink the blood of that haughty but valiant Knights order which had done as much to destroy as Templars. ^^ maintain the hold of Latin Christendom on Palestine. Among all the monstrous iniquities which perjured kings and godless statesmen have ever perpe- trated, the lies and cruelties, the persistent and diabolical injustice which attended the suppression of the Knights Templars must hold very nearly the first place. These men may have, nay undoubtedly they had, committed enormous crimes themselves ; but these were crimes done in the sight of the sun and shared by all crusaders of every generation, the saintly Louis of France forming, it would seem, the solitary exception. Now, when their services were no longer needed or could no more be of use in Palestine, the benefits to be derived from a confis- cation of their properties became patent to A. D. 1309. . . . ^ ^ -^ Philip the Fair, the brutal tyrant, the profli- gate murderer, the unscrupulous thief, who bullied the pope, Clement V., into a recognition of charges which at first he had rightly cast aside as absurd, extravagant, and impossible. False witness, tortures, hunger, thirst, darkness, filth, and disease in sunless dungeons, were all used with consummate skill and pertinacity to sub- due the warriors who in the field had never quailed. Taken one by one, some made confessions which were drawn from them by excruciating agonies, and which, when these agonies ceased, were indignantly withdrawn. With his remaining comrades the last grand- A. D. 1314. ,. , ^ , . , . master died, solemnly asserting the mno' 1314- The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 221 cence of his order — an innocence unquestionably real, if we confine ourselves to the charges brought against them by Philip and his myrmidons ; and the kings of France, made wealthier by their iniquities, laid up an- other count for the great indictment to be brought against their luckless representative in the French revo- lution. In England the proceedings against the Temp- lars, shameful though they were, fell infinitely short of the disgrace which covered the king and the judges of France : but in both countries it was seen what might be done by malignant lies uttered boldly under the plea of maintaining the truth and the righteousness of God. In this process we see, in fact, the legitimate result of the crusades. The unbelief of the Saracen was a suffi- cient reason for wresting from him a country • AD 1208" which was regarded as the inalienable herit- 1249. The Al- age of Christendom : the alleged unbelief ^S!'^"" '"^" or profanity of Templars was a sufficient reason for hounding on judges to their destruction ; and the heresies truly or falsely alleged against any persons whatsoever would be a thorough warrant for carrying fire and sword through their land, if gentler means failed to extort submission. The lesson had been soon learnt ; and while Dandolo and Baldwin were laying the foundations of the short-lived Latin empire at Constanti- nople, Innocent was preaching a crusade against the peaceable, although perhaps not strictly orthodox, sub- jects of count Raymond of Toulouse. The attempt to put down error by force was producing its natural fruits ; and men like Bernard and Innocent were brought to consider every means lawful, every weapon hallowed, against the wretched enemies of Christ and of his Church, Horrible miscreants, like the inquisitors Fulk of Marseilles and Arnold of Amaury, could without a 222 TJie Crusades. ch. xv. pang of remorse involve in one common slaughter the aged and the young, the mother and the infant ; and Simon of Montfort, cased in the triple armour of a heart harder than the nether millstone, could exult with sav- age joy over the massacres of his sword and the tor- ments of the Inquisition. In this awful chaos Frederick II., the enemy of the pope, the friends of Saracenic philosophers, of Moslem women, joined furiously in the fray. Near in its ideal, and similar in some points of its development, as was the careless society of the trouba- dour to his own luxurious civilization in Sicily, yet not a sign is there to show that he regarded with the least emotion its rapid and terrible catastrophe. His appre- ciation of their Gay Science, of their art, their refine- ment, and their luxury, was chilled and quenched by the thought of the vile crowd of Petrobrussians and other vulgar heretics, by whom these careless voluptuaries were surrounded. Well may it be said that never in any history were the principles of justice, the faith of treaties, common humanity so trampled under foot as in the Al- bigensian crusade, * Slay on ; God will know his own,' was the cry of the papal legate before the walls of Beziers ; and this easy method of settling a long con- troversy was the moral logically drawn from the preach- ing of the hermit Peter and of Bernard of Clairvaux. It is possible that the historian who seeks to account for all the characteristics which mark the era of the cru- The children's sadcs may connect these expeditions with crusades. some events which should be traced to other causes. The impulses which bring vast crowds together for any purpose are always more or less contagious : and the middle ages exhibit, throughout, a series of enthusi- astic risings. The outbreak of the Pastoureaux, or Shep- herds (so called from their supposed simplicity), which I202. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 223 for a time led astray even Blanche of Castile (p. 196), took place, perhaps only by an accidental coincidence, while Louis IX. was a captive in Egypt: but it was only one of a thousand instances of what has well been termed superstition set in motion. To this class belong probably the expeditions known as the Children's cru- sades, although these were started with the idea of re- covering the Holy Cross from the infidel. A few words may suffice to tell the miserable story how in "^ A. D. I2I2. France under the boy Stephen 30,000 chil- dren encamped around Vendome ; how 10,000 were lost or had strayed away before they reached Marseilles a month later ; how there they waited under a conviction that the waters of the Mediterranean would be cloven asunder to give them a passage on dry land; how at length two merchants offered ' for the cause of God and without charge ' to convey them in ships to Palestine ; and how the 5,000 children, who sailed from the harbour chanting the hymn l''^e7ii Creator Spiritus, found them- selves at the end of their voyage in the slave markets of Alexandria and Algiers. A pendant to this woful tale is found in the sufferings of the 20,000 German boys and girls who set out in the same year from Cologne under the peasant lad Nicholas 20,000 strong, and of whom 5,000 only reached Genoa. Of the rest some had re- turned home: some marched to Brindisi, and, setting sail for Palestine, were never heard of more. The for- tune of those who found their way to Genoa was more happy. Invited to settle there by the senate, many be- came wealthy, and not a few, rising to distinction, founded some of the noblest families in the state. But as the motives which led to the crusades were complex, so their results were complex also. The Picture 224 ^-^^^f Crusades. CH. xv. , ,. must not be presented only in its darker Indirect re- ^ ■' suits of the aspects. We have seen the effect which they criiS3.dcs produced on the growth of the temporal power of the popes. We must not forget that by rolhng back the tide of Mahomedan conquest from Constanti- nople for upwards of four centuries they probably saved Europe from horrors the recital of which might even now make our ears tingle ; that by weakening the resources and the power of the barons they strengthened the authority of the kings acting in alliance "with the citizens of the great towns; that this alliance broke up the feudal system, gradually abolished serfdom, and substituted the authority of a common law for the arbitrary will of chiefs who for real or supposed affronts rushed to the arbitra- ment of private war. Worthless in themselves, and wholly useless as means for founding any permanent dominion in Palestine or elsewhere, these enterprises have affected the commonwealths of Europe in ways of which the promoters never dreamed. They left a wider gulf between the Greek and the Latin churches, between the subjects of the Eastern empire and the nations of Western Europe ; but by the mere fact of throwing East and West together they led gradually to that interchange of thought and that awakening of the human intellect to which we owe all that distinguishes our modem civiliza- tion from the religious and political systems of the middle ages. INDEX. ABB A BBASSIDE caliphs of Bagdad, Abelard, 88 Abubekr, 13 Acre, siege of, 127 ; surrender of, 133 Adela, daughter of William the Con- queror, 80 Adelais, 120 Adhemar, bishop of Puy, 44, 58, 69, 70 Albigensians, crusades against the, 222 Alexander II., pope, 2, 21 Alexandria, surrender of, to Almeric, 100 Alexios, brother of Isaac Angelas, 153, 159 ^ Alexios emperor of the East, 17, 24, 51 ; extorts the homage of the cru- saders, 53 ; his conduct to the cru- saders, 54 ; fails to aid them, 71 ; benefited by the crusaders, 81 ; death of, 83 Alexios, son of Isaac Angelus, 153, 156, 161 Alexios Strategopoulos, 180 Alfonso, king of Gallicia, 38 Almeric, king of Jerusalem, 08 Almeric of Lusignan, king of Cyprus and titular king of Jerusalem, 144, 183 Amalfi, merchants of, 18 Andrew, king of Hungary, 176, 186 Anna Comnena, 50, 54 Antioch, siege of, 60 ; betrayed to Bohemond, 65 ; fall of, 69 Arnold, chaplain of Bohemond, 68, 73 Arnold of Amaury, 221 Arthur of Brittany, 129 Artois, count of, 210 Ascalon, Battle of, 77 ; fall of, 98 Assize of Jerusalem, 78, 170 Augustine, St., 8 Austria, Leopold, duke of, 133 Azan the Bulgarian, 179 Azotus, battle of, 132 BAGHASIAN, 60, 63, 65 Baldwin 1., brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, ^, 59 Baldwin II., emperor of the East, 175 Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, 84 CON Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, 85 Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 104 Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem, 104 Baldwin du Bourg, 84 Baldwin, lord of Edessa, 59 ; king of Jerusalem, 80, 84 Baldwin of Flanders, emperor of the East, 163, 173 Baldwin of Hainault, 70 Barbarossa [Fredeiick I.] Bela, king of Hungary, 121 Berengaria, 129, 130 Bernard, patriarch of Antioch, 70 Bernard, St., 86, ct seq. Bertrand of Toulouse, 81 Blanche of Castile, 203, 22 j Blondel, 138 Bodin, 53 Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, 23.45,52,81 Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, 152, 172, 175 Bouvines, battle of, 189 Brienne, constable of Apulia, 23 Brienne, John of, 184, 199 Bulgarians, 173 CALO JOHN, 173, 175 Charles of Anjou, 217 Charles the Great, 21 Chivalry, cause and eflFect of, 46 Chosroes [Khosru] Christianity, the, of the first century, 3 ; influence of paganism upon, 5 ; modified by the Roman imperial tradition, 20 Cid, the, 38 Clement IV., pope, 215 Clement V., pope, 220 Cogni [IconiumJ Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, 142 Conrad, emperor of Germany, 90, 92, 142 Conrad of Tyre, no, 127, 134 Constantia, heiress of Sicily, 125, 128 Constantine, church of, at Jerusalem, 8 Constantinople, first siege of, by the Latins, 158 ; second siege and conquest of, 162 : Latin emperors of, 168;— Baldwin I., 163, 174; 225 226 Index, FER Henry, brother of Baldwin, 175 ; Peter of Courtenay, 176 ; Robert, 177 ; John of Brienne, 178 ; Bald- win II., 179; — Latin empire of, 168 ; recovery of, by the Greeks, 181 Coradin, sultan of Syria, 186 Council of Clermont, 29 Council of Lyons, 217 Council of Nice, 17 Council of Piacenza, 24 Councils of Lateran, 116, 185 Courtenay, Joceline of, 84, 97 Courtenay, Peter of, 176, 177 Courtesy, 48 Courts of Love, 95 Cross, discovery of the true, 7 ; re- covery of, 12 Crusaders, numbers of the, 56; fero- city of the, 75 Crusades, causes tending to, i et seq.; financial effects of, 34 ; effects of, on the power of the pope and the clergy, 35 ; on the feudal system, 36 ; not national enterprises, 37 ; against the Albigensians, 222 ; the Children's, 222 ; indirect results of the, 224 DAIMBERT, patriarch of Jeru- salem, 78 Damascus, siege of, 95 Damietta, 116, 186, 209 Dandolo, Henry, doge of Venice, 163, 168, 172 Dargham, 98 David [Kilidje Arslan] Demetrius, lord of Thessalonica, 178 Dorylaion, battle of, 58 Durazzo, 23, 81, 173 EDESSA, conquest of, by Bald- win, 59 ; by Zenghis, 85 Edward I., of England, 216, 217, 218, 219 Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Louis VII., 88,92,95; marries Henry of Nor- mandy, afterwards Henry II. of England, 95 ; writes to Cselestine in., 138 Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 216 Emico, count of Leiningen, 40 Engelbert of Tournay, 74 Eugenius III., pope, 89 Eustace, count of Boulogne, 43 FATIMITE sultans of Egypt, 14, 62, 98, 99, I02 Ferentino, treaty ofjigo HOS Frederick I., Barbarossa, 104^ 125 Frederick II., grandson of Barba- rossa, 183 et seq., 207, 222 Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem, 85, 117 Fulk of Marseilles, 221 Fulk of Neuilly, 148 GENGHIS KHAN, 201 Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 120 Geoffrey of Villehardouin, 150,172,175 Ceroid, patriarch of Jerusalem, 198 Godfrey of Bouillon, 43, 49, 66, 72 ; baron and defender of the Holy Sepulchre, 77 ; reign and death of, 80 Gottschalk. the monk, 40 Greeks and Latins, antagonism be- tween, 56, 168, 180 Gregory I., the Great, 10, 20 Gregory VII., pope [Hildebrand] Gregory VIII., pope, 118 Gregory IX., pope, 191, 193, 200 Gregory X., pope, 217 Guelf, duke of Bavaria, 39 Guibert, abbot, 33 Guido, abbot of Vaux Cernay, 155 Guiscard, Robert, 24 Guy of I^usignan, king of Jerusalem, 104 ; of Cyprus", 134 HAKEM, 15 Haroun-al-Reschid, 25 Helena, church of, at Bethlehem, 8 Henry II., king of Cyprus, 218 Henry II. of England, 117, 119, 120, 121 Henry IV., emperor, 25, 43 Henry V. of England, 219 Henry VI., emperor, 134,138,139,140 Henry, Latin emperor of the East, 175, 176, 219 Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem, 134 Heraclius, emperor of the East, 11, 12 Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 117 Herakleios [Heraclius] Herman of Salza, 127, 195, 197 Hildebrand [Gregory VII.], 2, 21 ei seq. Hohenstaufen, house of, 188 Holy Land, growth of local traditions in the, 7 Honorius III., pone, 177, 189, 202 Hospitallers, or knights of St. John, 101, 108, 113, 141, 214, 217 Index. 527 LAT tTugh III., king of Cyprus, 217 Hugh of Vermandois, 43, 49, 69, 83 Hungary, conversion of, 16 TCONIUM, sultan of, 58, 82 i Ingulf, 16 Innocent II., pope, 88 Innocent III., pope, 145, 165, 189 Innocent IV., pope, 202 Isaac Angelus, emperor of the East, 119. 153 Isaac of Cyprus, 130 Isabella, sister of Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 127, 178, 183 TAMES du Chastel, 211 J Jerome, St., at Bethlehem, 9 Jerusalem, Assize of, 78, 170; Latin kingdom of, 77; Latin kings of, 77 ; Godfrey, 77; Baldwin I.. 80; Baldwin II., 84 ; Fulk of Anjou, 85 ; Baldwin III., 85 ; Almeric, 98 , Baldwin IV., 104 ; Baldwin V. 104; Guy of Lusignan, 104 ; Henry of Champagne (titular), 134 ; Almeric of Lusignan (titular), 144 Jerusalem, captured by the Persians, 10 ; by Omar, 12 ; by Hakem, 15 ; by the Seljukian Toucush, 17; by the first crusaders, 72 ; by Saladin, 105 ; by Kameel, 196 Jews, persecution of the, 40, 91, 122. Jews, plunder of the, 119. Joanna, sister of Richard I., 128, 134 Joceline of Courtenay, 84, 97 John Comnenos, 50 John of Brienne, 178 John of England, 135 John, St., Hospital of, 18 John the monk, 96 Joinville, 206, et seq. KAMEEL, sultan of Egypt, 186 ; treaty of, with Frederick II., 196, 200 ; takes Jerusalem, 201 Kerboga, 66, 68, 69 Khosru II., 10 Khosru Nushirvan, 11 Kilidje Arslan, 42, 58, 66, 69. Knighthood, 47 Knights Hospitallers, 101, 108, 113, 141, 214, 218 Knights Templars, 90, 113, 214 Knights, Teutonic, 127, 214, 218 Korasmians, 202 LANCE, discovery of the holy, 67 Lateran, councils of, 116, 185 PET Latin empire of Constantinople, 168 kingdom of Jerusalem, 77; em perors of Constantinople, 169 kings of Jerusalem, 77, 144 Latins and Greeks, antagonism be- tween, 55, 168, 181 Leo III,, pope, 21 Letold of Tournay, 74 Lothair, cardinal [Innocent III.] Louis VI., the Fat, 88 Louis VII., king of France, 92, 117 Louis IX., king of France, 203, et seq.; death of, 215 Lusignan, Almeric of, 144, 183 ; Guy of, 104, 134 Lyons, council of, 217 MAHOMED, embassy from, to Khosru II., II Mamelukes, 218 Manuel, emperor of the East, 93, loa Marra, siege of, 71 Mary, niece of Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 184 Maynard, nephew of Conrad of Tyre, Merovingian kings of France, 98 Moadhin, sultan of Damascus, 196 Montferrat, marquis of, 152 Montfort, Simon of, 150, 155, 158 Montfort, Sunon of, earl of Leicester, 203 ^ Morosini, Thomas, patriarch of Con- stantinople, 165, 167, 171 Mostadhi, caliph of Bagdad, 100 Mourzoufle, 161, 162, 173 NICE, Nikaia [Nice] Nice, Seljukian sovereigns of, 17; siege of, 57 Nicephoriis III., emperor, 23 Nicolas IV., pope, 218 Nicolas, the child crusader, 223 Nineveh, battle of, 11 Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo, 98, 9g^ 103 OMAR, the caliph, 12 Onflamme, the, 208 Otho of Brunswick, emperor, 188 PASCAL II., pope, 78 Pastoreau.x, 222 Pelagius", bishop of Albano, 185 Peter Barthelemy, 68 Peter of Blois, 138 Peter of Capua, 154, 157 Peter the Chanter, 148 228 Index. siw r peter of Courtenay, Latin emperor of the East, 176 Peter the Hermit, 26, et seq.; 38, 62, 68,73,75 Philip Augustus, king of France, 119, 138, 171 Philip I., king of France, 25, 43, 81 Phihp IV., the Fair, king of France, 220 Philip of Namur, 177 Philip of Swabia, 154, 156 Philip [titular], Latin emperor of the East, 181 Piacenza, council of, 24 Pilgrimage, growth of, 8 Pilgrims, tax on, at Jerusalem, 15 Phirouze, the renegade, 63 Placentia, council of, 24 Pontius, son of Bertrand of Tou- louse, 81 RAYMOND, count of Toulouse, 45, 53 Raymond of Tripoli, 104 Rhazates, 12 Richard, earl of Cornwall, 197, 201 Richard I'st of England, 114, 117 ; at Messina, 128 ; at Rhodes, 130 ; at Acre, 130 ; retreats from Bethle- hem, 135 : at Jaffa, 136 ; imprison- ment, 137; return of, to England, 140 Robert, count of Flanders, 44 Robert, count of Paris, 52 Robert duke of Normandy, 44, 60, 63 Robert, Latin emperor of the East, 177 Robert of Courcon, 185, 186 Rodolph of Hapsburg, 217 Rodolph the Monk, 91 Roger, successor of Tancred, 82 SAADI, 183 Saladin tax or tithe, 119 Saladin, 99, 102 ; enters Jerusalem, no ; death of, 141 Samosata, 60 San Germane, treaty of, 191 Saphadin, 136, 141 ; takes Jaffa, 143 ; offers peace, 183 ; death of, 186 Seljukian Turks, 17 Shawer, 98, 102 Shepherds of Pastoreaux, 222 Shiracouh, 98, 102 Sibylla, 104, 127 Sidon, conquest of, 84 Simon of Montfort, 150, 155, 158 Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, 203 Siroes 12 Siward, 84 ZIA Sophronius, patriarch of JerusaleiH. 12 Stephen, apostle of Hungary, 16 Stephen, count of Chartres, 44, 66, . 80 Stephen Harding, 87 Stephen, the child crusader, 223 TANCRED, 45, 59, 69, 75, 81 Tancred, son of Roger ^esire to get at the truth." — New York Herald. 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This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man ; of language, its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-his- toricusersof it ; of early social life, the religions, mythologies, and folk-tales, and of the history of writing. The present edition contains about one hundred pages of new matter, embodying the results of the latest researches, "A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model of what a popular scientific work should be. " — Boston Sat. Eve. Gazette. THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS. By Professor George Rawlinson, M.A. i2mo, with maps, $1.00. The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civiliza- tion in Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The second part is an examination of the ethnology of Genesis, showing its accordance with the latest results of modem ethnographical science. "A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful offset to a great deal of the superficial current literature on such subjects. " — Congregationalist. MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use of Schools, Art Students, and General Readers. Founded on the Works of Pet- iscus, Preller, and Welcker. By Alexander S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the Second Revised London Edition. Crown 8vo, $1.75. " It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject to be found in a concise form, and as it embodies the results of the latest researches and discoveries in ancient mythologies, it is superior for school and general purposes as a handbook to any of the so-called standard works." — Cleveland Herald. "Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school use, or for the general reader, the book will be found very valuable and interesting." — Boston Journal. IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest Time to tiie Period of Its Decline. By Dr. Theodor Mommsen. Translated by W. P. Dickson, D.D., LL.D. Reprinted from the Revised London Edition. Four volumes, crown 8vo. Price per set, $8.00. " A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact and profound ; its narrative full of genius and skill ; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid." — London Times. "Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and charm the reader. Its style — a rare quality in a German author — is vigorous, spirited, and animated." — Dr. Schmitz. THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. From Caesar to Diocletian. By Theodor Mommsen. Translated by William P. Dickson, D.D., LL.D. With maps. Two vols., 8 vo, $6.00. " The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture of the conquest and administration of that great circle of peoples and lands which formed the empire of Rome outside of Italy, their agriculture, trade, and manufactures, their artistic and scientific life, through all degrees of civilization, with such detail and completeness as could have come from no other hand than that of this great master of historical re- search." — Prof. W. A. Packard, Princeton College. THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. Abridged from the History by Professor Theodor Mommsen, by C. Bryans and F. J. R. Hendy. i2mo, $1.75- " It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen's Rome are thus brought within the easy reach of all, and the abridgment seems to me to preserve unusually well the glow and movement of the original." — Prof. Tracy Peck, Yale University. "The condensation has been accurately and judiciously effected. I heartily commend the volume as the most adequate embodiment, in a single volume, of the main results of modern historical research in the field of Roman affairs." — Prof. Henry M. Baird, University of City of New York. IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Dr. Ernst Curtius. Translated by Adolphus William Ward, M.A., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, Prof, of History in Owen's College, Manchester. Five volumes, crown 8vo. Price per set, $10.00. "We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius' book bet- ter than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen's great work. " — London Spectator. "As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no previous work is comparable to the present for vivacity and picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which enrich the literature of the age." — N. Y. Daily I'ribune. Ci^SAR: a Sketch. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. ' ' This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far the best account of Julius Caesar to be found in the English language." — The London Standard. "He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all that is known of the personal, social, political, and military life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar includes other brilliant sketches of the great man, his friends, or rivals, who contemporaneously with him formed the principal figures in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. CICERO. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. 20 Engravings. New Edition. 2 vols., crown 8vo, in one, gilt top, $2.50. The author has not only given us the most complete and well-balanced account of the life of Cicero ever published ; he has drawn an accurate and graphic picture of domestic life among the best classes of the Romans, one which the reader of general literature, as well as the student, may peruse with pleasure and profit. "A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which it behooves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal life of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become one of the classics of English biographical literature, and will be wel- comed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and of no profession at all." — London Quarterly. VALUABLE WORKS ON CLASSICAL LITERATURE. THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius. With Chronological Tables, etc., for the use of Students. By C. T. Cruttwell, M.A, Crown 8vo, $2.50. Mr. Cruttwell's book is written throughout from a purely literary point of view, and the aim has been to avoid tedious and trivial details. The result is a volume not only suited for the student, but remarkably readable for all who possess any interest in the subject. " Mr. Cruttwell has given us a genuine history of Roman literature, not merely a descriptive list of authors and their productions, but a well elaborated portrayal of the successive stages in the intellectual development of the Romans and the various forms of expression which these took in literature." — -A". V. Nation. UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. From the Earliest Period of Demosthenes. By Frank Byron Jevons, M.A., Tutor in the University of Durham. Crown 8vo, $2.50. The author goes into detail with sufficient fullness to make the history complete, but he never loses sight of the com- manding lines along which the Greek mind moved, and a clear understanding of which is necessary to every intelligent student of universal literature. " It is beyond all question the best history of Greek litera- ture that has hitherto been published." — London Spectator. " With such a book as this within reach there is no reason why any intelligent English reader may not get a thorough and comprehensive insight into the spirit of Greek literature, of its historic development, and of its successive and chief masterpieces, which are here so finely characterized, analyzed, and criticised." — Chicago Advance. TRANSLATIONS OF PLATO. THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO. Translated into English, with Analysis and Introduc- tions. 'By B. JowETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford. A new and cheaper edition. Fourvols., crown 8vo, per set, $8.00. " The present work of Professor Jowett will be welcomed with profound interest, as the only adequate endeavor to transport the most precious monument of Grecian thought among the familiar treasures of English literature. The noble reputation of Professor Jowett, both as a thinker and a scholar, is a valid guaranty for the excellence of his perfor- mance." — New York Tribune. SOCRATES. A Translation of the Apology, Crito, and parts of the Phaedo of Plato. Containing the Defence of Socrates at his Trial, his Conver- sation in Prison, with his Thoughts on the Future Life, and an Account of his Death. With an Introduction by Professor W. W. Goodwin, of Harvard College. i2mo, cloth, $i.cx3: paper, 50 cents. TALKS WITH SOCRATES ABOUT LIFE. Translations from the Gorgias and the Republic of Plato. i2mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. A DAY IN ATHENS WITH SOCRATES. Translations from the Protagoras and the Republic of Plato. Being conversations between Socrates and other Greeks on Virtue and Justice. i2mo, cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. " Eminent scholars, men of much Latin and more Greek, attest the skill and truth with which the versions are made ; we can confidently speak of their English grace and clearness. They seem a ' model of style,' because they are without manner and perfectly simple." — W. D. Howells. "We do not remember any translation of a Greek author which is a better specimen of idiomatic English than this, or a more faithful rendering of the real spirit of the original into English as good and as simple as the Greek." — New York Evening Post. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 743 and 745 Broadway, New York.