BERNARD—CONRAD III.—LOUIS VII.—SUGER—SIEGE OF DAMASCUS.
Pope Honorius delegated Bernard to preach throughout France and Germany
the renewal of the holy war. Drawn as much by the fame of the monk as by
the mandates of the king and the Pope, a vast assembly of prelates and
nobles gathered at Vezelay in Burgundy. A large platform was erected on
a hill outside the city. King and monk stood together, representing the
combined will of earth and heaven. The enthusiasm of the assembly of
Clermont in 1095, when Peter the Hermit and Urban II. launched the first
crusade, was matched by the holy fervor inspired by Bernard as he cried,
“O ye who listen to me! hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no
longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in
sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers.
The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the
penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins
by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy
places be the reward of your repentance.” As in the olden scene, the cry
“Deus vult! Deus vult!” rolled over the fields, and was echoed by the
voice of the orator: “Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with
blood.”
The king set the example by prostrating himself at the feet of the monk
and receiving from his hands the badge of the cross. “The cross! the
cross!” was the response of thousands who crowded about the platform.
Queen Eleanor imitated her husband, and was followed by such a host of
nobles, bishops, and knights that Bernard tore his garments into strips
to supply the enthusiasts with the insignia of their new devotion.
Similar scenes were enacted throughout France wherever the saint
appeared. Eye-witnesses do not hesitate to tell of miracles wrought by
his hands, emblazoning his mission with the seals of heaven.
The enlistments were so many that Bernard wrote to the Pope, “The
villages and castles are deserted, and there are none left but widows
and orphans, whose husbands and parents are still living.”
The orator visited Germany. A diet of the empire was at the time of his
arrival convened at Spires. The new emperor, Conrad III., at first
refused to heed the more private counsel of Bernard to join the crusade,
urging in return the need of the imperial hand upon the helm of state.
One day Bernard was saying mass, when suddenly he stopped and pictured
Jesus Christ, armed with the cross and accompanied by angels,
reproaching the emperor for his indifference. Conrad was as impotent to
resist this eloquence and assumption of divine authority as his
predecessor had been. He burst into tears and exclaimed, “I, too, swear
to go wherever Christ shall call me.” With many of his lords and
knights, he received the cross from Bernard’s hand.
From the Rhine to the Danube the enthusiasm spread like an epidemic. No
class had immunity from it. Even thieves and cutthroats were so far
converted as to swear to rob and murder only Infidels. Bernard’s gift of
persuasion was unsurpassed since the days of Pentecost, for men and
races that could not understand a word he said were as readily persuaded
as those who spoke the Frankish tongue.
Roger of Sicily offered to convey the new armies to Palestine in his
fleets, urging the hereditary treachery of the Greeks; for, though
Alexius had “gone to his own place” below, his grandson Manuel occupied
his place at Constantinople. The leaders, however, preferred the perils
of the land route to the uncertainties of the deep.
The government of France during the absence of Louis VII. was committed
to the hands of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis. A wiser choice could not have
been made. He had been the adviser of Louis the Fat, and to his
astuteness rather than to that of the king were due the consolidation
and development of French autonomy, which made that reign notable. An
evidence of Suger’s foresight, as well as of his independence and
courage, is the fact that he, almost alone of men, opposed the crusading
scheme and predicted its fatality. Only at the command of the Pope did
Suger assume the guardianship of the kingdom.
Not distrustful of the king, but credulous of the heavenly mission of
Bernard, the multitude, including the most noted warriors, called for
the monk to become their military leader. Only the intervention of the
Holy Father, who declared that it was sufficient for the saint to be the
trumpet of Heaven without wielding the sword, allayed the universal
demand. Thus at Whitsuntide, 1167, a hundred thousand Frenchmen set out
for their rendezvous at Metz. Their monarch bore at their head the
sacred banner of St. Denis, an oriflamme under which, at even that early
day, the kings of France believed themselves invincible.
But though royally commanded, the army was somewhat a motley array.
Troubadours joined the host to relieve the tedium of the camp with their
songs of expected triumph. Ladies of the court and soldiers’ wives
graced and encumbered the enterprise. One troop of female combatants was
commanded by an Amazon, whose gilded boots made her known as “the lady
with the legs of gold.” Old men and children were carried along with the
baggage. By the side of the saint trudged the libertine and the
criminal, whose remorse had been kindled by the preaching of Bernard,
and whose search for the remission of sins at Jerusalem was to poorly
compensate the dissolute outbursts of their unchanged natures along the
way.
The enthusiasm of the crusaders was not maintained by those who remained
at home, since upon them fell the unromantic burden of providing money
for the army’s sustenance. The Jews were openly robbed, the Abbot of
Cluny declaring it a righteous thing to despoil them of wealth acquired
by usury and sacrilege. Monasteries were bled of their long-accumulated
treasure. Churches sold their ornaments and mortgaged their lands to
supply the enormous demand. Thus the huzzas of the departing were echoed
by the suppressed groans of those who were left behind.
The Germans under Conrad III. had preceded the French. Before they
reached Constantinople they had more than once to punish with violence
the chronic perfidy of the Greeks. The Germans burned the monastery at
Adrianople to avenge the assassination of one of their comrades. Beyond
the Bosporus Conrad’s soldiers were incessantly picked off and slain by
skulking Greeks. The flour they purchased from the merchants of
Constantinople they found mixed with lime. The Greek guides were in
alliance with the Turks, and led the Christians into ambuscades among
the defiles of the Taurus. Conrad himself was twice wounded by
treacherous arrows, and his host, reduced to one tenth of its original
numbers, was forced to painfully retrace the way to Nicæa.
The French were at first more cordially received by the Greeks than had
been their German allies; but they soon learned that the Emperor Manuel
was in collusion with the Sultan of Iconium. Louis hardly restrained his
people from taking vengeance by assaulting the Greek capital, and forced
them onward to the relief of the Germans. Conrad did not await their
coming, but returned to Constantinople and made temporary fellowship
with his betrayer. The French, thus deserted, continued their route
alone. The Moslems massed against them on the bank of the Meander, only
to be scattered by the fury of the French onset, or, if we may believe
some of the spectators, by the appearance of the familiar celestial
knight clad in white armor, who headed the Christian army.
Flushed with victory, Louis hastened onward two days’ march beyond
Laodicea. Here he divided his force into two bands for the safer passage
of a mountain ridge. The vanguard was ordered to encamp upon the heights
until joined by their comrades, that they might make descent in full
force upon the farther plains. But the impatience of the soldiers in the
advance, encouraged by Queen Eleanor, could not brook the cautionary
command; they descended the other side of the ridge. The wary Turks
quietly took the ground thus unwisely abandoned. The second division of
the French, mistaking them for friends, climbed the ascent without
regard to orderly array, and were welcomed by a murderous assault. The
king barely escaped after witnessing the slaughter of thirty of his
chief nobles at his side. Alone upon a rock which he had climbed, he
kept his assailants at bay until they, mistaking him for a common
soldier, withdrew for some worthier prize. The heavy arms of the Franks
were worse than useless against the storm of rocks and arrows which the
Turks rained upon them, and the morning that dawned after a night of
unparalleled terror revealed a miserable remnant of the French force
fighting or stealing its way to the vanguard.
Placing the command in the hands of the veteran Gilbert, and Evrard des
Barras, Grand Master of the Templars, who had marched from the East to
assist the new crusaders, Louis pressed on. Winter fell with unwonted
severity upon his ragged and starving retainers. The Greeks held Attalia
and refused to allow the Franks to enter that city. At length Louis
accepted their offer to transport a portion of his army by sea to Syria.
Leaving a large proportion of his camp, the king set sail, and arrived
at Antioch in March, 1148. Less than one quarter of his followers met
him on the Syrian soil.
The Franks, thus abandoned by their king, had incessantly to fight with
the swarming Turks, until human nature succumbed. Their leaders,
Archambaud and Thierri, deserted them and followed the king over the
sea. Seven thousand essayed to pursue their journey overland, and were
massacred, or perished amid the dangers of the way. The old chronicle
says, “God alone knows the number of the martyrs whose blood flowed
beneath the blade of the Turks and even under the sword of the Greeks.”
Three thousand are said to have lost their faith in the protection of
Christ and sought the pity of the Moslems by confessing the Prophet.
Raymond of Poitiers was at this time lord and commandant at Antioch, and
welcomed the King of France with the expectation of receiving his help
in the conquest of Aleppo and Cæsarea, but as much, say the chronicles,
for the sake of the ladies who accompanied him as for his military aid.
Queen Eleanor was Raymond’s niece, and with her suite were several of
the most celebrated beauties from the courts of Europe. Their presence
promised to make Antioch again the brilliant and voluptuous city it had
been of old. When the king proposed to move southward to Jerusalem his
queen refused to accompany him. Some secret ambition, or a motive less
creditable to her virtue, led her to such disregard for the king that
she announced her rejection of her marriage vows, alleging as her reason
some newly awakened scruples of conscience on the ground of premarital
kinship with Louis. Her husband was compelled to kidnap his wife and
carry her by force from the palace to the camp. This estrangement was
the beginning of the rupture of relations between the King and Queen of
France, that led to his ultimate repudiation of her and to her
subsequent marriage with Henry II. of England, by whom she became the
mother of Richard Cœur de Lion.
At Jerusalem Louis and Conrad finally met, the latter without soldiers,
having reached the city in the disguise of a pilgrim. After paying the
proper tribute of devotion at the sacred shrines, the two Western
sovereigns, with Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, and their chief
barons, gathered at St. Jean d’Acre to determine upon the coming
campaign. The assembly was graced by the presence of Queen Melisende of
Jerusalem and many ladies from the courts of Europe; but there came
neither the Queen of France nor her advisers, Raymond of Antioch and the
counts of Edessa and Tripoli.
The conference determined to attempt the capture of Damascus. The
Christians quickly invested that place. It was defended on the east and
south by high walls, but was more exposed on the north and west. Here
the richness of the Syrian oasis burst into a vast garden, watered by
crystal streams from the Antilibanus. The extended plain was divided
into numerous private possessions by walls of baked earth, between which
a dense growth of trees left scarcely more than foot-paths. In spite of
the showers of arrows that greeted them at every dividing wall, the
Christians steadily made their way. In the front ranks was the young
King of Jerusalem, with his redoubtable Knights of St. John and Knights
Templars. The King of France pressed next with his braves, eager to
redeem by splendid victory the disaster of their coming. The German
emperor, with such meagre remnant of his army as he could muster,
protected the rear. At the little river which flows beneath the western
wall of the city the invaders met their first check. Here Conrad
performed the one deed creditable to his career since leaving Germany.
With his little band he passed through the forward ranks and fell upon
the enemy. The Saracens, seeing that the day was lost if the fight
continued general, sent a gigantic warrior to challenge the German hero
to single combat. The two armies watched the fight. Conrad unhorsed and
slew his antagonist. The Saracens then prepared to abandon their city.
Arabic chroniclers describe the humiliation of their brethren as they
prostrated themselves upon heaps of ashes, and in the great mosque of
Damascus sat round Omar’s copy of the Koran, invoking the help of their
Prophet.
The Christians, confident of the issue, fell to disputing the
sovereignty of the as yet unconquered city. It was awarded to Thierri of
Alsace, Count of Flanders. This decision instantly produced jealousy,
and all concert of action was at an end. The warriors of Syria hated the
Germans and Franks, who had come to eat the fruit of victory as well as
to help gather it. At once the assault ceased. The wily Saracen
commander, familiar with the divisions in the Christian camp, took
advantage of them. He declared that in the event of the siege being
pressed he would turn over the city to Nourredin of Mosul, an enemy
whose power and daring would make the occupancy of Damascus fatal to the
existence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. Mussulman writers aver
that King Baldwin was also directly bribed by the people of Damascus;
Latin writers accuse the Templars of perfidy. It is evident that none of
the leaders cared to conquer Damascus if its possession was not to be
his portion.
In the dilemma the Syrians advised a change of base. The rage and
cupidity of the various parties blinded all to the stupidity of this
plan. The army swung round from the gardens they had conquered, and
faced the impregnable walls that rose from the desert side. With neither
water nor natural protection, they camped in the open, arid plain. At
this juncture twenty thousand Turkomans and Kurds arrived and joined the
defenders. Among the Saracens was Ayoub, the founder of the dynasty of
Ayoubites, and with him his son Saladin, afterwards to become the most
famous of Moslem leaders, then a lad of thirteen years, who was here to
receive his first baptism of blood as he saw his eldest brother slain in
a sortie.
The succor received by the enemy led the Christians to raise the siege
as ignominiously as they had bravely begun it. Conrad in disgust
returned to Germany. Louis remained a year longer, vainly seeking some
enterprise in which to brighten his sword. It was not until his barons
and knights had deserted him, and his minister, Suger, in the name of
the French nation, had urged his return, that in July, 1149, he sailed
from St. Jean d’Acre.
Europe felt the shame of the ill-advised second crusade. The discredit
fell sorely upon its chief advocate. Bernard was compelled to lead
Christendom in the Miserere rather than the Te Deum. “We have fallen on
evil days,” he exclaimed, “in which the Lord, provoked by our sins, has
judged the world with justice, indeed, but not with His wonted mercy.”
The saint seems almost to have lost his faith. “Why,” he cried, “has not
God regarded our fasts, and appeared to know nothing of our
humiliations? With what patience is He now listening to the sacrilegious
and blasphemous voices of the nations of Arabia, who accuse Him of
having led His people into the desert that they might perish! All the
world knows that the judgments of the Lord are just, but this is so
profound an abyss that he is happy who has not been disgraced by it.”
The only one who benefited by the movement was Suger, whose repute for
wisdom was exalted not only by the fact that he had uttered his warning
against the undertaking, but more by the skill with which he had
conducted the affairs of the kingdom during the absence of its nominal
head. He died not long after the disasters he predicted, leaving France
more prosperous than before. Of him it is significantly said that “he
served faithfully a young king without losing his friendship.” Foreign
visitors to Paris called him the “Solomon of his age.” Louis VII. paid
him a filial compliment by naming him the “father of his country.” His
friend Bernard soon followed him to the grave, having won the honorable
distinction of the “last father of the church.”