BETWEEN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH CRUSADES—THE TARTARS—THE CARISMIAN
INVASION.
By a strange providence the sacred places of Palestine were destined to
fall for a while into other hands than any of the former great
contestants, Christian, Saracen, or Turk.
The most astounding events of the thirteenth century were in connection
with the great Tartar irruption. The Mogul hosts under Genghis Khan, or
“king of kings,” had broken eastward across the Great Wall of China, and
poured a tide of desolation over that ancient empire. As the bloody
waves returned, they moved with undiminished force westward and
southward, flooding all Turkestan, and all lands to the borders of India
and the Persian Gulf. These armies, numbering seven hundred thousand
warriors, courageous, remorseless, and cruel as tigers, were met by five
hundred thousand under Mohammed, Sultan of Carismia. But even this
latter tremendous host could not withstand the impact of the Tartars.
Under Octai, son of Genghis Khan, they crossed the Volga and conquered
vast sections of Russia, laying Moscow and Kiew in ashes. Poland fell
next. Even the Baltic monumented the fury of the Tartars with a circle
of ruined towers and devastated country which marked its shores.
Matthew Paris describes the terror these Tartars inspired even in
England, where they were thought to be “a people of monstrous shape,
drinking blood warm from the veins of their victims, eating raw flesh,
even of human beings, mounted upon enormous horses, which fed upon
leaves and trees.” Their home was presumed to be the Caspian Mountains,
the tops of which God had united and thus shut them in, until now they
were let loose to be the scourge of mankind. The extreme terror spread
by the rumor of their coming was such that the herring fisheries off
Yarmouth were abandoned, lest the sailors should be caught by these
monsters, who could sweep the waves with their ox-hide boats. Their
skill in swimming was of such renown that the lone fisherman of
Friesland was alert lest he should “catch a Tartar.”
At the battle of Liegnitz the prowess of Europe proved impotent against
the Tartar invasion which swept Hungary. Settled communities were
annihilated; nomadic peoples sought safety in migrating.
The Carismians, beaten back by the Tartars, spread themselves through
Asia Minor and Syria; but these fugitives were almost as terrible a
menace as their pursuers had been. They carried with them the spoil of
the lands they traversed. Dreading death less than the disgrace of
retreat, trained to neither give nor take quarter, waving from their
spear-heads the hair of the slaughtered, they assaulted all peoples,
Mussulmans and Christians alike. These nations were forced by the new
menace to lay aside their ancient animosities and unite in a struggle
for existence against the common foe.
The Sultan of Cairo, however, deemed that his policy lay in a different
direction, and made alliance with the invaders, promising to them the
free spoil of Palestine in exchange for the immunity of his Egyptian
possessions. Twenty thousand Carismian horsemen ravaged Tripoli and
Galilee and appeared suddenly before Jerusalem. The inhabitants fled;
the few who remained were indiscriminately massacred. Finding nothing
left to appease the appetite of their swords, the conquerors unfurled
the banner of the cross from the walls and rang the bells of the
churches, thus luring back to the city a multitude of the fugitives,
upon whom they satiated their cruelty. Seven thousand of these helpless
creatures perished at the gates. Not satisfied with the spoil of the
living, the Carismians rifled the abodes of the dead. Sepulchres which
had been respected by the Moslem occupants for a century were ruthlessly
despoiled. The contents of the alleged tomb of Christ, together with
those of the kings of Jerusalem from the days of Godfrey, were given to
the flames.
The Christian and Moslem armies massed against this remorseless foe in
the neighborhood of Gaza. For two days there raged as fearful carnage as
has ever dyed the pages of history; but nothing could stay this host of
fiends. Thirty thousand men, who had entered the battle with prayers in
the name of Jesus or Mohammed, perished or were taken prisoners. But
four Templars, twenty-six Hospitallers, and three Teutonic Knights
remained to tell the story of their useless valor. The heroism of
Gautier of Brienne, Lord of Jaffa, deserves to be chronicled. Captured
by the enemy, he was fastened upon a cross and brought close to the
walls of the town which the Carismians were besieging. He was offered
his life on condition of his counselling the place to surrender. To the
people who thronged the walls he cried with a loud voice, “Your duty is
to fight; mine is to die for you and Jesus Christ.”
But the Carismians, though they were able to conquer, had no ability to
hold their conquests. Like most semicivilized hordes, they reaped what
they found, but had no enterprise to sow again for other harvests. They
quickly quarrelled with their ally, the Sultan of Cairo. New
combinations were made against them, and in a few years they disappeared
from history, merged, doubtless, with other peoples whose home lands
they shared.
THE SEVENTH CRUSADE.