The whole of the forces of Edward did not exceed one thousand men. But

the prowess of the Plantagenets was dreaded by the Mussulmans; and they

feared that another Cœur de Lion was come to scourge them. The sultan of

Egypt departed from the vicinity of Acre, which he had devastated with

fire and sword. All the Latins in Palestine crowded round the banner of

the English prince; and he took the field at the head of seven thousand

men. The city of Nazareth was redeemed; and he surprised and defeated a

large Turkish force. Edward was brave and provident, and owed his success

as much to his skill as to his courage. But he was not less cruel than

any preceding hero of the holy wars; and he gave a dreadful earnest of

that savage implacability which Scotland afterwards so often rued. The

barbarities which stained the entry of the Christians into Jerusalem,

two centuries before, were repeated in a smaller theatre of cruelty in

Nazareth.

[Sidenote: [1271-1272 A.D.]]

But the march of victory was closed, for the English soldiers were

parched by the rays of a Syrian sun, and their leader was extended on the

bed of sickness. The governor of Joppa was the apparent friend of Edward,

but the sultan’s threat of degradation, if further commerce were held

with an infidel, changed courtesy into malignity. He hired an assassin

who, as the bearer of letters, was admitted into the chamber of his

intended victim. After receiving two or three wounds, the vigorous prince

threw the villain on the floor and stabbed him to the heart. The dagger

had been steeped in poison, and for some hours Edward’s fate was involved

in danger. The fairy hand of fiction has ascribed his convalescence to

his queen.[79]

After the English prince had been fourteen months in Acre, the sultan

of Egypt offered peace, for wars with the Moslem powers engrossed his

military strength. Edward gladly seized this occasion of leaving the Holy

Land, for his force was too small for the achievement of great actions,

and his father had implored his return to England. The hostile commanders

signed accordingly a treaty for a ten years’ suspension of arms; the

lords of Syria disarrayed their warlike front, and the English soldiers

quitted Palestine for their native country (July, 1272).

VAIN EFFORTS OF GREGORY X

[Sidenote: [1274-1291 A.D.]]

At the time when Palestine began to breathe from the horrors of war,

hope once more raised her head in consequence of the election to the

chair of St. Peter falling upon Theobald, archdeacon of Liège. The choice

of the cardinals was made known to him while he was in Palestine. He

impatiently transported himself to Italy, and so ardent was his zeal

that his endeavours for a crusade even preceded his introduction to the

pontificate. The trumpet of war again was heard among the nations. The

blast was however only faintly echoed. The republics of Pisa, Genoa,

and Venice, and the city of Marseilles, agreed to furnish a few galleys

and twenty-five thousand marks of silver were obtained from Philip the

Hardy on mortgage of the Templars’ estates in France. The masters of the

military friars and Red Cross knights went to Rome, and convinced their

papal friend that these succours would be too inconsiderable to enable

the Christians to drive infidels out of Palestine.

Again was the Christian world assembled, and the council of Lyons (May

1274) decreed the obligation of a new crusade. But Pope Gregory died

within two years after the sitting of the Lyonese council, and all

thoughts of a crusade were dropped when the life of its great promoter

closed.

Palestine however was at peace. Hugh III, king of Cyprus, a lineal

descendant of the princess Alice, had been crowned king of Jerusalem

at Tyre, a short time before the death of Conradin, the last unhappy

descendant of that house of Germany, of which three emperors had

supported and adorned holy wars. The Templars befriended Charles of

Anjou, but the Hospitallers, with more virtue than was generally shown,

declared that they could not fight against any Christian prince, and

contended that the claims for succession to the kingdom ought to be

deferred till the kingdom itself should be recovered. In the fourth year

of the peace which the valiant prince Edward had gained for Palestine,

the mameluke chief and king Bundukdari, died.

In the reign of Kalaun, the third sultan in succession to him who had

torn so many cities from the Christians, the war was renewed (1280), and

after a few years of dreadful preparation the living cloud of war burst

upon the Christians. Margat was captured; but so brave had been the

resistance of the knights that it procured them a safe and honourable

retreat to the neighbouring town of Tortosa (1287), and the sultan,

dreading even the possibility of future opposition, razed the fortress.

PROGRESS OF THE MAMELUKES

With rapid and certain steps the power of the Latins approached its fatal

termination. The city of Tripolis, that last remaining satellite of the

kingdom of Jerusalem, was taken in 1289; its houses were burned, its

works dismantled, and its people murdered or retained in slavery. Acre

once more became the principal possession of the Christians. The sultan

concluded a treaty of peace with Henry II of Cyprus, who had driven away

the lieutenants and soldiers of Charles, and had been acknowledged king

of Jerusalem.

The grand-master crossed the Mediterranean in order to infuse his martial

spirit into the people of the West. Pope Nicholas IV heard with coldness

the dismal tale. He declined to open the treasury of St. Peter for the

advancement of the Christian cause, and he gave his noble friend only

fifteen hundred men--the offscourings of Italy. Circular letters were

sent to the different European potentates, but the light which once

shone upon the holy cause had waned; cavaliers no longer thronged round

the cross, and the grand-master was compelled to return to Palestine,

accompanied only by his Italian banditti. When they arrived at Acre,

the city was in the greatest state of turbulence. Within its walls were

crowded the wretched remains of those kingdoms and principalities which

had been won by the blood of the West. Every distinct people occupied

a particular division, and, in the assertion of individual privileges,

general interests were forgotten.

[Sidenote: [1291-1300 A.D.]]

The sultan died before his preparations of vengeance were completed; but

his son Khalil was not less anxious than his father to exterminate the

infidel miscreants. In April, 1291, nearly two hundred thousand mameluke

Tatars of Egypt marched into Palestine, and encamped before Acre, exactly

on the same ground upon which a century before assembled Europe had

stood. To avoid the dreadful consequences of war, a large part of the

population embarked in the numerous vessels which at that time rode at

anchor in the harbour, and the defence of the place was left to the care

of about twelve thousand soldiers. The garrison was speedily reinforced

by a few hundred men, headed by Henry II of Cyprus, who boasted the

ideal title of king of Jerusalem. But the Christians beheld their towers

yielding to the mines and battering-rams. The pusillanimous monarch,

seizing a few ships, sailed to Cyprus. With the morn, the mamelukes

renewed the attack. Most of the German cavaliers died upon the breach;

the others slowly left the walls, and the firmness of their little

phalanx checked the foe. The Hospitallers chased back the mamelukes, and

even forced them headlong into the ditch. But the sultan was prodigal of

blood. His battalions marched to the breach, and in a few hours the entry

into the city was repeatedly lost and won by the Christians and infidels.

Under the cover of a few cross-bowmen, the knights of St. John, seven

only were the remnant, embarked, and left forever the scene of their

virtue and their valour. Their brethren in arms, the Templars, were

equally brave, and their fate was equally disastrous. Their resistance

was so firm, that the sultan was compelled to promise them a free and

honourable departure. But the insults of some low Saracenian people

irritated the cavaliers; the sword again was drawn, and such of the

Templars as survived the conflict, fled into the interior country.

The unarmed population of Acre hurried to the coast; but the elements

co-operated with the devastating spirit of the Turks, and the tempestuous

waves refused shelter to the fugitives. While gnashing with despair, the

people beheld their town in flames. The ruthless hand of death fell upon

them, and the sea shore of Palestine again drank torrents of Christian

blood.

TOTAL LOSS OF THE HOLY LAND

Tyre, Berytus, and other towns, were awed into submission. The Turks

swept all Palestine, and murdered or imprisoned all the Christians who

could not fly to Cyprus. The memory of the Templars is embalmed, for the

last struggle for the Holy Land was made by the Red Cross knights. Such

as escaped from Acre went to Sis, in Armenia. A Mussulman general drove

them to the island of Tortosa, whence they escaped to Cyprus, and the cry

of religious war no longer rung through Palestine.

The loss of the Holy Land did not fill Europe with those feelings of

grief and indignation which the fall of Jerusalem, an hundred years

before, had occasioned. The flame of fanaticism had slowly burned

out. During the thirteenth century, the territorial possessions of

the Christians in Palestine gradually diminished; the expeditions and

reinforcements were in consequence less vigorous, for, both politically

and personally, the people of the West declined in their interest

in respect of the affairs of the East. Pope Nicholas IV endeavoured

to revive holy undertakings; but the kings of Europe were deaf or

disobedient. As Genoa was allied to the Grecian emperor, Venice sought

the friendship of the Mussulmans. The mamelukes gave their Christian

brothers a church, an exchange, and a magazine in Alexandria; and the

Venetians carried on the lucrative but disgraceful trade of furnishing

the Egyptian market with male and female slaves from Georgia and

Circassia.

[Sidenote: [1299-1413 A.D.]]

[Illustration: HERALDS OF THE CRUSADERS]

There was some pretence for the preaching of a crusade by Pope Boniface

VIII in the year 1300. Kazan, the Mongol sultan of Persia, resolved to

exterminate the mamelukes of Egypt. He allied himself with the kings of

Georgia, Armenia, and Cyprus. In 1299 the fortunes of war smiled on the

allies; but still the success not being so great as what he had expected,

Kazan sent to the pope, soliciting the more powerful alliance of the

princes of the West, and agreeing that when Palestine was recovered,

it should be retained by the Christians. The project, though warmly

patronised by the pope, proved abortive. In the interim, the tide of

victory flowed in favour of the Egyptians. Kazan died about the year 1303.

From the commencement, till past the middle of the fourteenth century,

the popes repeatedly sounded the charge; but the West in most cases

disregarded the summons of its ghostly instructor; and it was evident

that, although the papal rulers could fan, they could not create the

sacred flame. At the time when the loss of the Holy Land became known in

Europe, the people had not recovered from the astonishment and terror

with which the victories of Jenghiz Khan and his successors had filled

the West. Part of Russia, the whole of Poland, Silesia, Moravia, Hungary

and all the countries to the eastward of the Adriatic Sea, fell a prey

to barbaric desolation. Several of the popes attempted in vain to soften

the ferocity of these new foes; but the papal legates were dismissed with

the tremendous command, for Rome herself to submit her neck to the Mongol

yoke.

Though Europe in general felt that in the fall of Acre all was lost, yet

despair did not immediately complete his triumph, for chivalry and policy

sometimes endeavoured to revive the religious spark. If Pope John XXII

had not been too open in the display of his avarice, and too prodigal in

the commutation of vows for money, the knights of Germany would once more

have fought under the glorious ensign of the cross. A threatened invasion

from England (1328 A.D.) deterred Philip de Valois from leaving his

country for Palestine, and a large body of crusaders was dispersed when

(1364 A.D.) John Le Bon of France died, on whom the pope intended to have

conferred the title of commander of the new crusaders. The politic Henry

IV[80] of England wished to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” in

order to divert his people from looking too nearly into his state, and

to retain their newly sworn allegiance. Both his maritime and military

preparations were considerable; but the hand of nature stopped him and it

was his fate to succumb to death, before he could attempt to commence his

new religious career.

FATE OF THE MILITARY ORDERS

[Sidenote: [1291-1600 A.D.]]

Such were the last appearances of that martial frenzy which so long

agitated Europe; and here the history of the holy wars would naturally

close, if curiosity did not suggest an inquiry into some of those

military and religious orders which arose from the spirit of pilgrimages

and crusades, and whose existence forms one of the most prominent

characteristics of the Middle Ages. The knights of the Teutonic order

were fixed in their conquest of Prussia, some years before the loss of

the Holy Land. Their love of war was not extinguished; they carried both

the sword and the Gospel into Pomerania; and the eastern part of that

country was definitively ceded to the order by a treaty of peace in the

year 1343. The town of Dantzic, the capital of the new conquest, was

considerably aggrandised under the dominion of the knights, and became

one of the principal places of commerce on the Baltic. Pressed forward

again by religion and ambition, they made war on the infidel Lithuanians,

but it was not till the beginning of the fifteenth century, and after

rivers of blood had flowed, that the pagans lost their independence, and

relinquished their national superstition. But the oppressive government

of the knights; their intestine divisions; their heavy imposts, the

unhappy result of wars continually reviving, encouraged the nobility

of Prussia and Pomerania to confederate, and to seek the protection of

the kings of Poland. The torch of war was rekindled, the knights were

defeated, and by the peace of Thorn in 1466 all Pomerania, and indeed

all the country which is generally called Polish Prussia, was ceded to

Poland. The order was allowed to preserve the west of Prussia by the

tenure of feudal service to the kings of Poland.

The Teutonic knights thus lost Prussia; their name appears on few

occasions in the history of Europe, and the order became only a “cheap

defence of nations.” Pope Innocent VIII in the year 1490 endeavoured to

suppress the order of the Knights of St. Lazarus. In Italy, perhaps he

succeeded, but not in any other country. The bull was resisted by the

knights of France and till the reign of Henry IV they were independent

and elected their own grand-masters.

KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN

[Sidenote: [1291-1310 A.D.]]

After the loss of Acre, the knights of St. John and the Temple, from

every preceptory and commandery in Europe, flocked to Cyprus, impatient

for glory and revenge. The military friars soon quitted their settlements

in Cyprus. The grand-master of the Hospitallers gained the friendship and

the purse of Pope Clement V, and drew a flattering picture of Christian

prosperity, if the cavaliers of St. John could set up their banners in

some island in the Mediterranean. Rhodes was fixed upon. Fifteen years

subsequently to the loss of Acre, a new crusade was published, and the

volunteers were invited to repair to Brundusium. The king of Sicily and

the republic of Genoa furnished transports. The grand-master headed the

army, but it was not until after they had sailed, that the crusaders knew

the object of the armament. Rhodes was at that time in the power, partly

of the Greeks and partly of the Saracens. The soldiers landed; many

battles were fought, and the army of the invaders was at last reduced

to the military friars. Their chief hired new soldiers, recommenced his

attacks, and the whole island submitted to his authority (1310). The

subsequent history of the knights of St. John is interwoven with the

general history of Europe.

THE TEMPLARS IN FRANCE

[Sidenote: [1307-1311 A.D.]]

While the military friars were planning the acquisition of an equivalent

to their loss in Palestine, most of the Red Cross knights gradually left

Cyprus, returned to their different commanderies, and lived in security

and indolence. But circumstances soon made the Templars repent that they

had not, like the Hospitallers, attempted a renewal of hostilities with

the infidels. Philip the Fair, king of France, acquainted Pope Clement

V, that the order of the knights Templar had been accused of heresy

and various other crimes against religion and morals. Some members had

charged their fraternity with the different abominations of treachery,

murder, idolatry, and Islamism. Philip the Fair took the bold step of

imprisoning all the knights Templar whom his officers could discover

in France, and of sequestering their property. Clement then circulated

a bull throughout Christendom, by which instrument of papal authority,

nuncios and the resident clergy were commanded to inquire into the

conduct of the knights. His holiness says that, pressed by public clamour

and by the declarations of the king, the barons, the clergy, and laity

of France, he had examined seventy-two members of the order, and had

found them all guilty, though in various degrees, of irreligion and

immorality. Such of the knights as yielded to blandishments and threats

were pardoned, but the torture was applied to those who denied the

charges, and thirty-six knights in Paris heroically braved the horrors of

the rack, and maintained the innocence of the order, till death closed

their sufferings and their virtue. Others confessed in the midst of

corporeal agony, and afterwards recanted their confessions. The knights

Templar were accused of renouncing, at the time of their matriculation,

God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and all the saints. It was said that the

brethren used often to spit and trample on the cross, in proof of their

contempt of Christ, who was crucified for his own crimes and not for the

sins of the world. Out of their disdain of God and his Son, they adored

a cat, and certain wooden and golden idols. The master could absolve

brethren from sins. On the assurance that the king would destroy the

order, whether the result of the examinations were favourable or hostile

to its continuance, many knights had yielded to pain and hopelessness,

stayed the hand of the executioner, confessed every crime, upon their

confessing of which, royal pardon and protection were proffered. The

court condemned to perpetual imprisonment those from whom no confession

of guilt had been extorted. But such as had retracted their forced

avowals were declared to be relapsed heretics; they were delivered over

to the secular power, and condemned to the fire (May 11th, 1310). The

number in the last-mentioned class of the proscribed was fifty-four.

All the historians who have spoken of the event, whatever opinion they

might have entertained on the general question, friends or enemies,

natives or strangers, have unanimously attested the virtuous courage, the

noble intrepidity, and the religious resignation, which these martyrs

of heroism displayed. Arrived at the place of punishment, they beheld

with firmness and placidity the piles of wood, and the torches already

lighted in the hands of the executioners. In vain a messenger of the

king promised pardon and liberty to those who did not persist in their

retractations; in vain their surrounding friends endeavoured to touch

their hearts by prayers and tears. Invoking God, the Virgin, and all

the saints, they sung the hymn of death; triumphing over the most cruel

tortures, they believed themselves already in the heavens, and died in

the midst of their songs.

IN OTHER COUNTRIES

[Sidenote: [1311-1314 A.D.]]

By royal command, the sheriffs of the different counties of England and

Wales seized the estates, and imprisoned the persons of the Templars.

The cavaliers were more than a year and a half in prison. At the end of

that time a papal bull was received in England; and the archbishop of

Canterbury appointed courts at London, York, and Lincoln, for the trial

of the Templars, July, 1311. The charges were the same in substance as

those which had been preferred against the order in France. Forty-seven

of the knights who had been incarcerated in the Tower were examined

upon oath before the bishop of London, some inferior clergy, and the

representatives of the pope. William de la Moore, the grand prior of

England, was as earnest as de Molay had been in defence of the French

Templars.

Four knights made a general confession of crimes, when they were told

that the pope had authorised a full pardon to those who acknowledged

their iniquities; but that if they persisted in heresy, they should be

considered and punished as heretics. Thirteen newly admitted knights

swore that they were not acquainted with the secrets of the order, but

that they were prepared to renounce all the erroneous opinions in which

it was possible the minds of men could be stained. William de la Moore,

the grand prior, was the only man whom no fear of imprisonment or dread

of ecclesiastical punishment could induce to deny his first avowal of the

innocence of the order. He was requested to make a general confession;

but he replied that he was not guilty of heresy, and would never abjure

crimes which he had not committed.

In Ireland about thirty Templars, in Scotland only two, were confined

and examined. In Lincoln the number somewhat exceeded twenty. There

were twenty-three in York. The general charges of apostasy and idolatry

were not proved in any case. However, all the knights made a general

confession of the offence of heresy, and avowed they could not cleanse

themselves from the crimes mentioned in the bull. The clergy pardoned

them, and received them again into the bosom of the church. They were

then sent into confinement in various monasteries until the decision of a

general council should be declared.

The fate of the Templars in other parts of the world remains to be told.

In Germany the innocence of the order was proved before the archbishops

of Mainz and Trèves, at councils held in their respective dioceses. In

Italy the pope had a little more success. Several Templars at Florence

confessed every species of abomination. Much blood was shed in Lombardy,

Tuscany, Sicily, Naples, and Provence, whenever the knights would not be

guilty of self-condemnation. In those parts of Spain where the conduct

of the Templars was inquired into, the result was an acquittal. Their

military front was powerful, and the ministers of papal vengeance did not

dare to apply the torture.

COUNCIL AT VIENNE

Four years after the first seizure of the Templars in France a council

was held at Vienne in Dauphiné, for the purpose of making some general

decision on the case of the order, October, 1311. The pope headed three

hundred bishops, and an untold number of inferior clergy. All men who

desired to defend the order were promised security and freedom. Nine

cavaliers presented themselves before the assembly in the character of

representatives of fifteen hundred of their brethren, who were living at

Lyons, and in the secret fastnesses of Savoy and Switzerland. Clement

immediately violated his promise of protection, and threw the nine

knights into prison. He then called upon the council for its opinion,

whether in consequence of the confessions of the Templars the society

ought not to be dissolved? With the disgraceful exception of one Italian

prelate, and three French archbishops, the whole body of churchmen

declared that so illustrious an order as that of the Red Cross knights

ought not to be suppressed, until the grand-master and the nine knights

had been heard in its defence. The pope disregarded the opinion of the

majority; and tried in vain for six months to make a change.

THE ORDER SUPPRESSED

The king of France arrived at Vienne, and sanctioned by his presence, the

pope declared that he should exercise the plenitude of papal authority.

He accordingly dissolved the order provisionally and not absolutely, and

reserved to himself the disposition of the persons and estates of the

Templars. When the subject of the distribution of the knights’ Templar

estates was debated in the council, the pope declared that they ought to

be bestowed upon the Hospitallers, because the original purpose of the

order was the subjugation of infidels, a purpose which the knights of

Rhodes were earnestly pursuing.

The decree of confiscation was executed throughout Christendom. The

Templars were robbed, but the Hospitallers did not enjoy the whole of

the plunder. Philip the Fair, and his successor Louis le Hutin, retained

nearly three hundred thousand livres [£12,000 or $60,000] for what they

chose to term the expenses of the prosecution. The landed estates were

slowly and unwillingly resigned, for the monarchs enjoyed the rents till

the commissioners of the knights of Rhodes established their rights. In

Germany the Teutonic knights assisted the Hospitallers in plundering

those who had formerly been their brethren in arms in Palestine. Dinis,

king of Portugal, preserved the order of the Red Cross knights, by

changing their title from the soldiers of the Temple to that of the

soldiers of Christ. Edward of England gave to different laymen much of

the forfeited property. Numbers of the nobility too as heirs of the

original donors seized many of the Templars’ estates. Indeed, so great

was the injustice done to the Hospitallers, that Pope John XXII censured

both the clergy and laity, for their disobedience to the decree of the

council at Vienne.

The last circumstance which attended the fate of the Templars was the

condemnation of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay.[81] With his dying

lips he bore testimony to the virtue of the order; and his mental

sufferings on account of his former want of firmness appeared to be

greater than his mere corporeal pain. The brother of the prince of

Dauphiné met with the same unhappy but honourable end as that of his

friend Jacques de Molay. The two priors seem to have died in prison.[b]

THE CRUSADES IN THE WEST

[Sidenote: [1230-1309 A.D.]]

Having completed the survey of the vain efforts for the Holy Land, it

will be well to glance at the contests springing up elsewhere on the same

fanatic belief that orthodoxy was a matter of life and death.[a]

Though the Crusades met with failure in the East, in the West they

achieved their purpose; that is, certain expeditions were highly

successful; for example that of the Teutonic knights and sword-bearers

into Prussia and the neighbouring regions, where they founded a new

state; also Simon de Montfort’s war against the Albigenses which

destroyed an ancient civilisation; and the struggle between the Spaniards

and the Moors, as a result of which the latter were forced to surrender

the peninsula over to Christianity and the civilisation of Europe.

It will be observed that the scene of action of the European Crusades was

the two extremities of the continent; around the mouths of the Niemen the

pagans of the Baltic were to be converted, and in the country washed by

the Tagus, the Moslems of Spain.

THE TEUTONIC CRUSADE

In the interval between the First and Second Crusades some citizens

of Bremen and Lübeck had journeyed to the Holy Land and there founded

a hospital for their compatriots, which was exclusively under the

management of Germans. In Palestine all benevolent institutions

were obliged to assume the form of military organisations; thus the

Hospitallers, or officials in charge of the hospitals, became the

knights of St. John, and the inmates of the temple of Solomon, the

knights Templar. The German hospitallers also became transformed into an

armed religious body that was called the Teutonic order. Like both the

others, this order soon acquired vast properties in Europe, especially

in Germany, and the emperor Frederick II raised its grand-master to the

rank of prince of the realm. In 1230 a Polish prince made use of their

zeal and arms, which could no longer be employed in the Holy Land, by

despatching them on a mission to subjugate and convert the Prussians,

a people who have since become so closely identified with the Germans

settled in the country as to be no longer distinguishable from them.

It was this idolatrous people, established between the Niemen and the

Vistula, whose language, history, and religion have now completely

disappeared, that gave its name to one of the largest and most prosperous

states of modern Europe.

The Teutonic order took up its station first at Kulm, whence it proceeded

to conquer the Prussians by the use of the means employed by Charlemagne

against the Saxons; that is, by destroying one portion of the population

and then building fortresses to contain the rest. It was this purpose

that Königsberg and Marienburg were intended to serve.

Several years earlier a prelate of Livonia had founded the order of the

Brothers of the Sword, known still as the knights of Christ, and the body

of the sword-bearers, which subdued Livonia and Esthonia. Disputes with

the bishops of Riga caused these organisations to unite in 1237 with

the Teutonic order, whose forces were thus doubled. Marienburg became

the capital of the order in 1309, and its grand-masters, who reigned

over Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland, caused these countries to

hold communion with the rest of Europe, and planted in them the germs of

civilisation. They remain to-day the richest and most progressive of the

Russian provinces. As late as the fifteenth century the Teutonic knights

retained the preponderance of power in northern Europe, all the countries

between the lower Vistula and Lake Peipus being subject to them except

Samogitia, a Lithuanian province which separated the original possessions

of the two orders.

THE ATTACK ON THE ALBIGENSES

[Sidenote: [1167-1208 A.D.]]

The crusade directed by Simon de Montfort against the populations of the

south of France was at first most disastrous in its effects. During all

the time that Christian warriors were being sent out to do battle with

miscreants at the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea, many infidels

were awaiting conversion in the very heart of Europe. Not the Jews, who

had furnished the first cause for the Crusades in the fury with which

they inspired their early persecutors, but the mixed populations in the

south of France, composed of Iberians, Gauls, Romans, Goths, and Moors,

whose religious beliefs were far removed from orthodoxy. Just what name

to give to their heresy it is hard to decide; even contemporaries were at

a loss in this respect since they called the people simply Albigenses,

from the town Albi, which was their common centre. One thing only is

certain--that in 1167 a council was held near Toulouse, presided over

by Nicetas, a Greek from Constantinople, at which many oriental ideas

were adopted; it has also been asserted that ecclesiastics were treated

with scorn in every part of the land, and even St. Bernard himself was

received there with derision. From this centre of heresy missionaries

were sent out in every direction, and already unseemly doctrines were

making themselves known in Flanders, Germany, England, and even in Italy,

while recently bands of marauders had spread out in the direction of

Auvergne, pillaging churches and profaning sacred objects.

Among the rich and brilliant cities of the south the most important was

Toulouse, where resided Count Raymond VI, one of the greatest nobles

of the south. Another prominent house was that of Barcelona, which had

lately obtained rule over Aragon and possessed Roussillon and Provence;

there were further the proud and adventurous nobles of the Pyrenees, who

lived free and independent lives, and owed not the least allegiance to

either church or king.

The south of France had long been separated from the north. Having other

customs and speaking a different tongue, it had made serious efforts

under Dagobert, Charles Martel, Pepin, Charlemagne, Charles the Bald,

and Hugh Capet, to constitute itself an independent state. Increase

in commerce had brought ease to its citizens and affluence to its

nobles, and the two classes united in peace and harmony to discharge

municipal duties, thus assuring the peace of the whole community. But

in those wealthy cities and brilliant courts, made gay by the songs of

troubadours, religious doctrines were accorded scant attention, and

heresy leaked in from every side.

The all-powerful Innocent III resolved to stamp out this hotbed of

impiety that threatened to spread contagion far and wide. He began by

organising the Inquisition, which was to seek out and judge heretics,

and countless victims were immolated without in any way lessening the

number of unbelievers, the rack and the stake being but indifferent

demonstrators of the truth. The pope next sent to Raymond VI his

legate, the monk Peter of Castelnau, with the demand that the heretics

be immediately expulsed. But the heretics formed the main body of

the population, and Castelnau accomplished nothing. Raymond was

excommunicated and threatened with eternal fires, and the legate was

murdered during his passage back over the Rhone (1208).

[Sidenote: [1208-1228 A.D.]]

“Anathema on the count of Toulouse,” cried the pope, “and remission of

sins to all who will take up arms against these pestilent inhabitants of

Provence! Forward, soldiers of Christ! let the heretics be wiped out, and

colonies of Catholics spring up where their cities now stand!”

The doctrine of extermination was preached by all the organs of the pope:

and the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers, Auxerre, Geneva, the

bishops of Rheims, Sens, Rouen, Autun, with many Germans and inhabitants

of Lorraine, massed forces, and set out on the crusade. Three armies made

irruption into the south of France, headed by Simon de Montfort, a feudal

lord of the environs of Paris, ambitious, fanatical, and cruel. The count

of Toulouse was not immediately attacked, the pope hoping to weaken his

resistance by appearing ready to extend a pardon, and hostilities were

all directed against the viscount of Béziers. When the latter’s town was

taken, the victors, not being able to distinguish the heretics, hesitated

whom to strike. “Kill all,” said the legate, “God will easily recognise

his own.” Thirty thousand are said to have perished. Carcassonne also

succumbed, and the knights of the Ile de France divided up the country

under Simon de Montfort, who was made suzerain over all.

Raymond hoped to be spared, now that so sanguinary a sacrifice had been

offered up on the altar of orthodoxy, and Innocent himself was inclined

to clemency, but the legates were without pity; they would extend mercy

to the count only on condition that he should cause all his subjects to

don the garb of penitents, degrade his nobles to the state of villeins,

discharge his hired troops, raze his castles to the ground, and himself

start on a crusade.

The count laughed at these proposals, and again the legates gave the

signal for attack. There flocked to the banner of Simon de Montfort a

multitude from the north, rejoicing that the highly profitable campaign

in the south was not yet at an end. Raymond VI was vanquished at

Castelnaudry, and the victors divided up his domains among themselves:

to the prelates fell the bishoprics, and to the soldiers the fiefs. The

defeated noble had no resource but to seek the protection of Pedro II,

king of Aragon, who at once advanced to the rescue, and was joined by

all the petty nobles of the Pyrenees, being looked upon by them as their

chief.

The battle of Muret, in which the king perished, decided the fate of

the south of France (1213). Two years afterward the Council of Lateran

ratified the dispossession of Raymond and of most of the other nobles;

the legates of the holy see offered their fiefs to the powerful barons

who had participated in the crusade; but all save Simon de Montfort

refused to accept gifts bought at the price of so much bloodshed. A

harsh measure was passed, forbidding widows of heretics who possessed

noble fiefs to marry any but Frenchmen during the next ten years. In the

grasp of hands so ruthless the civilisation of southern France perished,

and all gaiety and poesy disappeared. Innocent III, meanwhile, began

to be troubled, fearing to have committed a great iniquity. “Give me

back my lands,” the count de Foix said to him, “or I shall claim all

of you--property, rights, and heritage, on the Day of Judgment.” “I

acknowledge,” answered the pope, “that great wrong has been done you;

but it was not done by my order, and I owe no thanks to those who are

responsible.”

In their extremity the people of Languedoc bethought themselves of the

king of France. Montpellier gave itself up to him, and Philip Augustus

sent his son Louis to plant the national standard in the south of France.

Louis returned thither at the death of Simon de Montfort, who was killed

before Toulouse--whither Raymond VII, son of the old count, had also

returned; and Montfort’s successor, Amaury, offered to cede to the king

his father’s conquered possessions, which he could no longer defend

against the reprobation of the people. Philip, at that time on the brink

of the grave, refused the offer, but five years later it was accepted.

WESTERN ASSAULTS ON THE ARABS

[Sidenote: [732-1096 A.D.]]

Before, during, and after the great Crusades which had the Orient for

their scene of action and all the peoples of Europe for their personages,

there was being carried on in the West another and smaller undertaking

of a similar nature, which won nothing like the renown attending the

greater expeditions, but which displayed a tenacity of purpose that kept

it in operation during at least eight centuries. When Charles Martel and

Pepin le Bref expelled the Arabs from France they simply drove them to

the other side of the Pyrenees, seeming to look upon that strong mountain

barrier as the confine of Europe and Christianity. Spain was a country to

be sacrificed, to be delivered over with Africa to the Moslem races by

which it had been invaded. Spain had been Christian, however, before the

invasion, and the mass of the people remained so after, by no means all

having been subjected. Outside the conquered districts there remained a

point where the sacred thought of independence could find safe harbour,

and this point was gradually to expand until it formed the nucleus of a

new Christian domination.

The weakening of the power of the Cordovan caliphate in its northern

provinces, as a result of the revolt of the Beni Hassan in 864, was

singularly favourable to the development of the small Christian states.

The tenth century, however, did not continue to bring uninterrupted good

fortune to the Christian states. While discords were beginning to creep

in among their own number, the caliphate was restored by Abd ar-Rahman

III, and the adroit Al-Mansur under Hisham II. The terrible defeat

suffered by the Christians at Simancas in 940, the overthrow of Sancho

the Great by the count of Castile who declared himself independent, and

the subsequent reinstatement of Sancho by Abd ar-Rahman, reveal the

kingdom of Leon as having fallen into a state of demoralisation so deep

that even its enemies had power to dispose of the throne. Al-Mansur

also weighed upon the Christians with a ruthless hand. In 997 he found

himself master of all the lands the Christians had conquered south of

the Douro and the Ebro. When he came to be defeated himself, however, at

Calatanazar, near the source of the Douro, his chagrin was so great that

he allowed himself to die by starvation, and in him perished the mainstay

of the caliphate (998).

We have seen at another point in this history that during the eleventh

century the Spanish Arabs fell into complete dissolution; the Christian

states, on the other hand, grew into closer and closer union by means of

frequent intermarriages and increased trade relations. This process of

unification and internal adjustment, as well as the necessity of closing

all the gaps left open by the sword of Al-Mansur, held in check the holy

war for a period of nearly a century. At the end of that time it was

resumed with greater brilliancy and success than before.

Not alone by reason of the fortunate alliances he was able to make did

Sancho II merit the title of Great; greatness was to be achieved in Spain

mainly by warring upon infidels, and many were the engagements during

which the Moors were made to feel the might of his sword. Not content to

rest here, he carried his victorious arms, in the intervals of preparing

the substitution of the Christian dynasty of Aznar for that of Pelayo,

into the heart of the Moslem country to the very walls of Cordova.

[Sidenote: [1072-1146 A.D.]]

At Sancho’s death Spain was divided into four kingdoms. But Alfonso VI

reunited Castile and Leon in 1072, and resumed in Spain the holy war

which had been made extremely popular in Europe by the preparations for

the First Crusade. The news of the Christian reverses in Jerusalem, and

also the growing influence of the holy see, had a powerful effect on

Spain. It was the desire of Gregory VII to bring under his domination the

Spanish Christian states which had hitherto enjoyed complete religious

independence, and in case of their failure to yield it was feared that

some day he would arm all Christianity against them.

Always characterised by boundless presumption, Gregory VII demanded of

Alfonso VI that he pay him tribute, on the pretext that all lands taken

from the infidels were by right the property of the church. Alfonso

refused. Then Gregory fell back on another point, the adoption by the

Spanish Christians of the Roman instead of the Gothic or Muzarabic ritual

to which they had been used. Eventually Alfonso adopted the Roman ritual.

Henceforth complete communion was held with Rome by the Spanish people

which eventually became the most pronouncedly Catholic, if not always the

most submissive to the holy see, of all the races of the earth.

Ferdinand I had profited by the divisions existing among the petty Arab

sovereigns to wrest from them many of their possessions. He took Viseu,

Lamego, Coimbra, and made the king of Toledo pay him tribute. In 1085

Alfonso VI was even more successful, gaining possession of the entire

kingdom. Toledo, formerly the capital and metropolis of the Goths, became

once more an important centre; and its restoration marks the fourth stage

of the progress of the Christians from the Asturias, where they began

their onward march, to the heart of the peninsula, where they were to

take up a firm position behind the barrier of the Tagus.

Five years later the Capetian, Henri de Bourgogne, great-grandson of

Robert king of France, who had distinguished himself at the conquest of

Toledo, took at the mouth of the Douro, Porto Cale, which Alfonso raised

to importance by making it the countship of Portugal. Simultaneously

with this the famous Cid, Rodrigo de Bivar, the hero of Spanish chivalry

and romance, achieved victory after victory along the coast of the

Mediterranean, the most important of which was the conquest of Valencia

(1094). Finally in 1118 Alfonso I, king of Aragon, won for himself a

capital after the manner of the king of Castile, by taking possession

of Saragossa, where a Moslem dynasty had long been in power. Thus the

Christian invasion, divided like an army into three columns, was steadily

advancing across the peninsula, one column in the centre, one in the east

and one in the west.

In the centre progress was suddenly arrested, and was later checked along

all the lines by unforeseen obstacles which the Christians were unable to

surmount until after the lapse of nearly a century. Two new Moslem hordes

poured in upon the land, surprising the Spanish conquerors in the midst

of their belief that the sources of these invading tides had long since

been exhausted. The Almoravids, and after them the Almohads, swarmed out

of Africa and revived in the Moslem provinces of Spain the ancient faith

of Islam. The names of these two sects signify, respectively, “close

alliance with the faith,” and “Unitarians.” The Almoravids steadily

increased their power and the extent of their dominion. At the death of

the Cid (1099) they retook Valencia, gained possession of the Balearic

Isles, and in 1108 won, in a battle as sanguinary and hard-fought as

that of Zallaka, a signal victory over Alfonso VI. The Christians asked

themselves in alarm if Spain, but half reconquered, was about to be

wrested from them again.

As the result showed, their fears were groundless. Toledo, repeatedly

besieged, defended itself with victorious energy; and the little earldom

of Portugal not only successfully resisted attack, but itself took

several towns and drove the invaders back whence they had come.

[Sidenote: [1146-1270 A.D.]]

The invasion of the Almohads was similar in its effects to that of the

Almoravids, which it immediately succeeded. The leader, Abdul-Mumin,

began hostilities by laying siege to Fez, which he took in 1146; the

same year he led his followers into Spain. As before, it was Castile

that had to bear the heaviest shock of the invasion, and at the battle

of Alarcon (1195) Alfonso VIII was badly defeated. Portugal, on the

other hand, maintained its superiority and placed a decided check upon

the invaders at Santerem (1184). The advancement made by Aragon and

Portugal caused the thirteenth century to open gloriously for Spain in

its struggles against the Moslems. It had, moreover, been given a second

powerful instrument with which to achieve victory in the four military

bodies organised in the twelfth century expressly for the Spanish

Crusade, without prejudice to the great Holy Land crusaders who also took

part--the orders of Alcantara, of Calatrava, and of St. James in Castile,

and of Evora in Portugal.

In the year 1210 the news was spread throughout all Christendom that

four hundred thousand Almohads had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.

Though deeply engaged in the war against the Albigenses, Pope Innocent

III could not contemplate the danger thus announced without calling upon

all Europe to succour Spain. Public prayers were ordered and indulgence

promised to all who would volunteer to fight in the peninsula. The five

Christian kings of Leon and Castile, temporarily separated at the time,

joined their forces and marched against Muhammed, the fanatical leader

of the Almohads. The encounter took place at Alacab, on the plateau

of the Sierra Morena, according to the Arabs; at Las Navas de Tolosa,

according to the Christians. After an obstinately contested battle the

flight of the Andalusians decided the day in favour of the Christians.

Muhammed, who had stationed himself on a height amid the serried ranks of

his African guard, holding the _Koran_ in one hand and his sword in the

other, looked on in undisturbed passivity while his followers suffered

the most terrible defeat. “God alone,” he said, “is just and powerful,

the demon is without truth or greatness.” Muhammed was at last compelled

to take flight on a swift courser of the desert, which carried him far

from his enemies. This battle was decisive in the struggles between the

Christians and the infidels. The Almoravids and Almohads once definitely

repulsed, there rose up in Africa no more defenders of the Moslem faith

sufficiently powerful to restore its dominion in Spain.

During the whole of the thirteenth century the Christians reaped the

fruits of their victory, which was rendered the more complete by the

anarchy that prevailed among all ranks of the Almohads. Cordova (1236),

Seville (1266), and many other places fell into the hands of the king

of Castile, while James I, king of Aragon, brought the Balearic Isles

under subjection, and at the head of eighty thousand French and Spanish

troops retook Valencia (1238). Portugal reached its limit of expansion

when in 1270 it united the provinces of Algarve, and the outlines it

then assumed have never since been changed. The Moors now possessed only

the little kingdom of Granada, that was hemmed in on all sides by the

sea and the domains of the king of Castile. Yet even in this confined

space, their numbers swelled by the refugees that fled to them from the

cities captured by the Christians, they contrived to maintain a power

that staved off their ultimate downfall for a period of two hundred

years. Save to repel certain incursions on the part of the Merinids of

Maghreb which never seriously endangered their conquered possessions, the

Christians had now no military operations to carry on; hence the crusade

in Spain was practically suspended until a later date, 1492.

COMPARISON OF THE TWO CRUSADES

The crusade to Jerusalem had undoubtedly brought forth general results

to civilisation, but its particular aim had not been accomplished. It

founded no important institutions in the Orient; it did not even succeed

in delivering the Holy Sepulchre, and millions of men had left their

bones along its route. The crusade in Spain, on the other hand, while it

bore no consequences to the social conditions of Europe in the Middle

Ages, changed the whole face of Spain and reacted powerfully upon the

Europe of modern times. It took the peninsula away from the Moors and

gave it to the Christians; it brought into being the little kingdom of

Portugal which, carrying on a crusade of its own beyond seas, discovered

the Cape of Good Hope; and it made great states of Aragon and Castile,

whose kings were inspired with European ambitions by their victories in

Spain, and whose inhabitants gained, in the eight centuries of warfare,

military customs and knowledge which made of them the _condottieri_ of

Charles V and Philip II, not the peaceful and industrious heirs of the

commerce and brilliant civilisation of the Moors.

There was still another point. What was the cause of this difference

between the two crusades? Jerusalem, situated far from the centre of

Catholic denomination, remained in the hands of the Moslems, by whom

it was surrounded, for precisely the same reason that Toledo, situated

at the limit of their zone of occupation, escaped them to become the

possession of the nearby Christians. The whole matter was simply a

question of distance. Palestine bordered on the territory of Mecca,

as Spain lay in full view of Rome. Geographical relationship is a

powerful factor, even in matters that seem to come the least under its

influence--the theories and doctrines of religion.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[73] It was very seldom that the Christians thought of converting the

Mussulmans. When the sword failed, then they resorted to arguments. The

occasion will excuse us from departing from chronological order, and

saying, that in the year 1285, Pope Honorius IV in his design to convert

the Saracens to Christianity, wished to establish schools at Paris

for the tuition of people in the Arabic and other oriental languages,

agreeably to the intentions of his predecessors. In every subsequent

project for a crusade, it was always proposed to instruct the Saracens

sword in hand. The Council of Vienne in 1312 recommended the conversion

of the infidels, and the re-establishment of schools, as the way to

recover the Holy Land. It was accordingly ordered that there should be

professors of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic tongues in Rome, Paris,

Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca; and that the learned should translate

into Latin the best Arabic books. It was not till the time of Francis I

that this decree was acted upon. He founded the royal college, and sent

even into the East for books.

[74] The oriental chronicle says that the French lost in this defeat,

besides the brother of the king, fourteen hundred knights.

[75] De Joinville[f] quotes the Saracens as saying that “if Mohammed had

allowed them to suffer the manifold evils that God had caused the king to

undergo, they would never have had any confidence in him, nor paid him

their adorations.”

[76] “Pure paganism and native infidelity, like white cloth, will take

the tincture of Christianity; whereas the Turks are soiled and stained

with the irreligious religion of Mohammedanism, which first must with

great pains be scoured out of them.”--FULLER.[d]

[77] Le Blanc makes the ransom of St. Louis equivalent to seven millions

of livres modern French money [£280,000 or $1,400,000].

[78] See Matthew of Paris[c] and also Fuller.[d] “About this time (1250)

many thousands of the English were resolved for the holy war, and would

needs have been gone, had not the king strictly guarded his ports, and

kept his kingdom from running away out of doors. The king promised he

would go with them; and hereupon got a mass of money from them for this

journey. Some say that he never intended it, and that this only was a

trick to stroke the skittish cow to get down her milk. His stubborn

subjects said that they would tarry for his company till midsummer, and

no longer. Thus they weighed out their obedience with their own scales;

and the king stood to their allowance. But hearing of the ill success

of the French, both prince and people altered their resolution, who had

come too late to help the French in their distress, and too soon to bring

themselves into the same misery.”

[79] “It is storied,” says Fuller,[d] “how Eleanor, his lady, sucked

all the poison out of his wounds without doing any harm to herself. So

sovereign a remedy is a woman’s tongue, anointed with the virtue of

loving affection. Pity it is that so pretty a story should not be true

(with all the miracles in love’s legends), and sure he shall get himself

no credit, who undertaketh to confute a passage so sounding to the honour

of the sex. Yet can it not stand with what others have written.”

[80] Henry when young had endeavoured to implant Christianity in

Lithuania _vi et armis_. When king he gained the friendship of the clergy

by aiding them to put down the followers of Wycliffe.

[81] [See also the History of the Papacy for a full account of this

tragedy.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES

[Sidenote: [1096-1291 A.D.]]

No religious wars have ever been so long, so sanguinary, and so

destructive as the Crusades. Countless hosts of holy warriors fell

the victims of their own vindictive enthusiasm and military ardour.

Fierceness and intolerance were the strongest features in the character

of the dark ages, and it is, perhaps, not so much in the conduct, as in

the object, of the Crusades, that anything distinct and peculiar can be

marked. It was not for the conversion of people, nor the propagation

of opinions, but for the redemption of the sepulchre of Christ, and

the destruction of the enemies of God, that the crimson standard was

unfurled. The western world did not cast itself into Asia from any view

of expediency, or in consequence of any abstract theoretical principle

of a right of hostility; men did not arm themselves from any conviction

that the co-existence of Christendom and Islamism was compatible with

the doctrines of the _Koran_, or that the countries of the West would be

precipitated into the gulf of destruction, if Asia Minor were not torn

from the Seljuk Turks, and restored to the emperor of Constantinople.

But the flame of war spread from one end of Europe to the other, for the

deliverance of the Holy Land from a state which was called pollution; and

the floodgates of fanaticism were unlocked for the savage and iniquitous

purpose of extermination. But popular madness would not listen to the

calls of generous policy and lofty ambition. The wish for the redemption

of the Holy Land was the feeling which influenced both Godfrey de

Bouillon and St. Louis, the first and last great champions of the cross;

it was that wild desire which moved Europe for two centuries, and without

it the Crusades would never have been undertaken.

The question of the justice of the holy wars is one of easy solution. The

crusaders were not called upon by heaven to carry on hostilities against

the Mussulmans. Palestine did not, of right, belong to the Christians

in consequence of any gift of God; and it was evident, from the fact

of the destruction of the second temple, that there was no longer any

peculiar sanctity in the ground of Jerusalem. There is no command in the

Scriptures for Christians to build the walls of the Holy City, and no

promise of an earthly Canaan as the reward of virtue. If the Christians

had been animated by the conviction that war with all the world was

the vital principle of the Mohammedan religion, then also a right of

hostility would have been raised.

As Lord Bacon said in his _War with Spain_: “Forasmuch as it is a

fundamental law in the Turkish empire, that they may, without any other

provocation, make war upon Christendom for the propagation of their law;

so that there lieth upon Christians a perpetual fear of war, hanging

over their heads, from them; and therefore, they may at all times, as

they think good, be upon the preventive.” But before they could have

been justified on this last-mentioned argument, proof was necessary that

the danger was imminent, and that time and circumstances had not reduced

the principle to a mere dry, inoperative letter of the law. In the first

hundred and fifty years of Mohammedan history, the Mussulmans made

continued and successful attacks on the Christians; and the invasion of

France by the Spanish and African Moors, seemed to endanger Christendom

as a world independent of and not tributary to the Saracens. In all that

long period the people of the West might have instituted crusades on

principles of self-defence. But as they had acquiesced for ages in the

existence of Islam, they could not afterwards draw the sword, except for

the purpose of preventing or repelling new aggressions. No dangers hung

over Christendom at the time when the Crusades commenced.

MORAL EFFECTS

On principles of morals and politics the holy wars cannot be justified.

Yet war became a sacred duty, and obligatory on every class of mankind.

The fair face of religion was besmeared with blood, and heavenly

attraction was changed for demoniacal repulsiveness. The Crusades

encouraged the most horrible violences of fanaticism. They were the

precedent for the military contentions of the church with the Prussians

and Albigenses; and as the execrable Inquisition arose out of the spirit

of clerical dragooning, the wars in Palestine brought a frightful

calamity on the world. Universal dominion was the ambition of the Roman

pontiffs; and the iniquity of the means was in dreadful accordance with

the audacity of the project. The pastors of the church used anathemas,

excommunications, interdicts, and every weapon in the storehouse of

spiritual artillery; and when the world was in arms for the purpose of

destroying infidels, it was natural that the soldiers of God should

turn aside and chastise other foes to the true religion. Crusades with

idolaters and erring Christians were considered as virtuous and as

necessary as crusades with Saracens; the south of France was saturated

with heretical blood; and those booted apostles, the Teutonic knights,

converted, sword in hand, the Prussians and Lithuanians from idolatry to

Christianity.

The sword of religious persecution was not directed against Turks and

heretics only. The reader remembers the sanguinary enormities that

disgraced the opening of the First Crusade. Not only was this instance of

persecution of the Jews the earliest one upon record in the annals of the

West since the fall of the Roman Empire, but it is also true that that

wretched people met with most of their dreadful calamities during the

time of the holy wars. It is highly probable that the hatred which the

Christians felt against them was embittered by that fierce and mistaken

zeal for religion which gave birth to the Crusades; and as the chief

object of those Crusades was the recovery of the sepulchre at Jerusalem,

it was natural that the Christian belligerents should behold with equal

detestation the nation which had crucified the Saviour and the nation

which continued to profane his tomb. This conjecture is much confirmed

by the circumstance, that the prevailing prejudice in the Middle Ages

against the Jews was that they often crucified Christian children in

mockery of the great sacrifice. If it be objected to this reasoning

that the crusading Cœur de Lion befriended the Jews, we reply that the

crusading king Edward I expelled them from England.

The penalties which the church inflicted on its members, as the temporal

punishments of sin, might have been unwarranted by Scripture, and

were doubtless often awarded by cruelty and caprice. But the practice

of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, was in itself salubrious to the

individual, and beneficial to society. It softened pride; it subdued

the sensual passions; it diffused charity. Instead of these blessings,

the slaughter of human beings was made the propitiation of offence; and

the Christian virtues of self-denial and benevolence were considered an

absurd and antiquated fashion. As the discipline of the church had been

broken in upon for one purpose, it could be violated for another. The

repentant sinner who could not take the cross himself, might contribute

to the charge of the holy expedition. When offences were once commuted

for money, the religious application of the price of pardon soon ceased

to be necessary. Absolutions from penance became a matter of traffic,

and holy virtues were discountenanced. For this reason, and for many

others, the Crusades conferred no benefits on morals. The evils of a

life free from domestic restraints, formed a strong argument against

pilgrimages in very early ages of the church, and it does not appear

that when the wanderers became soldiers their morals improved. The

vices of the military colonists in Palestine are the burden of many a

page of the crusading annalists. Something must be detracted from those

representations in consequence of their authors’ prejudice that the vices

of the Christians in the Holy Land effected the ruin of the kingdom.

Yet enough remains to show that the tone of morals was not at a higher

pitch in Palestine than in Europe. The decrees of the council at Nablus

(Shechem or Neapolis) prove that a difference of religion, although

a barrier against the dearest charities of life, was no impediment

to a vicious sensual intercourse between the Franks and the Moslems.

The Latins lived in a constant course of plunder on their Mussulman

neighbours, and therefore on their return to Europe could not spread

around them any rays of virtue.[82]

POLITICAL EFFECTS

As the Crusades were carried on for holy objects, not for civil or

national ends, their connection with politics could only have been

collateral and indirect. The spirit of crusading, composed as it was

of superstition and military ardour, was hostile to the advancement of

knowledge and liberty; and consequently no improvement in the civil

condition of the kingdoms of the West could have been the legitimate

issue of the principles of the holy wars. The pope was the only monarch

who mixed politics with his piety. The other princes seem to have been

influenced by the spirit of religion or of chivalry; and it was only in

the attempts again to disorder the intellect of Europe, that we find one

monarch, Henry IV of England, acting the part of a crafty politician.

Great changes in the political aspect of Europe were coeval with but were

not occasioned by the holy wars. The power of the French crown was much

higher at the end of the thirteenth, than it had been at the same period

of the eleventh century; but the influence of the imperial throne was

materially depressed. These opposite effects could never have been the

simple results of the same cause; namely, the loss of the flower of the

western aristocracy in Palestine.

The causes of the depression of imperial authority were the

aggrandisement of the nobles (a natural effect of the feudal system); the

improvident grants of lands which the Swabian family made to the clergy;

the contests between the popes and emperors respecting their different

jurisdictions, and, above all the rest, the destructive wars which the

emperors waged in the north of Italy for the reannexation of that country

to the throne of the descendants of the imperial house of Charlemagne.

[Illustration: GERMAN CRUSADER OF THE EARLY CRUSADES]

The political changes in England cannot with justice be attributed to the

Crusades. Until the days of Richard I holy wars had not become a general

or a national concern. The monarchy stood the same at the close of his

reign as at its commencement; and the only favourable issue of Cœur de

Lion’s armament was an increase of military reputation. His renunciation

of feudal sovereignty over Scotland had no influence on politics. Edward

I pressed his claim, although Richard had deprived him of his strongest

support. The pusillanimous John assumed the cross; but that circumstance

did not occur until after he had surrendered his crown to the papal see,

and until the barons had formed a confederacy against him. His assumption

of the cross neither retarded nor accelerated the progress of English

liberty. The pope was not linked to him by stronger ties than those

which had formerly bound them; and the barons were not deceived by the

religious hypocrisy of the king. The transmarine expeditions of the earls

of Cornwall and Salisbury, and of Prince Edward in the reign of Henry

III, were the ebullitions of religious and military ardour, but did not

affect the general course of events.

The great political circumstance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

which was important above all others to civil liberty, was the appearance

of free and corporate towns. But the Crusades neither produced their

establishment nor affected their history. After various vicissitudes of

fortune, the battle of Legnano, and the Peace of Constance, established

the independence of the towns in the north of Italy. The Crusades did

not contribute to these events; for the two sacred expeditions which

had taken place were as disastrous to peasants as to princes, and

drained Europe of all ranks of society. Consequently it was not from the

holy wars that the people gained their liberties. We find that so ill

regulated was the liberty of the towns alluded to, that anarchy soon

succeeded. Men of personal importance and wealth aspired to sovereign

honours; an overwhelming aristocracy extinguished freedom, and at the

end of the thirteenth century there were as many princes in Tuscany and

Lombardy as there had been free towns at the end of the twelfth.

It is only in the maritime cities of Italy that any indisputable

influence of the Crusades can be marked. Trade with the Christian states

in Palestine, and the furnishing of transports to the pilgrims, increased

the wealth of the commercial cities. The capture of Constantinople by

the French and Venetians was important in its issues. Venice regained

maritime ascendency; but it was soon taken from her by the Genoese, who

aided the Greeks to recover their capital. Genoa then became a leading

power in the Mediterranean, and she subdued Pisa. The rapid increase of

the wealth and power of Venice and Genoa, and the eventual destruction

of Pisa seem, then, to form the principal circumstances in commercial

history which the Crusades were instrumental in producing. But how

insignificant were these events, both locally and generally, both in

their relation to Italy and to the general history of Europe, when

compared with the discovery of a maritime passage to India!

A view of the heroic ages of Christianity, in regard to their grand

and general results, is a useful and important, though a melancholy

employment. The Crusades retarded the march of civilisation, thickened

the clouds of ignorance and superstition; and encouraged intolerance,

cruelty, and fierceness. Religion lost its mildness and charity; and war

its mitigating qualities of honour and courtesy. Such were the bitter

fruits of the holy wars![c]

INFLUENCE UPON COMMERCE

Trade with the East, at that time, embraced many more articles of

commerce than at the present day. Sugar and several other commodities

sought for as luxuries or used as medicine, which now come entirely from

the new world, were brought from Egypt or the Indies. Europeans looked

to Asia for precious gems, especially emeralds, whose worth equalled

that of diamonds, until the discovery of the rich mines in the mountains

of America. Pearls were then to be found only on the shores of oriental

seas. The Crusades gave the peoples of Europe a taste for delicacies

and Asiatic ornaments, which several of them had never before known.

Vanity and enervation made precious stones, silks, perfumes, and all the

products less useful than pleasant which nature has sown in profusion

throughout the Orient, necessary to them.

Accustomed by their intercourse with the Orientals to the burning savour

of spices, soon they were not able to get along without them. They could

not prepare famous dishes without plentiful use of spice; wines even

were perfumed with them. Romancers of the era of the Crusades sang the

praises, on nearly every page, of cinnamon, musk, clove, and ginger.

Did these writers praise some exquisite odour, it was with spices they

compared it. Did their fertile imagination build some superb palace,

the magic home of the most powerful genii, they surrounded it with an

odoriferous forest, planted with spice-bearing trees. Several Italian

towns, especially the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, got from

this, almost entirely, not only the benefits of a commerce which embraced

so many sought-for commodities, but the other advantages of a sea-trade

abandoned to the Franks, by the Greeks and Arabs.

ENRICHMENT OF CITIES

Venice, who nourished amid her waters an enormous population, seems

through her natural environment to have been peopled only with merchants

and followers of the sea. The Crusades helped the proud city to the

accomplishment of her brilliant destiny, to make the Orient tremble

at her fleets, to enrich the Occident by her industry, and to command

respect through many ages for her military power. Genoa, less happily

situated, and less rich than Venice, was, however, powerful enough to

have aroused the Sea-Republic’s jealousy. Pisa had pushed herself too

late into rivalry with Genoa, and the destruction of her harbour was the

work of implacable Genoese hatred. Florence, never free from the throes

of civil discord, obtained nevertheless great wealth from her commerce,

which she generously consecrated to the culture of the fine arts.

The Crusades, therefore, enriched the great cities in giving the

opportunity to extend their trade, and also to raise to exorbitant prices

charges for their ships. The hardships and dangers which were inseparable

from the overland route made it less and less frequented after the first

expeditions. Crowds of pilgrims made their way to the ports, and several

Italian republics amassed, in the transportation of human freight, a

degree of wealth comparable for that time to that which the merchandise

of the new world had since brought to the most flourishing cities of

modern days.

COLONISATION

The establishment of colonies in the East gave more substantial

foundation to Italy’s prosperity. Several cities, whose own interest

was a constant stimulus, and whose industry grew with success, founded

trading colonies in Egypt, Africa, throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem;

at Tyre, where the Pisans had formed a celebrated commercial group; at

Antioch, at Acre, stronghold of the Christians; at several other places

which the Crusades had opened to them; and as a result the principal

cause of the decline of Venice and other powerful Italian cities was not

alone the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but to some extent the

conquests which made Selim I master of Egypt.

Before the days of the holy wars, some of the Italian towns already

possessed trading stations in the Greek Empire, but Constantinople having

fallen into the hands of the Latins, the active spirit of the Italians

was no longer disturbed by the defiant policy of the Eastern emperors.

The Genoese founded the colony of Kaffa, which became very prosperous;

the Venetians and Pisans multiplied their warehouses in many places. The

subjects of the doge, always mindful of their commerce, demanded the

islands of the archipelago, in dividing with the French the territory

wrested from the Eastern Empire; but at the moment of taking possession

of their share they feared to weaken themselves by occupying territory so

remote and widely separated. In the end, however, they could not bring

themselves to let go a maritime country so well adapted to trade, and

the senate invited by proclamation the rich citizens to take possession

of these isles, promising to give in fief those they succeeded in making

subject to themselves. Thus it happened that the descendants of the

Greeks once so jealous of their political independence saw, so to speak,

their freedom at the auction block in the public squares of Venice.

And thus it was that the Crusades ruined the Greeks and the Arabs, and

that traffic between the East and the West had to pass almost exclusively

through the hands of the Italians, then called Lombards, active, sharp

merchants and pitiless usurers, who have left their names as a monument

to their thrift, upon the commercial streets of many a great town; those

localities where the money lender, furnishing more often a passing aid

to extravagance than real assistance to misery, exhibits his insatiable

greed. They tried, in the twelfth century, to create merchant tribunals

in several towns, to decide commercial disputes and make treaties with

strangers--the first separation of commercial jurisprudence from common

law. We shall be forgiven doubtless for not entering into any minute

description of the Italian commercial establishments in Greece and Asia;

it has been sufficient to note the turn given by the Crusades to trade in

general.

The flourishing condition to which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa in the south

of Europe were raised by trade with the East was almost equalled in the

north by that of the Hanseatic towns. Necessary commodities for use at

sea, all the products of colder climes, offered to the Teutonic Hansa

large and assured profits. As the Lombards brought into parts of Germany

where money was scarce the products of the south and east, there sprang

up an exchange of merchandise for merchandise. The Hanseatic League

apparently came into existence about the beginning of the thirteenth

century, and it is not hard to believe that the commercial activity

stimulated by the Crusades favoured the formation of the powerful

federation which breathed nothing but the love of gain, and which

bartered for all the wealth of the south with all the product of the

north.

In infusing into trade a new activity, the Crusades necessarily perfected

the art of navigation. We may well admit that the sea held less of terror

for one who confronted it to perform a religious duty, and insensibly

this fear-inspiring element became less regarded as the inevitable tomb

of all who confided to it their life or fortune. Moreover vessels ceased

to be guided by blind instinct or the insufficient experience of pilots.

The compass, whose origin it is so difficult to establish (and indeed

the instrument may not have been invented before the time of the First

Crusade), was in general use on the ships that plied the Mediterranean.

We must admire the fortunate but rash industry of the Italians who

overcame the caprices and fury of the waves. These navigators gained

experience more and more in constantly transporting pilgrims, and proved

that it was not impossible to sail the seas in winter. Venice surpassed

the whole world in the brilliance of her maritime glory. She well

deserved that a pope of this period, zealous to show his gratitude to his

defenders, presented the doge, with solemn ceremony, the wedding ring

which was for long ages the unique emblem of the republic’s naval power.

[Illustration: CRUSADER OF THE LAST CRUSADE]

Other fleets than those of Italy found their way to the Holy Land.

One might see on the Southern Sea vessels carrying those pirates

and adventurers which set out every year in great numbers from the

countries in the north, the Flemings, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes

often rendered considerable assistance to the Christians in the East.

Norwegians fought under King Baldwin at the taking of Sidon; the Flemings

rescued Lisbon from the Saracens. These northern people came in

high-decked massive ships, while the vessels in use on the Mediterranean

were very light and shallow affairs; a difference in structure which

could not be noticed without a comparison of advantages and disadvantages.

From the Crusades may be dated the establishment of the French navy.

Philip Augustus, on his return from the Holy Land, organised a national

fleet; before this the French fleets were composed of foreign vessels

hired for a certain time. The title of “admiral,” of which the name and

idea was borrowed from the Greeks or the Arabs, came into constant use

about the time of the Second Crusade, whereas the rank was never bestowed

in former days except at the commencement of a war, and went out of use

at its close.

Very soon the ocean and the Mediterranean were covered with vessels

manned by prudent and intrepid sailors. The great overland route

from Antwerp to Genoa, which was expensive, slow, and difficult, was

thenceforth given up.

Naval architecture learned a lesson from several abuses which the

Crusades momentarily had introduced into the art. Ships of excessive

capacity, too weak, and of faulty proportions had been hastily built

in order to accommodate the crowd of pilgrims. Seamen who wished their

voyages to be more lucrative and passengers desirous of travelling in

companies began to adopt these ungainly vessels. However, this departure

from the principles of shipbuilding caused the loss of many fleets and

brought about a fortunate innovation in naval architecture. Experience

taught that a single mast was not sufficient in a vessel of great size,

and we may trace to this period the custom of furnishing several masts to

a single ship--a custom whose antiquity is well proven, but whose origin

is somewhat shadowed in doubt.

An increase in the number of sails must of necessity follow the adoption

of more than one mast; ships were no longer stopped in their course

for lack of a directly favourable wind,--by trimming the sails with

skill the seaman progressed nearly always towards his destination. The

art of sailing for a certain point with the wind nearly dead ahead

must certainly be counted as one of the most ingenious and important

discoveries ever made.

INFLUENCE ON INDUSTRY

The same causes which gave a new activity to commerce served to develop

powerfully every resource of industry. At the time of the first Crusades

there were no manufactories of silken stuffs but those of the Greeks,

a species of industry they had taken from the Persians, but which they

themselves were soon forced to give over to Sicily. Then artisans leaving

the island taught the Italians the art of making silk. The industry

occupied principally the members of the religious order of the Humilies,

who invented, it is said, cloth of gold and of silver.

In the cities of the Orient the Saracens, also, had manufactures of

goods, and from them the crusaders bought textile fabrics of camels’

hair. These industries and those of the Greeks, whether the latter was

transported to Palermo or remained in the Eastern Empire, were able to

serve as models or as incentive, in Europe, to many establishments where

wool was worked. There were some famous glass manufactories at Tyre. The

sand which covers the environs of that town has the property of giving a

high degree of transparence to the vitrified matter from which beautiful

shapes were fashioned. These productions excited probably the emulation

of Venice who drew great profit from her glassware, particularly in the

fifteenth century when the use of metal vessels was abandoned for that of

glass. Here are some particulars about inventions, the only ones we have

been able to gather. Mills, whose motive power is wind, were invented

in Asia Minor where running water is very scarce. It has been supposed

that the crusaders introduced them into Europe in the twelfth century--a

conjecture which would seem to be confirmed by the application of parts

of windmills on a great number of old armorial bearings, but which

certain other evidence does not permit us to adopt. Several writers have

also presumed that the crusaders spread a knowledge of the invention of

paper, which they had derived from the Greeks, throughout Europe.

The Arabs excelled at metal working and they knew how to chase and

encrust it. They invented the art of “damascening,” which gave to steel

the brilliance and splendour of gold and silver. Antiquaries have

observed that since the Crusades the stamping of coins and the imprint

of seals seem less incorrect and some attribute this improvement to

lessons learned from the Arabs. The crusaders, however indignant at

the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem, could not but admire the

ornamentation of precious metals by which the columns and walls had been

artistically treated in honour of Mohammed. They brought away with them

more than five hundred silver vessels consecrated to the service of the

false prophet. The process of enamelling metals and the use in painting

of solid, bright colours may have been brought to perfection by the sight

of these Arabian works of art. They also brought back from the Orient a

quantity of rubies, hyacinths, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and

they found out how to set them in gold and silver, so as to give an

undying charm through the taste of their mounting and their setting.

THE MASONS ORGANISE

The Crusades contributed indirectly to the progress of art in that they

caused religious orders and devout establishments to be multiplied. The

number of sacred edifices which rose up at that time throughout Europe

is truly prodigious. Nobles and even those who had little piety were

ambitious for the title of “founder of a church.” While they may have

wrecked temples in one place, it was often their pleasure to build them

in others.

One extraordinary circumstance greatly favoured this eagerness to erect

edifices devoted to the religious cult. In France, in Italy especially,

it had been common rumour that the world was nearing its end and it was

thought unnecessary, in this event, to repair churches, and even more

useless to build new ones. But when the predicted period arrived and

there were no signs of the final catastrophe, alarm diminished, and

ashamed to have been misled by pusillanimous fear, people were anxious to

make amends for the neglect of altars and sacred places of which they

had been guilty. They were not satisfied to pay their debt to religion

by rebuilding unsafe churches, but those of whose stability there was

no question were torn down on the specious pretext that they were not

sufficiently magnificent. To accomplish their aims a society was formed

composed of men of every degree, noble and humble, who made themselves in

their devotion into carpenters and masons; they offered their services

in every direction, hauling carts like beasts of burden or binding

themselves to certain religious devotions. The cathedral of Chartres is a

monument of the labour of these pious workmen. These strange ideas having

been developed towards the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades

found in men’s minds a passion for this sort of construction, and they

added to the general enthusiasm.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

Several monuments of architecture which still excite our admiration are

the fruit of the artistic impulse received from contact with people more

devoted to its culture and from the growing fervour of devotion. The

sight of Greek and Arab monuments introduced into the West a new taste

by which that Syrian, Arab, or Saracen type of architecture, improperly

called Gothic, was brought to its highest degree of perfection.

Delicately pointed ogive arches replaced the low and ugly openings which

timid builders were afraid to raise higher and which presented but narrow

outlooks to view. Architects were judged skilful as they were able to

astonish by the boldness and daring of their own work. As in the mosques,

they loaded upon light and graceful columns enormous masses which

seemed upheld by the support of an invisible arm. They cut stones into

a thousand different and often most fanciful forms, and set into them

painted glass whose brilliant colours were admirably brought out by the

rays of the sun. And as if they foresaw the indifference of posterity to

their work, they gave it a solidity which has enabled it to go for great

lengths of time without care and restoration.

At that time appeared the most magnificent offsprings of Gothic

architecture. Then was built the leaning tower of Pisa, which has become

a marvel through the injury of time. A Greek architect built at Venice

the church of St. Mark, strongly impressed with the degenerate taste of

the Greeks. A German conceived the plan of the tower of Strasburg, whose

delicate structure seems unable to hold it so high in the air. Suger did

not disdain to study architecture; he restored his own abbey church and

left an account of his labours. The foundations of Amiens, masterpiece

of bold and delicate construction, were laid. La Sainte Chapelle at

Paris, less vast but equally delicate in style, was the finest work of

the favourite architect whom St. Louis took with him to Asia. We should

go on at too great a length were we to enumerate all the superb edifices

built in the glorious age of Gothic architecture. Barbaric, perhaps,

in ornamentation, these artists have never been equalled in principle,

in general design, stone-cutting, in knowledge of arching, and in the

majesty of their edifices as a whole.

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

Sculpture made these temples alive with a host of statues. It has

preserved for us the images of many famous men, whose portraits, drawn

from nature, we often regret not to know.

Painting was cultivated with greater zeal. Cimabue developed his happy

faculties at Florence according to the teaching of some artists from

Constantinople. He was the first to show what wonders one could expect

from an almost forgotten art, and it is right that he should be placed at

the head of all the painters that have appeared since his time.

From what has been said it is certain that the Crusades helped to infuse

into the West a taste for painting, sculpture, and architecture. The

spirit of conquest has always awakened that of the fine arts. Though

artists may flee from the clash of arms, their souls, inspired by the

commotion of great warlike movements and the general emulation of courage

and valour, exhibit at such time a noble ambition for glory. The aspect

of the theatre of desolation and carnage, swept by the conqueror’s tread,

kindles often the sacred fire, which is extinguished in times of peace

and tranquillity, and marvellous productions, conceived and matured in

deep thought, quickly follow the imperfect and hastily finished sketch.

Nations also wish to celebrate, by public monuments, triumphs watered

with their blood and tears. For this reason painters display on heroes’

heads the wings of victory, are lavish with palm and crown, and place

on every side the emblems of fame. Cities become filled with superb

buildings, and public squares peopled with folk of bronze and marble who

seem to live and breathe.[e]

HERDER’S OPINION OF THE CRUSADES

It has been customary to ascribe so many beneficial effects to the

Crusades, that, conformably to this opinion, our quarter of the globe

must require a similar fever, to agitate and excite its forces, once in

every five or six centuries; but a closer inspection will show that most

of these effects proceeded not from the Crusades, at least not from them

alone; and that among the various impulses Europe then received, they

were at most accelerating shocks, acting upon the whole in collateral or

oblique directions, with which the minds of Europeans might well have

dispensed. Indeed it is a mere phantom of the brain to frame one prime

source of events out of seven distinct expeditions, undertaken in a

period of two centuries, by different nations, and from various motives,

solely because they bore one common name.

Trade the Europeans had already opened with the Arabian states, before

the Crusades: and they were at liberty to have profited by it, and

extended it, in a far more honourable way than by predatory campaigns.

By these, indeed, carriers, bankers, and purveyors were gainers: but

all their gain accrued from the Christians, against whose property they

were in fact the crusaders. What was torn from the Greek Empire was a

disgraceful traders’ booty, serving, by extremely enfeebling this empire,

to render Constantinople an easier prey at a future period to the Turkish

hordes, who were continually pressing more closely upon it. The Venetian

Lion of St. Mark prepared the way, by the Fourth Crusade, for the Turks

to enter Europe and spread themselves so widely in it. The Genoese, it is

true, assisted one branch of the Greek emperors to re-ascend the throne:

but it was the throne of a weakened, broken empire, which fell an easy

prey to the Turks; then both the Venetians and Genoese lost their best

possessions, and finally almost all their trade, in the Mediterranean and

Euxine seas.

Chivalry arose not from the Crusades, but the Crusades from chivalry:

the flower of French and Norman knighthood appeared in Palestine in

the first campaign. The Crusades, indeed, contributed rather to rob

chivalry of its proper honours, and to convert real armed knights into

mere armorial ones. For in Palestine many assumed the crested helmet,

which in Europe they durst not have borne: they brought home with them

armorial devices and nobility, which they transmitted to their families,

and thus introduced a new class, the nobility of the herald’s office, and

in time also nobility by letters patent. As the number of the ancient

dynasties, the true equestrian nobility, lessened, these new men sought

to obtain possessions and hereditary prerogatives, like them: they

carefully enumerated their ancestors, acquired dignities and privileges,

and in a few generations assumed the title of ancient nobility; though

they had not the slightest pretensions to rank with those dynasties which

were princes to them. Every man that bore arms in Palestine might become

a knight: the first Crusades were years of general jubilee for Europe.

These new nobles in right of military service were soon of great use

to growing monarchy, which cunningly knew how to avail itself of them

against such of the superior vassals as still remained. Thus passion

balances passion, and one appearance counteracts another: and at length

the nobility of the camp and the court totally obliterated the ancient

chivalry.

The arts and sciences, too, were nowise promoted by the proper crusaders.

The disorderly troops that first flocked to Palestine had not the least

notion of them; and were not likely to acquire them in the suburbs

of Constantinople, or from the Turks and mamelukes in Asia. In the

succeeding campaigns we need not reflect on the short time the armies

passed there, and the wretched circumstances under which this time was

often spent merely on the confines of the country, to dissipate the

splendid dream of great discoveries imported thence. The pendulum clock,

which the emperor Frederick II received as a present from Kamil, did not

introduce gnomonics into Europe; the Grecian palaces, which the crusaders

admired in Constantinople, did not improve the style of European

architecture. Some crusaders, particularly Frederick I and II, laboured

to promote the progress of knowledge: but Frederick I did this ere he

beheld Asia; and the short visit paid that country by Frederick II served

only as a fresh stimulus to urge him forward in that course of government

which he had long before chosen. Not one of the spiritual orders of

knighthood introduced any new knowledge into Europe, or contributed to

its cultivation.

All that can be said in favour of the Crusades, therefore, is confined to

a few occasions, on which they co-operated with causes already existing,

and involuntarily promoted them.

(1) As multitudes of wealthy vassals and knights repaired to the Holy

Land in the first campaigns, and many of them never returned, their

estates were of course sold or swallowed up by others. By this they

profited who could, the liege lord, the church, the cities already

established, each after his own manner: this promoted and accelerated the

course of things, tending to confirm the regal power by the erection of a

middle class, but was by no means its commencement.

(2) Men became acquainted with countries, people, religions, and

constitutions of which they were before ignorant; their narrow sphere of

vision was enlarged; they acquired new ideas, new impulses. Attention

was drawn to things which would otherwise have been neglected; what had

long existed in Europe was employed to better purpose; and as the world

was found to be wider than had been supposed, curiosity was excited

after a knowledge of its remotest parts. The mighty conquests made by

Jenghiz Khan in the north and east of Asia attracted men’s eyes chiefly

towards Tatary; whither Marco Polo the Venetian, Rubruquis (Guillaume

de Rubrouck), the Frenchman, and John de Plano Carpino (Giovanni Piano

Carpini), an Italian, travelled with very different views: the first,

for the purpose of trade; the second, to satisfy royal curiosity; the

third, sent by the pope, to make converts of the people. These travels,

of course, have no connection with the Crusades, before and after which

they were undertaken. The Levant itself is less known to us from these

expeditions, than might have been expected: the accounts the Orientals

give of it, even in the period when Syria swarmed with Christians, are

still indispensable to us.

(3) Finally, in this holy theatre Europeans became better acquainted

with one another, though not in a manner much to be prized. With this

more intimate acquaintance kings and princes for the most part brought

home an implacable enmity: in particular the wars between England

and France derived from them fresh fuel. The unfortunate experiment,

that a Christian republic could and might contend in unison against

infidels, formed a precedent for similar wars in Europe, which have since

extended to other quarters of the globe. At the same time it cannot

be denied that, while the neighbouring powers of Europe obtained a

closer inspection of their mutual weaknesses and strength, some obscure

hints were given for a more comprehensive policy, and a new system of

relationship in peace and war. Everyone was desirous of wealth, trade,

conveniences, and luxuries; as an uncultivated mind is prone to admire

these in strangers, and envy them in the hands of another. Few, who

returned from the East, could be satisfied with European manners; even

their heroism left much behind, awkwardly imitated Asia in the West, or

longed for fresh travels and adventures. For the actual and permanent

good produced by any event is always proportionate to its consonancy with

reason.

Unfortunate would it have been for Europe if, at the time its military

swarms were contending for the Holy Sepulchre in a corner of Syria, the

arms of Jenghiz Khan had been sooner and more powerfully turned toward

the West. Then probably our quarter of the globe would have been the

prey of the Mongols, like Poland and Russia; and its nations might have

dislodged, with the pilgrim’s staff in their hands, to tell their beads

round the object of their contention.[b]

GIBBON ON THE RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES

As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though

not the memory, was erased in the Mohammedan realms of Egypt and Syria.

The faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane

desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the

simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration

from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of

the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only

vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for

the recovery of their empire, they emulated the valour, discipline,

and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of the West

they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in

the rights of man; and some institutions of public and private life

were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople and

Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the

fathers and classics were at length honoured with a Greek version. But

the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by

persecution; and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the

two churches.

If we compare, at the era of the Crusades, the Latins of Europe with the

Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry,

and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the

scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority

may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and

imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time

were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the

Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a

series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world,

and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more

cultivated regions of the East. Yet in a reign of sixty years the Latins

of Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their subjects;

and the manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives might enjoy

without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed the oracle of the Western

universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of ascending

to the fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and

remote version from the Jews and Moors of Andalusia.

The principle of the Crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most

important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious

to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and

each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions.

The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice

by new superstitions; and the establishment of the Inquisition, the

mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and

the final progress of idolatry flowed from the baleful fountain of the

holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their

reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times

of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and

fable.

The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East,

would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their

native country; the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have

overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been

enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the

climates of the East.

In one respect we can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the

Crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil.

The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the

soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of

ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone

deserved the name of citizens and men. Among the cause that undermined

that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the Crusades.

The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often

extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty

extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the

fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of

the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most

numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration, which

destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest, gave air and scope to

the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[82] In the entertaining romance of _Le Renard_, written in the

thirteenth century, it is said, that foreign pilgrimages had done no

good to anybody, and that many good people had been made bad by them.

In tracing the history of morals, it is curious to observe, that Piers

Ploughman speaks of pilgrims and palmers, who on their return have leave

to tell lies all the rest of their lives.

[Illustration]

APPENDIX. FEUDALISM

[Sidenote: [800-1450 A.D.]]

To the average mind the term Middle Ages is a synonym for chaos. And,

compared with the periods before and after, it is indeed chaos. But, in

a sense, all human history is “without form,” even if not “void,” and

the comparative simplicity which we see in certain periods is arrived at

chiefly by a process of the cancellation of numberless confusing details

and the concentration of the attention on certain large and picturesque

personages or movements which were actually far from holding such stark

and eminent importance in the eyes of contemporaries.

Thus in the case of Alexander’s conquest of that little segment of space

which he called “the world,” to the contemporary Athenian, Alexander

was almost a myth lost in the wilderness of the East as in a fog. The

Athenian found his immediate troubles and triumphs in his own family, in

his shop, in his deme. To myriads of other peoples, however, Alexander’s

very existence was unknown; and splendid intrigues, superb politics,

lofty feats of statecraft and of warfare were taking place far from the

orbit of Alexander. These deeds were never chronicled, or the chronicles

are lost, or perhaps only waiting discovery. Consequently we are ignorant

of these confusing histories, and sum up in the exclusive phrase

“Alexandrian epoch” a vast web of what were chaos, did we but know more

of it.

But still, taking history as we have it, the Middle Ages torment and

bewilder us with the variety and seeming unimportance of their events.

They are called the Dark Ages, though, upon a closer look, they deserve

the name no more than the Night herself with all her revelation of the

stars which the Day absorbs in the one central splendour of the sun.

Let the name of Dark Ages stand, however, though it must not be forgotten

that human history at least dreamed and walked in this apparent sleep.

There is no lack of chronicle and no lack of action. Nor, in spite of the

common idea, was there lack of progress. The barbarians had come down in

avalanches of stolid clay upon the gardens of civilisation. During the

seeming idleness the seeds were at work and ideals were busily thrusting

upward till of a sudden they burst forth in that springtime known as the

Renaissance.

The history of each major country is given, in this work, its own

chronicle, but for the better comprehension of the forces that were

making possible the Renaissance and driving mankind to cry aloud for

a betterment of conditions, it will be useful to set apart for brief

consideration certain special phases and forces of Middle Age life. It

will make it the easier to comprehend that life was by no means without

the ferment of progress during that period which we so arbitrarily cleave

out of history and put aside as the Middle Age.

Throughout the various histories of modern nations will be found a

discussion of the multiform phases of feudalism. It is desirable,

however, to give it some isolated discussion, though necessarily brief. A

guide might be found in the words of Bryce, whose definition of feudalism

also makes a good beginning; and in the words of the philosopher Hegel:[a]

BRYCE AND HEGEL ON FEUDALISM

“This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman soil,

nor for showing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into Germany,

how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet under Pepin

and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the impress which

determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his successors allowed

it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be possible here to examine

its social and moral influence. Politically it might be defined as the

system which made the owner of a piece of land, whether large or small,

the sovereign of those who dwelt thereon; an annexation of personal to

territorial authority more familiar to eastern despotism than to the free

races of primitive Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are

explained, feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation,

each tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants

held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so uniform,

the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly bound to its

support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society that grasp

which the struggles of more than twenty generations have scarcely shaken

off.”[b]

The three steps by which feudalism was reached are thus broadly summed up

by Hegel:

“While the first period of the German world ends brilliantly with a

mighty empire, the second is commenced by the reaction resulting from

the antithesis occasioned by that infinite falsehood which rules the

destinies of the Middle Ages and constitutes their life and spirit.

This reaction is, first, that of the particular nationalities against

the universal sovereignty of the Frankish Empire, manifesting itself in

the splitting up of that great empire. The second reaction is that of

individuals against legal authority and the executive power--against

subordination, and the military and judicial arrangements of the

constitution. This produced the isolation and therefore defencelessness

of individuals. The universality of the power of the state disappeared

through this reaction; individuals sought protection with the powerful,

and the latter became oppressors. Thus was gradually introduced a

condition of universal independence, and this protecting relation was

then systematised into the feudal system.”[c]

COMMENCEMENT OF THE FEUDAL RÉGIME

The true heirs of Charlemagne were not the kings of France, nor those

of Germany and Italy, at first, but rather the feudal lords. Not only

had the empire been dismembered after the deposition of Charles the Fat,

but its composing kingdoms and even its great fiefs as well. Dukes and

counts had been quite as powerless as kings against the Northmen, Saxons,

and Hungarians, and quite as unable to maintain the vast domains under

their control. Populations whose leaders did not know how to bring them

together for concerted action had acquired, little by little, the habit

of depending upon themselves alone.

After having fled for a long time at the approach of the heathen to the

woods among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted people had turned their

heads and refused to abandon all their possessions without an attempt

at defence. Here and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, on the

hill overlooking the plain, entrenchments and walls were raised where

the brave and the strong held out. An edict of 853 directed the counts

and vassals of the king to repair their old castles and to build new

ones. The country was soon covered with fortresses against which invaders

flung themselves in vain. A few reverses quickly taught these bold

adventurers prudence. They no longer dared to venture so far, to where

these strongholds had sprung up from the ground on all sides, and the new

invasion meeting with fresh obstacles and difficulties came to an end in

the following century. It was not until afterwards that the masters of

these castles became the terror of the countryside they had once helped

to save.

[Illustration: A FEUDAL CASTLE]

Feudalism, so oppressive in its age of decline, had therefore its time

of lawful and just existence. All power is raised up by its virtues and

falls by its abuse.

But what was the new régime? We have seen the matter of acquiring and

holding property become more uniform among barbarian nations, by the

settlement of heredity upon lands ceded by the king, and the law’s

sanction given to another kind of usurpation--the heredity of the royal

offices. It was generally the owners of freehold property or of royal

lands who became the holders of these offices, which brought about the

union of sovereignty and proprietorship in the same hands. This is

essentially what constitutes feudalism.

In the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire public offices in all

degrees of the hierarchy were bestowed directly by the ruler, and their

disposition remained always in his power, so that he could take them

back when and under what condition he pleased. Furthermore the public

official held neither the land of the province he governed nor the

control of any particular piece of property that he might happen to own

as a private citizen. He was bound therefore, as landlord, by the civil

law applicable to the whole empire, and as governor, to the voluntary

will of his sovereign. In the feudal régime it was exactly the opposite.

The lord who _enfeoffed_, that is, conceded by title of sub-fief some

portion of his own fief, gave up entirely to the grantee or _vassal_

the property and its control, and it could not be taken back unless the

vassal failed to perform some part of the agreement made at the time of

receiving the investiture.

One lord might obtain land from another and thus become his vassal. The

former had to go to the latter, and between the two there took place the

ceremony known as homage. Kneeling before his future lord, with their

hands together, the future vassal proclaimed loudly that he would be

the other’s _homme_, or man, that is to say, that he would be attached

and devoted to him, defend him with his own life, somewhat as the

ancient _leudes_ of Germany did towards their warrior chiefs. After this

profession, which is homage in the original sense of the word, he took an

oath of fidelity or faith to the lord, promising to fulfil the new duties

required of him under the new title of _homme_ of the lord. When he had

contracted this double tie, the lord no longer feared to confide his land

to a man so strongly bound to him, and gave it to him by investiture

or seizin, accompanied with symbolic emblems--a sod of grass, a stone,

or some other object according to the custom of the fief. “It is the

custom,” says Otto von Freising,[e] “to deliver up kingdoms by the sword,

and provinces by the standard.” This three-part ceremony of homage once

completed, the reciprocal obligations began.

RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS OF VASSAL AND LORD

There were in the first place the moral obligations of the vassal towards

his lord, such as keeping his secrets, revealing the machinations of

his enemies, to give one’s horse to him in battle if he be unseated,

to take his place in captivity, to respect and to cause his honour

to be respected, to assist him with good counsel, etc. The material

obligations, the services due from the vassal, were of several kinds.

(1) Military service. This was the very basis of the feudal relation and

the principle of that state of society which does not contain permanent

and organised armies. The vassal on the requisition of his lord was bound

to follow him, either alone, or to bring such and such a number of men

according to the importance of his fief. The duration of this service

also was dependent on the same thing--it might be sixty, forty, or only

twenty days--a system which did not permit of distant expeditions and

could be employed only in neighbourhood or private wars. There were some

fiefs where military service held only within the feudal domain, or could

be called on only for purposes of defence.

(2) The “fiance,” or obligation to serve the lord in his court of

justice. As under the feudal régime the lord replaced the states general,

and was invested with the functions of public power, it was necessary in

order to exercise these to hold at his command the forces disseminated

through the hands of his vassals. War was one of these functions; justice

was another.

[Illustration: KNIGHTS AND PEASANTS]

The lord summonsed his men to court, and they had to attend, either to

serve him with their advice or to take part in the judging of disputes

brought before him, and they thus bound themselves to assistance in

carrying out the judgments their own mouths had proclaimed.

(3) The “aids,” some legal and compulsory, others courteous and

voluntary. Legal aids were usually demanded under three conditions--when

the lord was a prisoner and required to pay a ransom, when he knighted

his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter in marriage.

This aid took the place of the public imposts of ancient and modern

legislatures, but as may be seen was of a totally different character.

It was not, in fact, periodic or exacted in a regular manner for public

needs; it had the appearance of a voluntary gift under certain peculiar

circumstances. An annual tax would have seemed an affront to the vassals.

To these services must be added certain feudal rights by which the lord,

in virtue of his sovereignty, intervened in any important change the

ceded fief might undergo. Some of these were for him a new source of

revenue. These rights were the relief, a sum of money due from every

major individual who entered into possession of a fief by right of

succession, and more particularly if that succession did not take place

in line of direct descent; the right to the alienation tax, which he

who sold or alienated his fief in any fashion must pay; the right of

disinheritance and confiscation by which the fief reverted to the lord

when the vassal died without heirs or when he had forfeited his fief or

deserved for any reason to be deprived of it; the right of guardianship,

by virtue of which the lord, during the minority of his vassal, undertook

his tutelage and the administration of his fief, and enjoyed its revenue;

the marriage right, that is to say, the right of the overlord to provide

a husband for the heiress of a fief, and oblige her to choose from the

suitors he presents.

The vassal who fulfilled his obligations fully and conscientiously was

as nearly as possible master of his own fief. He could in turn enfeoff

the whole or part of his domain, and become in turn the sovereign lord of

vassals of a lower rank, or _vavasseurs_, holding towards him the same

obligations as he to his own lord. Such was the fabric of the hierarchy.

If the vassal had his obligations, the lord also had his. He could not

take back a fief arbitrarily or without a legitimate reason from his

vassal. He must protect him if he were attacked, see that he received

justice, etc.

Let us note that the feudal system in developing itself made a fief of

everything. Every concession--for hunting in the forests, for ferrying

across rivers, for acting as guides on the roads, for escorting

merchants, for running communal ovens in the towns--every useful

employment, in fact, conceded in return for fidelity and homage, became a

fief.

Lords multiplied concessions of this kind in order to multiply the number

of men owing them military service. But the fief itself, to which the

rights of justice were attached, remained in general undivided and was

handed down according to the laws of primogeniture.

FEUDAL JUSTICE

The obligation of the vassals to attend the courts of their lord has made

it clear that the principle of feudal justice was trial by one’s peers,

a principle which was entirely in the customs and even the institutions

of the Germanic peoples, where freedmen were tried by an assembly of

freedmen.

They called peers (_pares_, equals), vassals of the same lord settled

around him on his domain, and holding fiefs of the same rank. The king

himself had his peers who were those holding their estates directly from

him, not only as feudal lord but as king. Each had the right to be judged

by his peers before his lord. If the peers refused him justice or the

vassal believed that it had been unfairly rendered, he made a complaint

“in default of right,” and brought the matter to the attention of his

lord’s suzerain. It was to this higher tribunal that it was necessary

always to bring disputes which arose between a lord and his vassal.

But this right of appeal did not entirely satisfy the spirit of

independence which animated this warlike society. The lords preserved

with jealous care another right of appeal--that which is addressed to the

power of arms; they preferred to obtain justice for themselves rather

than receive it from the hands of others. So thoroughly was the custom

enrooted in their manners that the king regulated the formalities which

preceded this species of warfare and had for their object the warning

of the party to be attacked and the giving of an opportunity to place

himself in a state of defence. After all, our international wars proceed

from the same principle and are no better. The lords waged their wars

with their little armies as we with our greater ones. Only hostilities

had a more individual character since the states were much smaller.[i]

Besides the _Fehde_ or right of private warfare--an old Germanic

custom--there was the “trial by combat,” which must not be confused with

it. The true “judicial combat,” in which champions fight for a cause,

or for the settlement of a quarrel, is a product of the Middle Ages,

when faith in God was as strong as faith in the strength of the human

arm. This custom became so universal a method of settlement of difficult

questions that it was even used by Alfonso, the great Spanish lawgiver,

to decide upon the introduction of new laws concerning inheritance. This

much at least may be said in favour of it, that it was less of an evil

than the torture which tended to supplant it in judicial proceedings in

the later Middle Ages.[a]

Justice was not the prerogative of all the lords to the same extent.

It was distinguished in France by three degrees, high, low, and middle

justice. The first alone gave the right of life and death. In general it

may be said it was the largest and most important fiefs that had powers

of justice to the greatest extent. Still it was possible for a simple

_vavasseur_ to possess the functions of “high justice,” and in some

places the lord who could dispense but “low justice” could punish with

death the robber caught at his crime. Within these variable limits the

lord alone dispensed justice on his fief, and when, later on, royalty

usurped the right, there was a revolution.

To complete the enumeration of rights inherent in the sovereignty of

the lords it is necessary to mention two: first, that of recognising

throughout the whole extent of the fief no higher legislative power. We

find in the last collection of laws made in the ninth century by Charles

the Simple the final manifestation of law-bearing public power. After

that, there were no laws, civil or political, to be applied generally,

but only local customs, isolated, independent, and differing one from the

other, in fact possessing a territorial character in distinction from

those of the barbaric nations, which were entirely personal.

Second, the right to coin money, which was always a sign of lordship.

Before Charlemagne it seems that some private individuals, who doubtless

possessed the privilege, coined money. After him this was one of the

prerogatives of the lords, and at the advent of Hugh Capet there were no

less than 150 who exercised this right.