The envoys of the court of Rome were received with distinction in all

the states of Europe, and neglected neither evangelical exhortations,

nor seductions, nor promises, nor any of the resources of profane

policy, to induce Christian princes to join the crusade proclaimed by

the pope. The sacred college rejoiced at the success of their mission,

and the pope, to prove his gratitude to Heaven, and to draw down divine

blessings upon his enterprise, ordered that processions should be made

and prayers put up, during three days, in the capital of the Christian

world. He himself celebrated the divine office, distributed alms, and

walked barefooted and with his head uncovered to the church of the Holy

Apostles.

Sadoletus, secretary to the Holy See, one of the most distinguished

favourites of the Muses, and who, in the judgment of Erasmus, possessed

in his writings the copiousness and the manner of Cicero, pronounced,

in the presence of the clergy and the Roman people, a discourse, in

which he celebrated the zeal and the activity of the sovereign pontiff,

the eagerness of the Christian princes to make peace with each other,

and the desire they evinced to unite their powers against the Turks:

the orator reminded his auditory of the emperor of Germany and the king

of France, glorious pillars of Christendom; of the army of Charles,

king of Castile, whose youth exhibited all the virtues of ripened

age; of the king of England, the invincible defender of the faith; of

Emanuel, king of Portugal, always ready to sacrifice his own interests

to those of the Church; of Louis II., king of Hungary; and Sigismund,

king of Poland; the first, a young prince, the hope of Christians; the

second, worthy to be their leader; of the king of Denmark, with whose

devotion to religion Europe was well acquainted; and of James, king

of Scotland, the examples of whose family must keep him in the road

of virtue and glory. Among the Christian states, upon which humanity

and religion must build their hopes, Sadoletus did not forget the

Helvetians, a powerful and warlike nation, which burned with such zeal

for the war against the Turks, that its numerous bands of soldiers

were already prepared to march, and only waited for the signal of the

head of the Church. The holy orator finished by a vehement apostrophe

against the race of the Ottomans, whom he threatened with the united

forces of Europe, and by an invocation to God, whom he conjured to

bless the arms of so many princes, of so many Christian nations, in

order that the empire of the world might be wrested from Mahomet, and

that the praises of Jesus Christ might at length resound from the south

to the north, and from the west to the east.

Leo X. was constantly engaged with the crusade he had preached. He

consulted with able captains, and acquired information concerning

the strength of the Turks, and upon the means of attacking them with

advantage: the most certain means was to raise numerous armies. In his

letters to the princes and the faithful, he exhorted Christians not to

neglect prayers and the austerities of penitence; but he recommended

them above all things to prepare their arms, and to oppose their

redoubtable enemies with strength and valour. In concert with the

principal states of Christendom, he laid down the plan of the holy war.

The emperor of Germany was to furnish an army to which the Hungarian

and Polish cavalry should be united. The king of France, with all his

forces, all those of the Venetians, and several states of Italy, and

sixteen thousand Swiss, was to embark at Brindisi, and make a descent

upon the coast of Greece; whilst the fleets of Spain, Portugal, and

England, should set sail from Carthagena and the neighbouring ports,

to transport Spanish troops to the shores of the Hellespont. The

pope proposed to embark himself at the port of Ancona, to repair to

Constantinople, under the walls of which city all the forces of the

Christian powers were to meet.

This plan was gigantic, and never would the Ottoman empire have been

in greater danger, if such vast designs could have been carried into

execution. But the Christian monarchs were only able to observe the

truce proclaimed by the pope, and which they had accepted for a very

few months; each of them had engaged to furnish for the crusade troops

which every day became more necessary to them in their own states, and

which they wished to aggrandize or defend. The old age of Maximilian,

and the approaching vacancy of the imperial throne, at that time held

all the ambitious in a state of expectation: very shortly the rivalry

of Charles V. and Francis I. rekindled war in Europe, and Christendom,

disturbed by the quarrels of princes, no longer thought it probable

they should be invaded by the Turks.

But these political dissensions were not the only obstacles to the

execution of the projects of Leo X. Another difficulty arose from the

levy of the tenths. The clergy everywhere appeared to have the same

indifference for the wars which ruined them. The people dreaded to

see their alms employed in enterprises which had not for object the

triumph of religion. The legate of the pope in Spain addressed himself

first to the Arragonese, who replied by a formal refusal, expressed in

a national synod. Cardinal Ximenes declared, in the name of the king

of Castile, that the Spaniards did not believe in the threats of the

Turks, and that they would not give their money until the pope had

positively announced how he would employ it. If the dispositions and

the will of the court of Rome found less resistance and occasioned no

troubles in England or France, it was because Cardinal Wolsey, minister

of Henry VIII., was associated in the mission of the apostolic legate,

and that Leo X. abandoned the tenths of his kingdom to Francis I.

We have before us several historical documents which have never been

printed, and which throw a great light upon the circumstances of

which we are speaking. The first is a letter from Francis I., dated

from Amboise, the 16th of December, 1516, by which _Master Josse de

Lagarde, doctor in theology, vicar-general of the cathedral church of

Thoulouse_, is named commissary, _touching the fact of the crusade in

the diocese_. The king of France exposes in another letter the aim of

the jubilate that is about to be opened: _it was to implore means to

make war against the infidels, and conquer the Holy Land and the empire

of Greece, detained and usurped by the said infidels_. To these letters

patent are joined instructions given by the king, in concert with the

legate of the pope, for the execution of the bull which orders the

preaching of the crusade in the kingdom of France during the two years

1517 and 1518. These instructions, in the first place, recommend the

choice of good preachers, charged _to make good and devout sermons to

the people, and to explain the faculties and dispensations which are

contained in the bull_, as well as why _the just and holy causes for

which it is ordered, that during two years all other indulgences, all

other general and particular pardons, are suspended and revoked_.

After having spoken of the choice of preachers, and of the manner in

which they ought to preach, the letters patent of the king give some

instructions upon the choice of confessors. The commissary-general of

the crusade could appoint as many as seemed necessary to him for every

church in which were _troncs et questes_ (poor-boxes and gatherings)

for the jubilee. He was commanded to name six for the cathedral of the

diocese, _gens de bonne conscience, hors de suspicion_ (worthy people,

above suspicion). The ecclesiastics thus chosen by the commissary had

the mission to confess all such as were desirous of indulgences; and to

avoid the disorders that might arise from the spirit of rivalry, they

had, to the exclusion of all others, the power to make compositions and

restitutions, and give absolution, &c. &c.

In short, the royal ordinance omitted none of the circumstances which

accompanied the preaching of a crusade, or of the forms which ought to

be adopted in the distribution of indulgences. It goes so far as to

regulate the shape of the _troncs_ placed in the churches to receive

the offerings of the faithful, and the religious ceremonies that

were to be observed during the jubilee.[84] Among other orders, one

commanded that a great number of confessionals, or bills of absolution

and indulgence, should be made; that these bills, signed by a notary,

should be sent to the commissary-general, who would seal them WITH THE

SEAL sent by the king, and that there should be left upon them a blank

space for the name of him or her who wished to procure them. The royal

instruction added, that the commissary should cause his _tronc_ to be

properly and handsomely set up, and that there should be in the centre

of it a large handsome cross, upon which should be written, in great,

fair letters, IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. In order that nothing might be

wanting to excite the people to devotion, it was besides ordered, that

solemn processions should be made, and that in them a handsome banner

should be carried, upon which should be, on one side, the portraits of

the pope and the king of France, and on the other, _paintings full of

Turks and other infidels_.

In this ordinance, of which it gives us great pleasure to recall the

spirit and the expressions, that which history particularly observes,

is the numerous precautions against infidelity and fraud. The

distributors of the indulgences were obliged to consult an assessment

for their government in all expenses and reinstatements. The _troncs_,

in which the money of the faithful was deposited, had three locks and

three keys, and were only to be opened in the presence of witnesses;

among the documents we have quoted, is one which is the legal order

for the opening of the _troncs_,[85] with an account rendered of the

receipts and expenditure, in which the most minute details are not

neglected, and which shows to what a degree exactitude and watchfulness

were carried. These rigorous precautions were the more necessary, from

the people being led to be suspicious by the examples of past times;

it was pretty well known that many of the collectors of the money

for the crusades were not _people of worth, and above suspicion_.

The more sacred the motive for levying this tribute was said to be,

the more promptly was suspicion awakened; and the more anxious did

charity itself appear as to the manner in which its offerings might

be expended. Upon this point, as upon others, authority had so much

the more necessity for keeping a severe watch, from there always

being among the orators of the crusades some who showed more zeal

than wisdom, and whose preachings were really a subject of scandal.

As most of them received a salary proportionate with the amount

of money dropped into the _troncs_ of the churches, many did not

hesitate to exaggerate the promises of the sovereign pontiff and the

privileges attached to gifts of charity. History gives us the example

of a preacher who put forth from the evangelical pulpit the following

culpable maxim: _When a piece of money shall be placed in the tronc of

the crusade for the deliverance of a soul from purgatory, immediately

that soul will be delivered, and will fly away towards heaven_. The

Faculty of Theology of Paris censured this proposition as contrary to

the dogmas of the Church. The prudence of the heads of the Gallican

Church, and the wise measures adopted by the king of France, thus

prevented great disorders. It was not so in Germany, where the greatest

excitement and dissatisfaction prevailed, and where seeds of heresy and

trouble began to spring up even in the bosom of the clergy.

It may have been observed, how much more easy the court of Rome

had hitherto daily made the opening of the treasury of pontifical

indulgences. In the early expeditions to the East, these indulgences

were only granted to the pilgrims of the Holy Land. They were

afterwards granted to all who contributed to the support of the

Crusaders. Still later, they were granted to the faithful who listened

to the sermons of the preachers of the crusades; sometimes even to

those who were present at the mass of the pope’s legates. As the

distribution or sale of indulgences was an inexhaustible source of

wealth, Leo X. took upon him to grant them not only to those who, by

their alms, were willing to aid in defraying the expenses of the war

against the Turks, but to all the faithful whose pious liberality

should contribute to the amount necessary for the completion of the

building of the church of St. Peter, which had been begun by his

predecessor Julius II. Although this destination might have something

noble and truly useful in it; although it might be worthy, in some

sort, of an age in which the arts burst forth with great splendour,

many Christians, particularly in Germany, saw nothing in it but an

actual profanation, and a new means by which the court of Rome sought

to enrich itself at the expense of the faithful.

Albert, archbishop of Mayence, charged with appointing the preachers

of the jubilee and the distributors of papal indulgences, named for

Saxony, Dominicans, to the exclusion of Cordeliers or Augustines,

who had sometimes filled these kinds of missions. The latter showed

themselves jealous of this preference; and as no precaution had been

taken either to avert the effects of this species of rivalry, or put

a stop to the abuses which might be committed, it happened that the

Augustines censured severely the conduct, manners, and opinions of the

Dominicans, and that the latter but too well justified the complaints

of their adversaries.

Luther, an Augustine monk, put himself forward in these violent

quarrels, and distinguished himself by his fervid eloquence;[86] he

spoke strongly against the preachers that had been selected to receive

the contributions of the faithful; and among the propositions he put

forth from the pulpit, history has preserved the following, which

was censured by Leo X.: “It is a sin to resist the Turks, seeing

that Providence makes use of this faithless nation, to visit the

iniquities of his people.” This strange maxim obtained faith amongst

the partisans of Luther; and when the pope’s legate demanded, at the

diet of Ratisbon, the levy of the tenths destined for the crusade, he

met with a warm opposition. Murmurs and complaints arose in all parts

of Germany. The court of Rome was reproached with putting holy things

up to sale: it was compared to the unfaithful shepherd, who shears the

sheep confided to his care; it was accused of despoiling credulous

people; of ruining nations and kings; and of accumulating upon

Christians more miseries than the domination of the Turks could cause

them.

For more than a century, these kinds of accusations resounded

throughout Germany, every time that money was raised for crusades;

or that any tribute whatever was imposed upon the Christians by the

sovereign pontiff. The reformers took advantage of this disposition of

men’s minds to circulate new ideas, and to attempt a revolution in the

Church. Among a nation led by its genius and character to speculative

ideas, philosophic and religious novelties were sure to find more

warm partisans and ardent apostles than elsewhere. It must likewise

be added, that Germany was one of the countries of Christendom that

Rome had, in its omnipotence, spared the least; and that the spirit

of opposition had _there_ taken rise, amidst long quarrels between

the priesthood and the empire. When once the tie that united the minds

of people was broken, and the yoke of an authority consecrated by

time was shaken off, opposition knew no bounds; there was no longer a

limit to opinions: the Church was attacked on all sides at once, and

by a thousand different sects, all opposed to the court of Rome, and

most of them opposed to each other. From that period burst forth that

revolution which was destined to separate for ever many nations of

Christendom from the Romish communion.

It is not our task to describe the events which accompanied the schism

of Luther; but it is curious to observe, that the origin of the

Reformation should be connected, not directly with the crusades, but

with the abuse of the indulgences promulgated for the crusades.

Like all who begin revolutions, Luther was not at all aware of the

extent to which his opposition to the court of Rome might be carried:

he at first began by attacking some abuses of the pontifical authority,

and soon finished by attacking the authority itself. The opinions he

had kindled by his eloquence, the passions he had given birth to among

his disciples, led him himself much further than he could possibly have

foreseen: those who had the greatest reason to combat the doctrines of

the reformers saw, no more than he did, what those doctrines were to

bring with them. Germany, divided into a thousand different states,

and given up to all kinds of disorders, had no authority sufficiently

strong and sufficiently prescient to anticipate the effects of a

schism. At the court of Rome nobody could have believed that a simple

monk could ever shake the pillars of the Church. Amidst the pomp and

the splendour of the arts which he patronized, and diverted by the

cares of an ambitious policy, Leo X. perhaps was too neglectful of the

progress of Luther. Above all, he was wrong in entirely abandoning the

expedition against the Turks, which he had announced to the Christian

world, and which might, at least at the first, have offered a useful

distraction to minds agitated by ideas of reformation. The undertaking

of a holy war which he had followed up with so much warmth at the

beginning of his pontificate and for which the poets promised him

eternal glory,—this enterprise, at his death, no longer engaged his

thoughts, or those of his contemporaries.

In the mean time Soliman, the successor of Selim, had recently taken

possession of Belgrade, and threatened the isle of Rhodes. This isle

was then the last colony of the Christians in Asia. As long as the

Knights of St. John remained masters of it, the sultan of the Turks had

reason to fear that some great expedition might be formed in the West

for the recovery of Palestine and Syria, or even for the conquest of

Egypt, which had lately been united to the Ottoman empire.

The grand-master of the Hospitallers sent to solicit the assistance of

Christian Europe. Charles V. had just united, in his own person, the

imperial crown with that of the Spains. Entirely occupied with opposing

the power of France, and anxious to draw Pope Adrian VI. into a war

against the most Christian king, the emperor was very little affected

by the danger which threatened the Knights of Rhodes. The sovereign

pontiff did not dare to succour them, or solicit for them the support

of Christendom. Francis I. exhibited more generous sentiments; but in

the situation in which his kingdom was then placed, he was unable to

send them the assistance he had promised.

The Knights of Rhodes were left to their own resources. History has

celebrated the labours and the prodigies of heroism by which the order

of the Hospitallers illustrated its defence. After many months of

combats, Rhodes fell into the hands of Soliman. It was a sad spectacle

to behold the grand-master L’Isle-Adam, the father of his knights

and of his subjects, dragging with him the sad remains of the order,

and all the people of Rhodes, who had determined to follow him. He

landed at first upon the coast of Naples, not far from the spot where

Virgil makes the pious Æneas land, with the glorious wreck of Troy.

If the spirit of the crusades could have revived, what heart could

have remained unmoved, at seeing this venerable old man, followed by

his faithful companions in misfortune, seeking an asylum, imploring

compassion, and soliciting, as a reward of their past services, a

little corner of earth upon which he and his warriors might still

unfurl the standard of religion, and combat the infidels.

When the grand-master set forward on his march towards Rome, Adrian

VI. had declared war against the king of France; a league was formed

by the sovereign pontiff, the emperor, the king of England, and the

duke of Milan. In this state of affairs, the Christians of the East

could not hope for any succour. After the death of Adrian, Pope Clement

VII. showed himself more favourable to the order of the Hospitallers.

He received the grand-master with all the demonstrations of a

paternal tenderness. When the chancellor of the order related, in the

consistory, the exploits and the reverses of the knights, the sovereign

pontiff and the Romish prelates shed tears, and promised to interest

all the powers of the Christian world for such noble sufferers.

Unfortunately for the order of St. John, the powers of Europe were more

than ever divided among themselves. Francis I. was made prisoner at the

battle of Pavia. The pope, who had wished to resume the old papal title

of the conciliator, only drew down upon himself the hatred and the

anger of Charles V. Amidst these divisions, the Knights of Rhodes were

forgotten; and it was not till ten years after the conquest of Soliman,

that these noble warriors were able to obtain from the emperor, the

rock of Malta, where they became again the terror of the Mussulmans.

Whilst Europe was thus troubled, the conqueror of Rhodes and Belgrade

reappeared in a threatening attitude upon the banks of the Danube.

Louis II. endeavoured to reanimate the patriotism of the Hungarians,

and caused the old custom of exposing in public a bloody sabre to

be revived, as a signal of war and of danger for the country. But

neither the exhortations of the monarch, nor those of the clergy, nor

even the approach of the enemy, were able to appease the discords,

born of feudal anarchy and the lengthened misfortunes of Hungary. The

Hungarian monarch was only able to get together an army of twenty-two

thousand men, to oppose to that of Soliman. Louis, a young prince

without experience, who allowed himself to be led, even in war, by

ecclesiastics, named, as general of his army, Paul Temory, lately

issued from a convent of Cordeliers, to become archbishop of Colotza.

We are unable to ascertain whether, in this circumstance, the king of

Hungary was obliged to put himself in the hands of the clergy, because

he was abandoned by the nobility; or, if the nobility abandoned him,

because he had put himself in the hands of the clergy. As the pope

constantly excited the Hungarians to defend their own country, the

ecclesiastics of Hungary, who were his interpreters to the faithful,

and even to the king, must naturally have exercised a great influence

in all that concerned the crusade.

In this war twenty-two thousand Christians had to contend with an

army of a hundred thousand Ottomans; and this was the Hungarian army

which, according to the advice of the bishops, offered battle to the

infidels. What is very remarkable in holy wars is, that the clergy

may almost always be recognised by the rashness of the enterprises.

The persuasion of the ecclesiastics, that they were fighting for the

cause of God, with their ignorance of the art of war, prevented them

from seeing perils, did not allow them to doubt of victory, and made

them often neglect the means of human prudence. It was then, in the

confidence of a miraculous success, that the archbishop of Colotza

did not hesitate to venture upon a decisive battle. The clergy who

accompanied him animated the combatants by their discourses, and set

an example of bravery; but religious and warlike enthusiasm cannot

triumph over numbers, and most of the prelates received the palm of

martyrdom in the _mêlée_. Eighteen thousand Christians were left upon

the field of battle; and what added greatly to the misfortune, Louis

II. disappeared, and perished in the general rout, leaving his kingdom

torn by factions and ravaged by the Turks.

The defeat of the Hungarians brought despair to the mind of Clement

VII. The pontiff wrote to all the sovereigns of Europe; he even formed

the project of visiting them in person, and to engage them by his

prayers and his tears to defend Christendom. Neither the touching

exhortations of the pope, nor his suppliant attitude, were able to move

the princes; and it is here that we can plainly perceive the rapid

decline of the pontifical power, which we have so lately seen armed

with all the terrors of the Church, and whose decisions were considered

as the decrees of Heaven. War was about to be rekindled in Italy, and

the pope was not long in becoming himself the victim of the disorders

he would willingly have prevented. The imperial troops entered Rome as

into an enemy’s city. The emperor, who assumed the title of temporal

head of the Church, did not fear to offer to Europe the scandal of the

captivity of a pontiff.

Although the authority of the head of the Church no longer inspired the

same veneration, or exercised the same ascendancy over men’s minds,

nevertheless the violences of Charles V. excited general indignation.

England and France flew to arms. All Europe was troubled: some wished

to avenge the pope, others to take advantage of the disorder; but none

thought of defending Christendom against the invasion of the Turks.

Clement VII., however, from the depths of the prison in which the

emperor detained him, still watched over the defence of Christian

Europe: his legates went to exhort the Hungarians to fight for their

God and their country. As the pontiff had been ruined by the calamities

of war, he implored the charity of the faithful; he ordered that the

plate should be sold in all the churches of Italy; he solicited the

assistance of several Italian states; and he ordered that indulgences

might be distributed and the tenths collected to support the expenses

of the holy war.

The active solicitude of the pope went so far as to seek enemies

against the Turks even in the East and among the infidels. Acomath, who

had in Egypt shaken off the yoke of the Porte, received encouragement

from the court of Rome. A legate of the pope went to promise him the

support of the Christians of the West. The sovereign pontiff kept up

continual relations on all the frontiers and in all the provinces

of the Turkish empire, in order to be made aware of the designs and

preparations of the sultans of Constantinople. It is not out of place

to say here, that most of the predecessors of Clement had taken, as

he did, the greatest care in watching the projects of the infidels.

Thus the heads of the Church did not confine themselves to exciting

the Christians to defend themselves upon their own territories; but,

like vigilant sentinels, they constantly kept their eyes fixed upon the

enemies of Christendom, to warn Europe of the perils which threatened

it.

When the emperor broke the chains of Clement VII., the holy pontiff

forgot the outrages he had received, to give all his cares to the

danger of the German empire, which was about to be attacked by the

Turks. The capital of Austria was soon besieged, and only owed its

safety to the bravery of its garrison. In the diets of Augsburg and

Spire, the pope’s legate endeavoured, in the name of religion, to

rouse the ardour of the people of Germany for their own defence. A

physician, named Riccius, spoke in the name of the emperor, and added

his exhortations to those of the apostolic legate; he made an appeal

to the ancient virtue of the Germans, and reminded his auditors of the

example of their ancestors, who had never endured a foreign domination.

He pressed princes, magistrates, and people, to fight for their own

independence and safety. Ferdinand, king of Bohemia and Hungary, urged

the princes and states of the empire to adopt prompt and effective

measures against the Turks. These exhortations and counsels met with

but little success, but had to encounter a strong opposition from the

still too active spirit of the new doctrines. All the cities, all the

provinces, were occupied by questions agitated by the Reformation. We

may at this time compare the nations of Germany, menaced by the Turks,

to the Greeks of the lower empire, whom history represents as given up

to vain disputes, when the barbarians were at their gates. As among the

Greeks, there was a crowd of men among the Germans, who entertained

less dread of seeing in their cities the turban of Mahomet than the

tiara of the pontiff of Rome; some, governed by a spirit of fatalism

scarcely to be equalled in the Koran, asserted that God had judged

Hungary, and that the safety of that kingdom was not in the power of

men; others (the Millenarians) announced with a fanatical joy the

approach of the last judgment; and whilst the preachers of the crusades

were exhorting the Germans to defend their country, the jealous pride

of an impious sect called for the days of universal desolation.

The paternal proceedings and counsels of the pope were neither able to

calm men’s minds, nor to rekindle an enthusiasm for the holy war, in

Germany, or even among the Hungarians. Ferdinand, brother of Charles

V., whom the imperial power had caused to be declared king of Hungary;

and the vaiwode of Transylvania, who, with permission of the Turks,

reigned over the ruins of his country, were contending for this

unfortunate kingdom, oppressed at the same time by its enemies and its

allies. When Soliman returned, for the third time, to the banks of

the Danube, called thither by a party of the Hungarian nobility, he

found no army to oppose his march. The Ottomans advanced towards the

capital of Austria, and prepared to invade the richest provinces of

Germany. So pressing a danger determined the head and the princes of

the empire to unite their forces against the common enemy. But when the

Turks retired in disorder, no one thought of either fighting with them,

or pursuing them in their precipitate retreat. The king of Hungary,

abandoned all at once by the Germans, and fearing fresh attacks, had

no resource but to sue to his enemies for peace. It is a circumstance

worthy of remark, that the pope was comprised in the treaty: Soliman

gave the title of father to the Roman pontiff, and that of brother to

the king of Hungary. Clement VII., after so many useless attempts to

interest the princes of Christendom, appeared to entertain no hope but

in Providence; and exclaimed with bitterness, when approving the issue

of the pacific negotiations, “We have nothing left but to supplicate

Heaven to watch itself over the Christian world.”

It might be believed that the holy wars were drawing towards an end,

when the head of the Church had laid down his arms, and made peace with

the infidels. But this treaty of peace, like others that had preceded

it, could only be considered as a truce, and war would most likely

break out again when either the Christians or the Mussulmans saw any

hopes of carrying it on with advantage. Such was the policy of the

times; particularly that which governed the Christian and Mussulman

powers in their mutual relations. Soliman had abandoned his projects

upon Germany and Hungary, less out of respect for treaties, than

because he was employing his forces against the Persians, or that he

required his army to quell some revolts which had broken out in Asia

against his authority. On the other side, Christendom left the Ottomans

in peace, because it was a prey to discord; and because most Christian

princes, occupied by their own interests, listened to nothing but the

counsels of their ambition.

Europe had at that time three great monarchs, whose united strength

would have been quite sufficient to crush the power of the Turks;

but these three princes were as much opposed to each other by their

policy as by their character and their genius. Henry VIII. of England,

who had refuted Luther, and leagued himself with the king of France,

to deliver the captive pope, had just separated himself from the

Romish Church. Sometimes allied with France, sometimes allied with

the emperor, occupied in bringing about the triumph of the schism

of which he was the apostle and the head, he had no time to bestow

upon war with the infidels. Francis I. had, in the first place, made

pretensions to the imperial crown, and afterwards to the duchy of Milan

and the kingdom of Naples. These pretensions, which were a source of

misfortunes to himself and France, disturbed the whole of his reign,

and never allowed him an opportunity for seriously undertaking a

crusade against the Turks, a crusade which he himself had preached

in his states. The feeling of vengeance and jealousy which animated

him against a fortunate and powerful rival, inspired him twice with

the idea of seeking an alliance with Soliman. To the great scandal of

Christendom, an Ottoman fleet was received in the port of Marseilles,

and the standard of the lilies was mingled with the crescent under

the walls of Nice. Charles V., master of all the Spains, head of the

German empire, sovereign of the Low Countries, and possessor of several

empires in the new world, was much more anxious to humble the French

monarchy, and establish his domination in Europe, than to defend

Christendom against the invasion of the Turks. During the greater part

of his reign, this monarch conciliated the Protestants of Germany,

on account of the Ottomans; and avoided collision with the Ottomans,

on account of his enemies in the Christian republic. He satisfied

himself with protecting, by his arms, the capital of Austria, when

threatened by the Turks; but when the pope conjured him to employ

his forces for the deliverance of Hungary, he preferred attempting

an expedition to the coast of Africa. A war against the Moors of

Africa was more popular in Spain than an expedition upon the Danube;

and Charles was more desirous of acquiring popularity among the

Spaniards, than of meriting the gratitude of Christendom. The Barbary

powers were recently formed, under the protection of the Ottoman

Porte, and began to render themselves formidable in the Mediterranean.

Charles carried his arms twice to the coast of Africa: in the first

expedition, he got possession of Tunis, planted his standards upon the

ruins of Carthage, and delivered twenty thousand captives, who went

to publish his victories in every part of the Christian world; in the

second expedition, he would have annihilated the Barbary powers, so

destructive to the navigation of the Franks; but a hurricane, which

destroyed his fleet and his army, dispersed the hopes of commerce and

navigators.

At the time Charles experienced so great a disaster whilst combating

the Mussulmans of Africa, the Ottomans, invited by Francis I., were

ravaging the coasts of Italy, and had recently entered Hungary, from

whence they threatened Germany.

Then fresh cries of alarm resounded all over Europe, and among those

who exhorted the nations to oppose the Turks, the voice of Martin

Luther was heard. In a book entitled _Prayer against the Turk_, the

reformer condemned the indifference of people and kings, and advised

the Christians to resist the Mussulmans, if they did not wish to be

led into captivity, as the children of Israel had formerly been. In a

formula of prayer which he had composed, he expressed himself thus:

“Arise, Lord, great God, and sanctify thy name, which thy enemies

outrage; strengthen thy reign, which they wish to destroy, and suffer

us not to be trampled under-foot by those who are not willing that thou

shouldst be our God.”

Murmurs had several times arisen against Luther, who was accused of

having, by his doctrines, weakened the courage of the Germans. Some

time before the period of which we are speaking, he published an

apology, in which, without disavowing the famous proposition censured

by the pope, he gave to his words a different sense from that which

the court of Rome gave them, and which he himself, no doubt, had given

them in the first instance. All his explanations, which it is not very

easy to analyze, were reduced to this idea:—“That it was allowable

to fight with the Turks, but that it was not allowable to fight with

them under the banners of Christianity.” Although the leader of the

Reformation required all the qualities of a perfect Christian in the

warriors called upon to fight the Mussulmans, and although he drew

all the principles of his preaching from the religion of Christ; the

standard of the cross in a Christian army, caused him, he said, more

horror than the sight of the demon. The true motive for his repugnance

for a crusade may be easily guessed; a crusade appeared necessarily to

require the concurrence of the pope; and the concurrence of the pope,

in a war which interested Christendom, was the thing in the world

most dreaded by Luther. He had so strong an aversion to the court of

Rome, that in his writings he asks himself if war ought not to be made

against the Pope as well as the Turk; and in the excess of his hatred,

does not hesitate to answer, _against the one as against the other_.

We will not repeat here the declamations and the sophisms of Luther.

Through the puerile subtleties and the contrary reasonings which he

employs for his justification, we must, however, remark the distinction

he has made between civil authority and ecclesiastical authority: it is

to the first, says the reformer, that it belongs to combat the Turks;

the duty of the second is to wait, to submit, to pray, and to groan.

He adds, that war was not the business of bishops, but of magistrates;

that the emperor, in this circumstance, ought to be considered as the

head of the German confederation, and not as the protector of the

Church, nor as the support of the Christian faith; a title which can

only properly be given to Jesus Christ. All these arguments, doubtless,

had something reasonable in them; and the opinion of Luther upon

the civil authority, although he might have adopted it only out of

opposition to the papal power, would have obtained the approbation of

enlightened minds, if he had not employed, in supporting it, all the

passion of irritated pride; and if his apology, in particular, had not

been stained by abuse which decency will not allow history to repeat.

Not content with this apology, which had for title, _Of the War against

the Turks_, Luther, two years after the siege of Vienna, published

another work, entitled, _A Military Discourse_, in which he also urges

the Germans to take arms. This second discourse begins, as the first

had done, by theological distinctions and subtleties; by declamations

against the pope and the bishops; by predictions upon the approaching

end of the world; and upon the power of the Turks; which the author

finds clearly announced in Daniel. Although he endeavours to prove, as

in his first writing, that the war against the Mussulmans is not at all

a religious war, but an enterprise entirely political; he promises,

not the less, the palms of martyrdom to those who shall die with arms

in their hands. He represents this war as agreeable to the Divinity,

and as the duty of a true disciple of the Gospel. “Thy arm and thy

lance,” says he to every Christian soldier who shall take arms against

the infidels, “shall be the arm and the lance of God. In immolating

Turks, thou wilt not shed innocent blood, and the world will consider

thee as the executioner of the decrees of divine justice; for thou wilt

but kill those whom God has himself condemned. The Turk,” adds he,

“ravishes terrestrial life from Christians, and procures them eternal

life; he at the same time kills himself, and precipitates himself into

hell.” Luther appears to be so penetrated with this idea, that he is

on the point of deploring the fate of the Mussulmans; and to chastise

indifferent Christians, and pusillanimous Germans, he has no punishment

to wish them, unless it be that they should become Turks, and thus be

the property of the devil.

A short extract is not sufficient to show what whimsical and singular

ideas are contained in Luther’s discourse; it may, however, be easily

perceived how much this kind of preaching differs from that of the

orators who preached the crusade in preceding ages. In the second part

of his discourse, the leader of the Reformation addressed himself to

the various classes of society; to the nobility, who are immersed in

luxury and pleasures, but for whom the hour of fight is at length

come; to the citizens and merchants, for too long a time addicted to

usury and cupidity; to the labourers and peasants, whom he accuses of

deceiving and robbing their neighbours. The tone of the preacher is

full of an excessive severity; he speaks like a man who feels no sorrow

at the misfortunes which are about to happen, because he has foretold

them, and his warnings and prophecies have been despised. He says, with

a sort of satisfaction, that after days of joy and debauchery, after

seasons of festivity and pleasures, comes the time of tears, miseries,

and alarms. He finishes by a vehement apostrophe, addressed to all who

shall remain deaf to his voice, and whom the enemy shall find without

defence: “Listen now, then, to the devil in the Turk, you who are not

willing to listen to God in Jesus Christ; the Turk will burn your

dwellings; he will bear away your cattle and your harvests; he will

outrage and slaughter your wives and your daughters before your eyes;

he will impale your little children upon the very stakes of the hedge

which serves as an inclosure to your heritage; he will immolate you

yourselves, or will carry you away into Turkey, to expose you in the

market, like unclean animals; it is he who will teach you what you will

have lost, and what you ought to have done. It is to the Turk belongs

the task to humble the haughty nobility, to render citizens docile, and

to chastise and tame the gross multitude.”

Luther then gives his advice upon the manner of making war against

the Turks; he is desirous that all should defend themselves even to

death, and that all the countries through which the enemy was about to

pass should be laid waste; he terminates his discourse by addressing

consolations to them who shall fall into the hands of the Turks, and

traces out for them a plan of conduct for the time of their captivity

among the infidels.

This language, of which we are far from exaggerating the singularity,

was not at all calculated to warm and rally men’s minds for a struggle

against the enemies of Germany and Christendom. At this period, the

princes and the states of the empire frequently met to deliberate

on their own dangers. It was more easy to convoke diets than to get

together armies. The Protestants were not willing to take arms against

the Turks, for fear of strengthening their adversaries; and the

Catholics were restrained by their fear of the Protestants: amidst the

violent debates that agitated Germany, the Church, and even the civil

authority which Luther had proclaimed, lost all that unity of action,

without which it is impossible to combat a formidable enemy with

advantage. Among the Germans, the spirit of sect weakened by degrees

the spirit of patriotism; among Christians, the hatred they conceived

for one another caused them to lose that pious ardour which had

animated them against the Mussulmans. In proportion as the Reformation

proceeded, Germany became divided into two parties, which were like two

enemies face to face. Both parties soon had recourse to arms, and, in

the fury of civil wars, the invasions of the Turks were forgotten. It

was thus that the Reformation, which took its birth at the end of the

crusades, completely extinguished the enthusiasm for holy wars, and

no longer permitted the nations of Christendom to unite against the

infidels.

The name of the Turks was still pronounced in the diets of Germany, and

even in the council of Trent; but no measures were adopted for making

war against them. From that time there passed nothing in either Hungary

or the East which was able to fix the attention of the Christian world.

The only event upon which Europe seemed interested was the defence

of Malta against all the forces of Soliman. This defence increased

the reputation of the military order of St. John. The port of Malta

became the only place of shelter for Christian vessels on the route to

Egypt, Syria, or Greece. The corsairs of Tunis and Algiers, and all the

pirates who infested the Mediterranean, trembled at the sight of the

rock, and of the galleys over which floated the standard of the cross.

This military colony, always armed against the infidels, and constantly

recruited from the warlike nobility of Europe, offered, up to the end

of the eighteenth century, a living image of ancient chivalry, and of

the heroic epoch of the crusades. We have described the origin of this

illustrious order,—we have followed it in its days of triumph, and in

its reverses, still more glorious than its victories. We will not say

by what revolution it is fallen, nor how it has lost that isle which

was given to it as the reward of its bravery, and which it defended,

during more than two hundred years, against the Ottoman forces and the

barbarians of Africa.

Whilst the Turks miscarried in their expedition against Malta, Soliman

was pursuing the war in Hungary, and still threatening Germany. He died

on the banks of the Danube, in the midst of victories obtained over

the Christians. Christendom must have rejoiced at his death, as it had

rejoiced at the death of Mahomet II. Under the reign of Soliman, who

was the greatest prince of the Ottoman dynasty, the Turks not only

invaded a part of the German empire, but their marine, seconded by the

genius of Barberossa and Dragut, made a progress that must have alarmed

all the maritime powers of Europe. Selim II., who succeeded him, had

neither his qualities nor the genius of most of his predecessors; but

he followed not the less their projects of aggrandizement, or the views

of their ambitious policy. The Ottomans, masters of the coasts of

Greece, Syria, and Africa, were desirous of adding to their conquests

the kingdom of Cyprus, which was then possessed by the Venetians.

After a siege of several months, the Ottoman army obtained possession

of the cities of Famagousta and Nicosia. The Turks stained their

victory by cruelties without example. The bravest of the defenders of

Cyprus expiated in tortures the glory of an obstinate resistance; and

it may be said, it was the executioners that finished the war. The

barbarity of the Turks disgusted the Christian nations afresh; and the

maritime countries of the West beheld with terror an invasion which

threatened to exclude Europeans from every road to the East.

At the approach of the danger, Pope Pius V. exhorted the Christian

powers to take up arms against the Ottomans. A confederation was

formed, consisting of the republic of Venice, Philip II., king of

Spain, and the pope himself, always ready to add the authority of his

example to his preaching. A numerous fleet, equipped for the defence

of the isle of Cyprus, arrived too late in the eastern seas, and was

only able to repair the disgrace of the Christian arms. This fleet,

commanded by Don John of Austria, met that of the Ottomans in the

Gulf of Lepanto. It was in this sea Antony and Augustus disputed the

mastership of the Roman world. The battle which took place between the

Christians and the Turks reminds us in some degree of the spirit and

enthusiasm of the crusades. Before the commencement of the conflict,

Don John hoisted on board his ship the standard of St. Peter, which he

had received from the pope, and the army saluted with cries of joy this

religious signal of victory. The leaders of the Christians passed along

the line of barques, exhorting the soldiers to fight for the cause of

Christ. All the warriors, falling upon their knees, implored divine

protection, and arose full of confidence in their own bravery and the

miracles of heaven.

No naval battle of antiquity can be compared to this of Lepanto, in

which the Turks fought for the empire of the world, and the Christians

for the defence of Europe. The courage and skill of Don John and the

other leaders, the intrepidity and ardour of the soldiers, and the

superiority of the Franks in manœuvring their vessels, and in their

artillery, procured for the Christian fleet a decisive victory. Two

hundred of the enemy’s ships were taken, burnt, or sunk. The wreck of

the Turkish fleet, whilst announcing the victory of the Christians,

carried consternation to the coasts of Greece and to the capital of the

Ottoman empire.

Terrified by the results of this battle, Selim caused the famous castle

of the Dardanelles to be built, which to the present day defends the

entrance to the canal of Constantinople. At the time of the battle, the

roof of the temple of Mecca fell in, and the Turks believed they saw in

this accident a sign of the anger of Heaven. The roof was of wood; and

that it might become, says Cantemir, a more solid emblem of the empire,

the son of Soliman ordered it to be reconstructed of brick.

Whilst the Turks deplored the first reverse their arms had met with,

the whole of Christendom learnt the news of the victory of Lepanto

with the greatest joy. The Venetians, who had awaited in terror the

issue of the battle, celebrated the triumph of the Christian fleet by

extraordinary festivities. In order that no feeling of sadness should

be mingled with the universal joy, the senate set all prisoners at

liberty, and forbade the subjects of the republic to wear mourning

for their relations or friends who had been killed fighting against

the Turks. The battle of Lepanto was inscribed upon coins, and as the

infidels were defeated on the day of St. Justin, the seigneury ordered

that this happy day should be every year a festival for the whole

population of Venice.

At Toledo, and in all the churches of Spain, the people and the

clergy offered up hymns of gratitude to Heaven for the victory it had

granted to the valour of the Christian soldiers. No nation, no prince

of Europe, was indifferent to the defeat of the Turks; and, if one

historian may be believed, the king of England, James I., celebrated

in a poem the glorious day of Lepanto.

As the pope had effectively contributed to the success of the Christian

arms, it was at Rome that the strongest symptoms of delight were

exhibited. Mark Antony Colonna, who had commanded the vessels of the

sovereign pontiff, was received in triumph, and conducted to the

Capitol, preceded by a great number of prisoners of war. The ensigns

taken from the enemy were suspended in the church of Ara-Cœli. After

a solemn mass, Mark Antony Mureti pronounced the panegyric of the

triumphant general. Thus the ceremonies of ancient Rome were mingled

with those of the modern, to celebrate the valour and exploits of

the defenders of Christendom. The Church itself was desirous of

consecrating a victory gained over its enemies among its festivals;

Pius V. instituted one in honour of the Virgin, by whose intercession

it was believed the Mussulmans had been conquered. This festival was

celebrated on the 7th October, the day of the battle of Lepanto, under

the denomination of “Our Lady of Victories.”

Thus a unanimous concert of prayers and thanksgivings arose towards

heaven, and all Christians at the same time showed their gratitude

to the God of armies for having delivered Europe from the invasion

of the Mussulmans. But it was not long before this happy harmony was

disturbed: ambition, reciprocal mistrusts, diversity of interests, all

that had till that time favoured the progress of the Turks, prevented

the Christians from deriving the proper advantages from their victory.

The Venetians were anxious to pursue the war, in order to recover the

isle of Cyprus; but Philip II., dreading any increase in the power

of Venice, withdrew from the confederation. The Venetian republic,

abandoned by its allies, hastened to make peace. It obtained it by

sacrificing all the possessions it had lost during the war,—a strange

result of victory; by which the vanquished dictated laws to the

conqueror, and which plainly shows us to what extent the pretensions of

the Turks would have been carried if fortune had favoured their arms.

The war which was terminated by the battle of Lepanto, was the last in

which the standard of the cross animated or rallied Christian warriors.

The spirit of the holy wars at first arose from popular opinions.

When these opinions became weakened and great powers were formed,

all that relates to war or peace became concentrated in the councils

of monarchs. No more projects for distant expeditions were formed in

public councils; no more warlike enterprises were recommended from the

pulpits of the churches, or before assemblies of the faithful. States

and princes, placed at the head of human affairs, even when they made

war against the Mussulmans, obeyed much less the influence of religious

ideas than interests purely political. From that period the enthusiasm

of the multitude, and all the passions that had given birth to the

crusades, were reckoned as nothing.

The alliance of Francis I. with Soliman was at first a great scandal

for all Christendom. The king of France justified himself by accusing

the ambition and the perfidy of Charles V. His example was quickly

followed by Charles himself, and by other Christian states. Policy,

disengaging itself more and more from that which was religious in it,

came at last to consider the Ottoman Porte, no longer an enemy against

whom it was a duty always to be fighting, but as a great power, whom

it was sometimes necessary to conciliate, and whose support might be

sought without outraging the Deity, or affecting the interests of the

Church.

As the voice of the sovereign pontiff was always the instrument to

summon Christians to take arms against the infidels, the spirit of

the crusades necessarily grew weaker as the authority of the popes

declined. It may be added, that the political system of Europe was

making its development, and the ties and springs which were to

found the equilibrium of the Christian republic had an increasing

tendency to their establishment. Each state had its plan of defence

and aggrandisement, which it followed with a constant activity; all

were employed in endeavouring to attain the degree of power, force,

and influence to which their position and the fortune of their arms

entitled them. Hence those restless ambitions, those mutual mistrusts,

that ever active spirit of rivalry, which scarcely ever permitted

sovereigns to turn their attention towards distant wars.

Whilst ambition and the desire of increasing and defending their power

detained princes in their own states, the people became attached to

their homes by the blessings and the enjoyments of a rapidly-rising

civilization. In the eleventh century, the Franks, the Normans, and

other barbarians from the north, had not quite lost the character and

habits of nomadic races, which favoured the rise and the progress of

that warlike enthusiasm which had precipitated the Crusaders upon the

East. In the sixteenth century, institutions consecrated by time, the

precepts of Christianity better understood, respect for ancestry, love

of settled property, the constantly increasing wealth of cities, with

the progress of industry and of agriculture, had changed the character

of the Franks, destroyed their partiality for a wandering life, and had

become so many ties to attach them to their country.

In the preceding century the genius of navigation had discovered

America and the passage of the Cape of Good Hope. The results of

this discovery effected a great revolution in commerce, attracted

the attention of all nations, and gave a new direction to the human

mind. All the speculations of industry, for so long a time founded

upon the crusades, were directed towards America or the East Indies.

Great empires, rich climates, offered themselves all at once to the

ambition or the cupidity of all who sought for glory, fortune, or

adventures—the wonders of a new world made men forgetful of those of

the East.

At this so memorable epoch, a general emulation arose in Europe for

the cultivation of arts and of letters. The age of Leo X. produced

masterpieces of all kinds.[87] France, Spain, and still more Italy,

turned the newly-discovered art of printing greatly to the advantage

of knowledge. The splendid geniuses of Greece and Rome were everywhere

revived. In proportion as men’s minds became enlightened, the new

career opened before them expanded. Another enthusiasm succeeded to

that of religious enterprises; and the exploits of the heroic times of

our history excited much more admiration in our romances and poets,

than they created desire in people of the world to imitate them.

Then the Epic Muse, whose voice only celebrates distant events, sang

the heroes of the holy wars; and the crusades, for the same reason

that Tasso became at liberty to adorn the recital of them with all

the wealth of his imagination,—the crusades, we say, were no longer

anything for Europe but a poetical remembrance.

One fortunate circumstance for Christendom is, that at the period when

the crusades, which had for their object the defence of Europe, drew

near to their end, the Turks began to lose some part of that military

power which they had displayed in their contests with the Christian

nations. The Ottomans had at first been, as we have already said, the

only nation that kept on foot a regular standing army, which gave it

a vast superiority over powers that it was desirous of subduing. In

the sixteenth century, most of the great states of Europe had likewise

armies which they could at any time bring against their enemies.

Discipline and military tactics had made great progress in Christendom;

artillery and marine became more perfect in the West every day, whilst

the Turks, in all that concerns the art of war, or that of navigation,

gathered no advantage from either the lessons of experience, or from

the knowledge to which time and circumstances had given birth among

their neighbours. We ought to add, that the spirit of superstition

and intolerance which the Turks associated with their wars, was very

injurious to the preservation and extent of their conquests. When

they took possession of a province, they insisted upon making their

laws, their customs, and their worship paramount. They must change

everything, they must destroy everything, in the country in which

they wished to establish themselves; they must either exterminate the

population, or reduce it to the impossibility of disturbing a foreign

domination. Thus it may be remarked, that, although several times

masters of Hungary, they retired from it after every campaign, and were

never able, amidst all their victories, to found a colony or make any

durable establishment there. The Ottoman population which had sufficed

for occupying and enslaving the Greek empire, could not people and

preserve more distant countries. It was this, above everything, which

saved Germany and Italy from the invasion of the Turks. The Ottomans

might, perhaps, have conquered the world if they had been able to

impose their manners upon it, or furnish it with inhabitants.

After the battle of Lepanto, although they had preserved the isle of

Cyprus, and dictated laws to the republic of Venice, the Turks not the

less lost the idea of their being invincible, or that all the world

must submit to their arms. It was observed that from that time most of

the leaders of Turkish armies or fleets became more timid, and felt

less assured of victory, when in the presence of an enemy. Astrologers,

who had till then beheld in the phenomena of the heavens the increase

and the glory of the Ottoman empire, saw nothing during the reign of

Soliman and following reigns but sinister auguries in the aspects of

the celestial bodies. We mention astrologers, because their predictions

have considerable influence upon the policy of the Turks. It is not

improbable that these pretended conjurers did not confine their

observations to the celestial bodies, but that they watched the manners

and the opinions of the people, and the march of events and affairs. It

is for this reason that their prophecies were found true, and that they

belong, in some sort, to history.

The spirit of conquest, however, which had so long animated the nation,

still subsisted, and sometimes fortune favoured the Ottoman banner with

victory.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Turks carried war to

both the banks of the Danube and to the frontiers of Persia. Among the

Christian warriors who flew to the aid of Germany, the duke of Mercœur,

brother of the duke of Mayenne, must not be forgotten; he was followed

by a crowd of French soldiers, who had fought against Henry IV., and

who went to expiate the crimes of civil war by fighting the infidels.

The duke of Mercœur, to whom the emperor Rodolph II. gave the command

of the imperial army, gained several advantages over the Ottomans.

Whilst the war was being carried on in Hungary, the king of Persia

sent an embassy to the emperor of Germany and the princes of the West,

to persuade them to form an alliance with him against the Turks. The

Persian ambassadors repaired to the court of the sovereign pontiff,

and to those of several Christian powers, conjuring them to declare

war against the Ottomans. This embassy of the king of Persia, and the

exploits of the French on the Danube, created great uneasiness in the

Divan, and an ambassador was sent to the king of France, as the most

to be feared of the Christian princes. The letters of credit of the

Turkish envoy bore this title: “To the most glorious, magnanimous, and

greatest lord of the faith of Jesus, pacificator of the differences

which arise among Christian princes, lord of greatness, majesty, and

riches, and glorious guide of the greatest, Henry IV., emperor of

France.” The sultan of the Turks conjured the French monarch, in his

letter, to bring about a truce between the Porte and the emperor of

Germany, and to recall from Hungary the duke of Mercœur, whose valour

and skill brought victory to the banners of the Germans. Henry IV.

interrogated the Ottoman ambassador, and asked him why the Turks

dreaded the duke of Mercœur so much. The ambassador replied, that a

prophecy, credited by the Turks, declared that the sword of the French

would drive them from Europe, and overthrow their empire. Henry IV. did

not recall the duke of Mercœur: this able captain continued to beat the

Ottomans, and having covered himself with glory in the war against the

infidels, he was seized, whilst on his return to France, by a purple

fever, “which,” says Mezerai, “sent him to triumph in heaven.”

In their wars against the Christians, the Turks often found themselves

on the defensive, which was for them a sign of decline. History remarks

that at no period did their reverses cause them more alarm, or their

victories more surprise and joy. Their defeats were almost always a

signal for sedition and revolt, which the decline of power rendered

bold.

And yet the Ottoman empire still carried on war, and advanced like a

storm ready to burst. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the

isle of Chio, which had belonged to the Genoese, was added to its

maritime possessions, and the Turks directed their victorious arms

towards Candia, an important colony of the Venetians. At the same time

an Ottoman army entered Transylvania, and greatly alarmed Austria.

Pope Alexander VII., pressed by the emperor Leopold I. and by the

Venetian senate, endeavoured to form a league among the princes and

states of Christendom, and addressed the king of Poland, the king of

Spain, and more particularly the king of France, to implore their

succour against the Turks.

Louis XIV. yielded to the prayers of the sovereign pontiff, and sent

to Rome an ambassador charged to announce to his holiness, that he

entered into the confederation of the Christian princes. On the other

side, the states of the Germanic empire, which were the allies of

France, assembled at Frankfort, and engaged to raise money and troops,

promising to unite their efforts with those of the French monarch, for

the defence of Christendom.

This generous forwardness on the part of the king of France and his

allies merited, no doubt, the gratitude of Leopold; but, what is

difficult to be believed, the zeal they showed for the common cause,

and which exceeded what was first hoped for, only awakened the jealous

uneasiness of the emperor. We have even reason to think that this

uneasiness extended to the sovereign pontiff; for his holiness welcomed

the propositions of Louis XIV. very coldly; and when the resolutions of

the Germanic body reached Rome, Alexander received with indifference

news for which any other pope, say the memoirs of the time, would not

have failed to go and return solemn thanks in the church of St. Peter

or of St. John of the Lateran. The king of France could not dissemble

his surprise; and in a letter, which he caused to be written to his

ambassador, are these remarkable words: “For the rest, it is more an

affair of his holiness than ours; it will suffice for his majesty,

for his own satisfaction and his duty towards God, to have made all

the advances with respect to this league, that a king, the eldest son

of the Church, and the principal defender of religion, could do in a

danger imminent for Christendom.”

It was soon known that the Turks were making progress, and had

penetrated into Moravia. The emperor Leopold, at their approach,

quitted his capital. The pope then consented to resume the suspended

negotiations. But they were resumed with a sentiment of jealousy and

reciprocal mistrust, that left no hope of a happy result. Louis XIV.,

nevertheless, omitted nothing to prove the frankness of his intentions,

or to forward the formation of a league. It was then believed that an

enterprise against the Turks was the business of all Christendom, and

that, in this case, one Christian power alone, ought not to decide for

peace or war.

We enter into some details here, because these details have not been

hitherto generally known, and that present circumstances may give them

additional interest. We know, likewise, in the days in which we live,

we must search for examples in old remembrances, and often for our true

titles to glory likewise.

The emperor could not be reassured by the demonstrations of the French

monarch; and the rancour which he retained on account of the treaty

of Westphalia, made him forgetful of his own dangers and of those of

the Germanic body. Louis XIV. engaged to set on foot an army of twenty

thousand men, and the confederates of Germany offered as many. Leopold

feared this army on his own account. In the end, Louis satisfied

himself with furnishing six thousand soldiers, under the command of

the count de Coligny and the marquis de la Feuillade. The pope, not

to remain neuter in a war against the Mussulmans, granted the emperor

a subsidy of 70,000 florins, and the faculty of levying tenths upon

all the ecclesiastical property in the Austrian states. All the united

succours of Germany, the king of France, and the other confederate

states, formed an army of thirty thousand men. This army marched to

Hungary. When united to the troops of the emperor, they gained many

advantages over the Turks, and defeated them completely at the battle

of St. Gothard. The Ottomans solicited a suspension of arms, and the

jealous passions which had at first prevented the war being carried on

with vigour, allowed the Divan to conclude an advantageous peace.

The Ottomans, thus delivered from a formidable war, were able to direct

all their strength against Candia, which Venice, now left alone, was

not strong enough to defend. A great number of French warriors then

flew to the succour of a Christian city besieged by the infidels:

among the knights whom the love of glory led to this perilous and

distant war, history takes pleasure in naming the marquis de Fénelon,

whose care had brought up the archbishop of Cambrai, and whom his age

considered as the model of gallant gentlemen. His young son, whom he

took with him, was wounded in an affair against the Turks, and died

of his wounds. France, in the same expedition, had to lament another

hero, the young duke of Beaufort; Mascaron, who pronounced the funeral

oration of this new Maccabeus, thus describes his death: “After the

flight of all the others, yielding rather to number than to strength,

he fell upon his own trophies, and died the most glorious death that

a Christian hero could wish, sword in hand against the enemies of his

God and his king, in the sight of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and more

than all that, in the sight of God and his angels.” Louis XIV., always

considering it consistent with his glory to protect the Christian

states, sent fresh succours to Candia: four French vessels appeared

before the isle; but they arrived too late; the city of Candia, after a

siege of two years and four months, had just capitulated.

This conquest revived the courage of the Turks, and their power,

sustained by the genius of Kiouprouli, whom the Mussulmans called _the

great destroyer of the bells of impiety_, might have still rendered

themselves formidable to the Christian nations, if their policy had

not been governed by a foolish pride. Intoxicated with some trifling

successes, the Turks resumed their project of invading Germany. Towards

the end of the seventeenth century, they made a last attempt, and the

capital of Austria beheld beneath its walls an army of two hundred

thousand infidels.

Germany was exhausted by the thirty years’ war. The king of Poland,

urged by the pope to come to the succour of the Germanic empire,

hastened with his Polish cavalry to the scene of action, and revived

the courage of the Germans and the garrison of Vienna. The Turks, upon

being attacked with impetuosity, abandoned their camp, their artillery,

and their baggage. The wreck of the Ottoman army did not rally till

they reached the banks of the Raab, where they encamped around the tent

of the grand vizier, the only one that had not fallen into the hands

of the conquerors. John Sobieski entered in triumph into the city he

had saved by his courage. This happy event was celebrated throughout

Germany by public rejoicings; and, as had been done after the victory

gained by Don John of Austria, amidst the ceremonies of the Church,

these words from Scripture were repeated: “There was a man sent from

God, named John.”

The defeat of Vienna was for the Turks a signal for the greatest

reverses. The vengeance of the people and the army pursued the grand

vizier, who had conducted the war; and the sultan, Mahomet IV., fell

from the throne at the report of these sanguinary disasters, the

effects of which were felt to the very heart of the empire. The famous

treaty of Carlowitz testifies the losses that the Ottoman nation had

undergone, and the incontestable superiority of its enemies. The

decline of Turkey, as a maritime power, had commenced at the battle of

Lepanto; its decline as a military or conquering power, dates from the

defeat of Vienna. History has two things to remark in the negotiations

of Carlowitz. Hungary, which had for so long a time resisted the

Turks, weakened at length by civil discords and foreign wars, and

given up at the same time to the emperors of Germany and the sultans

of Constantinople, then lost its national independence, and became

united to the possessions of the house of Austria. Among the states

and princes who signed the treaty, the czars of Muscovy, who were

destined, at a later period, to inflict such terrible blows upon the

Ottoman empire, appeared for the first time as a power interested in

the Christian struggle against the infidels.

We have described the origin and progress of the Turks; it only remains

for us now to speak of the causes of their decline.

The Turks were only constituted to contend with a barbarous people,

like themselves, or with a degenerate people, like the Greeks.

When they met with nations that were not corrupted, and were not

deficient in bravery or patriotism, their career was checked. It is a

circumstance worthy of remark, that they were never able to make an

impression upon any of the nations of the Latin Church; the only nation

that was separated from Christendom by the conquests of the Turks was

one that had separated itself from it. When the Ottomans were no longer

able to prosecute their scheme of general invasion, all the passions

which had stimulated them to conquest only served to disturb their own

empire; which is the ordinary destiny of mere conquering nations.

The wars they prosecuted at the same time against Christian Europe and

Persia, were the principal causes of the decay of the military power

of the Turks. The efforts they made against the Persians, diverted

their forces from their expeditions against the Christians; and their

expeditions against the Christians crippled their means for the wars

in Asia. In these two kinds of war they had a very different manner

of fighting. After having for any length of time contended with the

warriors of the Oxus or Caucasus, they were incapacitated for making

war in Europe. They were never able to triumph completely over either

Persia or the Christian nations; and remained at last pressed between

two enemies, equally interested in their ruin, and equally animated by

religious passions.

The Turks, like all the hordes from the north of Asia, brought

with them the feudal government. The first thing to be done by all

nomadic nations, who established themselves in conquered countries,

was the division of the lands, with certain conditions of protection

and obedience. From this division naturally emanated feudalism. The

difference, however, which existed between the Turks and the other

barbarians who conquered the West, was, that the jealous despotism

of the sultans never allowed fiefs to become hereditary, or that

an aristocracy should grow up round it, as in the monarchies of

Christendom. Thus in the Turkish empire nothing was to be seen on

one side, but the authority of an absolute master; and on the other,

nothing but a military democracy. The Ottoman monarchy was thus built

upon that which is weakest in political societies—the will of a single

man, or that of the multitude.

The Turks have been compared to the Romans. Both nations began in

the same manner; for both were nothing but bands of brigands. What

distinguishes them in history is, that the Turks have remained the same

as they were in their origin; whilst the Romans, in their conquests,

never rejected the knowledge, the customs, or even the gods of the

people they conquered. The Turks, on the contrary, took nothing from

other nations, and made it their pride to continue barbarians.

We have said above, that hereditary aristocracy has never been

established by the side of despotism; and this is, perhaps, the

reason why the Ottoman nation has remained in a state of barbarism.

They who have studied the march of human societies know that it

is by the aristocracy that the manners and morals of a people are

formed, and that it is in the middle classes that knowledge has its

birth, and civilization begins.[88] The absence of an aristocracy in

oriental governments, not only explains to us the fragility of those

governments, but it assists us also in explaining why progress has not

been made in a country where nothing distinguished the men from each

other, where no one had sufficient influence to guide the crowd, or was

sufficiently elevated to serve as an example or model.

In consequence of the indifference of the Turks for the arts and

sciences, the labours of industry, agriculture, and navigation, were

confided to their slaves, who were their enemies. As they held in

horror everything new, or that they had not brought from Asia with

them, they were obliged to have recourse to foreigners for everything

that was invented or perfected in Europe. Thus the sources of

prosperity and power, the strength of their armies and their fleets,

were not at all in their own hands. Every one knows what the Turks have

lost by neglecting to learn or to follow the progress of the military

tactics of the Europeans. At the battle of Lepanto, disorder was

introduced into their fleet entirely from their having promised liberty

to their sailors, who were all Christians.

Some modern writers, seeking everywhere for similitudes, have compared

the janissaries to the pretorian cohorts. This comparison has nothing

exact in it: among the Romans, the empire was elective, and the

pretorians got possession of it for the purpose of putting it up

to sale. Among the Turks, the idea of choosing their prince never

suggested itself to the minds of either the people or the soldiery.

The janissaries contented themselves with disturbing the government,

and keeping it in such a state of disorder, that they could never

be dismissed, and might always remain masters. All their opposition

consisted in preventing any amelioration whatever in discipline or

military usages. The abuses and prejudices the most difficult to be

destroyed in a nation, are those which adhere to a body or a class in

which power happens to be placed. All-powerful despotism was never able

to overcome the opposition of the janissaries and spahis; and those

redoubtable corps, which had so effectively contributed to ancient

conquests, became the greatest obstacle to the making of new ones.

The Turks established in Greece had more respect for old usages and

old prejudices, than they had of love for the country they inhabited.

Masters of Stamboul, they had their eyes constantly fixed upon the

places of their origin, and appeared to be but travellers, or passing

conquerors of Europe. They preserved the manners of Asia, the laws of

Asia, the remembrances of Asia; and the West was, in their estimation,

less a country than a theatre for their exploits.

Amidst their decline, nothing was more fatal to the Turks than the

memory of their past glory; nothing was more injurious to them than

that national pride which was no longer in harmony with their fortune,

or in proportion with their strength. The illusions of a power that no

longer existed prevented them from foreseeing the obstacles they were

likely to meet with in their enterprises, or the dangers with which

they were threatened. When the Ottomans made an unsuccessful war, or

an unfavourable treaty, they never failed to lay the blame on their

leaders, whom popular vengeance devoted to death or exile; and whilst

they thus immolated victims to their vanity, their reverses became the

more irreparable, from their persisting in mistaking the true causes of

them.

Tacitus somewhere expresses the joy he felt in seeing barbarians

making war upon one another; and we experience something of this

joy when we see despotism threatened by its own institutions, and

tormented by the very instruments of its power. Another spectacle,

no less consoling to all who love humanity and justice, is to behold

this family of fierce despots, before whom the entire East trembled,

devouring itself. It is well known what victims each sultan, on

ascending the throne, was compelled to offer to the suspicious genius

of despotism. But Heaven does not permit the most sacred laws of nature

to be constantly violated with impunity; and the Ottoman dynasty, in

expiation of so many crimes against family ties, sunk at last into a

species of degradation. The Ottoman princes, brought up in subjection

and fear, lost the energy and the faculties necessary for conducting

the government of a great empire. Soliman II. only increased the evil

by decreeing a constitutional law, that no son of the sultan’s should

command armies or govern provinces. From that time none but effeminate

princes, timid and senseless men, occupied the Ottoman throne.

If the will of the prince became corrupt, it was quite sufficient to

render the corruption general. In proportion as the character of the

sultans degenerated, everything degenerated around them. A universal

apathy displaced the noisy activity of war and victory. To the passion

for conquests succeeded cupidity, ambition, selfishness, and all the

vices that signalize and complete the decline of empires. When states

rise and march on towards prosperity, there is an emulation to increase

their powers; when they decline, there is also an emulation to urge on

their destruction, and take advantage of their ruin.

The empire had always a numerous army; but that army, in which

discipline every day degenerated, was only formidable in time of peace.

A crowd of _Thimariots_, or possessors of fiefs for life, having

nothing to leave to their families, passed over the lands that were

given to them like locusts, which, in the plains where the winds have

wafted them, destroy even to the germs of the harvests. The pachas

governed the provinces as conquerors. The wealth of the people was for

them like the booty which conquerors distributed among themselves on

the day of victory. Such as could amass treasures were able to purchase

impunity. Such as had armies proclaimed their independence. Subalterns

everywhere followed the example of the leaders. In the government, as

well as in the army, everything was put up to sale, everything was

subject to pillage. Thus this empire, which had displayed such energy,

fell like a prey into the hands of all those whom fortune or the

favour of the prince called to authority; and if we may be permitted

to employ a not very elevated comparison to express the degree of

abasement of a nation, the Ottoman power no longer presented any aspect

but that of those lifeless bodies in which we can perceive no motion

but in the insects that are devouring them.

The sultans of Constantinople, while slumbering in their seraglios,

were often awakened by the thunder of popular revolts. Violences of the

army or the people were the only justice able to reach despotism. But

this justice itself was one calamity the more, and only assisted in

precipitating the general decline.

Although the successors of Othman, after the reign of Selim, were the

pontiffs of the national faith, this important dignity added nothing

to their power. The Mussulman faith, which commanded with severity

the observance of many minute practices, did not at all repress the

passions of the multitude. A religious belief which permitted a prince

to commit fratricide could be no safeguard for either the authority

or the life of the prince. A religion always ready to consecrate the

triumph of force, could find no motives in its moral code for the

condemnation of revolt, particularly when the revolt happened to be

crowned with success.[89]

But what is remarkably singular, the Turks, when they rose against a

prince of the Ottoman dynasty, preserved a profound veneration for that

dynasty. They immolated the tyrant to their vengeance, and were ready

to immolate themselves for the tyranny. Thus license, in its greatest

excesses, always respected despotism; and what carried disorder to its

highest pitch was, that despotism in its turn respected license.

The Turks lived in this state of decline as in their natural condition.

Nothing is more remarkable in history than the carelessness of a nation

in the midst of a revolution that is dragging it down to its ruin; and

this revolution with the Turks was not brought about by new ideas, but

by old ideas, not by love of liberty, but by habits of slavery. They

respected the causes of their ruin, because these causes were connected

with the history of barbarous times; and religion, by constantly

repeating to them that “he who is in the fire ought to be resigned,”

prevented them from seeking a remedy for the ills they suffered.

Among nations which incline towards destruction, in the very bosom

of corruption a certain politeness, a certain polish or elegance of

manners, may be observed. The Turks, on the contrary, had a brutal

and savage corruption, and their empire grew old without the nation’s

losing anything of that fierceness of character, of that proud

roughness, which belong to the infancy of society.

We shall be asked why Christendom did not take advantage of this

decline of the Turks to drive them back again into Asia. We have seen

in this history, that the nations of Christian Europe were never able

to combine and agree for the defence of Constantinople, when it was

attacked by the Turks; and they showed no more inclination to combine

to deliver it after it was taken. We may add that the less redoubtable

the Turks became, the fewer were the efforts made to conquer them.

They inspired, besides, no jealousy in the commercial nations of

Christendom. It was in vain that fortune placed them between the East

and the West; that she rendered them masters of the Archipelago, of the

coasts of Africa, of the ports of the Black Sea and the Red Sea: their

finest provinces were deserts, their cities were abandoned. Everything

perished in the hands of an indolent and unpolished people. The Turks

were spared, because they made no use of their advantages; and because

they were, to employ an expression of Montesquieu’s, the men the most

fit to hold great empires carelessly.

Before we terminate this rapid sketch of the Turkish empire in the

seventeenth century, we beg to be allowed to add some reflections which

circumstances may cause to be appreciated. Nothing was more monstrous

than the presence, upon the same territory, of two nations and two

religions that hated and cursed each other reciprocally. Spain had

presented a similar spectacle; but the energy and the magnanimous

constancy of the Spaniards triumphed over an adverse people and an

adverse religion; and at the very time at which the Turks established

themselves in Greece, the Moors, carrying with them their foreign

worship, abandoned their conquests and returned to Africa, from whence

they came. The Greeks, after the invasion of the Ottomans, neither

showed the same energy nor the same courage; although their patriotism

ought to have been constantly animated by the soil they trod on, and by

their very name, of which the conqueror had not been able to deprive

them.

Nevertheless, amidst their abasement and their misery, they were still

able to place their hope in the ascendancy of religious ideas, and in

the wish for civilization, which acted as a tie between all Christian

societies. Whilst the manners and the worship of Islamism rendered the

Turks foreign and even odious to Christendom, the religion of Christ

and the remembrances of history placed the Greeks in relation with the

other nations of Europe.

In proportion as the knowledge derived from antiquity made progress

among the Franks, Greece became for them a sacred country. The language

of Plato and Demosthenes, in which the charms of liberty had been

celebrated with so much eloquence, became more dear to them than their

own maternal tongue. The poetical sites of Greece, which the love of

letters rendered so familiar to the studious class, were for us like

places in which we had passed our infancy. Europe had not a scholar in

whom the city of Aristotle, that of Lycurgus, or that of Epaminondas,

did not inspire something resembling the sentiments we feel for our

own country. If the Greeks were degenerated; if they viewed with

indifference the ruins of their country, ancient Greece still lived for

every enlightened man, and was ever present, wherever a taste for the

arts or a love of learning existed.

The warmer that the interest for the Greeks became, the more barbarous

the Turks appeared. The Ottoman nation came and established itself in

the richest countries of Europe, and remained in sight of all European

people, without becoming acquainted with their languages, their laws,

or their policy; like those troops of wild animals which sometimes

stop in the neighbourhood of the dwellings of man, ignorant of that

which is going on in these places, and having no means to seize their

prey or defend themselves, but their activity, their natural strength,

and the means which a gross instinct gives them. This state of things

was opposed both to the laws of society and the laws of nature, which

do not permit men or nations to live together and in the same place,

except when they possess similar qualities, and are able to employ

their faculties in common. The Turks may have been protected, at first

by the fortune of their own arms, and afterwards by the policy of

certain cabinets; but what real support could they have in the West,

when they were repulsed by the manners, feelings, and opinions of the

European nations, to whom they became every day more foreign?

On one side, the antipathy entertained for a barbarous people; on the

other, the relations which united nations civilized by Christianity,

were likely, sooner or later, to revive that spirit of fraternity which

produced the crusades; and God has willed that this spirit, from which

the holy wars were born, should manifest itself in the same century

which had for a long time refused to acknowledge the effects or to

admire the prodigies of them.

At the moment in which we are finishing this history, the Greeks have

thrown forth a cry of alarm, and this cry has resounded throughout

the Christian world. Is the moment of their deliverance arrived? When

we examine the present state of Europe, we find a much greater force

than would be necessary to conquer Byzantium; but on the other side,

the diversity of interests and opinions will not permit the Christian

republic to unite for this great enterprise. We have seen that the

Turks really possess nothing but the soil of their vast empire; the

riches that are there produced belong to the nations of Christendom,

and these nations are for the Turkish provinces, which they cultivate

to their profit, that which an active and industrious farmer is for the

fields he ploughs and reaps. Add to this, that most of the Christian

powers appear to fear that the displacing of a great empire may break

the ties of the European confederation; they do not, as formerly,

dread the strength of the Ottomans, but the difficulties and divisions

that the conquest would produce. That which may add to their fears is

that impatience for change, that ardent passion for novelty, which

is spread all at once among the nations like a contagious fever;

whilst the Greeks are imploring Europe for their liberty, restless and

dissatisfied spirits look to the East for I do not know what signal

for a revolution in Europe. Thus Christendom, divided by its various

interests, tormented by a thousand different passions, and fearing for

its own repose, awaits with anxiety the events that are preparing,

and appears to recoil from victories which the superiority of her

intelligence and her armies hold out to her.

What will be the issue of all the warlike demonstrations and all

the pacific negotiations of which fame informs us every day? There

is no doubt the cross will again arise in the East, and the fate of

Christians residing there will receive some amelioration; but are we

arrived at the moment which is to render Europe entirely Christian?

Will the Ottoman empire, whose weakness now appears so great, yield

to the power of its enemies, or will it hasten its own ruin? Will

Greece, so long enslaved, resume that rank among nations from which she

formerly descended so ingloriously, or will she fall into the hands

of her liberators? A thousand other questions present themselves to

the mind; but we will not forestall events; above all, we will avoid

multiplying conjectures and hypotheses, or producing here the brilliant

reveries of philosophers and poets, which the severity of history

rejects. When we set a high value upon truth, and have sought it for a

length of time in all that the remembrances of the past contain that is

most positive, we learn to speak of the future with much circumspection

and reserve.

It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon the Ottoman empire;

but the origin of that empire, its progress and its decline, are

connected with all the events we have had to describe. The sketch

we have traced of it may have been sometimes serviceable in making

our readers acquainted with the spirit and the character of the wars

against the infidels; and is this view our labour has not been useless.

At the period we have now gained, the passions which had given birth to

the prodigies of the crusades had become speculative opinions, which

occupied the attention of writers rather than that of kings or nations.

Thus the holy wars, with their causes and effects, became the objects

of the discussions of doctors and philosophers. We may remember the

opinion of Luther; and although he had partly disavowed or retracted

his first opinion upon the war against the Turks, most of his partisans

continued to evince a great aversion for the crusades.

The minister Jurieu goes much further than Luther. That ardent apostle

of the Reformation, far from thinking that war ought to be made against

the Mussulmans, did not hesitate to consider the Turks as auxiliaries

of the Protestants, and said that the fierce sectaries of Mahomet were

sent to “labour with the Reformers in the great work of God,” which was

the ruin of the papal empire. After the raising of the last siege of

Vienna, in 1683, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the same

Jurieu was afflicted at the disgrace of the Reformers and the defeat of

the Turks; adding, at the same time, “that God had only abased them, in

order to raise them together again, and make them the instruments of

his vengeance against the popes.” Such is the excess of blindness to

which the spirit of party or sect has power to carry us, when misled by

hatred, and irritated by persecution.

Other writers, however, celebrated for their genius, and who also

were connected with the Reformation, maintained that wars against the

infidels ought to be carried on: they deplored the indifference of

Christendom, and the wars that were breaking out daily among Christian

nations, whilst they left in peace a people, a foe to all other

peoples. Chancellor Bacon, in his dialogue _de bello sacro_, employs

all his logic to prove that the Turks are excluded from the law of

nations. He invokes, by turns, natural right, the rights of nations,

and divine right, against the barbarians, to whom he refuses the name

of a people, and maintains that war should be carried on against them

as against pirates, anthropophagi, or wild animals. The illustrious

chancellor quotes, in support of his opinion, maxims from Aristotle,

maxims from the Bible, with examples from history, and even from fable.

His manner of reasoning savours a little of the policy and philosophy

of the sixteenth century, and we do not feel ourselves called upon to

repeat arguments, of which many would not be of a nature to convince

minds of the present century.

We prefer developing some of the ideas of Leibnitz, who, in order

to revive the spirit of distant expeditions, addressed himself to

the ambition of princes, and whose political views have received a

memorable application in modern times. At the moment in which Louis

XIV. was preparing to carry his arms into the Low Countries, the

German philosopher sent him a long memorial, to persuade him to renew

the expedition of St. Louis into Egypt. The conquest of that rich

country, which Leibnitz calls the Holland of the East, would favour the

triumph and the propagation of the faith; it would procure for the Most

Christian king the renown of Alexander, and for the French monarchy

vast means of power and prosperity. After the occupation of Alexandria

and Cairo, fortune would offer the conquerors some happy opportunity

for restoring the empire of the East; the Ottoman power, attacked by

the Poles and the Germans, and troubled by internal divisions, was

ready to sink into ruin; Muscovy and Persia were already preparing to

take advantage of its fall; if France put forth her strength, nothing

would be more easy than to gather together again the immense heritage

of Constantine, to dominate over the Mediterranean, to extend her

empire over the Red Sea, over the Sea of Ethiopia, over the Persian

Gulf, and obtain possession of the commerce of India; everything the

most brilliant in the glory and grandeur of empires then presented

itself to the imagination of Leibnitz; and this exalted genius, dazzled

by his own idea, and allying his policy with the prejudices of his

age, could see nothing greater than the conquest of Egypt, _but the

discovery of the philosopher’s stone_: he beheld already, in a shortly

distant futurity, the Christian religion flourishing again in Asia, the

empire and the commerce of the East and the West divided between the

king of France and the house of Austria and Spain, the world rendered

peaceful, and governed by these two conquering powers!

After having developed the advantages of the vast enterprise he

proposed, Leibnitz neglected none of the means that would be likely

to secure the success or facilitate the execution of it. It was in

this part of his memorial that he showed all the superiority of his

genius; and when we read the account of the last war of the French

in Egypt, we cannot but feel persuaded that Buonaparte was well

acquainted with the plan of campaign addressed by Leibnitz to Louis

XIV. But certainly this gigantic enterprise, whose result was likely to

be more brilliant than either solid or durable, was less suited to a

monarch guided in his policy by the sentiments of real greatness, than

to the modern hero, always enamoured of an adventurous and romantic

glory. Nevertheless, the ideas of Leibnitz, although not favourably

received by the cabinet of Versailles, did not fail to produce a lively

impression upon the statesmen of the seventeenth century. It is known

likewise, that the king of France had already thought seriously of

a war against the Turks; and we have reason to believe that Boileau

alluded to all these projects of distant conquests, when he said in his

epistle to the king:

Je t’attends dans six mois aux bords de l’Hellespont.[90]

The eloquence, or even the flattery of authors, could not induce

princes to take up arms against the infidels; and the Crusaders

finished, as they began, with pilgrimages. Among the celebrated

pilgrims who repaired to the East after the holy wars, one of the most

remarkable was Ignatius Loyola. He visited the holy places twice, and,

like St. Jerome, would have ended his days in Palestine, if the Latin

priests had not advised him to return into Europe, where he established

the order of the Jesuits. As was the case before the crusades, princes

mixed with the crowd of Christians who went to the Holy Land. Frederick

III., before he ascended the imperial throne, went on a pilgrimage to

the holy city. We still possess an account of the voyages which were

made successively into Palestine by a prince of Radziwil, a duke of

Bavaria, a duke of Austria, and three electors of Saxony, among whom

was he who was the protector of Luther.

Pilgrims from the West were no longer received at Jerusalem, as in

the early times, by the Knights of St. John, but by the Latin fathers

of the order of St. Francis of Assisi, who devoted themselves to the

guardianship of the holy sepulchre. Preserving the hospitable manners

of ancient times, the guardian father himself washed the feet of

travellers, and furnished them with the necessary assistance for their

pilgrimage. Pilgrims embarked at Venice, where vessels were always

ready to transport them to the coast of Syria. People could obtain

all the benefits attached to the pilgrimage of the Holy Land, without

quitting their homes; either by commissioning pious men who were sent

beyond the seas, or cenobites who resided on the spot.

The greater part of the sovereigns of Christendom, after the example

of Charlemagne, thought it consistent with their glory, not only to

deliver, but to protect the city of Jesus Christ from the outrages of

the Mussulmans. The capitulations of Francis I., renewed by most of his

successors, contain[91] several conditions which contribute to secure

peace to the Christians, with the free exercise of their religion in

the East. In the reign of Henry IV., Deshayes, the ambassador from

France to Constantinople, went to visit the faithful at Jerusalem, and

conveyed to them the consolations of a charity worthy of royalty. The

count of Nointel, who represented Louis XIV. at the court of the sultan

of Turkey, also went into the Holy Land; and Jerusalem received in

triumph the envoy of the powerful monarch, whose credit and renown were

employed to protect the Christians beyond the seas.

Most of the princes of Christendom every year sent their tributes to

the holy city; and in solemn ceremonies, the church of the Resurrection

displayed the treasures offered by the kings of the West. The guardians

of the holy places, who entertained and took charge of pilgrims,

possessed nothing on earth; but the gifts of the faithful were for them

like the manna of the desert, sent every day from heaven. By a species

of miracle constantly renewed, the holy monuments of the Christian

religion, for a long time defended by the armies of the West, having

no longer any defence but religious remembrances, preserved themselves

amidst the barbarous sectaries of Islamism: the security enjoyed by

the city of Jerusalem made its deliverance less thought of. That which

produced the spirit of the crusades in the eleventh century was, above

all other causes, the persecution directed against pilgrims, and the

state of misery in which the Christians of the East existed. When they

ceased to be persecuted, and had fewer miseries to endure, lamentable

accounts no longer awakened the pity and indignation of the western

nations; and Christendom satisfied itself with addressing prayers to

God for the preservation of peace in the places he had sanctified by

his miracles. There was then a spirit of resignation[92] which took

place of the enthusiasm of the crusades; the city of David and of

Godfrey became confounded in the minds of Christians with the heavenly

Jerusalem, and as sacred orators said, “it was necessary to pass

through Heaven to arrive at the Holy Land,” it was of no use appealing

to the bravery of warriors, but to the devotion and charity of the

faithful.