[57] Several authors have thought that Villehardouin could not write;

and they found their opinion upon what he himself says,—“_I, who

dictated this work_.” However that may be, the history of Villehardouin

has been pronounced by learned men to be a model of the language that

has ceased to be French. In the sixteenth century the language of

the marshal of Champagne was already not understood; his history was

turned into modern French by Blaise de Vigenère towards the end of the

sixteenth century; this translation has itself become so old as to be

now scarcely intelligible. The new version that Ducange made of it in

the seventeenth century still bears an impression of antiquity, which

preserves something of the _naïveté_ of the original. We shall often

have occasion to quote Villehardouin; but we shall only quote the

ancient versions, and sometimes from a translation we have ourselves

made, always endeavouring to preserve as far as possible the simplicity

of the old language.

[58] Gibbon says, “A reader of Villehardouin must observe the frequent

tears of the marshal and his brother knights; they weep on every

occasion of grief, joy, or devotion.”—TRANS.

[59] Maintenant li six messagers s’ageneuillent à la pies mull

plorant.—_Villehardouin_, lib. i.

[60] Persuasum omnes habent, solos Venetos mari, Gallos terrâ

præpotentes esse.—_Rhamn._ lib. i.

[61] Vigenère, the translator of Villehardouin, informs us that in his

time the treaty between the Venetians and the French, concluded in the

month of April, 1201, was still preserved in the Chancery of Venice.

[62] The author of the _History of the Republics of Italy_

recapitulates thus the sum that was due to the Venetians by the

Crusaders:—

For four thousand five hundred horses, at four }

marks per horse } 18,000

For the knights, at two marks per knight 9,000

For twenty thousand foot-soldiers, at two marks }

per soldier } 40,000

For two squires per horse, nine thousand squires 18,000

———

Total marks 85,000

———

Eighty-five thousand marks of silver are equal to four millions two

hundred and fifty thousand francs.

[63] Thibault was buried in the church of St. Stephen of Troyes; his

epitaph finishes with these verses:—

Terrenam quærens, cœlestem repperit urbem;

Dum procul hæc potitur, obviat ille domi.

[64] The _History of Burgundy_ by Courtépée and Béguillet has here

committed a great error in making Eudes III. set out on the crusade,

and take a part in the capture of Constantinople.

[65] Villehardouin makes thus the eulogy of Boniface, marquis of

Montferrat:—“The marquis Boniface is, as every one knows, a very

valorous prince, and most esteemed for knowledge of war and feats of

arms of any one at the present day living.”

[66] At the same time that Egypt experienced all the horrors of famine,

Richard of St. Germain and the Chronicle of Fossa-Nova (see _Muratori_)

say that a great dearth was felt in Italy and Spain; one of them adds

that this year, 1202, was known under the name of “annus famis.”

Mézerai speaks of this famine, which was felt in France, and attributes

it to the war then carried on between Philip and Richard. “The two

kings,” says he, “pillaged the lands, pulled up their vines, cut down

the trees, cut the harvest whilst unripe, and destroyed more cities and

towns in one day than had been built in ages. Famine followed these

horrible ravages, says an author; so that many of the richest were

reduced to beg their bread, and finding none to give it to them, ate

grass and burrowed in the earth for roots.”

[67] The pope was satisfied with liberating the Crusaders from the

usurious debts which they owed to the Jews. At that period all interest

upon money lent was considered usury.

[68] Jacques of Vitri, when speaking of the suspicions and murmurs

that arose against Foulques of Neuilly, expresses himself thus:—Et

crescente pecuniâ, timor et reverentia decrescebant.

[69] The Abbé Lebeuf, in his _History of the Diocese of Paris_, vol.

vi. p. 20, gives us a description of the tomb of Foulques of Neuilly,

which was still standing in the last century. “The tomb of Foulques,

the famous curé of this place about the year 1200, is in the nave,

before the entrance to the choir, built of stone a foot and a half

high. It is the work of the age in which this pious personage died.

Foulques is represented in relief upon the monument, clothed as a

priest, his head bare, having the tonsure on the top, and the hair so

short that the whole of his ears is visible. A book is laid upon his

breast, which he does not hold, as his hands are crossed above, the

right placed upon the left. His chasuble and his manipule represent the

vestments of his times. He has under him a kind of footstool, cut in

the stone, and two angels in relief incense his head, which is placed

towards the west; for, after the ancient manner, his feet are pointed

to the east, or the altar. It is not true, as has been said, that this

tomb is incensed, nor has it any arms. He is called in the country Sir

Foulques, and sometimes Saint Sire Foulques. There is a tradition that

the canons of St. Maur formerly endeavoured to carry it away; but the

immobility of the car with which this story is adorned, tells us what

degree of faith may be attached to it.” M. l’Abbé Chastelain names his

death, in his _Universal Martyrology_, as having taken place on the 2nd

of March, 1201, and qualifies him as _venerable_.

[70] Villehardouin says, when speaking of the arrival of the Crusaders

at Venice, “No nobler people were ever seen, nor better appointed,

nor more disposed to do something good for the honour of God and the

service of Christendom.”

[71] Upon the sojourn of the Crusaders at Venice, _Gesta Innocentii_,

Villehardouin and Ducange, Sanuti, Hérold, D’Outreman, Fleury,

_Histoire Ecclésiastique_, vol. xviii., l’Abbé Langier, &c. &c., may be

consulted.

[72] Then might be seen so many beautiful and rich vessels of gold and

silver heaped up here and there, and carried to the hotel of the duke

as part of their payment.—_Villehardouin._

[73] The Venetians might have said, and no doubt did say on this

occasion, that the king of Hungary had taken the cross many years

before, and had done nothing yet towards the fulfilment of his vow.

Andrew did not set out for Palestine till many years after the taking

of Constantinople.

[74] The monk Gunther does not at all spare the Venetians, and

reproaches them bitterly with having diverted the Crusaders from their

holy enterprise. The pious resolution of the leaders of the crusade,

says he, was subverted by the perfidy and wicked artifices of these

masters of the Adriatic,—fraude et nequitiâ Venetorum.

[75] With the true spirit of an antiquary, M. Michaud delights

in throwing a character of the “olden time” into the language of

Villehardouin, which is in a degree effective in the French, but is

with much difficulty conveyed into English.—TRANS.

[76] Irene, the daughter of Isaac, had been affianced to William, son

of Tancred, king of Sicily; being taken into Germany, with the rest of

the family of Tancred, she had married Philip of Swabia.

[77] Villehardouin and Gunther give very circumstantial details of the

siege of Zara, and of the debates that followed it. (See also, on the

subject of these debates, the letters of Innocent.) The Abbé Fleury,

in the sixteenth volume of his _Ecclesiastical History_, displays

sufficiently the spirit that then actuated the Crusaders. M. Lebeau, in

the twentieth volume of the _History of the Lower Empire_, and the Abbé

Laugier, in the second volume of his _History of Venice_, say a great

deal concerning the siege of Zara.

[78] Katona, in his _Histoire Critique des Rois de Hongrie_, expresses

himself with bitterness against the Crusaders, and relates facts very

little favourable to the Venetians and French who laid siege to Zara.

Archdeacon Thomas, one of the historians of Hungary, does not spare the

Venetians, whom he accuses of tyranny, and who made, he says, their

maritime power detested by all the excesses of violence and injustice.

[79] We feel bound to present the text of this oath:—B. Fland. et

Hain., L. Blesen et Clar. et H. S. P. comites, Oddo de Chanliet, et

W. frater ejus, omnibus ad quos litteræ istæ pervenerint, salutem in

Domino. Notum fieri volumus, quod super eo quod apud Jaderam incurrimus

excommunicationem apostolicam, vel incurrisse nos timemus, tam nos quam

successores nostros sedi apostolicæ obligamus, quod ad mandatum ejus

satisfactionem curabimus exhibere. Dat. apud Jaderam, anno Domini 1203,

mense Aprilis.

[80] The pope adds, whilst speaking of the Venetians: “Excommunicated

as they are, they still remained tied by their promises; and you are

not the less authorized to require the performance of them; it is

further a maxim of right, that in passing over the land of a heretic

or an excommunicated person, you may buy or receive necessary things

from him. Moreover, excommunication denounced against the father of a

family, does not prevent his household from communicating with him.”

[81] This permission to live by pillage, even in a friendly country,

is remarkable, particularly as the pope pretends to authorize it by

examples from Scripture.—_Fleury_, _Hist. Eccl._ book lxxv.

Innocent, in giving the Crusaders permission to take provisions

wherever they may find them, adds, “Provided it be with the fear of

God, without doing injury to any person, and with a resolution to make

restitution.”

[82] We find in the continuator of William of Tyre the following

circumstance:—Malek-Adel being informed that the Crusaders were

assembling at Venice, conceived great uneasiness regarding their

ulterior designs. He called together the heads of the Christian clergy

at Cairo, and announced to them that a new expedition was preparing

in Europe, and that they must provide themselves with horses, arms,

and provisions. The bishops, to whom he addressed himself to obtain

the succour of which he stood in need, replied that their sacred

ministry did not allow them to fight. “Well,” answered Malek-Adel,

“since you cannot fight yourselves, you must provide me with men to

fight in your place.” He then demanded of them an account of the lands

they possessed, and ordered that these lands should be sold; and the

money produced by this confiscation was sent to Venice, to corrupt the

leaders of that republic, and to engage them to divert the Crusaders

from an expedition into Egypt or Syria. Malek-Adel at the same time

promised the Venetians all sorts of privileges for their trade in the

port of Alexandria. This singular circumstance, related at first, as we

have said, by the continuator of William of Tyre, is to be found also

in Bernard _Thesaurarius_, and in the _Chronicle_ of St. Victor. Marin.

Sanut, it is true, passes it by in silence, and contents himself with

saying that Malek-Adel went into Egypt and there collected a treasure.

But it may be observed that Marin. Sanut was a Venetian, and had a good

reason not to report all the details of a fact which was not to the

glory of his country. Bernard when relating it, adds:—Qualiter autem

hujus rei effectus fuerit in opinione patenti multorum est, si legantur

quæ Veneti cum baronibus ipsis peregerunt, detrahendo eos ad obsidionem

Jadræ, et deinde Constantinopolim.

[83] The marshal of Champagne lets no opportunity escape for blaming

with bitterness those who abandoned the army of the Crusaders.

[84] A double alliance and the dignity of Cæsar had connected the

two elder brothers of Boniface with the imperial family. Reinier of

Montferrat had married Mary, daughter of the emperor Manuel Comnenus;

Conrad, who had defended Tyre before the third crusade, was married to

Theodora Angela, sister of the emperors Isaac and Alexius.

[85] The army was no longer to be dreaded by the emperors as it had

been in the early days of the empire; but it was no more an object

of fear to its enemies than to its master. A modern historian, M.

Sismondi, finds in the government of the Greek empire a complete

and incontestable evidence of the natural and necessary effects

of the worst of governments. The ancients were acquainted with

scarcely any medium between liberty and despotism. The government of

Constantinople had retained, up to the middle of the middle ages, all

which characterized the despotism of the ancients, although we must

allow that this despotism was sometimes tempered by religion and the

influence of the patriarchs of Byzantium.

[86] Lebeau, in his _History_, describes at length the decline of

the Greek empire and the vices of the emperors. Gibbon, a much more

enlightened observer, sometimes neglects important details connected

with this period, and in his latter volumes, too often forgets the

Greeks to speak of the barbarous nations of the East and West that had

shared the wrecks of the Roman empire.

[87] We may consult, for an account of this expedition, the marshal of

Champagne, Gunther, and some passages of Nicetas. Rhamnusius has only

made a pompous paraphrase of Villehardouin. Lebeau and the Abbé Laugier

say a great deal of the events we are relating. This expedition of the

Crusaders has been splendidly described by the historian Gibbon.

[88] Villehardouin.

[89] It would be difficult to give a very exact idea of the city of

Constantinople as it was at the period of this crusade. Among the

travellers who have described this capital at a time nearer than our

own to the middle ages, we ought to remark Peter Gilles and Grelot,

who saw Constantinople, the one in the reign of Francis I., and the

other in the reign of Louis XIV. Their description has furnished those

who came after them with many documents. Revolutions, wars, the Turks,

and fires change every day the aspect of this city, which was already

much altered in the times of the travellers we have named. Ducange,

in his _Christiana Constantinopolis_, and Banduri, in his _Imperium

Orientale_, have collected all the information of the old travellers

and the Greek historians. Among modern travellers _Constantinople,

Ancient and Modern_, by the Englishman Dallaway, and _Le Voyage de la

Propontide_, by M. Lechavalier, may be consulted with advantage.

[90] Having cast anchor, such as had never been there before began to

contemplate this beautiful and magnificent city, the equal to which

they thought could not be found in the whole world. When they perceived

those high walls and large towers so near to each other, with which it

was furnished all round, and those rich and superb palaces and churches

rising above all, and in such great number, that they could not easily

believe they saw them with their eyes; together with the fine situation

of the city, in its length and breadth, which of all other cities was

the sovereign, &c.—_Villehardouin._

[91] Ducange, in his observations upon Villehardouin, gives a very

learned note upon the arms and escutcheons which the warriors of the

middle ages caused to be ranged on board their vessels, and which

served them as battlements to shelter them from all the arrows of the

enemy.

[92] The Greek historian Nicetas says, that the navigation of the

Crusaders had been so favourable and so rapid, “that they arrived in

the port of St. Stephen without being perceived by anybody.”

[93] Nicetas, speaking of the Crusaders, says they were almost all as

tall as their spears.

[94] Nicetas says, among the Venetian vessels there was one so large

that it was called _the World_.

[95] The Varangians, who were in the service of the Greek emperors,

have given rise to many discussions among the learned. Villehardouin

says that the Varangians were English and Danes. The count de St. Pol,

in a letter written from Constantinople, calls them English, Livonians,

Dacians. Other historians call them Celts, Germans. The word Varangians

appears to be taken from an English word _waring_,(a) which means

warrior; this word is met with in the Danish, and several other tongues

of the north of Europe. Ducange thinks the Varangians came from Danish

England, a small province of Denmark, between Jutland and Holstein. M.

Malte Brun, in the notes that accompany the _History of Russia_, by

Lévesque, thinks the Varangians drew their recruits from Scandinavia;

that some came from Sweden by Norvogorod and Kiow, others from Norway

and Denmark by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. We still possess

a dissertation upon the Varangians by M. de Villoison, in which we

find more learning than criticism. The most probable opinion is that

of Ducange and M. Malte Brun. We have but one observation to make,

which is, that it is probable the Varangians were not members of the

Roman church; if they followed the Greek religion, may we not believe

that they belonged to the nations of the North, among whom it had been

introduced?

(a)An Englishman is rather at a loss to tell where our author finds

this word. Johnson derives _war_ from _werre_—old Dutch.—TRANS.

[96] Le Père d’Outreman speaks thus of Conon de Béthune: Vir domi

militæque nobilis et fœcundus in paucis.—_Constantin. Belg._ lib.

iii. Villehardouin says that Conon de Béthune “was a wise knight and

well-spoken.”

[97] Thus went they sailing along by the side of the walls, where they

showed Alexius to the Greeks, who from all parts flocked to the mole:

Sieurs Greeks, behold your natural lord, of that there is no doubt, &c.

&c.—_Villehardouin_, book iii.

[98] It was nearly at this period that the city of Chrisopolis began to

be called Scutari. The name of Scutari is employed by Villehardouin.

[99] The breaking of the chain of the port, according to the account

of Nicetas, spread the greatest consternation among the Greeks; and

misfortune, says the historian of Byzantium, assumed so many different

forms, and produced so surprising a number of afflicting images, that

no mind is able to conceive them.

[100] For the first siege we may profitably consult the _Letter of the

Crusaders to the Pope_; the _History_ of Villehardouin; Nicetas, _Reign

of Alexius_; the _Chronicle_ of Dandolo; the _War of Constantinople_,

by D’Outreman, Rhamnusius _de Bell. Constantinop._ &c. &c.

[101] The name of Barbysses is at present unknown to the Turks, who

call this river Kiathana; the Greeks call it Karturicos, names which,

in both languages remind us of the paper-mills that are at its mouth.

[102] Nevertheless the superb palaces were ruined by the stones of an

extraordinary size that the besiegers launched with their machines,

and they were themselves terrified by the heavy masses that the Romans

rolled upon them from the walls.—_Nicetas, Hist. of Alexius Comnenus_,

book iii.

[103] The historian of Byzantium says, with regard to this fire, that

so lamentable a spectacle was capable of producing floods of tears

sufficiently abundant to have extinguished the conflagration.

[104] The marshal of Champagne describes to us the order of battle of

the Latins, as it was drawn up according to the tactics of the middle

ages. The Crusaders issued from their camp divided into six bodies;

they ranged themselves before their palisades. The knights were on

horseback, their sergeants and esquires were behind them close to the

quarters of their horses; the crossbow-men and archers were in front.

[105] Certes, voila une capitulation bien étrange, répondit l’empereur,

et ne voy pas comme elle se puisse accomplir, tant elle est grande et

excessive. Nompourtant vous avez tout fait pour lui et pour moy, que si

l’on vous donnerait tout cet empire entièrement, si l’avez vous bien

desuivi.—_Villehardouin_, book iv.

[106] The Crusaders addressed Otho, and not Philip of Swabia, which is

very strange, as Philip was the brother-in-law of Alexius; but it is

to be observed that at this period the pope had declared in favour of

Otho, and threatened Philip with the thunders of the Church.

[107] This speech is given in its entirety by Villehardouin.

[108] The Greeks and Latins were divided on three principal points;

first, the addition made by the Latin Church to the creed of

Constantinople, to declare that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the

Father; 2nd the refusal on the part of the Greeks to acknowledge the

primacy of the pope; 3rdly the pretension of the Greeks that it is not

possible to consecrate in the Eucharist with unleavened bread. Photius

began the schism; the patriarch Cerularius established it; this latter

wished to be acknowledged as the head of the universal Church instead

of the pope. L’Abbé Fleury, in his _Histoire Ecclesiastique_, thinks

that the schism of the Greeks only really began at the period the

Latins were masters of Constantinople.

[109] The Bulgarians had shaken off the yoke under the first reign of

Isaac. They had for leaders two brothers, Peter and Asan, who had for

successor a third brother, Joannices.

[110] Nicetas devotes an entire chapter to the description of this

fire. Villehardouin, in the fourth volume of his _History_, speaks thus

of it: De quoi les pélerins Français farent mult dolent, et mult en

eurent grand pitié.

[111] Nicetas gives a sufficiently long description of this statue of

Pallas.—See the _History of Isaac Angelus_, chap. iii. This statue

was thirty feet high; its eyes, says the Greek historian, were turned

towards the south, so that those who were ignorant of the science

of angles considered she was looking towards the West, and that she

invited the nations from the north of Europe to come to the shores of

the Bosphorus.

[112] Nicetas.

[113] The continuator of William gives the Greek prince the name of

Marofle.

[114] Lebeau, _Histoire du Bas-Empire_, says that Mourzoufle had been

employed to put out the eyes of Isaac.—See _Hist. du Bas-Emp._ liv.

xciv.

[115] Jacques de Vitri, Alberic, and the continuator of William of Tyre

speak of this battle fought between Antioch and Tripoli; Villehardouin

likewise makes mention of it, and names many knights that were killed

or made prisoners.

[116] Vigenère, when translating Villehardouin, renders thus the

passage in which the marshal of Champagne expresses the dissatisfaction

of the Crusaders, and the ill-conduct of Alexius towards them:—Alexis

les menait de délai en délai, de respit en respit, le bec dans l’eau,

quant au principal, et pour le regard de certaines menues parties,

qu’il leur fournissait comme à lesche doigt, formait tant de petites

difficultés et chicaneries, que les barons commencèrent à s’ennuyer.

[117] Villehardouin, after having described the court of Alexius, in

this ceremony naïvely adds: Tout cela se sentait bien sa cour d’un si

puissant et riche prince. The title of _puissant_ scarcely suited a

prince who was hearing war declared against him in his own palace; and

the epithet _rich_ was hardly more applicable to him, since he could

not pay what he had promised, and thereby redeem his empire from the

greatest danger.

[118] Là-desseus bruit se leva fort grand au palais; et les messagers

s’en retournuèrent aux portes, où ils montèrent habilement à cheval;

n’y ayant celui, quand ils furent hors, qui ne se sentit très heureux

et content en son esprit, voire estonné, d’être reschappé à si bon

marché d’un si manifeste danger; car il ne tint presque à rien qu’ils

n’y demeurassent tous morts ou pris.—_Villehardouin_, liv. vi.

[119] Mourzoufle deprived Nicetas of the place of Logothete, to give

it to his brother-in-law Philocales. Nicetas treats Mourzoufle with

much severity, and among the reproaches he addresses to him, we may

remark one which suffices to paint the court of Byzantium. The greatest

crime of the usurper was not that of having obtained sovereignty by

parricide, but postponing the distribution of his favours.

[120] The two attempts to burn the Venetian fleet are described in a

letter of Baldwin to the pope.—See _Gesta Innocent_. The marshal of

Champagne only mentions the first attempt of the Greeks.

[121] Dandolo demanded of Mourzoufle fifty centenaries of gold, which

have been valued at 50,000 pounds’ weight of gold, or 48,000,000 of

francs (about £2,000,000 sterling.—TRANS.). Nicetas alone speaks of

this interview, of which Villehardouin and other historians make no

mention.

[122] The whole of this interview militates very strongly, as indeed do

all the scenes in which the doge is an actor, against the story of his

blindness.—TRANS.

[123] The monuments we have consulted for the second siege of

Constantinople are the _History_ of Villehardouin, the reign of

Mourzoufle in Nicetas, the account of Gunther, and the second letter

of Baldwin to the sovereign pontiff, which is found in the Life of

Innocent (_Gesta Innocent._).

[124] Eidem civitati de quâ fugere non audebant, obsidionem

ponebant.—_Gunther._ The same Gunther describes the Crusaders as

trembling and distracted: De victoriâ tantæ multitudinis obtinen lâ,

sive expugnatione urbis nulla eis spes poterat arridere.

[125] This treaty, made under the walls of Constantinople, is still

preserved, and is to be found in _Muratori_, vol. xii.

[126] Et là, il eut maintes choses alléguées se trouvant en grand emoy

ceux de l’ost, pour leur être ainsi pris ce jour là.—_Villehardouin_,

liv. v.

[127] Et sachez qu’il y en avait qui eussent volontiers desiré, que la

vague et le vent les eussent ravis jusqu’au delà de l’archipel; car à

tels ne chaillait sinon que de parter de là, et aller leur voie droite

en leurs maisons.—_Idem._

[128] According to Gunther, the taking of Constantinople was more

wonderful than all that has been related by Homer and the poets of

antiquity.

[129] Gunther says it was a German count that set fire to the

city,—_comes Teutonicus_; he did it to prevent the Greeks from

rallying:—Comes Teutonicus jussit urbem in quâdam parte succendi, ut

Græci duplici laborantes incommodo, belli scilicet atque incendii,

faciliùs vincerentur; quod et factum est, et hoc illi consilio victi

penitùs in fugam conversi sunt.

[130] The crowd of Greeks fled principally by the Golden Gate. M. le

Chevalier, in his _Voyage de la Propontide_, informs us that vestiges

of the Golden Gate are still to be seen within the inclosure of the

seven towers. This gate was a triumphal arch erected by Theodosius,

after his victory over Maximus; it was surmounted by a statue of

Victory in bronze, and ornamented profusely with gold. On the remains

of this gate may still be read these Latin verses:—

Theodosi jussis, gemino nec mense peracto,

Constantinus ovans hæc mœnia firma locavit;

Tam citò tam stabilem Pallas vix conderet arcem.

Raoul de Dicetto, quoted by Ducange, says that these words were upon

the Golden Gate:—Quando veniet rex flavus occidentalis, ego per

meipsam aperiar. Raoul de Dicetto wrote thirteen years before the

taking of Constantinople.

[131] Agnes, daughter of Louis VII., had been at the age of eight

years, given in marriage to Alexius Comnenus, the son of Manuel, in

1179. After the death of Alexius, his murderer Andronicus usurped the

empire and married Agnes, but had no children by her. Agnes remained

a widow at Constantinople to the time of its being taken, when she

married Branas, who was attached to the party of the Latins.

[132] Nicetas speaks of the carnage which followed the taking of

Constantinople. We have quoted the words even of Villehardouin, who

does not materially contradict Nicetas. The pope in his letters warmly

reproached the Crusaders on this subject. Gunther only carries the

number of slain, on the entrance of the Crusaders into Jerusalem, to

two thousand persons, and attributes this slaughter to the Latins

established at Constantinople, who had great cause of complaint against

the Greeks. The same historian informs us that the ecclesiastics that

followed the army contributed, by their discourses, to put an end to

the massacre. He does not omit this occasion to praise the piety and

humanity of Martin Litz, who went through the ranks of the victorious

army, preaching moderation to the conquerors.

[133] There was nothing so difficult, says Nicetas, as to soften the

fierce temper, appease the anger, or gain the affections of these

barbarians. Their bile was so heated, that it only required a word to

set it in a blaze; it was a ridiculous undertaking to attempt to render

them tractable, a folly to speak reason to them.

[134] This is a very remarkable passage; it describes the hero of the

crusades with the pencil of the painter as well as with the pen of the

historian.—TRANS.

[135] The lamentations of Nicetas are not always natural; whilst

deploring the fate of Byzantium he says, “I complained to the walls,

that they alone should be insensible to calamities, and should remain

standing, instead of melting away in tears.”

[136] The eleventh and twelfth volumes of the _Memoirs of the Royal

Society of Gottingen_ contain a beautiful work of the illustrious

Heyne, upon the monuments of art that have existed at Constantinople.

In the first memoir he gives the nomenclature of the ancient

monuments,—_Priscæ Artis Opera_. In the second those that were erected

under the emperors of Byzantium. In two other memoirs, the same learned

author describes the loss of these same monuments: _De Interitu Operum

cum antiquæ tam verioris ætatis_.

[137] The Bellerophon. This statue is that of Theodosius, showing a

trophy placed upon a neighbouring column; it was thus the Pacificator

was represented: _fuit a Deo pacificatoris habitus_. Nicetas says that

in his left hand he held a globe. The statues of the other emperors of

Constantinople present a similar sign, to which a cross is attached.

The people believed that under the hoof of the left fore foot, was the

figure of a Venetian or a Bulgarian, or of a man of some other country

which had no intercourse with the Romans. The statue being destroyed

by the Latins, it was said that the figure of a Bulgarian was found

concealed in the hoof, crossed by a nail and incrusted in lead. This

statue came from Antioch in Syria. At the quadrilateral base was a

basso-relievo, in which the populace, ever superstitious, fancied they

beheld the prediction of the fall of the empire. They even said that

the Russians there represented would accomplish the prediction.

[138] One of the French translators of Gibbon, of a single statue

has made two; he speaks of a statue of Joshua and of another of

Bellerophon. It is true that this gross error is only met with in one

French translation; the English original says that in the opinion of

the vulgar, this statue passed for that of Joshua, but that a more

classical tradition recognised in it that of Bellerophon and Pegasus;

the free and spirited attitude of the courser indicating that he trod

on air rather than on the earth.

[139] Heyne attributes it to Lysippus; he thinks it is the same as the

colossal Hercules of Tarentum, which was brought to Rome and placed in

the Capitol. From this city it went to Constantinople, with ten other

statues, under the consulate of Julian and the reign of Constantine,

that is to say, about 322; but it was not till after being exhibited in

the Basilic that it was placed in the Hippodrome.

[140] Gibbon calls this _an osier basket_; Michaud says, _un lit

d’osier_, which I have preferred. I can imagine Hercules sitting upon a

bed or mattress of osier, but not upon a basket.—TRANS.

[141] The learned Harris, in his historical Essay upon the literature

and arts of the middle ages, thinks that the monument which represented

the wolf suckling Romulus, was the same as that to which Virgil makes

allusion when describing the buckler of Æneas:—

Illam tereti cervice reflexam

Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguâ.

_Æneid_, b. viii.

[142] Cum ergo victores victam, quam jure belli suam fecerant,

alacriter spoliarent, cœpit Martinus abbas de suâ etiam prædâ cogitare,

et ne ipse vacuus remaneret, proposuit et ipse sacratas manus suas ad

rapinam extendere.—_Gunther._

The same Gunther relates how Martin committed violence upon a Greek

priest to obtain relics from him. When speaking of Martin Litz Gunther

employs these singular expressions—_prædo sanctus_.

[143] We have spoken in the early part of the work of the true cross

which the kings of Jerusalem caused to be borne before them in battle,

and which was taken by Saladin at the battle of Tiberias; Saladin

refused to deliver it up to Richard, as many of the Crusaders must have

known. How then could the true cross be found at Constantinople? The

Greeks, however, were not very nice with respect to the authenticity

of their relics, and the Christians of the West on this point yielded

very easy faith to them. [I cannot but think our author a little out in

his criticism here: they were but fragments or portions of the cross,

at Constantinople the Saracens still held the main body of the true

cross—_if true it was_.—TRANS.]

[144] Villehardouin, when speaking of the rigorous justice exercised

upon all who endeavoured to conceal any part of the plunder, says: Et

en y eut tout plein de pendus.

[145] One edition of Villehardouin makes the plunder of Constantinople

amount to five hundred thousand silver marks, equivalent to

twenty-four millions; if we add to this sum the fifty thousand marks

due to the Venetians, and deducted before the division, and the

part which they had in the division itself, we shall find the total

amount of booty fifty millions four hundred thousand francs (about

£2,100,000.—TRANS.). As much, says the modern historian who supplies

us with this note, perhaps, was appropriated secretly by individuals.

The three fires which had consumed more than half the city had

destroyed at least as much of its riches, and in the profusion that

followed the pillage, the most precious effects had lost so much

of their value, that the advantage of the Latins probably was not

equivalent to a quarter of what they had cost the Greeks. Thus we may

suppose that Constantinople, before the attack, contained 600,000,000

of wealth (£25,000,000). (What would the plunder of London amount to in

1852?—TRANS.)

[146] The ceremony of the lighted flax still takes place at the

exaltation of the popes; these words are addressed to them: _Sic

transit gloria mundi_.

[147] Nicetas relates all the circumstances of the sharing of the lands

of the empire. We find in _Muratori_ the treaty for the division which

was made before the siege; we do not offer it to our readers, because

it is unintelligible in several places, and cannot shed any light over

geography. The names of the cities and provinces of the empire are

given in a very unfaithful and imperfect manner. The Venetians without

doubt furnished the necessary information for the drawing up of the

treaty, but this information was very incomplete.

[148] The pope would not at first recognise this election, which

appeared to him a usurpation of the rights of the Holy See; but as

Morosini was an ecclesiastic of great merit, Innocent was not willing

to choose another. Morosini was sent to Constantinople not as if

elected by the Crusaders, but as if appointed by the pope.

[149] Innocent, when speaking of the sack of Constantinople, expresses

himself thus in his letter:—Quidam nec religioni, nec ætati, nec

sexui pepercerunt; sed fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis

omnium exercentes, non solum meretriculas et viduas, sed et matronas

et virgines Deoque dicatas exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum. The

pope is more severe towards the Crusaders than Nicetas himself; the

indignation that the disobedience of the Crusaders had created, led him

to exaggerate their faults. The word _incestus_, applied to warriors

who had no family relations with the Greeks, alone serves to prove that

there is more bitterness than truth in the letter of Innocent.

[150] Some modern writers have asserted that the column from which

Mourzoufle was precipitated is still to be seen at Constantinople:

but there existed two columns in that city; one of Theodosius and the

other of Arcadius. The first was destroyed by Bajazet, and nothing

remains of the other but the pedestal, which is in the Avret Baras (the

women-market). See the _Voyage to the Propontis_, by M. le Chevalier,

who has cleared up this fact on the spot.

[151] Claudian has made in his panegyrics of Stilicho, a picture of

the invasion of the Goths in the provinces of Greece. These beautiful

countries had not been invaded since the third century. The Franks

scarcely knew how to guard their conquests better than the barbarians

that had preceded them.

[152] There is in the king’s library a manuscript in modern Greek,

bearing the number 2,898; the first part of this manuscript is a

romance in verse, entitled “Les Amours de Thésée et des Amazones.” The

second part of the manuscript is a poem on the crusades; all the tenth

canto describes in detail the conquests of the Franks in Greece. M.

Khazis, professor of modern Greek, had made a short analysis of this

poem.

[153] The letters of Innocent speak of the city of Athens, which was no

longer dedicated to Minerva, but to the holy virgin.—See b. xx. epis.

vi. _Idem._

[154] It is here that for the last time we quote the _History_ of

Villehardouin; we shall perhaps be reproached with having quoted it

too often, and by that means given too much monotony to our account.

We will answer, that the natural relation and expressions of such

an historian, who relates what he has seen and that which he has

experienced, have appeared to us above all that talent or the art of

writing could substitute in their place. We are pleased at believing,

that if our recital has been able to interest our readers, we owe

a great part of this interest to the multiplied quotations from

Villehardouin and other contemporary historians.

[155] Among the romantic accounts that were circulated concerning

Baldwin, we must not omit the following:—The emperor was kept close

prisoner at Terenova, where the wife of Joannice became desperately in

love with him, and proposed to him to escape with her. Baldwin rejected

this proposal, and the wife of Joannice, irritated by his disdain and

refusal, accused him to her husband of having entertained an adulterous

passion. The barbarous Joannice caused his unfortunate captive to be

massacred at a banquet, and his body was cast on to the rocks, a prey

to vultures and wild beasts.

But people could not be convinced that he was dead. A hermit had

retired to the forest of Glançon, on the Hainault side, and the people

of the neighbourhood became persuaded that this hermit was Count

Baldwin. The solitary at first answered with frankness, and refused the

homage they wished to render him. They persisted, and at length he was

induced to play a part, and gave himself out for Baldwin. At first he

had a great many partisans; but the king of France, Louis VIII., having

invited him to his court, he was confounded by the questions that were

put to him: he took to flight, and was arrested in Burgundy by Erard

de Chastenai, a Burgundian gentleman, whose family still exists. Jane

countess of Flanders caused the impostor to be hung in the great square

of Lisle.—See _Ducange_, _Hist. de Constant._ book iii.

[156] Dandolo was magnificently buried in the church of St. Sophia,

and his mausoleum existed till the destruction of the Greek empire.

Mahomet II. caused it to be demolished, when he changed the church of

St. Sophia into a mosque. A Venetian painter, who worked during several

years in the court of Mahomet, on returning to his own country obtained

from the sultan the cuirass, the helmet, the spurs, and the toga of

Dandolo, which he presented to the family of this great man.

[157] Nicetas did not know whether he ought to give a place in his

_History_ to the Latins, who were for him nothing but barbarians, but

he makes up his mind to continue—“when God, who confounds the wisdom

of human policy, and lowers the pride of the lofty, has struck with

confusion those who had outraged the Greeks, and delivered them up to

people still more wicked than themselves.”—See the history of that

which happened after the taking of Constantinople, chap. i.

[158] How is it that our author, who is evidently partial to

Villehardouin, has neglected to speak of his skilful retreat from

Adrianople, upon which Gibbon bestows such high praise “His masterly

retreat of three days would have deserved the praise of Xenophon and

the ten thousand.” Gibbon has fine passages on Villehardouin.—TRANS.

[159] Innocent, to get rid of the neighbourhood of the emperor,

demanded of Philip Augustus a knight who might marry a daughter of

Tancred, and possibly reconquer Sicily. The adventures and the wars of

Gauthier de Brienne are related by Conrad, abbot of Usberg, Robert the

Monk, Alberic, and, as we have already said, by the author of the _Acts

of Innocent_.

[160] We cannot refrain from offering our readers a curious passage

from an excellent manuscript memoir which M. Jourdain has communicated

to us, entitled _Recherches sur les Anciennes Versions Latines

d’Aristote employées par les Ecclésiastiques du 13me Siècle_. “Two

circumstances contributed in the thirteenth century to materially

spread the knowledge of the Greek language in the West. Baldwin, who

was placed upon the imperial throne, wrote to Pope Innocent III. to beg

of him to send to him men distinguished by their piety and knowledge,

chosen from the religious orders and the University of Paris, to

instruct his new people in the Catholic religion and Latin letters.

The pope wrote to several monastic orders and to the University of

Paris. About the same time Philip Augustus founded at Paris, near

the mountain St. Geneviève, a Constantinopolitan college, destined

to receive the young Greeks of the most distinguished families of

Constantinople. The intention of this prince was to extinguish in the

hearts of these young men the hatred they had imbibed against the

Latins, by offering to them all sorts of kind treatment, and perhaps

also to secure hostages against the fickleness and bad faith of the

Greeks.” We can conceive that this circumstance contributed powerfully

in diffusing the knowledge of Greek, not only in France but in all the

West, for Paris was then the most celebrated school, and almost all

the men to whom Latin translations from the Greek are attributed, had

studied in that city: we must also assign to the same cause the Latin

versions of Aristotle made from the Greek and published before St.

Thomas. Nevertheless, if the Arabs had not previously spread throughout

the West a taste for the Peripatetic philosophy, it is very doubtful

whether the relations established between the East and the West by the

inauguration of Baldwin, would have produced any desire to obtain it

from purer sources.

[161] Since their restoration to Venice, the history of these three

celebrated horses has given birth to three dissertations. In one

(_Narrazione Storica dei Quatro Cavalli di Bronzo_, &c.), Count

Cicognara, president of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Venice,

pretends that this monument was cast at Rome in the reign of Nero, in

commemoration of the victory over Tiridates. M. Schlegel (_Lettera ai

Signori Compilatori della Biblioteca Italiana_) rejects this opinion of

the count, and thinks that the four bronze horses are from the hands of

a Greek statuary of the time of Alexander.—_Dei Quatro Cavalli della

Basilica di S. Marco._ Andre Mustoxidi, a very learned young Greek,

makes this superb group come from Chios, which was rich in skilful

sculptors, and believes they were transmitted to Rome in the time of

Verres, and to Constantinople under Theodosius the Great.

[162] We find in the first volume of an Italian work entitled _Storia

d’Incisa e del già celebre suo Marchesato_, published at Asti, in 1810,

a precious monument; this is a charter which proves the sending of the

seeds of maize to a city of Montferrat. This is a very interesting

document.

[163] It is well worthy of remark that it is very little more than a

quarter of a century since this sentence was written; and, in that

short period, what has not science effected!—the East, of which we

were then said to be so ignorant, is better known to Europeans than it

was at any time during the crusades.—TRANS.

[164] The account of this famine, and the disasters by which it

was followed, is to be found in its details, in _Les Relations de

l’Egypte_, translated from Abdallatif by M. Letvestre de Lacy. This

Arabian author was a skilful physician and an enlightened man; and

his recital, which contains many extraordinary facts, bears all the

characters of truth.

[165] The circumstances of this earthquake are related by Abdallatif,

the Latin historians scarcely name this great calamity.

[166] M. Langlès has furnished us with this valuable incident, which he

has taken from the Persian biographer Daulet Chah. The biographer adds,

that a merchant of Aleppo redeemed Saadi, by paying the Christians the

sum of ten golden crowns, and he likewise gave the poet another hundred

as the dowry of his daughter, whom he gave him in marriage.

[167] History has great trouble in following the events of this period

through the cloud of anarchy which reigned everywhere; and that which

increases the difficulty is, that the authors of our old chronicles

were only acquainted with the kingdom of Jerusalem, and knew nothing of

what was going on in the interior of the states. The Arab historians,

on the contrary, take much more note of the expeditions of the interior

than of the events that happened at Ptolemaïs, situated on the

sea-coast, and in some sort isolated from the rest of Syria.

[168] We find few details upon this epoch in the continuator of William

of Tyre, or the other historians of the middle ages who mention the

Christian colonies.

[169] This penitence and that which follows are mentioned by Fleury,

in the sixteenth volume of his History; the guilty were condemned, in

addition to the pilgrimage, to wear neither vair, grey squirrel fur,

ermine, nor coloured stuffs; they were never to be present at public

games; after becoming widowers, were never to marry again; to walk

barefooted and be clothed in woollen, and to fast on bread and water

on Wednesdays, Fridays, Ember-week, and Vigils; to perform three Lent

fasts in the course of the year, to recite the Pater Noster a hundred

times, and make a hundred genuflexions every day. When they came to a

city, they were to go to the principal church barefooted, in drawers,

with halters round their necks and rods in their hands, and there

receive from the canons discipline, &c. &c.

[170] Son of Erard II., count of Brienne in Champagne, and Agnes

Monthéliard.

[171] The continuator of William of Tyre relates that the barons of

Palestine themselves demanded John of Brienne of the king of France.

[172] As Gibbon has done, I have preferred the real name of this sect

to the Latinized _Albigenses_.—TRANS.

[173] Bossuet, _Histoire des Variat._ vol. ii. L’Abbé Paquet, in

his _Dictionnaire des Hérésies_, and Fleury, in his _Histoire

Ecclésiastique_, express the same opinion.

[174] Notwithstanding the partiality I naturally feel for an author

whose work I am translating, and to which task I was led by my

admiration of it, I cannot allow such opinions of the war against

the Albigeois to pass unnoticed. A very sensible French historian

says:—“The inhabitants of these provinces were industrious,

intellectual, and addicted to commerce, the arts, and poetry; their

numerous cities flourished, governed by consuls with forms approaching

to republican; all at once this beautiful region was abandoned to the

furies of fanaticism, its cities were ruined, its arts and its commerce

destroyed, and its language cast back into barbarism. The preaching

of the first religious reform gave birth to the devastation of these

rich countries. The clergy were not distinguished there, as in France

or the northern provinces, by their ardour to improve themselves and

diffuse knowledge; they signalized themselves by gross disorders,

and sank daily into greater contempt. The need of reform had been

long felt among the people of Provence and many reformers had already

appeared. For a length of time associations had existed whose aim it

was to purify the morals and the doctrines of the Church; such were the

Paterins, the Catharins, and the Poor of Lyons; and the greater part of

these had obtained the sanction of the popes, who considered them as

so many orders of monks, highly calculated to awaken public devotion.

But the reforms that were operated extended gradually; dogmas even were

attacked, priests were subjected to the insults of the people, and

the domains of the Church were invaded. Such was the state of things

when the famous Innocent III., at the age of thirty-nine, ascended

the pontifical throne in 1198. To his great task he brought the

talents of an ambitious, and the energy of a violent and an inflexible

character. This pontiff, who dominated over Europe by indulgences and

excommunications, watched for and punished with severity every free

exercise of thought in religious matters; he was the first to feel how

serious and threatening for the Church of Rome that liberty of mind

must be that had already degenerated into revolt. He saw with great

inquietude and anger the new tendency of men’s minds in Provence and

Languedoc, and proscribed the reformers, the most numerous of whom, and

who gave their name to all the others, were known under the names of

Albigeois and Vaudois. Some among them were Manicheans, that is to say,

admitted the two principles; _but the greatest number of them professed

doctrines differing but very little from those which, three centuries

later, were preached by Luther_. They denied transubstantiation in the

sacrament of the Eucharist, rejected confession, and the sacraments

of confirmation and marriage, and taxed the worship of images with

idolatry.” In this war papacy put forth all its most dreaded powers;

indulgences to its brutal, mercenary soldiers; heaven for wholesale

slaughterers of their fellow-creatures; hell for all who dared to think

when they worshipped, or to breathe a word against the veriest nonsense

of Romish rites: many instances occurred in which the odious doctrine

of _no faith to be observed with heretics_, was unblushingly advanced

and cruelly acted upon. I will close my notice of this war against men

who ventured to entertain a shade of difference in opinion from their

fellow-Christians and the head of the Church, by a quotation that

vividly stamps its character. “The Crusaders precipitated themselves

in a mass upon the lands of the young viscount de Béziers, took his

castles and burnt all the men, violated the women and massacred the

children they found in them; then, turning towards Béziers, they

carried it by assault. A prodigious number of the inhabitants of the

circumjacent country had taken refuge in this city; the abbot of

Citeaux, legate of the pope, upon being consulted by the knights as to

the fate of these unhappy beings, a part of whom only were heretics,

replied by these execrable and ever-memorable words: ‘_Kill away!

kill away! God will take care of his own!_’” The crusade against the

Albigeois is one of the blackest pages in the history of mankind, and

ought to be described as such by every historian whose disagreeable

duty it is to name it.—TRANS.

[175] The abbot of Vaux-de-Cernai, who signalized himself in the

crusade against the Albigeois, has left us a history of this period,

in which he relates with an air of triumph, facts which passed before

his eyes, at which religion as well as humanity ought to blush. When

we have read his account, we are persuaded of two things: the first,

that he was sincere in the excess of his fanatical zeal; the second,

that his age thought as he did, and did not disapprove of the violences

and persecutions of which he so candidly exposes the history. Le Père

Langlois, a Jesuit, has written, in French, a history of the crusades

against the Albigeois. The _Histoire Ecclésiastique_ of Fleury,

and _L’Histoire de la Province de Languedoc_ may be consulted with

advantage.

[176] This crusade of the children is related by so great a number of

contemporary authors, that we cannot entertain any doubt of it. We will

refer to our Appendix the different versions of the ancient chronicles

of this singular event.

[177] Vetus est hoc artificium Jesus Christi, quod ad suorum salutem

fidelium diebus istis dignatus est innovare.—_Epist. Innocent._

[178] The year 1263 answered to the year 602 of the Hegyra.

[179] Montesquieu foretells the fate of Mahometanism; not as Innocent

did, but philosophically. He likewise predicts “that France will fall

by the sword;” but whether the sword will be drawn by foreigners or her

own sons, he does not say.—TRANS.

[180] Gibbon says: “Some deep reasoners have suspected that the whole

enterprise, from the first synod at Placentia, was contrived and

executed by the policy of Rome. The suspicion is not founded either in

matter or fact. The successors of St. Peter appear to have _followed_,

rather than _guided_ the impulse of manners and prejudice.” With great

respect for our illustrious historian, I cannot quite agree with him;

the popes were in many instances the first to kindle the flame, and

were always anxious to keep it burning. In the part of our history

now before us, it is plain it would have gone out but for the great

exertions of Innocent. The crusades were a powerful engine in the hands

of the popes; they could not afford to let them go to decay.—TRANS.

[181] The cardinal de Courçon was an Englishman by family. He had

studied at the University of Paris, and from that was connected with

Lothaire, who became pope under the name of Innocent III. It is to

this friendship that Peter Robert de Courçon owed his elevation. There

is a very long notice of this person by the late M. du Theil, in _Les

Notices des Manuscrits_, tom. vi.

[182] The continuator of William of Tyre expresses himself thus:—Il

ot en France un clerc qui prescha de la croix, qui avait nom mâitre

Jacques de Vitri; cil en croisa mult, là où il étoit en la predication,

l’eslurent les chanoines d’Acre, et mandèrent à l’apostolle (le pape)

qu’il lor envoyast pour estre évesque d’Acre; et sachiez s’il n’en eust

le commandement l’apostolle, il ne l’eust mie reçu, mais toutes voies

passa-t-il outremer, et fust évesque grand pièce, et fist mult de biens

en la terre; mais puis resigna-t-il, et retourna en France, et puis fut

il cardinal de Rome. [As M. Michaud has placed this note all in the

text, and has only given it to show the curious mode of expression, I

have followed his example.—TRANS.]

[183] Philip granted this fortieth, without reference to the

future—_absque consuetudine_, and upon condition that this voluntary

gift should be employed wherever the king of England and the barons of

the two kingdoms should think best.—See _Le Rec. des Ord._ tom. i. p.

31.

[184] In the royal regulations of Philip Augustus, there is an order

relative to the debts contracted by the Crusaders as members of a

commune. We think our readers will not be displeased by the particulars

of this order. “As to the Crusaders, members of certain communes, we

order,” says the king, “that if the commune itself be charged with any

levy, whether for foot or horse soldiers (l’ost et la chevauchée),

the inclosure of the city, the defence of the city in the event of a

siege, or for any debt that is due, and contracted before they took the

cross, they shall be held subject to the payment of their proportion,

equally with the other inhabitants who have not taken the cross; but

as to the debts contracted after the period at which they shall have

taken the cross, the Crusaders shall remain exempt, not only until

their approaching departure, but until their return.”—See the _Recueil

des Ordonnances_, _Dachery_, and the sixth vol. of the _Notices des

Manuscrits, dissertation de M. du Theil sur Robert de Courçon_.

[185] In the charter granted by King John, that monarch expressly

says that he grants this charter by the advice of the archbishop of

Canterbury, of seven bishops, and the pope’s nuncio.

[186] This victory of Bouvines, which had such happy results for the

French monarchy, will be worthily celebrated in the poem of _Philip

Auguste_, by M. Perceval de Grand-maison: we cannot sufficiently praise

our poets who take their subjects from the greatest periods of our

annals.

[187] Upon the holding of this council, the Chronicle of Opsberg,

the monk Godfrey, Matthew Paris, Albert Stadensis, the Chronicle of

Fassano, and particularly the collection of the councils, may be

consulted. Fleury enters into very copious details.—See the sixteenth

vol. of the _Histoire Ecclésiastique_.

[188] The discourse of the pope is preserved in its entirety in the

collection of the councils.—See the fourth Council of the Lateran.

[189] M. Raynourd, who has made profound researches into the language

and poetry of the troubadours, communicated to us this piece of Pierre

of Auvergne, with several others which appear to us of great interest,

and which we will insert in our Appendix.

[190] In a dissertation upon the cardinal de Courçon, M. du Theil has

undertaken to make the apology of Innocent III. We have the greatest

respect for this _savant_; but he evinces too strong an inclination

to justify Innocent in all respects; and an application of the common

proverb, “_He who proves too much proves nothing_,” is quite in place

here.

[191] Innocent pronounced these words against Louis, the son of Philip

Augustus, whom he had induced to make war against the king of England;

and whom he afterwards wished to excommunicate, because this prince

persisted in continuing a war begun by the commands and advice of the

Holy See.

[192] I have observed more than once, that our author is so absorbed

in the history he has undertaken, that he is somewhat loose in his

remarks upon that of the nations nearest to him. It was not likely that

Henry III., a boy of nine years old, should take the cross, or that

the prudent Pembroke and his other counsellors would allow the forces

of an unsettled kingdom to be wasted upon such a scheme. The king of

France again, who he says was constantly occupied in the war against

the Albigeois, had absolutely nothing to do with that war. The southern

provinces subjected to this calamity were fiefs of the crown of Aragon,

and did not belong at that time to France in any way. Whilst these wars

were raging, Philip was prudently extending his dominions to the north

and north-east.—TRANS.

[193] Bonfinius, the historian of Hungary, says that Gertrude gave

up the wife of Banc, the chancellor of the kingdom, to the criminal

desires of her brother. He adds that Banc killed the queen to avenge

this injury; but this assertion is contradicted by all historians. The

same author says that the wife of Andrew was assassinated during his

voyage to the Holy Land; but this assertion is as false as the first.

Gertrude was assassinated on the 18th of September, 1213.—See Palma,

_Notitia Rer. Hung._ t. i.

[194] Marguerite, queen of Hungary, set out for Palestine after the

death of Bela, her husband.—See the ninth book of this History.

[195] The Chronicle of Peter Durburg, a priest of the Teutonic

order, may be consulted on the manners and religion of the ancient

Prussians. This chronicle, whose purpose is to describe the conquests

of the Teutonic knights, contains several historical dissertations,

which appear to us to have great merit; the most curious are,

_Dissertatio de Diis Veterum Prussorum_; _Dissertatio de Sacerdotibus

Veterum Prussorum_; _Dissertatio de Cultu Deorum_, _de Nuptiis_,

_de Funeribus_, _de Locis Divino Cultui dicatis_, &c. &c. A Latin

dissertation, _De Moribus Tartarorum, Lithuanorum, et Moschorum_, may

likewise be consulted. This work contains curious details upon the

worship and manners of Lithuania and Samogitia, which bore a strong

resemblance to the worship and manners of the Prussians. M. Kotzbue, in

his history of the Teutonic knights, has thrown great light upon the

origin of the legislation, and the customs and religion of the ancient

inhabitants of Prussia.

[196] A letter from Pope Honorius to the archbishop of Maïence, says

that there is in Prussia a nation of barbarians, of whom it is said

that they kill all the girls but one born of each mother; that they

prostitute their daughters and wives, immolate captives to their gods,

and bathe their swords and lances in the blood of these victims, to

bring them success in battle—See _Raynal_, 1218. We refer our readers

to our Appendix, for some details upon the manners of the Prussians.

[197] Le Père Maimbourg and most historians make the king of Hungary

embark at Venice; but they are unacquainted with the Chronicle of

Thomas, deacon of Spalatro, who furnishes the fullest details of

the passage of Andrew II. into the Holy Land, and his return to his

dominions. This Chronicle, it is true, contains many doubtful things

concerning the crusade, and the kingdom of Hungary on the return of

Andrew; but it is quite worthy of confidence in all that passed at

Spalatro.

[198] “This year,” 614 of the Hegyra, says the continuator of Tabary,

“the Franks received succours by sea from Rome the great, and other

countries of the Franks, both west and north. It was the chief of Rome,

a prelate much revered among the Christians, who directed them; he sent

troops from his own country under various commanders, and he ordered

the other Frank kings either to march in person or send their troops.”

[199] A letter from the master of the soldiers of the Temple, addressed

to Honorius III., enters into several details respecting the situation

of the Holy Land at this period. This letter speaks of the scarcity

experienced in Syria; the master of the Templars adds, that they could

procure no horses. “For this reason,” said he to the pope, “exhort all

who have taken the cross, or intend to take it, to furnish themselves

with such things as they cannot procure here.”

[200] This prince was named Cheref-Eddin Melik Moaddham.

[201] It is our duty to quote here what is met with in the continuator

of Tabary, or the false Tabary, relative to this expedition of the

Christians: “They undertook to besiege the castle of Thour (Tabor), and

reached the top of the mountain and the foot of the walls. They were

very near becoming masters of it; but one of their princes being dead,

they retired, after having remained seventeen days before the fort.”

This account is quite contrary to that of the western historians,

and otherwise bears no mark of probability. It is true that the king

of Cyprus died during this campaign of the Crusaders; but he died at

Tripoli, and more than a month after the expedition of Mount Tabor.

[202] According to the chronicles of the times, and the report of

travellers, there is no water on Mount Tabor. It is probable that the

want of water prevented the Crusaders from undertaking the siege of the

fortress.

[203] The unimportant accounts of this period are to be found in the

continuator of William of Tyre and in James of Vitri, who was then

bishop of Ptolemaïs.

[204] The archdeacon Thomas describes with great simplicity the

miracles effected by the relics of the king of Hungary.

[205] One of these historians, Palma, expresses himself thus:—Hæc

eadem expeditio Hierosolymitana adeo nervos omnes monarchiæ Hungaricæ

absumpsit, ut unius propemodum seculi spatio ad pristinam opulentiam

viresque redire nequiverit. Another historian adds, that the long

absence of Andrew, and the imbecility of his son, so completely

alienated the minds of his subjects, that his return created no joy,

and that Benedict, the chancellor of Queen Yollande, had difficulty in

persuading a few prelates to go out and meet him.

[206] The register of Honorius in Rinaldi, and particularly the letter

written by William of Holland to the pope, may be consulted for the

details of this campaign against the Moors. William asks permission of

the sovereign pontiff to remain in Portugal a year; but this permission

was refused him by the Holy See, at that time only interested in the

crusade beyond the sea. Some details concerning the expedition of the

Crusaders in Portugal may be found in James of Vitri, and in the monk

Godfrey.

[207] Savary has rectified an error committed by several learned

moderns, who have confounded the city of Damietta, which existed in

the times of the crusades, and which is called _Thamiatis_ by Stephen

of Byzantium, with the city of that name which exists at present.

Aboulfeda informs us that the ancient Damietta was set fire to and

demolished in the year 618 of the Hegyra, after the crusade of St.

Louis, and that another city, under the same name, was constructed at

two leagues from the sea. The assertion of Aboulfeda agrees in this

point with the description of Macuzi.

[208] James of Vitri gives a sufficiently particular description of

Egypt and its productions; this portion of his history is not unworthy

of the perusal of the learned, and may give a just idea of the

knowledge of geography and natural history of the thirteenth century.

[209] For particulars of the siege of Damietta, James of Vitri, the

continuator of William of Tyre, Marin Sanut, Matthew Paris, the

correspondence of Honorius in _Raynaldi_, Godfrey, and the Monk of

Alberic may be consulted. We have examined the account attributed

to Olivier, priest of Cologne, which may be found in the _Gesta Dei

per Francos_, but this account is repeated by James of Vitri. The

Arabian authors and the Chronicle of Ibn-ferat have afforded us great

assistance in our labours, and have informed us of very important facts

of which the Franks and their historians were ignorant.

[210] Le Père Maimbourg gives a long account of this machine, not

necessary to be repeated.

[211] This priest, who was named Olivier, afterwards became bishop of

Paderborn and a cardinal of St. Sabina; it is the same that signed his

name to the account we have mentioned in a preceding note.

[212] Gretser, in his treaty _de Cruce_, says formally that the

popes required the commanders of the pilgrims to take with them both

agriculturists and workmen.

[213] The Chronicle of Ibn-ferat collects the judgments of all the

Arabian historians upon Malek-Adel. These historians all express

themselves in the same manner. The continuator of William of Tyre, who

appears to have lived in the East, speaks of the pomp and of the air

of majesty which were remarked in the brother of Saladin: the latter

otherwise treats Malek-Adel with great severity.

[214] It is under the name of Seïf-Eddin, by corruption Saphadin, that

Malek-Adel is known in our Histories of the Crusades.

[215] A Latin dissertation, by Boecler, entitled _De Passagiis_, may be

consulted on this subject.

[216] I cannot make out who this Prince Oliver was.—TRANS.

[217] In the letter by which Honorius announced to the leaders of the

crusade the powers he had given to Cardinal Pelagius, his holiness

expresses himself thus: Ut exercitum Domini cum humilitate præcedens,

concordes in concordiâ foveat, et ad pacem revocet impacatos.

[218] _Califas papa ipsorum._ The continuator of William of Tyre

calls the caliph the _Apostle of the Miscreants_. The same historian

adds:—“Après manda (le soudan du Caire) au calife de Baudac, qui

apostoille était des Sarrasins, et par Mahomet qu’il le seccurût, et

s’il ne le seccurait, il perdrait la terre. Car l’apostolle de Rome y

envoyait tant de gent, que ce n’était mie conte ne mesure, et qu’il

fait preschier par Payennisme ainsi comme faisaient par Chretienté, et

envoyât au soudain grant seccurs de gent par son preschement.”—“The

sultan of Cairo afterwards sent to the caliph of Bagdad, who was the

apostle of the Saracens, and implored him, in the name of Mahomet,

to assist him, assuring him that if he did not assist him, he should

lose his dominions. For the apostle of Rome sent so many people that

they were beyond all count or measure, and that the caliph must

order preaching throughout Paganism as was practised in Christendom,

and he might send the sultan great assistance in consequence of his

preachings.”

[219] The Chronicle of Ibn-ferat, from which we have drawn

that which we relate, says that Emad-eddin was the son of

Seïf-Eddin-aboul-Hassan-Ali-ben-Ahmed Alhékari, surnamed Ibn-almachtoub

(son of the Scarred), on account of a wound which had marked his face.

The same chronicle adds that the emir, the son of the Scarred, despised

the futile things of kings, and that most extraordinary circumstances

were related of his revolts against sovereigns.

[220] All the Christian historians of the middle ages, and Maimbourg

after them, appear persuaded that Providence, by a miracle of its will,

put the Saracens to flight.

[221] Our historians of the crusades name this prince Meledin.

[222] The infantry must have rendered, during the siege, greater

services than the cavalry, in defending the intrenchments, mounting to

the assault, or fighting on board the ships. This dispute alone proves

that the infantry had made great progress; for till that time they

would not have dared to compare themselves with the cavalry.

[223] The continuator of William of Tyre speaks at length of the

interview between St. Francis and his companion and the sultan of

Cairo. St. Francis at first proposed to the sultan to renounce Mahomet,

under pain of eternal damnation.

[224] Li soudan dist qu’il avait archevesques et évesques de sa loi,

et sans eux ne pouvoit-il crier ce qu’ils diraient. Les clercs lui

respondirent: “Mandez les guerre;” et ils vinrent à lui en sa tente.

Si leur conta ce que li clercs li avaient dist; ils respondirent:

“Sire, tu es épée de la loi. Nous nous te commandons, de par Mahomet,

que tu lor fasse la teste couper.” A tant puient congé, si s’en

allèrent. Li soudan demora et li dist clercs, dont vint li soudan, si

lors dist, “Seignors, ils m’ont commandé, de par Mahomet, et de par

la loi, que je vous fasse les testes couper; mais j’irai en contre le

commandement,” &c. &c. The sultan—we translate our old historian—said

he had archbishops and bishops of the law, and without them he could

not listen to what they had to say. The clerks, St. Francis and his

companion, answered him, “Send for them here”—and they came to him

in his tent. He then related to them what the clerks had said, and

they answered: “Sire, thou art the sword of the law. We command you,

by Mahomet, to order their heads to be cut off.” They then made their

obeisance and went away. The sultan and the said clerks remained. Then

the sultan came towards them, and said, “Seignors, they have commanded

me, by Mahomet, to order your heads to be cut off; but I shall act

contrary to the commandment,” &c. &c. The historian adds, that the

sultan offered them presents, which they refused—he ordered them

refreshment, and sent them back to the Christian army.

[225] Ingredientibus nobis fœtor intolerabilis, spectus miserabilis;

mortui vivos occiderunt; vir et uxor, dominus et servus, pater et

filius, se mutuis fœtoribus interemerunt. Non solum plateæ erant

mortuis plenæ, sed in domibus et cubiculis et lectis jacebant defuncti;

extincto viro, mulier impotens surgere, sublevandi carens subsidio vel

solatione, putritudinem non ferens expiravit. Filius juxta patrem, vel

e converso; ancilla juxta dominam, vel vice versâ, languore deficiens

jacebat extincta; parvuli petierunt panem, et non erat qui frangeret

eis. Infantes ad ubera matrum pendentes, inter amplexus morientium

vocitabant; delicati divites, inter acervos tritici interierunt fame;

deficientibus cibis, in quibus erant nutriti, pepones et allia, cepas

et alitilia, pisces et volatilia, et fructus arborum, et olera frustra

desiderantes. Multitudo vulgi contracta vel molestiis diutius fatigata

deficiens aruit.—_J. Vitr. Hist. Or._ l. iii.

[226] M. Michaud is accused by some French critics of being too

rhetorical—in this instance he has not made his story so effective

as he might have done. If the reader will turn to the extract from

_James of Vitri_, at the foot of the last page, he will find the old

chronicler much more powerful than the modern historian.—TRANS.

[227] Two letters which Honorius wrote to Pelagius, when sending him

the money, are still extant; they appear to us to be very curious, and

merit a place in our Appendix.

[228] The Chronicle of Ibn-ferat gives some details of this council of

the Mussulman princes. The Western historians say nothing of it. It is

a pity that James of Vitri, who was sent to the camp of the Saracens to

propose the capitulation, should have preserved a profound silence upon

so important a circumstance. We have several times remarked that the

Arabian historians, when the Mussulmans experience reverses, content

themselves with saying, “_God is great; may God curse the Christians!_”

We find the same inconvenience in the Western historians, who are

almost always silent when the Christians are conquered.

[229] We cannot refrain from observing that the deliberations of the

Mussulmans generally end in resolutions of moderation and mercy;

and that those of the Crusaders have, as often, a very different

result.—TRANS.

[230] As translation can scarcely do justice to this touching little

_morceau_, I subjoin the original.—TRANS. Le roi s’assit devant le

soudan, et se mist à plorer; le soudan regarda le roi qui ploroit, et

lui dist: “Sire, pourquoi plorez vous?” “Sire, j’ai raison,” repondit

le roi, “car je vois le peuple dont Dex m’a chargié, perir au milieu de

l’eve et mourir de faim.” Le soudan eut pitié de ce qu’il vit le roi

plorer, si plora aussi; lors envoya trente mille pains as pauvres et as

riches; ainsi leur envoya quatre jours de suite.

[231] Muratori has preserved a little elegiac poem in Latin, upon the

taking of Damietta.—See _Script. Rer. Ital._ vol. vii. p. 992.

[232] See the letter of the patriarch of Alexandria, in the Appendix.

The patriarch, at the end of his letter, gives the pope some remarkable

opinions upon the manner in which the emperor and the Crusaders were to

arrive in Egypt.

[233] The letter of the queen of Georgia is to be found in the

continuator of Baronius, under the year 1224. Curious details of the

manners of the Georgians in the thirteenth century may likewise be

found in James of Vitri, _Hist. Orient._

[234] The Chronicle of Upsberg attributes the murder of the respectable

Engelbert, archbishop of Maïence, to this indulgence of the preachers

of the crusade.

[235] These details, unknown to all the historians of the West, are

related by Abulfeda and the greater part of the Arabian historians who

treat of the events of this period. The same authors name the Mussulman

envoy _Fakreddin_; they disfigure the name of Frederick’s envoy, and

say that this prince selected for this mission the person who had been

his governor in his childhood.

[236] The perusal of Arabian authors throws great light upon this part

of the history of the crusades; the continuator of William of Tyre, the

letters of the patriarch of Jerusalem, or the correspondence of the

pope, give but very incomplete information.

[237] The Arabian authors who speak of this treaty, say that one of

the conditions was, that the fortifications of Jerusalem should not be

repaired; this condition is not named in the treaty which is found in

the continuator of Baronius.

[238] Quant l’apostelle oi ces nouvelles, si n’en fu mie lies, parce

que l’empereur était excommunié, et qu’il li etoit avis qu’il avait

fait mauvaise paix, parce que les Sarrasins tenaient le temple et per

ce ne volut-il soffrir un le sçut fait par lui, ne que sainte église

en fit fête, ains recommanda par toute Chrestianeté qu’on excommuniat

l’empereur come renvoyé et mescréant.—_Cont. of William of Tyre._

(When the apostle heard these news, he was not at all pleased, because

the emperor was excommunicated, and he thought he had made a bad peace,

as the Saracens were to retain the temple. Therefore he was not willing

it should be thought he consented to the peace, or that the Church

should offer up thanks for it; and he ordered that the emperor should

be excommunicated throughout Christendom, as a castaway and an infidel.)

[239] Un poi après que l’emperor se fust parti de la terre de

Jerusalem, s’assemblèrent villains de la terre as Sarrasins, et

allèrent à Jerusalem une matinée, pour occir les Chrétiens qui dedans

estoient.—_Cont. de Guill. de Tyr._ The same author adds that

the Christian knights then at Ptolemaïs came to the assistance of

Jerusalem, and that they killed a great number of the Mussulmans.

[240] The letters addressed by the pope to the Mussulman princes may be

found in the continuator of Baronius.

[241] For the preachings of John of Vicentia consult _L’Histoire

Ecclésiastique_, of Fleury, vol. xvii., and _L’Histoire des Républiques

d’Italie_, by Sismondi.

[242] This was then a common epithet. St. Thomas Aquinas was called

_the Angel of the School_.—TRANS.

[243] This poetical exhortation, addressed to all knights, may be found

printed among the poetry of Thibault.

[244] Matthew Paris speaks warmly against this abuse, which created

much murmuring in England.

[245]

N’aie, Ector, Roll’, ne Ogiers,

Ne Judas Maahebeus li fiers

Tant ne fit d’armes en estors

Com fist li Rois Jehans cel jors

Et il defors et il dedans

La paru sa force et ses sens

Et li hardement qu’il avoit.

_Philip Mouskes_, 1274.

[246] John of Brienne married, as his second wife, a daughter of the

king of Arragon.

[247] “My lady lost, holy lady be my aid.”—TRANS.

[248] See Raynold, Matthew Paris, Alberic, Richard of St. Germain, and

the _Ecclesiastical History_ of Fleury, regarding this circumstance.

[249] Upon the quarrels of the pope and the emperor, _L’Italia Sacra_,

tom. viii., Richard de St. Germain, and particularly Matthew Paris, who

reports the letters of Frederick, may be consulted.

[250] This is a mistake; Richard had no legitimate children. Richard,

duke of Cornwall, who was likewise king of the Romans, was the son of

John, Richard’s brother. In the same manner Gibbon calls Edward I.

Richard’s nephew;—he was his _great-nephew_.—TRANS.

[251] It appears to be almost incredible that our author should be

so blind himself, or expect his readers to be so, to the lessons

taught by his History! If the early Crusaders could not buy off their

pilgrimages, more of them were attracted by what they might obtain on

earth, than by “religion and its promises.”—TRANS.

[252] Most of these questions may be found in the work of the Jesuit

Greutzer, which bears for title _De Cruce_.

[253] Although this is very like “damning with faint praise,” I cannot

see how the popes or their abuses are entitled to any mitigation of

contempt or disapproval: the beneficial results were the work of

Providence, and were never contemplated by the pontiffs.—TRANS.

[254] King John was a bad prince: he inspired mistrust in his subjects,

who demanded a pledge of him, and this pledge became the English

constitution. If France, before the revolution of 1789, had never

asked her kings for a pledge, it was because none of them had inspired

mistrust in his people: the best eulogy that can be made upon the kings

of France is, that the nation had never felt under their government the

want of a written or guaranteed constitution, and that they were in all

times considered as the safest guardians of the public liberty.

[It is scarcely conceivable how a writer of the nineteenth century

could offer his readers such opinions as these (both text and note).

Some of the best portions of British liberty were obtained from better

kings than any France had, with the exception of Henry IV., from Louis

IX. to the end of the monarchy. Our Charles I. and James II. had their

faults, but they are as “unsunned snow” by the side of nine French

monarchs out of ten.]—TRANS.

[255] M. Michaud is here more happy than usual in his political and

philosophical reflections. We might fancy him prescient of the 2nd of

December.—TRANS.

[256] A dispute upon an affair of gallantry, between two or more

troubadours.—TRANS.

[257] These verses are quoted by M. Raynourd in his grammar of the

Romance language.

[258] We have but to compare the piece of the Provençal with that of

Raoul de Courcy, who died in the third crusade.

[259] M. Michaud’s parental partiality for his elder born makes him

very oblivious. If we look back to his own account of the morals of

the early crusades, particularly those of Jerusalem, we cannot see the

justice of these remarks. The Crusaders only “remembered to be pious

and penitent” when they experienced reverses.—TRANS.

[260] It may be questioned whether the weapons since employed for the

same purpose, the cunning and the tongue of Jesuits, were not in all

senses as bad as the sword and lance of the Crusaders.—TRANS.

[261] The city of Thorn was built on the spot where the consecrated oak

grew.

[262] We may name, among the Greeks, the sacred war undertaken for the

lands which belonged to the temple of Delphos; but on reading closely

the history of this war, it is easy to see that they did not fight for

a dogma or a religious opinion, as in the wars which, among the moderns

have had religion for a motive or a pretence.

[263] Karakoroum, the residence of the principal branch of the

successors of Gengiskhan. It is only lately that the true situation of

this city has been fixed by M. Abel-Remusat; it was on the left bank of

the Orgon, not far from the junction of that river with the Selinga to

the south of the Lake of Baïkal, by the 49° of latitude and the 102° of

longitude. The same country has since been the residence of the Grand

Lama.

[264] M. Petis de Lacroix has published a life of Gengiskhan, according

to Eastern authors. This history, though fable is sometimes mixed with

truth, is one of the best works that can be consulted. M. Deguignes, in

his History of the Huns, has spoken at great length of the Tartars and

of Gengiskhan; he announces that he has deviated from the account of

Petis de Lacroix; but as he does not always name the sources from which

he has drawn, he does not inspire perfect confidence for this part of

his history. We find some details upon Gengiskhan in _La Bibliothèque

Orientale_ of D’Herbelot.

[265] The Chronicles of the middle ages often speak of Prester John.

A letter written by a prince of this name to Louis VII. has been

preserved. Seven barbarous princes have been reckoned who bore the name

of Prester John. The researches made to ascertain the truth would be

uninteresting nowadays.—See the _Precis de la Geographie Universelle_,

by M. Malte Brun, tom. i. p. 441.

[266] According to what we know of Gengiskhan, we should with

difficulty believe that among modern historians he has been able to

find panegyrists; but Petis de Lacroix has not been able to avoid the

example of most historians, who generally appear infatuated by the

hero whose life they are writing. An Arabian historian relates, that

on learning the massacre of his ambassadors, Gengiskhan was not able

to refrain from tears. Here Petis de Lacroix is very angry with the

Arabian, and reproaches him bitterly with having given the emperor of

the Moguls _a feminine_ character. All others, says he, have given a

portrait of him more worthy of a hero.

[267] There have been long disputes upon the terms Mogul and Tartar.

We think we can make out, amidst much uncertainty, that the Moguls

originally formed a distinct tribe of the vast countries of Tartary;

and that the Tartars, being in great numbers in the armies of the

conquering Moguls, obliterated in a degree the names of their

conquerors in the kingdoms of Europe and Asia to which these armies

penetrated.

[268] Father Gaubil has translated a Chinese history of Gengiskhan;

this history yields but little information, and gives no curious

details but upon the family and the successors of the conqueror.

[269] Matthew Paris speaks of the terror which the Moguls spread

through Europe: his history contains an exhortation to all the

nations of the West to fly to arms; each nation is in this history

characterized by an honourable and flattering epithet.

[270] The reader may consult _Thurocsius_, vol. i., _Rerum

Hungaricarum_, and particularly the _Carmen Miserabile_ of Roger of

Hungary, canon of Varadin, who has described in poetical prose the

disasters of which he himself was a witness.

[271] See in the Appendix the details which many of the Chronicles give

of the ravages of the Carismians in Palestine.

[272] Joinville gives many particulars of this war which he had learnt

during his sojourn in Palestine. The continuator of William of Tyre may

likewise be consulted. Matthew Paris has preserved two letters, one

from the patriarch of Jerusalem, the other from the grand master of the

Hospitallers, which describe this battle.

[273] This is the opinion of M. Deguignes, in his _Histoire des Huns_.

[274] Consult Matthew Paris, and the _Annales Ecclésiastiques_, for

particulars concerning the council of Lyons.

[275] Matthew Paris affords some very curious details upon the council

of Lyons; Le Père Labbe may also be consulted.

[276] We find in the great theology of Tournely (_Traité de l’Eglise_,

tom. ii.) a very learned dissertation upon this deposition of the

emperor Frederick II. at the first council of Lyons. This theologian

asserts that the council had nothing at all to do with this great act

of authority of Innocent IV., and brings several reasons to support his

opinion. We will quote some of them, leaving our readers to appreciate

their value.

“Whilst all the bulls of the pope, published in council, begin by these

words: ‘We have decreed, with the approbation of the council, according

to the advice of the sacred council, &c. (sacro approbante concilio, ex

communi concilii approbatione, statuimus),’ we read at the head of the

bull in question: ‘Sentence pronounced against the emperor Frederick

by the pope, Innocent IV., in presence of the council (sacro præsente

concilio),’ an essential difference, which is likewise observable in

the body of the bull, when the sovereign pontiff only speaks in his

own name, and as holding the place of Jesus Christ upon earth. All the

fathers of the council, says Matthew Paris, on hearing the sentence,

_were struck with surprise and horror_, sentiments they certainly would

not have felt if they had had any part in the judgment.

“All the historians of the time attribute this act of authority to the

pope, without even mentioning the council; and Frederick II., when

accusing the incompetence of the judge, his partiality, his blindness,

and his ingratitude, when writing to the kings of France and England

and the barons of his kingdom on the subject, only complains of the

pontiff, and does not attach the least reproach to the prelates who

composed the assembly. The sentence was considered as so completely the

work of the pope, that the Church, which received the decisions of the

council, attached little importance to the bull, and that this bull

became absolutely a party affair. It was rejected by a great number

of the churches of Germany and Italy. The kings of France and England

considered it as injurious to sovereign majesty, and continued to treat

Frederick as legitimate emperor. It only rendered the wars between the

Guelphs and Ghibellines more active and more inveterate.

“The pope said truly that he had deliberated with the fathers of the

council; but he adds, that the deliberation turned upon no other object

but the excommunication of the emperor; that he did not at all speak of

the article of the deposition, and that thence came the surprise and

horror which the prelates manifested.

“It is nevertheless objected that the pope and the fathers of the

council, after the reading of the sentence, turned down the waxlights

which they held and extinguished them, and that afterwards the pope

gave out the _Te Deum_, in which the prelates assisted; but Matthew

Paris believes that the circumstances are here not exact. He thinks

that some priests only, attached to the court of Rome, lent themselves

to the passion of the pope against Frederick, and performed the

ceremony of the waxlights, which may still further only relate to the

excommunication; otherwise how can we reconcile this passage of the

historian with the surprise and horror that were manifested, according

to him, in the assembly at the reading of the sentence.

“The pope did not even endeavour to persuade anybody that he was

supported by the authority of the council. He declared that he should

know how to maintain irrevocably _all that he had done_ relative to

Frederick.”

After having discussed all these points, Tournely raises doubts upon

the œcumenicity of the first council of Lyons.

“The council of Florence,” says this theologian, “which makes an

enumeration of the general councils held before that period, passes by

that of Lyons in silence, and in fact several countries, as Germany,

Italy, Spain, Brittany, Sweden, and Poland, had no bishops there; there

were few prelates from France or England.”

“In the same way the council of Constance, enumerating in a formula,

that the pope about to be elected was to sign all the œcumenic councils

which had preceded, only mentions one council of Lyons. Now, this could

only be the second, for that was very solemn. There were more than

five hundred bishops at it, as well from the East as the West, and the

Greeks in it acknowledged _the divine filiation_.”

Thadæus of Suesse, representative of the emperor Frederick II. at the

council of Lyons, and zealous defender of the rights of that prince,

appealed publicly from this council to a future general and _œcumenic_

council. One of the causes which might, according to Tournely, lead

several bishops into error, but which will appear very strange at the

present day, was, that they imagined the empire really was a feudatory

of the court of Rome. It is the sovereign pontiff, they say, who crowns

the emperor; he has then a particular and special right over the

empire; he can depose the head of it for a serious matter. Frederick,

in his letters to the kings of France and England, mentions and combats

strongly this ridiculous prejudice, and the foolish pretensions of

the popes. Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to Stephen, archbishop

of Canterbury, informs him that Frederick is engaged by oath to go to

the Holy Land, abandoning, if he failed in his promise, his states and

his person to the sovereign pontiff. According to this, the fathers

might believe that the deposition was a consequence of the penalty the

prince had incurred as a perjurer. We must refer to the ages in which

these questions were agitated to appreciate the influence they had upon

events.

[277] This great incident in the life of Louis IX. is differently, and

indeed more strikingly, related by most French historians. “When he

felt himself better, to the great astonishment of all, he ordered the

red cross to be affixed to his bed and his vestments, and made a vow

to go and fight for the tomb of Christ. His mother, and the priests

themselves, implored him to renounce his fatal design. It was all

in vain; and scarcely was he convalescent than he called his mother

and the bishop of Paris to his bedside, and said to them, ‘Since you

believe that I was not perfectly myself when I pronounced my vows,

there is my red cross, which I tear from my shoulders; I return it to

you: but now, when you must perceive that I am in the full enjoyment

of all my faculties, restore to me my cross; for He who is acquainted

with all things, knows also that no kind of food shall enter into my

mouth until I have again been marked with His holy sign. ‘It is the

hand of Heaven,’ cried all who were present; ‘its will be done.’”

(_Bonnechose_).—TRANS.

[278] English readers should acknowledge a familiar acquaintance in

this excellent mother and good queen: she is the _Lady Blanche_ of

Shakespear’s _King John_.—TRANS.

[279] See in our Appendix this fact related by Matthew Paris.

[280] It is Matthew Paris who furnishes us with information relative

to this attempt to persuade St. Louis. This is the chronicler that

throws most light upon the events of that period; such as the council

of Lyons, the quarrel of Frederick and the pope, and the crusade of

the king of France. We also find some details in William of Nangis, in

Joinville, and in the _Ecclesiastical Annals_ of Raynaldi.

[281] Que loyauté ils porteraient à sa famille, si aucune malle chose

avenait de sa personne au saint veage d’outremer.

[282] We do not observe that this worthy penitent opened his hand and

relaxed his grasp whilst living; death-bed repentances and posthumous

restitutions are very suspicious affairs.—TRANS.

[283] These calamities were but a portion of God’s great law of cause

and effect—they were begun in error and ended in failure. What

connection is there between Louis’ just government of his kingdom and

his mad and foolish expeditions to the East?—TRANS.

[284] Il ne voulut oncques retourner ses yeux vers Joinville, pour ce

que le cœur lui attendrit du biau chastel qu’il laissait, et de ses

deux enfants.

[285] Concerning the departure of Saint Louis, and the facts that

follow consult William of Nangis, William of Puits, Matthew Paris,

Sanuti, &c.

[286] Like many good and affectionate mothers, Blanche was very

jealous of the influence of a young wife over her son. Principally for

territorial advantages, Louis married Marguerite of Provence, when he

was nineteen and the princess thirteen. Immediately after the ceremony,

Blanche separated the newly-married couple and kept them apart for six

years, under pretext of the youth of the new queen.—TRANS.

[287] Bien fou celui qui, ayant quelque pêché sur son âme, se met en un

tel danger; car si on s’endort au soir, on ne sait si on se trouvera le

matin au fond de la mer.

[288] Michaud has omitted to mention the cause of Louis’ unfortunate

choice of a route,—the residence in Cyprus proving so injurious to the

army. The most regular and advisable route would have been by Sicily;

but after Louis had in vain tried every means of subduing the anger

of the pope, his superstitious reverence for the head of the Church

prevailed over even his good sense and his prudence, and he declined

stopping in Sicily, because that island was part of the dominions of an

excommunicated prince.—TRANS.

[289] The French had a custom of reckoning sums by _twenties_: in the

text of Joinville this stands, “six vingts livres tournois.”—TRANS.

[290] Oncques nul d’eux ne revint.

[291] Matthew Paris, William of Nangis, said Zanfliet are agreed

concerning this embassy. We shall revert to it in our Appendix.

[292] Deguignes informs us that the prince Ecalthaï was the lieutenant

of the khan of the Tartars in Asia Minor.

[293] Most of the articles which form the correspondence between

Christendom and the Tartars are collected in the book of Moshemius,

entitled _Historia Tartorum Ecclesiastica_: the letters of this

correspondence do not all merit the same attention or the same

confidence.

[294] M. Abel-Remusat, in his learned Memoir upon the Tartars,

explains several doubtful circumstances of this embassy; he examines

the opposite versions, and does not at all adopt the opinion of M.

Deguignes, who views the Mogul ambassadors as nothing but impostors. If

it may be allowed me, after these two great authorities, to offer an

opinion, I should say that the arrival of Louis having created a great

sensation in the East, Ecalthaï, governor of all the provinces of Asia,

might send emissaries to ascertain the designs and strength of the

Franks; and it may be believed that these emissaries, to perform their

mission with more success, feigned several circumstances calculated to

increase their credit in the minds of the Christians. It appears to us

that this opinion may reconcile that which is opposite in that of the

two writers quoted.

[295] No chronicle says that the king of Cyprus went with Louis,

although he had taken the cross. This prince is never mentioned in any

of the events of the war.

[296] This word comes to us from the Arabs, with the instrument which

it designates. The Arabs pronounce it _nakarah_.

[297] ——chose épouvantable à ouïr et moult étrange aux

Français.—_Joinville._

[298] An admirable subject for a large historical picture.—TRANS.

[299] Upon the battles that preceded the taking of Damietta, and

upon the taking of that city, Joinville may be consulted, as the

historian that furnishes the greatest number of details. William of

Nangis, Matthew Paris, but particularly Guy de Melun, may be read with

advantage. We have quoted in our text the Arabian authors that have

spoken of these events.

[300] At this period the national troops had neither the courage nor

the constancy that the labours of war require. The Arabs, who had

entered Egypt as conquerors with Amron-Ben-al-As, had disappeared,

without leaving successors capable of supporting their reputation.

There were no means of recruiting the army but by slaves bought in the

north of Asia and in Europe, or by wandering Arabs, who, accustomed to

a hardy, active life, still showed some energy. This latter measure

presented another advantage. By bringing these nomads under the yoke of

military discipline, the nations were delivered from the depredations

of men who lived by war. It was with this motive that the pacha of

Egypt of the present day has enrolled the Arabs of his states under his

banners.—See the _Voyage of Belzoni in Egypt and Numidia_.

[301] The livre Tournois was so called from being coined at Tours,

and was one-fifth less in value than the livre coined in Paris; thus

afterwards the livre Tournois was valued at twenty sous, that of Paris

at twenty-five. The sum mentioned would thus only amount to little more

than £200 which appears almost impossible.—TRANS.

[302] Ainsi demeura la besogne, dont maintes gens se tinrent mal

satisfaits.—_Joinville._

[303] At this period Louis IX. was but thirty-three years old.—TRANS.

[304] There is here an apparent contradiction between the version of

Ducange and that of MM. Melot, Sallier, and Caperonier: in the latter

we read that these five hundred Mussulmans were sent to harass the

French army, but there is no mention of a deceit, or _ruse de guerre_;

in that of Ducange, on the contrary, we find this sentence: “He [the

sultan] sent to the king, as a _ruse_, five hundred of his best-mounted

horsemen, they telling the king that they were come to assist him, him

and all his army.” We find nothing like this in the edition of MM.

Melot, Sallier, and Caperonier; it is probable that this sentence may

have been interpolated in the manuscript, for we cannot believe that

five hundred Mussulman horsemen could have been received as friends

in the Christian army, who stood in no need of auxiliaries, and who

certainly did not look for them among the Saracens. We avail ourselves

of this opportunity to warn our readers that the various editions of

Joinville often vary in important circumstances, and that they should

at all times be subjected to a very critical examination.

[305] Il s’écriait, pleurant à grant larmes: “Beau Sire, Dieu Jesus

Christ, garde moi et toute ma gent.”—_Joinville._

[306] This word _ores_, which was employed to animate the courage of

combatants, and which is still in use among the people in several

provinces of France, may it not be the same as the word _houra_, which

the Russians employ? May it not have been introduced by the Franks and

the other barbarians who conquered the Gauls?

[307] This is the same person who, later, made himself so formidable to

the Christians when he had united Egypt and Syria under his power; he

had preserved the name of Bondocdar from that of his ancient master, so

called because he was the _bondocdar_, or general of the arbalatiers,

in the reign of Malek-Saleh.

[308] Je vous promets que oncques plus bel homme armé ne vis.

[309] Leur disant paroles en signe de mocquerie.—_Joinville._

[310] .... et tous furent moult oppressés d’angoisse, de compassion

et de pitié de le voir ainsi plorer.—_Joinville._ [I hope my readers

will excuse my repetitions of this kind; I make them from a sense of

inability to convey the touching and characteristic simplicity of

the original, and from a wish that others should partake with me the

feeling they create.]—TRANS.

[311] This disease was the scurvy; “it was such,” says Joinville,

“that the flesh of our legs dried away to the bone, and our skins

became of a black or earth colour, like an old saddle which has been a

long time laid aside: and besides this, we who were afflicted by this

disease were soon subjected to another persecution, in a complaint

of the mouth, which arose from our having eaten of those fish; it

putrified the flesh of the gums, so that it rendered the breath

horribly stinking.” Joinville here speaks of the _burbotte_, a fish of

the Nile, which is a voracious fish, and feeds upon dead bodies. The

seneschal adds, in another passage of his memoirs, “that the malady

having seized upon the army, it became necessary for the barbers to cut

out the swollen flesh of the gums of all who were afflicted with this

disease, so that they could not eat. Great pity was it to hear all from

whom this dead flesh had been cut, going about in the army, crying and

moaning. They appeared to me like poor women who are in labour with

their children when they come upon earth: nobody can tell how pitiable

that sight was.”

[312] ... ne oncques plus ne chanta. [The readers of Michaud have

reason to congratulate themselves, when he is availing himself of such

authorities as Villehardouin and Joinville; he seems to have a sympathy

with them that procures us some very delightful traits.]—TRANS.

[313] Bernard Thesaurius, the author of the Continuation of the History

of William of Tyre, has fixed the precise epoch of each fact. We

shall most likely have occasion to draw the reader’s attention to the

_Annales Ecclésiastiques_ of this writer in a future volume.

[314] This generous trait of St. Louis, who refused to quit his army,

is attested by both French and Oriental historians. Joinville expresses

himself thus:—“Seeing the king had the same disease as the army,

and great weakness, as others had, we thought he would be much safer

on board one of the great galleys; but he said ‘he would rather die

than leave his people.’” Geoffrey of Beaulieu, equally an eyewitness,

attests this fact. To the evidence of these two historians we may add

that of the Arabian historian Aboul Mahassem. “The king of France,”

says he, “might have escaped from the Egyptians, either on horseback,

or in a boat; but this generous prince would never consent to abandon

his troops.”

[The conduct of Louis might be imprudent, but it was noble and heroic.

The admirers of the modern French idol, Buonaparte, would be very much

at a loss to find such a trait in his history; it was always _sauve qui

peut_ with him, when he met with reverses.]—TRANS.

[315] See the extract from _Soyouti_ in Appendix.

[316] This is the Minieh of Aboul-Abdallah.

[317] What a lesson is this letter to all such as designate their

God “the God of armies,” or are worshippers of military glory!

The archbishop of Canterbury could not have written a better,

or one apparently more pious, after the battles of Trafalgar or

Waterloo.—TRANS.

[318] Très volontiers le ferai, et si ai-je eu en pensée d’ainsi faire,

si le cas y échéait.—_Joinville._

[319] I am unable to discover the nature of this punishment, or the

meaning of the word, but cannot help thinking they are connected with

the French proverbial expression, _Envoyer quelqu’un au berniquets_, as

meaning to ruin him.—TRANS.

[320] Joinville speaks of a sum of five hundred thousand livres.

Ducange has made a dissertation on this head, that gives very little

information:—in the first place, we must be able to ascertain what was

then the value of 500,000 livres of our money.

[321] The continuator of Tabary and the _History of St. Louis_, by

Joinville, furnish information upon this event. Their accounts agree

exactly.

[322] Would not the death of the accomplished Sidney assort worthily

with these pictures, as not only exemplifying the good and true knight,

but the Christian hero, imbued with charity, the great principle of the

Gospel?—TRANS.

[323] This is really one of those tales that require “seven justices’

names” to vouch for their authenticity. How such a man, at such a time,

could be ambitious of the honour of knighthood, it is very difficult to

imagine. But when we recollect that the evidence of sixty-five miracles

performed by him, was produced to procure his canonization, we must not

be sceptical in what regards Louis IX.—TRANS.

[324] We had at first consulted the edition of Ducange; and we have

been surprised to find an account and expressions totally different in

that of Caperonier, otherwise called the edition of the Louvre; however

this may be, we cannot conclude, from either one version or the other,

that any proposal of the kind was made to Louis IX. [As the reader

may like, without trouble, to see the opinion of our great historian

upon this interesting subject, I venture to subjoin it:—“The idea of

the emirs to choose Louis for their sultan is seriously attested by

Joinville, pp. 77-78, and does not appear to me so absurd as to M. de

Voltaire. The Mamelukes themselves were strangers, rebels, and equals;

they had felt his valour, they hoped for his conversion; and such a

motion, which was not seconded, might be made perhaps by a secret

Christian, in their tumultuous assembly.”—_Gibbon._]—TRANS.

[325] If we compare this council with that of the Christians which sat

after the taking of Jerusalem, and the results of both, we shall be

less inclined to blame the hesitation of the Mussulmans. The Crusaders

were the invaders of the country of the Mussulmans, the assailants

of their faith—can it be wondered at if they awakened vindictive

passions?—TRANS.

[326] These Arabian verses were translated by M. l’Abbé Renard. See

_L’Extrait d’Abulfeda_, vol. xi.

[327] Matthew Paris gives curious details upon the effects produced by

the news of the captivity of the king.

[328] Among the great number of historians who have spoken of this

movement, William de Guy, Matthew Paris, William of Nangis, and the

_Annals of Waverley_ may be consulted.

(Some historians relate the catastrophe differently. One says: “The

pastors were accustomed to preach, surrounded by armed men for their

defence; one day, by the command of Blanche, an executioner introduced

himself among these, and gliding behind Jacob, struck his head off at a

blow, before the eyes of the spectators, who were chilled with horror.

Some knights then appeared and dispersed the pastors.”)—TRANS.

[329] There can be no doubt that this was the case with those who

remained with him; even the worthy seneschal and all. His determination

to go to Antioch proves that he had no resource in Europe. It was a

desperate game, and they were obliged to play it out.—TRANS.

[330] Norway.

[331] The reader may remember a curious ceremony of alliance, in the

last volume, wherein the one party passes through the shirt of the

other whilst he has it on.—TRANS.

[332] M. Michaud observes this is a remarkable circumstance; but it is

much more remarkable, that whilst instructing his readers, he appears

to gather no wisdom himself. Every page of his book tells us, that

though there were many examples of sincere piety and virtue among

the Crusaders, the bulk of them were _adventurers_, to whom the most

profitable religion would be the best. He is so in love with his drama,

that he wishes to think the actors and their motives of action much

better than they are.—TRANS.

[333] M. Ancelot, in his tragedy of _Louis IX._, has painted with much

truthfulness the character of a renegado.

[334] Joinville’s account is very confused here; indeed, almost

unintelligible. He says at first that the king was at Sidon, and that

he retired into the castle on the arrival of the Saracens. Two pages

further on he says: “When the king had finished the fortifying of

Jaffa, he formed the intention of doing the same for Sidon as he had

done for Jaffa.” We cannot fail to observe a contradiction here. We

can suppose that Louis had been to Sidon, had left it, and had again

returned; but one circumstance proves the contrary. History says that

two thousand Christians were killed at Sidon, or in the vicinity of

that city; if Louis had then been upon the spot, it is most probable

he would have buried the dead before his departure, and would not

have deferred the performance of this pious duty till his return. It

is evident that Joinville’s account has been altered at this part;

unfortunately, this alteration is not the only one which this precious

historical monument has undergone.

[335] It is not uninteresting or barren of instruction, to think

how different would be the reflections of a Voltaire or a Gibbon on

this subject! The reader may safely take a position between the two

extremes: Louis was a good and pious man, but a very mistaken one;

as king of a great people, he certainly had not performed his duties

during the last five years.—TRANS.

[336] The continuation of the conversation of King Louis with the emir

has for its object the manner in which the Mussulman doctors interpret

the precept for the pilgrimage to Mecca.

[337] But there is one piece of internal evidence in this tradition,

that we think should obtain it credit, notwithstanding the silence of

history. When we remember how the European armies in Egypt, at the end

of the last century, suffered from _ophthalmia_, we think there is

strong reason to believe that Louis might found such an institution on

his return.—TRANS.

[338] _Verit. Invent. de l’Histoire de France_, by John de Serres, p.

152.

[339] One thing worthy of remark is, that the emperor Frederick

resembled closely, both in character and policy, Frederick II., king of

Prussia; but the latter was in harmony with his age, and his age has

named him the _great Frederick_.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.