enterprising nature would have rendered probable, but the fact was,
that, with such a master as William Rufus, no one felt that he could
leave his home in anything like security. Helie de la Flèche, Count de
Maine, [Footnote: Robert of Normandy had been betrothed in his childhood
to the heiress of Maine, but she died before she was old enough for the
marriage to take place. In right of this intended marriage, the Norman
Kings claimed Maine, though Helie was the next heir.] took the Cross,
and asked William for some guarantee that his lands should not be
molested. “You may go where you like,” said William; “I mean to have
your city. What my father had, I will have.”
“It is mine by right,” said Helie; “I will plead it with you.”
“I will plead, too.” said William; “but my lawyers will be spears and
arrows.”
“I have taken the Cross; my land is under Christ’s own protection.”
“I only warn you,” said William, “that if you go, I shall pay the good
town of Mans a visit, with a thousand lances at my heel.”
So Helie stayed at home, and in two years’ time was made a prisoner when
in a wood with only seven knights. Mans was seized, and he was brought
before the King. “I have you now, my master,” said William.
“By chance,” said Helie; “but if I were free, I know what I would do.”
“What would you do, you knave?” said William. “Hence, go, fly, I give
you leave to do all you can; and if you catch me, I ask nothing in
return.”
Helie was set at liberty, and the next year, while William was absent
in England, managed to retake Mans. The Red King was hunting in the
New Forest when he heard the tidings; he turned his horse’s head and
galloped away, as his father had once done, with the words, “He who
loves me, will follow.” He threw himself into a ship, and ordered the
sails to be set, though the wind was so boisterous that the sailors
begged him to wait. “Fools,” he said, “did you ever hear of a drowned
king?” He cruelly ravaged Maine, but could not take the city, and,
having been slightly wounded, returned to meet his fate in the New
Forest.
After this story, no one could wonder that it required a great deal of
enthusiasm to persuade a man to leave his inheritance exposed to the
grasp of the Red King, who, unlike other princes, set at nought the
anathemas by which the Pope guarded the lands of absent Crusaders.
Stephen, Count de Blois, the husband of William’s sister Adela, took the
Cross. He was wise in counsel, and learned, and a letter which he wrote
to his wife is one of the chief authorities for the early part of the
expedition; but his health was delicate, and it was also said that his
personal courage was not unimpeachable; at any rate, he soon returned
home.
One of the foremost of the Crusaders was, however, our own Norman
Prince, Robert Courtheuse. Every one knows the deep stain of
disobedience on Robert’s early life; and yet so superior was he to his
brothers in every point of character, that it is impossible not to
regard him with a sort of affection, though the motto of his whole
career might be, “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
Never was man more completely the tool of every villain who gained
his ready ear. It was the whisper of evil counsellors that fired his
jealousy of his young brothers, and drove him into rebellion against his
father; the evil counsel of William led him to persecute Henry, loving
him all the time: and when in possession of his dukedom, his careless,
profuse habits kept him in constant poverty, while his idle good-nature
left unpunished the enormities of the barons who made his country
miserable.
But in generosity he never failed; he heartily loved his brothers, while
duped and injured by them again and again; he always meant to be true
and faithful, and never failed, except from hastiness and weakness; and
while William was infidel, and Henry hypocritical, he was devout and
sincere in faith, though miserably defective in practice.
The Crusade was the happiest and most respectable period of his life,
and no doubt he never was more light-hearted than when he delivered over
to William the mortgage of his dukedom, with all its load of care, and
received in return the sum of money squeezed by his brother from all
the unfortunate convents in England, but which Robert used to equip his
brave knights and men-at-arms, assisted by some of the treasures of
his uncle, Bishop Odo, who had taken the Cross, but was too feeble and
infirm to commence the expedition.
The Crusaders were not sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of
navigation to attempt to enter Palestine by sea, and they therefore
traversed Germany, Hungary, and the Greek Empire, trusting to the
Emperor Alexis Comnenus to give them the means of crossing the
Hellespont. Alexis was in great dread of his warlike guests; the schism
between the Greek and Roman Churches caused continual heart-burnings;
and at the same time he considered, very naturally, that all the lands
in the East at present occupied by the Mahometans were his right. He
would not, therefore, ferry over the Crusaders to Asia till they had
sworn allegiance to him for all that they might conquer, and it was a
long time before Godfrey would comply. At last, however, on condition
that the Greeks would furnish them with guides and reinforcements, they
took the oaths; but as Alexis did not fulfil his part of the engagement,
they did not consider themselves bound to him.
At Nicea, the Crusading army, of nineteen different nations, of whom
100,000 were horse and 500,000 infantry, came in sight of the Turks,
and, after a long siege and several hotly-contested battles, won
the town. They continued their march, but with much suffering and
difficulty; Raymond of Toulouse had an illness which almost brought him
to the grave, and Godfrey himself was seriously injured by a bear, which
he had attacked to save the life of a poor soldier who was in danger
from its hug. He killed the bear, but his thigh was much torn, and he
was a long time recovering from the effects of his encounter.
At the siege of Antioch were their chief disasters; they suffered from
hunger, disease, inundations of the Orontes, attacks of the enemy, until
the living were hardly enough to bury the dead. The courage of many gave
way; Robert of Normandy retired to Laodicea, and did not return till he
had been three times summoned in the name of the Christian Faith; and
Peter the Hermit himself, a man of more enthusiasm than steadiness,
began to despair, and secretly fled from the camp in the night. As his
defection would have done infinite harm to the cause, Tancred pursued
him and brought him back to the camp, and Godfrey obliged him to swear
that he would not again leave them. In the spring of 1098 a great battle
took place, in which Godfrey, Robert, and Tancred each performed feats
of the highest prowess. In the midst of the battle, Tancred made his
esquire swear never to reveal his exploits, probably as a mortification
of his own vanity in hearing them extolled. After a siege of more than
seven months, Boemond effected an entrance by means of an understanding
with some of the Eastern Christians within the town. It was taken, with
great slaughter, and became a principality ruled by the Sicilian Norman.
Another great victory opened the way to Palestine, and the Crusaders
advanced, though still very slowly. During the march, one of the
knights, named Geoffroi de la Tour, is said to have had a curious
adventure. He was hunting in a forest, when he came upon a lion
struggling in the folds of a huge serpent; he killed the serpent, and
released the lion, which immediately fawned upon him and caressed him.
It followed him affectionately throughout the Crusade, but when he
embarked to return to Europe, the sailors refused to admit the lion into
their vessel. The faithful creature plunged into the sea to follow its
master, swam till its strength was exhausted, and then sank and was
drowned. [Footnote: Michaud’s _Histoire des Croisades_ gives this story
from two authorities.]
It was on a glowing morning of June, 1098, that the Crusading host,
Tancred first of all, came in sight of the object of all their
toils--the City set upon a Hill.
There it stood, four-square, on the steep, solid, fortification-like
rocks, rising from the rugged ravines, Kedron, Siloam, Jehoshaphat,
Gehenna, that form, as it were, a deep moat round the walls, and natural
defences, bulwarks planted by the Lord’s own hand around His own City,
while He was still her Tower of Salvation, and had not left her to the
spoiler. There stood the double walls, the low-built, flat-roofed,
windowless houses, like so many great square blocks, here and there
interspersed with a few cypresses and aloes, the mighty Tower of David,
the Cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and far above it, alas!
the dome of the Mosque of Omar, with its marble gates and porphyry
pillars, on the flat space on Mount Moriah, where the Temple had once
flashed back the sunlight from its golden roof.
Jerusalem, enslaved and profaned, but Jerusalem still; the Holy City,
the mountain whither all nations should turn to worship, the sacred name
that had been spoken with reverence in every holiest lesson, the term
of all the toils they had undergone. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” cried the
foremost ranks. Down fell on their knees--nay, even prostrate on their
faces--each cross-bearing warrior, prince and knight, page and soldier.
Some shouted for joy, some kissed the very ground as a sacred thing,
some wept aloud at the thought of the sins they had brought with them,
and the sight of the tokens of Zion’s captivity--the Dome and the
Crescent. Then once more their war-cry rose as with one voice, and Mount
Zion and Mount Olivet echoed it back to them, “_Deus vult! Deus vult!_”
as to answer that the time was come.
But Jerusalem was only in sight--not yet won; and the Crusaders had much
to suffer, encamped on the soil of iron, beneath the sky of brass, which
is part of the doom of Judea. The vineyards, cornfields, and olive-trees
of ancient times had given place to aridity and desolation; and the
Christian host endured much from heat, thirst, and hunger, while their
assaults on the walls were again and again repelled. They pressed
forward their attacks as much as possible, since they could not long
exist where they were.
Three great wooden towers were erected, consisting of different stages
or stories, where the warriors stood, while they were wheeled up to the
walls. Godfrey, Raymond, and Tancred each had the direction of one of
these towers, and on the fourteenth of July the general assault began.
The Turks, on their side, showered on them arrows, heavy stones, and
Greek fire--an invention consisting of naphtha and other inflammable
materials, which, when once ignited, could not be quenched by water,
but only by vinegar. It was cast from hollow tubes, and penetrating the
armor of the Christians, caused frightful agonies.
Raymond’s tower was broken down or burnt; Godfrey and Tancred fought
on, almost overpowered, their warriors falling round them, the enemy
shouting with joy and deriding them. At the moment when the Crusaders
were all but giving way, a horseman was seen on the Mount of Olives, his
radiant armor glittering in the sun, and raising on high a white shield
marked with the red Cross. “St. George! St. George!” cried Godfrey’s
soldiers; “the Saints fight for us! _Deus vult! Deus vult!_” and on they
rushed again in an ecstasy of enthusiasm that nothing could resist. Some
broke through a half-opened breach, some dashed from the wooden towers,
some scaled the fortifications by their ladders, the crowd came over
the walls like a flood, and swept all before them with the fury of that
impulse.
There was a frightful slaughter; the Crusaders, brought up in a pitiless
age, looked on the Saracens as devoted to the sword, like the Canaanite
nations, and spared not woman or child. The streets streamed with blood,
and the more merciful chieftains had not power to restrain the carnage.
Raymond did indeed save those who had taken refuge in the Tower of
David, and Tancred sent three hundred in the Mosque of Omar his own
good pennon to protect them, but in vain; some of the other Crusaders
massacred them, to his extreme indignation, as he declared his knightly
word was compromised.
Godfrey had fought on as long as resistance lasted, then he threw
himself from his horse, laid aside his helmet and gauntlets, bared his
feet, and ascended the hill of Calvary. It was Friday, and the ninth
hour of the day, when the Christian chief entered the circular-vaulted
church, and descended, weeping at once for joy and for sorrow, into
the subterranean crypt, lighted with silver lamps--the Holy Sepulchre
itself, where his Lord had lain, and which he had delivered. Far
from the sound of tumult and carnage, there he knelt in humility and
thankfulness, and in time the rest of the chieftains gathered thither
also--Tancred guided by the chant of the Greek Christians who had taken
refuge in the church. Peter the Hermit sang mass at the altar, and thus
night sunk down on Jerusalem and the victorious Christians.
The following days confirmed the conquest, and councils began to be held
on the means of securing it. A King was to be elected, and it is said
that the crown was offered to Robert of Normandy, and declined by him.
Afterward, by universal consent, Godfrey de Bouillon was chosen to be
King of Jerusalem.
He accepted the office, with all its toils and perils, but he would
neither bear the title nor crown. He chose to leave the title of King of
Jerusalem to Him to whom alone it belonged; he would not wear a crown of
gold where that King had Worn a crown of thorns, and he kept only his
knightly helmet, with the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy
Sepulchre.
Well did he fulfil his trust, ever active, and meeting the infidels with
increasing energy wherever they attacked him; but it was only for one
year. The climate undermined his health; he fell sick of a fever, and
died in July, 1100, just one year from the taking of Jerusalem. He lies
buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, beneath a stone bearing
these words: “Here lieth the victorious Duke Godfrey de Bouillon, who
won all this land to the Christian faith. May whose soul reign with
Christ.” His good sword is also still kept in the same church, and was
long used to dub the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.
CAMEO XIV. THE ETHELING FAMILY. (1010-1159.)
_Kings of England_.
Knute and his sons.
Edward.
Harold.
William I.
William II.
Henry I.
_Kings of France_.
Henry I.
Philippe I.
Louis VI.
When, in 1016, the stout-hearted Edmund Ironside was murdered by Edric
Streona, he left two infant sons, Edmund and Edward, who fell into the
power of Knute.
These children were placed, soon after, under the care of Olaf
Scotkonung, King of Sweden, who had been an ally of their grandfather’s,
and had sent to England to request that teachers of the Gospel might
come to him. By these English clergy he had been baptized, and his
country converted, so that they probably induced him to intercede with
Knute for the orphan princes. Shortly after, a war broke out between
Denmark and Sweden, and Olaf, believing, perhaps, that the boys were
unsafe in the North, where Knute’s power was so great, transferred them
to Buda, to the care of Stephen, King of Hungary.
It was a happy home for them. Stephen, the first king of Hungary, was
a most noble character, a conqueror and founder of a kingdom, humble,
devout, pious, and so charitable that he would go about in disguise,
seeking for distressed persons. He was a great lawgiver, and drew up an
admirable code, in which he was assisted by his equally excellent son
Emeric, and was the first person who in any degree civilized the Magyar
race. His son Emeric died before him, leaving no children; and, after
three years of illness, Stephen himself expired in 1038. His name has
ever since been held in high honor, and his arched crown, half-Roman,
half-Byzantine, was to the Hungarians what St. Edward’s crown is to
us. After Hungary was joined to the German Empire, there was still a
separate coronation for it, and it was preserved in the castle of Buda,
under a guard of sixty-four soldiers, until the rebellion of 1848, when
it was stolen by the insurgents, and has never since been recovered.
After Stephen’s death, there was a civil war between the heathen Magyars
and the Christians, ending in the victory of the latter, and the
establishment of Andrew in the kingdom. This was in 1051, and it was
probably the sister-in-law of this Andrew whom the Saxon prince Edward
married. All we are told about her is, that her name was Agatha, and
that she was learned and virtuous.
In 1058, Edward, the only survivor of the brothers, was invited by his
cousin, the childless Confessor, to return to England, and there be
owned as Etheling, or heir to the crown. He came, but after his forty
years’ absence from his native country, his language, habits, and
manners were so unlike those of the English, that he was always known by
the name of Edward the Stranger.
After two years, both the Stranger and his wife Agatha died, leaving
three young children, Christina, Margaret, and Edgar, of whom the boy
was the youngest. His only inheritance, poor child, was his title of
Etheling, declaring a claim which was likely to be his greatest peril.
Edward the Confessor passed him entirely over in disposing of his
kingdom; and as he was but six, or, as some say, ten years old, Harold
seems to have feared no danger from him, but left him at liberty within
the city of London.
There he remained while the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings were
fought, and there, when the tidings came that the Normans had conquered,
the little child was led forth, while a proclamation was made before him
that Edgar was King of England. But it was only a few faithful
citizens that thus upheld the young descendant of Alfred. Some were
faint-hearted, others were ambitious; Edwin and Morkar said they would
support him if the bishops would; the bishops declared that the Pope
favored the Normans. The Conqueror was advancing, and from the walls of
London the glare of flame might be seen, as he burnt the villages of
Hertfordshire and Surrey, and soon the camp was set up without the
walls, and the Conqueror lodging in King Edward’s own palace of
Westminster. The lame Alderman Ansgard was carried in his litter to hold
secret conference with him, and returned with promises of security for
lives and liberties, if the citizens would admit and acknowledge King
William. They dreaded the dangers of a seige, and gladly accepted his
proposal, threw open their gates, and came forth in procession to
Westminster to present him with the keys, basely carrying with them the
helpless boy whom they had a few weeks before owned as their king.
Edgar was a fair child, of the old Saxon stamp of beauty, with flaxen
hair and blue eyes; and the Duke of Normandy, harsh as he usually was,
received him affectionately. Perhaps he thought of his own orphanhood at
the same age, and the many perils through which he had been preserved,
and pitied the boy deprived of his kingdom, without one faithful hand
raised to protect him, and betrayed to his enemies. He took him in his
arms, kissed him, promised him favors and kindness, and never broke the
promise.
For the next two years Edgar remained at the court of William, until the
general spirit of hatred of the Normans began to incite the Saxons to
rise against them. Cospatric, Earl of Durham, thought it best to secure
the safety of the royal children, and, secretly withdrawing Edgar and
his two sisters from the court, he embarked with them for the Continent,
intending to take them to their mother’s home in Hungary.
Contrary winds drove the ship to Scotland, and there the orphans were
brought to King Malcolm III. Never had an apparent misfortune been
in truth a greater blessing. Malcolm had but seven years before been
himself a wandering exile, sheltered in the court of Edward the
Confessor, after his father, the gracious Duncan, was murdered, and the
usurper Macbeth on the throne. He had venerated the saintly Confessor,
and remembered the untimely death of the Stranger, which had left these
children friendless in what was to them a foreign land; and he owed his
restoration to his throne to the Saxon army under old Siward Bjorn. Glad
to repay his obligations, he conducted the poor wanderers to his castle
of Dumfermline, treated them according to their rank, and promised to
assert Edgar’s claim to the crown.
He accordingly advanced into England, where, in many places, partial
risings were being made on behalf of “England’s darling,” as the Saxon
ballads called young Edgar, after his ancestor Alfred. It was, however,
all in vain: Malcolm did not arrive till the English had been defeated
on the banks of the Tyne, and the Normans avenging their insurrection
by such cruel devastation, that nine years after the commissioners of
Domesday Book found no inhabitants nor cultivation to record between
York and Durham.
There is some confusion in both the English and Scottish histories
respecting Malcom’s exertions in Edgar’s cause; indeed, the Border
warfare was always going on, and now and then the King took part in
it. At length William and Malcolm, each at the head of an army, met
in Galloway, and after standing at bay for some days, entered into a
treaty. Malcolm paid homage to the English King for the two Lothians and
Cumberland, and at the same time secured the safety of Edgar Etheling.
The boy solemnly renounced all claim to the English crown, engaging
never to molest the Conqueror or his children in their possession of it;
while, on the other hand, he was endowed with estates in England, and a
pension of a mark of silver a day was settled upon him. He could not at
this time have been more than fourteen--there is more reason to think he
was but ten years old--but the oath that he then took he kept with the
most unshaken fidelity, in the midst of temptations, and of examples of
successful perjury.
He returned with his friend to Scotland, where, the next year, his
beautiful sister Margaret consented to become the wife of their
host, the King Malcolm; but Christina, the other sister, preferred a
conventual life, though she seems for the present to have continued with
Margaret at Dumfermline.
Gentle Margaret, bred in some quiet English convent; taught by her
mother to remember the Greek cultivation and holy learning of good King
Stephen’s court; perhaps blessed by the tender hand of pious Edward the
Confessor, and trained by the sweet rose, Edith, sprung from the thorn,
Godwin; she must have felt desolate and astray among the rude, savage
Scots, wild chiefs of clans, owning no law, full of brawling crime and
violence, too strong to be kept in order by force, and their wives
almost as untamed and rude as themselves. Her husband was a rough,
untutored warrior, ruling by the main force of a strong hand, and asking
counsel of his own honest heart and ready wit, but perfectly ignorant,
and probably uncouth in his appearance, as his appellation of Cean Mohr
means Great-head.
But Margaret was a true daughter of Alfred, and the traditions of the
Alfred of Hungary were fresh upon her, and, instead of sitting down to
cower alarmed amid the turmoils round her, she set herself to conquer
the evils in her own feminine way, by her performance of her queenly
duties. She was happy in her husband: Malcolm revered her saintly purity
even more than he loved her sweet, sunny, cheerful manner, or admired
her surpassing loveliness of person. He looked on her as something too
precious and tender for his wild, rugged court, and attended to her
slightest bidding with reverence, kissing her holy books which he could
not read, and interpreting her Saxon-spoken advice to his rude Celts.
She even made him help her to wash the feet of the poor, and aid her in
disgusting offices to the diseased, and his royal treasury was open to
her to take all that she desired for alms. Sometimes she would pretend
to take it by stealth, and Malcolm would catch her by the wrists and
carry her to her confessor, to ask if she was not a little thief who
deserved to be well punished. In his turn he would steal away her books,
and bring them back after a time, gilt and adorned with beautiful
illuminations.