lay aside his anger, or not. Some say that he sent off sentence of
suspension and excommunication; others, that he owned the justice of
Grosteste’s letter. It made little difference to the good Bishop, who
lay on his deathbed long before the answer arrived. He spoke much of the
troubles and bondage of the Church, which he feared would never be
ended but by the edge of a blood-stained sword, and grieved over the
falsehood, perfidy, and extortion, that were soiling his beloved Church;
and thus he expired, uplifting his honest testimony both in word and
deed, untouched by the crimes of his age.
Innocent IV. did not long survive him, and there is a remarkable story
of the commencement of his last illness. He dreamt that the spirit of
Robert Grosteste had appeared, and given him a severe beating. The
delusion hung about him, and he finally died in the belief that he was
killed by the blows of the English Bishop.
Sewel, Archbishop of York, had the same contest with Rome. Three
Italians walked into York cathedral, asked which was the Dean’s seat,
and installed one of their number there; and when the Archbishop refused
to permit his appointment, an interdict was laid on his see, and he died
under excommunication, bearing it meekly and patiently, and his flock
following his funeral in weeping multitudes, though it was apparently
unblest by the Church.
These good men had fallen on days of evil shepherds, and lamentable was
the state of Europe, when men’s religious feelings were perverted to
be engines for exalting the temporal power of the popedom, and their
ministers, mistaking their true calling, were struggling for an absolute
and open dominion, for which purity, truth, meekness, and every
attribute of charity were sacrificed.
CAMEO XXIX. THE LONGESPÉES IN THE EGYPTIAN CRUSADES. (1219-1254.)
_King of England_.
1216. Henry III.
_Kings of Scotland_.
1214. Alexander II.
1249. Alexander III.
_Kings of France_.
1180. Philip III.
1223. Louis VIII.
1226. Louis IX.
_Emperors of Germany._
1209. Friedrich II.
1259. Conrad IV.
_Popes._
1216. Innocent III.
1227. Honorius III.
1241. Gregory IX.
1241. Celestin IV.
1242. Innocent IV.
The crusading spirit had not yet died away, but it was often diverted by
the Popes, who sent the champions of the Cross to make war on European
heretics instead of the Moslems of Palestine.
William Longespée, the son of Fair Rosamond, was, however, a zealous
crusador in the East itself. He had been with Coeur de Lion in the Holy
Land, and in 1219 again took the Cross, and shared an expedition led by
the titular King of Jerusalem, a French knight, named Jean de Brienne,
who had married Marie, the daughter of that Isabelle whom Richard I. had
placed on the throne of Jerusalem. Under him, an attempt was made to
carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, by attacking the Saracens in
Egypt, and with a large force of crusaders he laid siege to Damietta.
The reigning Sultan, Malek el Kamel, marched to its relief, and
encamping at Mansourah, in the delta of the Nile, fought two severe
battles with doubtful success, but could not assist the garrison, who,
after holding out for fifteen months, at length surrendered. The unhappy
city was in such a state from the effects of hunger and disease, that
the Christians themselves, suffering from severe sickness, did not dare
to enter it, till the prisoners, as the price of their liberty, had
encountered the risk of cleansing it and burying the dead.
Even then they remained, encamped outside, and Kamel continued to watch
them from Mansourah, where he built permanent houses, and formed his
camp into a town, while awaiting the aid of the natural defender of
Egypt, the Nile, which, in due time arising, inundated the whole
Christian camp, and washed away the stores. The troops, already reduced
by sickness, were living in a swamp, the water and mud ankle-deep, and
with currents of deeper water rushing in all directions, drowning the
incautious; while want and disease preyed upon the rest, till Jean de
Brienne was obliged to go and treat with the Sultan. When received
courteously in the commodious, royal tent at Mansourah, the contrast to
the miseries which his friends were enduring so affected him, that he
burst into a fit of weeping, that moved the generous Kamel at once,
without conditions, to send as a free gift a supply of provisions to his
distressed enemies. A treaty was then concluded, by which the crusaders
restored Damiotta, after having held it for eight months, and were
allowed every facility for their departure.
Though hardy, patient and enterprising as a crusader, Longespée was
lawless and unscrupulous, and paid no respect to the ordinances of
religion, neither confessing himself nor being a communicant; while his
wife, the lady Ella, Countess of Salisbury in her own right, continued a
devout observer of her duties.
Soon after his return from Egypt, Longespée, in sailing from Gascony to
England, was in great danger, from a storm in the Bay of Biscay of many
days’ continuance, and so violent, that all the jewels, treasure, and
other freight, were thrown overboard to lighten the vessel. In the
height of the peril, the mast was illuminated, no doubt by that strange
electric brightness called by sailors “St. Elmo’s Light,” but which, to
the conscience-stricken earl, was a heavenly messenger, sent to convert
and save him. It was even reported that it was a wax-light, sheltered
from the wind by a female form of marvellous radiance and beauty, at
whose appearance the tempest lulled, and the ship came safely to land.
The Countess Ella availed herself of the impression thus made upon her
husband to persuade him to seek the ghostly counsel of St. Edmund Rich,
then a canon of Salisbury; and the first sight of the countenance of
the holy man at once subdued him, so that he forsook his evil ways,
devoutly received the rites so long neglected, and spent his few
remaining years in trying to atone for his past sins.
In 1226, he was taken suddenly ill at a banquet given by Hubert de
Burgh, and being carried home, sent for the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard
Poer, who found him in a high fever; but he at once threw himself from
his bed upon the floor, weeping, and crying out that he was a traitor to
the Most High: nor would he allow himself to be raised till he had made
his confession, and received the Holy Eucharist.
He died a few days subsequently, and was buried at Old Sarum, whence
his tomb was afterward removed to the cathedral at Salisbury, where his
effigy lies in the nave, in chain armor, with his legs crossed as a
crusader. The Countess Ella founded a monastery at Laycock, where she
took the veil. Her eldest son, William Longespée, succeeded to the
Castle of Sarum, but afterward offended the King by quitting the realm
without the royal license, for which breach of rule Henry III. seized
his possessions, and he remained a knight adventurer. In this capacity
he followed his cousin, Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, who took
the Cross in 1240.
By this time, Yolande, the daughter of Jean de Brienne, had carried her
rights to her husband, Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, the object of
the bitter hatred of the Popes, who had thwarted him in every way, when
he himself led an expedition to Palestine, and now, since the conquests
of the crusaders would go to augment his power, would willingly have
checked them. Gregory IX. strove to induce the English party to commute
their vow for treasure, but they indignantly repelled the proposal, and
set forth, under the solemn blessing of their own bishops. In France,
they were received with great affection by Louis IX., and with much
enthusiasm by the people; so that their progress was a triumph, till
they came to Marseilles, where they embarked, disregarding a prohibition
from the Pope which here met them.
At Acre, they were received by the clergy and people in solemn
procession, chanting, “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the
Lord;” and high were the hopes entertained that their deeds would
rival those of the last Richard Plantagenet and William Longespée. But
Richard, though brave and kindly-tempered, was no general; Palestine
was in too miserable a condition for his succor to avail it, and all he
could do was to make a treaty, and use his wealth to purchase free
ingress to the holy places for the pilgrims; and, without himself entering
Jerusalem, he returned home. He took with him as curiosities two Saracen
damsels, trained to perform a dance with each foot, on a globe of
crystal rolling on a smooth pavement, while they made various graceful
gestures with their bodies, and struck together a couple of cymbals with
their hands.
This was the whole result of the Crusade, for the treaty was set at
naught by the Templars and Hospitallers, who called him a boy, and
refused to be bound by his compact. In 1245, William Longespée again
took the Cross under a very different leader.
In the previous year, Louis IX., King of France, had been attacked by an
illness of such severity that his life was despaired of; and at one time
a lady, who was watching by his bed, thought him actually dead, and was
about to cover his face. He soon opened his eyes, and, stretching out
his arms, said, “The light of the East hath shined on me, and called me
back from the dead,” and he demanded the Cross, and at once took the
vow for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. To part with so just and
excellent a monarch on an expedition of such peril was grief and misery
to his subjects, and, above all, to his mother, Queen Blanche, and every
means was taken to dissuade him; but he would neither eat nor drink till
the sign was given to him; and as soon as he had strength to explain
himself, declared that he had, while in his trance, heard a voice from
the East, calling on him, as the appointed messenger of Heaven, to
avenge the insults offered to the Holy City. His mother mourned as for
his death, his counsellors remonstrated, his people entreated; but
nothing could outweigh such a summons, and his resolution was fixed.
The Bishop of Paris saying that the vow was made while he was not fully
master of his senses, he laid the Cross aside, but only to resume it, so
as to be beyond all such suspicion.
The Crusade was preached, but it had now become a frequent practice, of
which Henry III. was a lamentable example, lightly and hastily to
assume the Cross in a moment of excitement, or even as a means of being
disembarrassed from troublesome claims by the privileges of a Crusader,
and then to purchase from the Pope absolution from the vow. It had
become such an actual matter of traffic, that Richard of Cornwall
positively obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of the money thus raised
from recreant Crusaders. The landless William of Salisbury, going to the
Pope, who was then at Lyons, thus addressed him: “Your Holiness sees
that I am signed with the Cross. My name is great and well known: it is
William Longespée. But my fortune does not match it. The King of England
has bereft me of my earldom, but as this was done judicially, not out of
personal ill-will, I blame him not. Yet, poor as I am, I have undertaken
the pilgrimage. Now, since Prince Richard, the King’s brother, who has
not taken the Cross, has obtained from you a grant to take money from
such as lay it aside, surely I may beg for the like--I, who am signed,
and yet without resource.”
He obtained the grant, and thus raised 1,000 marks, while Richard of
Cornwall actually gained from one archdeacon £600, and in proportion
from others.
Louis, for three years, was detained by the necessity of arranging
matters for the tranquillity of his own kingdom, and not till the Friday
in Whitsun-week, 1248, was he solemnly invested at St. Denis with the
pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and presented with the oriflamme, the
standard of the convent, which he bore as Count of Paris. His two
brothers, Robert Comté d’Artois, and Charles Comte d’Anjou, and his wife
Marguerite of Provence, accompanied him, together with a great number
of the nobility, among whom the most interesting was the faithful and
attached Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who has left us a
minute record of his master’s adventures.
They sailed from Aigues Mortes, August 25th, 1248, and Joinville
reflected that he could not imagine how a man in a state of mortal sin
could ever put to sea, since he knew not, when he fell asleep at night,
whether morning would not find him at the bottom of the sea. On coming
near the coast of Barbary, Joinville’s ship seems to have been becalmed,
for it continued for three whole days in view of the same round
mountain, to the great dismay of the crew, until a _preux d’homme_
priest suggested, that in his parish, in cases of distress, such as
dearth, or flood, or pestilence, processions chanting the Litany were
made on three Saturdays following. The day was Saturday, and the crew
acted on his advice, making the procession round the masts, even the
sick being carried by their friends. The next day they were out of sight
of the mountain, and on the third Saturday safely landed at Cyprus. Here
the Crusaders remained for eight months, since Egypt was the intended
point of attack, and they wished to allow the inundation of the Nile to
subside. At length, in the summer of 1249, they arrived before Damietta,
which was even better fortified than when it had previously held out for
fifteen months; but it now surrendered, after Fakreddin, the Mameluke
commander, had suffered one defeat under its walls, and the Christians
entered in triumph. Here Louis made an unfortunate delay, while waiting
for reinforcements brought by his brother Alfonse, Comte de Poitiers.
To the rude and superstitious noblesse, a Crusade appeared a certain
means of securing salvation, as indeed the clergy led them to believe;
and this belief seemed to remove all restraint of morality from the
ill-disposed, so that the pure and pious King was bitterly grieved by
the license which he found himself unable to restrain. Much harm was
done by the excess in which the troops indulged while revelling in the
plunder of Damietta. The prudent would have reserved the stores there
laid up for time of need, but old crusaders insisted on “the good old
custom of the Holy Land,” as they called it, namely, the distribution of
two-thirds among the army; and though the King ransomed some portion,
the money did as much harm in promoting revelry as the provisions
themselves.
Longespée arrived, with 200 English knights; but the small band of
English and their landless leader met with nothing but contumely from
their allies, especially the King’s brother, Robert Comte d’Artois, a
haughty and impetuous youth. The English took a small castle on the road
to Alexandria, where one of the Saracen Emirs had placed his harem. It
was reported that Longespée had acquired a huge treasure there, and
Robert insulted him to his face, and deprived him of his just share of
the spoil. Longespée, complained to the King; but Louis could give him
no redress. “You are no King, if you cannot do justice,” said William.
Louis meekly suffered the reproach. He had, in his submission, made over
his judgment and authority to the papal legates--men far less fit than
he to exercise power--and matters went chiefly as they and his fiery
brothers chose to direct. Wiser counsellors recommended securing the
other seaport, Alexandria; but Prince Alfonse declared, that the only
way to kill a snake, was to strike the head, and persuaded the council
that the move should be upon Grand Cairo, or, as the Crusaders chose to
call it, Babylon.
On November 25th, 1249, the army advanced, and the conjuncture should
have been favorable, for the Sultan was just dead, and his son absent
at Damascus; but nothing could have been worse concerted than the
expedition--ill-provisioned, without boats to cross the canals, without
engines of war, the soldiery disorganized; while the Mameluke force were
picked soldiers, recruited from the handsomest Circassian children, bred
up for arms alone, and with an _esprit de corps_ that rendered them a
terror to friend and foe almost down to our own times. They harassed the
Christians at every step, and destroyed their machines, and terrified
them excessively by showers of Greek fire, a compound of naphtha and
other combustibles launched from hollow engines, which ignited as it
traversed the air, and was very hard to extinguish.
The Franks regarded it with a superstitious horror, as a fiendish
mystery, and compared it to a fiery dragon with a tail as long as a
lance; but it did not actually cause many deaths, and they met with no
serious disaster till they came to the canal of Aschmoum, which flowed
between them and Mansourah. They tried to build a causeway across it,
but their commencement was destroyed by the Greek fire, and a Bedouin
offered, for 500 bezants, to show them a ford on the Shrove Tuesday
of 1250. Robert d’Artois begged to lead the vanguard, and secure the
passage of the rest; and when the King hesitated to confide so important
a charge to one so rash and impetuous, he swore on the Gospels that,
when he should have gained the bank on the other side, nothing should
induce him to leave it till the whole army should have crossed. The King
consented, but placed the command in the hands of the wise Guillaume
de Sonnac, Grand Master of the Templars, who, with his knights, the
Hospitallers, Longespée and the English, and Robert’s own band, formed a
body of 1,400.
The Saracens who guarded the ford were taken by surprise, and fled in
confusion; and the Christians, mounting the bank, beheld the inhabitants
and garrison of Mansourah hurrying away in terror.
The temptation made the impetuous prince forget his promises, and he was
dashing forward in pursuit, when the Grand Master tried to check him, by
representing that, though the enemy were at present under the influence
of panic terror, they would soon rally, and that the only safety for the
I,400 was to wait, with the canal in their rear, until the rest of the
army should have crossed; otherwise, as soon as their small number
should be perceived, they would infallibly be surrounded and cut off.
The fiery youth listened with scorn and impatience. “I see,” cried he,
“that it is well said, that the Orders have an understanding with the
Infidel! They love power, they love money, and so will not see the war
ended. This is the way that so many crusading princes have been served
by them.”
“Noble Count,” said Pierre de Villebride, the Grand Master of St. John,
trying to calm him, “why do you think we gave up our homes and took
these vows? Was it to overthrow the Church and lose our own souls? Such
things be far, far from us, or from any Christian.”
But De Sonnac would not parley; he called to his esquire, “Spread wide
the Beauséant banner. Arms and death must decide our honor and fate. We
might be invincible, united; but division is our ruin.”
Longespée interposed. “Lord Count,” said he, “you cannot err in following
the counsel of a holy man like the Grand Master, well tried in arms. Young
men are never dishonored by hearkening to their elders.”
“The tail! that smacks of the tail!” exclaimed the headstrong Robert.
[Footnote: On Thomas á Becket’s last journey to Canterbury, Raoul de
Broc’s followers had cut off the tails of his pack-horses. It was a vulgar
reproach to the men of Kent that the outrage had been punished by the
growth of the same appendage on the whole of the inhabitants of the
county; and, whereas the English populace applied the accusation to the
Kentishmen, foreigners extended it to the whole nation when in a humor for
insult and abuse, such as that of this unhappy prince.]
“Count Robert,” rejoined William, “I shall be so forward in peril
to-day, that you will not even come near the tail of my horse.”
With these words they all set out at full gallop, Robert’s old deaf
tutor, Sir Foucault de Nesle, who had not heard one word of the
remonstrance, holding his bridle, and shouting, “_Ores à eux! ores à,
eux!_” They burst into the town, and began to pillage, killing the
Saracen Emir Fakreddin, as he left his bath; but in the meantime,
Bendocdar, another Mameluke chief, had rallied his forces, threw a troop
between them and the ford, and thus, cutting them off, attacked them in
the streets, while the inhabitants hurled stones, boiling water, and
burning brands from above.
Separated and surprised as they were, the little band sold their lives
dearly, forgot their fatal quarrels, and fought as one man from ten
o’clock till three. Robert entrenched himself in a house, defended
himself there for a long time, and finally perished in its ruins.
Longespée was killed at the head of his knights, who almost all fell
with him; and his esquire, Robert de Vere, was found with his banner
wrapped around his dead body. Only thirty-five prisoners were made,
among them Pierre de Villebride. Sonnac, after having lost a hundred
and eighty of his knights, fought his way through with the loss of an
eye.
The King had, in the meantime, crossed the canal, and grievous was his
disappointment on finding that the Saracens were between him and his
brother. Every effort was made to break through to the rescue, but in
vain; and at one moment Louis himself was in the utmost danger, finding
himself singly opposed to six Saracens, whom, however, he succeeded in
putting to flight. With difficulty could his forces even maintain their
footing on the Mansourah side of the canal, and it was not till after
a long and desperate conflict that there was time to inquire for the
missing. The Prior de Rosnay came to the royal tent, to ask whether
there were any tidings of the Count, “Only that he is in Paradise,” said
the King. “God be praised for what He sends to us.” And he lifted up his
eyes, while the tears flowed down his cheeks.
It was believed, in England, that the Countess Ella of Salisbury had on
that day a vision of her son received into Paradise.
The bon Sieur de Joinville had his part in the brave deeds of the day:
he, with the Comte de Soissons and four other knights, guarded a bridge
against a mighty force of Saracens. “Seneschal,” cried the Count, “let
this canaille roar and howl; you and I will yet talk of this day in our
lady’s chamber.”
And Joinville fought on cheerfully, though twice dismounted, and in
great danger. But he kept up his heart, crying out, “Beau Sire, St.
James, help me, and succor me in my need!” and he came off safely,
though pierced with five arrows, and his horse with fifteen wounds.
The following day was a doubly sorrowful Ash-Wednesday in the Christian
camp; while the Mussulmans triumphed, calling the battle of Mansourah
the key of joy to true believers; and fancying, from the fleur-de-lys on
the surcoat, that the corpse of Robert was that of Louis himself, they
proclaimed throughout their camp, “The Christian army is a trunk without
life or head!”
They learnt their error on the Friday, when they made a furious attack
on the Crusaders, and Louis’s valor made itself felt, as he dashed
through showers of arrows and of Greek fire, and drove back the enemy as
they were surrounding his brother Charles. His other brother, Alfonse,
was for a moment made prisoner, but being much beloved, the butchers,
women, and servants belonging to the army, suddenly rushed forward and
rescued him. The Grand Master of the Templars lost his other eye, and
was soon after killed; and though the Christians claimed the victory,
their loss was so severe, especially in horses, that it was impossible
to advance to Cairo, and they therefore remained encamped before
Mansourah.
Nothing more fatal could have been done: the marshy ground, the number
of dead bodies that choked the stream, the feeding on fish that had
preyed upon them--for the Lenten fast prevented recourse to solid
food--occasioned disease to break out--fever, dysentery, and a horrible
disorder which turned the skin as black and dry (says Joinville) as an
old boot, and caused great swelling and inflammation of the gums, so
that the barbers cut them away piecemeal.