STORIES FROM HISTORY SERIES
EDITED BY JOHN LANG
STORIES FROM
THE CRUSADES
[Illustration: Wherever the battle was hottest, Richard seemed to
spring from the ground
See page 75]
STORIES FROM
THE CRUSADES
BY
JANET HARVEY KELMAN
WITH PICTURES BY
L. D. LUARD
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
TO
KATHARINE AND BARBARA
THE HEROES OF THE CRUSADES
The stories in this book are of heroes who lived hundreds of years ago.
They caught sight of a beautiful dream and lived and died to make it
come true.
Their eagerness swept along with them not only men who had never
dreamed the dream and who did not know for what end they fought, but
bad men also who only wished to get what they could for themselves.
The Crusades are long past, yet to-day there are men who see visions
of good and who wish to bring them down to earth. With them are others
who fight selfishly as did Bohemond and Baldwin long ago. But there are
still men like Francis, who carry goodwill with them, and great knights
like Tancred and like Louis, who live to fight for the poor and the
weak.
LIST OF STORIES
Chap. Page
I. How Peter preached of Jerusalem 1
II. How Tancred fought under the Banner of the
Cross 17
III. How the Kings fought for Glory and not for
Christ 51
IV. How Frederick came to his Kingdom 82
V. How Louis thought Death a little Thing 92
LIST OF PICTURES
Wherever the battle was hottest Richard
seemed to spring from the ground _Frontispiece_
At page
Peter set off with an unruly band of men 16
Bohemond led the way himself 38
Peter held a lance-head high in the air 40
They knelt on the rocky track 42
Barbarossa waits until his country needs him 64
A wild and fierce race called Tartars 92
Louis leapt into the water 98
CHAPTER I
HOW PETER PREACHED OF JERUSALEM
Once upon a time there was an ugly little boy called Peter, who lived
in his father’s castle in France. He was a restless boy, and liked
always to do or to hear something new. His home was very quiet, for his
father was a great fighter, and was often away at the wars for months
at a time.
But though one day was very like another in Peter’s life when he was
young, he used to hear tales of pilgrimage and of battle that made him
long to be free to go out into the world himself.
The country round his home and in the other northern lands near it was
bare and grey, and the towers and walls of the cities were gloomy,
but the boy heard of other lands and other cities. He heard that in
Byzantium, where the Greek Emperor had his palace, the houses were
built of marble, and their walls were lined with gold, and that in the
lands around it rich fruits and grain grew. He often heard of another
city called Jerusalem, for many pilgrims went to it because it was at
Jerusalem that Jesus Christ died. Hundreds of years before Peter was
born, Helena, the mother of the Greek Emperor Constantine, found a
cross which she thought must be the Cross on which Christ died. She was
full of awe and wonder, and in order that all who served Christ might
see the Cross, it was set up in Jerusalem on the spot where it was
thought to have stood when Christ died upon it. Long after Constantine
and his mother were dead, a king who did not serve Christ carried the
Cross away from Jerusalem. The Emperor who then reigned in Greece
fought with this king for ten years before he could subdue him. At last
he won the cross again, and with it lands and gold, but these gave him
far less joy than the thought that the cross would again stand in
Jerusalem. He kept part of it in his city of Byzantium; with the rest
he went to Jerusalem. He was a great man and a proud man, but he was
humble when he thought of the cross and of what it told of the death of
Christ. So he took off his beautiful clothes, and with bare feet and
wearing a plain robe he carried the cross up the street of Jerusalem,
and set it once more within the church that had been built where Christ
died.
When Peter was young, hundreds of pilgrims went to Jerusalem to worship
at the foot of this cross. They did so for many reasons. Some did it
because they loved the thought of Christ and wished to stand where
He had stood, and to see the land in which He had lived. Others went
because they thought it would make other people think them very good.
They hoped to be great people when they came back to their homes again.
But the largest number went because the Pope and the priests told them
that those who went in poverty to the Holy City would be forgiven for
all the wrong things they had done. Many a man who was very unhappy
because he had killed some one by stealth, gave up all that he had and
went with nothing except a staff to visit the cross.
These pilgrims were often very cruelly treated in Jerusalem, for men
called Saracens who did not serve Christ lived and ruled there, and
they made each pilgrim give them money before they would allow him into
the city. They are sometimes called ‘Moslems,’ and they were followers
of a prophet named Mahomet. They were cruel to the Christians who
lived in Jerusalem, as well as to the pilgrims who came to it.
Once, when Hakem, who was called ‘the mad Sultan,’ ruled in Jerusalem,
the streets of the city surged with an angry throng. The white robes
of the soldiers of Hakem flashed out amongst the bright colours that
were worn by men of other Moslem races. Every face was full of scorn
and anger. Harsh voices cursed those who served Christ. Jews hid in
corners and alleys that they might not suffer with the Christians, for
them too the Moslems hated.
The Moslems call their churches mosques, and the reason of their great
anger on this day was that they had found a dead dog lying in a mosque.
They thought that this had done such harm to their mosque that they
could not pray in it till they had made it pure again, and they were
sure that a Christian had thrown the dog’s body there in order to annoy
them. The news spread through the town, and each moment the crowd grew
larger and more fierce.
‘Let us fall on the Christian dogs!’ they shouted. ‘Let us kill them
without mercy!’ ‘Who are they that they should soil our temple?’
The Christians had gathered into one place in sorrow and in fear. They
all wore clothes of dull dingy shades, because they were not allowed
to wear beautiful colours nor white robes like Hakem’s soldiers. Each
of them wore a leather thong to show that the Moslems ruled over
him. Their hearts were more gloomy than their robes. If they were all
killed, the Christian Church would have no one left in Jerusalem.
They waited in terror. But the noise they heard was not what they
had feared. A clear voice rang out. The man who spoke was one of
themselves. His name was Olindo.
‘Nothing could be a greater evil,’ he said, ‘than that the Church
should perish. I will die for you and for our faith. Do not forget me
nor my people.’
The others burst into tears, but though they were sad to think of
Olindo’s death, no one tried to stay him. He passed swiftly out from
them, and met the Moslem leaders as they hurried on to kill the
Christians.
‘I alone am guilty of this deed,’ said Olindo; and he had not time to
say more, for he fell dead in the street, killed by the swords of those
nearest to him.
At that time those who were called Christians were quarrelling with
each other. There were two Churches. One was the Greek Church, the
other was the Church of Rome. The Popes, who reigned in Rome, always
wished to make the Greek Church obey them, so that there might be only
one Christian Church. And when Peter lived it seemed that perhaps this
dream of the Popes might come true. A fierce race of men called Turks
had swept westward from the Great Wall of China. Everything had fallen
before them except the faith of the Prophet whom the Moslems followed.
It did not fall, because, instead of trying to fight it, the Turks took
it for their own. It suited them well, because it taught that whoever
died fighting for it, against those who did not obey Mahomet, would go
straight to heaven. So instead of making slaves of the Moslems whom
they had defeated, the Turks joined their armies to their own, and led
them against the Empire of Greece. That was why the Pope who lived then
thought he might be able to unite Rome and Greece once more. Greece
asked Rome to help her against the Turks, and Rome hoped that if she
helped her so, then Greece would be willing to do what she wished
afterwards.
And it was of these things that men who knew the world talked and
thought when Peter was a boy. As he grew up, he longed to have a share
in all the great things that were being done in the world, and in order
to know about them he entered the home of the Bishop of Paris that he
might be a priest, and so have time to read many books. But he soon
found that he could not be happy while he only read about what other
men had done. He yearned to do things himself. The bishop liked him
well and wished to keep him with him, but the restless lad would not
stay. He went to fight in Flanders, but it was only for a short time
that war seemed gay and pleasant to him. He was made a prisoner, and he
found a cell far more dull and dreary than his study in Paris.
Then he escaped from prison, and made a home of his own. There he and
his wife Beatrice lived for a few years together, but soon she died
and left Peter with three little children. Peter gave the care of the
children to a friend and fled to a hermit’s cell. It seemed to him that
he had tried every kind of life in vain, and that nothing was left for
him but to live alone and to think and pray till death came to him.
But Peter was neither old nor ill, and death was a long way off from
him. The narrow cell became a prison to him, and he grew as restless
as a lion in a cage. But he had vowed that he would live the life of a
hermit, and if death would not come to him to bring him freedom, there
was only one way in which he could keep his vow and yet do things and
take part in the life of the world. That way was to go on pilgrimage.
As he thought of this, the old light flashed in his keen dark eyes.
‘I too,’ he said to himself, ‘will walk barefoot where Christ has trod.
My tears shall fall on His grave, and I will kneel before the cross.’
He set out on his journey, and after many risks and dangers he reached
Jerusalem. Peter had seen many beautiful towns and rich valleys, and
when he saw the bare rocky ground that led up to Jerusalem, he was
amazed that Christ had died in so dreary a city.
‘How strange,’ thought he, ‘that the Lord of All should have chosen
this barren spot!’ As he went from place to place in the city he was
in great excitement. He made such vivid pictures in his mind of all
that had happened there that the thought of it took away his breath,
and he longed that he might die where such things had taken place. It
was dreadful for him to see how those who cared not for the memory of
Christ scorned and defiled the holy places, and robbed and ill-treated
the pilgrims who asked only to be allowed to worship and to think in
peace. He sought out the head of the Christian Church, whom men called
the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and talked with him of what might be done
to save the Holy City from the Moslems, and he told the Christians in
Jerusalem that he would go away and bring the people of Europe to fight
for the Holy City.
On the evening before Peter left Jerusalem he went into the church in
which the cross stood, to pray. He was weary with talk and thought and
with many visits to holy places, and he fell asleep. While he slept, he
thought he saw Christ come to him and say:
‘Arise, Peter, do with courage that which thou hast said. I will be
with thee.’
Peter rose from his knees in great joy. He left Jerusalem and went with
haste to Rome. There the Pope listened to him gladly and gave him his
blessing. He told him to go from town to town and from land to land,
and to tell every one who would listen, of the sufferings of pilgrims
and of the dishonour that was shown to the memory of Christ in the
places where He had once walked.
This was a different kind of life from the one Peter had lived in the
hermit’s cell. It was full of change and excitement, and it had in it
the great hope that one day he would see Jerusalem in the hands of
Christian armies, and pilgrims welcomed and honoured where they had
suffered so much.
Peter was still ugly. He was small and ungainly, but he had piercing
black eyes, and those who caught sight of them forgot to look at
anything else. He was not fifty years old, but the hard life he had
lived had turned his hair and beard white. He did not wear either hat
or shoes. As he rode along on his mule, the long coarse folds of his
robe flapped round his bare feet, and the cord that bound his waist
dangled at his side. In his hands he carried a heavy crucifix.
When he stopped and began to speak, people thought he was some silly,
worthless man, but before he had spoken many sentences they gathered
close to him and listened with open eyes and mouths, for the ugly
little man could make other men see the things he saw, and feel what
he felt. Everywhere Peter made men and women think that the only thing
that mattered in the whole world was to save Jerusalem from the Moslems.
The crowds of people who followed Peter soon grew as excited as he was
himself. They thought that he was so holy, that if they touched him or
pulled a hair from his mule’s tail, they would be better and happier.
When Peter had told hundreds of people about Jerusalem, the Pope
himself came to meet as many of them as could be gathered together to
hear him. The city to which he asked them to come could not hold the
crowds who came together from every side. It was winter, and bitterly
cold, and knights and nobles, monks and workmen, camped in the icy
fields round the town.
When the great day came, the Pope sat on a throne in the city square
with Peter by his side. Peter told once more of Jerusalem and of what
he had seen there; and when he was silent the Pope rose and promised
that however wicked were any of those who heard him, yet if they would
only now go to fight in the Holy War he would promise that no evil
would ever come to them because of the wrong things they had done in
the past, and that when they died they would go straight to heaven.
The people had been greatly excited by Peter’s speech, and as they
heard the Pope promise such wonderful things to all who would fight for
Jerusalem, they began to shout out, ‘It is the will of God: it is the
will of God.’
‘It is the will of God,’ answered the Pope. ‘Let that be your
battle-cry. And because ye seek to save the city of our Lord, let the
cross be your sign. Wear it on your shoulders and on your breasts. With
it, ye shall certainly be either victors or martyrs.’
Then nobles with their gay banners and flashing armour, and peasants in
coarse dull-coloured tunics, crowded forward to take the red cross of
war from the hands of the Pope.
After this, many others besides Peter went out to preach the Crusade,
and all along the roads by which they went, there gathered groups of
men, women, and children, each with the sign of the cross on shoulder
or banner.
The knights and nobles who had taken the cross had many things to do
ere they could leave their lands. They had to sell jewels and silver
dishes that they might have money to pay for the food their followers
would need on the journey and throughout the fighting. They had to
find people in whose care they could leave children and castles. But
many foolish folk who knew nothing at all of what it meant to go on
foot to the Holy Land, or to fight the fierce Turkish soldiers, and
who had nothing to leave behind, crowded round Peter and begged him to
wait for no one, but to lead them at once to the Holy City. Peter knew
nothing of war, and although he did know something of the danger of the
journey, he did not think how much more hard it would be to find food
for a thousand people than for one. He thought, too, that all those men
whose eager faces looked up into his, were as much in earnest as he was
himself, and would be as willing to suffer and even to die. Besides all
that, he was not at all patient himself. He wished to see the banner of
the Cross floating from the walls of Jerusalem, and he wished to see it
at once. He could hardly bear to think of the long march that must lie
between him and victory, so it is no wonder that he would not wait for
the armies of the nobles, but set off with a great unruly band of men
who had not learned to fight nor even to obey!
Few of them ever reached the Holy Land. When Peter brought the handful
that still followed him to Byzantium, where the Greek Emperor reigned,
they behaved so badly that the Emperor was sorry that he had asked for
help from Rome. He hated the thought of the armies of the Holy War,
before any of the real warriors had come to his land.
[Illustration: Peter set off with an unruly band of men]