THE SECOND CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Bernard the apostle of the second crusade.]
What Peter the Hermit had been for the first crusade, that St. Bernard
was for the second; and on Peter, Bernard looked down with undisguised
contempt. The failure of that first great enterprise he ascribes to the
wretched councils of the fanatical guide whose name he supposes that his
hearers or correspondents have sometimes heard. To the holy war which
he felt himself called upon to kindle, he looked forward without the
least misgiving, and the proud confidence which he feels and everywhere
expresses may be taken as a special characteristic of Western monachism
in its palmiest days. While the monks of the East were losing themselves
more and more in the mists of dreamy or useless speculation, the cell of
the Western monk became an imperial chamber from which went forth the
letters which were to cheer or counsel the Vicar of Christ, to rebuke
kings and statesmen, to warn and guide the faithful, to recall the
wanderer to the fold, and to confound the unbeliever. For these high
offices he had a commission higher than that of any earthly authority.
They fell within the range of his duty as the member of a society, the
soldier of an army, which was to fight the battles of the King of kings.
He was the knight sheathed in the impenetrable armour of the Spirit, and
he bore in his hand the invincible sword of faith. He had learnt the
language, and transferred to his monastic life the images and terms, of
feudalism. For him action was everything; solitude with its essential
idea of rest was in comparison of this as nothing. He fled from his home
to the cloister, because he could there fight better against material and
spiritual corruption. He chose the most severe schools which he could
find for the exercise of his self-discipline. He withdrew from these into
wilder deserts, if they failed to meet his ideal of self-mortification.
He established what he called a reform, if existing rules appeared to him
too indulgent to human weakness. Such was the life of St. Bernard. He was
from first to last a crusader, and the most pertinacious and successful
of his crusades was against the peace and quiet of his own family. His
mother had made a secret vow to devote all her children to God; and
Bernard held it among the first of his duties to see that her vow should
be fulfilled. Power, wealth, and dignity in the world were within his
grasp: he threw them all aside. The holy house of Molesme had sent forth
some of its most austere members under an Englishman named Stephen
Harding, and these found a ruder and more savage home on the borders of
Champagne and Burgundy, at Citeaux, the cradle of the great Cistercian
order. Thither came Bernard in his early manhood, and there he remained
until he in his turn went forth to found a new house in the gloomy and
ill-famed valley to which he gave a name associated for ever with his
memory. Here at Clairvaux his father took the habit of a monk, and died
in his arms. His brothers and his sisters had made their profession
before him,—not all without a struggle; but who should resist the Divine
Will? The wife of one of his brothers refused to make the sacrifice of
her husband’s love: but a sudden illness convinced her of the perils of
disobedience, and like her husband she found her home in a convent.
[Sidenote: Sources of Bernard’s influence.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1130.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1140.]
This was the man whom the tidings of the fall of Edessa filled with
profound emotion. He could no more doubt the duty of ridding the Holy
Land of unbelievers than he could call into question his own mission
against all ungodliness and sin. But if it had been right to rush to
the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre when it was still in the hands of the
infidel, it was still more right, it was indispensably necessary, to
keep that sacred place and the land in which it lay from falling again
under the old despotism. For Bernard, when his mind was once fixed on any
enterprise, there could be no rest, as there could also be no measure
in the vehemence of his eloquence. The energy with which he espoused
the cause of Innocent II. against a rival pope had invested him with an
influence second to that of no other man of his age; and he had wielded
this power with tremendous effect against Abelard, the keenest and most
daring thinker of Latin Christendom.
[Sidenote: Death of Louis VI. of France.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1137.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1142.]
Three years before the council of Sens, which under the direction of
Bernard condemned the propositions or heresies of Abelard, died the
French king Louis VI., surnamed the Fat, the monarch (if so he might
be called) of a scanty kingdom the enlargement of which would best be
promoted by advantageous marriages. Of such an opportunity Louis the Fat
eagerly availed himself when William, lord of Poitou and Guienne, the
wide region lying between the Loire and the Adour, offered his daughter
and heiress Eleanor as the wife of the heir to the French crown. By right
of this marriage Louis VII. found himself on the death of his father
and of his father-in-law possessed of a far larger kingdom and greater
resources than he had expected to inherit; and he might have made it
the business of his life to guard and extend his dominions at home, had
he not felt himself suddenly called to take up his cross and follow the
example of his great-uncle, Hugh of Vermandois. In a war with Theobald,
count of Champagne, he had stormed and set fire to the castle of Vitry.
To escape from his soldiers the people had taken refuge in a neighbouring
church. To this building the flames spread, and all within it, men,
women, and children, 1,300, it is said, in number, were burnt. The sight
of the scorched and charred bodies filled the king with horror and
grief: sickness followed, and he determined to work out his repentance
by leading his armies to the Holy Land. His remorse was quickened by the
eloquence of Bernard, and Louis put on the blood-red cross in the council
of Vezelay.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1146. Easter. Council of Vezelay.]
[Sidenote: Speech of Bernard.]
[Sidenote: The Knights Templars.]
From this council the pope, Eugenius III., was absent. His place was more
than supplied by his friend and adviser, whose voice stirred the depths
of every heart. The letter of Eugenius held out to the crusaders all the
promises which had been assured to them by Urban at Clermont, and warned
them against the vices which had brought disaster and disgrace on the
arms of Christendom. But for the moment every other feeling than that
of fierce yearning for conflict was swept away by the furious torrent
of Bernard’s oratory. He preached to the Knights Templars, the members
of that splendid order which was already astonishing the world with
its valour and its haughtiness. Associated at first for the protection
of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, they had established themselves
in the Holy City itself, and received from Baldwin II. some ground
to the east of the Temple; and the mosque of Omar, purified from its
defilements, became the church of the order. The fiery warriors who
professed themselves the humble guardians of the Holy Sepulchre needed
no stimulus of rhetoric to spur them on: and the rhetoric of Bernard was
fierce enough to stir even the most peaceable. In this new philosophy
butchery was the surest means of grace, and carnage imparted indelible
sanctity. ‘The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is sure
of his reward, more sure if he is slain. The Christian glories in the
death of the Pagan, because by it Christ is glorified; by his own death
both he himself and Christ are still more glorified.’ The floodgates of
enthusiasm were once again opened wide; and the scenes of the council of
Clermont were reproduced with little change. Accompanied by the French
king who wore the cross conspicuously on his dress, Bernard mounted a
wooden platform and addressed the impassioned multitude. His speech was
scarcely ended when all with one voice cried aloud for the cross. The
saint gave or scattered the badges which had been provided. When these
were exhausted, he tore up his own dress to furnish more.
[Sidenote: Reluctance of Conrad emperor of Germany to join the crusade.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1147. Whitsuntide. Meeting of Louis VII. and the pope at
St. Denys.]
But if Louis was eager to depart, Conrad of Germany hung back. The
Emperor felt more anxious about the reduction of refractory princes than
for the slaughter of unknown infidels. Christmas came; and at Spires
first, afterwards at Ratisbon, Bernard strove to impress on him the
paramount duty of the crusade. Conrad promised to give his answer on the
following day; and on that day Bernard preached a sermon, painting in
awful colours the terrors of the Great Assize when all the kindreds of
the nations should be gathered before the judgment-seat of the Son of
Man. He implored the emperor to think of the account which he would then
have to give, and of the infinite shame and endless agony which would be
his portion, if he should then stand convicted of unjust stewardship.
Conrad was melted to tears, and promised to take the cross. Bernard was
prepared for him and for all, and fastened the badge on their shoulders
at once. Taking from the altar the consecrated banner, he delivered it
to the emperor, and the hand of God was seen in the crowd of thieves and
ruffians who thronged to enlist themselves as champions of the cross.
Four months later Louis welcomed the pope at St. Denys, and received
from Eugenius at the altar the wallet and staff of the pilgrim, with the
banner which was to lead him to victory. The wishes of the devout turned
naturally to Bernard rather than to others of whose earnestness they
could not have equal assurance; but to their prayers that he would head
the enterprise he replied that he was no general and that they must find
some one to lead them who was skilled in the handling of earthly armies.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk Rodolph.]
[Sidenote: Suppressed by Bernard.]
When the followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless began
their march along the Rhinelands, their crusading zeal vented itself
first in horrible cruelties practised on the Jews (p. 40). That vile
example was followed by the bands now gathered round the standard of the
emperor. The appetite for blood was whetted by the wolfish howlings of
the monk Rodolph; and the spell of bigotry enlisted on his side a man
otherwise well deserving the reverence of all ages, Peter the Venerable,
abbot of Clugny. But the fanaticism of Bernard could not fasten itself
on men against whom not even a semblance of wrong could be charged; and
he refused to punish them now for the crimes of their forefathers in the
days of Pontius Pilate. ‘God has punished the Jews,’ he said, ‘by their
dispersion; it is not for man to punish them by murder.’ Rodolph was sent
back to his monastery: but it was no easy task to repress the fury of a
multitude already drunk with the blood of hundreds of victims in all the
great Rhine cities.
[Sidenote: March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis.]
[Sidenote: Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at
Constantinople.]
Conrad and Louis had met at Mainz. With Louis came his wife Eleanor;
and here he was joined by the counts of Toulouse, Nevers, Flanders and
other chiefs of the crusade, among these being, it is said, Robert de
Mowbray and the earl of Warren and Surrey from England. The story of the
enterprise is soon told. The numbers of the host were vast, but numbers,
never easily ascertained, are least of all to be depended upon in such
expeditions as these. The order of disciplined armies may have lessened
the perils and lightened the hardships of the passage across Europe; and
the troop of women who with spear and shield, headed by the Golden-footed
Dame, marched on, as they thought, to conquest, may have congratulated
themselves on the pleasantness of their task. The real danger began when
they had passed from Europe into Asia. The suspicions of Conrad had been
soon and vehemently excited against the Greek emperor Manuel, grandson
of Alexios. These suspicions were so much strengthened before he reached
Constantinople that he refused all interviews with him and crossed the
Bosporus without coming into his presence.
[Sidenote: Supposed treachery of Manuel.]
The French king was more complaisant; but if he was satisfied with the
welcome given to him by Manuel in person, he was alarmed and indignant at
the news that the Byzantine sovereign was in secret correspondence with
the Turkish sultan of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion). His indignation was fully
shared by his army; and while some held that the paramount duty which
called them to Palestine should overbear the avenging of all private
wrongs, others insisted that a power which had allowed the Holy Sepulchre
and the Holy Land itself to slip from its grasp, and had only placed
hindrances in the way of the pilgrims and champions of the cross, should
be swept utterly away.
[Sidenote: Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis.]
For the present the storm was lulled; and the crusaders went on their
way, to find that the guides with which Manuel had furnished them led
them into arid deserts or betrayed them directly to the enemy. Conrad had
already lost thousands or tens of thousands in Lykaonia, when the French
king, who had been cheated with false tidings of his triumphant progress,
received on the shores of the Askanian lake (p. 57) the news of his great
disaster. Conrad himself soon followed the miserable fugitives who had
told his dismal story, and the two sovereigns resolved to strike off
from the beaten path and make their way through the lands bordering the
eastern shores of the Egean Sea. They had advanced as far as the Lydian
Philadelphia, when the threatening appearance of things impelled many
to return to Constantinople, and Conrad himself embarked near Ephesus.
Louis with his people pressed on to the banks of the Meander, where the
Turks who hastened to attack them were signally defeated. This defeat was
more than avenged in the mountain passes beyond Laodicea whence after
fearful slaughter the French reached the Pamphylian Attaleia. From this
seaport it was proposed that all, whether soldiers or pilgrims, should
go by sea to Antioch. It was decided that the latter only should take
ship, as Louis urged that the warriors ought to follow in the steps of
the conquerors of Jerusalem. But the ships promised by the governor of
Attaleia proved to be wholly insufficient for this purpose. The king
embarked with his army, and the pilgrims with the sick were left in
charge of the count of Flanders. The guard was inadequate; the sick
were murdered by the people of Attaleia; the Turks bore down hardly on
the pilgrims. The count of Flanders escaped by sea, and seven thousand
miserable wanderers struggled onwards on the road by which they hoped
to reach Jerusalem. Their journey was soon ended by the martyrdom which
according to the promise of Urban and Eugenius was to ensure their
salvation.
[Sidenote: Visit of the French king to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1148. March.]
[Sidenote: Resolution to attack Damascus.]
The arrival of the French king with his forces at Antioch caused no
slight alarm to the Turks of Cæsarea and Aleppo. But although he was
earnestly pressed to take advantage of their dismay by striking a sudden
blow, nothing could dissuade him to put off his journey to Jerusalem;
and the entreaties of Eleanor, who was well content to stay where she
was, excited in him mingled feelings of resentment and suspicion. After
disasters so terrible his entrance into Jerusalem bore too much likeness
to a triumph; and after a council with Conrad, who had reached Ptolemais,
the project of rescuing Edessa, which had been the very purpose of the
crusade, was for the time abandoned for the siege, and, as it was hoped,
the conquest, of the more important and nearer city of Damascus.
[Sidenote: Siege of Damascus.]
[Sidenote: Treachery of the barons of Palestine.]
[Sidenote: Retreat of the army to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Failure of the crusade.]
With the aid of the Knights of the Temple and of St. John, the siege of
this city was prosecuted with a skill and vigour which seemed to leave no
doubt of the result. The Damascenes were in despair, and not a few turned
their thoughts to flight as the only means of safety: but with incredible
infatuation the king of the French and the German emperor took counsel
not for the completion of the enterprise but for the disposal of the city
when it should have been conquered. The decision that it should be given
to Thierry, count of Flanders, roused the indignation of the barons of
Palestine, who now scrupled not to add treachery to the long catalogue of
their crimes. Bribed by the Turks, they assured the sovereigns that they
would have better success by attacking the city from another quarter than
from that on which their toil had been all but rewarded by its capture.
Abandoning their former position in the rich gardens before the town,
they soon found themselves on barren soil, with scanty supplies or none,
and with a hopeless task before them. It was easier to suspect than to
punish the treachery of their advisers; and possibly on account of this
treachery the proposal that they should attack Ascalon was rejected. The
army retreated to Jerusalem. Conrad went back with the remnant of his
troops to Europe. A year later his example was followed by the French
king and his wife, of whose conduct Louis had formed suspicions fully
justified by certain judgments pronounced by her in Provençal Courts of
Love. Only a few months more had passed before he obtained a divorce on
the plea of consanguinity, and Eleanor transferred her vast inheritance
to her second husband the Norman duke Henry, afterwards Henry II. of
England.
[Sidenote: Accusations against St. Bernard.]
[Sidenote: His answer.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1153. Death of Bernard.]
So ended in utter shame and ignominy the second crusade. The event seemed
to give the lie to the glowing promises and prophecies of St. Bernard.
So vast had been the drain of population to feed this holy war that, in
the phrase of an eye-witness, the cities and castles were empty, and
scarcely one man was left to seven women; and now it was known that the
fathers, the husbands, the sons, or the brothers of these miserable women
would see their earthly homes no more. The cry of anguish charged Bernard
with the crime of sending them forth on an errand in which they had done
absolutely nothing and had reaped only wretchedness and disgrace. For
a time Bernard himself was struck dumb: but he soon remembered that he
had spoken with the authority of God and of his vicegerent, and that the
guilt or failure must lie at the door of the pilgrims. Like those who
had gone before them, these men had given loose to their passions and
filled their camps with debauchery and confusion; and such abominations
the Divine Righteousness could never tolerate. Nay, Bernard could even
see now the folly, if not the iniquity, of allowing thieves and murderers
to take part in an enterprise in which only the devout and faithful
were worthy to share. But such considerations were too cold to satisfy
permanently the temper of the age. The thoughts of the many, if not of
the few, went back into the old channel, when the monk John declared that
the slaughtered pilgrims had died with the exulting joy of martyrs at
the thought of their deliverance from a wicked world; and that from the
lips of St. Peter and St. John themselves he had the assurance that the
ranks of fallen angels had been filled up with the spirits of those who
had died as champions and pilgrims of the cross whether in the Holy Land
or on the journey across the intervening countries. For Bernard also the
saints and angels, he said, were impatiently waiting. Five years later it
was in his power to add that their desires and his had been fulfilled.