THE EIGHTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1245. Council of Lyons.]
The havoc wrought by the Korasmian inroad was alleged by pope Innocent
IV. as a reason for sending forth another crusade. In a council held
at Lyons, the bishop of Berytos dwelt on the miserable state of the
Christians in the Holy Land, and it was resolved that another effort
should be made for its deliverance. Honorius wrote to Henry III. of
England to impress upon him the duty of taking up the cross like his
lion-hearted predecessor; but Henry had in Simon of Montfort, earl of
Leicester, a more pressing antagonist than Egyptian sultans or Korasmian
savages. The pope found fuel more easily kindled in the heart of Louis
IX., king of France.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1226. Louis IX., king of France.]
This saint, the very type of royal monks and devotees, was ten years old
when on the death of his father Louis VIII. he succeeded to the throne.
By his mother, Blanche of Castile, the regent of the kingdom, the child
was brought up with a strictness to which he answered with unbounded
docility. In his early youth the beauty of some fair maidens drew from
him a glance expressive of some admiration: his mother told him that she
would rather see him dead than that he should entertain even a sinful
thought. His own will would have led him to assume the obligations of
the cloister; but the interests of the state demanded his marriage,
and his wife, Margaret of Provence, passed with her husband under the
rigid discipline of the queen-mother. His severity to himself grew with
his years. At night he would rise from his bed and pace his chamber in
the coldest season. A shift of the coarsest haircloth worn next to his
skin furnished a desirable torture. Fruit he tasted only once in the
year. On Fridays he never changed his dress, and never laughed. The iron
chain scourges which he carried at his waist in an ivory case drew blood
from his shoulders once every week of the year and thrice in every week
during Lent. He would walk for miles to distant churches wearing shoes
without soles. He would scarcely content himself with two, three, and
even four masses a day; and if he made a journey, his chaplain recited
the offices on the road. Even monks tried to check an asceticism almost
exceeding that which was demanded by the rules of Benedict, Dominic, or
Francis; the king asked whether he would have incurred the same rebuke
had he spent twice as much time in hawking and dicing. No reproach, no
sarcasm, no insult, could disturb the serenity of his humble soul. ‘You
are not a king of France,’ exclaimed a woman who was pleading her cause
before him; ‘you are a king only of priests and monks. It is a pity that
you are king of France. You ought to be turned out.’ ‘You speak truly,’
answered Louis. ‘It has pleased God to make me king: it had been well
had He chosen some one better able to govern this kingdom rightly.’ The
woman was sent away with a gift of money: and money was a thing on which
the king set little store, and which he seldom needed except for the
purchase of relics. Here his avarice was unbounded; and we have seen him
paying the enormous sum of 10,000 silver marks for the ‘genuine crown
of thorns’ preserved in the church of Sancta Sophia (p. 173). To such a
man absolute obedience and implicit trust not only in God but in every
article or proposition set forth as forming part of the Christian faith
were the first, the most indispensable of all virtues. Not one point in
all the theology of the Church was to be called into question; there was
not one which was not to be received as absolutely true. ‘Do you know the
name of your father?’ he asked his seneschal, the lord of Joinville, who
accompanied him to Palestine, and whose inimitable memoirs bring the man
and his age before us in living reality. ‘Yes,’ answered the seneschal;
‘his name was Simon.’ ‘How do you know that?’ again asked Louis. ‘Because
my mother has told me so many times.’ ‘Then,’ answered the king, ‘you
ought perfectly to believe the articles of the faith which the apostles
of our Lord have testified to you, as you have heard the Credo chanted
every Sunday.’ For questioning and argument his system had no place.
Under no circumstances could there ever be need of any. He related to
Joinville with hearty approval the conduct of a knight, who, during a
disputation between some Jews and the monks of the abbey of Clugny, asked
leave of the abbot to say a few words. With some difficulty his request
was granted. Raising himself on his crutches, the old warrior beckoned
the rabbi to draw near, and then put to him one question. ‘Do you believe
in the Virgin Mary, who bore our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that she was
a virgin when she was the mother of God?’ The Jew answered promptly that
he believed not one word of it. ‘Fool that thou art,’ replied the knight,
‘for daring to enter a Christian monastery when thou disbelievest these
things. For this madness thou shalt now pay.’ Lifting up his crutch,
he struck the man a blow on the ear which smote him to the ground. His
comrades fled away from the scene of controversy, while the abbot came
forward to reprove the knight for his folly. ‘Thou art the greater fool,’
was the retort, ‘in permitting an assembly from which good Christians
might by listening to their arguments have gone away unbelievers.’
The king, Joinville tells us, clinched the moral of the story in the
following words: ‘No one, however learned or perfect a theologian he
may be, ought to dispute with Jews. The layman, whenever he hears the
Christian faith impugned, should defend it with a sharp-edged sword which
he should drive up to the hilt into the bodies of the unbelievers.’
[Sidenote: Louis IX., the pope and the emperor.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1239.]
We cannot really know the history of an age, if we do not really know
some at least of the men who lived in it: and this fact gives in the
case of Louis IX. an importance to details which we might be tempted
to pass with a sigh, perhaps, or a smile. ‘Do you wash the feet of the
poor on Holy Thursday?’ he asked the lord of Joinville. ‘Oh, fie!’ was
the answer; ‘no, never will I wash the feet of such fellows.’ ‘It is
ill said, indeed,’ answered the king, ‘for you should never hold in
disdain what God did for our instruction; for He who is Lord and Master
of the universe did on that day, Holy Thursday, wash the feet of all His
apostles, telling them that He who was their Master had thus done, that
they in like manner might do the same to each other. I therefore beg of
you, out of love to Him first, and then from regard to me, that you will
accustom yourself to do so.’ Another sermon, the gentleness of which
makes us forget its tedious prosing, rebuked Joinville’s impetuosity
in saying that he would rather have committed thirty deadly sins than
be a leper. Louis was, in short, a man who would have loved all men,
had he not been taught to believe that unbelief, heresy, or even doubt
(honest doubt was for him, of course, a thing inconceivable), put the
unbeliever or doubter beyond the pale of Christian charity. For Jews,
then, or infidels he avowed the most burning hatred, although probably
this hatred would have vanished like morning mist before the sight of Jew
or infidel in dire distress or agony. But in spite of his bigotry and
narrowness, his stern asceticism, his incessant sermonizing, there was in
him a depth of sweetness and gentleness, a genuine goodness of heart and
life, which won for him the love of thousands who made little attempt to
follow his example. In an age infamous for its foulness of speech and the
profanity of its oaths the purity of his language was never tarnished.
In his quaint phrases Joinville says of him, ‘I never heard him, at any
time, utter an indecent word nor make use of the devil’s name, which
is now very commonly uttered by every one—a practice which, I firmly
believe, far from being agreeable to God, is highly displeasing to Him.’
Nay, more, these qualities were in him combined with a sound sense and
a firmness of will which made him in all cases of right and duty hard as
adamant, and effectually crushed the contempt which some might have been
tempted to feel for his superstitions. He could bear rebuke patiently:
but they who thought that they might take advantage of his devotion to
encroach on his rights as king or even on the rights of his neighbours
found themselves speedily undeceived. When Gregory IX., after his second
and final rupture with Frederick II., deposed him from his imperial
throne and offered the dignity to Louis’s brother Robert, the meek and
gentle king replied to the pope in the following words:—Whence is this
pride and daring of the pope, which thus disinherits a king who has no
superior, nor even an equal, among Christians,—a king not convicted of
the crimes laid to his charge? Even if these crimes were proved, no power
could depose him but that of a general council. On his transgressions
the judgment of his enemies is of no weight, and his deadliest enemy
is the pope. To us he has not only thus far appeared guiltless, he has
been a good neighbour: we see no cause for suspicion either of his
worldly loyalty or of his Catholic faith. This we know, that he has
fought valiantly for our Lord Jesus Christ both by sea and land. So much
religion we have not found in the pope, who endeavoured to confound and
wickedly supplant him in his absence, while he was engaged in the cause
of God.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1245. Assumption of the cross by Louis IX.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1244. Dec. 10.]
In this cause, as interpreted by the religion of the time, this guiltless
but stout-hearted champion of justice and right was now to peril limb and
life without a shade of fear and with as complete a lack of every quality
needed in a general and leader of armies. A more thorough contrast to
Frederick whom he thus valiantly defended it would be impossible to
imagine. To him the learning, the grace, the refinement of heathen
philosophers and poets, the music and the songs of all poets of all ages,
were beyond expression horrible. Of an intercommunion of nations founded
on commerce, learning, and art, he could have not the faintest notion.
To the best of his power he would administer justice in his own land
so long as he remained in it; when his duty as a champion of the cross
called him elsewhere, he would leave it with fifty thousand men in his
train, having formed no military plans, but under a profound conviction
that God whom he sought to serve would fight his battles, and that, if
it should not be so, the result would be due only to his own sins and
sinfulness. To the remonstrances of his mother, who sought to dissuade
him from the enterprise, his ear was utterly deaf. He was seized with
illness: life seemed to be gone; an attendant, thinking that it had gone,
drew a covering over his face. It was withdrawn by another, and the king
was heard to say, ‘God has raised me from the dead: give me the cross.’
The die was cast. Nine months later, he assumed the badge publicly in the
parliament of Paris; and at Christmas in the same year he distributed to
his courtiers his usual gift of a new robe to each. By his orders a red
cross had been embroidered on these garments between the shoulders, and
the nobles owned themselves fairly entrapped. They must accompany the
king.
[Sidenote: Departure of Louis from France.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1249.]
Two years more were spent in preparations. On the 12th of June 1248 Louis
received from the papal legate at the abbey of St. Denis his purse and
pilgrim’s staff with the Oriflamme or sacred banner of the saint. At the
end of August he sailed from France. Eight months were spent in Cyprus,
where his people were fed in great part by the emperor Frederick. The
kindness called forth a warm letter to the pope, pleading for the
absolution of a man who had thus befriended the soldiers of the cross.
His letter was treated with contempt. In the spring of the next year he
sailed for Egypt; and as soon as his fleet was off Damietta, his envoys
hastened to the sultan with alarming pictures of their master’s power,
and with a summons for immediate submission. The sultan replied that
his cause was just; that those who made war without just cause should
perish; and that mighty armaments had often been destroyed by a handful
of soldiers.
[Sidenote: Capture of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: June.]
The campaign began with a signal success. The garrison of Damietta,
struck with something like panic fear, fled at the sight of the fifty
thousand crusaders landing in the pomp of military parade. The place was
taken; but the people had hurried away to Cairo, having first set fire
to that quarter of the city in which they had stored their merchandise
and their most valuable property. This victory had its usual result
on the crusaders. The tenor of Louis’s saintly life was unbroken; but
within a stone’s throw of his tent his people were indulging in unbounded
debauchery.
[Sidenote: March of the army towards Cairo.]
[Sidenote: Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1250. The king taken prisoner.]
Later in the season an addition to their force was made by 200 English
knights under William Longsword (p. 194) now bishop of Salisbury; and in
November the army began its march towards Cairo. Their progress, never
easy, owing to the assaults of the enemy, was effectually checked at
the canal of Ashmoun. The causeways which they attempted to construct
were destroyed, and their machines burnt with Greek fire. At length
a Bedoween, for a large bribe, showed them a ford. The passage was
effected, and the enemy fled before them on the other side. With good
order and discipline the crusaders might now have achieved some solid
success. But the count of Artois, brother of the king, could not wait
to be joined by the main army. He must press on at once against the
fugitives. In vain the grand-master of the Templars reminded him of the
folly of trusting to a feeling of passing fear. The count deliberately
imputed his advice to systematic treachery. ‘Do you suppose,’ replied
the Templar with calm dignity, ‘that we have left our homes and our
substance, and taken the religious habit in a strange land, only to
betray the cause of God and to forfeit our salvation?’ The bishop of
Salisbury offered his mediation: it was rejected with a biting insult.
In thorough disorder the crusaders rushed into Mansourah; and seeing
their condition at a glance the Mamelukes rushed upon their prey. A
sufficient force was sent to cut off all communication between the men
with the count of Artois and the main army under the king. Boiling water,
stones, blazing wood, were hurled upon them from the houses. The count
of Artois was killed before he could see the full effects of his folly;
and his death was soon followed by that of William Longsword. The utter
destruction of his force was prevented only by succour from the king who,
feeble though he may have been as a general, showed in the hour of danger
a dauntless and unselfish bravery. Both sides had suffered fearfully;
but the king was cut off from Damietta, and sickness of a singularly
malignant kind began to waste his camp. Louis offered the enemy a treaty
based on the exchange of Damietta for the lordship of Jerusalem. The
negotiation failed, and retreat became inevitable; but at the river and
before the canal they had to fight at desperate disadvantage. The courage
of the king was unbroken; but his strength was gone. He sank down in a
state of exhaustion after exertions worthy of the English Richard, and
awoke to find himself a prisoner. Some there were, says Joinville, to
whom the idea of retreat was intolerable; and the thought of the age is
vividly marked in the story which tells us how James du Chastel, bishop
of Soissons, preferred to live with God to returning to the land of his
birth, how he made a charge on the Turks, as if he alone meant to fight
their whole army, and how they soon sent him to God and placed him in the
company of martyrs by forthwith cutting him down.
[Sidenote: Firmness of the king.]
[Sidenote: Terms of ransom.]
The crusade seemed to be closing in hopeless disaster. The queen at
Damietta was about to become a mother, when she heard the tidings of
her husband’s captivity. A premature birth followed. She called her
babe Tristan, the child of sorrow. Louis himself had to undergo greater
misery. Of 10,000 Christian prisoners in Mansourah those only who
embraced the faith of Islam were allowed to live. Some recanted, and
Louis had the bitterness of witnessing their apostasy: the vast majority
stood firm, and he had the agony of seeing them die. But at no time was
he known to exhibit a more unclouded trust in God, a more cool bravery
towards his enemy. Peace was offered to him if he would surrender all
the Christian fortresses in Syria. He answered that they were not his
to surrender, and that he could not dispose of that which belonged to
Frederick II. as king of Jerusalem. He was threatened with torture to
his limbs, with the degradation of being carried from city to city and
exposed for the gratification of sight-seers. He replied quietly, ‘I am
your prisoner. You may do with me as you will.’ At last it was arranged
that Damietta should be given up, that the king should pay one million
byzants for his own ransom, and half a million French livres for his
barons. He demurred to the amount for himself, but agreed at once to the
other. ‘The king of France,’ he said, ‘must not haggle about the freedom
of his subjects.’ Not to be outdone by his unselfishness, the sultan
Turan Shah struck off one fifth from his ransom.
[Sidenote: Murder of Turan Shah.]
[Sidenote: Release of Louis IX.]
It was almost the last act of the sultan’s life. His murder heightened
the dangers of the Christian captives; the firmness of Louis in refusing
to take an oath couched in what he pronounced to be blasphemous language
increased them still more. The difficulty was at length got over; and
after enduring sufferings for which the Saracens said (if we may believe
Joinville) that if they had had to undergo them they would have renounced
Mahomed, the king was free.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth.]
Still Louis, with the bare relics of his army, could not bring himself
to return home. He had written again and again to urge on Henry of
England the duty of coming himself with instant and effectual succour;
he could not think that Henry would disregard his entreaties, especially
when these were backed by offers of the surrender of Normandy. He still
fancied that the Vicar of Christ himself, having made up his long quarrel
with Frederick, would hasten to join his faithful children and lead them
in a supreme effort which could not fail of success. He was abandoned
by his brothers the counts of Anjou and Poitou; but with his faithful
seneschal he made a pilgrimage in sackcloth to Nazareth. The sight of
the Holy Sepulchre, the dearest longing of his heart, he firmly denied
himself. The permission to visit it was freely offered by the sultan
of Damascus: but Louis would not leave behind for future sovereigns a
precedent by which they might reap the fruits of an enterprise in which
they had failed. He returned to Europe like Richard of England, humbled
but not dishonoured;—rather, to speak more strictly, having won that
serene renown which was soon to place his name in the long catalogue of
the saints.