deign to appear. On the contrary he prepared to raise up for himself
allies and to besiege the castles of those who would not join him. His
own lands were thereupon laid waste by his private enemies, and that
with the Emperor's consent. But Halberstadt, which took part in one of
these plundering expeditions, suffered a terrible vengeance at the
hand of the enraged Guelf. In one destructive blaze the city, churches
and all, was reduced to ashes. In the war that he was now waging Henry
did not hesitate to call in even the Wends to his aid, but Westphalia
was soon lost to him, and only in East Saxony was he able to maintain
himself.
At a diet held in Wuerzburg in January, 1180, the Emperor laid the
question before the princes what was to be done to one who had
refused, after having been three times summoned, to come before the
imperial tribunal. The answer was that he was to be deprived of all
honor, to be judged in the public ban, and to lose his duchy and all
his benefices. Thus was final sentence passed on the chief man in
Germany next to the Emperor himself.
An imperial army was now raised and several fortresses were besieged.
No battle took place, but the fact that Frederick had a large force at
his command was sufficient to cause defection in the ranks of Henry's
allies. In 1181 the Emperor's army marched as far as Lubeck, which
city, Henry's proudest foundation, was forced to submit. The whole
region north of the Elbe followed Lubeck's example, and Henry was soon
forced to confess that his cause was hopeless. He laid down his arms,
and was summoned to a diet at Erfurt to learn his fate. Here he fell
on his knees before Frederick, who, with tears in his eyes, raised him
and kissed him in token of peace.
He was made to surrender all his possessions with the exception of
Brunswick and Luneburg. He was to go into exile, and to bind himself
by an oath not to return without the Emperor's permission. He soon
afterward passed over to Normandy, where he stayed for two years with
his father-in-law, Henry II. He then passed over with the latter to
England.
The years immediately following the Congress of Venice were, strange
to say, the most brilliant period of Frederick's reign. It was, after
all, only his ideals that had suffered, and a time of prosperity now
settled down upon the nation.
With Alexander the Emperor remained on friendly terms; but the Pope in
1181 died in exile, having been forced by the faithless Romans, as
Gregory VII had been a century before, to flee the holy city.
The peace with the Lombard towns was signed at Constance within the
six years agreed upon, on June 23, 1183. The communal freedom for
which they had fought so long was now accorded them; the Emperor gave
up all right to the regalia and recognized the Lombard League. His
dream of becoming a second Justinian had not been realized.
The cities received the privilege of using the woods, meadows,
bridges, and mills in their immediate vicinity, and of raising
revenues from them; the jurisdiction in ordinary, civil, and criminal
cases; the right of making fortifications. The Emperor was, to a
certain extent, to be provided for when he chose to come to Italy; but
he promised to make no long stay in any one town. The cities were to
choose their own consuls, who were to be invested with their dignity
by the Emperor or his representatives. The ceremony, however, was to
be performed only once in five years. In important matters where more
than a certain sum was at stake, appeals to the Emperor were to be
allowed.
With the city of Alessandria, so long to him a thorn in the flesh,
Frederick had already come to a separate agreement by consent of the
league. The city was, technically, to be annihilated, and then to be
refounded; it was no longer to bear the name of the Pope, but that of
the Emperor. Alessandria was to become Cæsarea; yet none of the
Inhabitants was to suffer by the change.
The treaty is extant; it provided that the people should leave the
city and remain without the walls until led back by an imperial envoy.
All the male inhabitants of Cæsarea were then to swear fealty to the
Emperor and to his son Henry VI.
The Lombard cities, from this time forward, remained true to
Frederick.
SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM FROM THE CHRISTIANS
A.D. 1187
SIR GEORGE W. COX
Eight days after their conquest of the Holy City, in 1099,
the first crusaders proceeded to establish the Latin kingdom
of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its first king. On
the death of Godfrey, in 1100, his brother Baldwin succeeded
him, and in 1118 he was succeeded by Baldwin II, Count of
Edessa. The fourth king was Fulc, Count of Anjou and
son-in-law of Baldwin II (1131-1144), and after him reigned
his son, Baldwin III (1144-1162). This King came to the
throne at the age of thirteen. Early in his reign the
Christian stronghold of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was captured
by the Turks, and its loss, which seemed to threaten the
destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, was the
occasion of an appeal to Europe which called out the Second
Crusade. The great preacher of this crusade was St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, a man who, in earnestness and eloquence,
closely resembled Pope Urban and Peter the Hermit. Bernard's
influence won to his cause not only the common people, but
also nobles and kings, and the Second Crusade was led by
Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of
Germany.
The time of the Second Crusade was 1147-1149. Louis and
Conrad each commanded a great army, but they made the
mistake of working separately. Conrad reached Constantinople
first, and partly in consequence of the faithless conduct of
Manuel, the Byzantine emperor--who, like his predecessor
Alexius, in the time of the First Crusade, threw obstacles
in the way of the western hosts--the whole German army was
cut to pieces in Asia Minor, only the Emperor himself, with
a few followers, escaping. Louis, soon arriving with his
army, received the same treatment from Manuel, and after
taking a few towns he saw his forces likewise destroyed by
the Turks. Louis himself escaped and returned to France.
So ended in utter failure and shame the Second Crusade. The
event seemed to give the lie to the glowing promises of St.
Bernard, who was charged by anguished women with sending
their fathers, husbands, and sons forth on a fruitless
errand to disgrace and death. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem
profited nothing from this ignominious enterprise. The power
of that kingdom was already waning, and, but for the knights
of the military orders now in Jerusalem, the city must have
yielded to the Turcoman hordes that continually menaced it.
Baldwin III died in 1162, at the age of thirty-three, loved
and lamented by his people and respected by his foes. He
died childless, and his brother Almeric was elected to
succeed him. What experience and what fate awaited the
kingdom after this will be seen in the remarkable narration
which follows.
Almost at the beginning of Almeric's reign the affairs of the Latin
kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are
seen fighting by the side of one Mahometan race, tribe, or faction
against another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points
of theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of
Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the
opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt,
when Shawer, the grand _wazir_ of that Caliph, came into his presence
as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him,
and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler,
for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which
the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and
Pépin.
Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin
(Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin
despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy
Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but
the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by
Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with
success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less
dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with
Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh
replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than
Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his
newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin
King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called
away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not
knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to
leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies
were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the
hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave
Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.
Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that
such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor.
He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in
other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom
to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger
which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the
best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph
of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as
holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of
England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under
the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin King had already
entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was
overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh
across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians. Almeric received two
hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the
promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the
complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in
the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent was never asked
for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The
remaining events of the campaign were a battle, in which a part of the
army of Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the
surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade
of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the
pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces
away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be
left open to him.
The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite Caliph waved together on the
walls of Alexandria; but on either side the peace or truce was a mere
makeshift for the purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin King nor
the Sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of
Egypt; and Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that
since his own return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into
communication with their enemy and his. The King of Jerusalem had
lately married the niece of the Greek Emperor, and the latter promised
to aid the expedition with his fleet. The help of the Knights
Hospitalers was easily obtained, while (some said, on this account)
that of the Knights Templars was refused. At length with a large and
powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, pretending that his destination
was the Syrian town of Hems; but after a while his march was suddenly
turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium; and the storm and capture of
that city were followed by a wanton carnage which served to increase,
if anything could increase, the reputation of the Christians for
merciless cruelty. The prayers of the wazir Shawer for help were now
directed as earnestly to the Turkish Sultan as they had once been to
the Latin King of Jerusalem; but his envoys were also sent to Almeric
offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth part was
produced on the spot.
Almeric took the bribe; and when his army looked for nothing less than
the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle
while the rest of the money was being collected. The wazir took care
that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of
Noureddin had reached the frontier, and Almeric found too late that he
was caught in the trap which his own greed had laid for him. He could
himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as
it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of
the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek Emperor could not be
punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found
in the grand master of the Hospitalers, who was deprived of his
dignity by his knights.
The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the wazir Shawer,
who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had
invoked was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only
two months; and then by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and
lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance,
the Fatimite Caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The Caliph
was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Kurds, and so used the
treasures which his office placed at his command that the new yoke
became stronger than the old one.
To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a
really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm
prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes
of Western Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third
crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided
the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake
which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved
them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from
the north. Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old
nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt
with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pépin dealt with that of
the Merovingians. The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last
illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the
name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a
schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the
vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two
swords.
But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another.
Saladin was the servant of the Sultan of Aleppo, and he had been
recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score
of this lieutenancy. But the new wazir of Egypt had no mind to obey
any longer the summons of his old master, and to his threat of
chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of
war. His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the
assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike
his son's head off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know
that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speaking of
it; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth
matters over. But the time of quietness could not last long. The
designs of Saladin became continually more manifest, and Noureddin was
on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at
Damascus.
The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband's
death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege. A bribe to abandon it
was at first refused. A fortnight later it was accepted; but Almeric
returned to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five years
longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long
enough to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and
meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV, was a leper, and his
disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to delegate
his authority to another. His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan,
the husband of his sister Sibylla, but either the weakness of Guy or
the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and
Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown
to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond
II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay
the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper King died,
followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V, and in the renewed strife
consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish
himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem. He was still quite a
young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name. The murderer of
Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his
dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found
expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, "Had they known me,
the men who made my brother king would have made me a god."
Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy
besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But
Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria
and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace
the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost
superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed
by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of
Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered
under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking
Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On
hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside
all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that
the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly
besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which
would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice
was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on
the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of
his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended
to hide.
Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would
have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy
it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the
Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were
already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin
army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fighting was
undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the
Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set
on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well
knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the
Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce
war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up
the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman
had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.
But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine
favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of
the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point
during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on
either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers
must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those
of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King
and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy
relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the
hands of the infidels.
The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken.
Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved
by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband
of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin
marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace,
which after some hesitation was accepted.
The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at
the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people, but the garrison was
scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their
presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue
to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin
had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would
have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer.
Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all
combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner
or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than
the infliction of useless misery.
Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be
denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous
than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city
with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by
its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city
were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the
inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide
them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to
all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer,
honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might
accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city
as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful
as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph.
Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep
this vow to the letter.
Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The Christians
had done what they could to destroy the military engines of their
enemies; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down and
turned into money; but no solid advantage was gained by all their
efforts. The conviction of the Christian that death brought salvation
to the champions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to
those who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise
were at once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants
and to the fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged
discovered that the walls near the gate of St. Stephen had been
undermined, and at once they abandoned all hope of safety except from
miraculous intervention. Clergy and laity crowded into the churches,
their fears quickened by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city
were treating with the enemy.
The remembrance of Saladin's offer now came back with more persuasive
power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned
that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his
fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of
the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to
have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender
the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as
they could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the
nobles and fighting men should be taken to Tyre, which still held out
under Conrad; that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the
rate of ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for
each child; and that failing this ransom, they should remain slaves.
On the sick and the helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights
of the Hospital were among the most determined of his enemies, he
would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their attendance on
the sufferers who could not be moved away.
In the exasperation of a religious warfare now extended over nearly a
century these terms were very merciful. It may be said that this mercy
was the right of a people who submitted to the invader, and that in
the days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to
the last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins
was a superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while,
if the same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it
would have been sternly and fiercely refused.