On the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women
carrying or leading their children, the men bearing such of their
household goods as they were able to move. On the approach of the
Queen and her ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants
Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to
them words of encouragement and consolation. Cheered by his generous
language, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their
goods they cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to
them their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. Saladin
granted their request, added his alms for those who had been left
orphans or destitute by the war, and remitted a portion of the ransom
appointed for the poor. In this way the number of those who remained
unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand; and Saracenic
slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which
had but as yesterday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent
wars.
The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs
of triumph. Amid the waving of banners and the clash of martial music
he advanced to the Mosque of Omar, on the summit of which the
Christian cross still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst
from the Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled down to
the earth and dragged through the mire. For two days it underwent this
indignity, while the mosque was purified from its defilements by
streams of rosewater, and dedicated afresh to the worship of the one
God adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of
the Christian sanctuaries, which had been carefully stowed away in
four chests, had fallen into the hands of the conquerors, and it was
the wish of Saladin to send them to the Caliph of the Prophet as the
proudest trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously
consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping of the
patriarch, and the price put upon them, fifty-two thousand golden
bezants, was paid by Richard of England.
Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even
when Saladin himself assailed its walls. The siege was raised; and the
next personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who,
having regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the
city. The grand master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply
was short and decisive. The people would own no other master than the
gallant knight who had so nobly defended them. But the escape of Tyre
had no effect on the general issue of the war. Town after town
submitted to Saladin; and the long series of his triumphs closed when
he entered the gates of Antioch.
Eighty-eight years had passed away since the crusaders of Godfrey and
Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during
all those years the Latin kingdom had seldom rested from wars and
forays, from feuds and dissensions of every kind. From the first it
displayed no characteristics which could give it any stability; from
the first it exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall.
It sanctified treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith
was to be kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of wind by the
constant breach of solemn compact made them reap the whirlwind. A
right of pasturage round Paneas had been granted to the Mahometans by
Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their sheep the
Christian troops burst in, murdered the shepherds, and drove away
their flocks--not with the sanction, we may hope, of the most
high-minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem.
It recognized no title to property except in those who professed the
faith of Christ, and the power to commit injustice with practical
impunity tended still further to demoralize the people.
It gave full play to the passions of men in random wars and petty
forays, while it did nothing to keep up or to promote either military
science or the discipline without which that science becomes useless.
It was marked by an almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country
so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate
the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should
be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously
kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his
friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them
fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this
picture it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the case of Egypt
alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course which prudence
called upon them to take; and even here this course was followed with
miserable indecision, and at last disgracefully abandoned through mere
lust of gold.
It had to deal with an immorality not of its own creating, but which
in mere regard to its own safety it should have striven to keep well
in check. No such efforts were made, and the words of William of
Tyre--even if taken with a qualification--when he speaks of the Latin
women, point to a state of things which must involve grave and
imminent peril.
It was the misfortune of this kingdom that it was called into being by
troops of adventurers banded together--it cannot be said
confederated--for a religious rather than a political purpose; in
other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It started
therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who engaged
in the enterprise might abandon it when they thought that they had
fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance of
their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political
success of the undertaking.
The private and personal character of these enterprises led to the
perpetuation and multiplication of private and personal interests, and
thus to the endless divisions and feuds between the barons of the
kingdom, which were a constant scandal and menace and which led
frequently to deliberate treachery. It encouraged, or permitted, or
was compelled to tolerate the growth of societies which arrogated to
themselves an independent jurisdiction, and thus rendered impossible a
central authority of sufficient coercive power. The origin of the
military orders may have been in the highest degree edifying. The
Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians of the holy
places: the Knights Hospitalers may have been the poor brothers of St.
John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims
of the cross. But in the land where they might at any time encounter a
merciless or at the least a detested enemy, they were justified in
bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the need of
discipline; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off
from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become
formidable.
The natural strength of these orders was increased by immunities and
privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in
greater part by the popes. The Hospitalers, as bestowing their goods
to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed from the
obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if
these were laid upon the whole country, while it was expressly
asserted that no patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence
of excommunication against them. In other words, a society was called
into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an
irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor
can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights,
not content with the immunities secured to themselves, gave shelter to
persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sentence of
excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection.
But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus their feuds with the
clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the
Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought
to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled
about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious
action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the
very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King
and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the
military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a
state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house
divided against itself shall not stand.
THE THIRD CRUSADE
A.D. 1189-1194
HENRY VON SYBEL
Although after the failure of the Second Crusade the
interest felt by the western nations in the kingdom of
Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had
greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy
City--which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria,
in 1187--fell like a thunderbolt on men's minds. Once more
the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed
high. "What a disgrace, what an affliction," cried Pope
Urban III, "that the jewel which the second Urban won for
Christendom should be lost by the third!" He vehemently
exhorted the Church and all her faithful to join the war,
worked day and night, prayed, sighed, and so wore himself
out with grief and anger that he sickened and died in a few
weeks. His successor, Gregory VIII, and afterward Pope
Clement III, were inspired by the same feeling and exerted
themselves for the great cause with untiring energy.
In 1185 a number of English barons had put on the cross on
hearing of Saladin's menacing progress; toward the end of
1187 the heir to the throne, Richard, followed their
example; some months later King Henry II had a meeting with
his former enemy, Philip Augustus of France, at Gisors,
where they vowed to abandon their earthly quarrels and
become warriors of the everlasting God. Nearly the whole
nobility and a number of the lower class of people were
carried away by their example. King William of Sicily fitted
out his fleet, and was only prevented by death from joining
it himself. From Denmark, Scandinavian pilgrims thronged to
Syria both by land and water. In Germany, now as formerly,
the zeal was not so great, until in March, 1188, the emperor
Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of near seventy, put on the
cross, and by his ever firm and powerful will collected
together a mass of nearly one hundred thousand pilgrims. All
the western nations rose to arms.
The news of this enormous movement reached the East, and the
ferocious war-cry of Europe was answered by a voice of
defiance. Saladin had organized his dominions almost
according to the western system. Under an oath of allegiance
and service in war he granted to each of his emirs a town of
feudal tenure; its surrounding land they again divided among
their followers; the Sultan thus attached those wandering
hordes of horsemen to the soil and kept those restless
spirits permanently together. He then invoked the religious
zeal of all the Mahometans with such success that volunteers
flocked to his standard from every quarter.
These masses dispersed at the beginning of every winter, but
on the return of fair weather they again collected in
ever-increasing numbers. Saladin well knew the mutual hatred
which divided the Greek Byzantines and the Latin Franks, and
kept so securely alive in the Eastern Emperor, Isaac
Angelus, the fear of the insolence of the western soldiers
that he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with
Saladin against those who shared his own faith.
The leaders of the Third Crusade--Richard I ("the
Lion-hearted"), King of England; Frederick I, surnamed
"Barbarossa," of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire;
and Philip Augustus, King of France--were the most powerful
monarchs of Europe. A halo of false romance and glory,
however, surrounds this crusade, mainly by reason of the
associations connecting it with the self-seeker Richard. In
the real conduct of the crusaders appears a sordid greed
glutting itself with atrocities as savage as those
perpetrated under Godfrey of Bouillon a century before. In
Richard the world now sees a destroying "hero," one of the
scourges of mankind. The son of Henry II, Richard became
King of England in 1189. His chief ambition appears to have
been the spread of his own renown, and this aim he sought to
achieve in Palestine. He raised moneys by the sale of
titles, lands, etc., and then started for the Holy Land.
Modern history presents him, as well as his colleagues and
followers, divested of the glamour which for centuries hung
about the Third Crusade, of which the only heroic figure on
the Christian side is the likewise pitiable Barbarossa.
The whole East, from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to
the sources of the Nile, prepared with one intent to withstand the
great invasion of Europe. Amid cares and preparations which had
reference to three-quarters of the globe, Saladin neglected his
nearest enemy, the feeble remnant of the Christian States in Syria,
which, although unimportant in themselves, were of great consequence
as landing-places for the invading western nations during the
approaching war. The small principalities of Antioch and Tripoli still
existed, and in the midst of the Turkish forces the marquis Conrad of
Montferrat still displayed the banner of the cross upon the ramparts
of Tyre.
It seems as if in this instance Saladin had abandoned himself too much
to the superb and easy carelessness of his nature. Hitherto he had not
shrunk from the most strenuous exertions; but he was so certain of his
victory that he neglected to strike the final blow. Not until the
autumn of 1187 did he begin the siege of Tyre; and for the first time
in his life he found a dangerous adversary in Conrad of Montferrat, a
man of cool courage and keen determination, whose soul was unmoved by
religious enthusiasm, and equally free from weakness or indecision; so
that under his command the inhabitants of the city repulsed every
attack with increasing assurance and resolution.
Saladin hereupon determined to try starvation, which a strict blockade
by sea and land was to cause in the town; but in June, 1188, the
Sicilian fleet appeared, gave the superiority by sea to the
Christians, and brought relief to Tyre. The Sultan retreated, and
marched through the defenceless provinces of Antioch and Tripoli, but
there too he left the capitals in peace upon the arrival of the
Sicilian fleet in their waters. The following summer he spent in
taking the Frankish fortresses in Arabia Petræa, the possession of
which was important to him in order to secure freedom of communication
between Egypt and Syria.
Meanwhile the reinforcements from the West were pouring into the
Christian seaport towns. In the first place, the two military and
religious orders, the Templars and the Knights of St. John, had
collected munitions of war of every kind from all their European
possessions, and increased the number of their mercenaries to fourteen
thousand men. King Guy[31] also had ransomed himself from captivity
and had gone to Tripoli, where by degrees the remnant of the Syrian
barons, and pilgrims of all nations, gathered round him. They took the
right resolution to remain no longer inactive, but with the gigantic
preparations in Europe in prospect, to begin the attack at once.
On August 28, 1189, Guy commenced the siege of the strong maritime
fortress of Ptolemais (St. Jean d'Acre). A fleet from Pisa had already
joined the Sicilian one; in October there arrived twelve thousand
Danes and Friesians, and in November a number of Flemings, under the
Count of Avesnes, French knights under the Bishop of Beauvais, and
Thuringians, under their landgrave, Louis. Saladin, roused from his
inactivity by these events, hastened to the spot with his army, and in
his turn surrounded the Christian camp, which lay in a wide semicircle
round Ptolemais, and was defended by strong intrenchments within and
without. It formed an iron ring round the besieged town, which
Saladin, spite of all his efforts, could not break through. Each wing
of the position rested upon the sea, and was thus certain of its
supplies, and able to protect the landing of reinforcements, which
continually arrived in constantly increasing numbers--Italians,
French, English and Germans, Normans, and Swedes. "If on one day we
killed ten," said the Arabs, "on the next, a hundred more arrived
fresh from the West."
The fighting was incessant by land and by sea, against the town and
against the Sultan's camp. Sometimes the Egyptian fleet drove the
Christian ships far out to sea; and Saladin could then succor the
garrison with provisions and fresh troops, till new Frankish squadrons
again surrounded the harbor, and only a few intrepid divers could
steal through between the hostile ships. On land, too, now one side
and now the other was in danger. One day the Sultan scaled the
Christian intrenchments, and advanced close to the walls of the city,
before the Franks rallied sufficiently to drive him back by a
desperate attack; but they soon took their revenge in a night sortie,
when they attacked the Sultan in his very tent, and he narrowly
escaped by rapid flight. Against the town their progress was very
slow, as the garrison, under an able and energetic commander,
Bohaeddin, showed itself resolute and indefatigable. One week passed
after another, and the condition of the Franks became painfully
complicated. They could go neither backward nor forward, they could
make no impression on the walls; nor could they re-embark in the face
of an active enemy. There was no choice but to conquer or die; so
preparations were made for a long sojourn; wooden barracks, and for
the princes even stone houses were built, and a new hostile town arose
all around Ptolemais. In spite of this the winter brought innumerable
hardships. In that small space more than a hundred thousand men were
crowded together, with insufficient shelter, and uncertain supplies of
wretched food; pestilential diseases soon broke out, which swept away
thousands, and were intensified by the exhalations from the heaps of
dead. Saladin retreated from their deadly vicinity to more airy
quarters on the adjacent hills; his troops also suffered from the
severe weather, but were far better supplied than the Christians with
water, provisions, and other comforts, as the caravans from Cairo and
Bagdad met in their camp, and numbers of merchants displayed in
glittering booths all kinds of eastern wares.
It was an unexampled assemblage of the forces of two quarters of the
world round one spot, unimportant in itself, and chosen almost by
accident. Our own times have seen a counterpart to it in the siege of
Sebastopol, which, though in a totally different form, was a new act
in the same great struggle between the East and the West. Happily the
western nations did not derive their warlike stimulus from religious
sources, and they displayed, if not their military, at any rate, their
moral superiority, in the most brilliant manner.
Although, in the fight around Ptolemais, the superiority was doubtless
on Saladin's side, there was a moment in which Europe threatened to
oppose to the mighty Sultan an antagonist as great as himself. In May,
1189, the emperor Frederick IX marched out of Ratisbon with his army
for Syria. He had already ruled thirty-seven years over Germany and
Italy, and his life had been one of war and labor, of small results,
but growing fame. He was born a ruler in the highest sense of the
word; he possessed all the attributes of power; bold yet cautious,
courageous and enduring, energetic and methodical, he towered proudly
above all who surrounded him, and had the highest conception of his
princely calling. But his ideas were beyond his time, and while he
tried to open the way for a distant future, he was made to feel the
penalty of running counter to the inclination of the present
generation. It seemed to him unbearable that the Emperor, who was
extolled by all the world as the defender of the right and the
fountain-head of law, should be forced to bow before unruly vassals or
unlimited ecclesiastical power. He had, chiefly from the study of the
Roman law, conceived the idea of a state complete within itself, and
strong in the name of the common weal, a complete contrast to the
existing condition of Europe, where all the monarchies were breaking
up, and the crowned priest reigned supreme over a crowd of petty
princes.
Under these circumstances he appeared foreshadowing modern thoughts
deep in the Middle Ages, like a fresh mountain breeze, dispersing the
incense-laden atmosphere of the time. This discrepancy caused the
greatness and the misfortune of the mighty Emperor. The current of his
time set full against him. When, as the representative of the State,
he enforced obedience to the law, he appeared to some an impious
offender against the Holy Church; to others, a tyrant trampling on the
general freedom; and while conquering in a hundred fights, he was
driven from one position after another by the force of opinion. But so
commanding was the energy, so powerful the earnestness, and so
inexhaustible the resources of his nature that he was as terrible to
his foes on the last day as on the first, passionless and pitiless,
never distorted by cruelty, and never melted by pity, an iron defender
of his imperial rights.
We can only guess at the reasons which may have induced a sovereign of
this stamp to leave a sphere of domestic activity for the fantastic
wars of the crusades. Once, in the midst of his Italian feud, when the
deeds of Alexander the Great were read aloud to him, he exclaimed:
"Happy Alexander, who didst never see Italy! happy I had I never been
in Asia!" Whether piety or love of fame ultimately decided him, he
felt within himself the energy to take a great decision, and at once
proceeded to action. The aged Emperor once more displayed in this last
effort the fulness of his powerful and ever-youthful nature. For the
first time during these wars, since the armed pilgrimages had begun,
Europe beheld a spirit conscious of their true object, and capable of
carrying it out. The army was smaller than any of the former ones,
consisting of twenty thousand knights and fifty thousand squires and
foot soldiers; but it was guided by one inflexible, indomitable will.
With strict discipline, the imperial leader drove all disorderly and
useless persons out of his camp; he was always the first to face every
obstacle or danger, and showed himself equal to all the political or
military difficulties of the expedition. The Greek empire had to be
traversed first, whose Emperor, Isaac, had allied himself with
Saladin; but at the sight of these formidable masses he shrank in
terror from any hostile attempt, and hastened to transport the German
army across into Asia Minor.
There they hoped for a friendly reception from the Emir of Iconium,
who was reported to have a leaning toward Christianity; but in the
mean time the old ruler had been dethroned by his sons, who opposed
the Germans with a strong force. They were destined to feel the weight
of the German arm. After their mounted bowmen had harassed the
Christian troops for a time with a shower of arrows, the Emperor broke
their line of battle, and scattered them by a sudden attack of cavalry
in all directions, while at the same moment Frederick's son
unexpectedly scaled the walls of their city. The crusaders then
marched in triumph to Cilicia; the Armenians already yielded
submissively to a cessation of hostilities; and far and wide
throughout Turkish Syria went the dread of Frederick's irresistible
arms. Even Saladin himself, who had boldly defied the disorderly
attacks of the hundreds of thousands before Ptolemais, now lost all
hope, and announced to his emirs his intention of quitting Syria on
Frederick's arrival, and retreating across the Euphrates.