successor in Suzdal. Yaroslaff, 1238-1246, found his inheritance in
the most deplorable condition. The towns and villages were burned, the
country and roads covered with unburied corpses; the survivors hid
themselves in the woods. He recalled the fugitives and began to
rebuild. Batu, who had completed the devastation of South Russia,
summoned Yaroslaff to do him homage at Sarai, on the Volga. Yaroslaff
was received there with distinction. Batu confirmed his title of grand
prince, but invited him to go in person to the Great Khan, supreme
chief of the Mongol nation, who lived on the banks of the river
Sakhalian or Amur. To do this was to cross the whole of Russia and
Asia. Yaroslaff bent his knees to the new master of the world, Oktai,
succeeded in refuting the accusations brought against him by a Russian
boyar, and obtained a new confirmation of his title. On his return he
died in the desert of exhaustion, and his faithful servants brought
his body back to Vladimir. His son Andrew succeeded him in Suzdal,
1246-1252. His other son, Alexander, reigned at Novgorod the Great.
Alexander was as brave as he was intelligent. He was the hero of the
North, and yet he forced himself to accept the necessary humiliations
of his terrible situation. In his youth we see him fighting with all
the enemies of Novgorod, Livonian knights and Tchuds, Swedes and
Finns. The Novgorodians found themselves at issue with the
Scandinavians on the subject of their possessions on the Neva and the
Gulf of Finland. As they had helped the natives to resist the Latin
faith, King John obtained the promise of Gregory IX that a crusade,
with plenary indulgences, should be preached against the Great
Republic and her _protégés_, the pagans of the Baltic. His son-in-law,
Birger, with an army of Scandinavians, Finns, and western crusaders,
took the command of the forces, and sent word to the Prince of
Novgorod: "Defend yourself if you can; know that I am already in your
provinces." The Russians on their side, feeling they were fighting for
orthodoxy, opposed the Latin crusade with a Greek one.
Alexander humbled himself in St. Sophia, received the benediction of
the archbishop Spiridion, and addressed an energetic harangue to his
warriors. He had no time to await reinforcements from Suzdal. He
attacked the Swedish camp, which was situated on the Ijora, one of the
southern affluents of the Neva, which has given its name to Ingria.
Alexander won a brilliant victory, which gained him his surname of
Nevski, and the honor of becoming, under Peter the Great, the second
conqueror of the Swedes, one of the patrons of St. Petersburg. By the
orders of his great successor his bones repose in the monastery of
Alexander Nevski.
The battle of the Neva was preserved in a dramatic legend. An Ingrian
chief told Alexander how, in the eve of the combat, he had seen a
mysterious bark, manned by two warriors with shining brows, glide
through the night. They were Boris and Gleb, who came to the rescue of
their young kinsman. Other accounts have preserved to us the
individual exploits of the Russian heroes--Gabriel, Skylaf of
Novgorod, James of Polotsk, Sabas, who threw down the tent of Birger,
and Alexander Nevski himself, who with a stroke of the lance
"imprinted his seal on his face," 1240. Notwithstanding the triumph of
such a service, Alexander and the Novgorodians could not agree; a
short time after, he retired to Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski. The proud
republicans soon had reason to regret the exile of this second
Camillus. The Order of the Swordbearers, the indefatigable enemy of
orthodoxy, took Pskof, their ally; the Germans imposed tribute on the
Vojans, vassals of Novgorod, constructed the fortress of Koporie on
her territory of the Neva, took the Russian town of Tessof in
Esthonia, and pillaged the merchants of Novgorod within seventeen
miles of their ramparts. During this time the Tchuds and the
Lithuanians captured the peasants, and the cattle of the citizens. At
last Alexander allowed himself to be touched by the prayers of the
archbishop and the people, assembled an army, expelled the Germans
from Koporie, and next from Pskof, hanged as traitors the captive
Vojans and Tchuds, and put to death six knights who fell into his
hands.
This war between the two races and two religions was cruel and
pitiless. The rights of nations were hardly recognized. More than once
Germans and Russians slew the ambassadors of the other side. Alexander
Nevski finally gave battle to the Livonian knights on the ice of Lake
Peipus, killed four hundred of them, took fifty prisoners, and
exterminated a multitude of Tchuds. Such was the "Battle of the Ice,"
1242. He returned in triumph to Novgorod, dragging with him his
prisoners in armor of iron. The grand master expected to see Alexander
at the gates of Riga, and implored help of Denmark. The Prince of
Novgorod, satisfied with having delivered Pskof, concluded peace,
recovered certain districts, and consented to the exchange of
prisoners. At this time Innocent IV, deceived by false information,
addressed a bull to Alexander, as a devoted son of the Church,
assuring him that his father Yaroslaff, while dying among the Horde,
had desired to submit himself to the throne of St. Peter. Two
cardinals brought him this letter from the Pope, 1251.
It is this hero of the Neva and Lake Peipus, this vanquisher of the
Scandinavians and Livonian knights, that we are presently to see
grovelling at the feet of a barbarian. Alexander Nevski had understood
that, in presence of this immense and brutal force of the Mongols, all
resistance was madness, all pride ruin. To brave them was to complete
the overthrow of Russia. His conduct may not have been chivalrous, but
it was wise and humane. Alexander disdained to play the hero at the
expense of his people, like his brother Andrew of Suzdal, who was
immediately obliged to fly, abandoning his country to the vengeance of
the Tartars. The Prince of Novgorod was the only prince in Russia who
had kept his independence, but he knew Batu's hands could extend as
far as the Ilmen. "God has subjected many peoples to me," wrote the
barbarian to him: "will you alone refuse to recognize my power? If you
wish to keep your land, come to me; you will see the splendor and the
glory of my sway." Then Alexander went to Sarai with his brother
Andrew, who disputed the grand principality of Vladimir with his uncle
Sviatoslaf. Batu declared that fame had not exaggerated the merit of
Alexander, that he far excelled the common run of Russian princes. He
enjoined the two brothers to show themselves, like their father
Yaroslaff, at the Great Horde; they returned from it in 1257. Kuiuk
had confirmed the one in the possession of Vladimir, and the other in
that of Novgorod, adding to it all South Russia and Kiev.
The year 1260 put the patience of Alexander and his politic obedience
to the Tartars to the proof. Ulavtchi, to whom the khan Berkai had
confided the affairs of Russia, demanded that Novgorod should submit
to the census and pay tribute. It was the hero of the Neva that was
charged with the humiliating and dangerous mission of persuading
Novgorod. When the _possadnik_ uttered in the _vetche_ the doctrine
that it was necessary to submit to the strongest, the people raised a
terrible cry and murdered the possadnik. Vassili himself, the son of
Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to
freemen," and retired to the Pskovians. It needed a soul of iron
temper to resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the
Novgorodians to the commission of the cowardly though necessary act.
Alexander arrested his son, and punished the boyars who had led him
into the revolt with death or mutilation. The vetche had decided to
refuse the tribute, and send back the Mongol ambassadors with
presents.
However, on the rumor of the approach of the Tartars, they repented,
and Alexander could announce to the enemy that Novgorod submitted to
the census. But when they saw the officers of the Khan at work, the
population revolted again, and the Prince was obliged to keep guard on
the officers night and day. In vain the boyars advised the citizens to
give in: assembled around St. Sophia, the people declared they would
die for liberty and honor. Alexander then threatened to quit the city
with his men and abandon it to the vengeance of the Khan. This menace
conquered the pride of the Novgorodians. The Mongols and their agents
might go, register in hand, from house to house in the humiliated and
silent city to make the list of the inhabitants. "The boyars," says
Karamsin, "might yet be vain of their rank and their riches, but the
simple citizens had lost with their national honor their most precious
possession," 1260.
In Suzdal also Alexander found himself in the presence of insolent
victors and exasperated subjects. In 1262 the inhabitants of Vladimir,
of Suzdal, of Rostof, rose against the collectors of the Tartar
impost. The people of Yaroslavl slew a renegade named Zozimus, a
former monk, who had become a Moslem fanatic. Terrible reprisals were
sure to follow. Alexander set out with presents for the Horde at the
risk of leaving his head there. He had likewise to excuse himself for
having refused a body of auxiliary Russians to the Mongols, wishing at
least to spare the blood and religious scruples of his subjects. It is
a remarkable fact that over the most profound humiliations of the
Russian nationality the contemporary history always throws a ray of
glory.
At the moment that Alexander went to prostrate himself at Sarai, the
Suzdalian army, united to that of Novgorod, and commanded by his son
Dmitri, defeated the Livonian knights and took Dorpat by assault. The
khan Berkai gave Alexander a kind greeting, accepted his explanations,
dispensed with the promised contingent, but kept him for a year near
his court. The health of Alexander broke down; he died on his return
before reaching Vladimir. When the news arrived at his capital, the
metropolitan Cyril, who was finishing the liturgy, turned toward the
faithful and said, "Learn, my dear children, that the Sun of Russia is
set, is dead."
"We are lost," cried the people, breaking forth into sobs. Alexander,
by this policy of resignation, which his chivalrous heroism does not
permit us to despise, had secured some repose for exhausted Russia. By
his victories over his enemies of the West he had given her some
glory, and hindered her from despairing under the most crushing
tyranny, material and moral, which a European people had ever
suffered.
THE SIXTH CRUSADE
TREATY OF FREDERICK II WITH THE SARACENS
A.D. 1228
SIR GEORGE W. COX
For six years after the end of the Fifth Crusade--in which
the crusaders, forgetting their vows, instead of delivering
Jerusalem sacked Constantinople--the Christians of Palestine
were protected by a truce with Saphadin, who had succeeded
his brother Saladin in power. This truce was broken by the
action of the Latin Christians, Pope Innocent himself, who
had been the leading spirit of the Fifth Crusade, continuing
to make known his designs for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Between the Fifth and the Sixth Crusades occurred that which
was in some respects the strangest manifestation of the
crusading mania, whereby the inspiration of the Pope and
other preachers of a new crusade carried some fanatics to
the maddest extremes. This movement, or series of movements,
is known as the "Children's Crusade," 1212.
In response to the appeals of certain priests who went about
France and Germany calling upon the children to perform
what, through wickedness, their fathers had failed to do,
and assuring them of miraculous aid and success, fifty
thousand boys and girls, braving parental authority,
gathered together and pervaded both cities and countries,
singing: "Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross," and
saying, "We are going to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy
Sepulchre." Some of them crossed the Alps, intending to
embark at Italian ports; others took ship at Marseilles.
Many were lost in the forests, and perished with heat,
hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Some, after being stripped by
thieves, were reduced to slavery, and a remnant, in sorrow
and shame, returned to their homes. Of those who sailed,
some were lost by shipwreck, and others sold as slaves to
the Saracens. "No authority," says Michaud, "interfered,
either to stop or prevent the madness; and when it was
announced to the Pope that death had swept away the flower
of the youth of France and Germany, he contented himself
with saying: 'These children reproach us with having fallen
asleep, while they were flying to the assistance of the Holy
Land.'"
Innocent now called a general council of the Church--the
Fourth Lateran Council, 1215--for the purpose of stimulating
a new crusade. "The necessity for succoring the Holy Land,"
said his letters of convocation, "and the hope of conquering
the Saracens, are greater than ever. We renew our cries and
our prayers to you to excite you to this noble enterprise."
The Sixth Crusade, which was inspired by the Pope and
preached in France by his legate, Robert de Courçon, was
divided in the sequel into three maritime expeditions. The
first, 1216, consisted mainly of Hungarians under their
King, Andrew; the second, 1218, was composed of Germans,
Italians, French, and English nobles and their followers;
and the third, 1228, was led by Frederick II in person. The
first two produced no considerable advantage for the
Christians; while Frederick, involved in the Hohenstaufen
struggle with the papacy, evaded his crusading vows made
long before. Innocent III died in 1216; Honorius III, the
next pope, died in 1227; and his successor, Gregory IX,
urged Frederick on to fulfil his promise. The Emperor
embarked in 1227, but when he had been only three days at
sea, by reason of his own illness or the sickness of his
troops--accounts are not agreed--he returned to port. The
Pope, furious at his conduct, excommunicated him. But in the
following year, notwithstanding the ban, Frederick set sail
for Palestine, and the story of this expedition is the
essential history of the Sixth Crusade.
After his excommunication, Frederick appealed not to the Pope, but to
the sovereigns of Christendom. His illness, he said, had been real,
the accusations of the Pope wanton and cruel. "The Christian charity
which should hold all things together is dried up at its source, in
its stem, not in its branches. What had the Pope done in England but
stir up the barons against John, and then abandon them to death or
ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were
everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping where they
had not strawed."
But although he thus dealt in language as furious as that of the Pope,
the thought of breaking definitely with him and of casting aside his
crusading vow as worthless mockery never seems to have entered his
mind. He undertook to bring his armies together again with all speed,
and to set off on his expedition. His promise only brought him into
fresh trouble with the Pope, who in the Holy Week next following laid
under interdict every place in which Frederick might happen to be. If
this censure should be treated with contempt, his subjects were at
once absolved from their allegiance.
The Emperor went on steadily with his preparations, and then went to
Brundisium. He was met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to
leave Italy until he had offered satisfaction for his offences against
the Church. In his turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his
own envoys to the Pope to demand the removal of the interdict; and
these, of course, were dismissed with contempt.
In September the Emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of
the Pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the
clergy and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters
of the military orders were to see that none served under his polluted
banners. The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found
friends in the Teutonic Knights under their grand master Herman de
Salza, as well as with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined
to possess himself of Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his
aid.
The Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to be issued in his
name; and Frederick agreed that they should run in the name of God and
Christendom. But while the enemy was aided greatly by the divisions
among the Christians, the death of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of
little use to Frederick. The Egyptian sultan, Kameel, was now in a
position of greater independence, and his eagerness for an alliance
with the Emperor had rapidly cooled down.
Frederick, on his side, still resolved to try the effect of
negotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to the
complete restoration of the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to
believe Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject supplications. At length
a treaty was signed. It surrendered to the Emperor the whole of
Jerusalem except the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which were
to be retained by the Saracens; but Christians, under certain
conditions, might be allowed to enter it for the purpose of prayer. It
further restored to the Christians the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and
Nazareth.
To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate
satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions,
where a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One
task only remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the
Holy Sepulchre. But here also the hand of the Pope lay heavy upon him.
Not merely Jerusalem, but the Sepulchre itself, passed under the
interdict as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem
saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the approach of
the Christian Emperor.
On Sunday, in his imperial robes and attended by a magnificent
retinue, Frederick went to his coronation, as king of Jerusalem, in
the Church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to
take part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood
aloof, while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed
it on his own head. By his orders his friend Herman de Salza read an
address, in which the Emperor acquitted the Pope for his hard judgment
of him and for his excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of
the facts would have led him to speak not against him, but in his
favor. He confessed his desire to put to shame the false friends of
Christ, his accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and
unity, and to humble himself before God and before his vicar upon
earth.
From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The cadi silenced a muezzin
who had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house
in which the Emperor lodged, because he added to his call the
question, "How is it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son
of Mary?" Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of
prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi for
neglecting, on his account, his duty and his religion, and warned him
that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such
ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with
the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from
those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahometans
in his train fell on their knees at the times for prayer. His thoughts
about the Christians were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the
windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might
defile it, he asked: "You may keep out the birds; but how will you
keep out the swine?"
In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe,
announcing the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the
pen than by the sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had
raised up among Christians and Moslems alike. By a few words on a
sheet of parchment the Christian Emperor had deprived his people of
the hope of getting their sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers; by
the same words the Moslem Sultan had prevented his subjects from
insuring an entrance to the delights of paradise by the slaughter of
the Nazarenes.
From Gerold, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the Pope, full
of virulent abuse of the Emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and a
robber; but even before he received this letter Gregory had condemned
what he chose to consider as a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ
and Belial, and to set up Mahomet as an object of worship in the
temple of God. "The antagonist of the Cross," he wrote, "the enemy of
the faith and of all chastity, the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up
for adoration, by a perverse judgment, and by an intolerable insult to
the Saviour, to the lasting disgrace of the Christian name and the
contempt of all the martyrs who have laid down their lives to purify
the Holy Land from the defilements of the Saracens."
But Frederick, in his turn, could be firm and unyielding. He returned
from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Ptolemais; and there learning
that a proposal had been made to establish a new order of knights, he
declared that no one should, without his consent, levy soldiers within
his dominion. Summoning all the Christians within the city to the
broad plain without the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the
conduct of the Patriarch and the Templars, with all who aided and
abetted them, and insisted that all the pilgrims, having now paid
their vows, should return at once to Europe. On this point he was
inexorable. His archers took possession of the churches; two friars
who denounced him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets;
the Patriarch was shut up in his palace; and the commands of the
Emperor were carried out.
Frederick returned to Europe, to find that the Pope had been stirring
up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the papal forces
were in command of John of Brienne, who may have been the author of
the false news of Frederick's death, and who certainly proclaimed
himself as the only emperor. To the Pope, Frederick sent his envoys,
Herman de Salza at their head. They were dismissed with contempt; and
their master was again placed under the greater excommunication with
the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Arnoldists, and other
heretics who, in the eyes of the faithful, were the worst enemies of
the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man who had done more
toward the reëstablishment of the Latin kingdom in Palestine than had
been done by the lion-hearted Richard, and who, it may fairly be said,
had done it without shedding a drop of blood.
RISE OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE
A.D. 1241
H. DENICKE[59]
Trade trusts, which have attained so large a growth in our
day, are not an original product of the present age. The
Hanseatic League, or _Hansa_--the word meaning a society,
union--was the first trust of which we have authentic
record. It began about A.D. 1140, but the league was not
signed until 1241. It was first called into being to protect
the property of the German merchants against the piratical
Swedes and other Norsemen, but presently became submerged in
a combination of certain cities to enlarge and control the
trade of each country with which they had commerce. So
powerful did the league become that it dominated kings,
nobles, and cities by its edicts.
Those free cities which constituted the league had the
emperor for their lord, were released from feudal
obligations, and passed their own laws, subject only to his
approval. The emperors, finding in the strength of the
cities a bulwark against the bishops and the princes,
constantly extended the municipal rights and privileges. The
Hanseatic League at one time nearly monopolized the whole
trade of Europe north of Italy.