giving any command, when some traitor cried out in the midst of the
fight, “Yield, sir knights, yield all of you, the king orders it; do
not cause him to be slain.” The fight immediately ceased, the knights
threw down their arms and asked for quarter. The Saracens pitilessly
massacred not only the sick, from whom they feared the effects of
contagion, but every Christian beneath the rank of knight. The king
was taken prisoner, together with his two brothers (Fig. 108), his
principal barons, and the officers of his household. This occurred on
the 6th of April, 1250.
History records the most touching incidents of the captivity of the
pious monarch. Never was Louis IX. so noble, so heroic, as during
these thirty days of trial, of suffering, and of danger. Though a
captive in the hands of the unbelievers, subjected to the grossest
outrages, loaded with chains, and threatened with death, he still
displayed in the gentleness of his disposition and the serenity of
his soul the high virtues of the Christian faith and the nobility
pertaining to his kingly dignity. The Saracens greatly admired this
magnanimity in misfortune, and their principal leader, the terrible
Sultan of Damascus, entered into negotiations with his august
prisoner, who was prepared to die rather than submit to some of the
demands of his conquerors. A million of golden _besants_ (about
half a million of French livres) for the ransom of the Franks, the
restitution of Damietta for that of their king, and ten years’ truce
between the Christians and the Mussulmans of Egypt and of Syria, were
the conditions that Louis was obliged to accept. Joinville tells
us that the emirs of the sultan were content to accept, as their
only guarantee, the bare word of this Frankish prince, the noblest
Christian, they said, they had ever seen in the East. Some of the
Saracens, indeed, according to the same chronicler, had conceived the
intention of offering the throne of Egypt to King Louis (Fig. 109), so
much respect and esteem had he inspired them with.
[Illustration: Fig. 108.--St. Louis and his two brothers,
Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, and Charles, Count of Anjou, made
prisoners by the Saracens.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand
Voyage de Hiérusalem,” printed in Paris by François Regnault in
1522; folio. Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]
Louis having recovered his liberty, would not return to France without
having tried every means in his power to alleviate the miseries of
Palestine, or at least to deliver the Christian prisoners whom the
infidels still detained. He went, with seven hundred knights who
still remained under his orders, to the Holy Land, and then, rather
by conciliation than by force, and by the exercise of a marvellous
sagacity, he was enabled to a certain extent to re-establish the
prestige of the defenders of the cross. He devoted four years to this
good work, and only consented to return to France on hearing of the
death of his beloved mother. He re-entered Paris, after an absence of
six years (1254), with a wounded and broken spirit, “because,” says the
English chronicler, Matthew Paris, “through him disorder had overspread
Christendom.”
[Illustration: Fig. 109.--The Messengers of the Sultan, having
at their head a little old man walking with crutches, come to
discuss terms of ransom with the Christian prisoners.--From a
miniature in the “Credo de Joinville,” Manuscript of the end
of the Thirteenth Century, formerly in the National Library of
Paris, but now in England.]
Palestine in 1268 had fallen into the deepest misery and desolation;
the few towns and strongholds which remained in the hands of the
Eastern Christians had been pillaged and sacked by the Mamelukes,
who at last took Antioch, where they slew seventeen thousand of the
inhabitants, and sold a hundred thousand more into slavery (Fig. 110).
These dreadful tidings, which two centuries earlier would have caused a
general indignation in Christendom, reached the West without creating
much excitement, in the midst of the political troubles which were
agitating most of the states of Europe. But since his return to France,
St. Louis had worn the cross, if not on his garments, at least in his
heart, and had always cherished the hope of realising the dream of
his youth. “The cries of the miserable Eastern Christians,” says an
old chronicle, “deprived him of rest; and he felt within him a deep
anguish of soul and a passionate desire for martyrdom.”
[Illustration: Fig. 110.--Plan of Antioch in the Thirteenth
Century, with its five gates--of St. Paul, of the Dog, of the
Duke, of the Bridge, and of St. George. To the right is Mount
Oronte; in the foreground is the sea.--From a Manuscript of the
Thirteenth Century, No. 4,939, in the National Library of Paris.]
Accordingly he convened a solemn parliament, when he announced to
his assembled nobles his intention of undertaking a new crusade. At
first many were greatly surprised and afflicted, thinking, writes the
Sire de Joinville, “that those who had counselled the undertaking had
committed an evil deed and a mortal sin.” Some, indeed, of the king’s
most faithful servants openly refused to join his crusade, not through
fear, but from wisdom, and with the intention perhaps of persuading him
to abandon his fatal project; but the majority of the barons and feudal
lords found it impossible to gainsay the will of their sovereign, and
the example of the king was of still greater power than his orders.
His three sons, the Counts of Toulouse, of Champagne, and of Flanders,
took up the cross, as well as his brother, Charles of Anjou, who had
recently been raised to the throne of Sicily, and many other princes of
the royal house of France.
The preparations for the crusade required three years, during which
St. Louis, in the hope of persuading every Christian state to send
its troops against the infidels, did his best, but without success,
to put an end to the political quarrels that divided kings from their
subjects. He embarked, in 1270, with his sons and his principal nobles,
for Sardinia, which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of the
Crusaders. On his arrival there it was decided that Tunis should be
attacked first. A French chronicler mentions that the king had been
given to understand that “Tunis afforded great assistance to the Sultan
of Cairo, which was very injurious to the Holy Land, and the barons
believed that if that root of evil, the city of Tunis, were destroyed,
it would be of much advantage to Christendom.” Other chroniclers, on
the contrary, and amongst them Matthew Paris, give a more plausible
motive for the expedition, viz., that the king had heard that the
Moorish sovereign of that part of the coast had shown a disposition to
embrace Christianity and join the western powers in their attempt to
conquer Egypt.
[Illustration: Fig. 111.--Disembarkation of St. Louis
at Carthage.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Passaiges
d’oultremer:” small folio, Paris, 1518.]
However that may have been, the crusading fleet sailed for Tunis,
carrying an army sadly tried by sickness, and whose ardour had already
strangely begun to cool. The Moors permitted the Christians, almost
unopposed, to disembark and take possession of Carthage (Fig. 111),
which had dwindled down to a mere village. Some of the Crusaders
housed themselves in the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city, the
remainder bivouacked under the burning sun of Africa, surrounded
and harassed by the infidels, whose light cavalry kept continuously
skirmishing around them. It was not long before the plague broke out
in the Christian army, whilst it was still awaiting the arrival of the
King of Sicily and his troops, and Louis IX., already in feeble health,
bowed down by premature old age, and heartbroken in consequence of the
death of one of his sons, was attacked by it.
[Illustration: Fig. 112.--St. John of Capistran, Franciscan Monk,
who defended Belgrade against the Turks.--From a Painting by
Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Louvre. Fifteenth Century.]
As soon as this culminating misfortune was known in the camp there
was unusual consternation and despondency, for every one knew that
the king was the life and soul of the expedition. From his sickbed,
where he was undergoing the most cruel sufferings, he still continued
to issue his orders with that composure and gentleness which were
habitual to him; but every hour increased his feebleness, every moment
brought him nearer to his end. As soon as he perceived that his death
was at hand, he tranquilly dictated his last instructions to his son
Philip--instructions which have rightly been termed celestial;--then
kneeling at the bedside he received extreme unction, after which,
stretching himself upon a bed of ashes as a sign of repentance and
humility, his eyes turned beseechingly towards heaven, and the words of
the psalmist on his lips, “O Lord, I will enter thy temple and glorify
thy name,” he quietly breathed his last (August 25th, 1270).
[Illustration: Fig. 113.--Don Juan of Austria, holding a
boarding-axe in remembrance of the Battle of Lepanto.--From
a painting attributed to Alonso Sanchez Coello, Portuguese
painter, in the possession of M. Carderera, of Madrid. End of the
Sixteenth Century.]
And with the last beat of this grand and noble heart terminated the
eighth crusade, the last on the heroic list of these adventurous
expeditions in which the power and the influence of the Christian
faith had been so signally manifested. It had indeed required all the
personal influence of the revered monarch to re-awaken the religious
enthusiasm, to quicken into life the zeal and faith of a state of
society which had become more sceptical, if not more corrupt, as it
had become more civilised, and which occupied itself less with the
spiritual consolations of the soul than with the material pleasures
of the body. Never again was the sceptre of France to pass into such
sainted hands, never again was the martyr’s halo of glory to illuminate
its crown. It is true that more than once since the death of St. Louis
a call to the crusade has resounded from the pontifical chair and from
the dais of the council hall, but it never found an echo in the heart
of either prince or peasant. Nevertheless on two subsequent occasions
have voices as persuasive as those of Peter the Hermit and the Monk of
Clairvaux attempted to re-awaken popular enthusiasm. In the middle of
the fifteenth century, while Mahomet II., master of Constantinople,
was advancing full of confidence to conquer the West, John Corvin,
vayvode of Transylvania, better known under the name of Huniades, put
himself at the head of the Crusaders who had been assembled by the
eloquent appeals of St. John of Capistran (Fig. 112). Carried away with
the enthusiasm of this man of God, who, crucifix in hand, was wont to
penetrate the ranks in the hottest part of an engagement, the Crusaders
showed themselves worthy of their heroic leader, Huniades. At the
close of a tremendous struggle, the Turks were put to flight; Belgrade
remained in the hands of the Christians, and the haughty Mahomet II.
was wounded and hurried off the field by his followers.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, the King of Spain and
the Italian princes concluded arrangements with Pope Pius V. and the
Venetians for a crusade to defend Christian Europe against the Turks.
Don Juan of Austria (Fig. 113), who was appointed commander-in-chief
of the troops by Pius V., obtained, on the 7th of October, 1571, that
tremendous victory in which the Turks lost thirty thousand men and two
hundred and twenty-four vessels, a loss that destroyed their naval
supremacy and saved Europe. But in the meantime the Holy Land had
again fallen beneath the yoke of the infidel, and there was soon no
trace left of those principalities beyond the seas which the crusading
nobles had founded in the Archipelago and in Asia Minor, and which
for a brief, a very brief, space had seemed so flourishing; there was
soon, indeed, no trace left of even the name of the ephemeral kingdom
of Jerusalem, for the creation of which the nations of Europe had
lavished, for nearly two centuries, so much blood, so much wealth, and
so much heroism.
The effect of the Crusades was nevertheless a complete revolution in
the manners and customs of the Western nations; the suppression of
servitude, the founding of the free towns, the alienation and the
division of the feudal lands, and the development of the communal
system, were the immediate consequences of the tremendous emigration of
men who went forth to fight and die in Palestine. The nobles ceased
to wage their perpetual private quarrels, knighthood assumed a regular
and solemn character, judiciary duels diminished, religious orders
multiplied, and charitable institutions were established on every side.
Men’s minds became more enlightened and their manners softened under
the influence of the growing expansion of science, art, and literature.
Law, natural history, philosophy, and mathematics came to them in
direct descent from the Greeks and the Arabians; a new literature,
abounding in poetic gems, sprang forth all at once from the imagination
of troubadours, minstrels, and minnesingers; art, the fine arts
particularly, architecture, painting, sculpture, and embroidery, began
to unfold their thousand wonders; industry and commerce multiplied a
hundredfold the public wealth, which at one time had seemed nearly
swallowed up in ruinous expeditions; and the art of war, as well as the
art of navigation, made immense strides in the direction of progress.
[Illustration: Fig. 114.--Assault on a Fortified Place.--From a
Miniature in the “Histoire des Croisades” of Guillaume de Tyr,
Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr.
Firmin-Didot.]
CHIVALRY.
DUELS AND TOURNAMENTS.
Origin of Chivalry.--Its different Characteristics.--Chivalric
Gallantry.--Chivalry and Nobility.--Its Relations
with the Church.--Education of the Children of the
Nobility.--Squires.--Chivalric Exercises.--Pursuivants
at Arms.--Courts and Tribunals of Love.--Creation of
Knights.--Degradation of Knights.--Judicial Duels.--Trials by
Ordeal.--Feudal Champions.--Gages of Battle.--The Church forbids
Duels.--Tournaments invented by the Sire de Preuilly in the
Tenth Century.--Arms need in a Tournament.--Tilt.--Lists.--The
part taken by Ladies.--King René’s Book.
The word Chivalry, according to M. Philarète Chasles, whose ingenious
opinions we often borrow, expresses a mixture of manners, of ideas,
and of customs peculiar to the Middle Ages of Europe, and to which no
analogy is to be traced in the annals of the human race.
Illustration: Fig. 115.--King Artus, protected by the Virgin, is
fighting a Giant.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Chroniques de
Bretagne,” of Alain Bouchard; 4to, Paris, Galliot du Pré, 1514.]
The Eddas, Tacitus, and the Dano-Anglo-Saxon poems of Béowulf contain
the only positive documents concerning the origin of chivalry. It
reached its apogee rapidly after its birth, and gradually declined
towards the close of the thirteenth century. At that period ladies
took a very prominent position; they armed the knights, conferred the
order of knighthood, and bestowed the prizes of honour. It was under
the influence of the ideas peculiar to this epoch that Dante wrote his
great poem, “for the sole purpose,” he said, “of glorifying Beatrice
Portinari,” a child of eleven years of age whom he had accidentally
seen in a church. It was at this time that the Suabian knights,
invaded by the barbarous Hungarians, who were in the habit of slaying
their enemies with their enormous bows and arrows, implored them,
“in the name of the ladies,” to take sword in hand, in order to fight
in “a more civilised manner.” But chivalry soon began to decline,
both as an institution and as a doctrine. Froissart characterizes and
describes with picturesque liveliness this tendency to decay, which,
as time advanced, gradually resulted in a complete transformation,
so that the chivalric ideal became lost, and the independence of the
soldier, once the slave only of his God and of his lady, gave way to
the obsequiousness of the courtier, and finally became a selfish and
pitiful servility.
At these different epochs of organic transformation, chivalry was
constantly modifying itself according to each nation’s particular
tendency. In Thuringia and Saxony, in Ireland and in Norway, it
resisted longer than elsewhere the growing influence of Christianity.
It exhibits its semi-paganism in certain passages of the “Niebelungen,”
a German epic poem of the thirteenth century, in which the rude impress
of ancient Teutonism is still clear and distinct. Between the seventh
and the eleventh centuries the traces of this rudeness of origin still
strongly showed themselves among the Franks, whose bravery consisted
in spilling their blood, in fearing nothing, and in sparing nobody.
This thirst for blood was unknown in the south of Europe; there men’s
dispositions were amiable and gentle, and as far back as the eleventh
century chivalric gallantry was regulated by fixed laws, and gave birth
to a learned and refined school of poetry. From Provence this spirit
of gallantry and poetry made its way into Italy and Sicily, where the
barbarous Teutonic knights had been so frequently turned into ridicule.
Little by little, however, German chivalry was affected by these
southern influences. The minnesingers softened to the best of their
ability the Teutonic language to permit of its repeating the softer
songs of the Provençal muse, and the light but lively imaginations of
the troubadours assumed a gentle melancholy and often a metaphysical
grace in their German verses. In Great Britain, where the actual has
always overshadowed the ideal, chivalry remained cold, feudal, and
aristocratic, whilst it was passionately worshipped by the Spaniards,
those noble and knightly descendants of the Goths and Iberians, whose
struggle with the Arabs was one long tournament that lasted for more
than seven centuries (Fig. 116). In religious countries chivalry
assumed monastic characteristics; among nations of a gay and lively
disposition it verged on the voluptuous and licentious. Alphonso X.,
King of Leon and Castile, forced his subjects to submit to monkish
regulations, and prescribed the shape of their clothes as well as the
manner in which they were to spend their time. In Provence, chivalry
regarded unlawful love with an indulgent eye, and made a jest of
marriage.
Chivalry was in fact a fraternal association, or rather an enthusiastic
compact between men of feeling and courage, of delicacy and devotion;
such at least was the noble aim it had in view, and which it constantly
strove to attain (Fig. 117).
[Illustration: Fig. 116.--Sword of Isabella the Catholic.
Upon the hilt is the following inscription, partly in Spanish
and partly in Latin:--“I am always desiring honour; now I am
watching, peace be with me” (“Deseo sienpre onera; nunc caveo,
pax con migo”).--From the “Armeria Real of Madrid,” a publication
of M. Ach. Jubinal’s.]
However praiseworthy its motives and intentions, chivalry was not
favourably regarded by everybody. In its feudal aspect it was
displeasing to sovereigns, who constantly endeavoured to create beside
it, and sometimes above it, a nobility of the sword, an individual
and personal rank that could not be handed down from father to
son (Fig. 118). Thus Philippe le Bel, being in want of soldiers
after the Flemings had destroyed his chivalry--that is to say, his
nobility--attempted immediately to replace it by ordering that the
elder of two sons of a villain, and the two elder of three sons,
should be admitted into the order of knighthood. In this way Frederick
Barbarossa knighted peasants who had displayed personal bravery on the
field of battle.
[Illustration: Fig. 117.--Chivalry represented by Allegorical
Figures.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate in the Spanish translation
of the “Chevalier délibéré” of Olivier de la Marche: 4to,
Salamanca, 1573.]
[Illustration: Fig. 118.--Conferring Knighthood on the Field
of Battle.--Romance of “Lancelot du Lac,” a Manuscript in the
National Library of Paris (Thirteenth Century).]
As for the Church, it contented itself with warning the knights
against too bellicose a spirit, and with imbuing them as far as
possible with the sentiments of Christian charity; in fact, knights
were frequently considered to be a species of Levite. “There was,”
says the “Ordène de Chevalerie”[10] “a great resemblance between the
duties of a knight and those of a priest.” Thence the reason that the
priest was “the hero of the faith,” and the knight “the pontiff of true
honour.” Thence the name of _ordène_, or _ordination_, given
to the investiture of knighthood. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish
knight Don Ignatio de Loyola, who became so famous as the founder of
the Order of the Jesuits, made himself a knight of the Virgin, and
solemnised his entrance into God’s service, according to ancient
custom, by keeping the _veillée des armes_[11] before the sacred
image of the mother of Christ.
The Church, although it seeks to maintain peace and has a horror of
bloodshed, has never forbidden legitimate wars, and thus good King St.
Louis never shrank on the field of battle from driving his sword up to
the very hilt into his enemy’s heart. And the Church, whilst approving
of the noble character as well as of the enthusiasm of chivalry, always
endeavoured to restrain its more romantic and warlike tendencies. Its
pacific and charitable spirit is expressed in the solemn blessing on
the sword of a knight, which we take from the “pontifical:”--“Most
holy Lord,” said the officiating prelate, “omnipotent Father, eternal
God, who alone ordainest and disposest all things; who, to restrain
the malice of the wicked and to protect justice, hast, by a wise
arrangement, permitted the use of the sword to men upon this earth,
and willed the institution of the military order for the protection
of thy people; O thou who, by the mouth of the thrice-blessed John,
didst tell the soldiers who came to seek him in the desert to oppress
no one, but to rest content with their wages,--we humbly implore thy
mercy, Lord. It is thou who gavest to thy servant David to overcome
Goliath, and to Judas Maccabeus to triumph over the nations who did not
worship thee; in like manner now to this thy servant here, who has come
to bend his head beneath the military yoke, grant strength and courage
for the defence of the faith and justice; grant him an increase of
faith, hope, and charity; inspire him with thy fear and love; give him
humility, perseverance, obedience, and patience; make his disposition
in everything such that he may wound no person unjustly either with
this sword or with any other, but that he may use it to defend all that
is just and all that is right.”
The bishop gave the naked sword to the new knight, saying, “Receive
this blade in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, and use it for your own defence and for that of God’s Holy
Church, and for the confusion of the enemies of the cross of Christ and
of the Christian faith; and as far as human frailty permits it, wound
no one unjustly with it.” The new-made knight then rose, brandished the
sword, wiped it on his left arm, and replaced it in its scabbard. The
prelate then gave him the kiss of peace, saying, “Peace be with thee.”
Then with the naked sword in his right hand, he struck the knight
gently thrice across the shoulders, saying, “Be thou a peaceable,
brave, and faithful warrior.” After which the other knights present put
on his spurs (Fig. 119), whilst the bishop said, “Valiant warrior, thou
who surpassest in beauty the children of men, gird thyself with thy
sword upon thy thigh.”
[Illustration: Fig. 119.--Arming a Knight; whilst his spurs are
being put on, the prince girds the sword to his side.--From a
Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century in the British Museum.]