THE CHRONICLE OF SIX HUNDRED YEARS.
“Oh! yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taint of blood.”
_In Memoriam._
The Christian kingdom, reduced after Saladin’s conquest to a strip
of land along the coast, with a few strong cities, depended no
longer on the annual reinforcement of pilgrims, but on the strength
and wealth of the two military orders. Unfortunately these
quarrelled, and the whole of Syria became divided, Mohammedans as
well as Christians, into partisans of Knights Templars, or of
Knights Hospitallers. Henry of Champagne, the titular king, was only
anxious to get away, while Bohemond, the Prince of Antioch, was only
anxious to extend his own territories. In Germany alone the
crusading spirit yet lingered, and a few Germans flocked yearly to
the sacred places. Germany did more. The emperor, with forty
thousand men, went to Palestine by way of Italy. When he arrived, he
found, to his amazement, that the Christians did not want him—the
truce concluded with the Mohammedans being not yet broken. The
barons and princes had resolved not to break it at all; but rather
to seek its renewal. But the Germans had not accomplished their long
journey for nothing. They issued from their camp at Acre in arms,
and broke the truce by wantonly attacking the Saracens. Reprisals at
once followed, as a matter of course. Jaffa was attacked. Henry of
Champagne hastened to its defence. There he fell from a high window,
and was killed. The arrival of more Crusaders enabled the Christians
to meet El Melik el ‘Άdil in open field, and to gain a complete
victory. They followed it up by taking the seaboard towns, and the
whole coast of Syria was once more in the hands of the Christians.
Of Jerusalem no one thought except the common soldiers, with whom
the capture of the city remained still a dream. Isabelle, the widow
of Henry, was married a fourth time, to Amaury de Lusignan, who had
succeeded his brother Guy on the throne of Cyprus, and now became
the titular king of Jerusalem, a shadowy title, which was destined
never to become a real one, except for a very brief interval.
When the Germans went away, the Christians of Palestine were once
more at the mercy of the Saracens, with whom they had broken the
treaty. The Bishop of Acre was sent to supplicate help from Europe.
He was shipwrecked and drowned almost immediately after leaving
port. Other messengers were sent. These also were drowned in a
tempest. So for a long time news of the sad condition of the
Christians did not reach Europe. But, indeed, it was difficult to
raise the crusading spirit again in the West. Like a flame of dry
straw it had burned fiercely for a short time, and then expired.
Jerusalem was fading from the minds of the people. It was become a
city of memories, round which the glories of those myths which
gathered about the name of Godfrey and Tancred were already present.
Innocent III., a young and ardent pope, wrote letter upon letter.
These produced little effect. He sent preachers to promise men
remission of sins in return for taking the Cross. But it was a time
when men were not thinking much about their sins. Priests imposed
the penance of pilgrimage to Palestine; but it does not appear that
many pilgrims went; and boxes were placed in all the churches to
collect money; but it is not certain that much money was put into
them. Then Fulke de Neuilly, the most eloquent priest of the time,
was sent to preach a crusade, and succeeded in fanning the embers of
the crusading enthusiasm once more into an evanescent and
short-lived flame. How little of religious zeal there was in the
movement may be judged by the sequel, and we cannot here delay to
detail the progress of the Crusade which ended in the conquest of
Constantinople. No history can be found more picturesque, more full
of incident, and more illustrative of the manners and thoughts of
the time; but it does not concern Jerusalem. An old empire fell, and
a new one was founded, but Christendom was outraged by the spectacle
of an expedition which started full of zeal for the conquest of the
Holy Land, and was diverted from its original purposes to serve the
ambition of its leaders, and the avarice of a commercial city.
Egypt and Syria, meantime, were kept quiet from war by troubles not
caused by man. The Nile ceased for a time to overflow, and a fearful
famine, a famine of which the records speak as dreadful beyond all
comparison, set in; during this men kept themselves alive by eating
the flesh of those who died, while the cities were filled with
corpses, and the river bore down on its tide dead bodies as numerous
as the lilies which bloom on its surface in spring. And before the
famine, which extended over Syria as well, had ceased, an earthquake
shook the country from end to end. Damascus, Tyre, Nablous, were
heaps of ruins; the walls of Acre and Tripoli fell down; Jerusalem
alone seemed spared, and there the Christian and the Mohammedan met
together, still trembling with fear, to thank God for their safety.
The sums of money which Fulke de Neuilly had raised in his preaching
were spent in repairing the walls which had fallen, and the knights
sent messengers in all directions to implore the assistance of the
West. Amaury, a wise and prudent chief, died, leaving an infant son,
who also died a few days after him, and Isabelle was a widow for the
fourth time. Pope Innocent III. could find none to go to the Holy
Land but those whom he ordered to go by way of penance. Thus, the
murderers of Conrad, Bishop of Wurtzburg, were enjoined to bear arms
for four years against the Saracens. They were to wear no garments
of bright colours; never to assist at public sports; not to marry;
to march barefooted, and dressed in woollen; to fast on bread and
water two days in the week, and whenever they came to a city to go
to the church, with bare backs, a rope round the neck, and rods in
the hand, there to receive flagellation. But their penance was not
so cruel as that inflicted on the luckless Frotmond, described above
(p. 124). Another criminal, one Robert, a knight, went to the pope
and confessed that while a captive in Egypt, during the dreadful
famine, he had killed his wife and child, and kept himself alive by
eating their flesh. The pope ordered him to pass three years in the
Holy Land.
The Crown of Jerusalem devolved, by the death of Amaury de Lusignan,
on the daughter of Isabelle, by her husband, Conrad of Tyre. The
barons, looking for a fit husband to share the throne with her, that
is, to become their leader in war, selected John de Brienne. He was
recommended by the King of France, “as a man good in arms, safe in
war, and provident in business.” And hopes were held out that
another crusade would be sent from France. On the strength of this
expectation, the Templars, in spite of contrary advice from the
Hospitallers, broke the truce which yet existed with the Mahometans,
and open war began again. King John de Brienne came with an army of
three hundred knights, and no more; fortresses and towns were taken;
the Christians began to drop off, and desert the falling country;
and the new king soon found himself with no place that he could call
his own, except the city of Acre. He sent to the pope for
assistance. The pope could not help him, because there was a new and
much easier crusade on the point of commencing, that against the
Albigeois. And then happened that most wonderful episode in all this
tangled story, the Crusade of the Children, “expeditio nugatoria,
expeditio derisoria.”
It had long been the deliberate opinion of many ecclesiastics that
the misfortunes of the Christian kingdom, and the failure of so many
Crusades, were due to the impure lives of the Christian soldiers.
Since the First Crusade it had been the constant and laudable aim of
the Church to maintain among the _croisés_ a feeling that personal
purity was the first requisite in an expedition inspired solely by
religious zeal. All their efforts were vain; laws were made, which
were broken at once. Shameful punishments were threatened, of which
no one took any notice. Even the camp of Saint Louis himself was
filled with every kind of immorality; while that of Richard’s
Crusade, spite of the strictest laws, became the scene of profligacy
the most unbridled. For every one Crusader, in the later
expeditions, who was moved by a spirit of piety, there might be
found ninety-nine who took the Cross for love of fighting, for the
sake of their _seigneurs_, for sheer desire of change, for a release
from serfdom, for getting away from the burden of wife and family,
for the chance of plunder and license, and for every other unworthy
excuse. Thus it was that the religious wars fostered and promoted
vice; and the failure of army after army was looked on as a clear
manifestation of God’s wrath against the sins of the camp.
This feeling was roused to its highest pitch when, in the year
1212, certain priests—Nicolas was the name of one of these
mischievous madmen—went about France and Germany calling on the
children to perform what the fathers, through their wickedness,
had been unable to effect, promising that the sea should be dry to
enable them to march across; that the Saracens would be
miraculously stricken with a panic at sight of them; that God
would, through the hands of children only, whose lives were yet
pure, work the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre.
Thousands—it is said fifty thousand—children of both sexes
responded to the call. They listened to the impassioned preaching
of the monks, believed their lying miracles, their visions, their
portents, their references to the Scriptures, and, in spite of all
that their parents could do, rushed to take the Cross, boys and
girls together, and streamed along the roads which led to
Marseilles and Genoa, singing hymns, waving branches, replying to
those who asked whither they were going, “We go to Jerusalem to
deliver the Holy Sepulchre,” and shouting their rallying cry,
“Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross.” They admitted whoever
came, provided he took the Cross; the infection spread, and the
children could not be restrained from joining them in the towns
and villages along their route. Their miserable parents put them
in prison; they escaped; they forbade them to go; the children
went in spite of prohibition. They had no money, no provisions, no
leaders; but the charity of the towns they passed through
supported them. At their rear streamed the usual tail of camp
followers, those people who lived wherever soldiers were found,
following in the track of the army like vultures, to prey on the
living, and to rob the dead. Of these there came many, _ribauds et
ribaudes_, corrupting the boys, and robbing them of their little
means; so that long before the army reached the shores of the
Mediterranean the purity of many was gone for ever.
There were two main bodies. One of these directed its way through
Germany, across the Alps, to Genoa. On the road they were robbed of
all the gifts which had been presented them; they were exposed to
heat and want, and very many either died on the march or wandered
away from the road, and so became lost to sight; when they reached
Italy they dispersed about the country seeking food, were stripped
by the villagers, and in some cases reduced to slavery. Only seven
thousand out of their number arrived at Genoa. Here they stayed for
some days. They looked down upon the Mediterranean, hoping that its
bright waters would divide to let them pass. But they did not; there
was no miracle wrought in their favour; a few, of noble birth, were
received among the Genoese families, and have given rise to
distinguished houses of Genoa; among them is the house of Vivaldi.
The rest, disappointed and disheartened, made their way back again,
and got home at length, the girls with the loss of their virtue, the
boys with the loss of their belief, all barefooted and in rags,
laughed at by the towns they went through, and wondering why they
had ever gone at all.
This was the end of the German army. That of the French was not so
fortunate, for none of them ever got back again at all. When they
arrived at Marseilles, thinned probably by the same causes as those
which had dispersed the Germans, they found, like their brethren,
that the sea did not open a path for them, as had been promised.
Perhaps some were disheartened and went home again. But fortune
appeared to favour them. There were two worthy merchants at
Marseilles, named Hugh Ferreus, and William Porcus, Iron Hugh and
Pig William, who traded with the East, and had in port seven ships,
in which they proposed to convey the children to Palestine. With a
noble generosity they offered to take them for nothing; all for love
of religion, and out of the pure kindness of their hearts. Of course
this offer was accepted with joy, and the seven vessels, laden with
the happy little Crusaders, singing their hymns, and flying their
banners, sailed out from Marseilles, bound for the East, accompanied
by William the Good and Hugh the Pious. It was not known to the
children, of course, that the chief trade of these merchants was the
lucrative business of kidnapping Christian children for the
Alexandrian market. It was so, however, and these respectable
tradesmen had never before made so splendid a _coup_. Unfortunately,
off the Island of St. Peter, they encountered bad weather, and two
ships went down, with all on board. What must have been the feelings
of the philanthropists, Pig William and Iron Hugh, at this
misfortune? They got, however, five ships safely to Alexandria, and
sold all their cargo, the Sultan of Cairo buying forty of the boys,
whom he brought up carefully and apart, intending them, doubtless,
for his best soldiers. A dozen, refusing to change their faith, were
martyred. None of the rest ever came back. Nobody in Europe seems to
have taken much notice of this extraordinary episode, and its memory
has so entirely died out that hardly a mention of it is found in any
modern history of the period. Thousands of children perished.
Probably their mothers wept, but no one else seems to have cared.
And the pope built a church on the Island of Saint Peter, to
commemorate the drowning of the innocents, with the cold remark that
the children were doing what the men refused to do. It is, however,
pleasing to add that the two honest merchants were accused some
years afterwards of conspiring to assassinate the Emperor Frederick,
and so perished on the gallows-tree.
In 1213, after the Children’s Crusade, Innocent essayed once more to
wake the enthusiasm of Christendom. He promised, as before,
remission of sins to those who took the Cross: he wrote to the
Sultans of Damascus and Cairo, informing them that the Crusaders
were coming, and urged on them the advisability of giving up
Jerusalem peaceably: and he informed the world that Islam was the
Beast of the Apocalypse, whose duration was to be six hundred and
sixty years, of which six hundred were already passed. Some, no
doubt, of his hearers, thought that, such being the case, they might
very well be quiet for sixty years more. At the same time he wrote
to the Patriarch of Jerusalem with strict injunctions to effect, if
possible, a reform in the morals of the Syrian Christians, as if
that were a hopeful, or even a possible task; and, as before,
preaching was ordered through every diocese, and collecting-boxes
for every church. In England the preaching was a total failure. John
saw a means of reconciling himself with the Church, and took the
Cross. But the barons, in their turn excommunicated, held aloof, and
occupied themselves with their home affairs. Philip Augustus of
France, after giving the fortieth part of his wealth to the expenses
of the Crusade, quarrelled with the Cardinal de Courçon over the
powers which he assumed to possess as the legate of the pope. In
Germany, Frederick II., recently crowned King of the Romans, took
the Cross in the hope of preserving the support of the Church, Otho,
his rival, being at war with the pope. Then came the Council of
Lateran, at which Innocent presided. He spoke of Jerusalem and the
Holy Land. His address was received without any marks of enthusiasm.
Nevertheless a Crusade was actually undertaken, partly against the
Prussians, partly to Palestine. The latter was led by Andrew, King
of Hungary. It was conveyed in Venetian ships from Spalatro and the
towns of the Adriatic first to Cyprus, where they were joined by the
deputies of the king and patriarch, and the military orders. Thence
they sailed to Acre, where they landed in 1217. Like all the
crusading armies, this was too big to be manageable, too diverse in
its composition to be subject to discipline, too unruly to be led,
and under too many leaders. They marched straight across Palestine,
avoiding Jerusalem and the south. They bathed in the Jordan, and
wandered along the banks of the Sea of Galilee, singing hymns,
making prisoners, and plundering the towns, the Saracens not
striking a blow. Their only military exploit was an attempt on Mount
Tabor, on the top of which stood a fortress. There, too, were the
ruins of a church and the monasteries which the Mohammedans had
destroyed. The Crusaders climbed the hill in the face of the enemy’s
arrows and stones, and would have carried the fortress easily by
assault but for one of those panics which were always seizing the
Christians at this period. They all turned and fled down the slope
of the hill in the wildest confusion. On their return to camp the
chiefs accused each other: the soldiers talked of treachery, and the
patriarch refused any more to bring out the wood of the Cross—for
this imposture had been started again. To revive the spirits of the
army, Andrew ordered a march into Phœnicia. The time was winter:
cold, hail, and rain killed the troops: on Christmas Eve a furious
tempest destroyed their camp and killed their horses. Dejected and
discouraged, the Christians returned to Acre. Famine began again,
and it was resolved to separate into four camps. John de Brienne,
King of Jerusalem, with the Duke of Austria, commanded the first,
which lay in the plains of Cæsarea: the kings of Hungary and Cyprus
the second, which was stationed at Tripoli: the Master of the
Templars the third, at the foot of Mount Carmel: the fourth remained
at Acre. The King of Cyprus died, and the King of Hungary went home
again. He had got possession of the head of St. Peter, the right
hand of St. Thomas, and one of the seven vessels in which the water
had been turned into wine. His anxiety to put these treasures in a
place of safety was the chief cause that led him to forsake the
Crusade.
After his departure the Crusaders changed all their plans, and—it is
very curious to observe how persistently they avoided Jerusalem, the
pretended object of their aims—embarked at Acre for the siege of
Damietta, which they took after nearly two years of fighting. This
taken, they advanced on Cairo: on the way, for we have no space to
follow all their misfortunes, the Nile overflowed, they were cut off
from all hope of succour, assailed on every side by the enemy, and
finally compelled to offer terms. During the negotiations they found
themselves deprived of everything, encamped on a plain inundated by
the waters of the Nile: worn-out by hunger and sickness. The King of
Jerusalem went himself to the Sultan. “There he sat down and shed
tears. ‘Sire,’ said the Sultan, ‘why do you weep?’ 'Sire,’ replied
the King, ‘I do well to weep, for the people with whom God has
charged me I see perishing in the midst of the waters and dying of
hunger.’ The Sultan had pity on the King, and wept himself, and for
four days running sent thirty thousand loaves daily to poor and
rich.”
So ended a Crusade which showed neither prudence nor bravery, which
began with an artificially-excited enthusiasm, and was carried on by
the leaders in hopes of gaining personal distinction. There was no
discipline, no strong bond of a common hope; the knights deserted
the banners after a defeat and went home, some of them without even
striking a blow; and even in this time of relic-worship the wood of
the Cross failed to animate the spirits of the soldiers. Of all the
Crusades, this was the least worthy of success, the least animated
by religious ardour.
We are next to see the conquest of Jerusalem absolutely effected by
a Crusader, but by a Crusader under excommunication and interdict,
by means of a treaty with the Mohammedans, and actually against the
will and wishes of the Church. It is a troubled and tangled web of
dissimulation, ambition, and interested motives, into which we dare
not venture.[78] On the one hand we have a sovereign, clear-sighted,
gifted with a strong will, highly educated, equal at all points of
scholarship and attainments to any Churchman, holding tolerant views
as to differences of religion, a poet, a musician, and an artist:
one, too, who loved to associate with poets and artists: a king who
surrounded himself with Mohammedan friends, and made no sign of
displeasure when they performed the devotions due to their religion
in his very presence: a lawyer far in advance of his age, a gallant
lover, and a magnificent prince. In his Sicilian Court he welcomed
alike Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan—even Saracen ladies. Here the
sturdy and uncompromising faith of Western Europe was shorn of its
strength and sapped by the spirit of toleration, or even worse, by
the spirit of free thinking. Frederick himself wrote and spoke
Arabic: he corresponded with the Sultan of Damascus, receiving from
him, and propounding himself, curious questions in geometry.
Society, in fact, modern society, born before its time, was about to
grow up amid the fostering influences of Frederick, when its growth
was checked and destroyed by the interposition of the pope. For, on
the other side, stood the Monk: cold, bigoted, cut off from social
influences, old in the practice of austerities, fanatic in the cause
of the Church, arrogating to himself the blind obedience of the
whole world, claiming ever more and more the domination over men’s
hearts. The Monk, personified by Pope Gregory IX., formerly the
Cardinal Ugolino, confronted the king, and bade him do his bidding;
while, to his monastic eyes, the existence of such a court as that
of Frederick’s was blasphemous, devilish, and full of sin.
Footnote 78:
See Milman’s ‘Hist. of Latin Christianity,’ vol. iv., p. 196 _et
seq._, for as clear a statement of the imbroglio between Frederick
and the Pope as can well be looked for.
Frederick had taken the Cross. He had, moreover, pledged himself to
embark for the Holy Land in August, 1227. The time approached.
Frederick had already opened up negotiations with El Malek el Kamíl,
the Sultan of Egypt. Presents had passed between them. Even an
elephant had been sent, and the Church shuddered at this big and
visible proof of treachery on the part of Frederick. Pilgrims
meantime assembled by thousands and from all parts: Frederick failed
in having provisions and ships for all the throng: the heats of
summer came on with violence, and fever broke out. But the fleet
sailed, with Frederick. Three days afterwards his ship came back. He
was ill, and could not go.
Old Pope Gregory saw his opportunity. He would use his power.
Frederick was not ill, but only pretending illness. He preached
from the text, “It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto
him through whom they come.” He pronounced the sentence of
excommunication. Frederick wrote, on hearing of this, in perfect
good temper, calmly stating the fact of his illness: he took no
notice of the excommunication; but, after holding a Diet of the
Barons of Apulia, he issued an appeal to Christendom, calling on
all the sovereigns of Europe to shake off the intolerable yoke of
the priests, and declaring his own innocence in the matter of the
broken covenant. He called to witness the ill-treatment and
ingratitude with which the Church had always repaid those who
submitted—the malice and bitterness with which the Church had
always persecuted those who refused to submit; and he pointed to
the power and wealth of Rome as contrasted with the poverty of the
early Church. In the long history of the world’s revolt against
the pretensions of the priesthood, which has never for a moment
ceased since these pretensions first began to make themselves
heard, no more remarkable document has ever been issued, save only
the famous theses of Luther.
Frederick was rewarded by a second excommunication, and the pope
placed every town in which he might be under interdict. Then the
people of Rome rose in insurrection, and the pope fled.
Frederick went to the Holy Land. If he wished to avoid fighting with
his friends, the Saracens, he had certainly succeeded; because the
Crusaders, forty thousand in number, on hearing of Frederick’s
return to Italy, all re-embarked and went home again. The king,
notwithstanding a peremptory order from the pope forbidding him to
embark so long as he was under the ban of the Church, set sail with
a small fleet of twenty galleys, and six hundred knights. He arrived
at Acre. The Knights Templars and Hospitallers received him as their
king. Frederick was now married to Yolante, the daughter of John of
Brienne, from whom he took the crown of Jerusalem, on the ground
that he only held it in right of his wife, whose rights were now
descended to her daughter. The clergy refused to meet him, and there
came messengers from the pope, by whose command the knights of the
orders withdrew their help. Frederick went his own way. He sent
Balian, Prince of Tyre, as an ambassador to El Malik el Kamíl, who
sent him back with valuable presents, Saracenic robes, singers, and
dancing girls, and, above all, Frederick’s old friend Fakhr-ed-dín.
Then the Templars wrote to the Sultan proposing the assassination of
the Emperor. Kameel quietly sent on the letter to his friend, who
read it and said nothing. The negotiations between Frederic and
Kameel went on in secrecy; they were so far advanced that the former
found himself in a position to disclose to the barons the terms
proposed. He sent for the Grand Masters of the two orders, and
submitted his proposals to them. They refused to act without the
patriarch. Frederick knowing well enough that the patriarch would
refuse to act without the pope’s consent, replied that he could do
without that prelate. And then the treaty was signed. The Christians
were to have Jerusalem, except the Mosque of Omar, where the
Mohammedans were to worship freely; the Saracens were to have their
own tribunal; the emperor, King of Jerusalem, was to send no succour
to any who might attack the sultan; with some minor points. And as
soon as the treaty was signed, the Germans set off with Frederick,
and the Master of the Teutonic Knights, to the Holy City. The
Christians had got back their city. The Church of Christ refused to
have it, or to acknowledge, in any way, the treaty. Frederick rode
into the city to find the church empty and deserted. With his
knights and soldiers he marched up the aisle, took the crown from
the altar, and put it on his own head, without oath or religious
ceremony of any kind. Nor did he affect any religious zeal or
manifest any emotion. “I promised I would come,” he said, “and I am
here.” It was his answer to the world, and his defiance of the pope.
His vow was fulfilled, in a literal sense; but the Crusade was
ruined; he had done more than any other king since Godfrey; he had
recovered the city, but without slaughtering the infidel, and
subject to the conditions that the Mohammedans were to practise
their religion within its walls. What did Frederick care for a
religion which he confounded with the gloomy teaching of his
ecclesiastical enemies? “I am not here,” he confided to his friend
Fakhr-ed-dín, “to deliver the Holy City, but to maintain my own
credit.”
And two days after his coronation he went away again, in cynical
contempt of the city and its church. He wrote a letter to the pope
and sovereigns of Europe, stating that he had, “by miracle,” taken
the city, which was henceforth Christian. The pope, in an agony of
rage at the way in which his enemy had ignored his excommunication,
foamed at the mouth, and called the treaty a treaty of Belial.
Moreover, he could not but feel the awful irony of the situation,
when Jerusalem itself, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were
forbidden to have the service of the Christian religion performed in
them, because their deliverer, a Christian king, was under the
interdict of the pope. And here, reluctantly, we must leave the
fortunes of Frederick; not, perhaps, a good man, but a better man
than the arrogant and implacable monk who opposed him; and, perhaps,
from an unecclesiastical point of view, the best man in a high place
at that time in all the world.
The treaty was signed in 1229. Frederick in leaving Palestine, left
the Christians without a chief, without a head. The Christians in
Jerusalem, always dreading an attack from the Saracens, were
constantly taking refuge in the tower of David, or the surrounding
deserts. The patriarch, who had done most to estrange the emperor,
wrote letter after letter, imploring for help. How many such letters
had been sent since the Crusades had first commenced? Gregory had
concluded some sort of reconciliation with Frederick, and now asked
his help in an attempt to get up a new Crusade. It was left to the
Franciscan friars—Saint Francis of Assisi had himself been present
at the Crusade of King Andrew—to preach this. [Sidenote: 1237.]
There were found a large number of barons in France to enrol their
names; and by the Council of Tours it was resolved that the Cross
should no longer be a pretext for the safety of every sort of
criminal. But while the Crusaders were assembling came the news of
the downfall of the Latin kingdom of Constantinople, and a
discussion begun as to whether it were better to go to the help of
that city instead of Jerusalem. And before they had decided, came a
message from Frederick urging them to wait for him. While they
waited, civil war broke out in Italy. The old animosity between
Frederick and the pope was revived; and, worse than this, the treaty
which Frederick had made with El Malik el Kamíl, which was for ten
years only, expired; and the Saracens from Kerak, marching suddenly
upon Jerusalem, took it without the least resistance, and razed the
tower of David. The pope had forbidden the Crusaders to leave
Europe; but in spite of his prohibition, a small army, under the
Duke of Brittany and the Count of Champagne, landed in Acre. After a
few ineffective forays, they experienced a defeat which cost them
the loss of many of their leaders. So they all went home again, and
were replaced by an English prince, Richard of Cornwall, who
afterwards called himself Emperor of Germany. The Saracens thought
that Richard Lion Heart was coming back again, and awaited his
approach with the keenest terror. But he did nothing. Abandoned both
by Templars and Hospitallers, he contented himself with ransoming
the Christian prisoners, and, after visiting Jerusalem, and
worshipping at the Holy Places, Richard returned to Europe, and the
turmoil of European wars.
And now a new enemy appeared in the field. The people of Kh’árezm,
driven westwards by the Tartars, came into Syria, a wild and
ferocious band, with their wives and children, sparing neither
Mohammedans nor Christians. Had the forces in Syria been united, a
successful stand might have been made against them. But the
Mohammedans were divided amongst themselves, and the Sultan of Cairo
offered the Kharezmians Palestine for their own, if they would
conquer it. They accepted the offer with joy, and marched twenty
thousand strong upon Jerusalem. All the people in the city abandoned
it hastily, except the helpless poor and infirm. These the
Kharezmians found in their beds, and after killing them, thirsting
for more blood, they inveigled back the Christians by hoisting the
flags of the Cross. The flying Christians, looking round from time
to time, caught sight at last of the banner of victory. Satisfied
that God had delivered the city by a special miracle, and hearing,
moreover, the bell ring for prayer, they trooped back to the city.
Directly they were within the gates, the Kharezmians, who had only
withdrawn a short distance, returned and surrounded them. In the
depth of night the unhappy Christians endeavoured to fly. They were
all cut to pieces. None were spared. And the barbarians then turned
their wrath upon the very tombs, and tore up the coffins of Godfrey
and Baldwin, which they burned with all the sacred relics they could
find.
The Templars at Acre called on the Saracen princes of Damascus,
Emessa, and Kerak, to make common cause against their common enemy.
They came to Acre, headed by the valiant El Melik el Mensúr, Prince
of Emessa, whose entrance into the city was greeted with shouts of
applause. The allied armies met the Kharezmians on the plain of
Philistia, the battlefield of so many periods and so many peoples. A
curious incident is told, which took place before the battle. The
Count of Jaffa, an excommunicated man, asked the patriarch, who was
there with his wood of the Cross, as usual, for absolution. He
refused it. Again he asked, to be again refused. But then the Bishop
of Bama, impatient of his superior’s obstinacy, cried out, “Never
mind. The patriarch is wrong, and I absolve you myself.” Of course
one priest’s absolution is as good as another’s, and the count went
into battle, to be killed with a light heart. They fought all that
day, and all the next day, with a ferocity which nothing could
equal. But then the Mohammedans gave way, and the victory remained
with the Kharezmians. Of the allies thirty thousand lay dead on the
field, while of the Christian knights, there returned to Acre only
the Prince of Tyre, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, with his wood,
thirty-three Templars, twenty-six Knights of St. John, and three
Teutonic knights. The Kharezmians came before Jaffa. They tied
Walter de Brienne, who was their prisoner, to a cross, and told him
that unless he exhorted the besieged to submission they would put
him to death. He called on the garrison to defend themselves to the
last extremity, and was sent to Cairo, where he was murdered by the
mob. Palestine was relieved of the presence of the Kharezmians by
the Sultan of Cairo, who sent them to Damascus, which they took and
plundered. They then demanded the fulfilment of his promise as
regarded the lands of Palestine. But the Sultan prevaricated, and
refused, sending an army of Egyptians against them; they were
defeated in ten battles, and perish out of history altogether,
having only appeared for the brief space of three or four years.
The Kharezmians were gone; but the Christians, who had suffered most
of any at their hands, were in a condition of terrible weakness. So
threatening was the state of affairs, that they once more forced
their claims on the pope, and showed how, without help, they were
all undone. The pope renewed all the privileges accorded by his
predecessor to those who took the Cross. And then followed the
Crusades of Saint Louis. Of his expedition to Egypt, the siege of
Damietta, the calamities which befel his army, his own captivity,
his ransom and freedom, we cannot here speak. They belong to the
special history of the Crusades.
It was in 1250, after his return, that Saint Louis visited Acre. He
had with him a small number of knights, all in rags, and deprived of
everything. A pestilence broke out in the city. Louis remained,
endeavouring to ransom the twelve thousand Christian captives from
the Sultan of Cairo. Meantime he was urgently wanted at home, where
that most singular movement, known as the revolt of the
_Pastoureaux_, was distracting his country. And all efforts failed
to raise bands of new Crusaders. Some, however, went to join the
king. Among them was a Norwegian knight, named “Alenar de Selingan,”
according to Joinville, who, with his companions, beguiled the time
till they should be fighting the Saracens by slaying the lions in
the desert. The Sheikh of the Assassins also sent an embassy with
presents to Louis, asking for his friendship, and offering to remain
as firmly allied to him “as the fingers on the hand or the shirt to
the body.” Ives, a monk who could speak Arabic, was sent back on the
part of the king with a present of gold and silver cups and scarlet
mantles. He brought back a confused and wondrous story of the
religion of this sect (see p. 322). He described them, oddly, as
having a wonderful veneration for Peter, whom they maintained to be
still alive. And he told how a mournful silence reigned round the
castle of the Sheikh, and how, when he appeared in public, a herald
went before, crying out, “Whoever you are, fear to appear before him
who holds in his hand the life and death of kings.”
Louis, meantime, was repairing the fortifications of Cæsarea and
Jaffa, and making severe laws against the dissolute morals of the
Christians in the East and of his own men. His knights went on
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, whither he refused himself to go. But he
went to Nazareth, to Mount Tabor, and other sacred places.
After a little fighting, the news of his mother’s death determined
him to go home. He sailed in 1254, having been four years engaged in
his disastrous expedition, which only had the effect of making the
Mohammedans cautious how far they attacked the Christian
settlements, and mindful of the exasperation into which their fall
might throw the West of Europe. The subsequent efforts to raise a
Crusade all failed. The poets as well as the priests did their best,
but with no success. It is remarkable, however, that there is not a
word about crusading in the whole of the Romance of the Rose, except
a reference or two to the palm of the pilgrim. Neither of its
writers, certainly, was at all likely to be touched by the crusading
enthusiasm. Rutebeuf however, throws himself into the projected
Crusade with extraordinary vigour. “Ha! roi de France!” he cries—
“Ha! roi de France!
Acre est toute jor en balance.”
He laments that no one will come to the help of the sacred places.
Ah! Antioch; ah! Holy Land,
Thy piteous wail has reached this strand.
We have no Godfrey, brave and bold;
The fire of charity is cold
In every Christian heart;
And Jacobin and Cordelier
May preach, but not for love or fear
Will soldier now depart.
He shows, too, the change come over the thoughts of men by giving a
dispute between a _croisé_ and one who refuses to take the Cross, in
which the latter advances the startling proposition, not heard since
the time of Origen, that a man can very well get to heaven without
“pilgrimising,” and without fighting for the Cross.[79]
Footnote 79:
“Je dis que cil est foux nayx,
Qui se mest en autrui servage
Quant Dieu peut gaaigner sayx
Et vivre de son heritage.”
But Rutebeuf is very urgent. He laments the decay of religious zeal.
O’ergrown with grass the long road lies,
Thick trodden once by eager feet,
When men pressed on with streaming eyes,
Themselves to offer at God’s seat.
They send, instead, wax tapers now;
God has no true hearts left below.
The fatal thing, however, was a feeling slowly growing up that it
was God’s will that the Church of the Sepulchre should belong to the
infidel; and a bishop of a somewhat later time gives three reasons
for this; namely, first, as a plea for the Christians; second, for
the confusion of the Saracens; and thirdly, for the conversion of
the Jews. And for the first reason he argues that Christians will
never be allowed to have the city again till they are sinless,
because God will not have his children commit sin in such a place;
as for the Saracens, they are, of course, only dogs; now the master
of a house is not very careful about the behaviour of his dogs, but
he cannot bear ill behaviour on the part of his children.
Little now remains to tell, because Jerusalem passes away from
history, and the events which follow are hardly even indirectly
concerned with the Holy City. Louis led another Crusade and met his
death at Tunis. Edward of England, with his brother Edmund and eight
hundred men came to Acre, but were, of course of little use with so
small a reinforcement; and, after concluding a treaty with the
Sultan of Egypt, they too departed. Then twenty years of expectation
and fear pass away: Europe looks with indifference upon the Holy
Land: Laodicea is taken: Tripoli is taken: and lastly, Acre itself
is taken. The siege of this, the last place held by the Christians,
lasted a month, when the Mohammedans entered the city after a
furious assault. They were driven back by arrows and stones hurled
from the houses: day after day they came on, were repelled with
slaughter, and every day the Christians saw their camp growing
larger and larger. The military orders fought with a heroism which
caused the Saracens to think that two men were fighting in every
knight. But the end came at length, with a great and terrible
carnage. The nuns, trembling, and yet heroic, actually preserved
their honour by cutting off their noses, so that the Saracens only
killed them. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was put on board a ship,
entreating to be allowed to die with his flock. The ship sank and he
was drowned, so that his prayer was granted. A violent storm was
raging. Ladies rushed to the port, offering the sailors all they
had, diamonds, pearls, and gold, to be put on board. Those who had
no money or jewels were left on the shore to the mercies of the
victors. The Templars held out in their castle a few days longer and
then fell. All were killed. So ended, after two hundred years of
continued fighting, the Christian settlements in Palestine.[80] The
West heard the news of the fall of Acre with a sort of unreasoning
rage, and instantly set about mutual accusations as to the cause of
its fall. And the wretched _Pullani_, the Syrian Christians, who had
survived the taking of Acre, dropped over one by one to Italy and
begged their bread in the streets while they told the story of their
fall.
Footnote 80:
In the same year the house of the Virgin was miraculously
transferred from Nazareth to a hill in Dalmatia; whence, by
another miracle, it came to Loretto. Why did not the Holy
Sepulchre come too?
Pilgrims and travellers continued to visit Jerusalem. Sir John
Mandeville was there, early in the fourteenth century, and describes
the churches and sacred sites, but says little enough about the
condition of the people. Bertrandon de la Roquière was there a
hundred years later. He says that though there were many other
Christians in Jerusalem, the Franks experienced the greatest amount
of persecution from the Saracens, and that there were only two
Cordeliers in the Church of the Sepulchre. And in the same century
Ignatius Loyola twice went on pilgrimage. He wished to end his days
in Palestine, but this was, unhappily, denied him, and he returned,
to be a curse to the world by establishing his society. Among other
pilgrims, passing over various princes and kings, may be mentioned
Korte, the bookseller of Altona early in the eighteenth century, who
was the first to assail the authenticity of the sites, and that of
Henry Maundrell, chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo.
But during the interval of five hundred years Jerusalem has been
without a history. Nothing has happened but an occasional act of
brutality on the part of her masters towards the Christians, or an
occasional squabble among the ecclesiastics. Perhaps, some time, the
day may come when all together will be agreed that there is no one
spot in the world more holy than another, in spite of associations,
because the whole earth is the Lord’s. Then the tender interest
which those who read the Scriptures will always have for the places
which the writers knew so well may have a fuller and freer play,
apart from lying traditions, monkish legends and superstitious
impostures. For, to use the words which Cicero applied to Athens,
there is not one spot in all this city, no single place where the
foot may tread, which does not possess its history.