Chapter XXXIX

BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CRUSADES—CONDITION OF EAST AND WEST—THE
CHILDREN’S CRUSADE.

The campaign of Europe against Constantinople wrought only evil among the Christian colonists of Syria and Palestine. In the time of their deepest need there were diverted from their cause the enormous sums of money that had been raised for their succor, multitudes of brother warriors, whose swords were sadly missed amid the daily menaces of their foes, and the active sympathies, if not even the prayers, of their coreligionists at home. Dire calamities also fell upon them, which no human arm could have prevented. The plague had followed the terrible Egyptian famine of 1200, and spread its pall far to the East. Earthquakes of the most terrific sort changed the topography of many places; tidal waves obliterated shore-lines; fortresses, like those of Baalbec and Hamah, tottered to their fall upon the unsteady earth; stately temples, which had monumented the art and religion of antiquity, became heaps of ruins; Nablous, Damascus, Tyre, Tripoli, and Acre were shaken down. It would seem that only the common prayers of Christians and Mussulmans averted the calamity from Jerusalem, the city that was sacred in the creed of both.

Such sums of money as the cries for help brought from Europe were expended first in repairing the walls of Acre, into which service the Christians forced their Moslem prisoners. Among the chain-gangs thus set at work was the famous Sa’di, the greatest of Persian poets, almost equally noted for his eloquence as a preacher and for his adventures as a traveller.

Amaury, King of Jerusalem, died, leaving his useless sceptre in the hands of his wife, Isabella, whose demise passed it on to her daughter, Mary, by her former husband, Conrad of Tyre. Such were the burdens of the unsupported throne that none of the warriors in the East ventured to assume the responsibility of the new queen’s hand. A husband was sought for her in Europe. John of Brienne was nominated by Philip of France for the hazardous nuptials. John had been a monk, but his adventurous and martial spirit soon tired of the cowl. He abandoned the austerities of a professional saint for the freedom of the camp and the dangers of the field. The romantic perils of wedding the dowerless queen attracted him.

Rumors of a new crusade of gigantic proportions led Malek-Ahdel to propose a renewal of the truce with the Christians, which, though continually broken, was in his estimation safer than an openly declared war. The Hospitallers approved peace. This was sufficient to make their rivals, the Templars, eager for the reverse, and the majority of the knights and barons flew to arms against one another.

John of Brienne reached Acre with a meagre following of three hundred knights. His nuptials with the young Queen Mary were rudely disturbed by the Moslems, who besieged Ptolemaïs and swarmed in threatening masses around Acre. In their straits the Christians again appealed to Europe; but Christendom was fully occupied with contentions within its own borders. France was at war with England to repossess the fair provinces which the Angevine kings had wrested from her along the Atlantic. At the same time she was pressing her conquests beyond the Rhine against the Germans. Germany was divided by the rival claimants for the imperial sceptre, Otho and Philip of Swabia.

A more serious diversion of interest from the affairs of Palestine was due to the crusade under Simon de Montfort against the Albigenses, whose record makes one of the blackest pages of human history. (See Dr. Vincent’s volume in this series.) The Saracens in Spain were also threatening to overturn the Christian kingdom of Castile, and were defeated only with tremendous effort, which culminated in the great battle of Tolosa (1212).

In 1212 or 1213 occurred what is known as the Children’s Crusade, a movement that doubtless has been greatly exaggerated by after writers, but the facts of which illustrate the ignorance and credulity, as well as the adventurous, not to say marauding, spirit of the times. If in our day the free circulation of stories relating the adventures of cutthroats and robbers inflames the passions and engenders lawless conceits in the young, we may imagine that reports of the bloody work done by persecutors of the Albigenses, dastardly and cruel deeds, which were applauded by Pope and people, could not but make a similar impression upon the callow mind of childhood in the middle ages. Boys practised the sword-thrust at one another’s throats, built their pile of fagots about the stake of some imaginary heretic, and charged in mimic brigades upon phantom hosts of Infidels. It needed only the impassioned appeals of unwise preachers to start the avalanche thus trembling on the slope. It was proclaimed that supernal powers waited to strengthen the children’s arms. The lads were all to prove Davids going forth against Goliaths; the girls would become new Judiths and Deborahs without waiting for their growth. It was especially revealed that the Mediterranean from Genoa to Joppa would be dried up so that these children of God could pass through it dry-shod.

From towns and cities issued bands of boys and girls, who in response to the question, “Whither are you going?” replied, “To Jerusalem.” “Boy preachers” were universally encouraged to proclaim the crusade. One lad, named Stephen, announcing that Christ had visited him, led hundreds away. A boy named Nicholas, instigated by older persons, deluded a company into crossing the Alps, where many starved, were killed, or kidnapped. The real leaders, however, seem to have been men and women of disorderly habits, who in an age of impoverished homes readily adopted the lives of tramps, and used the pitiable appearance of the children to secure the charities of the towns and cities they passed through. Saracen kidnappers also took advantage of the craze to lure children on board of ships by promise of free passage to the Holy Land. Thus entrapped, they were sold as slaves for Eastern fields or harems. Seven vessels were loaded with Christian children at Marseilles. Five of the ships reached Egypt, consigned to slave merchants; two were wrecked off the isle of St. Peter, where Pope Gregory IX. afterwards caused a church to be built in memory of the victims.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE.