Chapter III: Part 3

Frederick's first act on entering Italy in 1174 was to wreak vengeance on Susa, where he had once been captive; no half measures were used, and the town was soon a heap of ashes. Asti, also, the first league town which lay in the path of the imperial army, was straightway made to capitulate. But, although the fall of these two cities induced many to abandon the cause of the league, the new fortress of Alessandria, situated as it was in the midst of a swampy plain and surrounded with massive earth walls, proved an effectual stumbling-block in the way of the avenger. Heavy rains and floods came to the aid of the besieged city and the imperial tents and huts were almost submersed, while hunger and other discomforts caused many of the allies of the Germans to desert. The siege was continued for six months, but Frederick at last abandoned it on learning that an army of the league was about to descend on his weakened forces. He burned his besieging implements, his catapults, battering rams, and movable towers, and retreated to Pavian territory.

The forces of the allied cities were sufficient to alarm Frederick, but they did not follow up their advantage. One is surprised to find negotiations for a peace begun at a time when a decisive battle seemed imminent. What preliminary steps were taken, or why the Lombards should have been the first to take them, is not clear; although some slight successes gained by Christian of Mayence at this juncture in the neighborhood of Bologna may have been not without effect.

A commission of six men was appointed to draw up the articles of treaty, three being chosen from the cities, three appointed by the Emperor. The consuls of Cremona were to decide on disputed points--points, namely, as to which it was impossible to arrive at a mutual agreement. A truce to all hostilities was meanwhile declared, and at Montebello both sides bound themselves to concur in whatever arrangement should be made by the commission and the consuls. The Lombards meanwhile went through the form of a submission, knelt at the Emperor's feet, and lowered their standards before him. Frederick thereupon received them into favor and dismissed the greater part of his army, the league doing likewise.

Naturally enough the disputed points were the most important ones, and had to be referred to the consuls of Cremona. But the rage and disappointment of the Lombards went beyond bounds when the different decisions, which, indeed, were remarkably fair, at last were made known. The Emperor was to exercise no prerogatives in Northern Italy that had not been exercised in the time of Henry V; he was also to sanction the continuance of the league. But no arrangement was made for a peace between the heads of Christendom, although the league had made this its first demand. Then, too, Alessandria, which Frederick considered to have been founded in scorn of himself, was to cease to exist, and its inhabitants were to return to their former homes.

The report of the consuls roused a storm of indignation; in many cases the document embodying it was torn in shreds by the mob. The Lombards altogether refused to be bound by the terms of the treaty, and reopened hostilities. Frederick hastily gathered what forces he could and sent a pressing call to Germany for aid.

It was now that the greatest vassal of the Crown, Henry the Lion, rewarded twenty years of trustfulness and favor by deserting Frederick in his hour of need. The only cause that is known, a strangely insufficient one, was a dispute concerning the town of Goslar, which the Emperor had withdrawn from Henry's jurisdiction. The details of the meeting, which took place according to one chronicle at Partenkirchen, to another at Chiavenna, are but vaguely known to us, but Frederick is said to have prostrated himself at the feet of his mighty subject and to have begged in vain for his support.

We have seen how Frederick, at the beginning of his reign, had caused Henry, who was already in possession of Saxony, to be acknowledged Duke of Bavaria in place of Henry Jasomirgott, who was conciliated by the gift of the new duchy of Austria. From that moment Henry the Lion's power had steadily grown. He increased his glory, and above all his territory, by constant wars against the Wends, developing a hitherto unheard-of activity in the matter of peopling Slavic lands with German colonists. The bishoprics of Lubeck, Ratzeburg and Schwerin owed to him their origin, while he it was who caused the marshy lands around Bremen to be reclaimed and cultivated.

When, on various occasions, conspiracies were formed against Henry by other Saxon nobles, the Emperor had boldly and successfully taken his part, helping in person to quell the insurgents; in 1162 he had prevented the Duke of Austria and the King of Bohemia from trying to bring about their rival's downfall.

A marriage with Matilda, daughter of the King of England, had increased the great Saxon's influence; and during the continued absences of the Emperor in Italy his rule was kingly in all but name. In 1171 he affianced his daughter to the son of King Waldemar of Denmark, and by this alliance secured his new colonies from Danish hostility.

In actual extent and productiveness his estates fairly surpassed those of his imperial cousin, and the defection of such a man signified the death knell of the latter's cause.

The battle of Legnano, fought on May 29, 1176, ended in disaster and defeat. Frederick himself, who was wounded and thrown from his horse, finally reached Pavia after days of adventurous flight, having meanwhile been mourned as dead by the remnant of his army.

All was not yet lost, indeed, for the league, not knowing what reinforcements were on the way from Germany--the small army of Christian of Mayence, too, was still harvesting victories in the March of Ancona--did not follow up its successes. Cremona, moreover, jealous of Milan, began to waver in her allegiance to the cause of which she had so long been the leader, and eventually signed a treaty with the Emperor.

But Frederick, although he at first made a pretence of continuing the war, was soon forced by the representations of his nobles to abandon the policy of twenty-four years, and to make peace on the best terms obtainable with Alexander III, and, through him, with the Lombard cities. The oath of Wuerzburg was broken, and the two treaties of Anagni and Venice put an end to the long war.

At Anagni the articles were drawn up on which the later long and wearisome negotiations were based. The Emperor, the Empress, and the young King of the Romans were to acknowledge Alexander as the Catholic and universal pope, and to show him all due respect. Frederick was to give up the prefecture of Rome and the estates of Matilda, and to make peace with the Lombards, with the King of Sicily, the Emperor of Constantinople, and all who had aided and supported the Roman Church. Provision was to be made for a number of German archbishops and bishops who had received their authority from the antipopes.

There is no need to dwell on the endless discussions that ensued with regard to these matters; more than once it seemed as though all attempts at agreement would have to be abandoned. But both parties were sincerely anxious for peace, and at last a remarkably skilful compromise was drawn up at Venice.

Frederick had objected strongly to renouncing the rights of the empire regarding the estates of Matilda; he was to be allowed to draw the revenues of those estates for fifteen years to come, and the question was eventually to be settled by commissioners. The form of the peace with the Lombards was a still more difficult matter, but the Pope made a wise suggestion which was adopted. A truce of six years was declared, at the end of which time it was hoped that a basis would have been found for a readjustment of the relations between the Emperor and the league. With Sicily, too, hostilities were to cease for a term of fifteen years.

It will be seen that all the great questions at issue, save the recognitions of Alexander as pope, were thus relegated to a future time; to a time when the persons concerned would no longer be swayed by passion, and when the din of war would be forgotten.

During the negotiations the Pope had remained for the most part in Venice, while Frederick had not been allowed to enter the city, but had remained in the neighborhood in order that the envoys might pass more quickly to and fro. The terms of the treaty were finally assented to by the Emperor at Chioggia, July 21, 1177. Alexander now prepared to carry out his cherished project of holding a mighty peace congress at Venice; and there, at the news of the approaching reconciliation, nobles and bishops and their retinues came together from all parts of Europe.

Now that the peace was to become an accomplished fact, Venice outdid herself in preparing to honor the Emperor. The latter, too, was determined to spare no expense that could add to the splendor of the occasion. He had negotiated for a loan with the rich Venetians, and he now imposed a tax of one thousand marks of silver on his nobles.

Frederick's coming was announced for Sunday, July 24th, and by that time the city had donned its most festive attire. Two tall masts had been erected on the present Piazzetta, and from them floated banners bearing the lion of St. Mark's. A platform had been constructed at the door of the church, and upon it was placed a raised throne for the Pope.

When the Emperor landed on the Lido he was met by cardinals whom Alexander had sent to absolve him from the ban. The Doge, the Patriarch of Grado, and a crowd of lesser dignitaries then appeared and furnished a brilliant escort with their gondolas and barks. Having reached the shore Frederick, in the presence of an immense crowd, approached the papal throne, and, throwing off his purple mantle, prostrated himself before the Pope and kissed the latter's feet. Three red slabs of marble mark the spot where he knelt. It was a moment of world-wide importance; the Empire and the papacy had measured themselves in mortal combat, and the Empire, in form at least, was now surrendering at discretion. No wonder that later ages have fabled much about this meeting. The Pope is said, with his foot on the neck of the prostrate King, to have exclaimed aloud, "The lion and the young dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet!"

As a matter of fact Alexander's letters of this time express anything but insolent triumph, and his relations with the Emperor after the peace had been sworn to assumed the friendliest character. On the day after his entry into Venice Frederick visited him in the palace of the Patriarch, and we are told that the conversation was not only amicable, but gay, and that the Emperor returned to the Doge's palace in the best of moods.

A year after the congress at Venice the antipope--Calixtus III had succeeded Paschal in 1168 without in any way altering the complexion of affairs--made a humble submission to Alexander at Tusculum. Therewith the schism ended, and a year later, in 1179, Alexander held a great council in the Lateran, where it was decreed that a two-thirds majority in the college of cardinals was necessary to make valid the choice of a pope. There was no mention of the clergy and people of Rome, none of the right of confirmation on the part of the Emperor.

It was not to be supposed that Frederick would ever forgive that act of Henry the Lion by which the whole aspect of the war in Italy had been changed. Yet it is probable that technically Henry had committed no offence against the Empire; for no charge of desertion or "_herisliz_," as refusal to do military service was called, or even of neglect of feudal duties, was ever brought against him. He probably possessed some privilege, like that bestowed on Henry Jasomirgott, rendering it optional with him to accompany the Emperor on expeditions out of Germany.

But the circumstances had been so exceptional, so much had hung in the balance at the time of Frederick's appeal for aid, that no one can blame the Emperor for now letting Henry feel the full weight of his displeasure. Nor was an occasion lacking by which his ruin might be accomplished. For years the Saxon nobles and bishops had writhed under Henry's oppressions, and the Emperor had hitherto taken sides with his powerful cousin; he now lent a willing ear to the charges of the latter's enemies.

The restitution to Udalrich of Halberstadt of his bishopric, a restitution that had been provided for in the treaty of Venice, gave the signal for the conflict. Henry the Lion refused to restore certain fiefs which, as Udalrich asserted, belonged to the Halberstadt Church. Archbishop Philip of Cologne and others came forward with similar claims.

Henry was repeatedly summoned to answer his accusers, but did not deign to appear. On the contrary he prepared to raise up for himself allies and to besiege the castles of those who would not join him. His own lands were thereupon laid waste by his private enemies, and that with the Emperor's consent. But Halberstadt, which took part in one of these plundering expeditions, suffered a terrible vengeance at the hand of the enraged Guelf. In one destructive blaze the city, churches and all, was reduced to ashes. In the war that he was now waging Henry did not hesitate to call in even the Wends to his aid, but Westphalia was soon lost to him, and only in East Saxony was he able to maintain himself.

At a diet held in Wuerzburg in January, 1180, the Emperor laid the question before the princes what was to be done to one who had refused, after having been three times summoned, to come before the imperial tribunal. The answer was that he was to be deprived of all honor, to be judged in the public ban, and to lose his duchy and all his benefices. Thus was final sentence passed on the chief man in Germany next to the Emperor himself.

An imperial army was now raised and several fortresses were besieged. No battle took place, but the fact that Frederick had a large force at his command was sufficient to cause defection in the ranks of Henry's allies. In 1181 the Emperor's army marched as far as Lubeck, which city, Henry's proudest foundation, was forced to submit. The whole region north of the Elbe followed Lubeck's example, and Henry was soon forced to confess that his cause was hopeless. He laid down his arms, and was summoned to a diet at Erfurt to learn his fate. Here he fell on his knees before Frederick, who, with tears in his eyes, raised him and kissed him in token of peace.

He was made to surrender all his possessions with the exception of Brunswick and Luneburg. He was to go into exile, and to bind himself by an oath not to return without the Emperor's permission. He soon afterward passed over to Normandy, where he stayed for two years with his father-in-law, Henry II. He then passed over with the latter to England.

The years immediately following the Congress of Venice were, strange to say, the most brilliant period of Frederick's reign. It was, after all, only his ideals that had suffered, and a time of prosperity now settled down upon the nation.

With Alexander the Emperor remained on friendly terms; but the Pope in 1181 died in exile, having been forced by the faithless Romans, as Gregory VII had been a century before, to flee the holy city.

The peace with the Lombard towns was signed at Constance within the six years agreed upon, on June 23, 1183. The communal freedom for which they had fought so long was now accorded them; the Emperor gave up all right to the regalia and recognized the Lombard League. His dream of becoming a second Justinian had not been realized.

The cities received the privilege of using the woods, meadows, bridges, and mills in their immediate vicinity, and of raising revenues from them; the jurisdiction in ordinary, civil, and criminal cases; the right of making fortifications. The Emperor was, to a certain extent, to be provided for when he chose to come to Italy; but he promised to make no long stay in any one town. The cities were to choose their own consuls, who were to be invested with their dignity by the Emperor or his representatives. The ceremony, however, was to be performed only once in five years. In important matters where more than a certain sum was at stake, appeals to the Emperor were to be allowed.

With the city of Alessandria, so long to him a thorn in the flesh, Frederick had already come to a separate agreement by consent of the league. The city was, technically, to be annihilated, and then to be refounded; it was no longer to bear the name of the Pope, but that of the Emperor. Alessandria was to become Cæsarea; yet none of the Inhabitants was to suffer by the change.

The treaty is extant; it provided that the people should leave the city and remain without the walls until led back by an imperial envoy. All the male inhabitants of Cæsarea were then to swear fealty to the Emperor and to his son Henry VI.

The Lombard cities, from this time forward, remained true to Frederick.

SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM FROM THE CHRISTIANS

A.D. 1187

SIR GEORGE W. COX

Eight days after their conquest of the Holy City, in 1099,
the first crusaders proceeded to establish the Latin kingdom
of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its first king. On
the death of Godfrey, in 1100, his brother Baldwin succeeded
him, and in 1118 he was succeeded by Baldwin II, Count of
Edessa. The fourth king was Fulc, Count of Anjou and
son-in-law of Baldwin II (1131-1144), and after him reigned
his son, Baldwin III (1144-1162). This King came to the
throne at the age of thirteen. Early in his reign the
Christian stronghold of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was captured
by the Turks, and its loss, which seemed to threaten the
destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, was the
occasion of an appeal to Europe which called out the Second
Crusade. The great preacher of this crusade was St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, a man who, in earnestness and eloquence,
closely resembled Pope Urban and Peter the Hermit. Bernard's
influence won to his cause not only the common people, but
also nobles and kings, and the Second Crusade was led by
Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of
Germany.

The time of the Second Crusade was 1147-1149. Louis and
Conrad each commanded a great army, but they made the
mistake of working separately. Conrad reached Constantinople
first, and partly in consequence of the faithless conduct of
Manuel, the Byzantine emperor--who, like his predecessor
Alexius, in the time of the First Crusade, threw obstacles
in the way of the western hosts--the whole German army was
cut to pieces in Asia Minor, only the Emperor himself, with
a few followers, escaping. Louis, soon arriving with his
army, received the same treatment from Manuel, and after
taking a few towns he saw his forces likewise destroyed by
the Turks. Louis himself escaped and returned to France.

So ended in utter failure and shame the Second Crusade. The
event seemed to give the lie to the glowing promises of St.
Bernard, who was charged by anguished women with sending
their fathers, husbands, and sons forth on a fruitless
errand to disgrace and death. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem
profited nothing from this ignominious enterprise. The power
of that kingdom was already waning, and, but for the knights
of the military orders now in Jerusalem, the city must have
yielded to the Turcoman hordes that continually menaced it.
Baldwin III died in 1162, at the age of thirty-three, loved
and lamented by his people and respected by his foes. He
died childless, and his brother Almeric was elected to
succeed him. What experience and what fate awaited the
kingdom after this will be seen in the remarkable narration
which follows.

Almost at the beginning of Almeric's reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the side of one Mahometan race, tribe, or faction against another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, when Shawer, the grand _wazir_ of that Caliph, came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and Pépin.

Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.

Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor. He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin King had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians. Almeric received two hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent was never asked for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining events of the campaign were a battle, in which a part of the army of Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him.

The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite Caliph waved together on the walls of Alexandria; but on either side the peace or truce was a mere makeshift for the purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin King nor the Sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of Egypt; and Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into communication with their enemy and his. The King of Jerusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek Emperor, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitalers was easily obtained, while (some said, on this account) that of the Knights Templars was refused. At length with a large and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, pretending that his destination was the Syrian town of Hems; but after a while his march was suddenly turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium; and the storm and capture of that city were followed by a wanton carnage which served to increase, if anything could increase, the reputation of the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers of the wazir Shawer for help were now directed as earnestly to the Turkish Sultan as they had once been to the Latin King of Jerusalem; but his envoys were also sent to Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth part was produced on the spot.

Almeric took the bribe; and when his army looked for nothing less than the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle while the rest of the money was being collected. The wazir took care that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached the frontier, and Almeric found too late that he was caught in the trap which his own greed had laid for him. He could himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek Emperor could not be punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found in the grand master of the Hospitalers, who was deprived of his dignity by his knights.

The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the wazir Shawer, who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had invoked was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only two months; and then by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance, the Fatimite Caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The Caliph was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Kurds, and so used the treasures which his office placed at his command that the new yoke became stronger than the old one.

To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes of Western Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pépin dealt with that of the Merovingians. The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two swords.

But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another. Saladin was the servant of the Sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score of this lieutenancy. But the new wazir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer the summons of his old master, and to his threat of chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war. His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speaking of it; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over. But the time of quietness could not last long. The designs of Saladin became continually more manifest, and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus.

The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege. A bribe to abandon it was at first refused. A fortnight later it was accepted; but Almeric returned to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five years longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long enough to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV, was a leper, and his disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to delegate his authority to another. His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla, but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper King died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V, and in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem. He was still quite a young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name. The murderer of Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, "Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god."

Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide.

Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fighting was undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life.

But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels.

The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted.

The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people, but the garrison was scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery.

Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer, honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter.

Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The Christians had done what they could to destroy the military engines of their enemies; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down and turned into money; but no solid advantage was gained by all their efforts. The conviction of the Christian that death brought salvation to the champions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to those who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants and to the fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged discovered that the walls near the gate of St. Stephen had been undermined, and at once they abandoned all hope of safety except from miraculous intervention. Clergy and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city were treating with the enemy.

The remembrance of Saladin's offer now came back with more persuasive power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the nobles and fighting men should be taken to Tyre, which still held out under Conrad; that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for each child; and that failing this ransom, they should remain slaves. On the sick and the helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights of the Hospital were among the most determined of his enemies, he would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their attendance on the sufferers who could not be moved away.

In the exasperation of a religious warfare now extended over nearly a century these terms were very merciful. It may be said that this mercy was the right of a people who submitted to the invader, and that in the days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to the last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused.

Four days were allowed to the people to prepare for their departure. On the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women carrying or leading their children, the men bearing such of their household goods as they were able to move. On the approach of the Queen and her ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to them words of encouragement and consolation. Cheered by his generous language, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to them their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. Saladin granted their request, added his alms for those who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, and remitted a portion of the ransom appointed for the poor. In this way the number of those who remained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which had but as yesterday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent wars.

The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of triumph. Amid the waving of banners and the clash of martial music he advanced to the Mosque of Omar, on the summit of which the Christian cross still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled down to the earth and dragged through the mire. For two days it underwent this indignity, while the mosque was purified from its defilements by streams of rosewater, and dedicated afresh to the worship of the one God adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of the Christian sanctuaries, which had been carefully stowed away in four chests, had fallen into the hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin to send them to the Caliph of the Prophet as the proudest trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, fifty-two thousand golden bezants, was paid by Richard of England.

Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even when Saladin himself assailed its walls. The siege was raised; and the next personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the city. The grand master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was short and decisive. The people would own no other master than the gallant knight who had so nobly defended them. But the escape of Tyre had no effect on the general issue of the war. Town after town submitted to Saladin; and the long series of his triumphs closed when he entered the gates of Antioch.

Eighty-eight years had passed away since the crusaders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during all those years the Latin kingdom had seldom rested from wars and forays, from feuds and dissensions of every kind. From the first it displayed no characteristics which could give it any stability; from the first it exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall.

It sanctified treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith was to be kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of wind by the constant breach of solemn compact made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pasturage round Paneas had been granted to the Mahometans by Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their sheep the Christian troops burst in, murdered the shepherds, and drove away their flocks--not with the sanction, we may hope, of the most high-minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem.

It recognized no title to property except in those who professed the faith of Christ, and the power to commit injustice with practical impunity tended still further to demoralize the people.

It gave full play to the passions of men in random wars and petty forays, while it did nothing to keep up or to promote either military science or the discipline without which that science becomes useless.

It was marked by an almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course which prudence called upon them to take; and even here this course was followed with miserable indecision, and at last disgracefully abandoned through mere lust of gold.

It had to deal with an immorality not of its own creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it should have striven to keep well in check. No such efforts were made, and the words of William of Tyre--even if taken with a qualification--when he speaks of the Latin women, point to a state of things which must involve grave and imminent peril.

It was the misfortune of this kingdom that it was called into being by troops of adventurers banded together--it cannot be said confederated--for a religious rather than a political purpose; in other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It started therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who engaged in the enterprise might abandon it when they thought that they had fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance of their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political success of the undertaking.

The private and personal character of these enterprises led to the perpetuation and multiplication of private and personal interests, and thus to the endless divisions and feuds between the barons of the kingdom, which were a constant scandal and menace and which led frequently to deliberate treachery. It encouraged, or permitted, or was compelled to tolerate the growth of societies which arrogated to themselves an independent jurisdiction, and thus rendered impossible a central authority of sufficient coercive power. The origin of the military orders may have been in the highest degree edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians of the holy places: the Knights Hospitalers may have been the poor brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims of the cross. But in the land where they might at any time encounter a merciless or at the least a detested enemy, they were justified in bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the need of discipline; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become formidable.

The natural strength of these orders was increased by immunities and privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in greater part by the popes. The Hospitalers, as bestowing their goods to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed from the obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if these were laid upon the whole country, while it was expressly asserted that no patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence of excommunication against them. In other words, a society was called into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights, not content with the immunities secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sentence of excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection.

But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house divided against itself shall not stand.

THE THIRD CRUSADE

A.D. 1189-1194

HENRY VON SYBEL

Although after the failure of the Second Crusade the
interest felt by the western nations in the kingdom of
Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had
greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy
City--which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria,
in 1187--fell like a thunderbolt on men's minds. Once more
the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed
high. "What a disgrace, what an affliction," cried Pope
Urban III, "that the jewel which the second Urban won for
Christendom should be lost by the third!" He vehemently
exhorted the Church and all her faithful to join the war,
worked day and night, prayed, sighed, and so wore himself
out with grief and anger that he sickened and died in a few
weeks. His successor, Gregory VIII, and afterward Pope
Clement III, were inspired by the same feeling and exerted
themselves for the great cause with untiring energy.

In 1185 a number of English barons had put on the cross on
hearing of Saladin's menacing progress; toward the end of
1187 the heir to the throne, Richard, followed their
example; some months later King Henry II had a meeting with
his former enemy, Philip Augustus of France, at Gisors,
where they vowed to abandon their earthly quarrels and
become warriors of the everlasting God. Nearly the whole
nobility and a number of the lower class of people were
carried away by their example. King William of Sicily fitted
out his fleet, and was only prevented by death from joining
it himself. From Denmark, Scandinavian pilgrims thronged to
Syria both by land and water. In Germany, now as formerly,
the zeal was not so great, until in March, 1188, the emperor
Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of near seventy, put on the
cross, and by his ever firm and powerful will collected
together a mass of nearly one hundred thousand pilgrims. All
the western nations rose to arms.

The news of this enormous movement reached the East, and the
ferocious war-cry of Europe was answered by a voice of
defiance. Saladin had organized his dominions almost
according to the western system. Under an oath of allegiance
and service in war he granted to each of his emirs a town of
feudal tenure; its surrounding land they again divided among
their followers; the Sultan thus attached those wandering
hordes of horsemen to the soil and kept those restless
spirits permanently together. He then invoked the religious
zeal of all the Mahometans with such success that volunteers
flocked to his standard from every quarter.

These masses dispersed at the beginning of every winter, but
on the return of fair weather they again collected in
ever-increasing numbers. Saladin well knew the mutual hatred
which divided the Greek Byzantines and the Latin Franks, and
kept so securely alive in the Eastern Emperor, Isaac
Angelus, the fear of the insolence of the western soldiers
that he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with
Saladin against those who shared his own faith.

The leaders of the Third Crusade--Richard I ("the
Lion-hearted"), King of England; Frederick I, surnamed
"Barbarossa," of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire;
and Philip Augustus, King of France--were the most powerful
monarchs of Europe. A halo of false romance and glory,
however, surrounds this crusade, mainly by reason of the
associations connecting it with the self-seeker Richard. In
the real conduct of the crusaders appears a sordid greed
glutting itself with atrocities as savage as those
perpetrated under Godfrey of Bouillon a century before. In
Richard the world now sees a destroying "hero," one of the
scourges of mankind. The son of Henry II, Richard became
King of England in 1189. His chief ambition appears to have
been the spread of his own renown, and this aim he sought to
achieve in Palestine. He raised moneys by the sale of
titles, lands, etc., and then started for the Holy Land.
Modern history presents him, as well as his colleagues and
followers, divested of the glamour which for centuries hung
about the Third Crusade, of which the only heroic figure on
the Christian side is the likewise pitiable Barbarossa.

The whole East, from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the sources of the Nile, prepared with one intent to withstand the great invasion of Europe. Amid cares and preparations which had reference to three-quarters of the globe, Saladin neglected his nearest enemy, the feeble remnant of the Christian States in Syria, which, although unimportant in themselves, were of great consequence as landing-places for the invading western nations during the approaching war. The small principalities of Antioch and Tripoli still existed, and in the midst of the Turkish forces the marquis Conrad of Montferrat still displayed the banner of the cross upon the ramparts of Tyre.

It seems as if in this instance Saladin had abandoned himself too much to the superb and easy carelessness of his nature. Hitherto he had not shrunk from the most strenuous exertions; but he was so certain of his victory that he neglected to strike the final blow. Not until the autumn of 1187 did he begin the siege of Tyre; and for the first time in his life he found a dangerous adversary in Conrad of Montferrat, a man of cool courage and keen determination, whose soul was unmoved by religious enthusiasm, and equally free from weakness or indecision; so that under his command the inhabitants of the city repulsed every attack with increasing assurance and resolution.