Chapter V: The Fourth to the Sixth Crusades (1)

Bound for Holy Palestine,
Nimbly we brush’d the level brine,
All in azure steel array’d;
O’er the wave our weapons play’d,
And made the dancing billows glow;
High upon the trophied prow,
Many a warrior-minstrel swung
His sounding harp, and boldly sung.

--WARTON, _The Crusade_.

[Sidenote: [1195-1229 A.D.]]

Wars and rebellions had filled all the thoughts of Saladin, and he had established no principles of succession. Three of his numerous progeny became sovereigns of Aleppo, Damascus, and Egypt; others had smaller possessions, and the emirs and atabegs of Syria again struggled for independence. The soldiers of the late sultan rallied round his brother Saphedin [Saif ad-Din] whose wisdom and valour were familiar to them. Both by stratagem and liberal policy he reared a large fabric of empire in Syria, and he was the most powerful of all the Moslem princes, when the time for the expiration of the peace arrived. The Saracenic power was, however, palsied for a while by a dreadful famine in Egypt, and the Latins in Palestine suffered also from the miserable state of this general granary.

The knights of St. John cast their regards towards Europe, and particularly to England, for succour, and entreated that new armies would march to Palestine, and destroy the exhausted Moslems.

POPE CELESTINE III PROMOTES A CRUSADE (1195 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1195-1198 A.D.]]

Two years before this favourable moment, the daring and ambitious pope Celestine III had again sounded the trumpet of war. France had not revived from its losses in the Third Crusade, and Philip Augustus heard the appeal with indifference. Many of the people of England enrolled their names as holy warriors, obtained spiritual absolution, and then abandoned their pious resolves. The pope hurled his thunders against those who deserted their profession, except for some legitimate cause; but all thoughts of a crusade gradually died away in England, for the king was too much occupied in political concerns to encourage it. But wild schemes of war were occasionally in his mind, and the early writers have ascribed to his dauntless spirit the vast design of conquering Egypt and, after having gained the Holy Land, of possessing himself of the throne of Constantinople.

Designs equally ambitious were entertained by the emperor Henry, the enemy of Plantagenet. Seconded by imperial influence, the clergy successfully preached the crusade through all the German states. The emperor declared that he would provide a passage for both rich and poor who wished to go. But, though influenced, he was not absorbed by the love of barren glory, and when the possession of Sicily seemed an easy achievement, he postponed the gathering of laurels in Palestine till he had added a great state to his empire in Europe. Tancred, prince of Sicily, had lately died, and Henry, in right of his wife Constanza, put in his claims. This defection from the holy war was declared to be in accordance with the opinions of his wisest princes and lords, and it did not quench the spirit of fanaticism and romance.

THE FOURTH (OR GERMAN) CRUSADE (1195-1198 A.D.)

From the north to the south of Germany the frenzy of crusading had spread, and it had infected the bishops of Bremen, Würzburg, Passau, and Ratisbon; the dukes of Saxony, Brabant, Bavaria, and the son of the duke of Austria; the marquis of Brandenburg and Moravia; the landgraf of Thuringia; the count Palatine, and the counts of Habsburg and Schwembourg. The son of Henry duke of Limburg and the archbishop of Mainz led the vanguard of the holy warriors; and in the passage through Hungary they were joined by Margaret, sister of the French king and queen of Hungary, who, as one mode of consolation for the loss of her husband, had vowed to pass the remainder of her life in the pains of pilgrimage. Though the time of peace, as settled by the treaty between Richard and Saladin, had expired, yet the Christians and Mussulmans continued to live in amity. When the new champions of the cross arrived at Acre, no remonstrances of the Latins against fresh wars, no suggestions that all new crusaders ought to be obedient to the discretion of the residents in the Holy Land could abate the furious desire of the Germans for hostility.

Their aggressions were quickly returned by the Mussulmans, civil feuds were hushed, and Saphedin again headed the veteran forces of Syria and of Egypt. The important city of Joppa was taken by him before the Christian army from Acre could relieve it. The care and expense of Richard were dissipated in a moment; the fortifications were destroyed, and several thousands of the people of Joppa were put to the sword. In these unhappy moments another portion of the German force, under the command of the dukes of the lower Lorraine and Saxony, arrived at Acre. They had made the voyage from the northern ports of Germany, and in their route had chastised the Moors of Portugal. Confident in their strength, the united forces of Europe and Palestine, led by the duke of Saxony, directed their march towards the city of Berytus; but Saphedin, ever observant of events, quitted the vicinity of Joppa, and overtook his foes between Tyre and Sidon. The close columns of the duke of Saxony’s army were impenetrable to his vigorous and continual attacks. The victory of the Christians appeared to be decisive, the enemy’s force was scattered, and so extensive was the panic that the Saracens abandoned Laodicea, Gabala, Joppa, Sidon, and Berytus. Nine thousand prisoners were redeemed without ransom; and the statement that there were three years’ provisions for the inhabitants of Berytus in the storehouses of that town shows the importance of the day of Sidon. The exultation of the crusaders was still further advanced by the arrival of a third body of friends, headed by Conrad, bishop of Hidelsheim and chancellor of the German Empire. By the usual process of ambitious princes Henry had subjugated Sicily; and now, devoted to the conquest of the Holy Land, he sent his third army as his immediate precursors.

It seemed that the hour was now at hand when Europe would receive the reward of her invincible heroism. All the sea coast of Palestine was already in the possession of the Christians: and even they who had generally most desponded were now elevated with the conviction that the cross must ere long surmount the walls of Jerusalem. But in their march from Tyre towards the Holy City they made a fatal halt at the fortress of Thoron. The lofty and solid pile of stones withstood the attacks of the common engines of violence. But by a month’s labour of some Saxon miners the rock itself which supported the fortress was pierced through; and the battlements tottered to their foundation. The Saracens were now at the feet of the Christians suing for clemency. A free passage into the Moslem territories was all that they asked, and the fort might then be at the disposal of the crusaders. After much time had been passed in balancing considerations of revenge or mercy, a treaty founded on these terms was signed; but although just principles of war prevailed with the majority, yet the smaller party, who breathed nothing but slaughter, impressed their menaces so deeply on the minds of the Saracens that the latter vowed to submit to the last extremity, rather than confide in the agreements and oaths of champions of the cross.

They gained resolution from despair; they met their foes in the passages which had been mined in the rocks; and in every encounter the Moslem scimitar reeked with Christian blood. Factious contentions disordered the Latin council; insubordination and vice raged in the camp; and, to crown their miseries, the crusaders heard that the infidel world had recovered from its defeat at Sidon, and that the sultans of Egypt and Syria were concentrating their levies. Daunted at the rumour of their march, the German princes deserted their posts in the middle of the night, and fled to Tyre. In the morning their flight was discovered by the soldiers, and horror and despair seized every breast. The camp was deserted by those who had strength to move; the feeble left their property, the cowardly their arms behind them. The road to Tyre was filled with soldiers and baggage in indiscriminate confusion; but so exhausted was the state of the Mussulmans in Thoron, that the Christians were not molested in their retreat by any accidents except those which their own imprudence and precipitation occasioned (1197).

[Sidenote: [1198-1201 A.D.]]

When the fragments of the army were collected, and the soldiers were at a distance from danger, everyone reproached the other as the cause of the late disgraceful event. The Germans accused the Latins of cowardice; and the barons of the Holy Land declared that they would not submit to the domineering pride of the Germans. All the quarrels were conducted in scriptural language. Treachery was the crime of which each party accused the other; for the case of Judas was in the minds of all. Conrad and his soldiers went to Joppa, and resolved to repair its fortifications and to await the moment for revenge on the Latins of Syria. Saphedin marched against them, and the Germans did not decline the combat. Victory was on the side of the Christians; but it was bought by the death of many brave warriors, particularly of the duke of Saxony, and of the son of the duke of Austria. But the Germans did not profit by this success, for news arrived from Europe that the great support of the Crusade, Henry VI, was dead. The archbishop of Mainz, and all those princes who had an interest in the election of a German sovereign, deserted the Holy Land. The queen of Hungary was the only individual of consequence whose fanaticism was stronger than worldly considerations. The remnants, and they were more than twenty thousand, of this once powerful host fortified themselves in Joppa. But a new storm arose in the Turkish states. It swept over Berytus and the land of the Christians; and, on the 11th of November, while the Germans were celebrating the feast of St. Martin, the Moslems entered the city of Joppa and slew every individual whom they found.

Old Fuller[f] says, “At this time, the spring-tide of their mirth so drowned their souls that the Turks, coming in upon them, cut every one of their throats to the number of twenty thousand; and quickly they were stabbed with the sword that were cup-shot before. A day which the Dutch (the Germans) may well write in their calendars in red letters dyed with their own blood, when the camp was their shambles, the Turks their butchers, and themselves the Martinmasse beeves, from which the beastly drunkards differ but a little.”

About the time of the massacre at Joppa, Henry, count of Champagne, the acknowledged king of Jerusalem, died. The grand master of the Hospitallers represented to Isabella the propriety of her marriage with Almeric de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, who had lately succeeded his brother Guy. It was thought that Acre and its vicinity could not remain in the hands of the Latins unless they were governed by a king, and that, in every circumstance, Cyprus, as a place of succour and retreat, would be a valuable ally to Jerusalem. With equal truth it might have been argued that, if there were a powerful king in Palestine, faction, the great foe of the state, could not raise its head. Familiarised to the joys of royalty and love, the widowed queen embraced with rapture new prospects of happiness, and in her eyes Almeric was as estimable as she had found her divorced husband Humphry, or her deceased lords Conrad and Henry. The union was approved of by the clergy and barons, it was celebrated at Acre, and Almeric and Isabella were proclaimed king and queen of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE (1201-1204 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1201-1204 A.D.]]

The Third and Fourth Crusades were created by the ordinary influence of papal power and royal authority; but the Fifth sprang from genuine fanaticism. At the close of the twelfth century a hero arose in France, worthy of companionship with Bernard. Fulk, of the town of Neuilly, near Paris, was distinguished by the vehemence and ability of his preaching, and as in early life he had drank deeply of the cup of pleasure he was well qualified to describe the different states of the sinner and the saint. He did not involve himself in the speculative absurdities of the day, but declaimed against the prevailing vices of usury and prostitution. For two years he preached without success, but after that time “heaven lent its aid to the efforts of the preacher, in order that his words, like arrows from a powerful bow, might penetrate the depraved hearts of men.” Accordingly, miracles attested celestial approbation, and his sermons were received as oracles. With the extension of his fame his wishes for religious good increased, and his soul was inflamed with the desire of accomplishing the great aim of Christendom. He accordingly assumed the cross, and war with the infidels became the copious matter of his sermons.[c]

The Fifth Crusade was an individual enterprise. Since the failure of the Third, Jerusalem was forgotten and wars between kings and Christian peoples took the place of the pious expeditions. England, Germany, and France, once united for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, were now armed one against the other. The emperor Otto IV was excommunicated; Philip Augustus had been, John was to be. All these excommunicants gave little thought to the Holy Land. The great pope Innocent III wanted to bring it back to their minds and caused a new crusade to be preached, promising the remission of all sins to those who served God for one year. Fulk the curé was the pope’s mouthpiece. He visited a tournament that was being held in Champagne, and his burning words made all the princes and knights assembled there assume the cross. This time, as on the first, the kings held aloof, and the people did also. Knighthood alone took part, and rather to show strength of arms than any deep piety, for the affair was nothing more, or little more, than a plundering expedition. Baldwin IX, count of Flanders, and Boniface II, count of Montferrat, were at its head. And it had been previously proved that the sea route was much preferable to the land, the crusaders sought ships at Venice.

That city was even then the Queen of the Adriatic. Driven by Attila’s invasion to the lagoons, the people from the mainland had prospered in that most remarkable situation in the world. None of the invasions that passed over Italy had reached them. Their trade had extended, and the islands and shores of Istria and Illyria recognised their superiority. When the crusaders appeared, the Venetians encouraged them not only through piety but the spirit of gain as well. The Mohammedans and Greeks were their rivals in the eastern Mediterranean and they found this a good opportunity to dispossess them. The interested services rendered the crusaders in 1130 had brought the Venetians the privilege of opening in each town of the new kingdom of Jerusalem a quarter exclusively their own, and at the same time they took possession of the Greek islands of Rhodes, Samos, Scio, Mytilene, and Andros. In 1173 Venice had made its dogeship elective, and established with its grand council that aristocratic government which kept its power through many ages.

Such was Venice when the crusaders put in an appearance. Geoffrey de Villehardouin,[g] seneschal to the court of Champagne, himself narrates the mission in which he took part. It was a curious sight--that of the feudal lords obliged, kneeling and in tears, to beg the people humbly for ships. “We will grant them; we will grant them,” replied the sovereign people. City of merchants and seamen, Venice could not but sell such a service, and demanded 85,000 marks or 20,230 kilograms of silver, which to-day would be equal to about £161,840 or $809,200, but in those days was worth much more. The knights could not produce such a sum, and in place of cash the Venetians offered to take in payment a hostile city if the crusaders would capture it for them. They had already taken from the Greeks the principal cities of the Dalmatian coast--Spalato, Ragusa, and Sebenico. One alone remained to prevent their complete dominion over the Adriatic--Zara, still occupied by the king of Hungary. In vain did Innocent III thunder against this detour from the crusade; the Venetians got Zara and Doge Dandolo, ninety years old, assumed the cross (1202).

The little account settled, they could go; but whither? The set-backs of the last Crusades showed that it was necessary to have some point of support in order to operate successfully in Palestine, and this point must be either Egypt or the Greek Empire. The Venetians persuaded their allies that the keys of Jerusalem were either at Cairo or Constantinople. There was some truth in this idea, but there was much more commercial interest. The possession of Cairo would give the Venetians the route to India; that of Constantinople would assure them the commerce of the Black Sea and the whole Grecian archipelago. The crusaders decided on Constantinople, whither a young Greek prince, Alexius, offered to lead them provided they would re-establish on the throne his father Isaac Angelus who had been deposed (1203).

The account of the assault on Constantinople, given more fully in the history of the Byzantine Empire, may be briefly sketched here. When the French came in sight of Constantinople, saw its high walls, its innumerable churches whose gilded domes glistened in the sun, and their glances wandered, as Villehardouin says, “over the length and breadth of the city, sovereign of all others, there was none so brave whose heart did not tremble, and each one looked at the arms which he would soon need.” Along the shore there was lined up a magnificent army of sixty thousand men. The crusaders counted on a terrible battle. Barges brought them fully armed to the shore. Before even touching the strand “the knights jumped into the water up to their waists, fully armed, the lance men, the sword bearers, the good archers, and the good sergeants, and the good cross-bowmen. And the Greeks made much pretext to stop them. And when the crusaders came with lowered lances, the Greeks turned their backs and fled, leaving them the shore. And know that nothing more glorious ever took place.” The 18th of July (1203) the city was carried by assault; the old emperor was brought from his cell and put back on the throne. Alexius had made the crusaders the most glowing promises; to keep them he imposed new taxes and so angered the weakened people that they strangled their emperor, set up another, Mourzoufle, and shut the city’s gates. The crusaders attacked at once. Three days sufficed to get them in again (March, 1204); this time they put it to the sack. One whole quarter, a square league of territory, was burned. And what works of art perished! Four hundred thousand marks were collected in a church for distribution.[68]

Then they divided the empire up. Baldwin IV, count of Flanders, was elected emperor of Romania. He won against his opponents, Dandolo and Boniface of Montferrat. The Venetians did not like the idea of seeing their doge on the imperial throne. They took (which pleased them better) a portion of Constantinople with the shore of the Bosporus and the Propontis, and a majority of the Archipelago islands, Candia, etc., and dubbed themselves lords of a quarter and a half of the Eastern Empire. The marquis of Montferrat was elected king of Macedonia; Villehardouin, marshal of Romania, and his nephew, prince of Romania. The count of Blois received the Asiatic provinces. There were dukes of Athens and Naxos, counts of Cephalonia, and lords of Thebes and of Corinth. A new France, with all its feudal customs, arose at the eastern end of Europe. Members of the Comnenus family, however, managed to keep several portions which they divided into principalities--Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis, Epirus and Nicæa. But the crusaders were too few to hold their conquest long. In 1261 this Latin Empire fell to pieces. But, up to the end of the Middle Ages and the conquests of the Turks, there still subsisted in certain parts of Greece remnants of the feudal principalities so strangely established by the French in the ancient land of Miltiades and Leonidas.[b]

[Sidenote: [1204-1261 A.D.]]

The establishment of the Latins in Constantinople was the important though unlooked-for issue of the Fifth Crusade; but their dominion lasted only fifty-seven years. The history of that period forms a part of the annals of the Lower Empire, and not of the holy wars. But we may remark, generally, that in a very few years fortune ceased to smile on the conquerors. Their arrogant and encroaching temper awakened the jealousy of the king of Bulgaria. The fierce mountaineers, who had so often insulted the majesty of the Roman Empire, now redeemed themselves from the sin of rebellion, by ceaseless war on the usurpers of their former master’s throne. The change of the Greek ritual into the service of the Latin church, was a subject of perpetual murmur and discontent. The feudal code of the kingdom of Jerusalem was violently imposed on the people, in utter contempt of their manners and opinions. The Greeks, too, were not admitted into any places of confidence in the government, and the nobility gradually retired from Constantinople, and associated themselves with the princes of the deposed royal family. Several of those princes formed states out of the ruins of the empire, and Manuel Palæologus, the emperor of Nicæa, descendant of Lascaris, son-in-law of the usurper Alexius, had the glory of recovering the throne of the Cæsars, and of finally expelling the usurpers from Constantinople. On the Asiatic side of the Bosporus the Latins never had much power.

The jealousy which Genoa entertained of her great rival, Venice, was one of the most active causes of the fall of the Latin Empire. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, commercial concessions had often purchased for Constantinople the military and naval aid of the sovereign of the Adriatic; and at the time of the Fifth Crusade, the empire appeared to acknowledge the equality of the republic. The imperial throne gained the friendship of other Italian princes, and the Pisans as well as the Venetians had almost unlimited commerce with the Grecian states. Each of these allies had its church and its exchange in Constantinople; its consuls decided the causes of their respective citizens, and both nations enjoyed the rare and blessed privilege of exemption from payment of public taxes. In the middle of the twelfth century, Genoa had obtained commercial immunities; but it does not appear that they were so extensive as those which had been acceded to the Venetians and Pisans. When the crusaders captured Constantinople, the commerce of the Black Sea was open to the Venetians, a commerce, which before that event had only been slightly enjoyed by the Italians. The Genoese, alarmed at the maritime progress of the Venetians, took up arms against them; fortune befriended the inferior power, and in the year 1215 a treaty was concluded, whereby the Genoese were confirmed in the commercial privileges which they had enjoyed under the Greek emperor. But the political situation of the Venetians continued a great source of superiority, and their rivals incited and assisted the Greeks to throw off the Latin yoke, and recapture Byzantium.[c]

RESULTS OF THE FIFTH CRUSADE

An old empire which moulders away, a new empire ready to sink into ruins--such are the pictures that this crusade presents to us; never did any epoch offer greater exploits for admiration, or greater troubles for commiseration. The Greeks, a degenerate nation, honoured their misfortunes by no virtue; they had neither sufficient courage to prevent the reverses of war, nor sufficient resignation to support them. When reduced to despair, they showed some little valour; but that valour was imprudent and blind; it precipitated them into new calamities, and procured them masters much more barbarous than those whose yoke they were so eager to shake off. They had no leader able to govern or guide them; no sentiment of patriotism strong enough to rally them; deplorable example of a nation left to itself, which has lost its morals, and has no confidence in its laws or its government! The Franks had just the same advantages over their enemies that the barbarians of the north had over the Romans of the Lower Empire. In this terrible conflict, simplicity of manners, the energy of a new people for civilisation, the ardour for pillage, and the pride of victory, were sure to prevail over the love of luxury, habits formed amidst corruption, and vanity which attaches importance to the most frivolous things, and only preserves a gaudy resemblance of true grandeur.

This spirit of conquest, which appeared so general among the knights, might favour the expedition to Constantinople; but it was injurious to the holy war, by turning the crusaders aside from the essential object of the crusade. The heroes of this war did nothing for the deliverance of Jerusalem, of which they constantly spoke in their letters to the pope. The conquest of Byzantium, very far from being, as the knights believed, the road to the land of Christ, was but a new obstacle to the taking of the Holy City; their imprudent exploits placed the Christian colonies in greater peril, and only ended in completely subverting, without replacing it, a power which might have served as a barrier against the Saracens. To recapitulate in a few words our opinion of the events and consequences of this crusade, we must say that the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of conquest at first gave birth to wonders, but that they did not suffice to maintain the crusaders in their possessions. The crusaders evinced a profound contempt for the Greeks, whose alliance and support they ought to have been anxious to seek; they wished to reform manners and alter opinions, a much more difficult task than the conquest of an empire, and only met with enemies in a country that might have furnished them with useful allies.

We may add that the policy of the holy see, which at first undertook to divert the Latin warriors from the expedition to Constantinople, became, in the end, one of the greatest obstacles to the preservation of their conquests. The counts and barons, who reproached themselves with having failed in obedience to the sovereign pontiff, at length followed scrupulously his instructions to procure by their arms the submission of the Greek church, the only condition on which the holy father would pardon a war commenced in opposition to his commands. To obtain his forgiveness and approbation, they employed violence against schism and heresy, and lost their conquest by endeavouring to justify it in the eyes of the sovereign pontiff. The pope himself did not obtain that which he so ardently desired. The union of the Greek and Roman churches could not possibly be effected amidst the terrors of victory and the evils of war; the arms of the conquerors had less power than the anathemas of the church, to bring back the Greeks to the worship of the Latins. Violence only served to irritate men’s minds, and consummated the rupture, instead of putting an end to it. The remembrance of persecutions and outrages, a reciprocal contempt, an implacable hatred arose and became implanted between the two creeds, and separated them forever.

History cannot affirm that this crusade made great progress in the civilisation of Europe. The Greeks had preserved the jurisprudence of Justinian; the empire possessed wise regulations upon the levying of imposts and the administration of the public revenues; but the Latins disdained these monuments of human wisdom and of the experience of many ages; they coveted nothing the Greeks possessed but their territories and their wealth. Most of the knights took a pride in their ignorance, and amongst the spoils of Constantinople, attached no value to the ingenious productions of Greece. Amidst the conflagrations that consumed the mansions and palaces of the capital, they beheld with indifference large and valuable libraries given up to the flames. We may add that the necessity for both conquerors and conquered of intercommunication must have contributed to the spreading of the Latin language among the Greeks, and that of the Greeks among the Latins.

The crusaders likewise profited by several useful inventions, and transmitted them to their compatriots; and the fields and gardens of Italy and France were enriched by some plants till that time unknown in the West. Boniface sent into his marquisate some seeds of maize, which had never before been cultivated in Italy; a public document, which still exists, attests the gratitude of the people of Montferrat. The magistrates received the innocent fruits of victory with great solemnity, and, upon their altars, called down a blessing upon a production of Greece, that would one day constitute the wealth of the plains of Italy.

Flanders, Champagne, and most of the provinces of France, which had sent their bravest warriors to the crusade, fruitlessly lavished their population and their treasures upon the conquest of Byzantium. We may say that these intrepid fighters gained nothing by this wonderful war, but the glory of having given, for a moment, masters to Constantinople, and lords to Greece. And yet these distant conquests, and this new empire, which drew from France its turbulent and ambitious princes, must have been favourable to the French monarchy. Philip Augustus must have been pleased by the absence of the great vassals of the crown, and had reason to learn with joy that the count of Flanders, a troublesome neighbour, and a not very submissive vassal, had obtained an empire in the East. The French monarchy thus derived some advantage from this crusade; but the republic of Venice profited much more by it. This republic, which scarcely possessed a population of two hundred thousand souls, and had not the power to make its authority respected on the continent, in the first place, made use of the arms of the crusaders, to subdue cities, of which, without their assistance, she could never have made herself mistress. By the conquest of Constantinople, she enlarged her credit and her commerce in the East, and brought under her laws some of the richest possessions of the Greek emperors. She increased the reputation of her navy, and raised herself above all the maritime nations of Europe. The Venetians never neglected the interests or glory of their own country, whilst the French knights scarcely ever fought for any object but personal glory and their own ambition. Of her new possessions in the East, Venice only retained such as she judged necessary to the prosperity of her commerce, or the maintenance of her marine.[d]

THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE (1212 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1212 A.D.]]

Some of the best witnesses for the history of the Middle Ages affirm that, seduced by the preaching of fanatics, the children of France and Germany, about the year 1212, thought themselves authorised by heaven to attempt the rescue of the Sepulchre, and ran about the country, crying, “Lord Jesus Christ, restore thy cross to us.” Boys and girls stole from their homes, “no bolts, no bars, no fear of fathers or love of mothers, could hold them back,” and the number of youthful converts was thirty thousand. They were organised by some fanatical wretches, one of whom was taken and hanged at Cologne. The children drove down France, crossed the Alps, and those who survived thirst, hunger, and heat, presented themselves at the gates of the seaports of Italy and the south of France. Many were driven back to their homes; but seven large ships full of them went from Marseilles; two of the vessels were wrecked on the isle of St. Peter, the rest of the ships went to Bougie and Alexandria, and the masters sold the children to slavery. These singular events are mentioned by four contemporary writers. (1) Alberic, monk of Trois Fontaines, in his chronicle. (2) Godfrey of St. Pantaleon, in his annals. The editor cites in his margin a Belgic chronicle as a testimony. (3) Sicard, bishop of Cremona. (4) M. Paris. Roger Bacon, who flourished in the middle of the thirteenth century, thus speaks of the Crusade of Children: “_Forsan vidistis aut audistis pro certo quod pueri de regno Franciæ semel occurrebant in infinita multitudine post quondam malignum hominem, ita quod nec a patribus, nec a matribus, nec amicis poterant detineri, et positi sunt in navibus et Saracenis redditi, et non sunt adhuc 64 anni._” Honest Fuller says: “This crusade was done by the instinct of the devil, who, as it were, desired a cordial of children’s blood, to comfort his weak stomach, long cloyed with murdering of men.”[c]

This expedition beyond the seas, undertaken about 1212, and composed entirely of children, if not one of the most striking events of the Crusades, certainly appears not one of the least extraordinary. Whoever is acquainted with the taste of the Middle Ages for the marvellous, and has only read the incomplete account of the modern historians of the Crusades, is at first tempted to range this expedition among fabulous adventures; and to procure it any credit, it is necessary to produce evidences worthy of our confidence.

With regard to the date, contemporary historians all place this crusade under the year 1212, or 1213 at the latest. It is only by an error very easy to be reconciled, that others advance it twelve years, or put it back ten. As to the places that witnessed the birth and growth of such an enterprise, it appears that the crusaders belonged to two nations, and formed two troops, which followed different routes; one, leaving Germany, traversed Saxony and the Alps and arrived on the shores of the Adriatic Sea; France furnished the others, who, after collecting in the environs of Paris, crossed Burgundy, and arrived at Marseilles, the place of embarkation. Prestiges, fanaticism, the announcement of prodigies, were all employed to rouse the youth of these countries and put them in motion. It was reported, according to Vincent de Beauvais, that the Old Man of the Mountain, who was accustomed to educate _arsacides_ from the tenderest age, detained two clerks captives, and would only grant them their liberty upon condition that they brought him back some young boys from France. The opinion then was, that these children, deceived by false visions, and seduced by the promises of these two clerks, marked themselves with the sign of the cross.

The promoter of the crusade in Germany was a certain Nicholas, a German by nation. “This multitude of children,” says Bezarre, “were persuaded by the help of a false revelation, that the drought would be so great that year that the abysses of the sea would be dry; and they went to Genoa, with the intention of passing over to Jerusalem, across the arid bed of the Mediterranean.” The composition of these troops corresponded with the means employed to seduce them. There were children of all ages and conditions, and of both sexes; some of them were not more than twelve years old; they set out from villages and towns, without leaders, without guides, without provisions, and with empty purses. It was in vain their parents or friends thought to dissuade them by showing them the folly of such an expedition; the captivity to which they condemned them redoubled their ardour; breaking through doors, or opening themselves passages through walls, they succeeded in escaping, and went to rejoin their respective bands. If they were questioned upon the object of their voyage, they answered that they were going to visit the holy places. Although a pilgrimage commenced under such auspices, and stained with all sorts of excesses, must have been an object of scandal rather than of edification, there were people senseless enough to see in it an act of the all-powerful God; men and women quitted their houses and their lands to join these vagabond troops, believing they pursued the way of salvation; others furnished them with money and food, thinking they aided souls inspired by God, and guided by sentiments of divine piety. The pope, when informed of their proceedings, exclaimed, with a groan: “These children reproach us with being buried in sleep, whilst they are flying to the defence of the Holy Land.” If some few of the clergy, endowed with a little foresight, openly blamed this expedition, their censures were at once attributed to motives of avarice and incredulity; and, in order to avoid public contempt, wisdom and prudence were condemned to silence.

The event, however, proved that all which man undertakes without employing the balance of reason and earnest reflection, does not come to a fortunate issue; “for soon,” says Bishop Sicard, “this multitude entirely disappeared: _quasi evanuit universa_.” But we must carefully distinguish between the fate of the German and that of the French crusaders, although a part of the latter directed their course towards Italy. It required nothing beyond wearing the cross to be admitted into the crusade; if the watchful care of princes and prelates in expeditions directed by ecclesiastical and secular power could not succeed in excluding from them men of bad morals, what sort of people must have been mixed with a host got together without the least care, and under the eye of no superior intelligence, the greater part of whom fled, like the prodigal son, from the paternal dwelling, in order to give themselves up, without restraint, to their vicious inclinations? The account of Godfrey the Monk, therefore, does not at all astonish us when he says that thieves insinuated themselves among the German pilgrims, and disappeared after having plundered them of their baggage and the gifts the faithful had bestowed upon them. One of these thieves, being recognised at Cologne, ended his days on the rack.

To this first misfortune a crowd of evils quickly succeeded, the necessary result of the want of foresight of the crusaders. The fatigue of a long journey, heat, disease, and want, swept away a great number of them. Of those who arrived in Italy, some, dispersing themselves over the country, and plundered by the inhabitants, were reduced to servitude; others, to the amount of seven thousand, presented themselves before Genoa. At first the senate gave them permission to remain six or seven days in the city; but reflecting afterwards upon the folly of the expedition, fearing that such a multitude would produce famine, and, above all, apprehending that Frederick, who was then in a state of rebellion against the holy see and at war with Genoa, might take advantage of the circumstance to excite a tumult, they ordered the crusaders to depart from the city. Some, finding their error, turned back towards their own country again; and these crusaders, who had been seen advancing in numerous troops, and singing animating songs, returned singly, robbed of everything, walking barefooted, undergoing the pangs of hunger, and subjected to the scoffs and derision of the population of the cities and countries they passed through; it is not to be wondered at, that in such circumstances many young girls lost the chastity which had been their ornament in their homes.

The crusaders from France experienced a nearly similar fate; a very slender portion of them returned; the rest either perished in the waves or became an object of speculation for two Marseilles merchants. Hugh Ferrers and William Porcus, so were they named, carried on a trade with the Saracens, of which the sale of young boys formed a considerable branch. No opportunity for an advantageous speculation could be more favourable; they offered to transport to the East all the pilgrims who arrived at Marseilles, without any kind of charge for the voyage; assigning piety as the motive for this act of generosity. This proposition was joyfully accepted; and seven vessels, laden with these pilgrims, set sail for the coast of Syria. At the end of two days, when the ships were off the Isle of St. Peter, near the Rock of the Recluse, a violent tempest arose, and the sea swallowed up two of them, with all the passengers on board. The other five arrived at Bougie and Alexandria, and the young crusaders were all sold to the Saracens or to slave-merchants. The caliph bought forty of them, all of whom were in orders, and caused them to be brought up with great care in a place set apart for the purpose; twelve of the others perished as martyrs, being unwilling to renounce their religion. None of the clerks purchased by the caliph, according to the account of one of them who afterwards obtained his liberty, embraced the worship of Mohammed; all faithful to the religion of their fathers, practised it constantly in tears in slavery. Hugh and William, having at a later period formed the project of assassinating Frederick, were discovered, and perished in an ignominious manner, with three Saracens, their accomplices, receiving, in this miserable end, the wages due to their treachery.

Pope Gregory IX afterwards caused a church to be built in the island of St. Peter, in honour of those who were shipwrecked, and instituted twelve canonships to provide for the duties of it. In the time of Alberic the spot was still pointed out where the bodies cast up by the waves were buried. As for the crusaders who survived so many calamities, and remained in Europe, with the exception of some old and infirm persons, the pope would not release them from their vows; they were obliged either to perform the pilgrimage at a maturer age, or to redeem it by alms.

Such was the issue of this crusade, so justly designated by two chronicles, _expeditio nugatoria, expeditio derisoria_.

Two facts strike us as extraordinary in this account; the condition attached by the Old Man of the Mountain to the liberty of the clerk of whom Vincent de Beauvais speaks, and the trade in children carried on by the merchants of Marseilles. Upon the first point we can offer nothing but the opinion received among the nations of the West. It was generally believed in the thirteenth century, that the Old Man of the Mountain kept up a connection with Christian Europe; several princes were even accused of having had recourse to the daggers of his Assassins to get rid of their enemies. Frederick received ambassadors from him in Sicily. Roger Bacon complains bitterly of the fascinations secretly employed by the Saracens to seduce the young servants of Christ; the name of Assassins had already passed into the vulgar tongue in the thirteenth century, and was the object of general terror. In spite, then, of the opinion of some critics, a more extended examination is necessary, before we reject the account of Vincent de Beauvais. As to the trade in young boys, that is not at all a new fact; many traces of it are found much anterior to this period. The Greeks and Venetians practised it openly enough. Pope Zacharias repurchased, in 748, many Christian slaves, who had been taken away from Rome by Venetian merchants; the people of Verdun, as witnessed by Liutprand, were about to sell to the Arabs of Spain some young boys they had mutilated, and who were to serve as guards to the women of seraglios. Besides, the fate of the young crusaders who embarked at Marseilles, and found degradation and slavery instead of the sacred soil promised to their blind zeal, is attested by two contemporary writers, worthy of perfect confidence: Thomas de Champré and Roger Bacon.[e]

THE SIXTH CRUSADE (1217-1229 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1210-1215 A.D.]]

The successful heroism of the French adventurers before Constantinople alarmed the Mussulmans, and Saphedin had gladly concluded a treaty for six years’ peace with the Christians. Palestine soon again became the theatre of ambition and of glory. Almeric and his wife died, and Mary, the daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Tyre, was the new ideal queen of Jerusalem, while Hugh de Lusignan, son of Almeric by his first wife, was proclaimed king of Cyprus. Hugh had married the princess Alice, half sister of the young queen, and daughter of Henry count of Champagne, and Isabella. There was not at that time any nobleman of rule or influence in Palestine capable of governing the state; and the ecclesiastical and civil potentates resolved that Philip Augustus of France should provide a husband for Mary. Philip Augustus fixed his eyes on Jean de Brienne, son of the count of Brienne in Champagne. Though the sovereignty over Jerusalem was titular, yet the command of the Christian army in Palestine, and the possession of a young queen so desirable as the ambassadors painted the daughter of Almeric, were circumstances so flattering to the imagination of an aspiring cavalier, that Jean de Brienne received the gift with joy; and the deputies were dismissed with the promise that in two years he would join them in Palestine with a powerful band. The truce of six years was on the point of expiring, and Saphedin offered to renew it, and to resign to the regency any ten castles or towns they might select, to be retained by them in perpetuity if the Saracens broke their faith. The knights of St. John, and those of the Teutonic order, argued strenuously for the acceptance of this offer; but the spirit of party was always the enemy of Palestine, and the Templars and clergy declared for war.

At the appointed time Jean de Brienne arrived at Acre; the next day he received the hand of Mary, and shortly afterward was crowned, and received the oaths of allegiance of the barons. Only three hundred knights had participated in his hopes of restoring the fortunes of the Holy Land, for the enthusiasm and love of glory of the western chivalry were diverted into new channels. England and Germany were torn by internal disturbances, the court of France was watching the turn of events, and Pope Innocent employed the penitents in putting an end to the heresy of the Albigenses. The destroyers of heretics and of infidels were alike praiseworthy; and a crusade into the south of France was less dangerous than a voyage to Syria. From these various causes the Mussulmans in Asia were forgotten or disregarded.[69] As peace had been refused, Saphedin marched an army to the country round Tripolis. The king displayed his valour in many a fierce encounter; and though he never conquered his foes, yet he broke the impression of the enemy, and saved his states from utter annihilation. He foresaw the approaching ruin of the holy cause; every day the Saracens made some acquisition; and the Latin barons, by every opportunity, and for every pretext, returned to Europe. He wrote, therefore, to the pope that the kingdom of Jerusalem consisted only of two or three towns, and that the civil wars between the sons of Saladin alone suspended its fate.

[Sidenote: [1215-1217 A.D.]]

Every project of ambition which the daring genius of Gregory VII had formed was embraced by the ardent spirit of Innocent III. In raising a fabric of ecclesiastical policy on the ruins of gospel liberty, the importance of guiding the military arm of Europe was not lost sight of. The commands of the Vatican were hurled upon every part of Europe, calling men to exterminate infidelity. The protection of St. Peter was promised to the families and fortunes of the pilgrims. They who had bound themselves to pay usury were released from their oaths; and secular power should compel the Jews to remit their claims. The indulgences were revoked which had been granted to those who quitted their homes in order to exterminate heresy in Provence, and infidelity in Spain.

Among those who most loudly and successfully pleaded the cause of religion was Robert de Courçon; a man inferior in talents and consideration to St. Bernard, but whose fanaticism was as fervent as that of Peter and Fulk. By parentage and birth he was an Englishman; but he had been educated in the university of Paris, and in that famous seat of learning had lived as a friend with a fellow student, who afterwards sat in the papal chair, under the title of Pope Innocent III. The associate of his holiness was promoted to various dignities in the church; his talents for business were employed by Innocent in clerical embassies, and his abilities as a public orator were matured under the care of Fulk de Neuilly. He was the papal legate in France, and after having appeased the foreign and internal distractions of that kingdom, he quitted Paris in 1215, descended by the way of Burgundy to the southern provinces, left no quarter of the south unvisited; and then, after having traversed with speed and success the western provinces, the saint-errant returned to the capital. Twenty years before he had preached the same theme to the same people, as the humble assistant of Fulk. Clad in the Roman purple, and armed with the authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ, the cardinal gave every possible dignity to the office of missionary. But his prudence kept not pace with his zeal, for, like Peter the Hermit, he admitted everyone to take the cross. Women, children, the old, the blind, the lame, the lepers, all were enrolled in the sacred militia. The multitude of the crusaders was innumerable, and the voluntary offerings of money which was put into the charitable boxes in the churches were immense. Philip Augustus contributed the fortieth part of his revenues; and it is singular that this money was to be employed for purposes of the holy war, agreeably to the directions of the kings and barons of France and England. But the alms of the people of France were not applied exclusively to sacred purposes. Robert de Courçon was openly convicted of peculation, and his papal friend was obliged to remit his own dignity, and intercede with the French prelates, in order to save the legate from punishment.

The pope, treading in the steps of his predecessors, convoked a general council for the purpose of chastising vice, condemning heresy, and of inducing the princes and people to undertake the sacred expedition. In the month of November, 1215, the religious and political authorities assembled in the church of the Lateran, and the greatness of their number, and their exalted rank, testify the zealous preaching of the pope’s legates. All the clergy (except those who were crusaders) were for three years to contribute the twentieth part of their ecclesiastical revenues; tournaments during the three years of the crusade were forbidden, lest the representation of war should draw men’s attention from war itself. Civil dissensions were to be suspended, and peace was to reign in the Christian world during all the time of the holy contest.

The necessity of extirpating heresy, and quelling rebellion in the south of France, was the pretence of the French king for not embracing the crusade. The emperor Frederick II remained to establish his authority in Apulia and Sicily, and to advance the favourite project of himself and family, and of making Italy the seat of the empire of the West.[70] The Hungarians who had been the scourge of the first crusaders, took the lead on this occasion. Their king, Andrew, incited by the example of his mother Margaret, the wish of his father, and certain political considerations, made a vow to march to Jerusalem. The dukes of Austria and Bavaria, and indeed all the ecclesiastical and secular potentates of lower Germany, joined their forces to those of the monarch. The united army marched to Spalato. The ships of Venice, and other ports of the Adriatic, transported them to Cyprus; and after having enjoyed for a while the pleasures of an island consecrated to Venus, the holy warriors sailed for and arrived at Acre, in company with fresh crowds of crusaders from Marseilles, Genoa, and Brundusium. The Mussulman powers were astonished at, and unprovided for this sudden and large reinforcement of the Latins. The sons of Saphedin were the lords of Syria, while Saphedin himself, retired from the constant toils of royalty, was contented with the respect of the army and people in times of difficulty and danger. The Saracens pressed to the country about Nablus, but not in sufficient numbers to meet the new crusaders, who ravaged the country and slew thousands of their foes. But they did not confine their cruelties to the infidels. The soil of Palestine, in the year in which the present crusaders landed, had been less productive than in most seasons; the soldiers had carried thither no provisions, and when not engaged in distant excursions into the enemy’s territories, they took the shorter course of robbing the private and religious houses of the Latins and Syrians.

[Sidenote: [1217-1219 A.D.]]