Chapter VI: The Last Crusades (2)

As ransom for the noble prisoners the sultan offered to accept some of the baronial castles in Palestine, or those which belonged to the Templars and Hospitallers. But the king and his peers replied that the liege lord, the emperor of Germany, would never consent that a pagan or Tatar should hold any fief of him; and that no cession of the property of the knights could be made, for the governors of their castles swore on their investiture that they would never surrender their charge for the deliverance of any man. The king was even threatened with torture, but as the Mussulmans saw in him no symptoms of fear on which they could work, they proposed to make a pecuniary ransom. Louis offered to pay ten thousand golden besants, which were equal to five hundred thousand livres, for the deliverance of his army, and that as the royal dignity could not be estimated by a vulgar scale, he would for his own freedom surrender the city of Damietta. The sultan was liberal in the fulness of his joy at such a completion of his victories, and remitted a fifth part of the pecuniary ransom.[77] Peace was to continue for ten years between the Mussulmans and the Christians, and the Franks were to be restored to those privileges in the kingdom of Jerusalem which they enjoyed before the landing of Louis at Damietta. The repose which succeeded the treaty was interrupted by the murder of the sultan; but after a few acts of hostility the successful emirs, and their mamelukes, renewed with a few changes the condition of amity. One moiety of the ransom was to be discharged before the king left the river, and the other on his arrival at Acre. The sick at Damietta, with the stores and baggage, were to be retained by the sultan till the last portion of the ransom should be paid.

Damietta was accordingly surrendered. But the mamelukes were more savage and unprincipled than any preceding enemies of the Latin name. They burned all the military engines, murdered the sick, and some of the most ferocious thirsted for the blood of the Christian potentates. The counsels of justice prevailed, and the Christians were relieved from their fears that the treaty would not be acted upon. The counts of Flanders and Brittany, the count of Soissons, and others embarked for France. The royal treasure at Damietta could not furnish the stipulated portion of the ransom. The new grand master of the Templars opposed the institutes of his order to the king’s request for a loan of the funds of the society, and contended that he could not divert them from their regular and appointed purposes. But state necessity trampled over mere statutable forms, and the chest of the Templars was seized by the royal officers. The king’s person was redeemed, and the French went to Acre.

The expedition of St. Louis into Egypt resembles in many respects the war in Egypt thirty years before. In both cases the Christian armies were encamped near the entrance of the Ashmun canal; they could not advance, and the surrender of Damietta was the price of safety.

[Sidenote: [1250-1254 A.D.]]

Many of Louis’ council were astonished at his resolution to remain in Palestine while political affairs were calling him to his duty to France. They were divided in their patriotism and their allegiance. The sultan of Damascus, a relative of the murdered Egyptian lord, solicited the aid of Louis to revenge the murder, and stimulated his virtue by the promise that in the event of victory he would deliver to the Christians the city of Jerusalem. The king replied that he would send to the mamelukes at Damietta, to know whether they would repair their violations of the treaty, and that, in case of their refusal, he would assist the sultan of Damascus. On intelligence of this negotiation, the people of Damietta restored to the king all the knights and common soldiers whom they had detained in prison. Louis wisely profited by circumstances, and declared that he would not enter upon a truce with the Egyptians, until they had absolved him from the payment of the remaining moiety of the ransom, and restored to him the heads of those Christians on the walls of Cairo, who had fallen in the battle near Mansura, and such Christian children as they had forced to become Mussulmans. The emirs and mamelukes complied with these terms, and, on condition of the alliance of the French king, they engaged to deliver up to him Jerusalem itself. The military force of Louis did not much exceed four thousand men. The king’s two brothers returned to Europe; and, in order to retain a respectable army, Louis was obliged to be liberal of his treasure. Louis remained a year at Cæsarea, and rebuilt its houses and repaired its fortifications. Joppa was the next object of his care. The war between the Egyptians and Syrians raged with dreadful violence. By the mediation of the caliph, the Mussulmans made peace; Egypt and Jerusalem were to belong to the mamelukes; and the countries beyond the Jordan to the sultan of Syria. But the united infidels did not pursue their schemes of destruction with that vigour and ability which had distinguished the fierce and dreadful movements of Nur ad-Din and Saladin. They might have swept the feeble and exhausted Christians from the shores of Palestine; but they merely ravaged the country round Acre, and then proceeded to Sajecte, in whose strong castle were Louis and most of the army. The blood and property of the citizens satisfied the Moslems, who departed without trying the valour of the French in garrison.

Perpetual disappointment gradually desiccated the spring of hope, and the king turned his mind to France. His friends marked his change of purpose, and news from Europe of the death of his royal mother, the regent of his kingdom, made him openly proclaim his resolution to return. The patriarch and barons of Palestine offered him their humble thanks and praise for the great good and honour he had conferred on the Holy Land; and, shortly after Easter, he embarked for the West. Louis IX gathered no new laurels in his transmarine expedition. All that was great and chivalric in France had been spread out in martial array, and had met with little else than discomfiture and defeat. In the course of Louis’ stay at Joppa, the sultan of Damascus sent him permission to visit Jerusalem. The king ardently desired to behold the sacred places, and was slow in allowing considerations of policy to conquer selfish feelings. The reason which dissuaded him from the journey, was, that if he should perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem without delivering it from the enemies of God, every subsequent crusading monarch would think a similar proceeding sufficient, and would not consider himself obliged to perform more than what the king of France had done. St. Louis was also reminded that Richard Cœur de Lion refused to behold Jerusalem as a pilgrim.

THE CHRISTIANS QUARREL AMONG THEMSELVES

[Sidenote: [1255-1259 A.D.]]

All the blood which had been shed, and all the treasure which France had lavished for the crusade of St. Louis, did not long preserve the Christians in Palestine from the hostilities of the Mussulmans, and, as no new succours arrived from Europe, the barons and knights were compelled, in some cases, to keep within the shelter of their fortresses, and at other times to make disadvantageous treaties with their foe. Although it was evident that nothing but unanimity in the holy warriors could preserve the remnants of the kingdom of Godfrey de Bouillon from annihilation, yet the Christians wasted their strength in party collisions, instead of watching the politics of the Saracenian courts, and gathering those branches of power which their enemies, in their ambitious feuds, continually broke from the tree of Islamism. The haughty republicans of Italy would never enter into any common bond of union, and the Venetians, the Pisans, and the Genoese had frequent hostile encounters, respecting the possession of churches to which each nation asserted her claims. The two great military orders only forgot their mutual jealousies when in the field they were opposed to the Moslems, but in every interval of peace, the knights, incapable of any exertions or thoughts but those which war inspired, gratified their arrogance and restlessness in disputes touching military prowess and precedency. As reason did not give birth to these altercations, she did not control the decision.

The jealousy and rancour of the Hospitallers and Red Cross knights were frequently aggravated by irregular skirmishes, and at length the kindred squadrons met in a general engagement. Victory sat on the helms of the cavaliers of St. John; few prisoners were taken, and scarcely a Templar escaped alive. But new companions from Europe gradually filled the places of the deceased brethren. New occasions demanded all their valour and skill, and civil discord was lost amidst the more honourable war with the real enemies of the state.

A blood-stained revolution in Egypt had placed the mameluke chief Bibars, or Bundukdari, on the throne of that country; he was well disposed to lead his savage mamelukes against the Christians, and his ferocity did not want the excitement which the military orders gave it, of refusing, contrary to treaty, to deliver to him some Mohammedan prisoners. His soldiers, as savage as the Khwarizmians, demolished the churches of Nazareth, and the fortress and church on Mount Tabor. They made their way to the gates of Acre with fire and sword, and such of the Christians as were immediately slain were not so much objects of compassion as the prisoners on whom the Turks inflicted every description of torture, in order to force a change of religion. Though Acre itself was saved for a few years, yet Cæsarea did not escape the wide-spreading calamities. Through these dreadful scenes the military orders fought with their usual heroism, and in the sieges of the strong fortresses of Azotus and Saffuria, the spirit of devotion which they manifested to their cause had never been equalled. The small force of ninety Hospitallers held possession of the former of these places. The number gradually diminished on each renewed assault, and when the Turks mounted the breach, they trampled on the bodies of the last of the knights.

After ravaging the neighbourhood of Acre, Tyre, and Tripolis, the Egyptians laid siege to the fortress of Saffuria. The fall of that place was inevitable, and the prior of the Templars therefore agreed to capitulate, and, on the surrender being made, the knights and garrison, altogether amounting to six hundred men, were to be conducted to the next Christian town. The sultan was invested with lordship over the fortress, but he violated the conditions of the surrender, and left the knights only a few hours to determine on the alternative of death or conversion to Islam. The prior and two Franciscan monks were earnest in fixing the faith of the religious cavaliers, and, at the appointed time for the declaration of their choice, they unanimously avowed their determination to die rather than incur the dishonour of apostacy. The decree for the slaughter of the Templars was pronounced and executed; and the three preachers of martyrdom were flayed alive.

HISTORY OF ANTIOCH (1206-1268 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1206-1268 A.D.]]

Before we continue our review of the calamities of Palestine, a retrospect must be taken of a principality whose fate was closely connected with that of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Bohemond IV continued to be the reputed lord of Antioch, from the year 1206 till the time of his death in 1233. But for many years during this interval he did not exercise any royal authority, for he was a tyrant, and was both hated by the people and excommunicated by the clergy. His nephew Rupin, the right heir, was aided by the papal legate, who was present at the great siege of Damietta, in the year 1218, and made several attempts to recover his thrones of Antioch and Tripolis; but he died some years before Bohemond, in a prison at Tarsus, into which he had been cast by Constantius, nominal regent of Antioch, and guardian of Isabella, daughter and successor of Livon, king of Armenia. From Bohemond IV and his first wife Plaisance, daughter of the lord of Gabala, Bohemond V descended. To him succeeded Bohemond VI. It does not appear that the family of the Bohemonds were entire masters of the principality and county from the year 1233 till their absorption in the Egyptian power. It is certain that Bohemond V was reigning over Antioch and Tripolis in 1244, when he became tributary to the Khwarizmians; and that in 1253 Bohemond VI was made a knight by St. Louis, and was considered lawful prince of Antioch, though he was a minor, and under his mother’s tutelage. But it is equally certain that at times, from 1233 to 1288, Frederick and Conrad, a son and grandson of the emperor Frederick II, had possession of all or part of the states of Antioch and Tripolis.

RAVAGES OF BIBARS

[Sidenote: [1268-1269 A.D.]]

We may now resume the thread of the general history. Joppa and the castle of Beaufort were the mameluke conquests which succeeded in point of time to those of Azotus and Saffuria.

The tempest at length burst upon the state of Antioch; and the city of that principality yielded without even the formality of a siege (1268). The reproach of treachery is alternately cast upon the patriarch and the inhabitants; and heavy is the disgrace of causing an event which occasioned the destruction of forty thousand, and the captivity of one hundred thousand Christians. Bibars ravaged the country round Tyre; but being equally religious and cruel, he gave the Franks a respite by pilgrimising to the holy places in Arabia. He soon, however, resumed his fell purpose of exterminating the Christians; Laodicea and many other places submitted to him; and the knights of St. John gained immortal honour by their brave, though fruitless, defence of the fortress of Karak, between Arca and Tortosa. The prince of Tripolis preserved his title by the sacrifice of half of his territory. Acre was saved in consequence of the reported succour of the king of Cyprus. Bibars returned to Cairo, hastily fitted out a fleet for the conquest of the island, which was without the presence of its monarch. But his ships were lost in a tempest; Cairo was overwhelmed with sorrow, and none of his efforts could re-establish affairs.

SECOND CRUSADE AND DEATH OF LOUIS IX

[Sidenote: [1269-1270 A.D.]]

Before the news of the capture of Antioch reached Europe, the people of the West had contemplated a new crusade. St. Louis thought that his first expedition to the Holy Land brought more shame on France than good on the Christian cause; and he feared that his own personal fame had withered. The pope encouraged his inclinations for a new attempt. England was at that time in a state of repose, and her martial youth were impatient of indolence. Prince Edward, with the earls of Warwick and Pembroke, received the holy ensign. The assumption of the cross by the heir of the English throne spread great joy throughout France. He was invited to Paris; the co-operation of the English and French was determined upon; and Louis lent his youthful ally thirty thousand marks on the security of the customs of Bordeaux. The prelates and clergy of England agreed to contribute a tenth of their revenue for three years; and by a parliamentary ordinance, a twentieth part was taken from the corn and movables which the laity possessed at Michaelmas. A crusade had for many years been popular in England. During the first expedition of St. Louis, and soon after the departure of William Longsword, Henry III engaged to fight under the sacred banners. But he was slow in preparing to go to the Holy Land; and the public murmured the suspicion that he had only assumed the cross as a pretence for collecting money. It was found that five hundred knights had been crossed; and the number of inferior people could not be counted. The holy warriors resolved to commence their voyage at midsummer; but the king had anticipated all their proceedings; and he declared that if they dared to march without him the thunders of the Vatican should be hurled against them. Some people submitted to, and others clamoured at this menace of papal interference; and the religious ardour of the most enthusiastic was cooled by the king’s delays, and the news of the disastrous events in Egypt. The pope and king were deaf to the reproaches of the French nation that indifference to Christianity could be the only motive for obstructing the pious wishes of the English people.[78] The king’s poverty was ever the alleged cause of his remissness; and two years after his dissolution of the association of English knights, he endeavoured to extort money from the clergy on the pretence of a journey to Syria. But they resisted his demands; and reproached him with his avarice and violation of oaths.

Anticipating the laurel of victory, or the crown of martyrdom, St. Louis spread his sails for the Holy Land in 1270. Sixty thousand soldiers were animated by their monarch’s feelings of religious and military ardour; and we may remark among the leaders the lords of Flanders, Champagne, and Brittany. The fleet was driven into Sardinia; and at that place a great change was made in the plan of operations. The king of Tunis had formerly sent ambassadors to Louis, and expressed a wish to embrace the only true religion. Northern Africa had formerly paid a pecuniary tribute to the sovereign of the Two Sicilies; and Charles of Anjou, the reigning monarch, concealing his selfishness under the garb of piety and justice, strongly urged his brother to restore the rights of Christendom. The soldiers too, now more greedy of plunder and revenge than zealous in bigotry, entreated to be led to Tunis. The subjugation of the Mussulmans in Africa was declared to be a necessary preliminary to successes in Palestine; the French soon reached the first object of their hopes; and the camp and town of Carthage were the earliest rewards of victory. But every sanguine expectation was damped when a pestilential disease spread its ravages through the Christian ranks.

The great stay of the Crusades fell August, 1270. During his illness Louis ceased not to praise God, and supplicate for the people whom he had brought with him. He became speechless; he then gesticulated what he could not utter; he perpetually made signs of the cross, stretched himself on the floor, which was covered with ashes; and in the final struggle of nature he turned his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, “I will enter thy house, I will worship in thy sanctuary.”

PRINCE EDWARD LEAVES ENGLAND

Before this calamitous event Prince Edward, Edmund Crouchback, earl of Lancaster, four earls, four barons, and the English division, had not only arrived in Africa, but had left it for Sicily, in despair that their French compeers would ever march to Palestine. The winter season was passed by Prince Edward in military exercises, and in the various occupations of chivalry, and in the following spring he turned his prow up the Mediterranean and arrived at Acre.

The whole of the forces of Edward did not exceed one thousand men. But the prowess of the Plantagenets was dreaded by the Mussulmans; and they feared that another Cœur de Lion was come to scourge them. The sultan of Egypt departed from the vicinity of Acre, which he had devastated with fire and sword. All the Latins in Palestine crowded round the banner of the English prince; and he took the field at the head of seven thousand men. The city of Nazareth was redeemed; and he surprised and defeated a large Turkish force. Edward was brave and provident, and owed his success as much to his skill as to his courage. But he was not less cruel than any preceding hero of the holy wars; and he gave a dreadful earnest of that savage implacability which Scotland afterwards so often rued. The barbarities which stained the entry of the Christians into Jerusalem, two centuries before, were repeated in a smaller theatre of cruelty in Nazareth.

[Sidenote: [1271-1272 A.D.]]

But the march of victory was closed, for the English soldiers were parched by the rays of a Syrian sun, and their leader was extended on the bed of sickness. The governor of Joppa was the apparent friend of Edward, but the sultan’s threat of degradation, if further commerce were held with an infidel, changed courtesy into malignity. He hired an assassin who, as the bearer of letters, was admitted into the chamber of his intended victim. After receiving two or three wounds, the vigorous prince threw the villain on the floor and stabbed him to the heart. The dagger had been steeped in poison, and for some hours Edward’s fate was involved in danger. The fairy hand of fiction has ascribed his convalescence to his queen.[79]

After the English prince had been fourteen months in Acre, the sultan of Egypt offered peace, for wars with the Moslem powers engrossed his military strength. Edward gladly seized this occasion of leaving the Holy Land, for his force was too small for the achievement of great actions, and his father had implored his return to England. The hostile commanders signed accordingly a treaty for a ten years’ suspension of arms; the lords of Syria disarrayed their warlike front, and the English soldiers quitted Palestine for their native country (July, 1272).

VAIN EFFORTS OF GREGORY X

[Sidenote: [1274-1291 A.D.]]

At the time when Palestine began to breathe from the horrors of war, hope once more raised her head in consequence of the election to the chair of St. Peter falling upon Theobald, archdeacon of Liège. The choice of the cardinals was made known to him while he was in Palestine. He impatiently transported himself to Italy, and so ardent was his zeal that his endeavours for a crusade even preceded his introduction to the pontificate. The trumpet of war again was heard among the nations. The blast was however only faintly echoed. The republics of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, and the city of Marseilles, agreed to furnish a few galleys and twenty-five thousand marks of silver were obtained from Philip the Hardy on mortgage of the Templars’ estates in France. The masters of the military friars and Red Cross knights went to Rome, and convinced their papal friend that these succours would be too inconsiderable to enable the Christians to drive infidels out of Palestine.

Again was the Christian world assembled, and the council of Lyons (May 1274) decreed the obligation of a new crusade. But Pope Gregory died within two years after the sitting of the Lyonese council, and all thoughts of a crusade were dropped when the life of its great promoter closed.

Palestine however was at peace. Hugh III, king of Cyprus, a lineal descendant of the princess Alice, had been crowned king of Jerusalem at Tyre, a short time before the death of Conradin, the last unhappy descendant of that house of Germany, of which three emperors had supported and adorned holy wars. The Templars befriended Charles of Anjou, but the Hospitallers, with more virtue than was generally shown, declared that they could not fight against any Christian prince, and contended that the claims for succession to the kingdom ought to be deferred till the kingdom itself should be recovered. In the fourth year of the peace which the valiant prince Edward had gained for Palestine, the mameluke chief and king Bundukdari, died.

In the reign of Kalaun, the third sultan in succession to him who had torn so many cities from the Christians, the war was renewed (1280), and after a few years of dreadful preparation the living cloud of war burst upon the Christians. Margat was captured; but so brave had been the resistance of the knights that it procured them a safe and honourable retreat to the neighbouring town of Tortosa (1287), and the sultan, dreading even the possibility of future opposition, razed the fortress.

PROGRESS OF THE MAMELUKES

With rapid and certain steps the power of the Latins approached its fatal termination. The city of Tripolis, that last remaining satellite of the kingdom of Jerusalem, was taken in 1289; its houses were burned, its works dismantled, and its people murdered or retained in slavery. Acre once more became the principal possession of the Christians. The sultan concluded a treaty of peace with Henry II of Cyprus, who had driven away the lieutenants and soldiers of Charles, and had been acknowledged king of Jerusalem.

The grand-master crossed the Mediterranean in order to infuse his martial spirit into the people of the West. Pope Nicholas IV heard with coldness the dismal tale. He declined to open the treasury of St. Peter for the advancement of the Christian cause, and he gave his noble friend only fifteen hundred men--the offscourings of Italy. Circular letters were sent to the different European potentates, but the light which once shone upon the holy cause had waned; cavaliers no longer thronged round the cross, and the grand-master was compelled to return to Palestine, accompanied only by his Italian banditti. When they arrived at Acre, the city was in the greatest state of turbulence. Within its walls were crowded the wretched remains of those kingdoms and principalities which had been won by the blood of the West. Every distinct people occupied a particular division, and, in the assertion of individual privileges, general interests were forgotten.

[Sidenote: [1291-1300 A.D.]]

The sultan died before his preparations of vengeance were completed; but his son Khalil was not less anxious than his father to exterminate the infidel miscreants. In April, 1291, nearly two hundred thousand mameluke Tatars of Egypt marched into Palestine, and encamped before Acre, exactly on the same ground upon which a century before assembled Europe had stood. To avoid the dreadful consequences of war, a large part of the population embarked in the numerous vessels which at that time rode at anchor in the harbour, and the defence of the place was left to the care of about twelve thousand soldiers. The garrison was speedily reinforced by a few hundred men, headed by Henry II of Cyprus, who boasted the ideal title of king of Jerusalem. But the Christians beheld their towers yielding to the mines and battering-rams. The pusillanimous monarch, seizing a few ships, sailed to Cyprus. With the morn, the mamelukes renewed the attack. Most of the German cavaliers died upon the breach; the others slowly left the walls, and the firmness of their little phalanx checked the foe. The Hospitallers chased back the mamelukes, and even forced them headlong into the ditch. But the sultan was prodigal of blood. His battalions marched to the breach, and in a few hours the entry into the city was repeatedly lost and won by the Christians and infidels.

Under the cover of a few cross-bowmen, the knights of St. John, seven only were the remnant, embarked, and left forever the scene of their virtue and their valour. Their brethren in arms, the Templars, were equally brave, and their fate was equally disastrous. Their resistance was so firm, that the sultan was compelled to promise them a free and honourable departure. But the insults of some low Saracenian people irritated the cavaliers; the sword again was drawn, and such of the Templars as survived the conflict, fled into the interior country. The unarmed population of Acre hurried to the coast; but the elements co-operated with the devastating spirit of the Turks, and the tempestuous waves refused shelter to the fugitives. While gnashing with despair, the people beheld their town in flames. The ruthless hand of death fell upon them, and the sea shore of Palestine again drank torrents of Christian blood.

TOTAL LOSS OF THE HOLY LAND

Tyre, Berytus, and other towns, were awed into submission. The Turks swept all Palestine, and murdered or imprisoned all the Christians who could not fly to Cyprus. The memory of the Templars is embalmed, for the last struggle for the Holy Land was made by the Red Cross knights. Such as escaped from Acre went to Sis, in Armenia. A Mussulman general drove them to the island of Tortosa, whence they escaped to Cyprus, and the cry of religious war no longer rung through Palestine.

The loss of the Holy Land did not fill Europe with those feelings of grief and indignation which the fall of Jerusalem, an hundred years before, had occasioned. The flame of fanaticism had slowly burned out. During the thirteenth century, the territorial possessions of the Christians in Palestine gradually diminished; the expeditions and reinforcements were in consequence less vigorous, for, both politically and personally, the people of the West declined in their interest in respect of the affairs of the East. Pope Nicholas IV endeavoured to revive holy undertakings; but the kings of Europe were deaf or disobedient. As Genoa was allied to the Grecian emperor, Venice sought the friendship of the Mussulmans. The mamelukes gave their Christian brothers a church, an exchange, and a magazine in Alexandria; and the Venetians carried on the lucrative but disgraceful trade of furnishing the Egyptian market with male and female slaves from Georgia and Circassia.

[Sidenote: [1299-1413 A.D.]]

There was some pretence for the preaching of a crusade by Pope Boniface VIII in the year 1300. Kazan, the Mongol sultan of Persia, resolved to exterminate the mamelukes of Egypt. He allied himself with the kings of Georgia, Armenia, and Cyprus. In 1299 the fortunes of war smiled on the allies; but still the success not being so great as what he had expected, Kazan sent to the pope, soliciting the more powerful alliance of the princes of the West, and agreeing that when Palestine was recovered, it should be retained by the Christians. The project, though warmly patronised by the pope, proved abortive. In the interim, the tide of victory flowed in favour of the Egyptians. Kazan died about the year 1303.

From the commencement, till past the middle of the fourteenth century, the popes repeatedly sounded the charge; but the West in most cases disregarded the summons of its ghostly instructor; and it was evident that, although the papal rulers could fan, they could not create the sacred flame. At the time when the loss of the Holy Land became known in Europe, the people had not recovered from the astonishment and terror with which the victories of Jenghiz Khan and his successors had filled the West. Part of Russia, the whole of Poland, Silesia, Moravia, Hungary and all the countries to the eastward of the Adriatic Sea, fell a prey to barbaric desolation. Several of the popes attempted in vain to soften the ferocity of these new foes; but the papal legates were dismissed with the tremendous command, for Rome herself to submit her neck to the Mongol yoke.

Though Europe in general felt that in the fall of Acre all was lost, yet despair did not immediately complete his triumph, for chivalry and policy sometimes endeavoured to revive the religious spark. If Pope John XXII had not been too open in the display of his avarice, and too prodigal in the commutation of vows for money, the knights of Germany would once more have fought under the glorious ensign of the cross. A threatened invasion from England (1328 A.D.) deterred Philip de Valois from leaving his country for Palestine, and a large body of crusaders was dispersed when (1364 A.D.) John Le Bon of France died, on whom the pope intended to have conferred the title of commander of the new crusaders. The politic Henry IV[80] of England wished to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” in order to divert his people from looking too nearly into his state, and to retain their newly sworn allegiance. Both his maritime and military preparations were considerable; but the hand of nature stopped him and it was his fate to succumb to death, before he could attempt to commence his new religious career.

FATE OF THE MILITARY ORDERS

[Sidenote: [1291-1600 A.D.]]

Such were the last appearances of that martial frenzy which so long agitated Europe; and here the history of the holy wars would naturally close, if curiosity did not suggest an inquiry into some of those military and religious orders which arose from the spirit of pilgrimages and crusades, and whose existence forms one of the most prominent characteristics of the Middle Ages. The knights of the Teutonic order were fixed in their conquest of Prussia, some years before the loss of the Holy Land. Their love of war was not extinguished; they carried both the sword and the Gospel into Pomerania; and the eastern part of that country was definitively ceded to the order by a treaty of peace in the year 1343. The town of Dantzic, the capital of the new conquest, was considerably aggrandised under the dominion of the knights, and became one of the principal places of commerce on the Baltic. Pressed forward again by religion and ambition, they made war on the infidel Lithuanians, but it was not till the beginning of the fifteenth century, and after rivers of blood had flowed, that the pagans lost their independence, and relinquished their national superstition. But the oppressive government of the knights; their intestine divisions; their heavy imposts, the unhappy result of wars continually reviving, encouraged the nobility of Prussia and Pomerania to confederate, and to seek the protection of the kings of Poland. The torch of war was rekindled, the knights were defeated, and by the peace of Thorn in 1466 all Pomerania, and indeed all the country which is generally called Polish Prussia, was ceded to Poland. The order was allowed to preserve the west of Prussia by the tenure of feudal service to the kings of Poland.

The Teutonic knights thus lost Prussia; their name appears on few occasions in the history of Europe, and the order became only a “cheap defence of nations.” Pope Innocent VIII in the year 1490 endeavoured to suppress the order of the Knights of St. Lazarus. In Italy, perhaps he succeeded, but not in any other country. The bull was resisted by the knights of France and till the reign of Henry IV they were independent and elected their own grand-masters.

KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN

[Sidenote: [1291-1310 A.D.]]

After the loss of Acre, the knights of St. John and the Temple, from every preceptory and commandery in Europe, flocked to Cyprus, impatient for glory and revenge. The military friars soon quitted their settlements in Cyprus. The grand-master of the Hospitallers gained the friendship and the purse of Pope Clement V, and drew a flattering picture of Christian prosperity, if the cavaliers of St. John could set up their banners in some island in the Mediterranean. Rhodes was fixed upon. Fifteen years subsequently to the loss of Acre, a new crusade was published, and the volunteers were invited to repair to Brundusium. The king of Sicily and the republic of Genoa furnished transports. The grand-master headed the army, but it was not until after they had sailed, that the crusaders knew the object of the armament. Rhodes was at that time in the power, partly of the Greeks and partly of the Saracens. The soldiers landed; many battles were fought, and the army of the invaders was at last reduced to the military friars. Their chief hired new soldiers, recommenced his attacks, and the whole island submitted to his authority (1310). The subsequent history of the knights of St. John is interwoven with the general history of Europe.

THE TEMPLARS IN FRANCE

[Sidenote: [1307-1311 A.D.]]

While the military friars were planning the acquisition of an equivalent to their loss in Palestine, most of the Red Cross knights gradually left Cyprus, returned to their different commanderies, and lived in security and indolence. But circumstances soon made the Templars repent that they had not, like the Hospitallers, attempted a renewal of hostilities with the infidels. Philip the Fair, king of France, acquainted Pope Clement V, that the order of the knights Templar had been accused of heresy and various other crimes against religion and morals. Some members had charged their fraternity with the different abominations of treachery, murder, idolatry, and Islamism. Philip the Fair took the bold step of imprisoning all the knights Templar whom his officers could discover in France, and of sequestering their property. Clement then circulated a bull throughout Christendom, by which instrument of papal authority, nuncios and the resident clergy were commanded to inquire into the conduct of the knights. His holiness says that, pressed by public clamour and by the declarations of the king, the barons, the clergy, and laity of France, he had examined seventy-two members of the order, and had found them all guilty, though in various degrees, of irreligion and immorality. Such of the knights as yielded to blandishments and threats were pardoned, but the torture was applied to those who denied the charges, and thirty-six knights in Paris heroically braved the horrors of the rack, and maintained the innocence of the order, till death closed their sufferings and their virtue. Others confessed in the midst of corporeal agony, and afterwards recanted their confessions. The knights Templar were accused of renouncing, at the time of their matriculation, God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and all the saints. It was said that the brethren used often to spit and trample on the cross, in proof of their contempt of Christ, who was crucified for his own crimes and not for the sins of the world. Out of their disdain of God and his Son, they adored a cat, and certain wooden and golden idols. The master could absolve brethren from sins. On the assurance that the king would destroy the order, whether the result of the examinations were favourable or hostile to its continuance, many knights had yielded to pain and hopelessness, stayed the hand of the executioner, confessed every crime, upon their confessing of which, royal pardon and protection were proffered. The court condemned to perpetual imprisonment those from whom no confession of guilt had been extorted. But such as had retracted their forced avowals were declared to be relapsed heretics; they were delivered over to the secular power, and condemned to the fire (May 11th, 1310). The number in the last-mentioned class of the proscribed was fifty-four. All the historians who have spoken of the event, whatever opinion they might have entertained on the general question, friends or enemies, natives or strangers, have unanimously attested the virtuous courage, the noble intrepidity, and the religious resignation, which these martyrs of heroism displayed. Arrived at the place of punishment, they beheld with firmness and placidity the piles of wood, and the torches already lighted in the hands of the executioners. In vain a messenger of the king promised pardon and liberty to those who did not persist in their retractations; in vain their surrounding friends endeavoured to touch their hearts by prayers and tears. Invoking God, the Virgin, and all the saints, they sung the hymn of death; triumphing over the most cruel tortures, they believed themselves already in the heavens, and died in the midst of their songs.

IN OTHER COUNTRIES

[Sidenote: [1311-1314 A.D.]]

By royal command, the sheriffs of the different counties of England and Wales seized the estates, and imprisoned the persons of the Templars. The cavaliers were more than a year and a half in prison. At the end of that time a papal bull was received in England; and the archbishop of Canterbury appointed courts at London, York, and Lincoln, for the trial of the Templars, July, 1311. The charges were the same in substance as those which had been preferred against the order in France. Forty-seven of the knights who had been incarcerated in the Tower were examined upon oath before the bishop of London, some inferior clergy, and the representatives of the pope. William de la Moore, the grand prior of England, was as earnest as de Molay had been in defence of the French Templars.

Four knights made a general confession of crimes, when they were told that the pope had authorised a full pardon to those who acknowledged their iniquities; but that if they persisted in heresy, they should be considered and punished as heretics. Thirteen newly admitted knights swore that they were not acquainted with the secrets of the order, but that they were prepared to renounce all the erroneous opinions in which it was possible the minds of men could be stained. William de la Moore, the grand prior, was the only man whom no fear of imprisonment or dread of ecclesiastical punishment could induce to deny his first avowal of the innocence of the order. He was requested to make a general confession; but he replied that he was not guilty of heresy, and would never abjure crimes which he had not committed.

In Ireland about thirty Templars, in Scotland only two, were confined and examined. In Lincoln the number somewhat exceeded twenty. There were twenty-three in York. The general charges of apostasy and idolatry were not proved in any case. However, all the knights made a general confession of the offence of heresy, and avowed they could not cleanse themselves from the crimes mentioned in the bull. The clergy pardoned them, and received them again into the bosom of the church. They were then sent into confinement in various monasteries until the decision of a general council should be declared.

The fate of the Templars in other parts of the world remains to be told. In Germany the innocence of the order was proved before the archbishops of Mainz and Trèves, at councils held in their respective dioceses. In Italy the pope had a little more success. Several Templars at Florence confessed every species of abomination. Much blood was shed in Lombardy, Tuscany, Sicily, Naples, and Provence, whenever the knights would not be guilty of self-condemnation. In those parts of Spain where the conduct of the Templars was inquired into, the result was an acquittal. Their military front was powerful, and the ministers of papal vengeance did not dare to apply the torture.

COUNCIL AT VIENNE

Four years after the first seizure of the Templars in France a council was held at Vienne in Dauphiné, for the purpose of making some general decision on the case of the order, October, 1311. The pope headed three hundred bishops, and an untold number of inferior clergy. All men who desired to defend the order were promised security and freedom. Nine cavaliers presented themselves before the assembly in the character of representatives of fifteen hundred of their brethren, who were living at Lyons, and in the secret fastnesses of Savoy and Switzerland. Clement immediately violated his promise of protection, and threw the nine knights into prison. He then called upon the council for its opinion, whether in consequence of the confessions of the Templars the society ought not to be dissolved? With the disgraceful exception of one Italian prelate, and three French archbishops, the whole body of churchmen declared that so illustrious an order as that of the Red Cross knights ought not to be suppressed, until the grand-master and the nine knights had been heard in its defence. The pope disregarded the opinion of the majority; and tried in vain for six months to make a change.

THE ORDER SUPPRESSED

The king of France arrived at Vienne, and sanctioned by his presence, the pope declared that he should exercise the plenitude of papal authority. He accordingly dissolved the order provisionally and not absolutely, and reserved to himself the disposition of the persons and estates of the Templars. When the subject of the distribution of the knights’ Templar estates was debated in the council, the pope declared that they ought to be bestowed upon the Hospitallers, because the original purpose of the order was the subjugation of infidels, a purpose which the knights of Rhodes were earnestly pursuing.

The decree of confiscation was executed throughout Christendom. The Templars were robbed, but the Hospitallers did not enjoy the whole of the plunder. Philip the Fair, and his successor Louis le Hutin, retained nearly three hundred thousand livres [£12,000 or $60,000] for what they chose to term the expenses of the prosecution. The landed estates were slowly and unwillingly resigned, for the monarchs enjoyed the rents till the commissioners of the knights of Rhodes established their rights. In Germany the Teutonic knights assisted the Hospitallers in plundering those who had formerly been their brethren in arms in Palestine. Dinis, king of Portugal, preserved the order of the Red Cross knights, by changing their title from the soldiers of the Temple to that of the soldiers of Christ. Edward of England gave to different laymen much of the forfeited property. Numbers of the nobility too as heirs of the original donors seized many of the Templars’ estates. Indeed, so great was the injustice done to the Hospitallers, that Pope John XXII censured both the clergy and laity, for their disobedience to the decree of the council at Vienne.

The last circumstance which attended the fate of the Templars was the condemnation of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay.[81] With his dying lips he bore testimony to the virtue of the order; and his mental sufferings on account of his former want of firmness appeared to be greater than his mere corporeal pain. The brother of the prince of Dauphiné met with the same unhappy but honourable end as that of his friend Jacques de Molay. The two priors seem to have died in prison.[b]

THE CRUSADES IN THE WEST

[Sidenote: [1230-1309 A.D.]]

Having completed the survey of the vain efforts for the Holy Land, it will be well to glance at the contests springing up elsewhere on the same fanatic belief that orthodoxy was a matter of life and death.[a]

Though the Crusades met with failure in the East, in the West they achieved their purpose; that is, certain expeditions were highly successful; for example that of the Teutonic knights and sword-bearers into Prussia and the neighbouring regions, where they founded a new state; also Simon de Montfort’s war against the Albigenses which destroyed an ancient civilisation; and the struggle between the Spaniards and the Moors, as a result of which the latter were forced to surrender the peninsula over to Christianity and the civilisation of Europe.

It will be observed that the scene of action of the European Crusades was the two extremities of the continent; around the mouths of the Niemen the pagans of the Baltic were to be converted, and in the country washed by the Tagus, the Moslems of Spain.

THE TEUTONIC CRUSADE

In the interval between the First and Second Crusades some citizens of Bremen and Lübeck had journeyed to the Holy Land and there founded a hospital for their compatriots, which was exclusively under the management of Germans. In Palestine all benevolent institutions were obliged to assume the form of military organisations; thus the Hospitallers, or officials in charge of the hospitals, became the knights of St. John, and the inmates of the temple of Solomon, the knights Templar. The German hospitallers also became transformed into an armed religious body that was called the Teutonic order. Like both the others, this order soon acquired vast properties in Europe, especially in Germany, and the emperor Frederick II raised its grand-master to the rank of prince of the realm. In 1230 a Polish prince made use of their zeal and arms, which could no longer be employed in the Holy Land, by despatching them on a mission to subjugate and convert the Prussians, a people who have since become so closely identified with the Germans settled in the country as to be no longer distinguishable from them. It was this idolatrous people, established between the Niemen and the Vistula, whose language, history, and religion have now completely disappeared, that gave its name to one of the largest and most prosperous states of modern Europe.

The Teutonic order took up its station first at Kulm, whence it proceeded to conquer the Prussians by the use of the means employed by Charlemagne against the Saxons; that is, by destroying one portion of the population and then building fortresses to contain the rest. It was this purpose that Königsberg and Marienburg were intended to serve.

Several years earlier a prelate of Livonia had founded the order of the Brothers of the Sword, known still as the knights of Christ, and the body of the sword-bearers, which subdued Livonia and Esthonia. Disputes with the bishops of Riga caused these organisations to unite in 1237 with the Teutonic order, whose forces were thus doubled. Marienburg became the capital of the order in 1309, and its grand-masters, who reigned over Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland, caused these countries to hold communion with the rest of Europe, and planted in them the germs of civilisation. They remain to-day the richest and most progressive of the Russian provinces. As late as the fifteenth century the Teutonic knights retained the preponderance of power in northern Europe, all the countries between the lower Vistula and Lake Peipus being subject to them except Samogitia, a Lithuanian province which separated the original possessions of the two orders.

THE ATTACK ON THE ALBIGENSES

[Sidenote: [1167-1208 A.D.]]

The crusade directed by Simon de Montfort against the populations of the south of France was at first most disastrous in its effects. During all the time that Christian warriors were being sent out to do battle with miscreants at the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea, many infidels were awaiting conversion in the very heart of Europe. Not the Jews, who had furnished the first cause for the Crusades in the fury with which they inspired their early persecutors, but the mixed populations in the south of France, composed of Iberians, Gauls, Romans, Goths, and Moors, whose religious beliefs were far removed from orthodoxy. Just what name to give to their heresy it is hard to decide; even contemporaries were at a loss in this respect since they called the people simply Albigenses, from the town Albi, which was their common centre. One thing only is certain--that in 1167 a council was held near Toulouse, presided over by Nicetas, a Greek from Constantinople, at which many oriental ideas were adopted; it has also been asserted that ecclesiastics were treated with scorn in every part of the land, and even St. Bernard himself was received there with derision. From this centre of heresy missionaries were sent out in every direction, and already unseemly doctrines were making themselves known in Flanders, Germany, England, and even in Italy, while recently bands of marauders had spread out in the direction of Auvergne, pillaging churches and profaning sacred objects.

Among the rich and brilliant cities of the south the most important was Toulouse, where resided Count Raymond VI, one of the greatest nobles of the south. Another prominent house was that of Barcelona, which had lately obtained rule over Aragon and possessed Roussillon and Provence; there were further the proud and adventurous nobles of the Pyrenees, who lived free and independent lives, and owed not the least allegiance to either church or king.

The south of France had long been separated from the north. Having other customs and speaking a different tongue, it had made serious efforts under Dagobert, Charles Martel, Pepin, Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, and Hugh Capet, to constitute itself an independent state. Increase in commerce had brought ease to its citizens and affluence to its nobles, and the two classes united in peace and harmony to discharge municipal duties, thus assuring the peace of the whole community. But in those wealthy cities and brilliant courts, made gay by the songs of troubadours, religious doctrines were accorded scant attention, and heresy leaked in from every side.

The all-powerful Innocent III resolved to stamp out this hotbed of impiety that threatened to spread contagion far and wide. He began by organising the Inquisition, which was to seek out and judge heretics, and countless victims were immolated without in any way lessening the number of unbelievers, the rack and the stake being but indifferent demonstrators of the truth. The pope next sent to Raymond VI his legate, the monk Peter of Castelnau, with the demand that the heretics be immediately expulsed. But the heretics formed the main body of the population, and Castelnau accomplished nothing. Raymond was excommunicated and threatened with eternal fires, and the legate was murdered during his passage back over the Rhone (1208).

[Sidenote: [1208-1228 A.D.]]

“Anathema on the count of Toulouse,” cried the pope, “and remission of sins to all who will take up arms against these pestilent inhabitants of Provence! Forward, soldiers of Christ! let the heretics be wiped out, and colonies of Catholics spring up where their cities now stand!”