In the month of August, 1099, the
Crusade, to judge by appearances, had attained its
object. Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians,
and they had set up in it a king, the most pious and
most disinterested of the crusaders. Close to
this ancient kingdom were growing up likewise, in
the two chief cities of Syria and Mesopotamia, Antioch
and Edessa, two Christian principalities, in the possession
of two crusader-chiefs, Bohemond and Baldwin.
A third Christian principality was on the point of
getting founded at the foot of Libanus, at Tripolis,
for the advantrge of another crusader, Bertrand, eldest
son of Count Raymond of Toulouse. The conquest
of Syria and Palestine seemed accomplished, in the
name of the faith, and by the armies of Christian
Europe; and the conquerors calculated so surely upon
their fixture that, during his reign, short as it
was (for he was elected king July 23, 1099, and died
July 18, 1100, aged only forty years), Godfrey de
Bouillon caused to be drawn up and published, under
the title of Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of laws,
which transferred to Asia the customs and traditions
of the feudal system, just as they existed in France
at the moment of his departure for the Holy Land.
Forty-six years afterwards, in 1145,
the Mussulmans, under the leadership of Zanghi, sultan
of Aleppo and of Mossoul, had retaken Edessa.
Forty-two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el-Eddyn),
sultan of Egypt and of Syria, had put an end to the
Christian kingdom of Jerusalem; and only seven years
later, in 1194, Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England,
after the most heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving
in sight of Jerusalem, retreated in despair, covering
his eyes with his shield, and saying that he was not
worthy to look upon the city which he was not in a
condition to conquer. When he re-embarked at
St. Jean d’Acre, casting a last glance and stretching
out his arms towards the coast, he cried, “Most
Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty;
and may He grant me long life enough to return hither
and deliver thee from the yoke of the infidels!
“A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph
of the first crusaders, and the dominion they had
acquired by conquest in the Holy Land had become,
even in the eyes of their most valiant and most powerful
successors, an impossibility.
Nevertheless, repeated efforts and
glory, and even victories, were not then, and were
not to be still later, unknown amongst the Christians
in their struggle against the Mussulmans for the possession
of the Holy Land. In the space of a hundred
and seventy-one years from the coronation of Godfrey
de Bouillon as king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the
death of St. Louis, wearing the cross before Tunis,
in 1270, seven grand crusades were undertaken with
the same design by the greatest sovereigns of Christian
Europe; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors
of Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy
successively engaged therein. And they all failed.
It were neither right nor desirable to make long
pause over the recital of their attempts and their
reverses, for it is the history of France, and not
a general history of the crusades, which is here related;
but it was in France, by the French people, and under
French chiefs, that the crusades were begun; and it
was with St. Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the
banner of the cross, that they came to an end.
They received in the history of Europe the glorious
name of Gesta Dei per Francos (God’s works
by French hands); and they have a right to keep, in
the history of France, the place they really occupied.
During a reign of twenty-nine years,
Louis vi., called the Fat, son of Philip I.,
did not trouble himself about the East or the crusades,
at that time in all their fame and renown. Being
rather a man of sense than an enthusiast in the cause
either of piety or glory, he gave all his attention
to the establishment of some order, justice, and royal
authority in his as yet far from extensive kingdom.
A tragic incident, however, gave the crusade chief
place in the thoughts and life of his son, Louis VII.,
called the Young, who succeeded him in 1137.
He got himself rashly embroiled, in 1142, in a quarrel
with Pope Innocent ii., on the subject of the
election of the Archbishop of Bourges. The pope
and the king had each a different candidate for the
see. “The king is a child,” said
the pope; “he must get schooling, and be kept
from learning bad habits.”
“Never, so long as I live,”
said the king, “shall Peter de la Châtre
(the pope’s candidate) enter the city of Bourges.”
The chapter of Bourges, thinking as the pope thought,
elected Peter de la Châtre; and Theobald
ii., Count of Champagne, took sides for the archbishop
elect. Mind your own business,” said the
king to him; “your dominions are large enough
to occupy you; and leave me to govern my own as I
have a mind.” Theobald persisted in backing
the elect of pope and chapter. The pope excommunicated
the king. The king declared war against the Count
of Champagne; and went and besieged Vitry. Nearly
all the town was built of wood, and the besiegers
set fire to it. The besieged fled for refuge
to a church, in which they were invested; and the
fire reached the church, which was entirely consumed,
together with the thirteen hundred inhabitants, men,
women, and children, who had retreated thither.
This disaster made a great stir. St. Bernard,
Abbot of Clairvaux and the leading ecclesiastical
authority of the age, took the part of Count Theobald.
King Louis felt a lively sorrow, and sincere repentance.
Soon afterwards it became known in the West that
the affairs of the Christians were going ill in the
East; that the town of Edessa had been re-taken by
the Turks, and all its inhabitants massacred.
The kingdom of Jerusalem, too, was in danger.
Great was the emotion in Europe; and the cry of the
crusade was heard once more. Louis the Young,
to appease his troubled conscience, and to get reconciled
with the pope, to say nothing of sympathy for the
national movement, assembled the grandees, laic and
ecclesiastical, of the kingdom, to deliberate upon
the matter.
Deliberation was more prolonged, more
frequently repeated, and more indecisive than it had
been at the time of the first crusade. Three
grand assemblies met, the first in 1145, at Bourges;
the second in 1146, at Vezelai, in Nivernais; and
the third in 1147, at Etampes; all three being called
to investigate the expediency of a new crusade, and
of the king’s participation in the enterprise.
Not only was the question seriously discussed, but
extremely diverse opinions were expressed, both amongst
the rank and file of these assemblies, and amongst
their most illustrious members. There were two
men whose talents and fame made them conspicuous above
all; Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the intimate and able
adviser of the wise king, Louis the Fat, and St. Bernard,
Abbot of Clairvaux, the most eloquent, most influential,
and most piously disinterested amongst the Christians
of his age. Though both were ecclesiastics,
these two great men were, touching the second crusade,
of opposite opinions. “Let none suppose,”
says Suger’s biographer and confidant, William,
monk of St. Denis, “that it was at his instance
or by his counsel that the king undertook the voyage
to the Holy Land. Although the success of it
was other than had been expected, this prince was
influenced only by pious wishes and zeal for the service
of God. As for Suger, ever far-seeing and only
too well able to read the future, not only did he
not suggest to the monarch any such design, but he
disapproved of it so soon as it was mentioned to him.
The truth of it is, that, after having vainly striven
to nip it in the bud, and being unable to put a check
upon the king’s zeal, he thought it wise, either
for fear of wounding the king’s piety, or of
uselessly incurring the wrath of the partisans of
the enterprise, to yield to the times.”
As for St. Bernard, at the first of the three assemblies,
viz., at Bourges, whether it were that his mind
was not yet made up or that he desired to cover himself
with greater glory, he advised the king to undertake
nothing without having previously consulted the Holy
See; but when Pope Eugenius iii., so far from
hesitating, had warmly solicited the aid of the Christians
against the infidels, St. Bernard, at the second assembly,
viz., at Vezelai, gave free vent to his feelings
and his eloquence. After having read the pope’s
letters, “If ye were told,” said he, “that
an enemy had attacked your castles, your cities, and
your lands, had ravished your wives and your daughters,
and had profaned your temples, which of you would
not fly to arms? Well, all those evils, and evils
still greater, have come upon your brethren, upon the
family of Christ, which is your own. Why tarry
ye, then, to repair so many wrongs, to avenge so many
insults? Christian warriors, He who gave His
life for you to-day demandeth yours; illustrious knights,
noble defenders of the cross, call to mind the example
of your fathers, who conquered Jerusalem, and whose
names are written in heaven! The living God hath
charged me to tell unto you that He will punish those
who shall not have defended Him against His enemies.
Fly to arms, and let Christendom re-echo with the
words of the prophet, ‘Woe to him who dyeth not
his sword with blood!’ “At this fervent
address the assembly rang with the shout of the first
crusade, ‘God willeth it! God willeth it!’
The king, kneeling before St. Bernard, received from
his hands the cross; the queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine,
assumed it, like her husband; nearly all the barons
present followed their example; St. Bernard tore up
his garments into crosses for distribution, and, on
leaving the assembly, he scoured the country places,
everywhere preaching and persuading the people.
The villages and castles are deserted,” he
wrote to the pope; “there is none to be seen
save widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers
are alive.” Nor did he confine himself
to France; he crossed into Germany, and preached the
crusade all along the Rhine. The emperor, Conrad
iii., showed great hesitation; the empire was
sorely troubled, he said, and had need of its head.
“Be of good cheer,” replied St. Bernard
“so long as you defend His heritage, God himself
will take the burden of defending yours.”
One day, in December, 1146, he was celebrating mass
at Spire, in presence of the emperor and a great number
of German princes. Suddenly he passed from the
regular service to the subject of the crusade, and
transported his audience to the last judgment, in
the presence of all the nations of the earth summoned
together, and Jesus Christ bearing his cross, and
reproaching the emperor with ingratitude. Conrad
was deeply moved, and interrupted the preacher by
crying out, “I know what I owe to Jesus Christ:
and I swear to go whither it pleaseth Him to call me.”
The attraction became general; and Germany, like
France, took up the cross.
St. Bernard returned to France.
The ardor there had cooled a little during his absence;
the results of his trip in Germany were being waited
for; and it was known that, on being eagerly pressed
to put himself at the head of the crusaders, and take
the command of the whole expedition, he had formally
refused. His enthusiasm and his devotion, sincere
and deep as they were, did not, in his case, extinguish
common sense; and he had not forgotten the melancholy
experiences of Peter the Hermit. In support
of his refusal he claimed the intervention of Pope
Eugenius iii. “Who am I,” he
wrote to him, “that I should form a camp, and
march at the head of an army? What can be more
alien to my calling, even if I lacked not the strength
and the ability? I need not tell you all this,
for you know it perfectly. I conjure you by
the charity you owe me, deliver me not over, thus,
to the humors of men.” The pope came to
France; and the third grand assembly met at Etampes,
in February, 1147. The presence of St. Bernard
rekindled zeal; but foresight began to penetrate men’s
minds. Instead of insisting upon his being the
chief of the crusade, attention was given to preparations
for the expedition; the points were indicated at which
the crusaders should form a junction, and the directions
in which they would have to move; and inquiry was
made as to what measures should be taken, and what
persons should be selected for the government of France
during the king’s absence. “Sir,”
said St. Bernard, after having come to an understanding
upon the subject with the principal members of the
assembly, at the same time pointing to Suger and the
Count de Nevers, “here be two swords, and it
sufficeth.” The Count de Nevers peremptorily
refused the honor done him; he was resolved, he said,
to enter the order of St. Bruno, as indeed he did.
Suger also refused at first, “considering the
dignity offered him a burden, rather than an honor.”
Wise and clear-sighted by nature, he had learned in
the reign of Louis the Fat, to know the requirements
and the difficulties of government. “He
consented to accept,” says his biographer, “only
when he was at last forced to it by Pope Eugenius,
who was present at the king’s departure, and
whom it was neither permissible nor possible for him
to resist.” It was agreed that the French
crusaders should form a junction at Metz, under the
command of King Louis, and the Germans at Ratisbonne,
under that of the Emperor Conrad, and that the two
armies should successively repair by land to Constantinople,
whence they would cross into Asia.
Having each a strength, it is said,
of one hundred thousand men, they marched by Germany
and the Lower Danube, at an interval of two months
between them, without committing irregularities and
without meeting obstacles so serious as those of the
first crusade, but still much incommoded, and subjected
to great hardships in the countries they traversed.
The Emperor Conrad and the Germans first, and then
King Louis and the French, arrived at Constantinople
in the course of the summer of 1117. Manuel
Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning
there; and he behaved towards the crusaders with the
same mixture of caresses and malevolence, promises
and perfidy, as had distinguished his grandfather.
“There is no ill turn he did not do them,”
says the historian Nicetas, himself a Greek.
Conrad was the first to cross into Asia Minor, and,
whether it were unskilfulness or treason, the guides
with whom he had been supplied by Manuel Comnenus led
him so badly that, on the 28th of October, 1147, he
was surprised and shockingly beaten by the Turks near
Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up
amongst the French, who had not yet left Constantinople;
and some of their chiefs, and even one of their prelates,
the Bishop of Langres, proposed to make, without further
delay, an end of it with this emperor and empire, so
treacherously hostile, and to take Constantinople in
order to march more securely upon Jerusalem.
But King Louis and the majority of his knights turned
a deaf ear: “We be come forth,” said
they, “to expiate our own sins, not to punish
the crimes of the Greeks; when we took up the cross,
God did not put into our hands the sword of His justice;”
and they, in their turn, crossed over into Asia Minor.
There they found the Germans beaten and dispersed,
and Conrad himself wounded and so discouraged that,
instead of pursuing his way by land with the French,
he returned to Constantinople to go thence by sea
to Palestine. Louis and his army continued their
march across Asia Minor, and gained in Phrygia, at
the passage of the river Meander, so brilliant a victory
over the Turks that, “if such men,” says
the historian Nicetas, abstained from taking Constantinople,
one cannot but admire their moderation and forbearance.”
But the success was short, and, ere
long, dearly paid for. On entering Pisidia,
the French army split up into two, and afterwards into
several divisions, which scattered and lost themselves
in the defiles of the mountains. The Turks waited
for them, and attacked them at the mouths and from
the tops of the passes; before long there was nothing
but disorder and carnage; the little band which surrounded
the king was cut to pieces at his side; and Louis
himself, with his back against a rock, defended himself,
alone, for some minutes, against several Turks, till
they, not knowing who he was, drew off, whereupon he,
suddenly throwing himself upon a stray horse, rejoined
his advanced guard, who believed him dead. The
army continued their march pell-mell, king, barons,
knights, soldiers, and pilgrims, uncertain day by
day what would become of them on the morrow.
The Turks harassed them afield; the towns in which
there were Greek governors residing refused to receive
them; provisions fell short; arms and baggage were
abandoned on the road. On arriving in Pamphylia,
at Satalia, a little port on the Mediterranean, the
impossibility of thus proceeding became evident; they
were still, by land, forty days’ march from
Antioch, whereas it required but three to get there
by sea. The governor of Satalia proposed to the
king to embark the crusaders; but, when the vessels
arrived, they were quite inadequate for such an operation;
hardly could the king, the barons, and the knights
find room in them; and it would be necessary to abandon
and expose to the perils of the land-march the majority
of the infantry and all the mere pilgrims who had
followed the army. Louis, disconsolate, fluctuated
between the most diverse resolutions, at one time demanding
to have everybody embarked at any risk, at another
determining to march by land himself with all who
could not be embarked; distributing whatever money
and provisions he had left, being as generous and sympathetic
as he was improvident and incapable, and “never
letting a day pass,” says Odo of Deuil,
who accompanied him, “without hearing mass and
crying unto the God of the Christians.”
At last he embarked with his queen, Eleanor, and his
principal knights; and towards the end of March, 1148,
he arrived at Antioch, having lost more than three
quarters of his army.
Scarcely had he taken a few days’
rest when messengers came to him on behalf of Baldwin
iii., king of Jerusalem, begging him to repair
without delay to the Holy City. Louis was as
eager to go thither as the king and people of Jerusalem
were to see him there; but his speedy departure encountered
unforeseen hinderances. Raymond, of Poitiers,
at that time Prince of Antioch by his marriage with
Constance, granddaughter of the great Bohemond of
the first crusade, was uncle to the Queen of France,
Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was, says William of
Tyre, “a lord of noble descent, of tall and
elegant figure, the handsomest of the princes of the
earth, a man of charming affability and conversation,
open-handed and magnificent beyond measure,”
and, moreover, ambitious and eager to extend his small
dominion. He had at heart, beyond everything,
the conquest of Aleppo and Caesarea. In this
design the King of France and the crusaders who were
still about him might be of real service; and he attempted
to win them over. Louis answered that he would
engage in no enterprise until he had visited the holy
places. Raymond was impetuous, irritable, and
as unreasonable in his desires as unfortunate in his
undertakings. He had quickly acquired great influence
over his niece, Queen Eleanor, and he had no difficulty
in winning her over to his plans. “She,”
says William of Tyre, “was a very inconsiderate
woman, caring little for royal dignity or conjugal
fidelity; she took great pleasure in the court of
Antioch, where she also conferred much pleasure, even
upon Mussulmans, whom, as some chronicles say, she
did not repulse; and, when the king, her husband,
spoke to her of approaching departure, she emphatically
refused, and, to justify her opposition, she declared
that they could no longer live together, as there
was, she asserted, a prohibited degree of consanguinity
between them.” Louis, “who loved
her with an almost excessive love,” says William
of Nangis, was at the same time angered and grieved.
He was austere in morals, easily jealous, and religiously
scrupulous, and for a moment he was on the point of
separating from his wife; but the counsels of his
chief barons dissuaded him, and, thereupon, taking
a sudden resolution, he set out from Antioch secretly,
by night, carrying off the queen almost by force.
“They both hid their wrath as much as possible,”
says the chronicler; “but at heart they had ever
this outrage.” We shall see, before long,
what were the consequences. No history can offer
so striking an example of the importance of well-assorted
unions amongst the highest as well as the lowest, and
of the prolonged woes which may be brought upon a
nation by the domestic evils of royalty.
On approaching Jerusalem, in the month
of April, 1148, Louis VII. saw coming to meet him
King Baldwin iii., and the patriarch and the people,
singing, “Blessed be he that cometh in the name
of the Lord!” So soon as he had entered the
city, his pious wishes were fulfilled by his being
taken to pay a solemn visit to all the holy places.
At the same time arrived from Constantinople the
Emperor Conrad, almost alone and in the guise of a
simple pilgrim. All the remnant of the crusaders,
French and German, hurried to join them. Impatient
to exhibit their power on the theatre of their creed,
and to render to the kingdom of Jerusalem some striking
service, the two Western sovereigns, and Baldwin, and
their principal barons assembled at Ptolemais (St.
Jean d’Acre) to determine the direction to be
taken by their enterprise. They decided upon
the siege of Damascus, the most important and the
nearest of the Mussulman princedoms in Syria, and
in the early part of June they moved thither with
forces incomplete and ill united. Neither the
Prince of Antioch nor the Counts of Edessa and Tripolis
had been summoned to St. Jean d’Acre; and Queen
Eleanor had not appeared. At the first attack,
the ardor of the assailants and the brilliant personal
prowess of their chiefs, of the Emperor Conrad amongst
others, struck surprise and consternation into the
besieged, who, foreseeing the necessity of abandoning
their city, laid across the streets beams, chains,
and heaps of stones, to stop the progress of the conquerors
and give themselves time for flying, with their families
and their wealth, by the northern and southern gates.
But personal interest and secret negotiations before
long brought into the Christian camp weakness, together
with discord. Many of the barons were already
disputing amongst themselves, at the very elbows of
the sovereigns, for the future government of Damascus;
others were not inaccessible to the rich offers which
came to them from the city; and it is maintained that
King Baldwin himself suffered himself to be bribed
by a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold which
were sent to him by Modjer-Eddyn, Emir of Damascus,
and which turned out to be only pieces of copper,
covered with gold leaf. News came that the Émirs
of Aleppo and Mossoul were coming, with considerable
forces, to the relief of the place. Whatever
may have been the cause of retreat, the crusader-sovereigns
decided upon it, and, raising the siege, returned to
Jerusalem. The Emperor Conrad, in indignation
and confusion, set out precipitately to return to
Germany. King Louis could not make up his mind
thus to quit the Holy Land in disgrace, and without
doing anything for its deliverance. He prolonged
his stay there for more than a year without anything
to show for his time and zeal. His barons and
his knights nearly all left him, and, by sea or land,
made their way back to France. But the king
still lingered. I am under a bond,” he
wrote to Suger, “not to leave the Holy Land,
save with glory, and after doing somewhat for the
cause of God and the kingdom of France.”
At last, after many fruitless entreaties, Suger wrote
to him, “Dear king and lord, I must cause thee
to hear the voice of thy whole kingdom. Why dost
thou fly from us? After having toiled so hard
in the East, after having endured so many almost unendurable
evils, by what harshness or what cruelty comes it
that, now when the barons and grandees of the kingdom
have returned, thou persistest in abiding with the
barbarians? The disturbers of the kingdom have
entered into it again; and thou, who shouldst defend
it, remainest in exile as if thou wert a prisoner;
thou givest over the lamb to the wolf, thy dominions
to the ravishers. We conjure thy majesty, we
invoke thy piety, we adjure thy goodness, we summon
thee in the name of the fealty we owe thee; tarry not
at all, or only a little while, beyond Easter; else
thou wilt appear, in the eyes of God, guilty of a
breach of that oath which thou didst take at the same
time as the crown.” At length Louis made
up his mind and embarked at St. Jean d’Acre
at the commencement of July, 1149; and he disembarked
in the month of October at the port of St. Gilles,
at the mouth of the Rhone, whence he wrote to Suger,
“We be hastening unto you safe and sound, and
we command you not to defer paying us a visit, on a
given day and before all our other friends.
Many rumors reach us touching our kingdom, and knowing
nought for certain, we be desirous to learn from you
how we should bear ourselves or hold our peace, in
every case. And let none but yourself know what
I say to you at this present writing.”
This preference and this confidence
were no more than Louis VII. owed to Suger.
The Abbot of St. Denis, after having opposed the crusade
with a freedom of spirit and a far-sightedness unique,
perhaps, in his times, had, during the king’s
absence, borne the weight of government with a political
tact, a firmness, and a disinterestedness rare in any
times. He had upheld the authority of absent
royalty, kept down the pretensions of vassals, and
established some degree of order wherever his influence
could reach; he had provided for the king’s expenses
in Palestine by good administration of the domains
and revenues of the crown; and, lastly, he had acquired
such renown in Europe, that men came from Italy and
from England to view the salutary effects of his government,
and that the name of Solomon of his age was conferred
upon him by strangers his contemporaries. With
the exception of great sovereigns, such as Charlemagne
or William the Conqueror, only great bishops or learned
theologians, and that by their influence in the Church
or by their writings, had obtained this European reputation;
from the ninth to the twelfth century, Suger was the
first man who attained to it by the sole merit of
his political conduct, and who offered an example of
a minister justly admired, for his ability and wisdom,
beyond the circle in which he lived. When he
saw that the king’s return drew near, he wrote
to him, saying, “You will, I think, have ground
to be satisfied with our conduct. We have remitted
to the knights of the Temple the money we had resolved
to send you. We have, besides, reimbursed the
Count of Vermandois the three thousand livres he had
lent us for your service. Your land and your
people are in the enjoyment, for the present, of a
happy peace. You will find your houses and your
palaces in good condition through the care we have
taken to have them repaired. Behold me now in
the decline of age: and I dare to say that the
occupations in which I have engaged for the love of
God and through attachment to your person have added
many to my years. In respect of the queen, your
consort, I am of opinion that you should conceal the
displeasure she causes you, until, restored to your
dominions, you can calmly deliberate upon that and
upon other subjects.”
On once more entering his kingdom,
Louis, who, at a distance, had sometimes lent a credulous
ear to the complaints of the discontented or to the
calumnies of Suger’s enemies, did him full justice
and was the first to give him the name of Father of
the country. The ill success of the crusade
and the remembrance of all that France had risked and
lost for nothing, made a deep impression upon the
public; and they honored Suger for his far-sightedness
whilst they blamed St. Bernard for the infatuation
which he had fostered and for the disasters which had
followed it. St. Bernard accepted their reproaches
in a pious spirit: “If,” said he,
“there must be murmuring against God or against
me, I prefer to see the murmurs of men falling upon
me rather than upon the Lord. To me it is a
blessed thing that God should deign to use me as a
buckler to shield Himself. I shrink not from
humiliation, provided that His glory be unassailed.”
But at the same time St. Bernard himself was troubled,
and he permitted himself to give expression to his
troubled feelings in a singularly free and bold strain
of piety. “We be fallen upon very grievous
times,” he wrote to Pope Eugenius iii.;
“the Lord, provoked by our sins, seemeth in
some sort to have determined to judge the world before
the time, and to judge it, doubtless, according to
His equity, but not remembering His mercy. Do
not the heathen say, ’Where is now their God?’
And who can wonder? The children of the Church,
those who be called Christian, lie stretched upon
the desert, smitten with the sword or dead of famine.
Did we undertake the work rashly? Did we behave
ourselves lightly? How patiently God heareth
the sacrilegious voices and the blasphemies of these
Egyptians! Assuredly His judgments be righteous;
who doth not know it? But in the present judgment
there is so profound a depth, that I hesitate not
to call him blessed whosoever is not surprised and
offended by it.”
The soul of man, no less than the
shifting scene of the world, is often a great subject
of surprise. King Louis, on his way back to France,
had staid some days at Rome; and there, in a conversation
with the pope, he had almost promised him a new crusade
to repair the disasters of that from which he had
found it so difficult to get out. Suger, when
he became acquainted with this project, opposed it
as he had opposed the former; but, at the same time,
as he, in common with all his age, considered the
deliverance of the Holy Land to be the bounden duty
of Christians, he conceived the idea of dedicating
the large fortune and great influence he had acquired
to the cause of a new crusade, to be undertaken by
himself and at his own expense, without compromising
either king or state. He unfolded his views
to a meeting of bishops assembled at Chartres; and
he went to Tours, and paid a visit to the tomb of St.
Martin to implore his protection. Already more
than ten thousand pilgrims were in arms at his call,
and already he had himself chosen a warrior, of ability
and renown, to command them, when he fell ill, and
died at the end of four months, in 1152, aged seventy,
and “thanking the Almighty,” says his
biographer, “for having taken him to Him, not
suddenly, but little by little, in order to bring him
step by step to the rest needful for the weary man.”
It is said that, in his last days and when St. Bernard
was exhorting him not to think any more save only of
the heavenly Jerusalem, Suger still expressed to him
his regret at dying without having succored the city
which was so dear to them both.
Almost at the very moment when Suger
was dying, a French council, assembled at Beaugency,
was annulling on the ground of prohibited consanguinity,
and with the tacit consent of the two persons most
concerned, the marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor of
Aquitaine. Some months afterwards, at Whitsuntide
in the same year, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy
and Count of Anjou, espoused Eleanor, thus adding to
his already great possessions Poitou and Aquitaine,
and becoming, in France, a vassal more powerful than
the king his suzerain. Twenty months later,
in 1154, at the death of King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet
became King of England; and thus there was a recurrence,
in an aggravated form, of the position which had been
filled by William the Conqueror, and which was the
first cause of rivalry between France and England and
of the consequent struggles of considerably more than
a century’s duration.
Little more than a year after Suger,
on the 20th of April, 1153, St. Bernard died also.
The two great men, of whom one had excited and the
other opposed the second crusade, disappeared together
from the theatre of the world. The crusade had
completely failed. After a lapse of scarce forty
years, a third crusade began. When a great idea
is firmly fixed in men’s minds with the twofold
sanction of duty and feeling, many generations live
and die in its service before efforts are exhausted
and the end reached or abandoned.
During this forty years’ interval
between the end of the second and beginning of the
third crusade, the relative positions of West and East,
Christian Europe and Mussulman Asia, remained the same
outwardly and according to the general aspect of affairs;
but in Syria and in Palestine there was a continuance
of the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, with
various fortunes on either side. The Christian
kingdom of Jerusalem still stood; and after Godfrey
de Bouillon, from 1100 to 1180, there had been a succession
of eight kings; some energetic and bold, aspiring to
extend their young dominion, others indolent and weak
upon a tottering throne. The rivalries and often
the defections and treasons of the petty Christian
princes and lords who were set up at different points
in Palestine and Syria endangered their common cause.
Fortunately similar rivalries, dissensions, and treasons
prevailed amongst the Mussulman émirs, some of
them Turks and others Persians or Arabs, and at one
time foes, at another dependants, of the Khalifs of
Bagdad or of Egypt. Anarchy and civil war harassed
both races and both religions with almost equal impartiality.
But, beneath this surface of simultaneous agitation
and monotony, great changes were being accomplished
or preparing for accomplishment in the West.
The principal sovereigns of the preceding generation,
Louis VII., King of France, Conrad iii., Emperor
of Germany, and Henry ii., King of England, were
dying; and princes more juvenile and more enterprising,
or simply less wearied out, Philip Augustus,
Frederick Barbarossa, and Richard Coeur de Lion, were
taking their places. In the East the theatre
of policy and events was being enlarged; Egypt was
becoming the goal of ambition with the chiefs, Christian
or Mussulman, of Eastern Asia; and Damietta, the key
of Egypt, was the object of their enterprises, those
of Amaury I., the boldest of the kings of Jerusalem,
as well as those of the Sultans of Damascus and Aleppo.
Noureddin and Saladin (Nour-Eddyn and Sala-Eddyn),
Turks by origin, had commenced their fortunes in Syria;
but it was in Egypt that they culminated, and, when
Saladin became the most illustrious as well as the
most powerful of Mussulman sovereigns, it was with
the title of Sultan of Egypt and of Syria that he
took his place in history.
In the course of the year 1187, Europe
suddenly heard tale upon tale about the repeated disasters
of the Christians in Asia. On the 1st of May,
the two religious and warlike orders which had been
founded in the East for the defence of Christendom the
Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars lost,
at a brush in Galilee, five hundred of their bravest
knights. On the 3d and 4th of July, near Tiberias,
a Christian army was surrounded by the Saracens, and
also, ere long, by the fire which Saladin had ordered
to be set to the dry grass which covered the plain.
The flames made their way and spread beneath the feet
of men and horses. “There,” say
the Oriental chroniclers, “the sons of Paradise
and the children of fire settled their terrible quarrel.
Arrows hurtled in the air like a noisy flight of
sparrows, and the blood of warriors dripped upon the
ground like rain-water.” “I saw,”
adds one of them who was present at the battle, “hill,
plain, and valley covered with their dead; I saw their
banners stained with dust and blood; I saw their heads
laid low, their limbs scattered, their carcasses piled
on a heap like stones.” Four days after
the battle of Tiberias, on the 8th of July, 1187,
Saladin took possession of St. Jean d’Acre, and,
on the 4th of September following, of Ascalon.
Finally, on the 18th of September, he laid siege
to Jerusalem, wherein refuge had been sought by a multitude
of Christian families driven from their homes by the
ravages of the infidels throughout Palestine; and
the Holy City contained at this time, it is said,
nearly one hundred thousand Christians. On approaching
its walls, Saladin sent for the principal inhabitants,
and said to them, “I know as well as you that
Jerusalem is the house of God; and I will not have
it assaulted if I can get it by peace and love.
I will give you thirty thousand byzants of gold if
you promise me Jerusalem, and you shall have liberty
to go whither you will and do your tillage, to a distance
of five miles from the city. And I will have
you sup-plied with such plenty of provisions that
in no place on earth shall they be so cheap.
You shall have a truce from now to Whitsuntide, and
when this time comes, if you see that you may have
aid, then hold on. But if not, you shall give
up the city, and I will have you conveyed in safety
to Christian territory, yourselves and your substance.”
“We may not yield up to you a city where died
our God,” answered the envoys: “and
still less may we sell you.” The siege
lasted fourteen days. After having repulsed several
assaults, the inhabitants saw that effectual resistance
was impossible; and the commandant of the place, a
knight named Dalian d’Ibelin, an old warrior,
who had been at the battle of Tiberias, returned to
Saladin, and asked for the conditions back again which
had at first been rejected. Saladin, pointing
to his own banner already planted upon several parts
of the battlements, answered, “It is too late;
you surely see that the city is mine.”
“Very well, my lord,” replied the knight:
“we will ourselves destroy our city, and the
mosque of Omar, and the stone of Jacob: and when
it is nothing but a heap of ruins, we will sally forth
with sword and fire in hand, and not one of us will
go to Paradise without having sent ten Mussulmans
to hell.” Saladin understood enthusiasm,
and respected it; and to have had the destruction
of Jerusalem connected with his name would’
have caused him deep displeasure. He therefore
consented to the terms of capitulation demanded of
him. The fighting men were permitted to retreat
to Tyre or Tripolis, the last cities of any importance,
besides Antioch, in the power of the Christians; and
the simple inhabitants of Jerusalem had their lives
preserved, and permission given them to purchase their
freedom on certain conditions; but, as many amongst
them could not find the means, Malek-Adhel, the sultan’s
brother, and Saladin himself paid the ransom of several
thousands of captives. All Christians, however,
with the exception of Greeks and Syrians, had orders
to leave Jerusalem within four days. When the
day came, all the gates were closed, except that of
David by which the people were to go forth; and Saladin,
seated upon a throne, saw the Christians defile before
him. First came the patriarch, followed by the
clergy, carrying the sacred vessels, and the ornaments
of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. After him
came Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem, who had remained
in the city, whilst her husband, Guy de Lusignan, had
been a prisoner at Nablous since the battle of Tiberias.
Saladin saluted her respectfully, and spoke to her
kindly. He had too great a soul to take pleasure
in the humiliation of greatness.
The news, spreading through Europe,
caused amongst all classes there, high and low, a
deep feeling of sorrow, anger, disquietude, and shame.
Jerusalem was a very different thing from Edessa.
The fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem meant the sepulchre
of Jesus Christ fallen once more into the hands of
the infidels, and, at the same time, the destruction
of what had been wrought by Christian Europe in the
East, the loss of the only striking and permanent
gage of her victories. Christian pride was as
much wounded as Christian piety. A new fact,
moreover, was conspicuous in this series of reverses
and in the accounts received of them; after all its
defeats and in the midst of its discord, Islamry had
found a chieftain and a hero. Saladin was one
of those strange and superior beings who, by their
qualities and by their very defects, make a strong
impression upon the imaginations of men, whether friends
or foes. His Mussulman fanaticism was quite as
impassioned as the Christian fanaticism of the most
ardent crusaders. When he heard that Reginald
of Chatillon, Lord of Karat, on the confines of Palestine
and Arabia, had all but succeeded in an attempt to
go and pillage the Caaba and the tomb of Mahomet,
he wrote to his brother Malek-Adhel, at that time governor
of Egypt, “The infidels have violated the home
and the cradle of Islamism; they have profaned our
sanctuary. Did we not prevent a like insult
(which God forbid!) we should render ourselves guilty
in the eyes of God and the eyes of men. Purge
we, therefore, our land from these men who dishonor
it; purge we the very air from the air they breathe.”
He commanded that all the Christians who could possibly
be captured on this occasion should be put to death;
and many were taken to Mecca, where the Mussulman
pilgrims immolated them instead of the sheep and lambs
they were accustomed to sacrifice. The expulsion
of the Christians from Palestine was Saladin’s
great idea and unwavering passion; and he severely
chid the Mussulmans for their soft-heartedness in the
struggle. “Behold these Christians,”
he wrote to the Khalif of Bagdad, “how they
come crowding in! How emulously they press on!
They are continually receiving fresh re-enforcements
more numerous than the waves of the sea, and to us
more bitter than its brackish waters. Where one
dies by land, a thousand come by sea. . . .
The crop is more abundant than the harvest; the tree
puts forth more branches than the axe can lop off.
It is true that great numbers have already perished,
insomuch that the edge of our swords is blunted; but
our comrades are beginning to grow weary of so long
a war. Haste we, therefore, to implore the help
of the Lord.” Nor needed he the excuse
of passion in order to be cruel and sanguinary when
he considered it would serve his cause; for human lives
and deaths he had that barbaric indifference which
Christianity alone has rooted out from the communities
of men, whilst it has remained familiar to the Mussulman.
When he found himself, either during or after a battle,
confronted by enemies whom he really dreaded, such
as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem or the
Templars, he had them massacred, and sometimes gave
them their death-blow himself, with cool satisfaction.
But, apart from open war and the hatred inspired by
passion or cold calculation, he was moderate and generous,
gentle towards the vanquished and the weak, just and
compassionate towards his subjects, faithful to his
engagements, and capable of feeling sympathetic admiration
for men, even his enemies, in whom he recognized superior
qualities, courage, loyalty, and loftiness of mind.
For Christian knighthood, its precepts and the noble
character it stamped upon its professors, he felt so
much respect and even inclination that the wish of
his heart, it is said, was to receive the title of
knight, and that he did, in fact, receive it with
the approval of Richard Coeur de Lion. By reason
of all these facts and on all these grounds he acquired,
even amongst the Christians, that popularity which
attaches itself to greatness justified by personal
deeds and living proofs, in spite of the fear and
even the hatred inspired thereby. Christian
Europe saw in him the able and potent chief of Mussulman
Asia, and, whilst detesting, admired him.
After the capture of Jerusalem by
Saladin, the Christians of the East, in their distress,
sent to the West their most eloquent prelate and gravest
historian William, Archbishop of Tyre, who, fifteen
years before, in the reign of Baldwin iv., had
been Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
He, accompanied by a legate of Pope Gregory VIII.,
scoured Italy, France, and Germany, recounting everywhere
the miseries of the Holy Land, and imploring the aid
of all Christian princes and peoples, whatever might
be their own position of affairs and their own quarrels
in Europe. At a parliament assembled at Gisors,
on the 21st of January, 1188, and at a diet convoked
at Mayence on the 27th of March following, he so powerfully
affected the knighthood of France, England, and Germany,
that the three sovereigns of these three states, Philip
Augustus, Richard Coeur de Lion, and Frederick Barbarossa,
engaged with acclamation in a new crusade. They
were princes of very different ages and degrees of
merit, but all three distinguished for their personal
qualities as well as their puissance. Frederick
Barbarossa was sixty-seven, and for the last thirty-six
years had been leading, in Germany and Italy, as politician
and soldier, a very active and stormy existence.
Richard Cceur de Lion was thirty-one, and had but
just ascended the throne where he was to shine as
the most valiant and adventurous of knights rather
than as a king. Philip Augustus, though only
twenty-three, had already shown signs, beneath the
vivacious sallies of youth, of the reflective and
steady ability characteristic of riper age. Of
these three sovereigns, the eldest, Frederick Barbarossa,
was first ready to plunge amongst the perils of the
crusade. Starting from Ratisbonne about Christmas,
1189, with an army of one hundred and fifty thousand
men, he traversed the Greek empire and Asia Minor,
defeated the Sultan of Iconium, passed the first defiles
of Taurus, and seemed to be approaching the object
of his voyage, when, on the 10th of June, 1190, having
arrived at the borders of the Selef, a small river
which throws itself into the Mediterranean close to
Seleucia, he determined to cross it by fording, was
seized with a chill, and, according to some, drowned
before his people’s eyes, but, according to
others, carried dying to Seleucia, where he expired.
His young son Conrad, Duke of Suabia, was not equal
to taking the command of such an army; and it broke
up.
The majority of the German princes
returned to Europe: and “there remained
beneath the banner of Christ only a weak band of warriors
faithful to their vow, a boy-chief, and a bier.
When the crusaders of the other nations, assembled
before St. Jean d’Acre, saw the remnant of that
grand German army arrive, not a soul could restrain
his tears. Three thousand men, all but stark
naked, and harassed to death, marched sorrowfully
along, with the dried bones of their emperor carried
in a coffin. For, in the twelfth century, the
art of embalming the dead was unknown. Barbarossa,
before leaving Europe, had asked that, if he should
die in the crusade, he might be buried in the church
of the Resurrection at Jerusalem; but this wish could
not be accomplished, as the Christians did not recover
the Holy City, and the mortal remains of the emperor
were carried, as some say, to Tyre, and, as others,
to Antioch, Where his tomb has not been discovered.”
(Histoire de la Lutte des Papes et des Empereurs
de la Maison de Souabe, by M. de Cherrier, Member
of the Institute, t. i., .)
Frederick Barbarossa was already dead
in Asia Minor, and the German army was already broken
up, when, on the 24th of June, 1190, Philip Augustus
went and took the oriflamme at St. Denis, on his way
to Vezelai, where he had appointed to meet Richard,
and whence the two kings, in fact, set out, on the
4th of July, to embark with their troops, Philip at
Genoa, and Richard at Marseilles. They had agreed
to touch nowhere until they reached Sicily, where
Philip was the first to arrive, on the 16th of September;
and Richard was eight days later. But, instead
of simply touching, they passed at Messina all the
autumn of 1190, and all the winter of 1190-91, no
longer seeming to think of anything but quarrelling
and amusing themselves. Nor were grounds for
quarrel or opportunities for amusements to seek.
Richard, in spite of his promise, was unwilling to
marry the Princess Alice, Philip’s sister; and
Philip, after lively discussion, would not agree to
give him back his word, save “in consideration
of a sum of ten thousand silver marks, whereof he shall
pay us three thousand at the feast of All Saints,
and year by year in succession, at this same feast.”
Some of their amusements were not more refined than
their family arrangements, and ruffianly contests and
violent enmities sprang up amidst the feasts and the
games in which kings and knights nearly every evening
indulged in the plains round about Messina.
One day there came amongst the crusaders thus assembled
a peasant driving an ass, laden with those long and
strong reeds known by the name of canes. English
and French, with Richard at their head, bought them
of him; and, mounting on horseback, ran tilt at one
another, armed with these reeds by way of lances.
Richard found himself opposite to a French knight,
named William des Barres, of whose strength and
valor he had already, not without displeasure, had
experience in Normandy. The two champions met
with so rude a shock that their reeds broke, and the
king’s cloak was torn. Richard, in pique,
urged his horse violently against the French knight,
in order to make him lose his stirrups; but William
kept a firm seat, whilst the king fell under his horse,
which came down in his impetuosity. Richard,
more and more exasperated, had another horse brought,
and charged a second time, but with no more success,
the immovable knight. One of Richard’s
favorites, the Earl of Leicester, would have taken
his place, and avenged his lord; but “let be,
Robert,” said the king: “it is a matter
between him and me;” and he once more attacked
William des Barres, and once more to no purpose.
“Fly from my sight,” cried he to the
knight, “and take care never to appear again;
for I will be ever a mortal foe to thee, to thee and
thine.” William des Barres, somewhat
discomfited, went in search of the King of France,
to put himself under his protection. Philip
accordingly paid a visit to Richard, who merely said,
“I’ll not hear a word.” It
needed nothing less than the prayers of the bishops,
and even, it is said, a threat of excommunication,
to induce Richard to grant William des Barres
the king’s peace during the time of pilgrimage.
Such a comrade was assuredly very
inconvenient, and might be under difficult circumstances
very dangerous. Philip, without being susceptible
or quarrelsome, was naturally independent, and disposed
to act, on every occasion, according to his own ideas.
He resolved, not to break with Richard, but to divide
their commands, and separate their fortunes.
On the approach of spring, 1191, he announced to him
that the time had arrived for continuing their pilgrimage
to the Holy Land, and that, as for himself, he was
quite ready to set out. “I am not ready,”
said Richard; “and I cannot depart before the
middle of August.” Philip, after some
discussion, set out alone, with his army, on the 30th
of March, and on the 14th of April arrived before
St. Jean d’.Acre. This important place,
of which Saladin had made himself master nearly four
years before, was being besieged by the last King of
Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, at the head of the Christians
of Palestine, and by a multitude of crusaders, Genoese,
Danish, Flemish, and German, who had flocked freely
to the enterprise. A strong and valiant Mussulman
garrison was defending St. Jean d’Acre.
Saladin manoeuvred incessantly for its relief, and
several battles had already been fought beneath the
walls. When the King of France arrived, he was
received by the Christians besieging,” say the
chronicles of St. Denis, “with supreme joy, as
if he were an angel come down from heaven.”.
Philip set vigorously to work to push on the siege;
but at his departure he had promised Richard not to
deliver the grand assault until they had formed a junction
before the place with all their forces. Richard,
who had set out from Messina at the beginning of May,
though he had said that he would not be ready till
August, lingered again on the way to reduce the island
of Cyprus, and to celebrate there his marriage with
Berengaria of Navarre, in lieu of Alice of France.
At last he arrived, on the 7th of June, before St.
Jean d’Acre; and several assaults in succession
were made on the place with equal determination on
the part of the besiegers and the besieged. “The
tumultuous waves of the Franks,” says an Arab
historian, “rolled towards the walls of the
city with the rapidity of a torrent; and they climbed
the half-ruined battlements as wild goats climb precipitous
rocks, whilst the Saracens threw themselves upon the
besiegers like stones unloosed from the top of a mountain.”
At length, on the 13th of July, 1191, in spite of
the energetic resistance offered by the garrison, which
defended itself “as a lion defends his blood-stained
den,” St. Jean d’Acre surrendered.
The terms of capitulation stated that two hundred
thousand pieces of gold should be paid to the chiefs
of the Christian army; that sixteen hundred prisoners
and the wood of the true cross should be given up
to them; and that the garrison as well as all the people
of the town should remain in the conquerors’
power, pending full execution of the treaty.
Whilst the siege was still going on,
the discord between the Kings of France and England
was increasing in animosity and venom. The conquest
of Cyprus had become a new subject of dispute.
When the French were most eager for the assault,
King Richard remained in his tent; and so the besieged
had scarcely ever to repulse more than one or other
of the kings and armies at a time. Saladin,
it is said, showed Richard particular attention, sending
him grapes and pears from Damascus; and Philip conceived
some mistrust of these relations. In camp the
common talk, combined with anxious curiosity, was,
that Philip was jealous of Richard’s warlike
popularity, and Richard was jealous of the power and
political weight of the King of France.
When St. Jean d’Acre had been
taken, the judicious Philip, in view of what it had
cost the Christians of East and West, in time and blood,
to recover this single town, considered that a fresh
and complete conquest of Palestine and Syria, which
was absolutely necessary for a re-establishment of
the kingdom of Jerusalem, was impossible: he had
discharged what he owed to the crusade; and the course
now permitted and prescribed to him was to give his
attention to France. The news he received from
home was not encouraging; his son Louis, hardly four
years old, had been dangerously ill; and he himself
fell ill, and remained some days in bed, in the midst
of the town he had just conquered. His enemies
called his illness in question, for already there was
a rumor abroad that he had an idea of giving up the
crusade, and returning to France; but the details
given by contemporary chroniclers about the effects
of his illness scarcely permit it to be regarded as
a sham. “Violent sweats,” they say,
“committed such havoc with his bones and all
his members, that the nails fell from his fingers
and the hair from his head, insomuch that it was believed and,
indeed, the rumor is not yet dispelled that
he had taken a deadly poison.” There was
nothing strange in Philip’s illness, after all
his fatigues, in such a country and such a season;
Saladin, too, was ill at the same time, and more than
once unable to take part with his troops in their
engagements. But, however that may be, a contemporary
English chronicler, Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough,
relates that, on the 22d of July, 1191, whilst King
Richard was playing chess with the Earl of Gloucester,
the Bishop of Beauvais, the Duke of Burgundy, and
two knights of consideration, presented themselves
before him on behalf of the King of France.
“They were dissolved in tears,” says he,
“in such sort they could not utter a single word;
and, seeing them so moved, those present wept in their
turn for pity’s sake. ’Weep not,’
said King Richard to them; ’I know what ye be
come to ask; your lord, the King of France, desireth
to go home again, and ye be come in his name to ask
on his behalf my counsel and leave to get him gone.’
‘It is true, sir; you know all,’ answered
the messengers; ’our king sayeth, that if he
depart not speedily from this land, he will surely
die.’ ‘It will be for him and for
the kingdom of France,’ replied King Richard,
’eternal shame, if he go home without fulfilling
the work for the which he came, and he shall not go
hence by my advice; but if he must die or return home,
let him do what he will, and what may appear to him
expedient for him, for him and his.’”
The source from which this story comes, and the tone
of it, are enough to take from it all authority; for
it is the custom of monastic chroniclers to attribute
to political or military characters emotions and demonstrations
alien to their position and their times. Philip
Augustus, moreover, was one of the most decided, most
insensible to any other influence but that of his own
mind, and most disregardful of his enemies’
bitter speeches, of all the kings in French history.
He returned to France after the capture of St. Jean
d’ Acre, because he considered the ultimate
success of the crusade impossible, and his return
necessary for the interests of France and for his own.
He was right in thus thinking and acting; and King
Richard, when insultingly reproaching him for it,
did not foresee that, a year later, he would himself
be doing the same thing, and would give up the crusade
without having obtained anything more for Christendom,
except fresh reverses.
On the 31st of July, 1191, Philip,
leaving with the army of the crusaders ten thousand
foot and five hundred knights, under the command of
Duke Hugh of Burgundy, who had orders to obey King
Richard, set sail for France; and, a few days after
Christmas in the same year, landed in his kingdom,
and forth-with resumed, at Fontainebleau according
to some, and at Paris according to others, the regular
direction of his government. We shall see before
long with what intelligent energy and with what success
he developed and consolidated the territorial greatness
of France and the influence of the kingship, to her
security in Europe and her prosperity at home.
From the 1st of August, 1191, to the
9th of October, 1192, King Richard remained alone
in the East as chief of the crusade and defender of
Christendom. He pertains, during that period,
to the history of England, and no longer to that of
France. We will, however, recall a few facts
to show how fruitless, for the cause of Christendom
in the East, was the prolongation of his stay and
what strange deeds at one time of savage
barbarism, and at another of mad pride or fantastic
knight-errantry were united in him with
noble instincts and the most heroic courage.
On the 20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the
surrender of St. Jean d’Acre, he found that
Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude
the conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him
up to time, he ordered the decapitation, before the
walls of the place, of, according to some, twenty-five
hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman
prisoners remaining in his hands.
The only effect of this massacre was,
that during Richard’s first campaign after Philip’s
departure for France, Saladin put to the sword all
the Christians taken in battle or caught straggling,
and ordered their bodies to be left without burial,
as those of the garrison of St. Jean d’Acre
had been. Some months afterwards Richard conceived
the idea of putting an end to the struggle between
Christendom and Islamry, which he was not succeeding
in terminating by war, by a marriage. He had
a sister, Joan of England, widow of William ii.,
king of Sicily; and Saladin had a brother, Malek-Adhel,
a valiant warrior, respected by the Christians.
Richard had proposals made to Saladin to unite them
in marriage and set them to reign together over the
Christians and Mussulmans in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
The only result of the negotiation was to give Saladin
time for repairing the fortifications of Jerusalem,
and to bring down upon King Richard and his sister,
on the part of the Christian bishops, the fiercest
threats of the fulminations of the Church. With
the exception of this ridiculous incident, Richard’s
life, during the whole course of this year, was nothing
but a series of great or small battles, desperately
contested, against Saladin. When Richard had
obtained a success, he pursued it in a haughty, passionate
spirit; when he suffered a check, he offered Saladin
peace, but always on condition of surrendering Jerusalem
to the Christians, and Saladin always answered, “Jerusalem
never was yours, and we may not without sin give it
up to you; for it is the place where the mysteries
of our religion were accomplished, and the last one
of my soldiers will perish before the Mussulmans renounce
conquests made in the name of Mahomet.”
Twice Richard and his army drew near Jerusalem, “without
his daring to look upon it, he said, since he was
not in a condition to take it.” At last,
in the summer of 1192, the two armies and the two chiefs
began to be weary of a war without result. A
great one, however, for Saladin and the Mussulmans
was the departure of Richard and the crusaders.
Being unable to agree about conditions for a definitive
peace, they contented themselves, on both sides, with
a truce for three years and eight months, leaving
Jerusalem in possession of the Mussulmans, but open
for worship to the Christians, in whose hands remained,
at the same time, the towns they were in occupation
of on the maritime coast, from Jaffa to Tyre.
This truce, which was called peace, having received
the signature of all the Christian and Mussulman princes,
was celebrated by galas and tournaments, at which
Christians and Mussulmans seemed for a moment to have
forgotten their hate; and on the 9th of October, 1192,
Richard embarked at St. Jean d’Acre to go and
run other risks.
Thus ended the third crusade, undertaken
by the three greatest sovereigns and the three greatest
armies of Christian Europe, and with the loudly proclaimed
object of retaking Jerusalem from the infidels, and
re-establishing a king over the sepulchre of Jesus
Christ. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa perished
in it before he had trodden the soil of Palestine.
King Philip Augustus retired from it voluntarily,
so soon as experience had foreshadowed to him the
impossibility of success. King Richard abandoned
it perforce, after having exhausted upon it his heroism
and his knightly pride. The three armies, at
the moment of departure from Europe, amounted, according
to the historians of the time, to five or six hundred
thousand men, of whom scarcely one hundred thousand
returned; and the only result of the third crusade
was to leave as head over all the most beautiful provinces
of Mussulman Asia and Africa, Saladin, the most illustrious
and most able chieftain, in war and in politics, that
Islamry had produced since Mahomet.
From the end of the twelfth to the
middle of the thirteenth century, between the crusade
of Philip Augustus and that of St. Louis, it is usual
to count three crusades, over which we will not linger.
Two of these crusades one, from 1195 to
1198, under Henry vi., Emperor of Germany, and
the other, from 1216 to 1240, under the Emperor Frederick
ii. and Andrew ii., King of Hungary are
unconnected with France, and almost exclusively German,
or, in origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe.
They led, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to wars,
negotiations, and manifold complications; Jerusalem
fell once more, for a while, into the hands of the
Christians; and there, on the 18th of March, 1229,
in the church of the Resurrection, the Emperor Frederick
ii., at that time excommunicated by Pope Gregory
ix., placed with his own hands the royal crown
upon his head. But these events, confused, disconnected,
and short-lived as they were, did not produce in the
West, and especially in France, any considerable reverberation,
and did not exercise upon the relative situations
of Europe and Asia, of Christendom and Islamry, any
really historical influence. In people’s
lives, and in the affairs of the world, there are
many movements of no significance, and more cry than
wool; and those facts only which have had some weight
and some duration are here to be noted for study and
comprehension. The event which has been called
the fifth crusade was not wanting, so far, in real
importance, and it would have to be described here,
if it had been really a crusade; but it does not deserve
the name. The crusades were a very different
thing from wars and conquests; their real and peculiar
characteristic was, that they should be struggles between
Christianity and Islamism, between the fruitful civilization
of Europe and the barbarism and stagnation of Asia.
Therein consist their originality and their grandeur.
It was certainly on this understanding, and with this
view, that Pope Innocent iii., one of the greatest
men of the thirteenth century, seconded with all his
might the movement which was at that time springing
up again in favor of a fresh crusade, and which brought
about, in 1202, an alliance between a great number
of powerful lords, French, Flemish, and Italian, and
the republic of Venice, for the purpose of recovering
Jerusalem from the infidels. But from the very
first, the ambition, the opportunities, and the private
interests of the Venetians, combined with a recollection
of the perfidy displayed by the Greek emperors, diverted
the new crusaders from the design they had proclaimed.
What Bohemond, during the first crusade, had proposed
to Godfrey de Bouillon, and what the Bishop of Langres,
during the second, had suggested to Louis the Young,
namely, the capture of Constantinople for the sake
of insuring that of Jerusalem, the first crusaders
of the thirteenth century were led by bias, greed,
anger, and spite to take in hand and accomplish; they
conquered Constantinople, and, having once made that
conquest, they troubled themselves no more about Jerusalem.
Founded, May 16th, 1204, in the person of Baldwin ix.,
Count of Flanders, the Latin empire of the East existed
for seventy years, in the teeth of many a storm, only
to fall once more, in 1273, into the hands of the
Greek emperors, overthrown in 1453 by the Turks, who
are still in possession.
One circumstance, connected rather
with literature than politics, gives Frenchmen a particular
interest in this conquest of the Greek empire by the
Latin Christians; for it was a Frenchman, Geoffrey
de Villehardouin, seneschal of Theobald iii.,
Count of Champagne, who, after having been one of
the chief actors in it, wrote the history of it; and
his work, strictly historical as to facts, and admirably
epic in description of character and warmth of coloring,
is one of the earliest and finest monuments of French
literature.
But to return to the real crusades.
At the beginning of the thirteenth
century, whilst the enterprises which were still called
crusades were becoming more and more degenerate in
character and potency, there was born in France, on
the 25th of April, 1215, not merely the prince, but
the man who was to be the most worthy representative
and the most devoted slave of that religious and moral
passion which had inspired the crusades. Louis
ix., though born to the purple, a powerful king,
a valiant warrior, a splendid knight, and an object
of reverence to all those who at a distance observed
his life, and of affection to all those who approached
his person, was neither biassed nor intoxicated by
any such human glories and delights; neither in his
thoughts nor in his conduct did they ever occupy the
foremost place; before all and above all he wished
to be, and was indeed, a Christian, a true Christian,
guided and governed by the idea and the resolve of
defending the Christian faith and fulfilling the Christian
law. Had he been born in the most lowly condition,
as the world holds, or, as religion, the most commanding;
had he been obscure, needy, a priest, a monk, or a
hermit, he could not have been more constantly and
more zealously filled with the desire of living as
a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and of insuring,
by pious obedience to God here, the salvation of his
soul hereafter. This is the peculiar and original
characteristic of St. Louis, and a fact rare and probably
unique in the history of kings. (He was canonized
on the 11th of August, 1297; and during twenty-four
years nine successive popes had prosecuted the customary
inquiries as to his faith and life.)
It is said that the Christian enthusiasm
of St. Louis had its source in the strict education
he received from Queen Blanche, his mother. That
is overstepping the limits of that education and of
her influence. Queen Blanche, though a firm
believer and steadfastly pious, was a stranger to
enthusiasm, and too discreet and too politic to make
it the dominating principle of her son’s life
any more than of her own. The truth of the matter
is that, by her watchfulness and her exactitude in
morals, she helped to impress upon her son the great
Christian lesson of hatred for sin and habitual concern
for the eternal salvation of his soul. “Madame
used to say of me,” Louis was constantly repeating,
“that if I were sick unto death, and could not
be cured save by acting in such wise that I should
sin mortally, she would let me die rather than that
I should anger my Creator to my damnation.”
In the first years of his government,
when he had reached his majority, there was nothing
to show that the idea of the crusade occupied Louis
ix.’s mind; and it was only in 1239, when
he was now four and twenty, that it showed itself
vividly in him. Some of his principal vassals,
the Counts of Champagne, Brittany, and Macon, had
raised an army of crusaders, and were getting ready
to start for Palestine; and the king was not contented
with giving them encouragement, but “he desired
that Amaury de Montfort, his constable, should, in
his name, serve Jesus Christ in this war; and for
that reason he gave him arms and assigned to him per
day a sum of money, for which Amaury thanked him on
his knees, that is, did him homage, according to the
usage of those times. And the crusaders were
mighty pleased to have this lord with them.”
Five years afterwards, at the close
of 1244, Louis fell seriously ill at Pontoise; the
alarm and sorrow in the kingdom were extreme; the king
himself believed that his last hour was come; and he
had all his household summoned, thanked them for their
kind attentions, recommended them to be good servants
of God, “and did all that a good Christian ought
to do. His mother, his wife, his brothers, and
all who were about him kept continually praying for
him; his mother, beyond all others, adding to her
prayers great austerities.” Once he appeared
motionless and breathless; and he was supposed to
be dead. “One of the dames who were
tending him,” says Joinville, “would have
drawn the sheet over his face, saying that he was
dead; but another dame, who was on the other side of
the bed, would not suffer it, saying that there was
still life in his body. When the king heard
the dispute between these two dames, our Lord
wrought in him: he began to sigh, stretched his
arms and legs, and said, in a hollow voice, as if
he had come forth from the tomb, ’He, by God’s
grace, hath visited me, He who cometh from on high,
and hath recalled me from amongst the dead.’
Scarcely had he recovered his senses and speech,
when he sent for William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris,
together with Peter de Cuisy, Bishop of Meaux, in
whose diocese he happened to be, and requested them
’to place upon his shoulder the cross of the
voyage over the sea.’ The two bishops
tried to divert him from this idea, and the two queens,
Blanche and Marguerite, conjured him on their knees
to wait till he was well, and after that he might
do as he pleased. He insisted, declaring that
he would take no nourishment till he had received the
cross. At last the Bishop of Paris yielded, and
gave him a cross. The king received it with
transport, kissing it, and placing it right gently
Upon his breast.” “When the queen,
his mother, knew that he had taken the cross,”
says Joinville, “she made as great mourning as
if she had seen him dead.”
Still more than three years rolled
by before Louis fulfilled the engagement which he
had thus entered into, with himself alone, one might
say, and against the wish of nearly everybody about
him. The crusades, although they still remained
an object of religious and knightly aspiration, were
from the political point of view decried; and, without
daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical,
had no desire to take part in them. Under the
influence of this public feeling, timidly exhibited
but seriously cherished, Louis continued, for three
years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of
his kingdom and to his relations with the European
powers, as if he had no other idea. There was
a moment when his wisest counsellors and the queen
his mother conceived a hope of inducing him to give
up his purpose. “My lord king,”
said one day that same Bishop of Paris, who, in the
crisis of his illness, had given way to his wishes,
“bethink you that, when you received the cross,
when you suddenly and without reflection made this
awful vow, you were weak, and, sooth to say, of a wandering
mind, and that took away from your words the weight
of verity and authority. Our lord the pope,
who knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your
weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation.
Lo! we have the puissance of the schismatic Emperor
Frederick, the snares of the wealthy King of the English,
the treasons but lately stopped of the Poitevines,
and the subtle wranglings of the Albigensians to fear;
Germany is disturbed; Italy hath no rest; the Holy
Land is hard of access; you will not easily penetrate
thither, and behind you will be left the implacable
hatred between the pope and Frederick. To whom
will you leave us, every one of us, in our feebleness
and desolation? “Queen Blanche appealed
to other considerations, the good counsels she had
always given her son, and the pleasure God took in
seeing a son giving heed to and believing his mother;
and to hers she promised, that, if he would remain,
the Holy Land should not suffer, and that more troops
should be sent thither than he could lead thither himself.
The king listened attentively and with deep emotion.
You say,” he answered, “that I was not
in possession of my senses when I took the cross.
Well, as you wish it, I lay it aside; I give it back
to you;” and raising his hand to his shoulder,
he undid the cross upon it, saying, “Here it
is, my lord bishop; I restore to you the cross I had
put on.” All present congratulated themselves;
but the king, with a sudden change of look and intention,
said to them, “My friends, now, assuredly, I
lack not sense and reason; I am neither weak nor wandering
of mind; and I demand my cross back again. He
who knoweth all things knoweth that until it is replaced
upon my shoulder, no food shall enter my lips.”
At these words all present declared that “herein
was the finger of God, and none dared to raise, in
opposition to the king’s saying, any objection.”
In June, 1248, Louis, after having
received at St. Denis, together with the oriflamme,
the scrip and staff of a pilgrim, took leave, at Corbeil
or Cluny, of his mother, Queen Blanche, whom he left
regent during his absence, with the fullest powers.
“Most sweet fair son,” said she, embracing
him; “fair tender son, I shall never see you
more; full well my heart assures me.”
He took with him Queen Marguerite of Provence, his
wife, who had declared that she would never part from
him. On arriving, in the early part of August,
at Aiguës-Mortes, he found assembled there a
fleet of thirty-eight vessels with a certain number
of transport-ships which he had hired from the republic
of Genoa; and they were to convey to the East the
troops and personal retinue of the king himself.
The number of these vessels proves that Louis was
far from bringing one of those vast armies with which
the first crusades had been familiar; it even appears
that he had been careful to get rid of such mobs, for,
before embarking, he sent away nearly ten thousand
bow-men, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even French,
whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection,
he desired nothing further. The sixth crusade
was the personal achievement of St. Louis, not the
offspring of a popular movement, and he carried it
out with a picked army, furnished by the feudal chivalry
and by the religious and military orders dedicated
to the service of the Holy Land.
The Isle of Cyprus was the trysting-place
appointed for all the forces of the expedition.
Louis arrived there on the 12th of September, 1248,
and reckoned upon remaining there only a few days;
for it was Egypt that he was in a hurry to reach.
The Christian world was at that time of opinion that,
to deliver the Holy Land, it was necessary first of
all to strike a blow at Islamism in Egypt, wherein
its chief strength resided. But scarcely had
the crusaders formed a junction in Cyprus, when the
vices of the expedition and the weaknesses of its
chief began to be manifest. Louis, unshakable
in his religious zeal, was wanting in clear ideas and
fixed resolves as to the carrying out of his design;
he inspired his associates with sympathy rather than
exercised authority over them, and he made himself
admired without making himself obeyed. He did
not succeed in winning a majority in the council of
chiefs over to his opinion as to the necessity for
a speedy departure for Egypt; it was decided to pass
the winter in Cyprus, and during this leisurely halt
of seven months, the improvidence of the crusaders,
their ignorance of the places, people, and facts amidst
which they were about to launch themselves, their
headstrong rashness, their stormy rivalries, and their
moral and military irregularities aggravated the difficulties
of the enterprise, great as they already were.
Louis passed his time in interfering between them,
in hushing up their quarrels, in upbraiding them for
their licentiousness, and in reconciling the Templars
and Hospitallers. His kindness was injurious
to his power; he lent too ready an ear to the wishes
or complaints of his comrades, and small matters took
up his thoughts and his time almost as much as great.
At last a start was made from Cyprus
in May, 1249, and, in spite of violent gales of wind
which dispersed a large number of vessels, they arrived
on the 4th of June before Damietta.
The crusader-chiefs met on board the
king’s ship, the Mountjoy; and one of those
present, Guy, a knight in the train of the Count of
Melun, in a letter to one of his friends; a student
at Paris, reports to him the king’s address
in the following terms: “My friends and
lièges, we shall be invincible if we be inseparable
in brotherly love. It was not without the will
of God that we arrived here so speedily. Descend
we upon this land and occupy it in force. I
am not the King of France. I am not Holy Church.
It is all ye who are King and Holy Church. I
am but a man whose life will pass away as that of
any other man whenever it shall please God.
Any issue of our expedition is to usward good; if we
be conquered we shall wing our way to heaven as martyrs;
and if we be conquerors, men will celebrate the glory
of the Lord; and that of France, and, what is more,
that of Christendom, will grow thereby. It were
senseless to suppose that God, whose providence is
over everything, raised me up for nought: He
will see in us His own, His mighty cause. Fight
we for Christ; it is Christ who will triumph in us,
not for our own sake, but for the honor and blessedness
of His name.” It was determined to disembark
the next day. An army of Saracens lined the shore.
The galley which bore the oriflamme was one of the
first to touch. When the king heard tell that
the banner of St. Denis was on shore, he, in spite
of the pope’s legate, who was with him, would
not leave it; he leaped into the sea, which was up
to his arm-pits, and went, shield on neck, helm on
head, and lance in hand, and joined his people on the
sea-shore. When he came to land, and perceived
the Saracens, he asked what folk they were, and it
was told him that they were the Saracens; then he put
his lance beneath his arm and his shield in front
of him, and would have charged the Saracens, if his
mighty men, who were with him, had suffered him.
This, from his very first outset,
was Louis exactly, the most fervent of Christians
and the most splendid of knights, much rather than
a general and a king.
Such he appeared at the moment of
landing, and such he was during the whole duration,
and throughout all the incidents of his campaign in
Egypt, from June, 1249, to May, 1250: ever admirable
for his moral greatness and knightly valor, but without
foresight or consecutive plan as a leader, without
efficiency as a commander in action, and ever decided
or biassed either by his own momentary impressions
or the fancies of his comrades. He took Damietta
without the least difficulty. The Mussulmans,
stricken with surprise as much as terror, abandoned
the place; and when Fakr-Eddin, the commandant of
the Turks, came before the Sultan of Egypt, Malek-Saleh,
who was ill, and almost dying, “Couldst thou
not have held out for at least an instant?”
said the sultan. “What! not a single one
of you got slain!” Having become masters of
Damietta, St. Louis and the crusaders committed the
same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus: they
halted there for an indefinite time. They were
expecting fresh crusaders; and they spent the time
of expectation in quarrelling over the partition of
the booty taken in the city. They made away
with it, they wasted it blindly. “The barons,”
said Joinville, “took to giving grand banquets,
with an excess of meats; and the people of the common
sort took up with bad women.” Louis saw
and deplored these irregularities, without being in
a condition to stop them.
At length, on the 20th of November,
1249, after more than five months’ inactivity
at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once more
in motion, with the determination of marching upon
Babylon, that outskirt of Cairo, now called Old
Cairo, which the greater part of them, in their
ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and where
they flattered themselves they would find immense
riches, and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew
captives. The Mussulmans had found time to recover
from their first fright, and to organize, at all points,
a vigorous resistance. On the 8th of February,
1250, a battle took place twenty leagues from Damietta,
at Mansourah (the city of victory), on the right bank
of the Nile. The king’s brother, Robert,
Count of Artois, marched with the vanguard, and obtained
an early success; but William de Sonnac, grand master
of the Templars, and William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury,
leader of the English crusaders but lately arrived
at Damietta, insisted upon his waiting for the king
before pushing the victory to the uttermost.
Robert taxed them, ironically, with caution.
“Count Robert,” said William Longsword,
“we shall be presently where thou’lt not
dare to come nigh the tail of my horse.”
There came a message from the king ordering his brother
to wait for him; but Robert made no account of it.”
I have already put the Saracens to flight,”
said he, “and I will wait for none to complete
their defeat; “and he rushed forward into Mansourah.
All those who had dissuaded him followed after; they
found the Mussulmans numerous and perfectly rallied;
in a few moments the Count of Artois fell, pierced
with wounds, and more than three hundred knights of
his train, the same number of English, together with
their leader, William Longsword, and two hundred and
eighty Templars, paid with their lives for the senseless
ardor of the French prince.
The king hurried up in all haste to
the aid of his brother; but he had scarcely arrived,
and as yet knew nothing of his brother’s fate,
when he himself engaged so impetuously in the battle
that he was on the point of being taken prisoner by
six Saracens who had already seized the reins of his
horse. He was defending himself vigorously with
his sword, when several of his knights came up with
him, and set him free. He asked one of them
if he had any news of his brother; and the other answered,
“Certainly I have news of him: for I am
sure that he is now in Paradise.” “Praised
be God!” answered the king, with a tear or two,
and went on with his fighting. The battle-field
was left that day to the crusaders; but they were
not allowed to occupy it as conquerors, for, three
days afterwards, on the 11th of February, 1250, the
camp of St. Louis was assailed by clouds of Saracens,
horse and foot, Mamelukes and Bedouins. All surprise
had vanished, the Mussulmans measured at a glance the
numbers of the Christians, and attacked them in full
assurance of success, whatever heroism they might
display; and the crusaders themselves indulged in
no more self-illusion, and thought only of defending
themselves. Lack of provisions and sickness soon
rendered defence almost as impossible as attack; every
day saw the Christian camp more and more encumbered
with the famine-stricken, the dying, and the dead;
and the necessity for retreating became evident.
Louis made to the Sultan Malek-Moaddam an offer to
evacuate Egypt, and give up Damietta, provided that
the kingdom of Jerusalem were restored to the Christians,
and the army permitted to accomplish its retreat without
obstruction. The sultan, without accepting or
rejecting the proposition, asked what guarantees would
be given him for the surrender of Damietta. Louis
offered as hostage one of his brothers, the Count of
Anjou, or the Count of Poitiers. “We must
have the king himself,” said the Mussulmans.
A unanimous cry of indignation arose amongst the
crusaders. “We would rather,” said
Geoffrey de Sargines, “that we had been all slain,
or taken prisoners by the Saracens, than be reproached
with having left our king in pawn.” All
negotiation was broken off; and on the 5th of April,
1250, the crusaders decided upon retreating.
This was the most deplorable scene
of a deplorable drama; and at the same time it was,
for the king, an occasion for displaying, in their
most sublime and most attractive traits, all the virtues
of the Christian. Whilst sickness and famine
were devastating the camp, Louis made himself visitor,
physician, and comforter; and his presence and his
words exercised upon the worst cases a searching influence.
He had one day sent his chaplain, William de Chartres,
to visit one of his household servants, a modest man
of some means, named Gaugelme, who was at the point
of death. When the chaplain was retiring, “I
am waiting for my lord, our saintly king, to come,”
said the dying man; “I will not depart this
life until I have seen him and spoken to him:
and then I will die.” The king came, and
addressed to him the most affectionate words of consolation;
and when he had left him, and before he had re-entered
his tent, he was told that Gaugelme had expired.
When the 5th of April, the day fixed for the retreat,
had come, Louis himself was ill and much enfeebled.
He was urged to go aboard one of the vessels which
were to descend the Nile, carrying the wounded and
the most suffering; but he refused absolutely, saying,
“I don’t separate from my people in the
hour of danger.” He remained on land,
and when he had to move forward he fainted twice.
When he came to himself, he was amongst the last to
leave the camp, got himself helped on to the back
of a little Arab horse, covered with silken housings,
and marched at a slow pace with the rear-guard, having
beside him Geoffrey de Sargines, who watched over him,
“and protected me against the Saracens,”
said Louis himself to Joinville, “as a good
servant protects his lord’s tankard against the
flies.”
Neither the king’s courage nor
his servants’ devotion was enough to insure
success, even to the retreat. At four leagues’
distance from the camp it had just left, the rear-guard
of the crusaders, harassed by clouds of Saracens,
was obliged to halt. Louis could no longer keep
on his horse. He was put up at a house,”
says Joinville, “and laid, almost dead, upon
the lap of a tradeswoman from Paris; and it was believed
that he would not last till evening.”
With his consent, one of his lièges entered into
parley with one of the Mussulman chiefs; a truce was
about to be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking
off his ring from his finger as a pledge that he would
observe it. “But during this,” says
Joinville, “there took place a great mishap.
A traitor of a sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began
calling to our people, ’Sirs knights, surrender,
for such is the king’s command: cause not
the king’s death.’ All thought that
it was the king’s command; and they gave up their
swords to the Saracens.” Being forthwith
declared prisoners, the king and all the rear-guard
were removed to Mansourah; the king by boat; and his
two brothers, the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and
all the other crusaders, drawn up in a body and shackled,
followed on foot on the river bank. The advance-guard,
and all the rest of the army, soon met the same fate.
Ten thousand prisoners this
was all that remained of the crusade that had started
eighteen months before from Aiguës-Mortes.
Nevertheless the lofty bearing and the piety of the
king still inspired the Mussulmans with great respect.
A negotiation was opened between him and the Sultan
Malek-Moaddam, who, having previously freed him from
his chains, had him treated with a certain magnificence.
As the price of a truce and of his liberty, Louis
received a demand for the immediate surrender of Damietta,
a heavy ransom, and the restitution of several places
which the Christians still held in Palestine.
“I cannot dispose of those places,” said
Louis, “for they do not belong to me; the princes
and the Christian orders, in whose hands they are,
can alone keep or surrender them.” The
sultan, in anger, threatened to have the king put to
the torture, or sent to the Grand Khalif of Bagdad,
who would detain him in prison for the rest of his
days. “I am your prisoner,” said
Louis; “you can do with me what you will.”
“You call yourself our prisoner,” said
the Mussulman negotiators, “and so, we believe
you are; but you treat us as if you had us in prison.”
The sultan perceived that he had to do with an indomitable
spirit; and he did not insist any longer upon more
than the surrender of Damietta, and on a ransom of
five hundred thousand livres (that is, about ten million
one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs, or four
hundred and five thousand two hundred and eighty pounds,
of modern money, according to M. de Wailly, supposing,
as is probable, that livres of Tours are meant).
“I will pay willingly five hundred thousand
livres for the deliverance of my people,” said
Louis, and I will give up Damietta for the deliverance
of my own person, for I am not a man who ought to
be bought and sold for money.” “By
my faith,” said the sultan, the Frank is liberal
not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go
tell him that I will give him one hundred thousand
livres to help towards paying the ransom.”
The negotiation was concluded on this basis; and
victors and vanquished quitted Mansourah, and arrived,
partly by land and partly by the Nile, within a few
leagues of Damietta, the surrender of which was fixed
for the 7th of May. But five days previously
a tragic event took place. Several émirs
of the Mamelukes suddenly entered Louis’s tent.
They had just slain the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, against
whom they had for some time been conspiring.
“Fear nought, sir,” said they to the
king; “this was to be. Do what concerns
you in respect of the stipulated conditions, and you
shall be free.” Of these émirs
one, who had slain the sultan with his own hand, asked
the king, brusquely, “What wilt thou give me?
I have slain thine enemy, who would have put thee
to death, had he lived;” and he asked to be
made knight. Louis answered not a word.
Some of the crusaders present urged him to satisfy
the desire of the emir, who had in his power the decision
of their fate. “I will never confer knighthood
on an infidel,” said Louis; “let the emir
turn Christian; I will take him away to France, enrich
him, and make him knight.” It is said
that, in their admiration for this piety and this
indomitable firmness, the émirs had at one time
a notion of taking Louis himself for sultan in the
place of him whom they had just slain; and this report
was probably not altogether devoid of foundation, for,
some time afterwards, in the intimacy of the conversations
between them, Louis one day said to Joinville, “Think
you that I would have taken the kingdom of Babylon,
if they had offered it to me?” “Whereupon
I told him,” adds Joinville, “that he
would have done a mad act, seeing that they had slain
their lord; and he said to me that of a truth he would
not have refused.” However that may be,
the conditions agreed upon with the late Sultan Malek-Moaddam
were carried out; on the 7th of May, 1250, Geoffrey
de Sargines gave up to the émirs the keys of Damietta;
and the Mussulmans entered in tumultuously.
The king was waiting aboard his ship for the payment
which his people were to make for the release of his
brother, the Count of Poitiers; and, when he saw approaching
a bark on which he recognized his brother, “Light
up! light up!” he cried instantly to his sailors;
which was the signal agreed upon for setting out.
And leaving forthwith the coast of Egypt, the fleet
which bore the remains of the Christian army made
sail for the shores of Palestine.
The king, having arrived at St. Jean
d’Acre on the 14th of May, 1250, accepted without
shrinking the trial imposed upon him by his unfortunate
situation. He saw his forces considerably reduced;
and the majority of the crusaders left to him, even
his brothers themselves, did not hide their ardent
desire to return to France. He had that virtue,
so rare amongst kings, of taking into consideration
the wishes of his comrades, and of desiring their
free assent to the burden he asked them to bear with
him. He assembled the chief of them, and put
the question plainly before them. “The
queen, my mother,” he said, “biddeth me
and prayeth me to get me hence to France, for that
my kingdom hath neither peace nor truce with the king
of England. The folk here tell me that, if I
get me hence, this land is lost, for none of those
that be there will dare to abide in it. I pray
you, therefore, to give it thought, for it is a grave
matter, and I grant you nine days for to answer me
whatever shall seem to you good.” Eight
days after, they returned; and Guy de Mauvoisin, speaking
in their name, said to the king, “Sir, your brothers
and the rich men who be here have had regard unto your
condition, and they see that you cannot remain in
this country to your own and your kingdom’s
honor, for of all the knights who came in your train,
and of whom you led into Cyprus twenty-eight hundred,
there remain not one hundred in this city. Wherefore
they do counsel you, sir, to get you hence to France,
and to provide troops and money wherewith you may return
speedily to this country, to take vengeance on these
enemies of God who have kept you in prison.”
Louis, without any discussion, interrogated all present,
one after another, and all, even the pope’s legate,
agreed with Guy de Mauvoisin. “I was seated
just fourteenth, facing the legate,” says Joinville,
“and when he asked me how it seemed to me, I
answered him that if the king could hold out so far
as to keep the field for a year, he would do himself
great honor if he remained.”
Only two knights, William de Beaumont
and Sire de Chatenay, had the courage to support the
opinion of Joinville, which was bolder for the time
being, but not less indecisive in respect of the immediate
future than the contrary opinion. “I have
heard you out, sirs,” said the king: “and
I will answer you, within eight clays from this time,
touching that which it shall please me to do.”
“Next Sunday,” says Joinville, “we
came again, all of us, before the king. ‘Sirs,’
said he, ’I thank very much all those who have
counselled me to get me gone to France, and likewise
those who have counselled me to bide. But I have
bethought me that, if I bide, I see no danger lest
my kingdom of France be lost, for the queen, my mother,
hath a many folk to defend it. I have noted likewise
that the barons of this land do say that, if I go
hence, the kingdom of Jerusalem is lost. At
no price will I suffer to be lost the kingdom of Jerusalem,
which I came to guard and conquer. My resolve,
then, is, that I bide for the present. So I
say unto you, ye rich men who are here, and to all
other knights who shall have a mind to bide with me,
come and speak boldly unto me, and I will give ye
so much that it shall not be my fault if ye have no
mind to bide.’”
Thus none, save Louis himself, dared
go to the root of the question. The most discreet
advised him to depart, only for the purpose of coming
back, and recommencing what had been so unsuccessful;
and the boldest only urged him to remain a year longer.
None took the risk of saying, even after so many
mighty but vain experiments, that the enterprise was
chimerical, and must be given up. Louis alone
was, in word and deed, perfectly true to his own absorbing
idea of recovering the Holy Sepulchre from the Mussulmans
and re-establishing the kingdom of Jerusalem.
His was one of those pure and majestic souls, which
are almost alien to the world in which they live,
and in which disinterested passion is so strong that
it puts judgment to silence, extinguishes all fear,
and keeps up hope to infinity. The king’s
two brothers embarked with a numerous retinue.
How many crusaders, knights, or men-at-arms, remained
with Louis, there is nothing to show; but they were,
assuredly, far from sufficient for the attainment
of the twofold end he had in view, and even for insuring
less grand results, such as the deliverance of the
crusaders still remaining prisoners in the hands of
the Mussulmans, and anything like an effectual protection
for the Christians settled in Palestine and Syria.
Twice Louis believed he was on the
point of accomplishing his desire. Towards the
end of 1250, and again in 1252, the Sultan of Aleppo
and Damascus, and the Émirs of Egypt, being engaged
in a violent struggle, made offers to him, by turns,
of restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem if he would
form an active alliance with one or the other party
against its enemies. Louis sought means of accepting
either of these offers without neglecting his previous
engagements, and without compromising the fate of
the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living
in the territories of Aleppo and Damascus; but, during
the negotiations entered upon with a view to this
end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt suspended their
differences, and made common cause against the remnants
of the Christian crusaders; and all hope of re-entering
Jerusalem by these means vanished away. Another
time, the Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis’s
pious perseverance, had word sent to him that he,
if he wished, could go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
and should find himself in perfect safety. “The
king,” says Joinville, “held a great council;
and none urged him to go. It was shown unto him
that if he, who was the greatest king in Christendom,
performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy
City from the enemies of God, all the other kings
and other pilgrims who came after him would hold themselves
content with doing just as much, and would trouble
themselves no more about the deliverance of Jerusalem.”
He was reminded of the example set by Richard Coeur
de Lion, who, sixty years before, had refused to cast
even a look upon Jerusalem, when he was unable to
deliver her from her enemies. Louis, just as
Richard had, refused the incomplete satisfaction which
had been offered him, and for nearly four years, spent
by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria since
his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he
expended, in small works of piety, sympathy, protection,
and care for the future of the Christian populations
in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary resources,
and the ardor of a soul which could not remain icily
abandoned to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied.
An unexpected event occurred and brought
about all at once a change in his position and his
plans. At the commencement of the year 1253,
at Sidon, the ramparts of which he was engaged in
repairing, he heard that his mother, Queen Blanche,
had died at Paris on the 27th of November, 1252.
“He made so great mourning thereat,” says
Joinville, “that for two days no speech could
be gotten of him. After that he sent a chamber-man
for to fetch me. When I carne before him, in
his chamber where he was alone, so soon as he got
sight of me, he stretched forth his arms, and said
to me, ‘O, seneschal, I have lost my mother!’”
It was a great loss both for the son and for the
king. Imperious, exacting, jealous, and often
disagreeable in private life and in the bosom of her
family, Blanche was, nevertheless, according to all
contemporary authority, even the least favorable to
her, “the most discreet woman of her time, with
a mind singularly quick and penetrating, and with
a man’s heart to leaven her Woman’s sex
and ideas; personally magnanimous, of indomitable energy,
sovereign mistress in all the affairs of her age, guardian
and protectress of France, worthy of comparison with
Semiramis, the most eminent of her sex.”
From the time of Louis’s departure on the crusade
as well as during his minority she had given him constant
proofs of a devotion as intelligent as it was impassioned,
as useful as it was masterful. All letters from
France demanded the speedy return of the king.
The Christians of Syria were themselves of the same
opinion; the king, they said, has done for us, here,
all he could do; he will serve us far better by sending
us strong re-enforcements from France. Louis
embarked at St. Jean d’Acre, on the 24th of
April, 1254, carrying away with him, on thirteen vessels,
large and small, Queen Marguerite, his children, his
personal retinue, and his own more immediate men-at-arms,
and leaving the Christians of Syria, for their protection
in his name, a hundred knights under the orders of
Geoffrey de Sargines, that comrade of his in whose
bravery and pious fealty he had the most entire confidence.
After two months and a half at sea, the king and his
fleet arrived, on the 8th of July, 1254, off the port
of Hyeres, which at that time belonged to the Empire,
and not to France. For two days Louis refused
to land at this point; for his heart was set upon not
putting his foot upon land again save on the soil
of his own kingdom, at Aiguës-Mortes, whence
he had, six years before, set out. At last he
yielded to the entreaties of the queen and those who
were about him, landed at Hyeres, passed slowly through
France, and made his solemn entry into Paris on the
7th of September, 1254. “The burgesses
and all those who were in the city were there to meet
him, clad and bedecked in all their best according
to their condition. If the other towns had received
him with great joy, Paris evinced even more than any
other. For several days there were bonfires,
dances, and other public rejoicings, which ended sooner
than the people wished; for the king, who was pained
to see the expense, the dances, and the vanities indulged
in, went off to the wood of Vincennes to put a stop
to them.
So soon as he had resumed the government
of his kingdom, after six years’ absence and
adventures, heroic, indeed, but all in vain for the
cause of Christendom, those of his counsellors and
servants who lived most closely with him and knew
him best were struck at the same time with what he
had remained and what he had become during this long
and cruel trial. “When the king had happily
returned to France, how piously he bare himself towards
God, how justly towards his subjects, how compassionately
towards the afflicted, and how humbly in his own respect,
and with what zeal he labored to make progress, according
to his power, in every virtue, all this can be attested
by persons who carefully watched his manner of life,
and who knew the spotlessness of his conscience.
It is the opinion of the most clear-sighted and the
wisest that, in proportion as gold is more precious
than silver, so the manner of living and acting which
the king brought back from his pilgrimage in the Holy
Land was holy and new, and superior to his former
behavior, albeit, even in his youth, he had ever been
good and guileless, and worthy of high esteem.”
These are the words written about St. Louis by his
confessor Geoffrey de Beaulieu, a chronicler, curt
and simple even to dryness, but at the same time well
informed. An attempt will be made presently to
give a fair idea of the character of St. Louis’s
government during the last fifteen years of his reign,
and of the place he fills in the history of the kingship
and of politics in France; but just now it is only
with the part he played in the crusades and with what
became of them in his hands that we have to occupy
our attention. For seven years after his return
to France, from 1254 to 1261, Louis seemed to think
no more about them, and there is nothing to show that
he spoke of them even to his most intimate confidants;
but, in spite of his apparent calmness, he was living,
so far as they were concerned, in a continual ferment
of imagination and internal fever, ever flattering
himself that some favorable circumstance would call
him back to his interrupted work. And he had
reason to believe that circumstances were responsive
to his wishes. The Christians of Palestine and
Syria were a prey to perils and evils which became
more pressing every day; the cross was being humbled
at one time before the Tartars of Tchingis-Khan, at
another before the Mussulmans of Egypt; Pope Urban
was calling upon the King of France; and Geoffrey de
Sargines, the heroic representative whom Louis had
left in St. Jean d’Acre, at the head of a small
garrison, was writing to him that ruin was imminent,
and speedy succor indispensable to prevent it.
In 1261, Louis held, at Paris, a parliament, at which,
without any talk of a new crusade, measures were taken
which revealed an idea of it: there were decrees
for fasts and prayers on behalf of the Christians
of the East and for frequent and earnest military
drill. In 1263, the crusade was openly preached;
taxes were levied, even on the clergy, for the purpose
of contributing towards it; and princes and barons
bound themselves to take part in it. Louis was
all approval and encouragement, without declaring
his own intention. In 1267, a parliament was
convoked at Paris. The king, at first, conversed
discreetly with some of his barons about the new plan
of crusade; and then, suddenly, having had the precious
relics deposited in the Holy Chapel set before the
eyes of the assembly, he opened the session by ardently
exhorting those present “to avenge the insult
which had so long been offered to the Saviour in the
Holy Land and to recover the Christian heritage possessed,
for our sins, by the infidels.” Next year,
on the 9th of February, 1268, at a new parliament
assembled at Paris, the king took an oath to start
in the month of May, 1270.
Great was the surprise, and the disquietude
was even greater than the surprise. The kingdom
was enjoying abroad a peace and at home a tranquillity
and prosperity for a long time past without example;
feudal quarrels were becoming more rare and terminating
more quickly; and the king possessed the confidence
and the respect of the whole population. Why
compromise such advantages by such an enterprise, so
distant, so costly, and so doubtful of success?
Whether from good sense or from displeasure at the
burdens imposed upon them, many ecclesiastics showed
symptoms of opposition, and Pope Clement iv. gave
the king nothing but ambiguous and very reserved counsel.
When he learned that Louis was taking with him on
the crusade three of his sons, aged respectively twenty-two,
eighteen, and seventeen, he could not refrain from
writing to the Cardinal of St. Cecile, “It
doth not strike us as an act of well-balanced judgment
to impose the taking of the cross upon so many of the
king’s sons, and especially the eldest; and,
albeit we have heard reasons to the contrary, either
we be much mistaken or they are utterly devoid of
reason.” Even the king’s personal
condition was matter for grave anxiety. His
health was very much enfeebled; and several of his
most intimate and most far-seeing advisers were openly
opposed to his design. He vehemently urged Joinville
to take the cross again with him; but Joinville refused
downright. “I thought,” said he,
“that they all committed a mortal sin to advise
him the voyage, because the whole kingdom was in fair
peace at home and with all neighbors, and, so soon
as he departed, the state of the kingdom did nought
but worsen. They also committed a great sin
to advise him the voyage in the great state of weakness
in which his body was, for he could not bear to go
by chariot or to ride; he was so weak that he suffered
me to carry him in my arms from the hotel of the Count
of Auxerre, the place where I took leave of him, to
the Cordeliers. And nevertheless, weak as he
was, had he remained in France, he might have lived
yet a while and wrought much good.”
All objections, all warnings, all
anxieties came to nothing in the face of Louis’s
fixed idea and pious passion. He started from
Paris on the 16th of March, 1270, a sick man almost
already, but with soul content, and probably the only
one without misgiving in the midst of all his comrades.
It was once more at Aiguës-Mortes that he went
to embark. All was as yet dark and undecided
as to the plan of the expedition. Was Egypt,
or Palestine, or Constantinople, or Tunis, to be the
first point of attack? Negotiations, touching
this subject, had been opened with the Venetians and
the Genoese without arriving at any conclusion or
certainty. Steps were taken at haphazard with
full trust in Providence and utter forgetfulness that
Providence does not absolve men from foresight.
On arriving at Aiguës-Mortes about the middle
of May, Louis found nothing organized, nothing in
readiness, neither crusaders nor vessels; everything
was done slowly, incompletely, and with the greatest
irregularity. At last, on the 2d of July, 1270,
he set sail without any one’s knowing and without
the king’s telling any one whither they were
going. It was only in Sardinia, after four days’
halt at Cagliari, that Louis announced to the chiefs
of the crusade, assembled aboard his ship the Mountjoy,
that he was making for Tunis, and that their Christian
work would commence there. The King of Tunis
(as he was then called), Mohammed Mostanser, had for
some time been talking of his desire to become a Christian,
if he could be efficiently protected against the séditions
of his subjects. Louis welcomed with transport
the prospect of Mussulman conversions. “Ah!”
he cried, “if I could only see myself the gossip
and sponsor of so great a godson!”
But on the 17th of July, when the
fleet arrived before Tunis, the admiral, Florent de
Varennes, probably without the king’s orders
and with that want of reflection which was conspicuous
at each step of the enterprise, immediately took possession
of the harbor and of some Tunisian vessels as prize,
and sent word to the king “that he had only to
support him and that the disembarkation of the troops
might be effected in perfect safety.”
Thus war was commenced at the very first moment against
the Mussulman prince whom there had been a promise
of seeing before long a Christian.
At the end of a fortnight, after some
fights between the Tunisians and the crusaders, so
much political and military blindness produced its
natural consequences. The re-enforcements promised
to Louis, by his brother Charles of Anjou, king of
Sicily, had not arrived; provisions were falling short;
and the heats of an African summer were working havoc
amongst the army with such rapidity that before long
there was no time to bury the dead, but they were
cast pell-mell into the ditch which surrounded the
camp, and the air was tainted thereby. On the
3d of August Louis was attacked by the epidemic fever,
and obliged to keep his bed in his tent. He
asked news of his son John Tristan, Count of Nevers,
who had fallen ill before him, and whose recent death,
aboard the vessel to which he had been removed in
hopes that the sea air might be beneficial, had been
carefully concealed from him. The count, as well
as the Princess Isabel, married to Theobald the Young,
King of Navarre, was a favorite child of Louis, who,
on hearing of his loss, folded his hands and sought
in silence and prayer some assuagement of his grief.
His malady grew worse; and having sent for his successor,
Prince Philip (Philip the Bold), he took from his
hour-book some instructions which he had written out
for him, with his own hand and in French, and delivered
them to him, bidding him to observe them scrupulously.
He gave likewise to his daughter Isabel, who was
weeping at the foot of his bed, and to his son-in-law
the King of Navarre, some writings which had been intended
for them, and he further charged Isabel to deliver
another to her youngest sister, Agnes, affianced to
the Duke of Burgundy. “Dearest daughter,”
said he, “think well hereon: full many folk
have fallen asleep with wild thoughts of sin, and
in the morning their place hath not known them.”
Just after he had finished satisfying his paternal
solicitude, it was announced to him, on the 24th of
August, that envoys from the Emperor Michael Palaeologus
had landed at Cape Carthage, with orders to demand
his intervention with his brother Charles, King of
Sicily, to deter him from making war on the but lately
re-established Greek empire. Louis summoned
all his strength to receive them in his tent, in the
presence of certain of his counsellors, who were uneasy
at the fatigue he was imposing upon himself.
“I promise you, if I live,” said he to
the envoys, “to cooperate, so far as I may be
able, in what your master demands of me; meanwhile,
I exhort you to have patience, and be of good courage.”
This was his last political act, and his last concern
with the affairs of the world; henceforth he was occupied
only with pious effusions which had a bearing
at one time on his hopes for his soul, at another
on those Christian interests which had been so dear
to him all his life. He kept repeating his customary
orisons in a low voice, and he was heard murmuring
these broken words: “Fair Sir God, have
mercy on this people that bideth here, and bring them
back to their own land! Let them not fall into
the hands of their enemies, and let them not be constrained
to deny Thy name!” And at the same time that
he thus expressed his sad reflections upon the situation
in which he was leaving his army and his people, he
cried from time to time, as he raised himself on his
bed, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will
go up to Jerusalem!” During the night of the
24th 25th of August he ceased to speak, all the time
continuing to show that he was in full possession
of his senses; he insisted upon receiving extreme
unction out of bed, and lying upon a coarse sack-cloth
covered with cinders, with the cross before him; and
on Monday, the 25th of August, 1270, at three P.M.,
he departed in peace, whilst uttering these his last
words: “Father, after the example of the
Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!”