The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

THE SECOND CRUSADE.

CHAPTER XXIV.
BERNARD—CONRAD III.—LOUIS VII.—SUGER—SIEGE OF DAMASCUS.

Pope Honorius delegated Bernard to preach throughout France and Germany the renewal of the holy war. Drawn as much by the fame of the monk as by the mandates of the king and the Pope, a vast assembly of prelates and nobles gathered at Vezelay in Burgundy. A large platform was erected on a hill outside the city. King and monk stood together, representing the combined will of earth and heaven. The enthusiasm of the assembly of Clermont in 1095, when Peter the Hermit and Urban II. launched the first crusade, was matched by the holy fervor inspired by Bernard as he cried, “O ye who listen to me! hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.” As in the olden scene, the cry “Deus vult! Deus vult!” rolled over the fields, and was echoed by the voice of the orator: “Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood.”

The king set the example by prostrating himself at the feet of the monk and receiving from his hands the badge of the cross. “The cross! the cross!” was the response of thousands who crowded about the platform. Queen Eleanor imitated her husband, and was followed by such a host of nobles, bishops, and knights that Bernard tore his garments into strips to supply the enthusiasts with the insignia of their new devotion. Similar scenes were enacted throughout France wherever the saint appeared. Eye-witnesses do not hesitate to tell of miracles wrought by his hands, emblazoning his mission with the seals of heaven.

The enlistments were so many that Bernard wrote to the Pope, “The villages and castles are deserted, and there are none left but widows and orphans, whose husbands and parents are still living.”

The orator visited Germany. A diet of the empire was at the time of his arrival convened at Spires. The new emperor, Conrad III., at first refused to heed the more private counsel of Bernard to join the crusade, urging in return the need of the imperial hand upon the helm of state. One day Bernard was saying mass, when suddenly he stopped and pictured Jesus Christ, armed with the cross and accompanied by angels, reproaching the emperor for his indifference. Conrad was as impotent to resist this eloquence and assumption of divine authority as his predecessor had been. He burst into tears and exclaimed, “I, too, swear to go wherever Christ shall call me.” With many of his lords and knights, he received the cross from Bernard’s hand.

From the Rhine to the Danube the enthusiasm spread like an epidemic. No class had immunity from it. Even thieves and cutthroats were so far converted as to swear to rob and murder only Infidels. Bernard’s gift of persuasion was unsurpassed since the days of Pentecost, for men and races that could not understand a word he said were as readily persuaded as those who spoke the Frankish tongue.

Roger of Sicily offered to convey the new armies to Palestine in his fleets, urging the hereditary treachery of the Greeks; for, though Alexius had “gone to his own place” below, his grandson Manuel occupied his place at Constantinople. The leaders, however, preferred the perils of the land route to the uncertainties of the deep.

The government of France during the absence of Louis VII. was committed to the hands of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis. A wiser choice could not have been made. He had been the adviser of Louis the Fat, and to his astuteness rather than to that of the king were due the consolidation and development of French autonomy, which made that reign notable. An evidence of Suger’s foresight, as well as of his independence and courage, is the fact that he, almost alone of men, opposed the crusading scheme and predicted its fatality. Only at the command of the Pope did Suger assume the guardianship of the kingdom.

Not distrustful of the king, but credulous of the heavenly mission of Bernard, the multitude, including the most noted warriors, called for the monk to become their military leader. Only the intervention of the Holy Father, who declared that it was sufficient for the saint to be the trumpet of Heaven without wielding the sword, allayed the universal demand. Thus at Whitsuntide, 1167, a hundred thousand Frenchmen set out for their rendezvous at Metz. Their monarch bore at their head the sacred banner of St. Denis, an oriflamme under which, at even that early day, the kings of France believed themselves invincible.

But though royally commanded, the army was somewhat a motley array. Troubadours joined the host to relieve the tedium of the camp with their songs of expected triumph. Ladies of the court and soldiers’ wives graced and encumbered the enterprise. One troop of female combatants was commanded by an Amazon, whose gilded boots made her known as “the lady with the legs of gold.” Old men and children were carried along with the baggage. By the side of the saint trudged the libertine and the criminal, whose remorse had been kindled by the preaching of Bernard, and whose search for the remission of sins at Jerusalem was to poorly compensate the dissolute outbursts of their unchanged natures along the way.

The enthusiasm of the crusaders was not maintained by those who remained at home, since upon them fell the unromantic burden of providing money for the army’s sustenance. The Jews were openly robbed, the Abbot of Cluny declaring it a righteous thing to despoil them of wealth acquired by usury and sacrilege. Monasteries were bled of their long-accumulated treasure. Churches sold their ornaments and mortgaged their lands to supply the enormous demand. Thus the huzzas of the departing were echoed by the suppressed groans of those who were left behind.

The Germans under Conrad III. had preceded the French. Before they reached Constantinople they had more than once to punish with violence the chronic perfidy of the Greeks. The Germans burned the monastery at Adrianople to avenge the assassination of one of their comrades. Beyond the Bosporus Conrad’s soldiers were incessantly picked off and slain by skulking Greeks. The flour they purchased from the merchants of Constantinople they found mixed with lime. The Greek guides were in alliance with the Turks, and led the Christians into ambuscades among the defiles of the Taurus. Conrad himself was twice wounded by treacherous arrows, and his host, reduced to one tenth of its original numbers, was forced to painfully retrace the way to Nicæa.

The French were at first more cordially received by the Greeks than had been their German allies; but they soon learned that the Emperor Manuel was in collusion with the Sultan of Iconium. Louis hardly restrained his people from taking vengeance by assaulting the Greek capital, and forced them onward to the relief of the Germans. Conrad did not await their coming, but returned to Constantinople and made temporary fellowship with his betrayer. The French, thus deserted, continued their route alone. The Moslems massed against them on the bank of the Meander, only to be scattered by the fury of the French onset, or, if we may believe some of the spectators, by the appearance of the familiar celestial knight clad in white armor, who headed the Christian army.

Flushed with victory, Louis hastened onward two days’ march beyond Laodicea. Here he divided his force into two bands for the safer passage of a mountain ridge. The vanguard was ordered to encamp upon the heights until joined by their comrades, that they might make descent in full force upon the farther plains. But the impatience of the soldiers in the advance, encouraged by Queen Eleanor, could not brook the cautionary command; they descended the other side of the ridge. The wary Turks quietly took the ground thus unwisely abandoned. The second division of the French, mistaking them for friends, climbed the ascent without regard to orderly array, and were welcomed by a murderous assault. The king barely escaped after witnessing the slaughter of thirty of his chief nobles at his side. Alone upon a rock which he had climbed, he kept his assailants at bay until they, mistaking him for a common soldier, withdrew for some worthier prize. The heavy arms of the Franks were worse than useless against the storm of rocks and arrows which the Turks rained upon them, and the morning that dawned after a night of unparalleled terror revealed a miserable remnant of the French force fighting or stealing its way to the vanguard.

Placing the command in the hands of the veteran Gilbert, and Evrard des Barras, Grand Master of the Templars, who had marched from the East to assist the new crusaders, Louis pressed on. Winter fell with unwonted severity upon his ragged and starving retainers. The Greeks held Attalia and refused to allow the Franks to enter that city. At length Louis accepted their offer to transport a portion of his army by sea to Syria. Leaving a large proportion of his camp, the king set sail, and arrived at Antioch in March, 1148. Less than one quarter of his followers met him on the Syrian soil.

The Franks, thus abandoned by their king, had incessantly to fight with the swarming Turks, until human nature succumbed. Their leaders, Archambaud and Thierri, deserted them and followed the king over the sea. Seven thousand essayed to pursue their journey overland, and were massacred, or perished amid the dangers of the way. The old chronicle says, “God alone knows the number of the martyrs whose blood flowed beneath the blade of the Turks and even under the sword of the Greeks.” Three thousand are said to have lost their faith in the protection of Christ and sought the pity of the Moslems by confessing the Prophet.

Raymond of Poitiers was at this time lord and commandant at Antioch, and welcomed the King of France with the expectation of receiving his help in the conquest of Aleppo and Cæsarea, but as much, say the chronicles, for the sake of the ladies who accompanied him as for his military aid. Queen Eleanor was Raymond’s niece, and with her suite were several of the most celebrated beauties from the courts of Europe. Their presence promised to make Antioch again the brilliant and voluptuous city it had been of old. When the king proposed to move southward to Jerusalem his queen refused to accompany him. Some secret ambition, or a motive less creditable to her virtue, led her to such disregard for the king that she announced her rejection of her marriage vows, alleging as her reason some newly awakened scruples of conscience on the ground of premarital kinship with Louis. Her husband was compelled to kidnap his wife and carry her by force from the palace to the camp. This estrangement was the beginning of the rupture of relations between the King and Queen of France, that led to his ultimate repudiation of her and to her subsequent marriage with Henry II. of England, by whom she became the mother of Richard Cœur de Lion.

At Jerusalem Louis and Conrad finally met, the latter without soldiers, having reached the city in the disguise of a pilgrim. After paying the proper tribute of devotion at the sacred shrines, the two Western sovereigns, with Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, and their chief barons, gathered at St. Jean d’Acre to determine upon the coming campaign. The assembly was graced by the presence of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and many ladies from the courts of Europe; but there came neither the Queen of France nor her advisers, Raymond of Antioch and the counts of Edessa and Tripoli.

The conference determined to attempt the capture of Damascus. The Christians quickly invested that place. It was defended on the east and south by high walls, but was more exposed on the north and west. Here the richness of the Syrian oasis burst into a vast garden, watered by crystal streams from the Antilibanus. The extended plain was divided into numerous private possessions by walls of baked earth, between which a dense growth of trees left scarcely more than foot-paths. In spite of the showers of arrows that greeted them at every dividing wall, the Christians steadily made their way. In the front ranks was the young King of Jerusalem, with his redoubtable Knights of St. John and Knights Templars. The King of France pressed next with his braves, eager to redeem by splendid victory the disaster of their coming. The German emperor, with such meagre remnant of his army as he could muster, protected the rear. At the little river which flows beneath the western wall of the city the invaders met their first check. Here Conrad performed the one deed creditable to his career since leaving Germany. With his little band he passed through the forward ranks and fell upon the enemy. The Saracens, seeing that the day was lost if the fight continued general, sent a gigantic warrior to challenge the German hero to single combat. The two armies watched the fight. Conrad unhorsed and slew his antagonist. The Saracens then prepared to abandon their city. Arabic chroniclers describe the humiliation of their brethren as they prostrated themselves upon heaps of ashes, and in the great mosque of Damascus sat round Omar’s copy of the Koran, invoking the help of their Prophet.

The Christians, confident of the issue, fell to disputing the sovereignty of the as yet unconquered city. It was awarded to Thierri of Alsace, Count of Flanders. This decision instantly produced jealousy, and all concert of action was at an end. The warriors of Syria hated the Germans and Franks, who had come to eat the fruit of victory as well as to help gather it. At once the assault ceased. The wily Saracen commander, familiar with the divisions in the Christian camp, took advantage of them. He declared that in the event of the siege being pressed he would turn over the city to Nourredin of Mosul, an enemy whose power and daring would make the occupancy of Damascus fatal to the existence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. Mussulman writers aver that King Baldwin was also directly bribed by the people of Damascus; Latin writers accuse the Templars of perfidy. It is evident that none of the leaders cared to conquer Damascus if its possession was not to be his portion.

In the dilemma the Syrians advised a change of base. The rage and cupidity of the various parties blinded all to the stupidity of this plan. The army swung round from the gardens they had conquered, and faced the impregnable walls that rose from the desert side. With neither water nor natural protection, they camped in the open, arid plain. At this juncture twenty thousand Turkomans and Kurds arrived and joined the defenders. Among the Saracens was Ayoub, the founder of the dynasty of Ayoubites, and with him his son Saladin, afterwards to become the most famous of Moslem leaders, then a lad of thirteen years, who was here to receive his first baptism of blood as he saw his eldest brother slain in a sortie.

The succor received by the enemy led the Christians to raise the siege as ignominiously as they had bravely begun it. Conrad in disgust returned to Germany. Louis remained a year longer, vainly seeking some enterprise in which to brighten his sword. It was not until his barons and knights had deserted him, and his minister, Suger, in the name of the French nation, had urged his return, that in July, 1149, he sailed from St. Jean d’Acre.

Europe felt the shame of the ill-advised second crusade. The discredit fell sorely upon its chief advocate. Bernard was compelled to lead Christendom in the Miserere rather than the Te Deum. “We have fallen on evil days,” he exclaimed, “in which the Lord, provoked by our sins, has judged the world with justice, indeed, but not with His wonted mercy.” The saint seems almost to have lost his faith. “Why,” he cried, “has not God regarded our fasts, and appeared to know nothing of our humiliations? With what patience is He now listening to the sacrilegious and blasphemous voices of the nations of Arabia, who accuse Him of having led His people into the desert that they might perish! All the world knows that the judgments of the Lord are just, but this is so profound an abyss that he is happy who has not been disgraced by it.”

The only one who benefited by the movement was Suger, whose repute for wisdom was exalted not only by the fact that he had uttered his warning against the undertaking, but more by the skill with which he had conducted the affairs of the kingdom during the absence of its nominal head. He died not long after the disasters he predicted, leaving France more prosperous than before. Of him it is significantly said that “he served faithfully a young king without losing his friendship.” Foreign visitors to Paris called him the “Solomon of his age.” Louis VII. paid him a filial compliment by naming him the “father of his country.” His friend Bernard soon followed him to the grave, having won the honorable distinction of the “last father of the church.”

CHAPTER XXV.
NOURREDIN—RISE OF SALADIN—KING GUY—QUEEN SIBYLLA.

The return of the two royal crusaders was not so much of an affliction to the kingdom of Jerusalem as it was felt to be a disgrace to their own nations. Relieved of their rivalry, King Baldwin III. took counsel of his own ambition to avenge the recent disasters. He found himself pitted against the most astute leader the Moslem cause had yet produced. Nourredin had swept like a cyclone over Mesopotamia and northern Syria, had conquered all his competitors, and established his throne at Damascus. Leaving Ayoub, the father of Saladin, as governor, he was pouring his invincible warriors southward.

Nourredin was more than a soldier; he had mastered much of the science of the age, and displayed a statesman’s clemency and justice in administration. As a thorough religionist he held his power in stewardship of his cause and refused all personal emolument from his position. His wife once complained of the trivial value of his gifts to her; he replied, “I have naught else, for all I have I hold only as treasure for the faithful.” He treated his soldiers as his children; if any of them fell in battle he made their families his care, anticipating thus the modern system of army pensions.

Baldwin III., undeterred by the greatness of his rival, besieged and captured Ascalon, whose wealth suggested the Arabic title of the “Spouse of Syria” (August 12, 1153). Four years later he assaulted Cæsarea on the Orontes, and would have gained the place but for the outburst of the chronic jealousy among the Christians. In 1159 he obtained for wife Theodora, niece of the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople, and with her munificent dowry the alliance of the Greeks. Manuel appeared in Syria with an enormous army, which, however, accomplished little and withdrew, having been quickly appeased by the shrewdness of Nourredin, or, as some say, having been frightened by news of insurrection in Constantinople.

Nourredin then extended his ravages, avoiding direct encounter with Baldwin, who died February 10, 1163, and is said to have been poisoned by the court physician at Antioch. The magnanimity of Nourredin and his appreciation of the character of young Baldwin were illustrated by his reply to those who urged this as an opportune time for assault upon Jerusalem: “No; we should pity this people’s sorrow, for they have lost a prince whose like is not now left in the world.”

Amaury (Amalric) succeeded his brother, Baldwin III., on the throne. Had his gains equalled his ambition, his power would have dominated far beyond any boundaries the Christian sword had as yet set to the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Moslem world was nominally divided between the Syrian caliph of Bagdad and the Egyptian caliph of Cairo. Egypt was wretchedly governed. The caliph of Cairo was but a creature of his viziers. Amaury, seeing the possibility of extending his domains to the Nile, took arms against him. In 1163 he sent an army which might have held the country, had it not been driven out by the enemy’s flooding the valley of the Nile. One party in Egypt invoked the assistance of Nourredin, who sent as his general Shirkuh the Kurd, uncle of Saladin. Amaury accomplished against him the capture of Pelusium in 1164. In 1167 he took Alexandria, commanded at the time by young Saladin. He later penetrated to Cairo and laid El Fostat in ashes. In 1168 Shirkuh renewed the war. Amaury, marching from Egypt to meet his antagonist in the desert, was flanked by that general, who suddenly occupied the land left undefended. Amaury, who had married a niece of the Emperor Manuel, made with the Greeks an unsuccessful attack upon Damietta. Here the Christians felt the hand of one who was destined ultimately to overthrow all their power in the East. Saladin was in command. On the death of Shirkuh he had been appointed vizier by the caliph of Cairo. The caliph, wearied of being controlled by designing and capable men who absorbed in their own interests the power they defended, selected Saladin, thinking that the young man’s inexperience would be less of a menace to the caliphate.

Nourredin, however, divined the genius of the young vizier and assigned to him the supreme command in Egypt. He then deposed the caliph, and with his reign brought to an end the dynasty of the Fatimites, which for two hundred years had held the land of the Nile. Thus Nourredin ruled supreme from Babylonia to the desert of Libya. Only the kingdom of Jerusalem marred the map of his dominion. To reconquer this for Islam was his incessant purpose. With his own hands he made a pulpit, from which he promised the faithful one day to preach in the mosque of Omar on the temple site.

But the Moslem world was already attached to one destined to be greater than Nourredin. The youth of Saladin had been one of apparent indolence and dissipation, but he veiled beneath his indifference the finest genius and most unbounded ambition. As soon as he felt the possession of power he assumed a corresponding dignity, and men recognized him as one appointed of Heaven. Turbulent emirs, who had ignored him as a chance holder of position, now sat reverently before him. Even the priests were struck with the sincere austerity of his devotion. The caliph of Bagdad bestowed upon him the distinguished dignity of the vest of honor. Poets began to mingle his name with those of heroes as the rising star. The pious included it in their prayers as the hope of Islam.

Knowing that experience is often wiser than genius, Saladin judiciously guarded himself from the errors of youth by associating his father, Ayoub, with him in the government of Egypt. Nourredin, whose successful career had allowed him no jealousy of ordinary men, showed that he was restless at the popularity and ability displayed by his young subaltern, and was preparing to take Egypt under his own immediate government when death, his first vanquisher, came upon the veteran (May, 1174). Saladin immediately proclaimed himself Sultan of Egypt, and hastened to secure the succession of Nourredin’s power as Sultan of Damascus.

Two months later (July, 1174) Amaury followed his great competitor to the grave, and the kingdom of Jerusalem fell to his son, Baldwin IV., a leprous lad of thirteen years. The personal contrast of this sovereign with Saladin was ominous of the contrast between the coming history of the two powers they respectively led. The education of Baldwin was conducted by William of Tyre, the chief historian of this period. The regency of the kingdom was disputed by Milo de Plausy and Raymond, Count of Tripoli. Raymond was great-grandson of Raymond of Toulouse, the renowned leader of the first crusade, and inherited, together with his ancestor’s bravery, his impatience and passion for personal precedence. He deemed that he had a right to the highest emoluments of the kingdom as compensation for having suffered eight years’ imprisonment among the Infidels. Milo was elected regent by the barons, but was shortly afterwards assassinated by unknown hands on the street. Raymond succeeded to the regency. The suspicion of having instigated the murder of his rival was supplemented by a later suspicion that he secretly betrayed the Christian cause in the interest of Saladin. It is not necessary to believe this, as the prowess of the new ruler of Egypt is sufficient to account for his successes. Raymond was unwise in his movements; he busied himself with a wretched attempt upon Alexandria, and then made truce with Saladin in the north just at a moment when peace enabled the young Saracen to strengthen his power over his Mohammedan neighbors.

In time Baldwin IV. took the reins into his own hands. Saladin was pouring his forces over the Holy Land. His newly organized troop of Mamelukes formed his body-guard. Baldwin shut himself up in Ascalon, but soon the general devastation of his kingdom maddened the Christians to desperation. They issued from Ascalon with such fury that the Egyptian army was swept from the field and but few of Saladin’s soldiers lived to accompany their young leader back to Cairo.

This defeat, far from depressing the courage of Saladin, only taught him new lessons of caution. Little by little his sword carved away the Christian kingdom, until Baldwin was forced to sign a truce. Renaud, Lord of Carac, broke this compact, and with the aid of an army of Templars plundered the Moslem caravans, massacring defenceless men and capturing the women. He made an incursion as far as Arabia, and announced his purpose of going to Mecca to plunder the tomb of the Prophet. But the swift riders of Saladin were upon his track. Renaud barely escaped, many of his troops being captured. Most of these were put to death in Egypt, a few being reserved as victims in the annual sacrifice at Mecca. Saladin was infuriated by Renaud’s breach of faith, and won the title of “Scourge of God,” even among the Christians, by the swift and fearful retaliation which he took upon the cities of northern Palestine.

The increasing leprosy of Baldwin rendered him incapable of discharging his royal duties. A sort of political leprosy or dry-rot seemed to infect the state. The crown retained its shape, but not its lustre, for it could not control the internecine strife of the Christian barons, who waged war upon one another from their mountain fastnesses. The Hospitallers and Templars, too, combined against the priesthood, and hooted and shot at them as they went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The priests retaliated by gathering the arrows and placing them on the Mount of Olives, calling heaven to avenge the insult offered to its ministers. The various nations represented by the influx of pilgrims added to the confusion by reviving in Palestine the prejudices of sections of Europe. Vice everywhere had open license. William of Tyre, in describing the condition of affairs, drops his pen, lest his readers should accuse him of defaming human nature by his recital. Agents were sent to the courts of Europe, appealing for succor to the kingdom, which was falling to pieces in punishment of its own demerits. The piety of Christendom made no response except in pity for a government which they called “Christ’s Second Crown of Thorns.”

Baldwin IV. died in 1185. Baldwin V., a child, had been crowned as his successor two years before. This prince was the child of Sibylla by her first husband, the Marquis of Montferrat. Since the death of the marquis she had married Guy of Lusignan. Little King Baldwin died a year later (1186). Sibylla was accused of having poisoned her own child to advance her new husband’s interest. The suspicion was not lessened by her adoption of a disgraceful ruse to gain for Guy the vacant throne. As the daughter of one king of Jerusalem and sister of another, she might have held the sovereignty but for the opposition to Guy, whom she associated with herself in the government. She proposed to the chiefs that she should divorce Guy, saying, “If a divorce takes place between me and my husband, I wish you to make me sure by your oaths that whomsoever I shall make choice of for my husband you will choose for your head and lord.” She then swore that she would award him whom she regarded as the ablest defender of Jerusalem with her hand and crown. This was agreed to. The patriarch solemnly announced her divorce and placed the crown in her hands. Sibylla, to the surprise of all, turned to Guy and, placing the crown upon his head, boldly declared, “I make choice of thee as king and as my lord; for whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” The audacity of Sibylla apparently cowed the warriors about her; they acquiesced, and some even applauded the cleverness of her deceit.

CHAPTER XXVI.
BATTLE OF TIBERIAS—FALL OF JERUSALEM.

In the meantime Saladin had gathered into his hand the reins of Egypt and western Asia. In 1185 the Christians of Palestine sent an appeal for aid to all the courts of Europe. The imminence and magnitude of the danger led them to select the most important dignitaries as their messengers: Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, together with the Grand Masters of the Hospitallers and Templars. The ambassadors offered the crown of Jerusalem to King Henry II. of England, presenting him with the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of the tower of David. The appeal of the East was seconded by Pope Lucius, whose letter to Henry shows that Europe dreaded as much as it pretended to despise the new Moslem leader. The letter read: “For Saladin, the most inhuman persecutor, has arisen to such a pitch in his fury that, unless the vehement onset of his wickedness is checked, he may entertain an assured hope that all the Jordan will flow into his mouth, and the land be polluted by his most abominable superstitions, and the country once more be subjected to the accursed dominion of the most nefarious tyrant. By the sorrows thus imminent, we entreat your Mightiness with a palpitating heart,” etc. But neither King Henry’s conscience nor his hope of gaining a brighter crown in heaven was sufficient to lure him from projects nearer home.

Saladin quickly verified the Pope’s estimate of his ability. In May, 1187, he overthrew the Templars in a battle at Nazareth. With eighty thousand horse he then invested and crushed Tiberias on Galilee. The citadel of this place alone remained untaken. The Christians massed fifty thousand men on the plain of Hattîn, above the city, for one supreme endeavor. The boldest feared the result. The sight of the wood of the True Cross gave a martyr courage rather than hope of success. Raymond, whose bravery no man questioned, made an address to the assembled barons, counselling retreat. He said: “In this army is the only hope left to the Christians of the East. Here are gathered all the soldiers of Christ, all the defenders of Jerusalem. The archers of Saladin are more skilful than ours, his cavalry more numerous and better trained. Let us abandon Tiberias and save the army.” To lose that battle in the open plain would be, as Raymond foresaw, to lose everything. To retreat might force the enemy to fight against strongholds, when the advantage would be on the Christians’ side.

This discreet counsel of the veteran was derided by the Master of the Templars, who openly taunted Raymond with some secret alliance with Saladin. Raymond rejoined, “I will submit to the punishment of death if these things do not fall out as I have said.” The barons were for following the advice of the veteran, but King Guy, after various changes of mind, gave the fatal order for battle.

The day (July 4, 1187) was excessively hot. The Christians, worn out with the march, advanced to the fight, sustained chiefly by the desperation of their resolve. The Mussulmans occupied the vantage-ground on the hills which make the western shore of the Lake of Tiberias, and welcomed their adversaries’ approach with a furious discharge of arrows. Then suddenly, as lightning through a pelting storm, the white turbans and cimeters of the Saracen cavalry, led by Saladin in person, flashed across the field. In the language of the Arabic chronicler: “Then 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.”

The True Cross, which had animated the Christians’ courage, was an occasion of their weakness; for, despairing of victory through their own valor, they sought the protection of the emblem of their religion. Saladin said afterwards that the Franks flew round the cross like moths round a light. Again and again the sultan drove his squadrons through the thickest ranks of his opponents, and would that day have sealed the Christians’ fate had not night given recess to the battle. During the darkness the Christians closed their ranks in dense array. The Saracens, having superior numbers, adopted the opposite plan and extended their lines, so that when morning broke they surrounded their antagonists on every side. The Christians in vain tried to break the cordon, which was steadily drawing closer and closer, limiting the space within it as one by one the doomed knights fell. The Saracens fired the grass of the plain. Swords flashed through the lurid smoke, and the bravest, whom arms could not daunt, dropped from suffocation. The Templars and Hospitallers maintained the battle all day long, rallying about the cross; but that symbol was ultimately taken. It was being borne by Rufinus, Bishop of Acre, when he fell, pierced with an arrow. Says a contemporary writer: “This was done through the righteous judgment of God; for, contrary to the usage of his predecessors, having greater faith in worldly arms than in heavenly ones, he went forth to battle equipped in a coat of mail.”

Guy was a captive, together with the Master of the Templars and many of the most celebrated knights, who had failed to find death, though they sought it. Raymond cut his way through the line of Saracens, who praised his amazing valor as they witnessed his exploit, while the Christians denounced him for connivance with the foe.

A scene followed which showed the temper of Saladin. The conqueror received King Guy and his surviving nobles in a manner to lessen, if possible, their chagrin for the disaster. He presented to the king a great goblet filled with drink, which had been cooled in the snows from the Lebanons. Having drunk from it, Guy passed the cup to Renaud, the man who had violated the truce in former years. Saladin could be magnanimous to a worthy antagonist. So great was his self-command that he observed the most punctilious etiquette even in the rage of a hand-to-hand fight. But to the false and treacherous he could show no mercy. The sight of the truce-breaker fired him with uncontrollable frenzy; he exclaimed, “That traitor shall not drink in my presence.” He gave Renaud the instant choice of death or acceptance of the religion of Mohammed. Renaud refused to subscribe the Koran. Saladin smote him with the side of his sabre, a mark of his contempt. At a signal a common soldier swirled his cimeter, and the head of Renaud fell at King Guy’s feet.

Towards the Templars and Hospitallers the sultan had conceived similar hatred from the conviction that they regarded their covenants with their enemies too lightly. As these knights of the white and the red cross were led past him Saladin remarked, “I will deliver the earth of these two unclean races.” He bade his emirs each slay a knight with his own hand. Neither the defenceless condition of the captives nor the protestation of his warriors against this cruelty produced any compunction in the breast of the resolute conqueror.

Four days later St. Jean d’ Acre fell under Saladin’s assault; but the people were spared and allowed to depart with all their movable property. The churches were converted into mosques, and resounded with prayers and thanksgiving to the Prophet. The yellow flag of Saladin soon floated from the walls of Jericho, Ramleh, Arsuf, Jaffa, and Beirut. Ascalon resisted for a while, in spite of the threats of the conqueror and the entreaty of his prisoner, King Guy, that the garrison should not prolong the useless conflict. The defenders of the city refused submission unless the victor should pledge the safety of the women and children and the liberty of the king. Saladin honored their bravery by acceding to these conditions, and Ascalon became his possession (September 4th).

Two weeks later (September 18th) his troops invested Jerusalem. Sending for the principal inhabitants, he said to them: “I, as well as you, acknowledge Jerusalem to be the house of God; I will not defile its sanctity with blood if I can gain it by peace and love. Surrender it by your Whitsuntide, and I will bestow upon you liberty to go where you will, with provisions in plenty and as much land as you can cultivate.” The reply of the Christians was valiant: “We cannot yield the city in which died our God; still less can we sell it to you.” Saladin then swore to avenge the slaughter perpetrated by the Christians upon the Moslems when, under Godfrey, the first crusaders had captured Jerusalem and massacred its inhabitants.

The assault was furious and met with equal valor. Within and without, the walls were fairly buttressed with the bodies of the fallen. It was not until the principal gate was undermined, the ramparts tottering, and the soldiers of Saladin occupying some of the towers, that Balian d’Iselin, the commandant, proposed to accept the conditions the Christians had rejected before the fight. “It is too late,” replied Saladin, pointing to his yellow banners, which proclaimed his occupancy of many places along the walls. “Very well,” replied Balian; “we will destroy the city. The mosque of Omar, and the mysterious Stone of Jacob which you worship, shall be pounded into dust. Five thousand Moslems whom we retain shall be killed. We will then slay with our own hands our wives and children, and march out to you with fire and sword. Not one of us will go to paradise until he has sent ten Mussulmans to hell.” Saladin again bowed to the bravery which he might have punished, and accepted the capitulation (October 2, 1187).

The Christian warriors were permitted to retire to Tripoli or Tyre, cities as yet unconquered by Saladin. The inhabitants were to be ransomed at a nominal sum of money for each. Many, however, in their poverty could not produce the required amount. The fact, reported to the victor, led to a deed on his part which showed his natural kindliness, together with the exactness of his rule. The ransom money could not be remitted; it belonged of right to the men whose heroism had been blessed of Allah in taking the city. Saladin and his brother, Malek-Ahdel, paid from their own purses the redemption money for several thousand Christians, who otherwise, according to the usages of war, would have become the slaves of their conquerors.

On the day for the evacuation of the city Saladin erected his throne at the Gate of David to review the wretched army of the vanquished as it passed out. First came the patriarch and priests, carrying the sacred vessels and treasures of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Next followed Queen Sibylla with the remnant of her court. Saladin saluted her with great courtesy, and added words of seemingly genuine consolation as he noted her grief. Mothers carried their children, and strong men bore the aged and sick in their arms. Some paused to address the sultan, asking that members of their families from whom they were separated might be restored to them. Saladin instantly ordered that in no case should children be separated from their mothers, nor husbands from their wives. He permitted the Hospitallers to remain in the city on condition of their resuming those duties which their order was originally instituted to perform, and committed to them the care of the sick who could not endure being removed. Many writers are disposed to analyze the motives of Saladin and to attribute his clemency to politic foresight in subduing the hatred as well as the arms of his enemies. But surely the annals of war are too barren of such acts of humanity to allow us to mar the beauty of the simple narration; and the virtues of Christians in such circumstances have not been so resplendent that they may not emulate the spirit of one who was their noblest foe.

The new lord of Jerusalem purged the sacred city of what to him was the taint of idolatry, the worship of Jesus. The mosque of Omar on the temple site was washed within and without with rose-water. The pulpit which Nourredin had made with his own hands was erected by the side of the mihrab, towards which the people prayed as indicating the direction of Mecca. The chief imam preached from it on the glories of Saladin, “the resplendent star of Allah,” on the redemption of Jerusalem, from which Mohammed had made his miraculous night journey to Mecca, and on the holy war, which must be continued until “all the branches of impiety should be cut” from the tree of life.

The joy of the Moslem world had its refrain in the wails of Europe. It is said that Pope Urban III., on hearing the news, died of a broken heart. The minstrels composed lamentations as the captives did by the rivers of Babylon. Courts and churches were draped in mourning. The superstitious saw tears fall from the eyes of the wooden and stone saints that ornamented the churches. The general gloom was described by one who felt it as “like the darkness over the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour, when Christ was crucified.”

CHAPTER XXVII.
EUROPE BETWEEN THE SECOND AND THIRD CRUSADES—SUPERSTITION—THE WALDENSES—DEGRADATION OF THE PAPACY—FRANCE UNDER LOUIS—ENGLAND UNDER HENRY II.—RICHARD CŒUR DE LION.

Forty years had elapsed since the ill-fated crusade of Louis VII. and Conrad (1147) to avenge the capture of Edessa by Zenghi, and the crowning calamity, the fall of Jerusalem into the hands of Saladin (1187). We may briefly note some of the conditions and changes in Europe during this period.

Men were thinking, though the dense darkness of mediæval night yet remained, and the spectres of superstition which inhabited the human mind were as many and as strange as ever. For example, the year 1186 was looked for with alarm by the people of northern Europe, because of the predictions of astrologers that certain conjunctions of the stars then betokened dire evils to mankind. In the language of a contemporary: “The planets being in an aërial and windy sign, ... there shall arise in the East a mighty wind, and with its stormy blasts it shall blacken the air and corrupt it with poisonous stench.... The wind shall raise aloft the sands and dust from the face of the earth, and utterly overwhelm such cities as Mecca, Baldac [Bagdad], and Babylon. The regions of Egypt and Ethiopia shall become almost uninhabitable. In the West shall arise dissensions, raised by the wind, and seditions of the people shall take place; and there shall be one of them who shall levy armies innumerable, and shall wage war on the shores of the waters, on which a slaughter so vast will take place that the flow of blood will equal the surging waves. This conjunction signifies the mutation of kingdoms, the superiority of the Franks, the destruction of the Saracenic race, together with longer life to those who shall be born hereafter.”

Other astrologers blew their star-blasts of similar warning. More startling still were the reported words of a pious monk, which he chanted while in a trance, confirming the astrologers with rhapsodic quotations from Scripture and the Greek mythologists. The popular consternation was somewhat allayed by Pharamella the Moor, whose humanity was stronger than his religious bigotry, and led him to write to the Christian Bishop of Toledo, from the tower on which he was watching the stars, that their prognostications of the “aërial or windy signs” were wrong; but that there would be sufficient force of evil abroad in the atmosphere to produce “scanty vintage, crops of only moderate average, much slaughter by the sword, and many shipwrecks.” The most serious chroniclers of the time still associated as effect and cause the rise and fall of kings and the issue of battles with natural phenomena of comets, eclipses, and storms. Epidemic madness continued to see celestial warriors through the dust of earthly combat, and the ubiquitous presence of the mother of God in churches and cells, in the silence of the roadway, and, in company with Mary Magdalene, trudging along amid bands of pilgrims. Men visited purgatory and returned to describe its burning floor and the writhing shapes of its inhabitants. Indeed, the human mind was not yet sufficiently awake to know that it had been dreaming.

Yet here and there were those who threw off the age delusion. The logic of Abélard and the love of liberty voiced by Arnold of Brescia roused more than one of the sleepers, who kept awake and jostled their fellows.

Thus the sect of the Waldenses foretokened the rise of modern Protestantism. Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons, was afflicted with the rigors of ecclesiastical rule, which robbed more than it protected the people, and with the dogmatic traditions of the church, which were being manipulated as strangling strings about the mind. He threw off these restraints; he devoted his large fortune to the relief of the poor and organized a brotherhood of kindred spirits, who took the name of the Poor Men of Lyons. There had as yet been no attempt to teach the masses the simple religion of Jesus as contained in the Scriptures, Jerome’s Latin Bible of the fourth century being the only translation in use. Waldo secured a rendering of the four Gospels into French. The reading of this by the people led them to dissent from the assumptions of the Roman Church, to question its sacraments, and to deny to the priesthood the sole prerogative of preaching and administering religion. Waldo and his followers claimed liberty to expound the Word of God according to its own rules, and to interpret its precepts in the light of reason and prayer-illuminated conscience.

The Waldenses were at once proceeded against by the Bishop of Lyons as heretics and rebels. His judgment was confirmed by the anathemas of the papal see. Waldo and his friends fled to the mountains of Piedmont and Dauphine. In 1179 the new doctrines were denounced by the Third Lateran Council. Waldo died the same year, having lived long enough to anticipate in his own person the persecutions which were to make his sect forever famous among martyrs.

The history of the Papacy during this period was humiliating. Popes and antipopes strove for the seat of St. Peter. The hierarchy invoked the aid of the Emperor of Germany, Frederick Barbarossa, to overturn the republic of Rome, which Arnold of Brescia had inspired. That leader atoned for his audacity by being hanged and burned. Barbarossa was, however, equally determined that the secular power of the popes should not be rebuilt upon the ruins of Roman independence. Italy was laid waste by the armies of the empire, until the centre of Christendom was disgraced by scenes as cruel as those which marked the contention of Christian and Turk in the East.

France was scarcely less unfortunate. Louis VII., shortly after his return from Palestine, divorced his queen, Eleanor, who became the wife of Henry of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. of England, and added to the possession of England the territories of Aquitaine and Poitou, leaving to the French monarchy less than half of what had been, and was again to be, the land of France. Guizot remarks: “This was the only event under Louis’s reign of any real importance, in view of its long and bloody consequences to his country. A petty war or a sullen strife between the kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis with some of the great lords of his kingdom, some vigorous measures against certain districts, the first bubblings of that religious fermentation which resulted before long, in the south of France, in the crusade against the Albigensians—such were the facts which went to make up with somewhat of insipidity the annals of this reign.” Kingship, on the death of the Abbé Suger, Louis’s prime minister, steadily declined, until Philip Augustus opened for it a new era of strength and progress. Philip had been seven years on the throne (from 1080) at the time of the capture of Jerusalem.

England at the beginning of this period was distressed with the war between King Stephen and Matilda. Churches were converted into fortifications, and castles into prisons. For nineteen years the country was so ravaged by the contending parties that, in the language of the contemporary chronicler, “to till the ground was to plough the sea,” and brave men, “sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East.” With the son of Matilda, Henry II., the dynasty of the Angevins, or Plantagenets, was established. Inheriting Normandy from his mother, and acquiring by his marriage with Eleanor her estates, at the age of twenty-one Henry II. ruled from the Arctic Ocean to the Pyrenees. “Though a foreigner, never speaking the English tongue, he seems to have possessed something of the spirit which produced the subsequent Anglican civilization. He abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the relations established between church and state, and declared that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held under the common law” (Norgate). Though his quarrel with and murder of Thomas à Becket left in suspension the Constitutions of Clarendon, which gave the kingship preëminence over the hierarchy, the principles of that document were soon revived. Henry II. admitted no papal legate into England without an oath not to interfere with any royal prerogative. Though he repented the death of Becket, he forced the monks of Canterbury to elect a successor of his own nomination.

Perhaps the most important progress of Henry II.’s reign was marked by the Assizes of Clarendon (1166), which gave to England the beginning of trial by jury. A grand jury of twelve men was to hear all accusations, and only on sufficient evidence allow further procedure, although the final trial of a case was, until 1216, allowed to proceed according to the laws of Ordeal and Combat. Circuit judges were also appointed, subject only to the king and his council as a court of appeal.

In 1155 Ireland was given over to the conquest of Henry by Pope Hadrian for one penny a house, to be paid into the papal treasury; for, said the Holy Father, “all the islands on which Christ, the Sun of justice, has shone belong to the see of St. Peter.” Henry’s victory over William of Scotland also gave him the ascendency in that kingdom. Thus was woven the substance of the band which now holds together Great Britain.

The reign of Henry II. was brought to a close in personal disaster. At Le Mans in France he was beaten in battle by his son Richard, who, in conjunction with King Philip Augustus, had raised an unfilial hand against his father. Henry died, cursing God and muttering, “Shame! shame on a conquered king!”

Richard I. (Cœur de Lion) may be said to have been badly born (September 8, 1157). His father, Henry II., though astute in kingcraft, was among the most disreputable of monarchs in personal character. St. Bernard said of Henry, “He comes of the devil, and to the devil he shall return.” His remorse for the murder of Becket, which seems to have been genuine, did not restrain him from spending his later years as a notorious libertine, polluting every innocent thing about him with his lecherous touch. Even childhood was not safe from his lust. It is typical of the man and the times that Geoffrey, for whom the king secured the bishopric of Lincoln, was his own natural son by Rosamond, his concubine.

Richard’s mother, Eleanor, was perhaps of as unwholesome a sort as his father. She never blushed except at the failure of some intrigue which in our later age is regarded as shameful to her sex. Her first royal husband, Louis VII. of France, though fascinated by her beauty, could not abide her infidelities, and put her away. If the chronicle be true, she avenged the marital sins of Henry II. by slaying with her own hand his mistress, Rosamond.

Richard thus inherited much of the disposition which marred his many nobler traits. Guizot’s portrait of him is fair: “Beyond comparison the boldest, the most unreflecting, the most passionate, the most ruffianly, the most heroic adventurer of the middle ages.” The first suggestion of his title, “Lion-hearted,” is perhaps in the pages of Roger de Wendover (died 1237), who, describing the ravages Richard committed in France, says: “He invaded the territory with more than a lion’s fury, carried off the produce, cut down the vines, burned the villages, and demolished everything.” His first act upon coming to power was to release his mother, Eleanor, from the twelve years’ imprisonment she suffered at the hands of her husband, Henry II. Then was remembered, and applied to her and to Richard, a prediction of Merlin, the “Wizard of the North,” in the fifth century: “The eagle of the broken treaty shall rejoice in her third nestling.” Roger de Wendover thus interpreted the hitherto enigmatic words: “The queen [Eleanor] is meant by the eagle, because she stretches out her two wings over two kingdoms, France and England. She was separated from the king of the French by divorce on account of consanguinity, and from the king of the English by suspicion and imprisonment; and so she was on both sides the eagle of a broken treaty. ‘She shall rejoice in her third nestling’ may be understood in this way: the queen’s first-born son, named William, died when he was a boy; Henry, her second son, was raised to the rank of king, and paid the debt of nature after he had engaged in hostilities with his father; and Richard, her third son, who is denoted by the ‘third nestling,’ was a source of joy to his mother.”

Richard was crowned September 11, 1189. Wendover, who may have witnessed it, describes the coronation service. Richard was conducted to Westminster in solemn procession, headed by ecclesiastics bearing the cross, holy water, and censers; four barons carried candlesticks with wax candles, two earls holding aloft two sceptres, one surmounted with a golden cross, the other with a dove; three earls followed, carrying three swords with golden sheaths; six earls and barons carried a checker, over which were placed the royal arms and robes, while a seventh held aloft a golden crown. Richard swore upon the Gospels his kingly devotion, pledging to observe peace, honor, and reverence towards God and the holy church, and to exercise true justice to all his people. “After this they stripped him of all his clothes except his breeches and shirt, which had been ripped apart over his shoulders to receive the unction. He was then shod with sandals interwoven with gold thread, and Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, anointed him king in three places, namely, on his head, his shoulders, and his right arm, using prayers composed for the occasion. Then a consecrated linen cloth was placed on his head, over which was put a hat, and when they had again clothed him in his royal robes, with the tunic and gown, the archbishop gave into his hands a sword wherewith to crush all the enemies of the church.... Then they placed the crown upon his head, with the sceptre in his right hand and the royal wand in his left.” Preceded by candles and cross, he went to the celebration of mass; thence “to the dinner-table, and feasted splendidly, so that the wine flowed along the pavement and walls of the palace.”

A very different scene, though not less characteristic of the age, took place beyond the palace. Richard had issued an edict forbidding any Jew to appear at his coronation. Some of the wealthiest Hebrews, presuming upon the splendid gifts they brought, approached the dining-hall. The populace, willingly interpreting the king’s mandate as a license for persecution, set upon the Jews, not only at the palace gate, but throughout the city. They murdered them without stint and looted their houses. The king, essaying an investigation, found that the chief dignitaries and citizens were leaders of the mob, and stayed further inquiry. Other cities emulated the cruelty and greed of the Londoners. At York five hundred Jews, who had fled for safety to the castle, unable to defend themselves, slaughtered their own wives and children to save them from worse fate, threw the dead bodies to the Christians without the walls, and then set fire to their refuge, perishing in the flames. The people to whom the Jew’s had loaned money, the bonds of which were kept in the cathedral, seized these evidences of debt and burned them in pious offering before the altar.

The chief interest of Richard, even surpassing the care of his throne, was to fulfil the vow he had taken two years before (1187) to join a new crusade against the Infidels in Palestine.