Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

I have dwelt thus on the Council of Clermont, and quoted from the speech of Pope Urban, that the reader might see clearly the mixed motives that stirred the heart of Europe for nearly two centuries, and nerved her warriors to the most noble, heroic and almost superhuman deeds of valor and endurance that have ever been emblazoned among the memorials of the mightiest heroes of this mortal race.

This was the declaration of war against the Mohammedan. The breaking up of the Council was the scattering of the firebrands of fanaticism. Pope Urban traversed several provinces of France that seemed to rise en masse to his appeals. France seemed to have no country but the Holy Land. Ease, property and life were cast into the sacrificial cause. All Christian nations seemed to forget their internal strifes, and to plunge headlong into the excitement of the hour. Western Europe resounded with the Papal Watchword: “He who will not take up his cross and come after me, is not worthy of me.”

It must not be forgotten, however, that the political and physical condition of Europe contributed vastly to the warlike conflagration. The people groaned under feudal servitude and violence. Famine more or less severe, for years had contributed to robbery and brigandage. Commerce was almost destroyed, agriculture was neglected. Towns and cities were in ruins; lands everywhere were abandoned. The Church made her appeals popular. The Crusader was freed from all imposts and from pursuit by debts. The Cross suspended all laws and all menaces. Tyranny could not seek a wearer of the emblem nor could justice find the guilty. What wonder that an entire population rushed to a cause that absolved them from a grinding past and pictured so glowing a future! What wonder that the inexpiable wickedness of tyrannical baron and brutal knight sought expiation or at least relief by a desperate plunge into foreign martial excesses! What wonder if freebooters and robbers should join the ranks in hope of sharing the plunder of the conquered East! Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that over and above all love of glory, all true patriotism or base cupidity, towered the sublime passion, the pervading emotion of the hour. Religion smelted every other sentiment into harmonious union with her fervid zeal and her intense zealotry. Monks deserted their cloisters, anchorites their cells or forest retreats to mingle with and encourage the crusading throngs. Thieves and robbers came out of their hiding places to confess their sins and expiate offences by assuming the sacred badge.

All Europe seemed to be on the move eastward. Barons were willing to desert their castles and Lords their manors. The artisan deserted his shop, merchants their stores, the laborer the field. Cities were depopulated, lands were mortgaged, castles sold. Values were nothing. Accumulations of centuries went for a song. Even miracles entered into the furore. To their overheated imaginations stars fell; blood was seen in the clouds. Armed warriors were seen rushing to battle in the skies. Saints issued from the tomb, and the shade of Charlemagne arose to lead these phantom hosts to the rescue of the Holy City. While everywhere the women and children and the helpless of every estate espoused the cause of Heaven crying aloud, “It is the will of God,” and imprinting crosses on their limbs.

The early spring of 1096 saw the gathering of the impatient throngs. They came from every quarter, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, and from Tiber to the Ocean. Troops of men, armed with every conceivable weapon or without arms of any kind, swarmed towards their respective rendezvous chanting and shouting their war cry until every hill reëchoed “It is the will of God.” Without preparation or forethought or commissary they gathered, blindly trusting that He who fed the sparrows would not suffer them to hunger. There was no voice of reason in all this surging multitude. It was a spectacle without a parallel in history. There is no way of computing the vast aggregate, but the French historian, Carnot, estimates that five billion enthusiasts were on the move in the spring of 1096. This certainly is most extravagant hyperbole, but all Western Europe was fiercely agitated and vast multitudes were on the march.

THE CRUSADE OF THE MOB.

Their story is but a harrowing recital of a tumultuous and reckless march through an unknown country by a starving horde of men, women and children. Pillage, rapine and blood marked their way. For a time in Germany the people were kindly disposed and brought them food. Fortunately for the mob Hungary had but recently embraced Christianity and its King, Carloman, gave it a friendly passage through his domains: but when it struck Bulgaria its struggles and sorrows began. They were forced to pillage to keep from starvation. Religion was laid aside. Hunger knew no law stronger than that of self-preservation. The Bulgarians flew to arms and inflicted great losses on the undisciplined and helpless crowd of beggars. At last that part of the throng led by Walter the Penniless, arrived under the walls of Constantinople and there were allowed by the Emperor to await the coming of Peter the Hermit. Alas! the excesses of his hosts led to still more terrible assaults while passing through Hungary and Bulgaria. At Nissa they endeavored to scale the ramparts and a terrific battle ensued in which the Crusaders were cut to pieces. Women, children, horses, camp and trophy chests, all fell a prey to the infuriated Bulgarians.

In August, Peter the Hermit appeared under the walls of Constantinople with about seven thousand soldiers and camp followers to recruit his wasted energies in the camp of Walter the Penniless while waiting for other and better armed and disciplined forces to arrive. From the banks of the Rhine, from Flanders, and even from Britain an army largely composed of the refuse of mankind, two hundred thousand strong, started on its march—but soon gave themselves to unheard-of barbarities. How much worse than a Mohammedan was a member of that hated race which had crucified the Christ and so they let loose their fury against the defenseless Jews in most pitiless massacres, sweeping on into Hungary, to the city of Mersburg, which shut its gates and refused them provisions. Forests were cut down, causeways built across the swamps which partially protected the walls and a furious assault was made upon the city. The battle raged fiercely and for a long time with doubtful result, but at last the scaling ladders of the Crusaders began to give way, and then fell dragging down their occupants and fragments of the walls and towers. These disasters carried panic into the army of the besiegers and they fled into the forests, were caught in the swamps and were ruthlessly slaughtered. Few of the desperate and cruel adventurers escaped. Some found the way back to their own country covered with disgrace—a few more made their way to the army of Peter the Hermit encamped before Constantinople.

Thus far this fanatical spirit had cost Western Europe the lives of nearly a quarter of a million people, and not a Saracen had been seen. But the motley crowd encamped on the Bosphorus augmented by adventurers from Italian cities had gradually increased until now it probably numbered one hundred thousand all told. They were scarcely more welcome than the Saracens to the Emperor Alexius who had treated them as guests and supplied their famished hosts. Their desire for plunder could not long be restrained, and the churches, houses and palaces in the suburbs fell a prey to their rapacity which was as insatiable as the cry for blood that rises from a pack of ravening wolves. Alexius was therefore very glad to furnish them with transportation across the Bosphorus. They were now on Asiatic soil an undisciplined and motley crowd in the face of the well armed and equally furious and fanatical Turk. They revelled in the pillage of the fertile plains of Nicomedia, dividing the booty at night in their camps. They plundered the valley, ravaged and burned the villages and committed most horrible excesses; they captured a small fort near the mountains from the Turks and massacred the garrison. The Turks reinforced, fell upon them in turn, and put nearly all of them to the sword. This roused the anger of the mixed crowds in camp. Nothing could restrain the blind fury of the soldier mob. They chased the apparently flying columns of the Turks into the mountains of an unknown country and fell into the ambush laid for them. In vain their courage, their despair. The carnage was horrible. Only three thousand escaped. The entire crusading army perished in this single battle and only their bleaching bones remained as a ghastly monument pointing out to other crusaders the way to the Holy Land.