The Art of War

by baron de Antoine Henri Jomini

This temporary success of the Crusaders became the source of great disasters. The Mussulmans, heretofore divided among themselves, united to resist the infidel, and divisions began to appear in the Christian camps. A new expedition was necessary to aid the kingdom which the brave Noureddin was threatening. Louis VII. and the Emperor Conrad, each at the head of one hundred thousand Crusaders, marched, as their predecessors had done, by the route of Constantinople, (1142.) But the Greeks, frightened by the recurring visits of these menacing guests, plotted their destruction.

Conrad, who was desirous of being first, fell into the traps laid for him by the Turks, and was defeated in detachments in several battles by the Sultan of Iconium. Louis, more fortunate, defeated the Turks on the banks of the Mender; but, being deprived of the support of Conrad, and his army being annoyed and partially beaten by the enemy in the passage of defiles, and being in want of supplies, he was confined to Attalia, on the coast of Pamphylia, where he endeavored to embark his army. The means furnished by the Greeks were insufficient, and not more than fifteen or twenty thousand men arrived at Antioch with the king: the remainder either perished or fell into the hands of the Saracens.

This feeble reinforcement soon melted away under the attacks of the climate and the daily contests with the enemy, although they were continually aided by small bodies brought over from Europe by the Italian ships; and they were again about to yield under the attacks of Saladin, when the court of Rome succeeded in effecting an alliance between the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the Kings of France and England to save the Holy Land.

The emperor was the first to set out. At the head of one hundred thousand Germans, he opened a passage through Thrace in spite of the formal resistance of the Greeks, now governed by Isaac Angelus. He marched to Gallipolis, crossed the Dardanelles, and seized Iconium. He died in consequence of an imprudent bath in a river, which, it has been pretended, was the Cydnus. His son, the Duke of Swabia, annoyed by the Mussulmans and attacked by diseases, brought to Ptolemais scarcely six thousand men.

At the same time, Richard Coeur-de-Lion[^[58]] and Philip Augustus more judiciously took the route over the sea, and sailed from Marseilles and Genoa with two immense fleets,(1190.) The first seized Cyprus, and both landed in Syria,—where they would probably have triumphed but for the rivalry which sprang up between them, in consequence of which Philip returned to France.

Twelve years later, a new Crusade was determined upon, (1203.) Part of the Crusaders embarked from Provence or Italy; others, led by the Count of Flanders and the Marquis of Montferrat, proceeded to Venice, with the intention of embarking there. The party last mentioned were persuaded by the skillful Dandolo to aid him in an attack upon Constantinople, upon the pretext of upholding the rights of Alexis Angelus, the son of Isaac Angelus, who had fought the Emperor Frederick and was the successor of those Comnenuses who had connived at the destruction of the armies of Conrad and Louis VII.

Twenty thousand men had the boldness to attack the ancient capital of the world, which had at least two hundred thousand defenders. They assailed it by sea and land, and captured it. The usurper fled, and Alexis was replaced upon the throne, but was unable to retain his seat: the Greeks made an insurrection in favor of Murzupha, but the Latins took possession of Constantinople after a more bloody assault than the first, and placed upon the throne their chief, Count Baldwin of Flanders. This empire lasted a half-century. The remnant of the Greeks took refuge at Nice and Trebizond.

A sixth expedition was directed against Egypt by John of Brienne, who, notwithstanding the successful issue of the horrible siege of Damietta, was obliged to give way before the constantly-increasing efforts of the Mussulman population. The remains of his splendid army, after a narrow escape from drowning in the Nile, deemed themselves very fortunate in being able to purchase permission to re-embark for Europe.

The court of Rome, whose interest it was to keep up the zeal of Christendom in these expeditions, of which it gathered all the fruits, encouraged the German princes to uphold the tottering realm at Jerusalem. The Emperor Frederick and the Landgrave of Hesse embarked at Brundusium in 1227, at the head of forty thousand chosen soldiers. The landgrave, and afterward Frederick himself, fell sick, and the fleet put in at Tarentum, from which port the emperor, irritated by the presumption of Gregory IX., who excommunicated him because he was too slow in the gratification of his wishes, at a later date proceeded with ten thousand men, thus giving way to the fear inspired by the pontifical thunders.

Louis IX., animated by the same feeling of fear, or impelled, if we may credit Ancelot, by motives of a higher character, set out from Aigues-Mortes, in 1248, with one hundred and twenty large vessels, and fifteen hundred smaller boats, hired from the Genoese, the Venetians and the Catalans; for France was at that time without a navy, although washed by two seas. This king proceeded to Cyprus, and, having there collected a still larger force, set out, according to Joinville's statement, with more than eighteen hundred vessels, to make a descent into Egypt. His army must have numbered about eighty thousand men; for, although half of the fleet was scattered and cast away upon the coast of Syria, he marched upon Cairo a few months later with sixty thousand fighting-men, twenty thousand being mounted. It should be stated that the Count of Poictiers had arrived also with troops from France.