CHAPTER X.
Consequences of the Loss of Edessa—The State of France unfavourable to a new Crusade—View of the Progress of Society—Causes and Character of the Second Crusade—St. Bernard—The Emperor of Germany takes the Cross and sets out—Louis VII. follows—Conduct of the Germans in Greece—Their Destruction in Cappadocia—Treachery of Manuel Comnenus—Louis VII. arrives at Constantinople—Passes into Asia—Defeats the Turks on the Meander—His Army cut to pieces—Proceeds by Sea to Antioch—Fate of his remaining Troops—Intrigues at Antioch—Louis goes on to Jerusalem—Siege of Damascus—Disgraceful Failure—Conrad returns to Europe—Conduct of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis—Termination of the Second Crusade.
The loss of Edessa shook the kingdom of Jerusalem; not so much from the importance of the city or its territory, as from the exposed state in which it left the frontier of the newly established monarchy. The activity, the perseverance, the power of the Moslems had been too often felt not to be dreaded; and there is every reason to believe, that the clergy spoke but the wishes of the whole people, when in their letters to Europe they pressed their Christian brethren to come once more to the succour of Jerusalem. Shame and ambition led the young Count of Edessa to attempt the recovery of his capital as soon as the death of Zenghi, who had taken it, reached his ears. He in consequence collected a large body of troops, and on presenting himself before the walls during the night, was admitted, by his friends, into the town. There he turned his whole efforts to force the Turkish garrison in the citadel to surrender, before Nourhaddin, the son of Zenghi, could arrive to its aid. But the Saracens held out; and, while the Latin soldiers besieged the castle, they found themselves suddenly surrounded by a large body of the enemy, under the command of Nourhaddin. In this situation, they endeavoured to cut their way through the Turkish force, but, attacked on every side, few of them escaped to tell the tale of their own defeat. Nourhaddin marched over their necks into Edessa, and, in order to remove for ever that bulwark to the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, he caused the fortifications to be razed to the ground.
The consternation of the people of Palestine became great and general. The road to the Holy City lay open before the enemy, and continual applications for assistance reached Europe, but more particularly France.
The state of that country, however, was the least[545] propitious that it is possible to conceive for a crusade. The position of all the orders of society had undergone a change since the period when the wars of the Cross were first preached by Peter the Hermit; and of the many causes which had combined to hurry the armed multitudes to the Holy Land, none remained but the spirit of religious fanaticism and military enterprise. At the time of the first crusade, the feudal system had reached the acme of its power. The barons had placed a king upon the throne. They had rendered their own dominion independent of his, and though they still acknowledged some ties between themselves and the monarch—some vague and general power of restraint in the king and his court of peers—yet those ties were so loose, that power was so undefined in its nature, and so difficult in its exercise, that the nobles were free and at liberty to act in whatever direction enthusiasm, ambition, or cupidity might call them, without fear of the sovereign, who was, in fact, but one of their own body loaded with a crown.
The people, too, at that time, both in the towns and in the fields, were the mere slaves of the nobility; and as there existed scarcely a shadow of vigour in the kingly authority, so there remained not an idea of distinct rights and privileges among the populace. Thus the baronage were then unfettered by dread from any quarter; and the lower classes—both the poorer nobility, and that indistinct tribe (which we find evidently[546] marked) who were neither among the absolute serfs of any lord, nor belonging to the military caste—were all glad to engage themselves in wars which held out to them riches and exaltation in this world, and beatification in the next; while they could hope for nothing in their own land but pillage, oppression, and wrong; or slaughter in feuds without an object, and in battles for the benefit of others.
Before the second crusade was contemplated, a change—an immense change had operated itself in the state of society. Just fifty years had passed since the council of Clermont: but the kings of France were no longer the same; the royal authority had acquired force[547]—the latent principles of domination had been exercised for the general good. Kings had put forth their hands to check abuses, to punish violence and crime; and the feudal system began to assume the character, not of a simple confederation, but of an organized hierarchy,[548] in which the whole body was the judge of each individual, and the head of that body the executor of its sentence. Louis VI., commonly called Louis the Fat,[549] was the first among the kings of France who raised the functions of royalty above those of sovereignty, and the distinction between the two states is an important one. The former monarchs of France, including Philip I., under whose reign the first crusade was preached, had each been but sovereigns, who could call upon their vassals to serve them for so many days in the field, and whose rights were either simply personal, that is to say, for their own dignity and benefit, or only general so far as the protection of the whole confederacy from foreign invasion was implied. Louis the Fat, however, saw that in the kingly office was comprised both duties and rights of a different character; the right of punishing private crime,[550] and of opposing universal wrong; the duty of maintaining public order, and of promoting by one uniform and acknowledged power the tranquillity of the whole society and the security of each individual. The efforts of that prince were confined and partial, it is true;[551] but he and his great minister, Suger, seized the just idea of the monarchical form of government, and laid the basis of a well-directed and legitimate authority.
This authority, of course, was not pleasing to the barons, whose license was thus curtailed. Their views, therefore, were turned rather to the maintenance of their own unjust privileges, than to foreign adventures. At the same time, the nobles found themselves assailed by the classes below them, as well as by the power above, and the people of the towns were seen to struggle for the rights and immunities so long denied to them. The burghers had,[552] indeed, been permitted to labour in some small degree for themselves. Though subject to terrible and grievous exactions, they had still thriven under the spirit of commerce and industry. Their lords had sometimes even recourse to them for assistance. The greater part, though of the servile race, had been either freed, or were descended from freed men; and the baron of the town in which they lived, though cruel and tyrannical, was more an exacting protector than a master. At length—the precise time is unknown—the people of the cities began to think of protecting themselves; and, by mutual co-operation, they strove at once to free themselves from the tyranny of a superior lord, and to defend themselves against the encroachments of others. The word commune[553] was introduced, and each town of considerable size hastened to struggle for its liberty. At first the horror and indignation of the nobles were beyond all conception; but the spirit of union among them was not sufficiently active to put down that which animated the commons.