Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

ATTACKS OF RUSSIANS AND BULGARIANS.—Left to itself, the empire showed some energy in repelling the attacks of the Russians and Bulgarians. A number of capable rulers arose. The Russians, of the same race of Northmen who had ravaged Western Europe, kept up their assaults until their chief, Vladimir, made peace, accepted Christianity, and married the sister of the emperor, Basil II. (988). The empire between 988 and 1014 was invaded twenty-six times by King Samuel of Bulgaria. But the Bulgarian kingdom was overthrown, in 1019, by Basil II. In the twelfth century it regained its independence.

THE GREEK EMPERORS.—In the ninth century the Greeks made head against the Arabs, especially by means of their navy. In the tenth century John I. (Zimisces) crossed the Euphrates, and created alarm in Bagdad. The tenacity of life in the Greek Empire was surprising in view of the languishing sort of existence that it led. After Heraclius, there were three dynasties, the last of which, the Macedonian (867-1056), produced three remarkable men, Nicephorus Phocas, Zimisces, and Basil II. But the dynasty of Comneni, which, in the person of Isaac I., ascended the throne in 1057, had to combat a new and vigorous enemy, the Turks, who had now made themselves masters of Asia. One of this line of emperors, Alexius I., appealed to the Germans for help. This had some influence in giving rise to the first of the Crusades. In these conflicts the Latins bore the brunt. The exhausted Greek Empire played a minor part.

CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS.—The Mussulman dominion of the Arabs had become enfeebled. The Ommiad dynasty at Cordova had disappeared under the assaults of Christians, and of the Moors of Africa. The Fatimite caliphs were confined to Egypt. The rule of the Abassids of Bagdad had been well-nigh demolished by the Seljukian Turks in 1058. They founded in the eleventh century an extensive empire. The sultan, Alp Arslan, took the emperor, Romanus IV. Diogenes, prisoner (1071), and conquered Armenia. Malek Shah invaded Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, and carried his arms as far as Egypt, while a member of the Turkish family of Seljuk wrested Asia Minor from the Greeks, and established the kingdom of Iconium, which was called Roum, extending from Mount Taurus to the Bosphorus. After the death of Malek Shah, there were three distinct sultanates, Persia, Syria, and Kerman,—the last being on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

THE PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM.—The immediate occasion of the Crusades was the hard treatment of the Christian pilgrims who visited the sepulcher of Christ in Jerusalem. There the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, had erected a stately church. Pilgrimages—which had become more and more a custom since the fourth century—naturally tended to the sacred places in Palestine. Especially was this the case in the eleventh century, when piety had been quickened by the Cluny movement. In 1064 a great pilgrimage, in which seven thousand persons, priests and laity, of all nations, were included, under Siegfried, archbishop of Mentz, made its way through Hungary to Syria. Not more than a third of them lived to return. The reports of returning pilgrims were listened to with absorbing interest, as they told of the spots to which the imagination of the people was constantly directed. What indignation then was kindled by the pathetic narrative of the insults and blows which they had endured from the infidels who profaned the holy places with their hateful domination! In the ninth century, under caliphs of the temper of Haroun Al-Raschid, Christians had been well treated. About the middle of the tenth century the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt were the rulers at Jerusalem. Hakem was fierce in his persecution, but his successors were more tolerant. When the Seljukian Turks got control there, the harassed pilgrims had constant occasion to complain of insult and inhumanity.

THE CALL OF THE GREEKS.—The Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, threatened by the Mussulmans on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, sent his call for succor to all Christian courts. Two popes, Sylvester II. and Gregory VII., had in vain exhorted the princes to rise in their might, to do away with the wrong and the shame which the disciples of Jesus were suffering at the hands of his enemies.

MOTIVES TO THE CRUSADES.—After this, only a spark was needed to kindle in the Western nations a flame of enthusiasm. The summons to a crusade appealed to the two most powerful sentiments then prevalent,—the sentiment of religion and that of chivalry. The response made by faith and reverence was reinforced by that thirst for a martial career and for knightly exploits which burned as a passion in the hearts of men. The peoples in the countries formed by the Germanic conquests were full of vigor and life. Outside of the Church, there was no employment to attract aspiring youth but the employment of a soldier. Western Europe was covered with a net-work of petty sovereignties. Feudal conflicts, while they were a discipline of strength and valor, were a narrow field for all this pent-up energy. There was a latent yearning for a wider horizon, a broader theater of action. Thus the Crusades profoundly interested all classes. The Church and the clergy, the lower orders, the women and the children, shared to the full in the religious enthusiasm, which, in the case of princes and nobles, took the form of an intense desire to engage personally in the holy war, in order to crush the infidels, and at the same time to signalize themselves by gallant feats of arms. There was no surer road to salvation. There was, moreover, a hope, of which all in distressed circumstances partook, of improving their temporal lot.

THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.—The prime author of the first Crusade was Pope Urban II. He authorized an enthusiast, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, to travel on an ass through Italy and Southern France, and to stir up the people to the great undertaking of delivering the Holy Sepulcher. With an emaciated countenance and flashing eye, his head bare, and feet naked, and wearing a coarse garment bound with a girdle of cords, he told his burning tale of the inflictions endured by the pilgrims. At the great council of Clermont, in 1095, where a throng of bishops and nobles, and a multitude of common people who spoke the Romanic tongue, were assembled, Urban himself addressed the assembly in a strain of impassioned fervor. He called upon everyone to deny himself, and take up his cross, that he might win Christ. Whoever would enlist in the war was to have a complete remission of penances,—a "plenary indulgence." The answer was thundered forth, "God wills it." Thousands knelt, and begged to be enrolled in the sacred bands. The red cross of cloth or silk, fastened to the right shoulder, was the badge of all who took up arms. Hence they were called crusaders (from an old French word derived from crucem, Lat. acc. of crux, a cross).

THE UNDISCIPLINED BANDS.—The farmer left his plow, and the shepherd his flock. Both sexes and all ages were inspired with a common passion. Before a military organization could be made, a disorderly host, poorly armed and ill-provided, led by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, a French knight, started for Constantinople by way of Germany and Hungary. They were obliged to separate; and, of two hundred thousand, it is said that only seven thousand reached that capital. These perished in Asia Minor. They left their bones on the plain of Nicoea, where they were found by the next crusading expedition.

FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099).—"The Crusades were primarily a Gaulish movement:" in French-speaking lands, the fire of chivalric devotion was most intense. The first regular army of soldiers of the cross departed by different routes under separate chiefs. First of these was Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, the bravest and noblest of them all. With him were his brothers, Baldwin, and Eustace, count of Boulogne. Prominent among the other chiefs were Hugh, count of Vermandois; Robert, duke of Normandy, who had pawned his duchy to his brother, William II., the king of England; Robert, count of Flanders; Raymond, count of Toulouse; Bohemond of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard; and Tancred, Robert Guiscard's nephew. The Spaniards were taken up with their own crusade against the Moors. In consequence of the late absorbing struggles between emperors and popes, the Germans and Italians did not now embark in the enterprise. The relation of the Norman dynasty in England to the conquered Saxons prevented the first crusading host from receiving substantial aid from that country. The leaders of the army finally consented to become the feudal dependents of the emperor Alexius while they should be within his borders, and to restore to him such of their conquests as had been lately wrested by the Turks from the Eastern Empire. Alexius was more alarmed than gratified on seeing the swarm of warriors which he had brought into his land. After a siege of seven weeks, Nicea was surrendered, not, however, into the hands of the European soldiers who had conducted the siege, but to the shrewd Alexius. At Doryleum, in a desperate battle the Turks were defeated; but, on their march eastward, they wasted the lands which they left behind them. The crusaders suffered severely from disease consequent on the heat. A private quarrel broke out between Tancred and Baldwin. Baldwin, invited to Edessa by the Greek or Armenian ruler, founded there a Latin principality. After besieging Antioch for several months, by the treachery of a renegade Christian, Bohemond, with a few followers, was admitted into the city. The Christians slew ten thousand of its defenders; but, three days after, Antioch was shut in by a great army of Turks under the sultan Kerboga. The crusaders were stimulated by the supposed discovery of the "holy lance," or the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of Jesus. The Turks were vanquished, and the citadel of Antioch was possessed by Bohemond. The wrangling chieftains were now compelled by the army to set out for Jerusalem. When they reached the heights where they first caught a glimpse of the holy city, the crusaders fell on their knees, and with tears of joy broke out in hymns of praise to God. But, not accustomed to siege operations, and destitute of the machines and ladders requisite for the purpose, they found themselves balked in the first attempts to capture the city. Yet after thirty days, their needs having been meantime in a measure supplied, Jerusalem was taken by storm (July 15, 1099). The infuriated conquerors gave the rein to their vindictive passions. Ten thousand Saracens were slaughtered. The Jews were burned in the synagogues, to which they had fled. When the thirst for blood and for plunder was sated, feelings of penitence and humility took possession of the victors. The leaders, casting aside their arms, with bared heads and barefoot, entered into the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and on their bended knees thanked God for their success. After debate, the princes united in choosing Godfrey of Bouillon as ruler of the city. He would not wear a royal crown in the place where the Saviour of the world had worn on his bleeding forehead a crown of thorns. He designated himself Protector of the Holy Sepulcher. Shortly after, at Ascalon, he won a great victory against the vastly superior forces of the Egyptian sultan. Godfrey died the next year (1100), and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who first took the title of King of Jerusalem. The force of the Moslems, and the almost incessant strife and division among the crusaders themselves, made the kingdom hard to defend.

THE NEW KINGDOM.—Venice, Genoa, and Pisa had the most to do with the defense and enlargement of the new kingdom. It was organized according to the method of feudalism. It continued until the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187.