The History of the Crusades (vol. 1 of 3)

by J. Fr. Michaud

Among the celebrated pilgrims of this age, we observe the name of Robert II., duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror. History accuses him of having caused his brother Richard to be poisoned. Remorse urged him to make the pilgrimage to Palestine; and he set out accompanied by a great number of knights and barons, bearing the scrip and staff, walking barefoot, and clothed in the sack of penitence. He attached, he said, more value to the pains he suffered for Christ’s sake than to the richest city of his dukedom. On his arrival at Constantinople, he despised the luxury and the presents of the emperor, and appeared at court in the guise of the humblest of the pilgrims. Having fallen sick in Asia Minor, he refused the services of the Christians of his suite, and caused himself to be carried in a litter by Saracens. Meeting a pilgrim from Normandy, the latter asked him if he had any message that he could deliver for him to his country. “Go and tell my people,” said the duke, “that you have seen a Christian prince being carried to Paradise by devils.” When he arrived at Jerusalem, he found a crowd of pilgrims, who, not having the means of paying the tribute to the infidels, awaited the arrival of some rich lord who might deign, by his charity, to open for them the gates of the holy city. Robert paid a piece of gold for each of them, and followed them into Jerusalem amidst the acclamations of the Christians. During his sojourn here he caused himself to be remarked for his devotion, and still more for his charity, which he extended even to the infidels. As he was returning into Europe, he died at Nicea, in Bithynia, regarding only the relics he had brought with him from Palestine, and regretting that he had not finished his days in the holy city.

The greatest blessing for the pilgrims, and that which they demanded of Heaven as a reward for their labours and fatigues, was to die, like Jesus Christ, in the holy city. When they presented themselves before the holy sepulchre, they were accustomed to offer up this prayer: “Thou who died for us, and wast buried in this holy spot, take pity of our misery, and withdraw us at once from this valley of tears.” History tells of a Christian, born in the territory of Autun, who, on his arrival at Jerusalem, sought death in the excess of his fastings and mortifications. One day he remained a long time in prayer on the Mount of Olives, with his eyes and his hands raised towards heaven, whither God seemed to call him. On his return to the hospital of the pilgrims, he cried three times, “Glory to thee, oh God!”[31] and died suddenly in the sight of his companions, who envied him his fate, and believed themselves witnesses of a miracle.

The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at length so general, that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as soldiers, they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054, Litbert, bishop of Cambrai, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.[32] When he began his march, the people and the clergy accompanied him three leagues from the city, and with eyes bathed in tears, implored of God the happy return of their bishop and their brethren. The pilgrims traversed Germany without encountering any enemies, but on reaching Bulgaria, they found none but men who inhabited the forests and subsisted upon plunder. Many were massacred by these barbarous people, and some perished with hunger in the midst of the deserts. Litbert arrived with much difficulty at Laodicea, embarked with those who followed him, and was cast upon the coast of Cyprus by a tempest. He had seen the greater part of his companions perish, and the remainder were nearly sinking under their various miseries. Returned to Laodicea, they learnt that still greater dangers awaited them on the route to Jerusalem. The bishop of Cambrai felt his courage abandon him, and believed that God himself was opposed to his pilgrimage. He returned through a thousand dangers to his diocese, where he built a church in honour of the holy sepulchre, which he had never seen.

Ten years after the voyage of Litbert, seven thousand Christians, among whom were the archbishop of Mayence, and the bishops of Spires, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht, set out together from the banks of the Rhine, to repair to Palestine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of the Crusades,[33] crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having visited the churches of Byzantium, and the numerous relics which were the objects of the veneration of the Greeks, the pilgrims of the West traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. On such a sacred day, the pilgrims even who had arms employed them with much hesitation and scruple. Enclosed within the ruins of an old castle, they resisted for a time, but on the third day famine compelled them to capitulate. When they came to the arrangement of the conditions of the peace, there arose a violent quarrel, which was near leading to the massacre of all the Christians by the Arabs. The emir of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey. As the report of their combats and their perils had preceded them, their arrival created a great sensation in Jerusalem. They were received in triumph by the patriarch, and conducted, to the sound of timbrels and by the light of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. During their abode at Jerusalem, the misery into which they were fallen excited the pity of the Christians. They could not visit the banks of the Jordan, or the places most renowned in Judea, as these were all now infested by the Arabs and exposed to their incursions. After having lost more than three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[34]

New perils and the most violent persecutions at this period threatened both the pilgrims of the West and the Christians of Palestine. Asia was about once again to change masters, and tremble beneath a fresh tyranny. During several centuries, the rich countries of the East had been subject to continual invasions from the wild hordes of Tartary. As fast as the victorious tribes became effeminated by luxury and prosperity, they were replaced by others retaining all the barbarism of the deserts. The Turks issuing from countries situated beyond the Oxus, had rendered themselves masters of Persia, where the uncalculating policy of Mamouh had received and encouraged their wandering tribes. The son of Mamouh fought a battle with them, in which he performed prodigies of valour; “but fortune,” says Feristha, “had declared herself unpropitious to his arms; he looked around during the fight, and except the body which he immediately commanded, his whole army had devoured the paths of flight.” Upon the very theatre of their victory the Turks proceeded to the election of a king. A large number of arrows were collected into a bundle. Upon each of these arrows was inscribed the name of a tribe, of a family, and of a warrior. A child drew three of the arrows in the presence of the whole army, and chance assigned the throne to Togrul-Beg, grandson of Seldjouc. Togrul-Beg, whose ambition equalled his courage, embraced, together with his soldiers, the faith of Mahomet, and soon joined to the title of conqueror that of protector of the Mussulman religion.

The banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates were then troubled by the revolt of the emirs, who shared the spoils of the caliphs of Bagdad: the caliph Cayem implored the assistance of Togrul, and promised the conquest of Asia to the new master of Persia. Togrul, whom he had named his temporal vicar, marched at the head of an army, dispersed the factious and the rebellious, ravaged the provinces, and entered Bagdad, to prostrate himself at the feet of the caliph, who proclaimed the triumph of his liberators and their sacred claims to the empire. In the midst of an imposing ceremony, Togrul was successively clothed with seven robes of honour; and seven slaves born in the seven climates of Arabia were presented to him. Two crowns were placed upon his head, and, as an emblem of his dominion over the East and the West, they girded him with two scimitars. This ceremony rendered the usurpation of the Turks legitimate in the eyes of the Mussulmans. The empire which the vicar of Mahomet pointed out to their ambition was speedily conquered by their arms. Under the reign of Alp-Arsland, and that of Malek-Scha, the successors of Togrul, the seven branches of the dynasty of Seldjouc shared amongst them the largest kingdoms of Asia. Thirty years had scarcely passed away since the Tartars conquered Persia, and already their military and pastoral colonies extended from the Oxus to the Euphrates, and from the Indus to the Hellespont.

One of the lieutenants of Malek-Scha carried the terror of his arms to the banks of the Nile, and wrested Syria from the hands of the Fatimite caliphs. Palestine yielded to the power of the Turks, and the black flag of the Abassides floated triumphantly over the walls of Jerusalem. The conquerors spared neither the Christians nor the children of Aly, whom the caliph of Bagdad represented to be the enemies of God. The Egyptian garrison was massacred, and the mosques and the churches were delivered up to pillage. The holy city was flooded with the blood of Christians and Mussulmans.

The possession of Jerusalem in no degree arrested the barbarous fury of the Turks. As their empire was recent and ill-established, as they were threatened with the armies of Cairo, and even with those of the West, their tyranny became restless, jealous, and violent. The Christians trembled under the hardest and most humiliating subjugation; they were despoiled of their property, and reduced to the most frightful degree of misery. They underwent much greater evils than they had suffered during the reign of Hakim.

A great number of those who had quitted their families and their country to visit the tomb of Christ, lost their lives before they were able to enjoy the felicity of saluting the holy city; and they who arrived at Jerusalem after having escaped a thousand dangers, found themselves exposed to the insults and cruelties of the new masters of Judea. The pilgrims of the Latin Church who returned into Europe, related all that they had suffered in their voyage, and told, with groans, of the outrages committed upon the religion of Christ. They had seen the holy sepulchre profaned, and the ceremonies of the Christians become the sport of the infidels; they had seen the patriarchs of Jerusalem and the venerable guardians of the holy places dragged from their sanctuary and cast ignominiously into dungeons. These recitals, exaggerated by repetition, flew from mouth to mouth, and drew tears from the eyes of the faithful.

Whilst the Turks, under the command of Toutousch and Ortock, were desolating Syria and Palestine, other tribes of that nation, led by Soliman, nephew of Malek-Scha, had penetrated into Asia Minor. They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. These countries, in which the Christian religion had first shone forth, and the greater part of the Greek cities whose names were conspicuous in the annals of the primitive church, sunk under the yoke of the infidels. The standard of the prophet floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Nicea had become the seat of a Mussulman empire, and the divinity of Christ was insulted in that city wherein the first œcumenic council had declared it to be an article of faith. The modesty of the virgins had been sacrificed to the brutal lust of the conquerors. Thousands of children had been circumcised.[35] Everywhere the laws of the Koran took place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries and churches.