BOOK XII.
——
SIXTH CRUSADE.
A.D. 1200-1215.
In the preceding books, the imposing spectacle has passed before our eyes of the fall of an old empire, and of the rise and rapid decline of a new one. The imagination of man loves to dwell upon ruins, and the most sanguinary catastrophes even offer him highly attractive pictures. We have reason to fear that our narration will create less interest, awaken less curiosity, when, after the great revolutions we have described, it will be our duty to turn our attention to the petty states the Christians founded in Syria, for the safety of which the nations of the West were constantly called upon to furnish warlike assistance.
At the present day, we have great difficulty in comprehending that enthusiasm which animated all classes for the deliverance of the holy places, or that powerful interest that directed the thoughts of all to countries almost forgotten by modern Europe.[163] During the height of the fervour for the crusades, the taking of a city or town of Judea caused more joy than the taking of Byzantium; and Jerusalem was more dear to the Christians of the West than their own country. This enthusiasm, of which our indifference can scarcely form an idea, renders the task of the historian difficult, and makes him often hesitate in the choice of the events that history has to record: when opinions have changed, everything has changed with them: glory itself has lost its splendour, and that which appeared great in the eyes of men, seems only fantastical or vulgar; the historical epochs of our annals have become the objects of our most sovereign contempt; and when, without due reference to the ages of the holy wars, we wish to submit these extraordinary enterprises to the calculations of reason, we resemble those modern travellers who have only found a dribbling rivulet in the place of that famous Scamander, of which the imagination of the ancients, and still more, the muse of Homer, had made a majestic river.
But if we have no longer the task of describing the revolutions and falls of empires, the epoch of which we are about to trace the picture, will still present to us but too many of those great calamities with which human life supplies history: whilst Greece was a prey to all the ravages of war, the most cruel scourges desolated both Egypt and Syria.
The Nile suspended its accustomed course, and failed to inundate its banks or render the harvests abundant. The last year of this century (1200) announced itself, says an Arabian author, like a monster whose fury threatened to devour everything. When the famine began to be felt, the people were compelled to support themselves upon the grass of the fields and the ordure of animals,[164] the poor routed up cemeteries, and disputed with the worms the spoils of coffins. When this awful scourge became more general, the population of the cities and country, as if pursued by a pitiless enemy, fled away from their homes in despair, and wandered about at hazard from city to city, from village to village, meeting everywhere with the evil they wished to avoid; in no inhabited place could they step a foot without being struck by the appearance of a putrifying carcass, or some unhappy wretch on the point of expiring.