The most frightful effect of this universal calamity was, that the want of food gave birth to the greatest crimes, and rendered every man the enemy of his fellows. At the commencement of the famine much horror was expressed at some being reduced to feed upon human flesh, but examples of so great a scandal increased with such rapidity, that it was soon spoken of with indifference. Men contending with famine, which spared the rich no more than the poor, were no longer sensible to pity, shame, or remorse, and were restrained neither by respect for the laws, nor by the fear of punishment. They came at last to devour each other like wild beasts. At Cairo, thirty women, in one day, perished at the stake, convicted of having killed and eaten their own children. The historian Abdallatif relates a crowd of barbarous and monstrous incidents which make the blood run cold with horror, and to which we will not give a place in our history, for fear of being accused of calumniating human nature.
The plague soon added its ravages to those of famine. God alone, says contemporary history, knows the number of those that died with famine and disease. The capital of Egypt, in the space of a few months, witnessed a hundred and eleven thousand funerals. At length it was found impossible to bury the dead, and the terrified survivors were obliged to be satisfied with casting them over the ramparts. The same mortality was experienced at Damietta, Kous, and Alexandria. It was at the period of seed-time that the plague was at its height; they who sowed the seed were not the same that had ploughed the ground, and they who sowed lived not to reap the harvest. The villages were deserted, and reminded travellers of those expressions of the Koran: “We have mown them all down and exterminated them; one cry was heard, and all have perished.” The dead bodies that floated on the Nile were as numerous as the bulbous plants which, at certain seasons, cover the waters of that river. One fisherman counted more than four hundred that passed before his eyes in a single day; piles of human bones were met with everywhere; the roads, to borrow the expression of Arabian writers, “Were like a field sown with dead bodies, and the most populous provinces were as a banqueting-hall for the birds of prey.”
Egypt lost more than a million of its inhabitants; both famine and plague were felt as far as Syria, and the Christian cities suffered equally with those of the Mussulmans. From the shores of the Red Sea to the banks of the Euphrates and the Orontes, the whole country presented one picture of desolation and mourning. As if the anger of Heaven was not satisfied, it was not long before a third calamity, not less terrible, followed in the train of the others. A violent earthquake laid waste the cities and provinces that famine and plague had spared;[165] the shocks resembled the motion of a sieve, or that which a bird makes when he raises and lowers his wings. The rising of the sea, and the agitation of the waves presented a horrible appearance; ships were, on a sudden, carried far on to the land, and multitudes of fish covered the shore; the heights of Libanus opened and sunk in many places. The people of Syria and Egypt believed it to be the earthquake that is to precede the day of judgment. Many inhabited places totally disappeared; a vast number of men perished; the fortresses of Hamath, Barin, and Balbec were thrown down; the only part of the city of Naplouse that was left standing was the street of the Samaritans; in Damascus, all the most superb edifices were destroyed; in the city of Tyre only a few houses escaped, and the ramparts of Ptolemaïs and Tripoli were nothing but heaps of ruins. The shocks were felt with less violence in the territory of Jerusalem, and, in the general calamity, both Christians and Mussulmans returned thanks to Heaven for having spared in its anger the city of prophets and miracles.
Such awful disasters ought to have caused the treaties made between the barons and the infidels to be respected. In the fifth crusade, the sovereign pontiff urged the Christians to take advantage of these calamitous days to invade the Mussulman provinces of Syria and Egypt: but if the advice of the pope had been followed, if the Christian army on leaving Venice, had directed its march towards the countries devastated by pestilence and famine, it is most probable that the conquerors and the conquered would have perished together. At that period, death, like a formidable sentinel, guarded all the frontiers of the Christians and Mussulmans. All the scourges of nature became the terrible guardians of provinces, and defended the approaches and entrances of cities better than the greatest armies could have done.
The Christian colonies, however, began, not to repair their losses, but to forget the evils they had suffered. Amaury, king of Jerusalem, set his barons an example of wisdom and pious resignation. The three military orders, that had exhausted their treasures to support their knights and soldiers during the famine, made a strong appeal, by messengers and letters, to the charity of the faithful of the West. The Christian cities that had been destroyed by the earthquake were rebuilt, and the sums amassed by Foulque of Neuilly, the preacher of the last crusade, were employed in restoring the walls of Ptolemaïs. As the Christians wanted labourers, they set the Mussulman prisoners to work. Among the prisoners condemned to this service, history must not pass by the celebrated Persian poet Saadi, who had fallen into the hands of the Franks, whilst on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[166] The author of “The Garden of Roses,” and several other works, destined at a future day to obtain the admiration of the East and the West, was loaded with irons, led to Tripoli, and confounded with the crowd of captives employed in rebuilding the fortifications of that city.
The truce which had been concluded with the infidels still subsisted; but either pretensions or quarrels daily arose that were frequently followed by hostilities. The Christians were continually kept under arms, and peace was sometimes as abundant in troubles and dangers as an open war would have been. There likewise prevailed, at this time, great confusion among the Christian colonies, and even among the Mussulman powers. The sultan of Damascus was at peace with the king of Jerusalem, whilst the count of Tripoli, the prince of Antioch, with the Templars and Hospitallers, were at war with the princes of Hamath, Edessa or some emirs of Syria.[167] Every one, according to his humour, took up or laid down his arms, without any power being sufficiently strong to enforce respect for treaties.
No great battles were fought, but constant incursions upon the territories of enemies were made; cities were surprised, countries were ravaged, and great booty obtained. Amidst these disorders, which were called Days of Truce, the Christians of Palestine had to lament the death of their king. Amaury, according to the custom of the faithful, went to Caïfa, during holy week, to gather palm; but fell sick on his pilgrimage, and returned to Ptolemaïs to die. Thus the sceptre of the kingdom of Jerusalem again remained in the hands of Isabella, who had neither the power, nor the ability necessary to govern the Christian states. At the same time, one of the sons of Bohemond, prince of Antioch, fell under the daggers of assassins sent by the Old Man of the Mountains. Bohemond the Third, at a very advanced age, was unable to avenge this murder; and, in addition, before he died, had the mortification of seeing war break out between his second son, Raymond, count of Tripoli, and Livon, prince of Armenia. The order of the Templars, as well as that of the Hospitallers, interested themselves in this quarrel, and were opposed to each other. The sultan of Aleppo and the Turks from Asia Minor mixed themselves with the dissensions of the Christians, and took advantage of their divisions to ravage the territory of Antioch.[168] The Christian states of Syria received no more succours from the West. The remembrance of the evils that had ravaged the countries beyond the seas had damped the zeal and the ardour of pilgrims; the warriors of Europe, accustomed to face with coolness all the perils of war, had not sufficient courage to brave pestilence and famine. A great number of the barons and knights of Palestine, themselves abandoned a land too long laid desolate, some to repair to Constantinople, and others to the kingdoms of the West.
Innocent, who had up to this time made vain efforts for the deliverance of the holy places, and who could not overcome his regret at having seen great Christian armies fruitlessly dissipated in the conquest of Greece, still did not give up his vast designs; from the beginning of his reign, the sovereign pontiff had pointed out the Holy Land to the Christian nations, as the road and the way of salvation. After the example of his predecessors, he not only called piety and virtue in to the defence of the Christian colonies, but remorse and repentance. All who came to him to confess great sins, were allowed but one means of expiating their crimes,—crossing the sea to fight against the infidels.
Among the sinners condemned to this sort of punishment history quotes the names of the murderers of Conrad, bishop of Wurtzburg and chancellor of the empire.[169] The guilty having presented themselves before the pope, barefooted, in drawers, and with halters round their necks, swore in the presence of the cardinals, to pass their lives in the practice of the most austere mortifications, and to carry arms during four years against the Saracens. A knight, named Robert, scandalized the whole court of Rome by confessing in a loud voice, that, being a prisoner in Egypt during the famine, he had killed his wife and daughter, to feed upon their flesh. The pope imposed the most rigorous penances upon Robert, and ordered him, to complete the expiation of so great a crime, to pass three years in visiting the holy places.
Innocent endeavoured by such means to keep up the devotion of pilgrimages, which had given birth to the crusades, and might again revive the zeal and ardour for holy wars. According to the opinion which the sovereign pontiff sought to spread among the faithful, and by which he himself appeared penetrated, this corrupt world had no crimes for which God would not open the treasures of his mercy provided the perpetrators would take the voyage to the East. The people however were persuaded that the sins and errors of a perverse generation had irritated the God of the Christians, and that the glory of conquering the Holy Land was reserved for another and a better age, to a generation more worthy of attracting the eyes and the blessings of Heaven.