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

by J. Fr. Michaud

As soon as pestilence had ceased its ravages, war resumed all its fury. The deplorable state in which discord had plunged Europe at that time, and particularly France, must have made people regret the periods when the preaching of a crusade imposed silence upon all passions and suspended all hostilities. The pope had several times undertaken to reëstablish peace: he at first addressed supplications to the English monarch; he afterwards threatened him with the thunders of the Church, but the voice of the father of the faithful was lost in the din of arms.

Philip of Valois died amidst the terrible struggle he had to maintain against England. The loss of the battle of Poictiers and the captivity of King John became the signal for the greatest troubles that afflicted the kingdom of France in the middle ages. The plots of the king of Navarre, the intrigues of the great, the disorders of the people, the fury of factions, the sanguinary scenes of the Jacquerie, spread terror and desolation in the capital and through the provinces. When France had completed the exhaustion of her treasures by paying the ransom of King John, the presence of her monarch was not able to restore to her the repose she required to repair her misfortunes. The soldiers of both nations, who were disbanded without pay, and who found themselves without an asylum, formed themselves into armed bands, and under the name of white companies, pervaded the kingdom, braving the orders of the king and the excommunications of the pope, and carrying wherever they went license, murder and devastation. All that had escaped the sword of the English, and the avidity of the collectors of the imposts, became the prey of these brigands, whose numbers increased in proportion with their impunity and their excesses. The fields remained uncultivated; all commercial pursuits were interrupted; and terror and misery reigned in the cities. Thus the suspension of hostilities had brought no relief to the evils of nations, and the disorders which broke out during the peace were more insupportable than those which had been endured during the war.

It was in these unfortunate circumstances that Peter, the son of Hugh of Lusignan, came, after the example of his father, to solicit the assistance of the Christian princes against the infidels, and caused Urban V. to adopt the project of a new crusade. Perhaps he hoped that the state of confusion in which France was plunged offered him a means of raising troops, and that he might turn against his enemies of the East, all the furies of war which desolated the kingdom.

Peter of Lusignan proposed to attack the power of the sultans of Cairo, whose dominions extended to Jerusalem. Christendom had at that time more redoubtable enemies among the Mussulman nations than the Mamelukes of Egypt. The Turks, who had become masters of Asia Minor, had recently passed the Hellespont, pushed their conquests as far as Mount Hemus, and placed the seat of their empire at Adrianople. That was the enemy that doubtless ought to have been attacked, but the Turks did not as yet inspire serious alarm, except in the countries they had invaded or menaced. At the court of Avignon, at which were assembled the king of Cyprus, the king of France, and the king of Denmark, there was no mention made of the invasion of Romania, or of the dangers of Constantinople, but of the loss of the Christian colonies in Syria, and of the captivity in which the city of Christ was still held.

Peter of Lusignan spoke with enthusiasm of the war against the infidels, and of the deliverance of the holy places; King John did not listen to him without emotion, and finished by forgetting his own misfortunes, to interest himself about those of the Christians beyond the seas. Waldemar III., king of Denmark, was equally affected by the discourse and the accounts of the king of Cyprus. The pope preached the crusade before the three monarchs: it was holy week; the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ appeared to add authority to the words of the pontiff, and when he deplored the misfortunes of Jerusalem, the princes who listened to him could not refrain from shedding tears, and swore to go and fight the Saracens.

We may, doubtless, believe that the king of France was led to take the cross by a sentiment of piety, and by the eloquence of the pope; but we must likewise suppose that the counsels of policy were not entirely foreign to this determination. The spirit of the holy war, if once really awakened, would necessarily go far to appease, if not extinguish, the discords and passions kindled by revolution and civil war. King John might entertain the hope of uniting under the standard of the crusade, and seducing to follow him beyond the seas, the white companies, over whom he could exercise no authority; and the sovereign pontiff was no less anxious to get rid of these bands of brigands, who braved his spiritual power, and threatened to make him a prisoner in Avignon.

Several great nobles, John of Artois, the count of Eu, the count Dammartin, the count de Tancarville, and Marshal Boucicault, followed the example of King John. The Cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord was named legate of the pope in the crusade. The king of Denmark promised to unite his forces with those of the French. To encourage his zeal, the sovereign pontiff gave him a fragment of the true cross, and several other relics, the sight of which would constantly remind him of the holy cause he had sworn to defend. Waldemar III. had come to the court of Avignon to place his kingdom under the protection of the Holy See; he took all the oaths required of him; but the bulls he obtained from Urban, as the price of his submission, had no efficacy in restoring peace to his dominions, and the troubles which followed his return soon made him forget his promises regarding the holy war.

The king of Cyprus, with most pressing recommendations from the pope, visited all the courts of Europe; the zeal and the chivalric eloquence of the hero of the cross were universally admired; but he derived nothing but vague promises from his enterprise, and received nothing but vain felicitations for a devotion which found no imitators.

The king of France was the only one of all the Christian princes who appeared to engage himself earnestly in the crusade. Urban V., however, showed but little confidence in the firmness of his resolution, as he felt it necessary to threaten with excommunication all who should seek to divert him from the holy enterprise. But all these precautions of the pope, with the example of the king and the indulgences of the crusade, were powerless in inducing the nation to take arms, or in persuading the white companies to leave the chamber, as they called the kingdom they desolated with their brigandages. The time fixed for the expedition was very near at hand, and nothing was ready; there was neither an army nor a fleet. It was at this period King John died in London, whither he had returned to offer himself as an hostage for the duke of Anjou, who had escaped from prison; and perhaps also to get rid of the cares of an enterprise which he had no means of executing or directing with success.

The pope trembled in Avignon, and was compelled to use his utmost efforts to free himself from these formidable bands, whose leaders styled themselves the friends of God and the enemies of all the world. History says that he employed in his contests with them the small quantity of money which had been raised for the crusade, and that this excited violent murmurs. In this state of things, Charles IV., emperor of Germany, in concert with the king of Hungary, proposed to take the companies into their pay, and send them against the Turks. If this project had been executed, we should have been able to join the name of Bertrand Duguesclin to the glorious names that adorn the pages of this history; the Breton hero was to have been the leader of the troops destined to contend with the Mussulmans on the banks of the Danube. The sovereign pontiff himself wrote several letters to him to induce him to take part in this crusade; but the project of Charles IV. was in the end abandoned, and Duguesclin led the white companies into Spain.