The Christians of Palestine being totally without means of resisting the Mameluke forces, sent deputies to the West to solicit prompt and efficient succour. The sovereign pontiff appeared affected by the account of the perils of the Holy Land, and exhorted the faithful to take the cross; but the tone of his exhortations, and the motives that he named in his circulars, only too plainly evinced his desire to see Europe take up arms against other enemies than the Mussulmans. “The Saracens,” said he, “know that it will be impossible for any Christian prince to make a long abode in the East,[8] and that the Holy Land will never have any but transient succour from distant countries.”
Alexander IV. was much more sincere and far more eloquent in his manifestoes against the house of Swabia; the interest he took in the contest he was carrying on in the kingdom of Naples could not be diverted by the undertaking of a holy war. Clement IV., who succeeded him, made some few demonstrations of zeal to engage the European nations to take arms against the Mussulmans; but the policy of his predecessors had left too many germs of discord and trouble in Italy, to allow him to give much attention to the East. On one side, Germany, still without an emperor, though with three pretenders to the empire, could spare no warriors for the Holy Land. England was a prey to a civil war, in which the barons wore a white cross as their badge of union against the king, and in which priests exhorted them to the fight, pointing to heaven as the reward of their bravery and their rebellion. This strange crusade precluded all thoughts of one beyond the seas. France was the only kingdom from which the prayers of the Christians of Palestine were not repulsed; some French knights took the cross, and chose Eudes, count of Nevers, son of the duke of Burgundy, as their leader; and these were all the succours Europe could afford to send to the East.
At the same time that the afflicting news arrived from the Holy Land, an event was announced which would have plunged the whole West in mourning, if the conquests of the Crusaders had then excited anything like the interest to which they had given birth in former ages. We have frequently had occasion to deplore the rapid decline of the Latin empire of Constantinople; for a length of time, Baldwin had had no means for supporting the imperial dignity, or paying his scanty troop of soldiers, but the alms of Christendom, and some loans obtained from Venice, for which he was obliged to give his own son as a hostage, or, more properly, a pledge. In pressing moments of want, he sold the relics, he tore the lead from the roofs of the churches, and the timber of public edifices was used for heating the fires of the imperial kitchens. Towers half-demolished, ramparts without defences, palaces smoky and deserted, houses and whole streets abandoned, such was the spectacle presented by the queen of eastern cities.
Baldwin had concluded a truce with Michael Palæologus. The facility with which this truce was made ought to have inspired the Latins with some suspicion; but the deplorable state of the Franks did not prevent them from despising their enemies or dreaming of fresh conquests. In hopes of pillage, and forgetful of the perfidious character of the Greeks, a Venetian fleet bore such as remained of the defenders of Byzantium in an expedition against Daphnusia, situated at the embouchure of the Black Sea. The Greeks of Nice, informed by some peasants from the shores of the Bosphorus, did not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity fortune thus presented. These peasants pointed out to the general of Michael Palæologus, who was about to make war in Epirus, an opening that had been made under the ramparts of Constantinople, close to the Golden Gate, by which more troops might be introduced than would be necessary for the conquest of the city. Baldwin had none with him but children, old men, women, and traders; among the latter of whom were the Genoese newly allied to the Greeks. When the soldiers of Michael had penetrated into the city, they were surprised to find no enemy to contend with; whilst they preserved their ranks, and advanced with precaution, a troop of Comans, whom the Greek emperor had in his pay, traversed the city, sword and fire in hand. The small, terrified crowd of the Latins fled towards the port; whilst the Greek inhabitants hastened to meet the conqueror, shouting, “Long life to Michael Palæologus, emperor of the Romans!” Baldwin, awakened by these cries and the tumult that drew near to his palace, hastened to quit a city that no longer was his. The Venetian fleet, returning from the expedition to Daphnusia, arrived in time to receive the fugitive emperor and all that remained of the empire of the Franks upon the Bosphorus. Thus the Latins were deprived of that city that it had cost them such prodigies of valour to obtain; the Greeks reëntered it without striking a blow, seconded only by the treachery of a few peasants and the darkness of night. Baldwin II., after having reigned in Byzantium during thirty-seven years, resumed the mendicant course he had practised in his youth, and wandered from one court to another, imploring the assistance of Christians. Pope Urban received him with a mixture of compassion and contempt. In a letter addressed to Louis IX., the pontiff deplored the loss of Constantinople, and groaned bitterly over the obscured glory of the Latin Church. Urban expressed a desire that a crusade should be undertaken for the recovery of Byzantium; but he found men’s minds but very little disposed to undertake such an enterprise: the clergy of both England and France refused subsidies for an expedition which they pronounced useless. The pope was obliged to content himself with the submission and presents of Michael Palæologus, who, still in dread in the bosom of his new conquest, promised, in order to appease the Holy See, to recognise the Church of Rome, and to succour the holy places.
In the mean time the situation of the Christians of Palestine became every day more alarming, and more worthy of the compassion of the nations and princes of the West. The new sultan of Cairo, after having ravaged the country of the Franks, returned a second time, with a more formidable army than the former. The Franks, alarmed at his progress, sent to him to sue for peace; his only reply was to give up the church of Nazareth to the flames; the Mussulmans ravaged all the country situated between Naïn and Mount Thabor, and then encamped within sight of Ptolemaïs.
The most distinguished of the Christian warriors had attempted an expedition towards Tiberias; but this gallant troop, the last resource of the Franks, had just been defeated and dispersed by the infidels; fifty knights had arrived in Palestine with the duke of Nevers; but what could such a feeble reinforcement do to arrest the progress of a victorious army.
The country was laid waste, and the inhabitants of the cities kept themselves closely shut up behind their ramparts, in the constant apprehension of beholding the enemy under their walls. After threatening Ptolemaïs, Bibars threw himself upon the city of Cæsarea; the Christians, after a spirited resistance, abandoned the place, and retired into the castle, which was surrounded by the waters of the sea. This fortress, which appeared inaccessible, was only able to resist the attacks of the Mussulmans a few days.[9] The city of Arsouf was the next object of the Mussulman leader. The inhabitants defended themselves with almost unexampled bravery; several times the machines of the besiegers and the heaps of wood which they raised to the level of the walls, were consigned to the flames. After having fought at the foot of the ramparts, the besieged and the besiegers dug out the earth beneath the walls of the city, and sought each other, to fight in the mines and subterranean passages; nothing could relax the ardour of the Christians or the impatient activity of Bibars. Religious fanaticism animated the courage of the Mamelukes; the imauns and doctors of the law flocked to the siege of Arsouf, to be present at the triumph of Islamism: at length the sultan planted the standard of the prophet upon the towers of the city, and the Mussulmans were called to prayers in the churches at once converted into mosques. The Mamelukes massacred a great part of the inhabitants; the remainder were condemned to slavery. Bibars distributed the captives among the leaders of his army; he then ordered the destruction of the city, and the Christian prisoners were compelled to demolish their own dwellings. The conquered territory was divided and shared among the principal emirs, according to an order of the sultan, which the Arabian chronicles have preserved as an historical monument. This liberality towards the conquerors of the Christians, appeared to the Mussulmans worthy of the greatest praise, and one of the historians of Bibars exclaims, in his enthusiasm, “That so noble an action was written in the book of God, before being inscribed upon the book of the life of the sultan.”
Such encouragements bestowed upon the emirs, announced that Bibars still stood in need of their valour to accomplish other designs. The sultan returned into Egypt, to make fresh preparations and recruit his army. During his sojourn at Cairo, he received ambassadors from several kings of the Franks, from Alphonso, king of Arragon, the king of Armenia, and some other princes of Palestine. All these ambassadors demanded peace for the Christians; but their pressing solicitations only strengthened the sultan in his project of continuing the war; the more earnest their entreaties, the greater reason he had to believe they had nothing else to oppose to him. He answered the envoys of the count of Jaffa: “The time is come in which we will endure no more injuries; when a cottage shall be taken from us, we will take a castle; when you shall seize one of our labourers, we will consign a thousand of your warriors to chains.”
Bibars did not delay putting his threats into execution; he returned to Palestine, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to implore the protection of Mahomet for his arms. His army immediately received the signal for war, and ravaged the territory of Tripoli. If some Oriental chronicles may be believed, the project of Bibars then was to attack Ptolemaïs; and in so great an enterprise, he did not disdain the assistance of treachery. The prince of Tyre, says Ibn-Ferat, united with the Genoese, was to attack Ptolemaïs with a numerous fleet on the sea side, whilst the Mamelukes attacked it by land. Bibars in fact presented himself before Ptolemaïs, but his new auxiliaries no doubt repented of the promises they had made him; and did not second his designs. The sultan retired filled with fury, and threatened to avenge himself upon all the Christians whom war should place in his power.
He first went to discharge his anger upon the fortress of Sefed, which was situated in lower Galilee, fifteen leagues from Ptolemaïs. This fortress had to defend itself against all the forces that the sultan had gathered together for his great enterprise. When the siege had begun, Bibars neglected no means of forcing the garrison to surrender; he was constantly at the head of his troops, and in one conflict, his whole army burst into a loud cry to warn him of a danger that threatened him. To inflame the ardour of the Mamelukes, he caused robes of honour and purses of money to be distributed on the field of battle; the great cadi of Damascus had come to the siege to animate the combatants by his presence; and the promises he addressed, in the name of the prophet, to all the Mussulman soldiers, added greatly to their warlike enthusiasm.