The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

The enthusiasm of the crusaders was not maintained by those who remained at home, since upon them fell the unromantic burden of providing money for the army’s sustenance. The Jews were openly robbed, the Abbot of Cluny declaring it a righteous thing to despoil them of wealth acquired by usury and sacrilege. Monasteries were bled of their long-accumulated treasure. Churches sold their ornaments and mortgaged their lands to supply the enormous demand. Thus the huzzas of the departing were echoed by the suppressed groans of those who were left behind.

The Germans under Conrad III. had preceded the French. Before they reached Constantinople they had more than once to punish with violence the chronic perfidy of the Greeks. The Germans burned the monastery at Adrianople to avenge the assassination of one of their comrades. Beyond the Bosporus Conrad’s soldiers were incessantly picked off and slain by skulking Greeks. The flour they purchased from the merchants of Constantinople they found mixed with lime. The Greek guides were in alliance with the Turks, and led the Christians into ambuscades among the defiles of the Taurus. Conrad himself was twice wounded by treacherous arrows, and his host, reduced to one tenth of its original numbers, was forced to painfully retrace the way to Nicæa.

The French were at first more cordially received by the Greeks than had been their German allies; but they soon learned that the Emperor Manuel was in collusion with the Sultan of Iconium. Louis hardly restrained his people from taking vengeance by assaulting the Greek capital, and forced them onward to the relief of the Germans. Conrad did not await their coming, but returned to Constantinople and made temporary fellowship with his betrayer. The French, thus deserted, continued their route alone. The Moslems massed against them on the bank of the Meander, only to be scattered by the fury of the French onset, or, if we may believe some of the spectators, by the appearance of the familiar celestial knight clad in white armor, who headed the Christian army.

Flushed with victory, Louis hastened onward two days’ march beyond Laodicea. Here he divided his force into two bands for the safer passage of a mountain ridge. The vanguard was ordered to encamp upon the heights until joined by their comrades, that they might make descent in full force upon the farther plains. But the impatience of the soldiers in the advance, encouraged by Queen Eleanor, could not brook the cautionary command; they descended the other side of the ridge. The wary Turks quietly took the ground thus unwisely abandoned. The second division of the French, mistaking them for friends, climbed the ascent without regard to orderly array, and were welcomed by a murderous assault. The king barely escaped after witnessing the slaughter of thirty of his chief nobles at his side. Alone upon a rock which he had climbed, he kept his assailants at bay until they, mistaking him for a common soldier, withdrew for some worthier prize. The heavy arms of the Franks were worse than useless against the storm of rocks and arrows which the Turks rained upon them, and the morning that dawned after a night of unparalleled terror revealed a miserable remnant of the French force fighting or stealing its way to the vanguard.

Placing the command in the hands of the veteran Gilbert, and Evrard des Barras, Grand Master of the Templars, who had marched from the East to assist the new crusaders, Louis pressed on. Winter fell with unwonted severity upon his ragged and starving retainers. The Greeks held Attalia and refused to allow the Franks to enter that city. At length Louis accepted their offer to transport a portion of his army by sea to Syria. Leaving a large proportion of his camp, the king set sail, and arrived at Antioch in March, 1148. Less than one quarter of his followers met him on the Syrian soil.

The Franks, thus abandoned by their king, had incessantly to fight with the swarming Turks, until human nature succumbed. Their leaders, Archambaud and Thierri, deserted them and followed the king over the sea. Seven thousand essayed to pursue their journey overland, and were massacred, or perished amid the dangers of the way. The old chronicle says, “God alone knows the number of the martyrs whose blood flowed beneath the blade of the Turks and even under the sword of the Greeks.” Three thousand are said to have lost their faith in the protection of Christ and sought the pity of the Moslems by confessing the Prophet.

Raymond of Poitiers was at this time lord and commandant at Antioch, and welcomed the King of France with the expectation of receiving his help in the conquest of Aleppo and Cæsarea, but as much, say the chronicles, for the sake of the ladies who accompanied him as for his military aid. Queen Eleanor was Raymond’s niece, and with her suite were several of the most celebrated beauties from the courts of Europe. Their presence promised to make Antioch again the brilliant and voluptuous city it had been of old. When the king proposed to move southward to Jerusalem his queen refused to accompany him. Some secret ambition, or a motive less creditable to her virtue, led her to such disregard for the king that she announced her rejection of her marriage vows, alleging as her reason some newly awakened scruples of conscience on the ground of premarital kinship with Louis. Her husband was compelled to kidnap his wife and carry her by force from the palace to the camp. This estrangement was the beginning of the rupture of relations between the King and Queen of France, that led to his ultimate repudiation of her and to her subsequent marriage with Henry II. of England, by whom she became the mother of Richard Cœur de Lion.

At Jerusalem Louis and Conrad finally met, the latter without soldiers, having reached the city in the disguise of a pilgrim. After paying the proper tribute of devotion at the sacred shrines, the two Western sovereigns, with Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, and their chief barons, gathered at St. Jean d’Acre to determine upon the coming campaign. The assembly was graced by the presence of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and many ladies from the courts of Europe; but there came neither the Queen of France nor her advisers, Raymond of Antioch and the counts of Edessa and Tripoli.

The conference determined to attempt the capture of Damascus. The Christians quickly invested that place. It was defended on the east and south by high walls, but was more exposed on the north and west. Here the richness of the Syrian oasis burst into a vast garden, watered by crystal streams from the Antilibanus. The extended plain was divided into numerous private possessions by walls of baked earth, between which a dense growth of trees left scarcely more than foot-paths. In spite of the showers of arrows that greeted them at every dividing wall, the Christians steadily made their way. In the front ranks was the young King of Jerusalem, with his redoubtable Knights of St. John and Knights Templars. The King of France pressed next with his braves, eager to redeem by splendid victory the disaster of their coming. The German emperor, with such meagre remnant of his army as he could muster, protected the rear. At the little river which flows beneath the western wall of the city the invaders met their first check. Here Conrad performed the one deed creditable to his career since leaving Germany. With his little band he passed through the forward ranks and fell upon the enemy. The Saracens, seeing that the day was lost if the fight continued general, sent a gigantic warrior to challenge the German hero to single combat. The two armies watched the fight. Conrad unhorsed and slew his antagonist. The Saracens then prepared to abandon their city. Arabic chroniclers describe the humiliation of their brethren as they prostrated themselves upon heaps of ashes, and in the great mosque of Damascus sat round Omar’s copy of the Koran, invoking the help of their Prophet.

The Christians, confident of the issue, fell to disputing the sovereignty of the as yet unconquered city. It was awarded to Thierri of Alsace, Count of Flanders. This decision instantly produced jealousy, and all concert of action was at an end. The warriors of Syria hated the Germans and Franks, who had come to eat the fruit of victory as well as to help gather it. At once the assault ceased. The wily Saracen commander, familiar with the divisions in the Christian camp, took advantage of them. He declared that in the event of the siege being pressed he would turn over the city to Nourredin of Mosul, an enemy whose power and daring would make the occupancy of Damascus fatal to the existence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. Mussulman writers aver that King Baldwin was also directly bribed by the people of Damascus; Latin writers accuse the Templars of perfidy. It is evident that none of the leaders cared to conquer Damascus if its possession was not to be his portion.