The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

“Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe!”

Boniface two years later was mortally wounded in a fight with the Bulgarians in the Rhodope Mountains. Mourtzouphlos was soon taken prisoner and hurled headlong from the column of Theodosius, thus fulfilling a local prophecy relative to the column, that it should witness the destruction of some perfidious ruler.

It is not within our scope to narrate the history of the Latin empire thus established. For fifty-seven years it maintained a precarious existence, and finally fell again into the hands of the Greeks, who had constantly menaced it from their opposing capital of Nicæa (1264).

The most serious consequence of the capture of Constantinople by the Latins was the new hope and opportunity imparted to the Turks. The Greeks, with all their weaknesses, had for generations been a buffer between Islam and Europe. The empire had stood like a wall across the great highway of the Asiatic incursion. If the Greeks had been generally the losers in the struggle, they had maintained sufficient power to occupy the arms of their contestants, leaving the Christians of the West free to prey upon the Moslems of Syria and adjacent countries. Now all was changed in this respect. The war of Latins with Greeks engrossed, and largely used up, the power of both as against their common enemy. Though the capital had fallen, the Greek everywhere was still the sworn enemy of the Latin.

In the meantime the Moslems were compacting and extending their military power. They were growing in multitude by the migration of new swarms from the original hive in the farther East. They were destined to become too strong for Christendom to resist, to move steadily on to their own conquest of Constantinople, and even to knock at the gate of Vienna. The words of Edward Pears are undoubtedly warranted: “The crime of the fourth crusade handed over Constantinople and the Balkan peninsula to six centuries of barbarism.”

CHAPTER XXXIX.
BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CRUSADES—CONDITION OF EAST AND WEST—THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE.

The campaign of Europe against Constantinople wrought only evil among the Christian colonists of Syria and Palestine. In the time of their deepest need there were diverted from their cause the enormous sums of money that had been raised for their succor, multitudes of brother warriors, whose swords were sadly missed amid the daily menaces of their foes, and the active sympathies, if not even the prayers, of their coreligionists at home. Dire calamities also fell upon them, which no human arm could have prevented. The plague had followed the terrible Egyptian famine of 1200, and spread its pall far to the East. Earthquakes of the most terrific sort changed the topography of many places; tidal waves obliterated shore-lines; fortresses, like those of Baalbec and Hamah, tottered to their fall upon the unsteady earth; stately temples, which had monumented the art and religion of antiquity, became heaps of ruins; Nablous, Damascus, Tyre, Tripoli, and Acre were shaken down. It would seem that only the common prayers of Christians and Mussulmans averted the calamity from Jerusalem, the city that was sacred in the creed of both.

Such sums of money as the cries for help brought from Europe were expended first in repairing the walls of Acre, into which service the Christians forced their Moslem prisoners. Among the chain-gangs thus set at work was the famous Sa’di, the greatest of Persian poets, almost equally noted for his eloquence as a preacher and for his adventures as a traveller.

Amaury, King of Jerusalem, died, leaving his useless sceptre in the hands of his wife, Isabella, whose demise passed it on to her daughter, Mary, by her former husband, Conrad of Tyre. Such were the burdens of the unsupported throne that none of the warriors in the East ventured to assume the responsibility of the new queen’s hand. A husband was sought for her in Europe. John of Brienne was nominated by Philip of France for the hazardous nuptials. John had been a monk, but his adventurous and martial spirit soon tired of the cowl. He abandoned the austerities of a professional saint for the freedom of the camp and the dangers of the field. The romantic perils of wedding the dowerless queen attracted him.