Rumors of a new crusade of gigantic proportions led Malek-Ahdel to propose a renewal of the truce with the Christians, which, though continually broken, was in his estimation safer than an openly declared war. The Hospitallers approved peace. This was sufficient to make their rivals, the Templars, eager for the reverse, and the majority of the knights and barons flew to arms against one another.
John of Brienne reached Acre with a meagre following of three hundred knights. His nuptials with the young Queen Mary were rudely disturbed by the Moslems, who besieged Ptolemaïs and swarmed in threatening masses around Acre. In their straits the Christians again appealed to Europe; but Christendom was fully occupied with contentions within its own borders. France was at war with England to repossess the fair provinces which the Angevine kings had wrested from her along the Atlantic. At the same time she was pressing her conquests beyond the Rhine against the Germans. Germany was divided by the rival claimants for the imperial sceptre, Otho and Philip of Swabia.
A more serious diversion of interest from the affairs of Palestine was due to the crusade under Simon de Montfort against the Albigenses, whose record makes one of the blackest pages of human history. (See Dr. Vincent’s volume in this series.) The Saracens in Spain were also threatening to overturn the Christian kingdom of Castile, and were defeated only with tremendous effort, which culminated in the great battle of Tolosa (1212).
In 1212 or 1213 occurred what is known as the Children’s Crusade, a movement that doubtless has been greatly exaggerated by after writers, but the facts of which illustrate the ignorance and credulity, as well as the adventurous, not to say marauding, spirit of the times. If in our day the free circulation of stories relating the adventures of cutthroats and robbers inflames the passions and engenders lawless conceits in the young, we may imagine that reports of the bloody work done by persecutors of the Albigenses, dastardly and cruel deeds, which were applauded by Pope and people, could not but make a similar impression upon the callow mind of childhood in the middle ages. Boys practised the sword-thrust at one another’s throats, built their pile of fagots about the stake of some imaginary heretic, and charged in mimic brigades upon phantom hosts of Infidels. It needed only the impassioned appeals of unwise preachers to start the avalanche thus trembling on the slope. It was proclaimed that supernal powers waited to strengthen the children’s arms. The lads were all to prove Davids going forth against Goliaths; the girls would become new Judiths and Deborahs without waiting for their growth. It was especially revealed that the Mediterranean from Genoa to Joppa would be dried up so that these children of God could pass through it dry-shod.
From towns and cities issued bands of boys and girls, who in response to the question, “Whither are you going?” replied, “To Jerusalem.” “Boy preachers” were universally encouraged to proclaim the crusade. One lad, named Stephen, announcing that Christ had visited him, led hundreds away. A boy named Nicholas, instigated by older persons, deluded a company into crossing the Alps, where many starved, were killed, or kidnapped. The real leaders, however, seem to have been men and women of disorderly habits, who in an age of impoverished homes readily adopted the lives of tramps, and used the pitiable appearance of the children to secure the charities of the towns and cities they passed through. Saracen kidnappers also took advantage of the craze to lure children on board of ships by promise of free passage to the Holy Land. Thus entrapped, they were sold as slaves for Eastern fields or harems. Seven vessels were loaded with Christian children at Marseilles. Five of the ships reached Egypt, consigned to slave merchants; two were wrecked off the isle of St. Peter, where Pope Gregory IX. afterwards caused a church to be built in memory of the victims.
THE FIFTH CRUSADE.
CHAPTER XL.
DISASTER OF MARIETTA.
Pope Innocent III. comforted himself for this “slaughter of the innocents” by making the incident the basis of a new appeal for the relief of Palestine. “These children,” said he, “reproach us with being asleep while they were flying to the assistance of the Holy Land.” In his exhortation to Europe the Holy Father ventures to interpret the mysterious prediction of the Book of Revelation regarding the duration of the Antichrist symbolized by the beast. Some Protestants have presumptuously applied the figures to the destiny of the Roman Church. Innocent regarded Mohammedanism as meant, and, counting from the hejira of Mohammed (622) to his own day, announced to the people, in the name of God, whose infallible vicegerent he was, “The power of Mohammed draws towards its end; for that power is nothing but the beast of the Apocalypse, which is not to extend beyond the number of six hundred and sixty-six years, and already six hundred have been accomplished.” Europe was asked to believe that the marshalled nations of the East, then so threatening, would only furnish the funeral cortège of Antichrist, after which the world would enter upon its millennium of peace.
Every crowned head, every noble, every knight, every city, every church, received its especial appeal from Rome to offer men, ships, money, and incessant prayers for this last holy adventure. With equal assurance Innocent addressed letters to the sultans of Damascus and Cairo, giving them an opportunity to voluntarily restore the holy places before the final vengeance of the Lord. Ardent orators, like Cardinal Courçon and James of Vitri (an original chronicler of these events), went everywhere, firing the passions of the people. Philip Augustus appropriated for the project two and a half per cent. of the territorial revenue of France. King John of England promised to make amends for his many sins by taking the cross; he was the more inclined to this from the fact that his barons had just wrenched from him Magna Charta, and the Pope had put him under excommunication; his pretence of piety was the policy of the moment. Frederick II. of Germany, to secure the papal favor in his contest with Otho for the imperial throne, assumed the rôle of a crusader.
The movement was, however, halted by the affairs in France. England, Flanders, Holland, Boulogne, with the aid of the German Otho, invaded France. At the battle of Bouvines (1214) this combination was overthrown, and the French monarchy, with restored territory and prestige, assumed the independence which it maintained until recent times.