The Emperor Frederick also proposed that the expedition should be postponed until, with the rallied forces of his empire, he might give it better assurance of success. Pope and emperor revived their strifes, and Italy was turned into pandemonium. A few of the more ardent managed to escape the entanglements at home for more honorable adventures in the East. The King of Navarre, the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, reached Syria (August, 1239) and performed exploits sufficient to more thoroughly enrage, but not to awe, the Moslems. In 1240 Richard of Cornwall, with a band of English, sailing in spite of the Pope’s prohibition, landed at Acre, made several raids through Turkish territory, and returned, having gained nothing but a continuance of the truce with the sultan.
CHAPTER XLII.
BETWEEN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH CRUSADES—THE TARTARS—THE CARISMIAN INVASION.
By a strange providence the sacred places of Palestine were destined to fall for a while into other hands than any of the former great contestants, Christian, Saracen, or Turk.
The most astounding events of the thirteenth century were in connection with the great Tartar irruption. The Mogul hosts under Genghis Khan, or “king of kings,” had broken eastward across the Great Wall of China, and poured a tide of desolation over that ancient empire. As the bloody waves returned, they moved with undiminished force westward and southward, flooding all Turkestan, and all lands to the borders of India and the Persian Gulf. These armies, numbering seven hundred thousand warriors, courageous, remorseless, and cruel as tigers, were met by five hundred thousand under Mohammed, Sultan of Carismia. But even this latter tremendous host could not withstand the impact of the Tartars. Under Octai, son of Genghis Khan, they crossed the Volga and conquered vast sections of Russia, laying Moscow and Kiew in ashes. Poland fell next. Even the Baltic monumented the fury of the Tartars with a circle of ruined towers and devastated country which marked its shores.
Matthew Paris describes the terror these Tartars inspired even in England, where they were thought to be “a people of monstrous shape, drinking blood warm from the veins of their victims, eating raw flesh, even of human beings, mounted upon enormous horses, which fed upon leaves and trees.” Their home was presumed to be the Caspian Mountains, the tops of which God had united and thus shut them in, until now they were let loose to be the scourge of mankind. The extreme terror spread by the rumor of their coming was such that the herring fisheries off Yarmouth were abandoned, lest the sailors should be caught by these monsters, who could sweep the waves with their ox-hide boats. Their skill in swimming was of such renown that the lone fisherman of Friesland was alert lest he should “catch a Tartar.”
At the battle of Liegnitz the prowess of Europe proved impotent against the Tartar invasion which swept Hungary. Settled communities were annihilated; nomadic peoples sought safety in migrating.
The Carismians, beaten back by the Tartars, spread themselves through Asia Minor and Syria; but these fugitives were almost as terrible a menace as their pursuers had been. They carried with them the spoil of the lands they traversed. Dreading death less than the disgrace of retreat, trained to neither give nor take quarter, waving from their spear-heads the hair of the slaughtered, they assaulted all peoples, Mussulmans and Christians alike. These nations were forced by the new menace to lay aside their ancient animosities and unite in a struggle for existence against the common foe.
The Sultan of Cairo, however, deemed that his policy lay in a different direction, and made alliance with the invaders, promising to them the free spoil of Palestine in exchange for the immunity of his Egyptian possessions. Twenty thousand Carismian horsemen ravaged Tripoli and Galilee and appeared suddenly before Jerusalem. The inhabitants fled; the few who remained were indiscriminately massacred. Finding nothing left to appease the appetite of their swords, the conquerors unfurled the banner of the cross from the walls and rang the bells of the churches, thus luring back to the city a multitude of the fugitives, upon whom they satiated their cruelty. Seven thousand of these helpless creatures perished at the gates. Not satisfied with the spoil of the living, the Carismians rifled the abodes of the dead. Sepulchres which had been respected by the Moslem occupants for a century were ruthlessly despoiled. The contents of the alleged tomb of Christ, together with those of the kings of Jerusalem from the days of Godfrey, were given to the flames.
The Christian and Moslem armies massed against this remorseless foe in the neighborhood of Gaza. For two days there raged as fearful carnage as has ever dyed the pages of history; but nothing could stay this host of fiends. Thirty thousand men, who had entered the battle with prayers in the name of Jesus or Mohammed, perished or were taken prisoners. But four Templars, twenty-six Hospitallers, and three Teutonic Knights remained to tell the story of their useless valor. The heroism of Gautier of Brienne, Lord of Jaffa, deserves to be chronicled. Captured by the enemy, he was fastened upon a cross and brought close to the walls of the town which the Carismians were besieging. He was offered his life on condition of his counselling the place to surrender. To the people who thronged the walls he cried with a loud voice, “Your duty is to fight; mine is to die for you and Jesus Christ.”
But the Carismians, though they were able to conquer, had no ability to hold their conquests. Like most semicivilized hordes, they reaped what they found, but had no enterprise to sow again for other harvests. They quickly quarrelled with their ally, the Sultan of Cairo. New combinations were made against them, and in a few years they disappeared from history, merged, doubtless, with other peoples whose home lands they shared.