A few months later, the French and German armies, each of which contained more than a hundred thousand fighting men, without reckoning the swarm of pilgrims who accompanied them, set out, well armed, well equipped, and full of confidence, for the East. The two armies contained the élite of the chivalry of both countries. “Europe,” said St. Bernard in one of his letters, “contained nothing but desert towns and castles, nothing but widows and orphans, whose husbands and fathers were still alive.”
But, alas! this enthusiasm, this zeal, this heroism, displayed by all classes of European society, were destined to end in miserable disaster. The insubordination of the troops, the want of foresight and co-operation of their leaders, and the treachery of the Greek emperor Manuel, prepared a fatal ending for this ill-omened undertaking, which saw its host melt away long before their arrival in the Holy Land. After more than a year of tremendous efforts and sanguinary reverses, its remnants struggled painfully back to the West, leaving the kingdom of Jerusalem in a far more precarious position than before the arrival of the combined forces. “And on all sides,” relates a chronicler, “were heard complaints and reproaches against the Abbot of Clairvaux, whose promises of victory had been so little realised, who, it was said, had sent so many brave men to a useless death, and who had plunged so many noble families into mourning. The holy man was mortified to the very depths of his soul, but rather than doubt the beneficent wisdom of the Almighty, he exclaimed, ‘If they must murmur, it is better that they should murmur against me than against God. I am rejoiced that the Lord has condescended to use me as a shield. I am willing to be humiliated, provided always that His glory be unassailed.’”
Forty years later, after the terrible battle of Tiberias (1187), where so much generous blood was spilt around Guy de Lusignan, the last King of Jerusalem, the Sultan Saladin, one of the most remarkable characters in Mussulman history, seized the holy city, which henceforth was only destined once, and then but for a short time, to fall again into the hands of the Christians.
In 1181 the Third Crusade was undertaken, and Philip Augustus, the King of France, and Richard, the King of England, whose great deeds in this holy war obtained for him the surname of Cœur de Lion, forgetting their own personal quarrels, put themselves at its head. Subsequently, Frederick Barbarossa, the Emperor of Germany, who had previously taken part in the Second Crusade, joined the undertaking, in which he was destined to meet his death.
After having shed more blood and displayed more bravery than would have sufficed to conquer the whole of Asia, after the long and memorable siege of the city of Ptolemais, after many signal successes, the Christian armies, discouraged and diminished by more than one half, returned to Europe, bringing with them “moult de gloire,”[8] says a chronicler, but without having in reality obtained any material or lasting advantage over the unbelievers, who it was true had lost St. Jean d’Acre, but who still retained possession of Jerusalem.
The Fourth Crusade (1198–1204), which some historians call the fifth, was authorised by Pope Innocent III., and preached in France by the celebrated Foulques de Neuilly. This crusade was remarkable in one respect. Its efforts at first were directed against the persecutors of Christianity, but events, as they developed themselves, modified its aim, and the question of the holy places having become abandoned, it ended, after the taking of Constantinople (Fig. 106), in the overthrow of the dynasty of the successors of Constantine, and its being replaced by a French dynasty, the founders of the Latin Empire of Byzantium. Following the example of Baudouin, Count of Flanders, the principal nobles of the crusading army divided among themselves the spoils of the Greek Empire, and ceased to think of the holy war.
In 1217, Andrew, King of Hungary, in company with several nobles of Germany and France, assumed the cross. This expedition sailed for Egypt, and laid siege to Damietta, which only capitulated after losing eighty thousand of its inhabitants. From thence it moved on to Cairo, but, being decimated by the plague, it was forced to retreat and return to Europe. This was really the fifth crusade.
Fig. 106.—Second taking of Constantinople, in 1204.—From a Fresco by Tintoretto, in the Palace of the Doges, Venice (Sixteenth Century).
In 1228, Frederick II., King of Naples and Sicily, having been elected Emperor of Germany, conceived the idea, more from political than religious motives, of reconquering, in the name of Christendom, the Holy City. He embarked, accompanied only by a few hundred soldiers, and, landing in Egypt, had an interview with the Sultan, who was persuaded, under some unknown influence, to sign a treaty, by virtue of which Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem were to be restored to the Christians, under the express condition that the Mussulmans should be allowed to retain the Temple and to erect a mosque in the city of Jesus Christ. This was at best a sacrilegious compact. It was neither approved nor kept by the Christians or by the Saracens, and was soon considered by Frederick himself a worthless compromise, although he had entered Jerusalem in person, and had there crowned himself with his own hands. This singular expedition was termed the Sixth Crusade.