Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

Shelley.

Peter the Hermit, the preacher and main cause of the first Crusade, was born about the year 1050, of a noble family of Picardy. He was at first, like all men of gentle birth of his time, a soldier, and fought in some at least of the wars that were going on around him. For some cause—no one knows why—perhaps disgusted with the world, perhaps struck with repentance for a criminal or dissolute life—he withdrew from his fellow-men, and became a hermit. But it would seem that his turbulent and unquiet spirit could not stand the monotony, though it might support the austerities, of a hermit’s life, and he resolved about the year 1093 to go as a pilgrim to Palestine. He found the pilgrims miserable indeed. As most of them had been robbed or exorbitantly charged on the road, there was not one in a hundred who, on arriving before Jerusalem, found himself able to pay the fee demanded for admittance within the gates. The hapless Christians, starving and helpless, lay outside the walls, dependent on the small supplies which their brethren within could send them. Many of them died; many more turned away without having been able to enter the city; famine, thirst, nakedness, and the sword of the infidel, constantly thinned their ranks, which were as constantly renewed. Even if they got within the walls, they were not much safer: the monasteries could do little for them, though they did what they could; in the streets they were insulted, mocked, spat upon, and sometimes beaten. And in the very churches, and during the celebration of services, they were liable, as we have seen, to the attacks of a fanatic crowd, who would sometimes break in upon them, and outrage the most sacred ceremonies.

Among all the indignant and pious crowd of worshippers none was more indignant or more devout than Peter. He paid a visit to Simeon, the aged patriarch, and wept with him over the misfortunes of the Christians. “When,” said Simeon, “the cup of our sufferings is full, God will send the Christians of the West to the help of the Holy City.” Peter pressed him to write urgent letters to the sovereign powers of Europe: he himself promised to exhort the people to arm for the recovery of Jerusalem and to testify to the statements of Simeon.

And then, to the fiery imagination of the Hermit, strange voices began to whisper, and strange forms began to be seen. “Arise, Peter,” cried our Lord Himself to him, when he was worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, “Arise, Peter. Hasten to announce the tribulations of my people. It is time that my servants were succoured and my sacred places delivered.” Peter arose and departed to obey what he believed to be a divine command. The pope Urban, who certainly saw in this an opportunity for strengthening himself against the anti-pope, received him with ardour, real or assumed, and authorized him to preach the Crusade over the whole of Europe. He crossed the Alps, and began first to preach in France. His appearance was mean and unprepossessing, his stature low; he rode on a mule, bare-headed and bare-footed, dressed in a gown of the coarsest stuff and with a long rope for a girdle. The fame of his austerity, the purity of his life, the great purpose he had on hand, went before him. The irresistible eloquence of his words moved to their deepest depths the hearts of the people. He preached in country and in town; on the public roads and in the pulpits of churches; he reminded his hearers of the profanation of the holy places; he spoke of the pilgrims, and narrated his own sufferings; he read the letters of the venerable Simeon; and finally he told them how from the very recesses of the Holy Sepulchre the voice of Jesus Himself had called aloud to him, bidding him go forth and summon the people to the recovery of Jerusalem. And as he spoke, the souls of those that heard were moved. With tears, with repentant sobs, with loud cries of anger and sorrow, they vowed to lead better lives, and dedicated themselves for the future to the service of God; women who had sinned, men who had led women astray, robbers who lived by plunder, murderers rich with the rewards of crime, priests burdened with the heavy guilt of long years of hypocrisy—all came alike to confess their sins, to vow amendment, to promise penance by taking the Cross. Peter was reverenced as a saint: such homage as never man had before was his; they tried to get the smallest rag of his garment; they crowded to look upon him, or, if it might be, to touch him. Never in the history of the world has eloquent man had such an audience, or has oratory produced such an effect. And in the midst of this agitation, confined as yet, be it observed, to France, whose soil has ever been favourable to the birth of new ideas, came letters from the emperor Alexis Comnenus, urging on the princes of the West the duty of coming to his help. The leader of the infidels was at his very gates. Were Constantinople to fall, Christendom itself might fall. He might survive the loss of his empire: he could never survive the shame of seeing it pass under the laws of Mohammed. And if more were wanted to urge on the enthusiasm of the people, Constantinople was rich beyond all other cities of the world; her riches should be freely lavished upon her defenders; her daughters were fairer than the daughters of the West; their love should be the reward of those who fought against the Infidels.

The pope received the letters, and held a council, first at Plaisance, then at Clermont (1094). His speech at the latter council has been variously given; four or five reports of it remain, all evidently written long after the real speech had been delivered; all meant to contain what the pope ought to have said; and all, as appears to us, singularly cold and artificial. The council began by renewing the Peace of God; by placing under the protection of the Church all widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers; by proclaiming the inviolability of the sanctuary; and by decreeing that crosses erected by the wayside should be a refuge against violence. And at its tenth sitting, the council passed to what was its real business, the consideration of Peter’s exhortations and the reading of the letters of the patriarch Simeon and the emperor Alexis. Peter spoke first, narrating, as usual, the sufferings of the pilgrims. Urban followed him. And when he had finished, with one accord the voices of the assembled council shouted, “Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut!” “Yes,” answered the pontiff, “God wills it, indeed! Behold how our Lord fulfils his own words, that where two or three are gathered together in his name He will be in the midst. He it is who has inspired these words. Let them be for you your only war-cry.” Adhémar, Bishop of Puy, begged to be the first to take the vow of the Crusade. Other bishops followed. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, first of the laity, swore to conduct his men to Palestine, and then the knights and barons followed in rapid succession. Urban declined himself to lead the host, but appointed Bishop Adhémar as his deputy. Meantime he promised all Crusaders a full and complete remission of their sins. He promised their goods and their families the protection of Saint Peter and the Church; he placed under anathema all who should do violence to the soldiers of the Cross; and he threatened with excommunication all who should fail to perform their oaths. As if the madness of enthusiasm was not sufficiently kindled already, the pope himself went to Rouen, to Angers, to Tours, and to Nismes, called councils, harangued the people, and enjoined on the bishops the duty of proclaiming the Crusade; and the next year was spent in preaching, exhorting, in maintaining the enthusiasm already kindled, and in preparing for the war. The kings of Europe, for their part, had good reasons for holding aloof, and so took no part in the Crusade: the king of France, because he was under excommunication; the emperor of Germany, because he was also under excommunication; William Rufus, because he was an unbeliever and a scoffer. But for the rank and file, the First Crusade, which was instigated by a Frenchman, was mainly recruited from France.

Here, indeed, the delirium of enthusiasm grew daily in intensity. During the winter of 1095-96 nothing but the sound of preparation was heard throughout the length and breadth of the land. It was not enough that knights and men-at-arms should take upon them the vows of the Cross; it behoved every man who could carry a pike or wield a sword to join the army of deliverance. Artisans left their work, merchants their shops, labourers their tools, and the very robbers and brigands came out from their hiding-places, with the intention of atoning for their past sins by fighting in the army of the Lord. All industry, save that of the forging of weapons, ceased; for six whole months there was no crime; for six months an uninterrupted Peace of God, concluded by tacit consent, while the croisés crowded the churches to implore the divine protection and blessing, to consecrate their arms, and to renew their vows. In order to procure horses, armour, and arms, the price of which went up enormously, the knights sold their lands at prices far below their real value; the lands were in many cases bought up by far-seeing abbots and attached to monasteries, so that the Church, at least, might be enriched, whatever happened. No sacrifice, however, appeared too great in the enthusiasm of departure; no loss too heavy to weigh for one moment against the obligation of the sacred oath. And strange signs and wonders began to appear in the heavens. Stars were seen to fall upon the earth: these were the kings and chiefs of the Saracens; unearthly flames were visible at night: these betokened the conflagration of the Mohammedan strong places; blood-red clouds, stained with the blood of the Infidel, hovered over the east; a sword-shaped comet, denoting the sword of the Lord, was in the south; and in the sky were seen, not once, but many times, the towers of a mighty city and the legions of a mighty host.

With the first warm days of early spring the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. Refusing to wait while the chiefs of the Crusade organised their forces, laid down the line of their march, and matured their plans, they flocked in thousands to the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, clamouring for immediate departure. Most of them were on foot, but those who by any means could raise the price of a horse came mounted. Some travelled in carts drawn by oxen. Their arms were such as they could afford to buy. Every one, however, brandished a weapon of some kind; it was either a spear, or an axe, or sword, or even a heavy hammer. Wives, daughters, children, old men, dragged themselves along with the exultant host, nothing doubting that they too would be permitted to share the triumph, to witness the victory. From the far corners of France, from Brittany, from the islands, from the Pyrenees, came troops of men whose language could not be understood, and who had but one sign, that of the Cross, to signify their brotherhood. Whole villages came en masse, accompanied by their priests, bringing with them their children, their cattle, their stores of provision, their household utensils, their all; while the poorest came with nothing at all, trusting that miracles, similar to those which protected the Israelites in the Desert, would protect them also—that manna would drop from heaven, and the rocks would open to supply them with water. And such was their ignorance, that as the walls of town after town became visible on their march, they pressed forward, eagerly demanding if that was Jerusalem.

Who should be the leader of the horde of peasants, robbers, and workmen who came together in the spring of 1096 on the banks of the Meuse? Among all this vast host there were found but nine knights: Gaultier Sans Avoir—Walter the Penniless—and eight others. But there was with them, better than an army of knights, the great preacher of the Crusade, the holy hermit and worker of miracles, Peter. To him was due the glory of the movement: to him should be given the honour of leading the first, and, it was believed, the successful army. By common acclamation they elected Peter their leader. He, no less credulous than his followers, accepted the charge; confident of victory, and mounted on his mule—the mule which had borne him from town to town to preach the war—clothed in his monastic garb, with sandals on his feet and a cross in his hand, he led the way.

Under his command were a hundred thousand men, bearing arms, such as they were, and an innumerable throng of women, old men, and children. He divided this enormous host into two parts, keeping the larger under his own orders, and sending on the smaller as an advance-guard, under the knight Walter.

Walter started first. Marching down the banks of the Rhine, he experienced no difficulties with the Germans. These, slow to follow the example of the fiery French, and, moreover, not yet stimulated by the preaching of a Peter, still sympathised with the object of the army, which they doubtless thought was but a larger and a fiercer band of pilgrims, like many that had gone before, and assisted those who were too poor to buy provisions, to the best of their power. Passing, therefore, safely through Germany, the disorderly host, among whom all sorts of iniquities were already rife, entered Hungary. The Hungarians, by this time christianised, had yet no kind of enthusiasm for the objects of the Crusaders or desire to aid them; but their King, Coloman, gave them guides through his vast marshes and across his rivers, and permitted them to purchase what they wanted at the public market-places; and by great fortune no accident happened to them, save the beating of a few laggards after the crossing of the river Maros. Judging it idle to avenge an insult which it cost little to endure, Walter pushed on till he reached Belgrade, the frontier town of the Bulgarians. These were even a ruder people than the Hungarian Christians; they refused to recognise the Crusaders as their brethren: subjects of the Greek crown, they refused any submission but that which was extorted by arms, and living in the midst of inaccessible forests, they preserved a wild and savage independence which made them the terror of the pilgrims, whom they maltreated, and the Greeks, who tried to reduce them to submission.