Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

The duty of the king was to maintain the laws; to defend the church; to care for widows and orphans; to watch over the safety of the people; and to lead the army to war. The duty of the seigneur towards his people was exactly the same as that of the king; towards the king it was to serve him in war and by counsel. The duty of a subject to his lord was to defend and to revenge him; to protect the honour of his wife and daughters; to be a hostage for him in case of need; to give him his horse if he wanted one, or arms if he wanted them; and to keep faith with him. There were three courts of justice; the first presided over by the king, for the regulation of all differences between the great vassals; the second, formed of the principal inhabitants—a kind of jury—to maintain the laws among the bourgeoisie; and the third, reserved for the Oriental Christians, presided over by judges born in Syria.

The king, the summit of this feudal pyramid, who was wont to offer his crown at the Holy Sepulchre, “as a woman used to offer her male child at the Temple,” had immediately under him his seneschal, who acted as chief justice, chancellor of the exchequer, and prime minister. The constable commanded the army in the name of or in the absence of the king; he presided over the ordeal by battle, and regulated its administration. Under his orders was the marshal, who replaced him on occasion. The chamberlain’s duty was about the person of the king.

As regards the power and duties of the barons, it was ruled that they were allowed, if they pleased, to give their fiefs to the church; that the fiefs should always descend to the male heir; that the baron or seigneur should succeed to a fief alienated by the failure on the part of the feudatory to perform his duties; that the baron should be the guardian of heirs male and female. These, if male, were to present themselves when the time came, saying, “I am fully fifteen years of age,” upon which he was to invest them; while maidens were to claim their fiefs at the age of twelve, on condition that they took a husband to protect it. Nor was any woman who remained without a husband to hold a fief until she was at least sixty years of age.

In the ordeal of battle, the formula of challenge was provided, and only those were excused who had lost limbs, in battle or otherwise, women, children, and men arrived at their sixtieth year. In a criminal case death followed defeat; in a civil case, infamy.

Slaves, peasants, and captives were, like cattle, subject only to laws of buying and selling. A slave was reckoned worth a falcon; two slaves were worth a charger; the master could do exactly as he pleased with his own slaves. They were protected by the natural kindness of humanity alone. In the days of its greatest prosperity the different baronies and cities of the kingdom of Jerusalem could be called upon to furnish in all three thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine knights. But this was after the time of Godfrey, the David of the new kingdom.

Of course the seigneurs and barons took their titles from the places they held; thus we hear of the barony of Jaffa, of Galilee, of Acre, and of Nablous; the seigneur of Kerak and of Arsûf. And thus in the soil of Palestine was planted, like some strange exotic, rare and new, the whole of the feudal system, with all its laws, its ideas, and its limitations.

The news of the recovery of Jerusalem, and the return of the triumphant Crusaders, revived the flame of crusading enthusiasm, which in the space of four years had somewhat subsided. Those who had not followed the rest in taking the Cross reproached themselves with apathy; those who had deserted the Cross were the object of contempt and scorn. More signs appeared in heaven; flames of fire in the east—probably at daybreak; passage of insects and birds—emblematic of the swarms of pilgrims which were to follow. Only when the preachers urged on their hearers to take the Cross it was no longer in the minor key of plaint and suffering; they had risen and left the waters of Babylon; they had taken down their harps from the trees and tuned them afresh; they sang, now, a song of triumph; and in place of suffering, sorrow, and humiliation, they proclaimed victory, glory, and riches. It seemed better to a European knight to be Baron of Samaria than lord of a western state; imagination magnified the splendour of Baldwin and Tancred; things far off assumed such colours as the mind pleased; and letters read from the chiefs in Palestine spoke only of spoils won in battle, of splendid victories, and of conquered lands. Again the cry was raised of Dieu le veut, and again the pilgrims, but this time in a very different spirit, poured eastwards in countless thousands.

The way was led by Hugh, Count of Vermandois and the unfortunate Stephen of Blois, whose lives had been a mere burden to them since their desertion of the Cross; the latter, who had little inclination for fighting of any kind, and still less for more hardships in the thirsty East, followed at the instigation of his wife Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. Neither of them ever returned. William of Poitiers, like Stephen of Blois, a poet and scholar, mortgaged his estates to William Rufus, the scoffer, who, of course, was still lamentably insensible to the voice of the preacher—it must have been just before his death; Humbert of Savoy, William of Nevers, Harpin of Bourges, and Odo, Duke of Burgundy, followed his example. In Italy the Bishop of Milan, armed with a bone of Saint Ambrose, led an army of one hundred thousand pilgrims, while an immense number of Germans followed the Marshal Conrad and Wolf of Bavaria. Most of the knights professed religious zeal; but hoped, their geographical knowledge being small, to win kingdoms and duchies like those of Baldwin and Tancred. Humbert of Savoy, more honest than the others, openly ordered prayers to be put up that he might obtain a happy principality. It does not appear from history that his petition was granted.

The new army was by no means so well conducted as the old. Insolent in their confidence, and ill-disciplined, they plundered and pillaged wherever they came. They menaced Alexis Comnenus, and threatened to take and destroy the city. Alexis, it is said, but it is difficult to believe this, actually turned his wild beasts upon the mob, and his favourite lion got killed in the encounter. After prayers and presents, the Emperor persuaded his unruly guests to depart and go across the straits. Non defensoribus istis might have been the constant ejaculation of the much abused and long suffering monarch.

Then they were joined by Conrad with his Germans and Hugh with his French. Their numbers are stated at two hundred and sixty thousand, among whom was a vast number of priests, monks, women, and children. Raymond of Toulouse, who was in Constantinople, undertook reluctantly to guide the army across Asia Minor, and brought with him a few of his Provençaux and a body of five hundred Turcopoles (these were light infantry, so called because they were the children of Christian women by Turkish fathers), the contingent of the Greek Emperor.