“Hitherto,” says William of Tyre, whom we have been principally following, “hitherto the events I have described were related to me by others. All that follows I have either seen with my own eyes or have heard from those who actually were present. I hope, therefore, with the assistance of God, to be able to relate the facts that I have yet to put down with greater accuracy and facility.”

He was a young man when Fulke died, and preserves in his history that enthusiasm for his successor which one of his own age would probably entertain, and which Baldwin’s early death, if not his admirable qualities, prevented from dying out. He writes of him as one might have written of Charles I., had he died five years after he came to the throne, or of Louis XIV., had he finished his reign thirty years earlier.

Baldwin was only thirteen when with his mother, Milicent, as Queen and Regent, he was crowned king. Like his great ancestors, the young king grew up taller and stronger than the generality of mankind; his features were firm and undaunted, and a light beard covered his lips and chin; he was not “too fat like his brother, nor too thin like his mother.” In short, Baldwin, when he grew up, was a tall and handsome man. As for his mental qualities, his biographer exhausts himself in praises. He was prompt to understand; eloquent and fluent of speech; affable in manners; full of compassion and tenderness; endowed with an excellent memory (in which he must have presented a pleasing contrast to his father); tolerably well educated—“better, that is, than his brother”—the biographer’s standard of education is difficult to catch, because he afterwards tells us of Amaury that he was educated, “but not so well as his brother:” he was fond of having read to him the lives of great kings and the deeds of valiant knights; he knew thoroughly the common law of the realm; his powers of conversation were great and charming; he attached to himself the affections of everybody high and low. “And,” says the worthy bishop, “what is more rare in persons of his age, is that he showed all sorts of respect for ecclesiastical institutions, and especially for the Prelates of the Churches.” Where could a finer king be found?

If he had a fault it was that he was fond of gaming and dice. As the greater part of his life was spent on horseback, it was only occasionally that he could indulge in this vice. Another fault he had as a youth which he entirely renounced in later years. To the credit of King Baldwin it is recorded that he was, after his marriage, entirely blameless in respect of women. Now by this time the morals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were in an extremely bad way, and the example of the young king could not fail of producing a great and most beneficial effect.

Queen Milicent was an ambitious woman, like her sister Alice, and had no intention at all of being a puppet. She accordingly insisted on being crowned together with her son. The kings of Jerusalem had ceased to affect that proud humility which made Godfrey refuse to wear a crown when his Lord had only worn thorns, and sent Baldwin I. to Bethlehem to be crowned, as it were, out of sight of the city of Christ’s sufferings. Now the ceremony was held in the very church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was the cathedral of the Christian city. In the king’s hands was placed the sword, with which to defend justice and Holy Church: on his finger they put the ring of faith; on his head the crown of honour; in his right hand the sceptre of authority and the golden apple of sovereignty.

Mother and son were crowned together, and the unhappy state, which wanted the firm hand of a Godfrey, found itself ruled by a boy and a woman. The barons began to take sides and form parties. There was no leader in the councils, none to whom they could look to as the common head, and if one advanced above the rest they regarded him with suspicion and envy. Worst of all, they began to fight with each other. In the north, Raymond of Antioch and young Jocelyn of Edessa looked upon each other as enemies, and spent most of their time in trying to devise means of mutual annoyance. Jocelyn, who ought to have been occupied in organising means for the defence of his dominions against the formidable Zanghi, when he was not harrying Raymond, lay inactive at Tellbasher, where he indulged in his favourite pleasures, hoping to spend the rest of his life in ignoble ease, looking out upon the world with those goggle eyes of his, the only feature, and that not a lovely one, recorded of this prince.

But he was to be rudely shaken from his slumber. It was in the early winter of 1144, the year of Baldwin’s accession, when news came to him that Zanghi was before the walls of Edessa with an immense army. Jocelyn, roused too late, sent everywhere for assistance. Raymond would not help him; his own knights reproached him with his indolence and apathy, and declared that they would not march to certain death. Queen Milicent issued orders for the army to move northwards, which were not obeyed; and Edessa was doomed.

Zanghi, finding success almost certain, redoubled his efforts, and sent for reinforcements in all directions. He even offered favourable terms of surrender; but these were refused. Zanghi’s plan of siege was the ordinary one, quietly to undermine the towers, propping up the earth as it was removed with timber. When the proper time arrived, the timber would be set fire to, and of course the tower would fall. The Latin archbishop, who appears to have been in command, would hear of no surrender, and exhorted the people daily, holding forth the promise of the crown of martyrdom. But on the twenty-second day of the siege the towers which had been undermined fell with a crash, and the enemy poured in. The first thought of the people was to fly for shelter to the citadel. Many were crushed or trampled to death in the attempt, among whom was Archbishop Hugh, who had been storing up gold, and now tried to carry it into the citadel. The weight of his treasure helped to bear him down. The enemy were before them at the gates of the citadel, and the slaughter of the helpless people commenced, with all the horrors usual after a siege. Islam was triumphant; Christendom in despair.

But Zanghi died next year, being assassinated by his own slaves, and a lively joy was diffused throughout Palestine. “A certain Christian,” says William of Tyre, with admirable modesty, for, of course, he was himself the accomplished poet, directly he heard of this event, delivered himself of the following melodious impromptu:^[64]

King Baldwin won his spurs while yet a boy, first by a short and successful expedition beyond the Jordan, and next by his Quixotic attempt on the town of Bozrah, in the Hauran. It was an attempt undertaken in haste and without reflection, and doomed from the outset to failure. A certain Armenian, governor of the town, influenced probably by some private motives of revenge, came to Jerusalem and offered to put the town in the hands of the Christians, if they wished to have it. There was still lingering, in spite of the fall of Edessa, some remains of the old spirit of conquest, and, regardless of the dangers which hovered round the kingdom, and of the pressing necessity for consolidating all their strength for purposes of defence, the Christians tumultuously demanded to be led to the attack, and an army was called together. Baldwin went with them. The troops assembled in the north and started full of vainglorious confidence. On the second day they found themselves surrounded with clouds of enemies, who assailed them with showers of darts. The country was a desert; as the only means of getting water the people had formed artificial cisterns, in which the winter rains were stored. But they were filled with dead bodies of locusts, and the water was too bad even for men parched with thirst. The Christians struggled on. They arrived at Edrei. Here, at least, they would get water. But at Edrei as well the water was all stored in large cisterns. They let down buckets by ropes: men hidden below cut the ropes. For four days they pressed on, however, while the enemy was reinforced hourly, and by day and night a continuous hail-storm of arrows and projectiles was showered into the camp, so that neither man nor beast among the Christians escaped without some wound. On the fourth day, they were cheered by the sight of the town of Bozrah, and by the discovery of certain small rills of water, which they fought for, and won at the cost of many lives. But in the dead of night a messenger of very evil tidings came into the camp. The wife of the Armenian had refused to be a partner in her husband’s treachery: the enemy occupied the city in force, and all hope was to be given over of taking it by storm. Then the Christians despaired. Some of them advised the king to mount the fleetest horse—that of John Gomain—in the camp, and make his way back alone, so that at least his life might have a chance of being saved. But Baldwin, brave boy that he was, refused. He had not had the stories of valiant knights read to him for nothing. He would remain with his army and share their fate. At break of day the camp was broken up and the retreat commenced. Orders were given to lay the dead and the wounded, as they fell, on the beasts of burden, so that the enemy might not know the havoc they were making, and then, for NÛr-ed-dÍn was already on the alert, they started on their disastrous and melancholy retreat. The heat was oppressive; there was no water; clouds of dust hung over the little army; clouds of Saracens rode round them firing arrows into their midst. And yet the Christians moved on in good order. More wonderful still, there was not a single dead body behind them. Were they, then, protected by some unknown power? The Saracens hesitated. Thinking that their arrows had no effect, and ignorant of the ghastly load under which the camels were groaning, they tried another method. The whole country was covered with dry bushes and grass. They set fire to it, and the wind blew the flames and smoke directly upon the Christians. And then the people turned to Archbishop Robert of Nazareth, who bore the Holy Cross, “Pray for us, father, pray for us in the name of the wood of the Cross that you hear in your hands, for we can no longer bear our sufferings.” It was high time that Robert should pray: the faces and hands of the army were blackened with smoke and dust; “they were like blacksmiths working at the forge:” their throats were dry with heat and thirst.

The archbishop prayed, and at his prayer the wind shifted, and the flames were blown towards the enemy. The Christians resolved to send a messenger to the Saracens. They chose a knight who had been suspected of treachery, but they had no other choice, because he alone spoke the language of the enemy. They asked him if he would faithfully perform his mission. “I am suspected,” he said, “unjustly. I will go where you wish me. If I am guilty of the crime you impute to me, may I never return—may I perish by the enemy’s weapons!” He went, but before he had gone far the poor wretch fell dead, pierced by a hundred arrows.

Then the Christians pressed on. Arrived near Damascus, the Emir of that city sent a messenger to them. If they would halt, he would feed and entertain them all. Worn, thirsty, and wearied as they were, they suspected his loyalty, and hurried on. In after times it was related that a knight, whom none had seen before, appeared every morning at the head of the army, guided them during the day by roads unknown to the enemy, and disappeared at night. Doubtless, St. George. We have said before that the time for saints’ help ended with Godfrey. A saint appears again, it is true, but with how great a change! the last time Saint George fought for the Christians, he led them on to victory after victory. Now he shows them a way by which, broken down and utterly beaten, they can escape with their lives.

There was great rejoicing in Jerusalem when the remnant of the army, with the young king, came back. Those who had been wont to sing psalms for the defeat of the enemy, sang them now for the safe return of the defeated king. “This our son,” they chanted, “was dead, and is alive again: he was lost, and is found.”

After the death of Zanghi, who had repeopled the city of Edessa, the ill-advised Jocelyn instigated the people to revolt against their new masters. All the Turks in the place were put to death, and Jocelyn, once more reinstated in the city of his father, sent messengers in all directions, asking for help. No help came, for it was impossible that any one should send help. NÛr-ed-dÍn came to the town with ten thousand men before Jocelyn had held it for a week. He vowed to exterminate the Christians, and these were too few in number to make any resistance. They threw open the gates, and all sallied forth together, with the resolution to fight their way through the beleaguering army. Jocelyn got through, and, with a few knights, reached Samosata in safety. The rest of the people were all massacred.

Some years after this, Jocelyn himself was taken prisoner, and spent the rest of his life, nine years, in captivity, far enough removed from any chance of indulging in those vices which had ruined him, and perilled the realm. It was a fitting end to a career which might have been glorious, if glory is a thing to desire; which might have assured the safety of the Christian kingdom, if, which is a thing to be questioned, the Christian kingdom was worth saving.

And now hostilities on both sides seem to have been for a time suspended, for the news reached the East how another Crusade had been preached in the West, and gigantic armies were already moving eastwards to protect the realm, and reconquer the places which had been lost. Signs, too, were not wanting which, though they might be interpreted to signify disaster, could yet be read the other way. A comet, for instance; this might portend evil for the Saracens—Heaven grant it was intended to strike terror into their hearts. But what could be said of the lightning which struck, of all places in the world, the very church of the Holy Sepulchre itself? Nothing but the anger of God could be inferred from a manifestation so clear, and the hearts of all were filled with terror and forebodings.

The details of the second Crusade, as it is called, unhappily resemble those of the first. It is not necessary that we should do more than follow the leading incidents which preceded the arrival of the soldiers—all who were left—in Palestine.

It was exactly fifty years since Peter the Hermit went through France, telling of the indignities offered to the pilgrims, and the sufferings of the faithful. But in fifty years a vast change had come over the West. Knowledge had taken the place of ignorance. No fear, now, that the rude soldiery would ask as every fresh town rose before their eyes, if that was Jerusalem. There was not a village where some old Crusader had not returned to tell of the long march, the frightful sufferings on the way, the obstinacy of the enemy, the death of his friends. From sea to sea, in France at least, the East seemed as well known as the West, for from every province some one had gone forth to become a great man in Palestine. Fulke from Anjou, Godfrey from Lorraine, Raymond from Toulouse, another Raymond from Poitou, Robert from Normandy, another Robert from Flanders, Hugh le Grand from Paris, Stephen from Blois, and fifty others, whose fame was spread far and wide in their native places, so that men knew now what lay before them. They went, if they went at all, to fight, and defend, not to conquer. The city was Christian; but there was plunder and glory to be got by fighting beyond the city.

Bernard proclaimed the Crusade. He preached the necessity of going to the assistance of a kingdom dear to all Christian eyes, tottering to its fall. He called attention to the corruption of morals, which he declared to be worse than any state of things ever known before; he forbore from promising easy conquests and victories where all the blood would be that of the infidel; on the contrary, he told the people that the penances inflicted by God Himself for their sins were the clash of arms, the fatigues and dangers of war, the hard fighting and physical suffering of a campaign under the sun of Syria; and, which is very significant, he appears to have invoked a curse upon all who refused to obey the summons, and follow to the Holy War.

The first Crusaders set off with light and buoyant hearts; they were marching, they thought, to certain conquest; the walls would fall down before them: it was a privilege and a sacred pleasure to have taken the sign of the Cross. The second army started with gloomy forebodings of misery and suffering; they were going on a penitential journey; they were about to encounter perils which they knew to be terrible, an enemy whom they knew to be countless as the sands of their own deserts, not because they wanted to fight, but because Bernard, who could not err, told them that God Himself laid this penance on their shoulders. Every step that brought Peter’s rough and rude army nearer to Constantinople was a step of pleasure: every step that the second army took was an addition to the weariness and boredom of the whole thing. The most penitential of all was the young king, Louis VII. of France, upon whose conscience there lay the terrible crime of having burned the church at Vitry. For in the church, which he had fired himself, were thirteen hundred men, women, and children, who were all burned with it. The king would fain have saved them, but could not, and when he saw their blackened and half-burned bodies, his soul was sick within him for remorse and sorrow. It was a calamity—for which, however, the king was not, perhaps, wholly responsible—worse than that modern burning of the women of Santiago. In Germany they began to expiate their sins by murdering the Jews, a cheap and even profitable way of purifying the troubled conscience, because they plundered as well as murdered them. Bernard, to his infinite credit, stayed the hand of persecution, and showed the people that this was not, hateful as a Jew must always be to a Christian, the way pointed out by Heaven. The preaching of Bernard was seconded by the exhortations of the poets, who united in singing the praises of those who take the Cross, and in denouncing those who refused. “Rise,” says one bard,

The Crusade consisted wholly of Germans and French. The former went first, headed by Conrad, King of the Romans, who left his son Henry in charge of his dominions. They got through the Greek emperor’s dominions with some difficulty, being unruly and little amenable to discipline, but were at last safely conveyed across the straits to Asia Minor, where they waited the arrival of King Louis.

In France an enormous army had been collected, by help of the old cry of “Dieu le veut,” the magic of which had not yet died out; there must have been men, not very old, who remembered the preaching of Peter, and the frantic cries with which the Cross was demanded after one of his fiery harangues. Bernard wrote to the pope, with monkish exaggeration, that “the villages and the castles are deserted, and one sees none but widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers are yet living.” Most of them, alas! were to remain widows and orphans indeed, for the husbands and fathers were never destined to return. And, as in the First Crusade, many of those who joined ruined themselves in procuring the arms and money necessary for their outfit. The Church, as before, kindly came to their assistance by buying the lands of them at a nominal value.

The gravest mistake was that made at the very outset when the barons were permitted to take with them their wives. Queen Eleanor, who afterwards married our Henry II., went with her husband, accompanied by a great number of ladies, and the presence of large numbers of women in the camp caused grave disorder, and subsequently great peril, both to the French and German armies.

It was in the early winter of 1147 that the Crusaders crossed the Hellespont. Without waiting for the French, the Germans, divided into two bodies, had pushed on. They reckoned on the friendship of the Greeks, but they were grievously disappointed. Extravagant prices were demanded for the most inferior food; lime was put into the bread, which killed many; the Turcopoles hovered about and cut off the supplies; but, in spite of these obstacles, a portion of the army, under the Bishop of Freisingen, managed to reach Syria. As for the larger part, under Conrad, they were guided as far as DorylÆum, where the first Crusaders had so hard a battle. Here the guides ran away, and the Turks fell upon them. The army consisted of seventy thousand horse, and a vast multitude of foot soldiers, of women, and of children. About seven thousand horse escaped with King Conrad. All the rest were slaughtered. No greater calamity had ever happened to the Christian arms. Conrad got back to NicÆa, where Louis, who had just arrived, was encamped. The French resolved to take the way by the sea-shore. We need not follow through all the perils of their march. They fought their way to Ephesus; thence, crossing the MÆander, they came to a place called Satalia, at the western extremity of Cilicia; and here Louis left them, and went by sea to Antioch. The plague broke out among the troops: the Greeks refused them any help, which they got from the very Turks whom they came to fight, and finally, out of the hundreds of thousands who had left the West a year before, a few thousands only struggled into Syria. Of the women who went with them, their wives and mistresses, not one got to Palestine, save only Queen Eleanor and her suite.

Raymond of Antioch was the cousin of Eleanor. He welcomed Louis and his queen to his little court, and immediately began to cast about for some way of making their visit to Palestine serviceable to himself. It was the way of all these Syrian knights and barons. Every man looked to himself and to his own interests; no man cared about the general interest. Jocelyn of Edessa, who was not yet put into prison, Pons of Tripoli, Raymond of Antioch, all hoped to catch the great kings of the West on their way to Jerusalem, and to turn the Crusade into such channels as might advance their own interests.

Suspecting nothing, Louis made a lengthened stay at Antioch, waiting for the remains of his great army. Raymond, thinking the best means of getting at the king was through his consort, employed every means in his power to amuse Eleanor. She, who had no kind of sympathy with the piety or remorse of her royal husband, preferred the feastings and amusements of Antioch to anything else, and would gladly have protracted them. But her own conduct and the levity of her manners caused grievous scandal, and effectually prevented her from having any influence over the king, who, when pressed to help Raymond, coldly replied that, before anything else, he must visit the holy places. Raymond, who had succeeded in pleasing the queen, if he had not won her heart, by way of revenge, persuaded Eleanor to announce her intention of getting divorced from the king on the ground of consanguinity, while Raymond declared that he would keep her, by force, if necessary, at his court. Louis took council of his followers, and by their advice, carried off his queen by night, and made the best of his way to Tripoli, where he was met by an emissary of Queen Milicent, who was afraid he would be drawn into some enterprise by the count, urging him to come straight on to Jerusalem.

In June, 1148, a great council of the assembled kings and chiefs was held at Acre. At this meeting were present King Baldwin, Queen Milicent, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the barons of the kingdom, and the Grand Masters of the two great orders of the Temple and St. John, on behalf of the Christian kingdom; while the Crusaders were represented by Kings Conrad and Louis, Otto Bishop of Freisingen, brother of Conrad, Frederick (afterwards Barbarossa), his nephew, the Marquis of Montferrat, Cardinal Guy of Florence, Count Thierry of Flanders, and many other noble lords. Only it was remarked, by those who were anxious for the future, that the Counts of Tripoli, Edessa, and Antioch were not present, while it was ominous that Eleanor of France did not take her seat with the other ladies who were present at the council.

There were several courses open to the Crusaders. They might retake Edessa, and so establish again that formidable outpost as a bulwark to the kingdom. They might strengthen the hands of Raymond, and so make up for the loss of Edessa. They might take Ascalon, always a thorn in the side of the realm; or they might strike out a new line altogether, and win glory for themselves by an entirely new conquest, an exploit of danger and honour. Most unfortunately, they resolved upon the last, and determined on taking the city of Damascus. Such a feat of arms commended itself naturally to the rough fighting men. They despised Jocelyn; they resented the treatment of Raymond; and therefore they could not be got to see that to strengthen the hands of either of these was to strengthen the power of the Christians, while to conquer new lands was to increase their weakness and multiply the hatred and thirst of revenge of their enemies. And with that want of foresight which always distinguished the Crusaders, they followed up their resolution by immediate action, and started on their new enterprise with the eagerness of children, in spite of a burning July sun. The King of Jerusalem marched first, because his men knew the roads. Next came King Louis, with his French, and lastly, the Germans, under Conrad. On the west side of Damascus lay its famous gardens, and it was determined first to attack the city from this side. The paths were narrow, and behind the bushes were men armed with spears, which they poked through at the invaders as they passed. The brick walls which hedged in the gardens were perforated, with a similar object. There was thus a considerable amount of fighting to be done in dislodging these hidden enemies before the Christians managed to make themselves masters of the position.position. It was done at last, all the leaders having performed the usual prodigies of strength and valour—Conrad himself cut a gigantic Saracen right through the body, so that his head, neck, shoulder, and left arm fell off together, a clean sweep indeed—and the Damascenes gave themselves up for lost. And then happened a very singular and inexplicable circumstance. The Christians deliberately abandoned a position which had cost them so much to win, and resolved to cross over the river to the other side, where they were persuaded that the attack would be much easier. They went across. They found themselves without water, without provisions, and in a far worse position for the siege than before. The Damascenes received reinforcements, closed up the approaches to the gardens, and quietly waited the course of events. There was nothing left but to retreat; and the Christians, breaking up their camp in the middle of the night, retreated, or rather fled, in disgrace and confusion. This was the end of the second Crusade.

Why did they leave the gardens? Many answers, all pointing to treachery, were given to the question. Some said that Thierry of Flanders wanted the city, and because the chiefs would not promise it to him, preferred seeing it remain in the hands of the enemy, and so became a traitor. Others told how the Templars arranged the whole matter for three great casks full of gold byzants, which, when they were examined, turned out to be all copper. Raymond of Antioch, according to a third story, managed the false counsels out of revenge to the king. And so on. Talk everywhere, treachery somewhere, that was clear, because treachery was in the Syrian air, and because knights, and barons, and priests were all alike selfish and interested, rogues and cheats—all but King Baldwin. “Whoever were the traitors,” says the historian, “let them learn that sooner or later they shall be rewarded according to their merits, unless the Lord deign to extend them his mercy.” He evidently inclines to the hope that mercy will not be extended to them.

Disgusted with a people who would not be served, and wearied of broken promises and faithless oaths, the chiefs of the Crusade made haste to shake off the dust of their feet, and to leave the doomed kingdom to its fate. Some of their men remained behind, a reinforcement which enabled Baldwin to keep up his courage and show a bold front to the enemy so long as his life lasted.

NÛr-ed-dÍn, directly they were gone, invaded Antioch, and Raymond was killed in one of the small skirmishes which took place. At this time, too, Jocelyn of Edessa fell into the hands of the Turks, and was put into prison. It was almost impossible for Baldwin to defend Antioch alone. Nevertheless, he held it manfully, and it was not till after his time that it was ceded to the Greeks, who in their turn surrendered it to the Turks. Tripoli, the count of which town was himself assassinated, remained the only bulwark of the kingdom. The eyes of Palestine were turned again upon Europe. But from Europe little help could now be expected. Louis, returning defeated and inglorious, had been hailed as a conqueror. Medals were struck in his honour, with the lying legend—

And, though he promised to lead another Crusade, his conscience was appeased by his pilgrimage, and his love of praise was satisfied by the honours he received. Therefore he went no more. Moreover, two new methods of crusading were discovered, nearer home, and far more profitable. In the north of Germany lay a large and fertile country, inhabited wholly by pagans. Why not conquer that, and reduce so fair a land to Christianity? And in Spain, so close at hand for pious Frenchmen, were vast provinces, rich beyond measure, all in the hands of those very Saracens whom they were asked to go all the way to Palestine in order to fight. And then there died both Bernard and Suger, the sagacious Suger, who saw the disgrace which had fallen on the Christian arms, and wished to repair it by sending out another army in place of that which Louis had madly thrown away.

The boundaries of poor young Baldwin’s kingdom were greatly contracted. Nothing now remained but what we may call Palestine proper, with a dubious and tottering hold on a few outlying towns. Fifty years had been sufficient to turn the sons of the rough and straight-forward soldiers of Godfrey, whose chief fault seems to have been their ungovernable fits of rage, into crafty and double-faced Syrians, slothful and sensual, careless of aught but their own interests, and brave only when glory, to which they still clung, could be got out of it. Nor was the kingdom itself free from discord and variance. Queen Milicent retained her authority, nor could she be persuaded to give it up. It was the most monstrous thing—it shows, however, how the feudal ideas had become corrupted—that she should insist on holding part of the realm in her own name. She did so, however, giving Baldwin Tyre as his principal place, and retaining Jerusalem as her own. She had a following of barons, who preferred, for many reasons, to be under the rule of a woman. The reins of government were confided to her own cousin, one Manasseh, and Baldwin had the mortification of finding himself in times of peace, few enough, it is true, only the second man in a country of which he was the nominal king. He claimed his rights; these were refused. He besieged Manasseh in his castle; he even besieged his mother in hers. The patriarch acted as mediator, and, after long negotiations, a compromise was effected, by which Milicent, more fortunate than her equally ambitious sister, Alice of Antioch, received the city of Nablous to hold as her own for the rest of her life.

It was during these negotiations, or at their close, that the king held a great council at Tripoli on the state of the kingdom. And it was while the council was sitting that Count Raymond was assassinated—no one knew at whose instigation, because the murderers were instantly cut to pieces.

The Turks made an attempt upon the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, and while the knights were gone to defend Nablous, they encamped on the Mount of Olives. Then the people of Jerusalem went out, as full of courage as Gideon’s three hundred, and drove them off with great slaughter. Their success—success was now so rare—raised the spirits of all the Christians, and the king resolved to follow it up by laying siege to that old enemy of Christendom, Ascalon, which was to Jerusalem even as the mound which Diabolus raised up against the city of Mansoul in Bunyan’s allegory. It was in 1153 that this strong place, which ought to have been in the hands of the Christians fifty years before, had it not been for the jealousy of Count Raymond, fell at last. Baldwin marched against it with all the forces he could command. A fleet watched the port from the sea, while the siege was hurried on by land. Every ship that brought pilgrims was ordered to proceed southwards, and the pilgrims were pressed into the service. Nevertheless, the work went on slowly, and after more than four months, reinforcements were received from Egypt, and the besieged were as confident as ever. Accident gave the Christians the town. They had a moveable tower, higher than the walls, with which they were able to annoy the enemy almost with impunity. One day, when it was laid alongside the wall, the besieged threw a vast quantity of wood, on which they poured oil and sulphur, between the ramparts and the town. This they set fire to; but, unfortunately for themselves, without first considering which way the wind was blowing. It was a strong east wind, and the flames were blown towards the walls. They blazed all day and all night, and when they ceased, at length, the stones were calcined, and that portion of the wall about the fire fell down with a crash. The Christians wanted nothing more. At daybreak the soldiers were awakened by hearing the noise, and rushed towards the spot. They were too late. The Templars were already crowding in at the breach, and, in order to get all the plunder for themselves, these chivalrous knights had stationed men to prevent the army from following them.

remarks the historian. Their cupidity proved the death of a great many of their body, for they were too few to carry everything before them, as they had hoped. Forty Templars perished in this attack, and the rest were not able to get in at all, for the people drove them back, and in an incredibly short time, fortified the broken wall with great beams of timber; and then, safe for a time behind their rampart, they tied ropes to the corpses of the knights, and dangled them up and down outside the wall, to the indignation of the Christians. After deliberation, confession, and a grand mass, a general assault was ordered, and for a whole day hand-to-hand fighting was carried on. And then the city yielded, and obtained fair terms. Provided they evacuated the town within three days, their lives were to be spared. And at last, in delusive imitation of the glories which were never to return again to the Christian arms, the standard of the Cross floated from the towers of Ascalon, the “Bride of Syria.” The unfortunate people, with their wives and children, made what haste they could to get ready, and in two days had all left their city, carrying with them all their portable goods. The king honourably kept his word with them, and gave them guides to conduct them to Egypt across the desert. All went well so long as their guides were with them. But these left them after a time, and gave them over to a certain Turk, who had been with them in Ascalon—“valiant in war, but a perverse man, and without loyalty”—on his promise to conduct them safely to Egypt. But on the way he and his men fell on them, robbed them of all their treasures, and went away—whither, history sayeth not—leaving them to wander helplessly up and down the desert. And so the poor creatures all perished. It is a pity that we cannot ascertain what became of the admirable Turk who knew so well how to seize an opportunity.

During the siege of Ascalon, the Lady Constance of Antioch, whom the king had been anxious to see married for a long time, chose, to everybody’s astonishment, a simple knight, one Renaud de Chatillon, as her husband. The king, anxious above all that a man should be at the head of Antioch, consented at once, and Renaud, of whom we shall have more to say, wedded the fair widow. Although the king approved of the marriage, it appeared that the Patriarch of Antioch did not, and trusting to the sacredness of his person went about the city spreading all sorts of stories about the fortunate young bridegroom. Renaud dissembled his resentment, and invited him to the citadel, and then, by way of giving the reverend bishop a lesson as to the punishment due to calumniators, set him in the sun all day, with his bald head covered with honey to attract the wasps. After this diabolical audacity, as William of Tyre calls it, there was nothing left for the patriarch but to pack up and get away to Jerusalem as fast as he could. The king reprimanded Renaud, but too late, for the mischief was done, and the head of the prelate already painfully stung.

Internal troubles occupied the king for the next year or two. These were caused by the quarrels between the two military orders and the Church of Jerusalem. We hear only one side of the story, which throws the whole blame upon the knights. No doubt the clergy were also in some way to blame. By special permission of the pope, no interdict or excommunication could touch the Knights of St. John or the Knights Templars. They were free from all episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to the pope. It pleased Raymond, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, for no reason given by the chronicler, to raise up all sorts of troubles against the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the prelates of the Church, on the subject of parochial jurisdiction and the tithes. The way they showed their enmity is very suggestive of many things. “All those whom the bishops had excommunicated, or interdicted, were freely welcomed by the Hospitallers, and admitted to the celebration of the divine offices. If they were ill, the brothers gave them the viaticum and extreme unction, and those who died received sepulture. If it happened that for some enormous crime”—probably the withholding of tithes—“the churches of the city were put under interdict, the brothers, ringing all their bells, and making a great clamouring, called the people to their own chapels, and received the oblations themselves; and as for their priests, they took them without any reference whatever to the bishops.” Obviously, therefore, the quarrel was entirely an ecclesiastical squabble, due to the desire of the Church to aggrandize and preserve its power. The knights, ecclesia in ecclesiÂ, a church within a church, would not recognise in any way the authority of the patriarch. For this they had a special charter from the pope. But they would not pay tithes, and they were constantly acquiring new territories. We may have very little doubt that it was the question of tithes on the knights’ lands which caused all the quarrel. But it is very remarkable to note the way in which the historian speaks of interdicts and excommunications. In the West an interdict was a great and solemn thing. In England only one interdict, at the memory of which the people shuddered for many years to come, was ever laid upon the country, while, though English kings have been excommunicated, it has happened rarely. In Palestine the custom of debarring offenders, whether towns or individuals, from the privileges of the Church, is spoken of as quite a common practice. The thing, evidently, was often happening. The patriarch was handy with his interdicts, and it must have galled him to the very soul to find that the people cared nothing for them, because they could get their consolations of the Church just as well from the knights.

One cannot, however, defend the manner in which the knights vexed the heart of the patriarch in other ways. For whenever he went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the knights, who had a great building opposite (in what is now called the MuristÀn), began to ring all their bells at once, and made so great a noise that he could not be heard. And once, though one can hardly believe this, they went to the doors of the church and shot arrows at the people who were praying. Probably they pretended to shoot them in order to frighten the priests. Such a practical joke, and its effect in the skurrying away of people and priests, would be quite in accordance with the spirit of the times.

The patriarch, though now nearly a hundred years of age, went himself to Rome, but got no satisfaction. He had with him six bishops and a band of lawyers to plead his cause; but he was badly received by the pope and badly treated by the cardinals. And after being put off from day to day, finding that he could get no redress, he retired in shame and confusion, and probably patched up some sort of peace with his enemies the knights.

And now followed a sort of lull before the storm, three or four years of actual peace and internal prosperity. Renaud de Chatillon disgraced the cause of Christianity by an unprovoked attack upon the Isle of Cyprus, which he overran from end to end, murdering, pillaging, and committing every kind of outrage. NÛr-ed-dÍn made himself master of Damascus, an event which more than counter-balanced the loss of Ascalon. And Baldwin committed the only crime which history can allege against him. For he had given permission to certain Turcomans and Arabs to feed their cattle on the slopes of Libanus. Here, for a time, they lived peaceably, harming none and being harmed by none. But the king was loaded with debts which he could not pay. Some one in an evil hour suggested to him an attack upon this pastoral people. Taking with him a few knights, the king went himself and overran the country sword in hand. Some of them escaped by flight, leaving their flocks and herds behind; some buried themselves in the forests; some were made slaves; and some were mercilessly slaughtered. The booty in cattle and horses was immense, and Baldwin found, by this act of iniquity, a means of paying off, at least, the most pressing of his creditors. But his subsequent misfortunes were attributed to this perfidy, the worst which a Christian king of Jerusalem had as yet displayed.

NÛr-ed-dÍn laid siege to the castle of Banias, into which Count Humphrey had introduced the knights of St. John on conditions of their sharing in the defence. Baldwin went to its assistance. NÛr-ed-dÍn raised the siege and retired. The king, seeing no use in staying any longer, began his southward march. They encamped the first night near the lake Huleh, where they lay without proper guards, believing the enemy to be far enough away. The king’s own body-guard had left him, and some of the barons had left the army altogether, followed by their own men. In the morning the enemy fell upon them all straggling about the country. Baldwin retreated to a hilltop with half a dozen men, and gained in safety the fortress of Safed. And then the historian adds a sentence which shows how utterly rotten and corrupt was this kingdom, founded by the brave arms of Godfrey and his knights. “There was very little slaughter, because everybody, not only those who were renowned for their wisdom and their experience in war, but also the simple soldiers, eager to save their miserable lives, gave themselves up without resistance to the enemy like vile slaves, feeling no horror for a shameful servitude, and not dreading the ignominy which attaches to this conduct.”

Is it possible to imagine a knight of the First Crusade, or even a simple soldier, preferring to surrender at once than to risk the chance of life in the battle? And when the news came south, which happened soon enough, instead of flying to arms, the men flew to the altars, chanting the psalm “Domine, salvum fac regem.”

Fortunately one of those little crusades, consisting of a fleet and a few thousand men, arrived at this juncture, headed by Stephen, Count of Perche. Baldwin welcomed them with delight, and made the best use of them, defeating by their help the Saracens at every point in the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch, and lastly gave the Damascenes the most complete defeat they had ever experienced. It must always be remembered that it was by such windfalls and adventitious aids as these that the kingdom of Jerusalem was maintained. The pilgrims who came to pray fought in the intervals of prayer; a small percentage of them always remained in the country and attached themselves to the fortunes of king or baron. When the influx of pilgrims was great the new blood kept up the stamina, physical as well as moral, of the Syrian Christians; when the influx was small the king had to depend upon the pullani, the Syrian born, the creoles of the country, who were weedy, false, and cowardly, like those knights and soldiers who surrendered, rather than strike a blow for their lives, to NÛr-ed-dÍn.

In 1160 died Queen Milicent. Against her moral character, since the scandal about Hugh of Jaffa, no word had been breathed. But she was ambitious, crafty, and intriguing, like her sisters, not one of whom lived happily with her husband. She founded a convent on the Mount of Olives, in return for which the ecclesiastical biographers, as is their wont, are loud in their praises of her. Her youngest sister was made its first abbess. She died of some mysterious malady, for which no cure could be found. Her memory failed, and her limbs were already long dead when she breathed her last. No one was allowed to go into the room where she lay save a very few, including her two sisters, the Countess of Tripoli, widow of Raymond, and the Abbess of Saint Lazarus of Bethany. Probably the disease she suffered from was that which broke out in her grandson, Baldwin IV., leprosy. The year before her death the king had contracted a splendid marriage, advantageous from every point of view. He married Theodora, niece to the Emperor of Constantinople. The new queen was only thirteen: she was singularly beautiful, and brought, which was of more importance, a large dowry in ready money. Baldwin was passionately fond of his young bride, and from the moment of his marriage gave up all those follies of which he had been guilty before. But he had a very short period of this new and better life. Renaud de Chatillon, who had made his peace with the emperor, by means of the most abject and humiliating submissions, got into trouble again, and was taken prisoner by the Mohammedans. Baldwin, affairs in the north falling into confusion in consequence of this accident, went to aid in driving back the enemy. Here he was seized with dysentery and fever, diseases common enough in the Syrian climate. His physician, one Barak, an Arab, gave him pills, of which he was to take some immediately, the rest by degrees. But the pills did not help him, and he grew worse and worse. They said he was poisoned. Some of the pills were given to a dog, which died after taking them—the story is, however, only told from hearsay, and is probably false. He was brought to Beyrout, where he languished for a few days and then died, in his thirty-third year, leaving no children.

Great was the mourning of the people. Other kings had been more powerful in war; none had been braver. Other kings had been more successful; none had so well deserved success. And while his predecessors, one and all, were strangers in the land, Baldwin III. was born and brought up among them all; he knew them all by name, and was courteous and affable to all. In those degenerate days he was almost the only man in the kingdom whose word could be trusted; moreover, he was young, handsome, bright, and generous. The only faults he had were faults common to youth, while from those which most degrade a man in other men’s eyes, gluttony and intemperance, he was entirely free. Even the Saracens loved this free-handed chivalrous prince, and mourned for him. When some one proposed to NÛr-ed-dÍn to take advantage of the confusion in the country and invade it, he refused, with that stately courtesy which distinguished even the least of the Saracen princes. “Let us,” said he, “have compassion and indulgence for a grief so just, since the Christians have lost a prince such that the world possesses not his equal.”

The wiseacres remembered how, when he stood godfather to his brother’s infant son, he gave him his own name, and on being asked what else he would give him, “I will give him,” said the king, with his ready laugh—it was his laugh which the people loved—“I will give him the kingdom of Jerusalem.” The gossips had shaken their heads over words so ominous, and now, with that melancholy pleasure, almost a consolation, which comes of finding your own prognostications of evil correct, they recalled the words of fate and strengthened themselves in their superstition.

Ill-omened or not, the words had come true. Baldwin was dead, his brother was to succeed him, and his nephew was to come after. And henceforth the days of the kingdom of Jerusalem are few, and full of trouble.

The kingdom of Jerusalem, like a Roman colony, was founded by men alone. Those women who came with the Crusaders either died on the way, unable to endure the fatigue, heat, and misery of the march, or fell into the hands of the Turks, whose mistresses they became. The Crusaders therefore had to find wives for themselves in the country. They took them from the Syrian Christians or the Armenians, occasionally, too, from Saracen women who were willing to be baptized. Their children, subjected to the enervating influences of the climate, and imbibing the Oriental ideas of their mothers, generally preserved the courage of their fathers for one or two generations, when they lost it and became wholly cowardly and sensual and treacherous. But the kingdom was always being reinforced by the arrival of new knights and men at arms, so that for all practical purposes it was a kingdom of the West transplanted to the East. All the manners and customs were purely European. Falconry and hunting were the most favourite sports. They amused the Saracens, when they came to have friendly relations with them, by tournaments and riding at the quintain. Indoors they beguiled the time which was not taken up by eating, drinking, or religious services, in chess, dicing, and games of chance. They were all great gamblers, and forgot in the chances of the dice all their misfortunes and anxieties. Those who were rich enough entertained minstrels, and had readers to read them the lives of illustrious warriors and kings. Later on, but this was always done with the greatest secrecy, even by Frederick II., who cared little enough what was said of him, they learned to admire the performances of dancing girls. Richard of Cornwall was so delighted with their voluptuous dances that he carried a number of them to England. As for their manner of living it was coarse and gross. They brought their Western appetites to the East, and, ignorant of the necessity of light food and temperance in a hot climate, they made huge meals of meat and drank vast quantities of wine. This was probably the main cause of their ungovernable temper, and the sudden outbursts of rage which sometimes made them commit acts of such extraordinary folly. And this was most certainly the cause why they all died young. And though they imbibed every other Oriental habit readily—Oriental voluptuousness, Oriental magnificence, Oriental dress—they never learned the truth that Mohammed enforced so rigidly, that to preserve life we must be temperate. Fever destroyed them, and leprosy, that most miserable of all diseases, crept into their blood, possibly through the eating of pork, of which they were inordinately fond.

For the rest, they swore enormous oaths, vying with each other in finding strange and startling expressions; they were always rebelling against the authority of the Church, and always ready to be terrified by the threats of the priests and to repent with tears. In religion they exercised a sort of fetish worship. For it was no matter what odds were against them so long as the wood of the True Cross was with them; it mattered little what manner of lives they led so long as a priest would absolve them; there was no sin which could not be expiated by the slaughter of the Mohammedans. Every Crusader had a right to heaven; this, whatever else it was, was an escape from the fires of hell. The devil, who was always roaming up and down the world, appearing now in one form and now in another, had no power over a soldier of the Cross. Everybody, for instance, knows the story of the Picard knight. He had made a bargain with the devil, to get revenge—this obtained, he could not get rid of his infernal ally. He took the Cross and the devil ceased to torment him. But when Jerusalem was taken, and he returned home, he found the devil there already, awaiting him in his own castle. Therefore he took the Cross again, went outre mer, stayed there, and was no more troubled. And every Crusader was ready to swear that he had never himself met any other devil than the black Ethiopians of the Egyptian army. The saints, on the other hand, frequently appeared, as we have seen.

Such, in a few words, were the manners of the Christians over whom ruled Baldwin III.; an unruly, ungodly set, superstitious to their fingers’ ends, and only redeemed from utter savagery by their unbounded loyalty to their chiefs, by their dauntless courage in battle, and by whatever little gleams of light may have shone upon them through the chinks and joints of the iron armour with which they had covered, so to speak, and hidden the fair and shining limbs of Christianity.