The Christian kingdom, reduced after Saladin’s conquest to a strip of land along the coast, with a few strong cities, depended no longer on the annual reinforcement of pilgrims, but on the strength and wealth of the two military orders. Unfortunately these quarrelled, and the whole of Syria became divided, Mohammedans as well as Christians, into partisans of Knights Templars, or of Knights Hospitallers. Henry of Champagne, the titular king, was only anxious to get away, while Bohemond, the Prince of Antioch, was only anxious to extend his own territories. In Germany alone the crusading spirit yet lingered, and a few Germans flocked yearly to the sacred places. Germany did more. The emperor, with forty thousand men, went to Palestine by way of Italy. When he arrived, he found, to his amazement, that the Christians did not want him—the truce concluded with the Mohammedans being not yet broken. The barons and princes had resolved not to break it at all; but rather to seek its renewal. But the Germans had not accomplished their long journey for nothing. They issued from their camp at Acre in arms, and broke the truce by wantonly attacking the Saracens. Reprisals at once followed, as a matter of course. Jaffa was attacked. Henry of Champagne hastened to its defence. There he fell from a high window, and was killed. The arrival of more Crusaders enabled the Christians to meet El Melik el ‘?dil in open field, and to gain a complete victory. They followed it up by taking the seaboard towns, and the whole coast of Syria was once more in the hands of the Christians. Of Jerusalem no one thought except the common soldiers, with whom the capture of the city remained still a dream. Isabelle, the widow of Henry, was married a fourth time, to Amaury de Lusignan, who had succeeded his brother Guy on the throne of Cyprus, and now became the titular king of Jerusalem, a shadowy title, which was destined never to become a real one, except for a very brief interval.

When the Germans went away, the Christians of Palestine were once more at the mercy of the Saracens, with whom they had broken the treaty. The Bishop of Acre was sent to supplicate help from Europe. He was shipwrecked and drowned almost immediately after leaving port. Other messengers were sent. These also were drowned in a tempest. So for a long time news of the sad condition of the Christians did not reach Europe. But, indeed, it was difficult to raise the crusading spirit again in the West. Like a flame of dry straw it had burned fiercely for a short time, and then expired. Jerusalem was fading from the minds of the people. It was become a city of memories, round which the glories of those myths which gathered about the name of Godfrey and Tancred were already present. Innocent III., a young and ardent pope, wrote letter upon letter. These produced little effect. He sent preachers to promise men remission of sins in return for taking the Cross. But it was a time when men were not thinking much about their sins. Priests imposed the penance of pilgrimage to Palestine; but it does not appear that many pilgrims went; and boxes were placed in all the churches to collect money; but it is not certain that much money was put into them. Then Fulke de Neuilly, the most eloquent priest of the time, was sent to preach a crusade, and succeeded in fanning the embers of the crusading enthusiasm once more into an evanescent and short-lived flame. How little of religious zeal there was in the movement may be judged by the sequel, and we cannot here delay to detail the progress of the Crusade which ended in the conquest of Constantinople. No history can be found more picturesque, more full of incident, and more illustrative of the manners and thoughts of the time; but it does not concern Jerusalem. An old empire fell, and a new one was founded, but Christendom was outraged by the spectacle of an expedition which started full of zeal for the conquest of the Holy Land, and was diverted from its original purposes to serve the ambition of its leaders, and the avarice of a commercial city.

Egypt and Syria, meantime, were kept quiet from war by troubles not caused by man. The Nile ceased for a time to overflow, and a fearful famine, a famine of which the records speak as dreadful beyond all comparison, set in; during this men kept themselves alive by eating the flesh of those who died, while the cities were filled with corpses, and the river bore down on its tide dead bodies as numerous as the lilies which bloom on its surface in spring. And before the famine, which extended over Syria as well, had ceased, an earthquake shook the country from end to end. Damascus, Tyre, Nablous, were heaps of ruins; the walls of Acre and Tripoli fell down; Jerusalem alone seemed spared, and there the Christian and the Mohammedan met together, still trembling with fear, to thank God for their safety. The sums of money which Fulke de Neuilly had raised in his preaching were spent in repairing the walls which had fallen, and the knights sent messengers in all directions to implore the assistance of the West. Amaury, a wise and prudent chief, died, leaving an infant son, who also died a few days after him, and Isabelle was a widow for the fourth time. Pope Innocent III. could find none to go to the Holy Land but those whom he ordered to go by way of penance. Thus, the murderers of Conrad, Bishop of Wurtzburg, were enjoined to bear arms for four years against the Saracens. They were to wear no garments of bright colours; never to assist at public sports; not to marry; to march barefooted, and dressed in woollen; to fast on bread and water two days in the week, and whenever they came to a city to go to the church, with bare backs, a rope round the neck, and rods in the hand, there to receive flagellation. But their penance was not so cruel as that inflicted on the luckless Frotmond, described above (p. 124). Another criminal, one Robert, a knight, went to the pope and confessed that while a captive in Egypt, during the dreadful famine, he had killed his wife and child, and kept himself alive by eating their flesh. The pope ordered him to pass three years in the Holy Land.

The Crown of Jerusalem devolved, by the death of Amaury de Lusignan, on the daughter of Isabelle, by her husband, Conrad of Tyre. The barons, looking for a fit husband to share the throne with her, that is, to become their leader in war, selected John de Brienne. He was recommended by the King of France, “as a man good in arms, safe in war, and provident in business.” And hopes were held out that another crusade would be sent from France. On the strength of this expectation, the Templars, in spite of contrary advice from the Hospitallers, broke the truce which yet existed with the Mahometans, and open war began again. King John de Brienne came with an army of three hundred knights, and no more; fortresses and towns were taken; the Christians began to drop off, and desert the falling country; and the new king soon found himself with no place that he could call his own, except the city of Acre. He sent to the pope for assistance. The pope could not help him, because there was a new and much easier crusade on the point of commencing, that against the Albigeois. And then happened that most wonderful episode in all this tangled story, the Crusade of the Children, “expeditio nugatoria, expeditio derisoria.”

It had long been the deliberate opinion of many ecclesiastics that the misfortunes of the Christian kingdom, and the failure of so many Crusades, were due to the impure lives of the Christian soldiers. Since the First Crusade it had been the constant and laudable aim of the Church to maintain among the croisÉs a feeling that personal purity was the first requisite in an expedition inspired solely by religious zeal. All their efforts were vain; laws were made, which were broken at once. Shameful punishments were threatened, of which no one took any notice. Even the camp of Saint Louis himself was filled with every kind of immorality; while that of Richard’s Crusade, spite of the strictest laws, became the scene of profligacy the most unbridled. For every one Crusader, in the later expeditions, who was moved by a spirit of piety, there might be found ninety-nine who took the Cross for love of fighting, for the sake of their seigneurs, for sheer desire of change, for a release from serfdom, for getting away from the burden of wife and family, for the chance of plunder and license, and for every other unworthy excuse. Thus it was that the religious wars fostered and promoted vice; and the failure of army after army was looked on as a clear manifestation of God’s wrath against the sins of the camp.

This feeling was roused to its highest pitch when, in the year 1212, certain priests—Nicolas was the name of one of these mischievous madmen—went about France and Germany calling on the children to perform what the fathers, through their wickedness, had been unable to effect, promising that the sea should be dry to enable them to march across; that the Saracens would be miraculously stricken with a panic at sight of them; that God would, through the hands of children only, whose lives were yet pure, work the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre. Thousands—it is said fifty thousand—children of both sexes responded to the call. They listened to the impassioned preaching of the monks, believed their lying miracles, their visions, their portents, their references to the Scriptures, and, in spite of all that their parents could do, rushed to take the Cross, boys and girls together, and streamed along the roads which led to Marseilles and Genoa, singing hymns, waving branches, replying to those who asked whither they were going, “We go to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy Sepulchre,” and shouting their rallying cry, “Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross.” They admitted whoever came, provided he took the Cross; the infection spread, and the children could not be restrained from joining them in the towns and villages along their route. Their miserable parents put them in prison; they escaped; they forbade them to go; the children went in spite of prohibition. They had no money, no provisions, no leaders; but the charity of the towns they passed through supported them. At their rear streamed the usual tail of camp followers, those people who lived wherever soldiers were found, following in the track of the army like vultures, to prey on the living, and to rob the dead. Of these there came many, ribauds et ribaudes, corrupting the boys, and robbing them of their little means; so that long before the army reached the shores of the Mediterranean the purity of many was gone for ever.

There were two main bodies. One of these directed its way through Germany, across the Alps, to Genoa. On the road they were robbed of all the gifts which had been presented them; they were exposed to heat and want, and very many either died on the march or wandered away from the road, and so became lost to sight; when they reached Italy they dispersed about the country seeking food, were stripped by the villagers, and in some cases reduced to slavery. Only seven thousand out of their number arrived at Genoa. Here they stayed for some days. They looked down upon the Mediterranean, hoping that its bright waters would divide to let them pass. But they did not; there was no miracle wrought in their favour; a few, of noble birth, were received among the Genoese families, and have given rise to distinguished houses of Genoa; among them is the house of Vivaldi. The rest, disappointed and disheartened, made their way back again, and got home at length, the girls with the loss of their virtue, the boys with the loss of their belief, all barefooted and in rags, laughed at by the towns they went through, and wondering why they had ever gone at all.

This was the end of the German army. That of the French was not so fortunate, for none of them ever got back again at all. When they arrived at Marseilles, thinned probably by the same causes as those which had dispersed the Germans, they found, like their brethren, that the sea did not open a path for them, as had been promised. Perhaps some were disheartened and went home again. But fortune appeared to favour them. There were two worthy merchants at Marseilles, named Hugh Ferreus, and William Porcus, Iron Hugh and Pig William, who traded with the East, and had in port seven ships, in which they proposed to convey the children to Palestine. With a noble generosity they offered to take them for nothing; all for love of religion, and out of the pure kindness of their hearts. Of course this offer was accepted with joy, and the seven vessels, laden with the happy little Crusaders, singing their hymns, and flying their banners, sailed out from Marseilles, bound for the East, accompanied by William the Good and Hugh the Pious. It was not known to the children, of course, that the chief trade of these merchants was the lucrative business of kidnapping Christian children for the Alexandrian market. It was so, however, and these respectable tradesmen had never before made so splendid a coup. Unfortunately, off the Island of St. Peter, they encountered bad weather, and two ships went down, with all on board. What must have been the feelings of the philanthropists, Pig William and Iron Hugh, at this misfortune? They got, however, five ships safely to Alexandria, and sold all their cargo, the Sultan of Cairo buying forty of the boys, whom he brought up carefully and apart, intending them, doubtless, for his best soldiers. A dozen, refusing to change their faith, were martyred. None of the rest ever came back. Nobody in Europe seems to have taken much notice of this extraordinary episode, and its memory has so entirely died out that hardly a mention of it is found in any modern history of the period. Thousands of children perished. Probably their mothers wept, but no one else seems to have cared. And the pope built a church on the Island of Saint Peter, to commemorate the drowning of the innocents, with the cold remark that the children were doing what the men refused to do. It is, however, pleasing to add that the two honest merchants were accused some years afterwards of conspiring to assassinate the Emperor Frederick, and so perished on the gallows-tree.

In 1213, after the Children’s Crusade, Innocent essayed once more to wake the enthusiasm of Christendom. He promised, as before, remission of sins to those who took the Cross: he wrote to the Sultans of Damascus and Cairo, informing them that the Crusaders were coming, and urged on them the advisability of giving up Jerusalem peaceably: and he informed the world that Islam was the Beast of the Apocalypse, whose duration was to be six hundred and sixty years, of which six hundred were already passed. Some, no doubt, of his hearers, thought that, such being the case, they might very well be quiet for sixty years more. At the same time he wrote to the Patriarch of Jerusalem with strict injunctions to effect, if possible, a reform in the morals of the Syrian Christians, as if that were a hopeful, or even a possible task; and, as before, preaching was ordered through every diocese, and collecting-boxes for every church. In England the preaching was a total failure. John saw a means of reconciling himself with the Church, and took the Cross. But the barons, in their turn excommunicated, held aloof, and occupied themselves with their home affairs. Philip Augustus of France, after giving the fortieth part of his wealth to the expenses of the Crusade, quarrelled with the Cardinal de CourÇon over the powers which he assumed to possess as the legate of the pope. In Germany, Frederick II., recently crowned King of the Romans, took the Cross in the hope of preserving the support of the Church, Otho, his rival, being at war with the pope. Then came the Council of Lateran, at which Innocent presided. He spoke of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. His address was received without any marks of enthusiasm. Nevertheless a Crusade was actually undertaken, partly against the Prussians, partly to Palestine. The latter was led by Andrew, King of Hungary. It was conveyed in Venetian ships from Spalatro and the towns of the Adriatic first to Cyprus, where they were joined by the deputies of the king and patriarch, and the military orders. Thence they sailed to Acre, where they landed in 1217. Like all the crusading armies, this was too big to be manageable, too diverse in its composition to be subject to discipline, too unruly to be led, and under too many leaders. They marched straight across Palestine, avoiding Jerusalem and the south. They bathed in the Jordan, and wandered along the banks of the Sea of Galilee, singing hymns, making prisoners, and plundering the towns, the Saracens not striking a blow. Their only military exploit was an attempt on Mount Tabor, on the top of which stood a fortress. There, too, were the ruins of a church and the monasteries which the Mohammedans had destroyed. The Crusaders climbed the hill in the face of the enemy’s arrows and stones, and would have carried the fortress easily by assault but for one of those panics which were always seizing the Christians at this period. They all turned and fled down the slope of the hill in the wildest confusion. On their return to camp the chiefs accused each other: the soldiers talked of treachery, and the patriarch refused any more to bring out the wood of the Cross—for this imposture had been started again. To revive the spirits of the army, Andrew ordered a march into Phoenicia. The time was winter: cold, hail, and rain killed the troops: on Christmas Eve a furious tempest destroyed their camp and killed their horses. Dejected and discouraged, the Christians returned to Acre. Famine began again, and it was resolved to separate into four camps. John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem, with the Duke of Austria, commanded the first, which lay in the plains of CÆsarea: the kings of Hungary and Cyprus the second, which was stationed at Tripoli: the Master of the Templars the third, at the foot of Mount Carmel: the fourth remained at Acre. The King of Cyprus died, and the King of Hungary went home again. He had got possession of the head of St. Peter, the right hand of St. Thomas, and one of the seven vessels in which the water had been turned into wine. His anxiety to put these treasures in a place of safety was the chief cause that led him to forsake the Crusade.

After his departure the Crusaders changed all their plans, and—it is very curious to observe how persistently they avoided Jerusalem, the pretended object of their aims—embarked at Acre for the siege of Damietta, which they took after nearly two years of fighting. This taken, they advanced on Cairo: on the way, for we have no space to follow all their misfortunes, the Nile overflowed, they were cut off from all hope of succour, assailed on every side by the enemy, and finally compelled to offer terms. During the negotiations they found themselves deprived of everything, encamped on a plain inundated by the waters of the Nile: worn-out by hunger and sickness. The King of Jerusalem went himself to the Sultan. “There he sat down and shed tears. ‘Sire,’ said the Sultan, ‘why do you weep?’ 'Sire,’ replied the King, ‘I do well to weep, for the people with whom God has charged me I see perishing in the midst of the waters and dying of hunger.’ The Sultan had pity on the King, and wept himself, and for four days running sent thirty thousand loaves daily to poor and rich.”

So ended a Crusade which showed neither prudence nor bravery, which began with an artificially-excited enthusiasm, and was carried on by the leaders in hopes of gaining personal distinction. There was no discipline, no strong bond of a common hope; the knights deserted the banners after a defeat and went home, some of them without even striking a blow; and even in this time of relic-worship the wood of the Cross failed to animate the spirits of the soldiers. Of all the Crusades, this was the least worthy of success, the least animated by religious ardour.

We are next to see the conquest of Jerusalem absolutely effected by a Crusader, but by a Crusader under excommunication and interdict, by means of a treaty with the Mohammedans, and actually against the will and wishes of the Church. It is a troubled and tangled web of dissimulation, ambition, and interested motives, into which we dare not venture.^[78] On the one hand we have a sovereign, clear-sighted, gifted with a strong will, highly educated, equal at all points of scholarship and attainments to any Churchman, holding tolerant views as to differences of religion, a poet, a musician, and an artist: one, too, who loved to associate with poets and artists: a king who surrounded himself with Mohammedan friends, and made no sign of displeasure when they performed the devotions due to their religion in his very presence: a lawyer far in advance of his age, a gallant lover, and a magnificent prince. In his Sicilian Court he welcomed alike Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan—even Saracen ladies. Here the sturdy and uncompromising faith of Western Europe was shorn of its strength and sapped by the spirit of toleration, or even worse, by the spirit of free thinking. Frederick himself wrote and spoke Arabic: he corresponded with the Sultan of Damascus, receiving from him, and propounding himself, curious questions in geometry. Society, in fact, modern society, born before its time, was about to grow up amid the fostering influences of Frederick, when its growth was checked and destroyed by the interposition of the pope. For, on the other side, stood the Monk: cold, bigoted, cut off from social influences, old in the practice of austerities, fanatic in the cause of the Church, arrogating to himself the blind obedience of the whole world, claiming ever more and more the domination over men’s hearts. The Monk, personified by Pope Gregory IX., formerly the Cardinal Ugolino, confronted the king, and bade him do his bidding; while, to his monastic eyes, the existence of such a court as that of Frederick’s was blasphemous, devilish, and full of sin.

Frederick had taken the Cross. He had, moreover, pledged himself to embark for the Holy Land in August, 1227. The time approached. Frederick had already opened up negotiations with El Malek el KamÍl, the Sultan of Egypt. Presents had passed between them. Even an elephant had been sent, and the Church shuddered at this big and visible proof of treachery on the part of Frederick. Pilgrims meantime assembled by thousands and from all parts: Frederick failed in having provisions and ships for all the throng: the heats of summer came on with violence, and fever broke out. But the fleet sailed, with Frederick. Three days afterwards his ship came back. He was ill, and could not go.

Old Pope Gregory saw his opportunity. He would use his power. Frederick was not ill, but only pretending illness. He preached from the text, “It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto him through whom they come.” He pronounced the sentence of excommunication. Frederick wrote, on hearing of this, in perfect good temper, calmly stating the fact of his illness: he took no notice of the excommunication; but, after holding a Diet of the Barons of Apulia, he issued an appeal to Christendom, calling on all the sovereigns of Europe to shake off the intolerable yoke of the priests, and declaring his own innocence in the matter of the broken covenant. He called to witness the ill-treatment and ingratitude with which the Church had always repaid those who submitted—the malice and bitterness with which the Church had always persecuted those who refused to submit; and he pointed to the power and wealth of Rome as contrasted with the poverty of the early Church. In the long history of the world’s revolt against the pretensions of the priesthood, which has never for a moment ceased since these pretensions first began to make themselves heard, no more remarkable document has ever been issued, save only the famous theses of Luther.

Frederick was rewarded by a second excommunication, and the pope placed every town in which he might be under interdict. Then the people of Rome rose in insurrection, and the pope fled.

Frederick went to the Holy Land. If he wished to avoid fighting with his friends, the Saracens, he had certainly succeeded; because the Crusaders, forty thousand in number, on hearing of Frederick’s return to Italy, all re-embarked and went home again. The king, notwithstanding a peremptory order from the pope forbidding him to embark so long as he was under the ban of the Church, set sail with a small fleet of twenty galleys, and six hundred knights. He arrived at Acre. The Knights Templars and Hospitallers received him as their king. Frederick was now married to Yolante, the daughter of John of Brienne, from whom he took the crown of Jerusalem, on the ground that he only held it in right of his wife, whose rights were now descended to her daughter. The clergy refused to meet him, and there came messengers from the pope, by whose command the knights of the orders withdrew their help. Frederick went his own way. He sent Balian, Prince of Tyre, as an ambassador to El Malik el KamÍl, who sent him back with valuable presents, Saracenic robes, singers, and dancing girls, and, above all, Frederick’s old friend Fakhr-ed-dÍn. Then the Templars wrote to the Sultan proposing the assassination of the Emperor. Kameel quietly sent on the letter to his friend, who read it and said nothing. The negotiations between Frederic and Kameel went on in secrecy; they were so far advanced that the former found himself in a position to disclose to the barons the terms proposed. He sent for the Grand Masters of the two orders, and submitted his proposals to them. They refused to act without the patriarch. Frederick knowing well enough that the patriarch would refuse to act without the pope’s consent, replied that he could do without that prelate. And then the treaty was signed. The Christians were to have Jerusalem, except the Mosque of Omar, where the Mohammedans were to worship freely; the Saracens were to have their own tribunal; the emperor, King of Jerusalem, was to send no succour to any who might attack the sultan; with some minor points. And as soon as the treaty was signed, the Germans set off with Frederick, and the Master of the Teutonic Knights, to the Holy City. The Christians had got back their city. The Church of Christ refused to have it, or to acknowledge, in any way, the treaty. Frederick rode into the city to find the church empty and deserted. With his knights and soldiers he marched up the aisle, took the crown from the altar, and put it on his own head, without oath or religious ceremony of any kind. Nor did he affect any religious zeal or manifest any emotion. “I promised I would come,” he said, “and I am here.” It was his answer to the world, and his defiance of the pope. His vow was fulfilled, in a literal sense; but the Crusade was ruined; he had done more than any other king since Godfrey; he had recovered the city, but without slaughtering the infidel, and subject to the conditions that the Mohammedans were to practise their religion within its walls. What did Frederick care for a religion which he confounded with the gloomy teaching of his ecclesiastical enemies? “I am not here,” he confided to his friend Fakhr-ed-dÍn, “to deliver the Holy City, but to maintain my own credit.”

And two days after his coronation he went away again, in cynical contempt of the city and its church. He wrote a letter to the pope and sovereigns of Europe, stating that he had, “by miracle,” taken the city, which was henceforth Christian. The pope, in an agony of rage at the way in which his enemy had ignored his excommunication, foamed at the mouth, and called the treaty a treaty of Belial. Moreover, he could not but feel the awful irony of the situation, when Jerusalem itself, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were forbidden to have the service of the Christian religion performed in them, because their deliverer, a Christian king, was under the interdict of the pope. And here, reluctantly, we must leave the fortunes of Frederick; not, perhaps, a good man, but a better man than the arrogant and implacable monk who opposed him; and, perhaps, from an unecclesiastical point of view, the best man in a high place at that time in all the world.

The treaty was signed in 1229. Frederick in leaving Palestine, left the Christians without a chief, without a head. The Christians in Jerusalem, always dreading an attack from the Saracens, were constantly taking refuge in the tower of David, or the surrounding deserts. The patriarch, who had done most to estrange the emperor, wrote letter after letter, imploring for help. How many such letters had been sent since the Crusades had first commenced? Gregory had concluded some sort of reconciliation with Frederick, and now asked his help in an attempt to get up a new Crusade. It was left to the Franciscan friars—Saint Francis of Assisi had himself been present at the Crusade of King Andrew—to preach this. " 1237." There were found a large number of barons in France to enrol their names; and by the Council of Tours it was resolved that the Cross should no longer be a pretext for the safety of every sort of criminal. But while the Crusaders were assembling came the news of the downfall of the Latin kingdom of Constantinople, and a discussion begun as to whether it were better to go to the help of that city instead of Jerusalem. And before they had decided, came a message from Frederick urging them to wait for him. While they waited, civil war broke out in Italy. The old animosity between Frederick and the pope was revived; and, worse than this, the treaty which Frederick had made with El Malik el KamÍl, which was for ten years only, expired; and the Saracens from Kerak, marching suddenly upon Jerusalem, took it without the least resistance, and razed the tower of David. The pope had forbidden the Crusaders to leave Europe; but in spite of his prohibition, a small army, under the Duke of Brittany and the Count of Champagne, landed in Acre. After a few ineffective forays, they experienced a defeat which cost them the loss of many of their leaders. So they all went home again, and were replaced by an English prince, Richard of Cornwall, who afterwards called himself Emperor of Germany. The Saracens thought that Richard Lion Heart was coming back again, and awaited his approach with the keenest terror. But he did nothing. Abandoned both by Templars and Hospitallers, he contented himself with ransoming the Christian prisoners, and, after visiting Jerusalem, and worshipping at the Holy Places, Richard returned to Europe, and the turmoil of European wars.

And now a new enemy appeared in the field. The people of Kh’Árezm, driven westwards by the Tartars, came into Syria, a wild and ferocious band, with their wives and children, sparing neither Mohammedans nor Christians. Had the forces in Syria been united, a successful stand might have been made against them. But the Mohammedans were divided amongst themselves, and the Sultan of Cairo offered the Kharezmians Palestine for their own, if they would conquer it. They accepted the offer with joy, and marched twenty thousand strong upon Jerusalem. All the people in the city abandoned it hastily, except the helpless poor and infirm. These the Kharezmians found in their beds, and after killing them, thirsting for more blood, they inveigled back the Christians by hoisting the flags of the Cross. The flying Christians, looking round from time to time, caught sight at last of the banner of victory. Satisfied that God had delivered the city by a special miracle, and hearing, moreover, the bell ring for prayer, they trooped back to the city. Directly they were within the gates, the Kharezmians, who had only withdrawn a short distance, returned and surrounded them. In the depth of night the unhappy Christians endeavoured to fly. They were all cut to pieces. None were spared. And the barbarians then turned their wrath upon the very tombs, and tore up the coffins of Godfrey and Baldwin, which they burned with all the sacred relics they could find.

The Templars at Acre called on the Saracen princes of Damascus, Emessa, and Kerak, to make common cause against their common enemy. They came to Acre, headed by the valiant El Melik el MensÚr, Prince of Emessa, whose entrance into the city was greeted with shouts of applause. The allied armies met the Kharezmians on the plain of Philistia, the battlefield of so many periods and so many peoples. A curious incident is told, which took place before the battle. The Count of Jaffa, an excommunicated man, asked the patriarch, who was there with his wood of the Cross, as usual, for absolution. He refused it. Again he asked, to be again refused. But then the Bishop of Bama, impatient of his superior’s obstinacy, cried out, “Never mind. The patriarch is wrong, and I absolve you myself.” Of course one priest’s absolution is as good as another’s, and the count went into battle, to be killed with a light heart. They fought all that day, and all the next day, with a ferocity which nothing could equal. But then the Mohammedans gave way, and the victory remained with the Kharezmians. Of the allies thirty thousand lay dead on the field, while of the Christian knights, there returned to Acre only the Prince of Tyre, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, with his wood, thirty-three Templars, twenty-six Knights of St. John, and three Teutonic knights. The Kharezmians came before Jaffa. They tied Walter de Brienne, who was their prisoner, to a cross, and told him that unless he exhorted the besieged to submission they would put him to death. He called on the garrison to defend themselves to the last extremity, and was sent to Cairo, where he was murdered by the mob. Palestine was relieved of the presence of the Kharezmians by the Sultan of Cairo, who sent them to Damascus, which they took and plundered. They then demanded the fulfilment of his promise as regarded the lands of Palestine. But the Sultan prevaricated, and refused, sending an army of Egyptians against them; they were defeated in ten battles, and perish out of history altogether, having only appeared for the brief space of three or four years.

The Kharezmians were gone; but the Christians, who had suffered most of any at their hands, were in a condition of terrible weakness. So threatening was the state of affairs, that they once more forced their claims on the pope, and showed how, without help, they were all undone. The pope renewed all the privileges accorded by his predecessor to those who took the Cross. And then followed the Crusades of Saint Louis. Of his expedition to Egypt, the siege of Damietta, the calamities which befel his army, his own captivity, his ransom and freedom, we cannot here speak. They belong to the special history of the Crusades.

It was in 1250, after his return, that Saint Louis visited Acre. He had with him a small number of knights, all in rags, and deprived of everything. A pestilence broke out in the city. Louis remained, endeavouring to ransom the twelve thousand Christian captives from the Sultan of Cairo. Meantime he was urgently wanted at home, where that most singular movement, known as the revolt of the Pastoureaux, was distracting his country. And all efforts failed to raise bands of new Crusaders. Some, however, went to join the king. Among them was a Norwegian knight, named “Alenar de Selingan,” according to Joinville, who, with his companions, beguiled the time till they should be fighting the Saracens by slaying the lions in the desert. The Sheikh of the Assassins also sent an embassy with presents to Louis, asking for his friendship, and offering to remain as firmly allied to him “as the fingers on the hand or the shirt to the body.” Ives, a monk who could speak Arabic, was sent back on the part of the king with a present of gold and silver cups and scarlet mantles. He brought back a confused and wondrous story of the religion of this sect (see p. 322). He described them, oddly, as having a wonderful veneration for Peter, whom they maintained to be still alive. And he told how a mournful silence reigned round the castle of the Sheikh, and how, when he appeared in public, a herald went before, crying out, “Whoever you are, fear to appear before him who holds in his hand the life and death of kings.”

Louis, meantime, was repairing the fortifications of CÆsarea and Jaffa, and making severe laws against the dissolute morals of the Christians in the East and of his own men. His knights went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, whither he refused himself to go. But he went to Nazareth, to Mount Tabor, and other sacred places.

After a little fighting, the news of his mother’s death determined him to go home. He sailed in 1254, having been four years engaged in his disastrous expedition, which only had the effect of making the Mohammedans cautious how far they attacked the Christian settlements, and mindful of the exasperation into which their fall might throw the West of Europe. The subsequent efforts to raise a Crusade all failed. The poets as well as the priests did their best, but with no success. It is remarkable, however, that there is not a word about crusading in the whole of the Romance of the Rose, except a reference or two to the palm of the pilgrim. Neither of its writers, certainly, was at all likely to be touched by the crusading enthusiasm. Rutebeuf however, throws himself into the projected Crusade with extraordinary vigour. “Ha! roi de France!” he cries—

He laments that no one will come to the help of the sacred places.

He shows, too, the change come over the thoughts of men by giving a dispute between a croisÉ and one who refuses to take the Cross, in which the latter advances the startling proposition, not heard since the time of Origen, that a man can very well get to heaven without “pilgrimising,” and without fighting for the Cross.^[79]

But Rutebeuf is very urgent. He laments the decay of religious zeal.

The fatal thing, however, was a feeling slowly growing up that it was God’s will that the Church of the Sepulchre should belong to the infidel; and a bishop of a somewhat later time gives three reasons for this; namely, first, as a plea for the Christians; second, for the confusion of the Saracens; and thirdly, for the conversion of the Jews. And for the first reason he argues that Christians will never be allowed to have the city again till they are sinless, because God will not have his children commit sin in such a place; as for the Saracens, they are, of course, only dogs; now the master of a house is not very careful about the behaviour of his dogs, but he cannot bear ill behaviour on the part of his children.

Little now remains to tell, because Jerusalem passes away from history, and the events which follow are hardly even indirectly concerned with the Holy City. Louis led another Crusade and met his death at Tunis. Edward of England, with his brother Edmund and eight hundred men came to Acre, but were, of course of little use with so small a reinforcement; and, after concluding a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt, they too departed. Then twenty years of expectation and fear pass away: Europe looks with indifference upon the Holy Land: Laodicea is taken: Tripoli is taken: and lastly, Acre itself is taken. The siege of this, the last place held by the Christians, lasted a month, when the Mohammedans entered the city after a furious assault. They were driven back by arrows and stones hurled from the houses: day after day they came on, were repelled with slaughter, and every day the Christians saw their camp growing larger and larger. The military orders fought with a heroism which caused the Saracens to think that two men were fighting in every knight. But the end came at length, with a great and terrible carnage. The nuns, trembling, and yet heroic, actually preserved their honour by cutting off their noses, so that the Saracens only killed them. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was put on board a ship, entreating to be allowed to die with his flock. The ship sank and he was drowned, so that his prayer was granted. A violent storm was raging. Ladies rushed to the port, offering the sailors all they had, diamonds, pearls, and gold, to be put on board. Those who had no money or jewels were left on the shore to the mercies of the victors. The Templars held out in their castle a few days longer and then fell. All were killed. So ended, after two hundred years of continued fighting, the Christian settlements in Palestine.^[80] The West heard the news of the fall of Acre with a sort of unreasoning rage, and instantly set about mutual accusations as to the cause of its fall. And the wretched Pullani, the Syrian Christians, who had survived the taking of Acre, dropped over one by one to Italy and begged their bread in the streets while they told the story of their fall.

Pilgrims and travellers continued to visit Jerusalem. Sir John Mandeville was there, early in the fourteenth century, and describes the churches and sacred sites, but says little enough about the condition of the people. Bertrandon de la RoquiÈre was there a hundred years later. He says that though there were many other Christians in Jerusalem, the Franks experienced the greatest amount of persecution from the Saracens, and that there were only two Cordeliers in the Church of the Sepulchre. And in the same century Ignatius Loyola twice went on pilgrimage. He wished to end his days in Palestine, but this was, unhappily, denied him, and he returned, to be a curse to the world by establishing his society. Among other pilgrims, passing over various princes and kings, may be mentioned Korte, the bookseller of Altona early in the eighteenth century, who was the first to assail the authenticity of the sites, and that of Henry Maundrell, chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo.

But during the interval of five hundred years Jerusalem has been without a history. Nothing has happened but an occasional act of brutality on the part of her masters towards the Christians, or an occasional squabble among the ecclesiastics. Perhaps, some time, the day may come when all together will be agreed that there is no one spot in the world more holy than another, in spite of associations, because the whole earth is the Lord’s. Then the tender interest which those who read the Scriptures will always have for the places which the writers knew so well may have a fuller and freer play, apart from lying traditions, monkish legends and superstitious impostures. For, to use the words which Cicero applied to Athens, there is not one spot in all this city, no single place where the foot may tread, which does not possess its history.