J. Fr. Michaud

——

SIXTH CRUSADE.

A.D. 1200-1215.

In the preceding books, the imposing spectacle has passed before our eyes of the fall of an old empire, and of the rise and rapid decline of a new one. The imagination of man loves to dwell upon ruins, and the most sanguinary catastrophes even offer him highly attractive pictures. We have reason to fear that our narration will create less interest, awaken less curiosity, when, after the great revolutions we have described, it will be our duty to turn our attention to the petty states the Christians founded in Syria, for the safety of which the nations of the West were constantly called upon to furnish warlike assistance.

At the present day, we have great difficulty in comprehending that enthusiasm which animated all classes for the deliverance of the holy places, or that powerful interest that directed the thoughts of all to countries almost forgotten by modern Europe.[163] During the height of the fervour for the crusades, the taking of a city or town of Judea caused more joy than the taking of Byzantium; and Jerusalem was more dear to the Christians of the West than their own country. This enthusiasm, of which our indifference can scarcely form an idea, renders the task of the historian difficult, and makes him often hesitate in the choice of the events that history has to record: when opinions have changed, everything has changed with them: glory itself has lost its splendour, and that which appeared great in the eyes of men, seems only fantastical or vulgar; the historical epochs of our annals have become the objects of our most sovereign contempt; and when, without due reference to the ages of the holy wars, we wish to submit these extraordinary enterprises to the calculations of reason, we resemble those modern travellers who have only found a dribbling rivulet in the place of that famous Scamander, of which the imagination of the ancients, and still more, the muse of Homer, had made a majestic river.

But if we have no longer the task of describing the revolutions and falls of empires, the epoch of which we are about to trace the picture, will still present to us but too many of those great calamities with which human life supplies history: whilst Greece was a prey to all the ravages of war, the most cruel scourges desolated both Egypt and Syria.

The Nile suspended its accustomed course, and failed to inundate its banks or render the harvests abundant. The last year of this century (1200) announced itself, says an Arabian author, like a monster whose fury threatened to devour everything. When the famine began to be felt, the people were compelled to support themselves upon the grass of the fields and the ordure of animals,[164] the poor routed up cemeteries, and disputed with the worms the spoils of coffins. When this awful scourge became more general, the population of the cities and country, as if pursued by a pitiless enemy, fled away from their homes in despair, and wandered about at hazard from city to city, from village to village, meeting everywhere with the evil they wished to avoid; in no inhabited place could they step a foot without being struck by the appearance of a putrifying carcass, or some unhappy wretch on the point of expiring.

The most frightful effect of this universal calamity was, that the want of food gave birth to the greatest crimes, and rendered every man the enemy of his fellows. At the commencement of the famine much horror was expressed at some being reduced to feed upon human flesh, but examples of so great a scandal increased with such rapidity, that it was soon spoken of with indifference. Men contending with famine, which spared the rich no more than the poor, were no longer sensible to pity, shame, or remorse, and were restrained neither by respect for the laws, nor by the fear of punishment. They came at last to devour each other like wild beasts. At Cairo, thirty women, in one day, perished at the stake, convicted of having killed and eaten their own children. The historian Abdallatif relates a crowd of barbarous and monstrous incidents which make the blood run cold with horror, and to which we will not give a place in our history, for fear of being accused of calumniating human nature.

The plague soon added its ravages to those of famine. God alone, says contemporary history, knows the number of those that died with famine and disease. The capital of Egypt, in the space of a few months, witnessed a hundred and eleven thousand funerals. At length it was found impossible to bury the dead, and the terrified survivors were obliged to be satisfied with casting them over the ramparts. The same mortality was experienced at Damietta, Kous, and Alexandria. It was at the period of seed-time that the plague was at its height; they who sowed the seed were not the same that had ploughed the ground, and they who sowed lived not to reap the harvest. The villages were deserted, and reminded travellers of those expressions of the Koran: “We have mown them all down and exterminated them; one cry was heard, and all have perished.” The dead bodies that floated on the Nile were as numerous as the bulbous plants which, at certain seasons, cover the waters of that river. One fisherman counted more than four hundred that passed before his eyes in a single day; piles of human bones were met with everywhere; the roads, to borrow the expression of Arabian writers, “Were like a field sown with dead bodies, and the most populous provinces were as a banqueting-hall for the birds of prey.”

Egypt lost more than a million of its inhabitants; both famine and plague were felt as far as Syria, and the Christian cities suffered equally with those of the Mussulmans. From the shores of the Red Sea to the banks of the Euphrates and the Orontes, the whole country presented one picture of desolation and mourning. As if the anger of Heaven was not satisfied, it was not long before a third calamity, not less terrible, followed in the train of the others. A violent earthquake laid waste the cities and provinces that famine and plague had spared;[165] the shocks resembled the motion of a sieve, or that which a bird makes when he raises and lowers his wings. The rising of the sea, and the agitation of the waves presented a horrible appearance; ships were, on a sudden, carried far on to the land, and multitudes of fish covered the shore; the heights of Libanus opened and sunk in many places. The people of Syria and Egypt believed it to be the earthquake that is to precede the day of judgment. Many inhabited places totally disappeared; a vast number of men perished; the fortresses of Hamath, Barin, and Balbec were thrown down; the only part of the city of Naplouse that was left standing was the street of the Samaritans; in Damascus, all the most superb edifices were destroyed; in the city of Tyre only a few houses escaped, and the ramparts of PtolemaÏs and Tripoli were nothing but heaps of ruins. The shocks were felt with less violence in the territory of Jerusalem, and, in the general calamity, both Christians and Mussulmans returned thanks to Heaven for having spared in its anger the city of prophets and miracles.

Such awful disasters ought to have caused the treaties made between the barons and the infidels to be respected. In the fifth crusade, the sovereign pontiff urged the Christians to take advantage of these calamitous days to invade the Mussulman provinces of Syria and Egypt: but if the advice of the pope had been followed, if the Christian army on leaving Venice, had directed its march towards the countries devastated by pestilence and famine, it is most probable that the conquerors and the conquered would have perished together. At that period, death, like a formidable sentinel, guarded all the frontiers of the Christians and Mussulmans. All the scourges of nature became the terrible guardians of provinces, and defended the approaches and entrances of cities better than the greatest armies could have done.

The Christian colonies, however, began, not to repair their losses, but to forget the evils they had suffered. Amaury, king of Jerusalem, set his barons an example of wisdom and pious resignation. The three military orders, that had exhausted their treasures to support their knights and soldiers during the famine, made a strong appeal, by messengers and letters, to the charity of the faithful of the West. The Christian cities that had been destroyed by the earthquake were rebuilt, and the sums amassed by Foulque of Neuilly, the preacher of the last crusade, were employed in restoring the walls of PtolemaÏs. As the Christians wanted labourers, they set the Mussulman prisoners to work. Among the prisoners condemned to this service, history must not pass by the celebrated Persian poet Saadi, who had fallen into the hands of the Franks, whilst on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[166] The author of “The Garden of Roses,” and several other works, destined at a future day to obtain the admiration of the East and the West, was loaded with irons, led to Tripoli, and confounded with the crowd of captives employed in rebuilding the fortifications of that city.

The truce which had been concluded with the infidels still subsisted; but either pretensions or quarrels daily arose that were frequently followed by hostilities. The Christians were continually kept under arms, and peace was sometimes as abundant in troubles and dangers as an open war would have been. There likewise prevailed, at this time, great confusion among the Christian colonies, and even among the Mussulman powers. The sultan of Damascus was at peace with the king of Jerusalem, whilst the count of Tripoli, the prince of Antioch, with the Templars and Hospitallers, were at war with the princes of Hamath, Edessa or some emirs of Syria.[167] Every one, according to his humour, took up or laid down his arms, without any power being sufficiently strong to enforce respect for treaties.

No great battles were fought, but constant incursions upon the territories of enemies were made; cities were surprised, countries were ravaged, and great booty obtained. Amidst these disorders, which were called Days of Truce, the Christians of Palestine had to lament the death of their king. Amaury, according to the custom of the faithful, went to CaÏfa, during holy week, to gather palm; but fell sick on his pilgrimage, and returned to PtolemaÏs to die. Thus the sceptre of the kingdom of Jerusalem again remained in the hands of Isabella, who had neither the power, nor the ability necessary to govern the Christian states. At the same time, one of the sons of Bohemond, prince of Antioch, fell under the daggers of assassins sent by the Old Man of the Mountains. Bohemond the Third, at a very advanced age, was unable to avenge this murder; and, in addition, before he died, had the mortification of seeing war break out between his second son, Raymond, count of Tripoli, and Livon, prince of Armenia. The order of the Templars, as well as that of the Hospitallers, interested themselves in this quarrel, and were opposed to each other. The sultan of Aleppo and the Turks from Asia Minor mixed themselves with the dissensions of the Christians, and took advantage of their divisions to ravage the territory of Antioch.[168] The Christian states of Syria received no more succours from the West. The remembrance of the evils that had ravaged the countries beyond the seas had damped the zeal and the ardour of pilgrims; the warriors of Europe, accustomed to face with coolness all the perils of war, had not sufficient courage to brave pestilence and famine. A great number of the barons and knights of Palestine, themselves abandoned a land too long laid desolate, some to repair to Constantinople, and others to the kingdoms of the West.

Innocent, who had up to this time made vain efforts for the deliverance of the holy places, and who could not overcome his regret at having seen great Christian armies fruitlessly dissipated in the conquest of Greece, still did not give up his vast designs; from the beginning of his reign, the sovereign pontiff had pointed out the Holy Land to the Christian nations, as the road and the way of salvation. After the example of his predecessors, he not only called piety and virtue in to the defence of the Christian colonies, but remorse and repentance. All who came to him to confess great sins, were allowed but one means of expiating their crimes,—crossing the sea to fight against the infidels.

Among the sinners condemned to this sort of punishment history quotes the names of the murderers of Conrad, bishop of Wurtzburg and chancellor of the empire.[169] The guilty having presented themselves before the pope, barefooted, in drawers, and with halters round their necks, swore in the presence of the cardinals, to pass their lives in the practice of the most austere mortifications, and to carry arms during four years against the Saracens. A knight, named Robert, scandalized the whole court of Rome by confessing in a loud voice, that, being a prisoner in Egypt during the famine, he had killed his wife and daughter, to feed upon their flesh. The pope imposed the most rigorous penances upon Robert, and ordered him, to complete the expiation of so great a crime, to pass three years in visiting the holy places.

Innocent endeavoured by such means to keep up the devotion of pilgrimages, which had given birth to the crusades, and might again revive the zeal and ardour for holy wars. According to the opinion which the sovereign pontiff sought to spread among the faithful, and by which he himself appeared penetrated, this corrupt world had no crimes for which God would not open the treasures of his mercy provided the perpetrators would take the voyage to the East. The people however were persuaded that the sins and errors of a perverse generation had irritated the God of the Christians, and that the glory of conquering the Holy Land was reserved for another and a better age, to a generation more worthy of attracting the eyes and the blessings of Heaven.

This opinion of the nations of the West was very little in favour of the Christians of Syria, who were daily making rapid strides towards their fall. Isabella, who only reigned over depopulated cities, died soon after her husband. A son that she had had by Amaury preceded her to the tomb; and the kingdom of Jerusalem became the heritage of a young princess, a daughter of Isabella and Conrad, marquis of Tyre. The barons and knights that remained in Syria were more sensible than ever of the necessity of having at their head a prince able to govern them, and immediately set about choosing a husband for the young queen of Jerusalem.

Their choice might have fallen upon one of themselves; but they feared that jealousy would give birth to fresh discords, and that the spirit of rivalry and faction would weaken the authority of him that should be called upon to govern the kingdom. The assembly resolved to seek a king in the West, and to address themselves to the country of Godfrey and the Baldwins,—to that nation that had furnished so many heroes to the crusades, so many illustrious defenders of the Holy Land.

This resolution of the barons of Palestine had not only the advantage of preserving peace in the kingdom of Jerusalem, but also that of arousing the spirit of chivalry in Europe, and of interesting it in the cause of the Christians of the East. Aimar, lord of CÆsarea, and the bishop of PtolemaÏs, crossed the sea, and went, in the name of the Christians of the Holy Land, to solicit Philip Augustus to send them a knight or a baron who might save the little that remained of the unfortunate kingdom of Jerusalem. The hand of a young queen, a crown, and the blessings of Heaven were the rewards held out to the bravery and devotedness of him who was willing to fight for the heritage of the Son of God. The deputies were received with great honours at the court of the king of France. Although the crown they offered was nothing but a vain title, it not the less dazzled the imagination of the French knights; their valorous ambition was seduced by the hope of acquiring great renown, and restoring the throne that had been founded by the bravery of Godfrey of Bouillon.

Among the knights of his court, Philip greatly distinguished John of Brienne,[170] brother of Gauthier,[171] who died in Apulia with the reputation of a hero and the title of king. In his youth, John of Brienne had been destined for the ecclesiastical state; but, brought up in a family of warriors, and less sensible to the charms of piety than to those of glory, he refused to obey the will of his parents; and as his father was inclined to employ force to constrain him, he sought a refuge against paternal anger in the monastery of Citeaux. John of Brienne was mixed with the crowd of cenobites, and gave himself up, as they did, to fasting and mortification. The austerities of the cloister, however, did not at all assimilate with his growing passion for the noble occupation of arms; and often, amidst prayers and religious ceremonies, the images of tournaments and battles would distract his thoughts and disturb his mind. One of his uncles having found him at the door of the monastery in a state very little suited to a gentleman, had pity on his tears, took him away with him, and encouraged his natural inclinations. From that time the glory of combats entirely occupied his thoughts; and he who had been destined to the silence of cloisters and the peace of altars, was not long in creating for himself by his bravery and exploits a great and widely spread renown.

At the period of the last crusade, John of Brienne accompanied his brother in his attempt to obtain the kingdom of Naples, and saw him perish whilst fighting for a throne that was to be the reward of the victor. He had the same fortune to guide his hopes, and the same dangers to encounter, if he espoused the heir of the kingdom of Jerusalem. He accepted with joy the hand of a young queen, for the possession of whose states he must contend with the Saracens, he charged the ambassadors to return and announce his speedy arrival in Palestine, and, full of confidence in the cause he was about to defend, promised to follow them at the head of an army.

When Aymar of CÆsarea and the bishop of PtolemaÏs returned to the Holy Land, the promises of John of Brienne raised the depressed courage of the Christians, and, as it often happens in seasons of misfortune, they passed from despair to the most extravagant hopes.

It was given out in Palestine that a crusade was in preparation, commanded by the most powerful monarchs of the West; and the report of such an extraordinary armament produced a momentary terror among the infidels. Malek-Adel, who, since the death of Al-Aziz, reigned over Syria and Egypt, dreaded the enterprises of the Christians; and as the truce made with the Franks was on the point of expiring, he proposed to renew it, offering to deliver up ten castles or fortresses as a pledge of his good faith and his desire for a continuation of peace. This proposal ought to have been welcomed by the Christians of Palestine; but the hopes of assistance from the West had banished all moderation and foresight from the councils of the barons and knights. The wiser part of the Christian warriors, among whom was the grand master of the order of St. John, were of opinion that the truce should be prolonged. They reminded their companions that they had often been promised succour from the West, without this succour ever having reached the Holy Land; and that in the very last crusade, a formidable army, confidently expected in Palestine, had directed its march towards Constantinople. They added, that it was not prudent to risk the chances of war upon the faith of a vain promise; and that they ought to wait the event, before they formed a determination upon which might depend the safety or the ruin of the Christians of the East. These discourses were full of wisdom and good sense, but as the Hospitallers spoke in favour of the truce, the Templars, with great warmth, declared for war: such was, likewise, the spirit of the Christian warriors, that prudence, moderation, or, indeed, any of the virtues of peace, inspired them with a sort of disdain; for them reason was always on the side of perils, and only to speak of flying to arms was quite sufficient to win all their suffrages. The assembly of barons and knights refused to prolong the truce made with the Saracens.

This determination became so much the more fatal, from the situation of France and Europe, which could scarcely allow John of Brienne to entertain the hope of accomplishing his promise of raising an army for the Holy Land.

Germany was still agitated by the rival pretensions of Otho and Philip of Swabia: John of England laboured under the curse of an excommunication, which interdict extended to his kingdom. Philip Augustus was busily employed in taking advantage of all the troubles that were in full action around him; on one side by endeavouring to extend his influence in Germany, and on the other by constant efforts to weaken the power of the English, who were masters of several provinces of his kingdom. John of Brienne arrived at PtolemaÏs with the train of a king, but he only brought with him three hundred knights to defend his kingdom; his new subjects, however, still full of hopes, looked upon him no less as a liberator. His marriage was celebrated in the presence of the barons, the princes, and the bishops of PtolemaÏs. As the truce was about to expire, the Saracens resumed their arms, and disturbed the festivities of the coronation. Malek-Adel entered Palestine at the head of an army, and the infidels not only laid siege to Tripoli, but threatened PtolemaÏs.

The new king, at the head of a small number of faithful warriors, created great admiration for his valour in the field of battle; but he was not able to deliver the Christian provinces from the presence of a formidable enemy. When the defenders of Palestine compared their scanty ranks with the multitude of their enemies, they sank at once into a state of despondency; and even those who so lately scorned the thoughts of peace with the infidels, could not muster either strength or courage to oppose to their attacks. Most of the French knights that had accompanied the new king, quitted the kingdom they had come to succour, and returned into Europe. The dominions of John of Brienne consisted of the city of PtolemaÏs alone, and he had no army to defend even that; he then began to perceive he had undertaken a perilous and difficult task, and that he should not be able to contend for any length of time against the united forces of the Saracens. Ambassadors were sent to Rome to inform the pope of the pressing dangers of the Christian states in Asia, and once more to implore the support of the princes of Europe, and, above all, of the French knights.

These fresh cries of alarm were scarcely heard by the nations of the West. The troubles which agitated Europe at the period of the departure of John of Brienne for Palestine were far from being allayed, and prevented France especially from lending any assistance to the Christian colonies. Languedoc and most of the southern provinces of the kingdom were then desolated by religious wars, which fully employed the bravery of the French knights and nobles.

A spirit of inquiry and indocility, which had arisen among the faithful, and with which St. Bernard had reproached his age, was making alarming progress every day. The most holy doctors had already many times expressed their grief at the abasement of the holy word, of which every one constituted himself judge and arbiter, and which was treated, said Stephen of Tournay in his letters to the pope, with as little discernment as holy things given to dogs, or pearls cast at the feet of swine. This spirit of independence and pride, joined to the love of paradox and novelty; to the decline of sound studies, and the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline; had given birth to heresies which rent the bosom of the Church.

The most dangerous of all the new sects was that of the Albigeois,[172] which took its name from the city of Albi, in which its first assemblies had been held. These new sectarians being unable to explain the existence of evil under a just and good God, as the Manicheans had done, adopted two principles. According to their belief, God had first created Lucifer and his angels; Lucifer having revolted from God, was banished from heaven, and produced the visible world, over which he reigned. God, to re-establish order, created his second son, Jesus Christ, to be the genius of good, as Lucifer had been the genius of evil. Several contemporary writers represent the Albigeois in the most odious colours, and describe them as given up to all kinds of error; but this opinion must not be adopted in all its rigour by impartial history. For the honour of human nature we feel bound to say, that never did a religious sect dare to endeavour to win the approbation of mankind whilst presenting an example of depravity of morals; and that in no age, among no people, has a false doctrine ever been able to lead astray any number of men, without being supported by at least an appearance of virtue.

The wisest and most earnest Christians were at that period desirous of a reform in the clergy. “But there were,” says Bossuet, “vain and proud minds,[173] full of bitterness, which, struck by the disorders that reigned in the Church, and more particularly among its ministers, did not believe that the promises of its eternal duration could possibly subsist amongst these abuses. These, become proud, and thence weak, yielded to the temptation which leads to a hatred of the Church from a hatred of those who preside in it; and as if the malice of man could annihilate the work of God, the aversion they had conceived for the teachers, made them hate at the same time both the doctrine they taught and the authority they had received from God.”

This disposition of men’s minds gave the apostles of error a most deplorable ascendancy, and multiplied the number of their disciples. Among the new sectarians, the most remarkable were the Vaudois, or Poor of Lyons, who devoted themselves to a state of idle poverty, and despised the clergy, whom they accused of living in luxury and voluptuousness; the Apostoliques, who boasted of being the only mystical body of Jesus Christ; the Popelicains, who abhorred the eucharist, marriages, and the other sacraments; the Aymeristes, whose teachers announced to the world the future establishment of a purely spiritual worship, and denied the existence of a hell or a paradise, persuaded that sin finds in itself its own punishment, and virtue its own reward.

As the greater part of these heretics exhibited a sovereign contempt for the authority of the Church, which was then the first of all authorities, all those who wished to shake off the yoke of divine laws, and those even to whom their passions rendered the restraint of human laws intolerable, came at length to range themselves under the banners of these innovators, and were welcomed by a sect anxious to increase and strengthen itself, and always disposed to consider as its partisans and defenders, men whom society cast from its bosom, who dreaded justice, and could not endure established order. Thus the pretended reformers of the thirteenth century, whilst themselves affecting austerity of manners, and proclaiming the triumph of virtue and truth, admitted into their bosom both corruption and licentiousness, destroyed every regulation of authority, abandoned everything to the caprice of the passions, and left no bond to society, no power to morals, no check upon the multitude.

The new heresies had been condemned in several councils; but as violence was sometimes employed in executing the decisions of the Church, persecution only tended to sour men’s minds, instead of bringing them back to truth. Missionaries and papal legates were sent into Languedoc, to convert the misled wanderers from the flock; but their preaching produced no fruit, and the voice of falsehood prevailed over the word of God. The preachers of the faith, whom the heretics reproached with their luxury, their ignorance, and the depravity of their manners, had neither sufficient resignation nor sufficient humility to support such outrages, or offer them as a sacrifice to Jesus Christ, whose apostles they were. Exposed to the scoffs of the sectarians, and gathering nothing from the labours of their missions but humiliation and contempt, they accustomed themselves to view the people they were sent to convert as personal enemies; and a spirit of vengeance and pride, which certainly came not from heaven, made them believe it was their duty to bring into the right road, by force of arms, all who had denied their power or resisted their eloquence. The sovereign pontiff, whose mind was constantly bent upon the Asiatic war, hesitated at ordering a crusade to be preached against the Albigeois; but he was led away by the opinions of the clergy, perhaps also by that of his age, and at last promised to all Christians who would take up arms against the Albigeois the same privileges as those granted to the Crusaders against the Saracens.[174] Simon de Montfort, the duke of Burgundy, and the duke of Nevers obeyed the orders of the Holy See: the hatred which this new sect inspired, but still more the facility of gaining indulgences from the sovereign pontiff without quitting Europe, drew a great number of warriors to the standards of this crusade. The Inquisition owes its birth to this war; an institution at once fatal to humanity, religion, and patriotism. Piles and stakes appeared on all sides, cities were taken by storm, and their inhabitants put to the sword. The violences and cruelties which accompanied this unfortunate war have been described by those even who took a most active part in them;[175] their recitals, which we have great difficulty in believing, frequently resemble the language of falsehood and exaggeration. In periods of vertigo and fury, when violent passions come in to mislead both opinions and consciences, it is not rare to meet with men who exaggerate the excesses to which they have given themselves up, and boast of more evil than they have committed.

For ourselves, the disastrous war against the Albigeois does not enter into the plan of this history, and if we have spoken of it here, it was only the better to describe the situation of France at this period, and the obstacles which then opposed themselves to all enterprises beyond sea. Amidst these constantly increasing obstacles, Innocent III. was deeply afflicted at not being able to send succours to the Christians of Palestine, his regret being the greater from the circumstance that at the very time the Albigeois and the count of Thoulouse were subjected to this frightful crusade, the Saracens were becoming more formidable in Spain. The king of Castile, threatened by an innumerable army, had just called upon all Frenchmen able to bear arms to come to his assistance. The pope himself had written to all the bishops of France, recommending them to exhort the faithful of their dioceses to assist in a great battle which was to be fought between the Spaniards and the Moors, about the octave of Pentecost (1212). Innocent promised the warriors who would repair to Spain, the usual indulgences of holy wars; and a solemn procession was made at Rome, to implore of God the destruction of the Moors and Saracens. The archbishops of Narbonne and Bordeaux, the bishop of Nantes, and a great number of French nobles, crossed the Pyrenees, followed by two thousand knights with their squires and serjeants-at-arms. The Christian army met the Moors in the plains of Las Navas de Tolosa, and fought a battle, in which more than two hundred thousand infidels lost either their lives or their liberty. The conquerors, loaded with spoils and surrounded by the dead, sang the Te Deum on the field of battle: the standard of the leader of the Almoades was sent to Rome as a trophy of the victory granted to the prayers of the Christian Church.

On learning the issue of the battle of Tolosa, the sovereign pontiff, amidst the assembled inhabitants of Rome, offered up thanks to God for having scattered the enemies of his people, and at the same time prayed that Heaven in its mercy would, in the end, deliver the Christians of Syria as it had just delivered the Christians of Spain.

The head of the Church renewed his exhortations to the faithful for the defence of the kingdom of Jesus Christ; but amidst the troubles and civil wars that he himself had excited, he could gain no attention to the complaints of Jerusalem, and shed tears of despair at the indifference of the nations of the West. About this period such a circumstance was beheld as had never occurred even in times so abounding in prodigies and extraordinary events. Fifty thousand children, in France and Germany, braving paternal authority, gathered together and pervaded both cities and countries, singing these words:—“Lord Jesus, restore to us your holy cross!” When they were asked whither they were going, or what they intended to do, they replied, “We are going to Jerusalem, to deliver the sepulchre of our Saviour.” Some ecclesiastics, blinded by false zeal, had preached this crusade; most of the faithful saw nothing in it but the inspiration of Heaven, and thought that Jesus Christ, to show his divine power, and to confound the pride of the greatest captains, and of the wise and powerful of the earth, had placed his cause in the hands of simple and timid infancy.

Many women of bad character, and dishonest men insinuated themselves amongst the crowd of these new soldiers of the cross, to seduce and plunder them. A great portion of this juvenile militia crossed the Alps, to embark at the Italian ports; whilst those who came from the provinces of France, directed their course to Marseilles. On the faith of a miraculous revelation, they had been made to believe that this year (1213) the drought would be so great that the sun would dissipate all the waters of the sea, and thus an easy road for pilgrims would be opened across the bed of the Mediterranean to the coasts of Syria. Many of these young Crusaders lost themselves in forests, then so abundant and large, and wandering about at hazard, perished with heat, hunger, thirst, and fatigue; others returned to their homes, ashamed of their imprudence, saying, they really did not know why they had gone. Among those that embarked, some were shipwrecked, or given up to the Saracens, against whom they had set out to fight; many, say the old chronicles, gathered the palms of martyrdom, and offered the infidels the edifying spectacle of the firmness and courage the Christian religion is capable of inspiring at the most tender age as well as at the more mature.

Such of these children as reached Ptolemais must have created terror as well as astonishment, by making the Christians of the East believe that Europe had no longer any government or laws, no longer any wise or prudent men, either in the councils of princes or those of the Church. Nothing more completely demonstrates the spirit of these times than the indifference with which such disorders were witnessed. No authority interfered, either to stop or prevent the madness; and when it was announced to the pope that death had swept away the flower of the youth of France and Germany, he contented himself with saying,—“These children reproach us with having fallen asleep, whilst they were flying to the assistance of the Holy Land.”[176]

The sovereign pontiff, in order to accomplish his designs, and rekindle the enthusiasm of the faithful, found it necessary to strike the imagination of the nations vividly, and to present a grand spectacle to the Christian world. Innocent resolved to assemble a general council at Rome, to deliberate upon the state of the Church and the fate of the Christians of the East. “The necessity for succouring the Holy Land,” said he in his letters of convocation, “and the hope of conquering the Saracens, are greater than ever; we renew our cries and our prayers to you, to excite you to this noble enterprise. No one can imagine,” added Innocent, “that God has need of your arms to deliver Jerusalem; but he offers you an opportunity of showing your penitence, and proving your love for him. Oh, my brethren, how many advantages has not the Christian Church already derived from the scourges that have desolated her, and desolate her still! How many crimes have been expiated by repentance! How many virtues revive at the fire of charity! How many conversions are made among sinners by the complaining voice of Jerusalem! Bless, then, the ingenious mercy, the generous artifice of Jesus Christ, who seeks to touch your hearts, to seduce your piety, and is willing to owe to his misled disciples a victory which he holds in his all-powerful hand.”[177]

The pope afterwards compares Jesus Christ banished from his heritage, to one of the kings of the earth who might be driven from his dominions. “Where are the vassals,” added he, “who will not risk their fortunes and their lives to restore their sovereign to his kingdom? Such of the subjects and servants of the monarch as shall have done nothing for his cause, ought they not to be ranked with the rebels, and be subjected to the punishment due to revolt and treason? It is thus that Jesus Christ will treat those who remain indifferent to the insults heaped upon him, and refuse to take up arms to fight against his enemies.”

To raise the hopes and the courage of the Christians, the holy father terminated his exhortation to the faithful, by saying, that “the power of Mahomet drew towards its end; for that power was nothing but the beast of the Apocalypse, which was not to extend beyond the number of six hundred years,[178] and already six centuries were accomplished.” These last words of the pope were sustained by the popular predictions which were spread throughout the West, and created a belief that the destruction of the Saracens was at hand.[179]

As in preceding crusades, the sovereign pontiff promised all who should take arms against the infidels, the remission of their sins and the especial protection of the Church. Upon so important an occasion, the head of the Christians laid open the treasures of divine mercy to all the faithful, in proportion to their zeal and their gifts. All prelates and ecclesiastics, as well as the inhabitants of cities and countries, were invited to raise a certain number of warriors, and support them for three years, according to their means. The pope exhorted princes and nobles who would not take the cross, to second the zeal of the Crusaders in every way in their power; the head of the Church demanded of all the faithful, prayers; of the rich, alms and tributes; of knights, an example of courage; of maritime cities, vessels; he himself engaging to make the greatest sacrifices. Processions were to be made every month in all parishes, in order to obtain the benedictions of Heaven; all the efforts, all the vows, all the thoughts of Christians were to be directed towards the object of the holy war. That nothing might divert the faithful from the expedition against the Saracens, the Holy See revoked the indulgences granted to those who abandoned their homes to go and fight against the Albigeois in Languedoc, or the Moors on the other side of the Pyrenees.

It is plain that the sovereign pontiff neglected nothing that could render the success of the holy enterprise more certain. A modern historian justly remarks, that he employed every means, even such as were not likely to succeed; for he wrote to the sultan of Damascus and Cairo, inviting him to replace the holy city in the hands of the servants of the true God. Innocent said in his letter, that God had chosen the infidels as his instruments of vengeance; that he had permitted Saladin to get possession of Jerusalem, in order to punish the sins of the Christians; but that the day of deliverance was come, and that the Lord, disarmed by the prayers of his people, was about to restore the heritage of Jesus Christ. The sovereign pontiff counselled the sultan to avoid the effusion of blood, and prevent the desolation of his empire.

This was not the first time that the head of the Church had addressed prayers and warnings to the Mussulman powers. Two years before he had written to the sultan of Aleppo, in the hope of bringing him back to the way of evangelical truth, and making him a faithful auxiliary of the Christians. All these attempts, which ended in nothing, clearly prove that the pope was perfectly unacquainted with the spirit and character of the Mussulmans. The sovereign pontiff was not more fortunate when, in his letters, he desired the patriarch of Jerusalem to use his utmost endeavours to arrest the progress of corruption and licentiousness among the Christians of Palestine. The Christians of Syria made no change in their morals, and all the passions maintained their reign amongst them; whilst the Mussulmans fortified the holy city that was demanded of them, and employed themselves in arming against the attacks of the enemies of Islamism.

Nothing could exceed the ardour and activity of the sovereign pontiff. History can scarcely follow him, whilst seeking in every direction enemies against the Mussulmans; appealing, by turns, to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and to all the princes of Armenia and Syria. His eye took in at one view both East and West. His letters and ambassadors passed unceasingly throughout Europe. He sent the convocation for the council and the bull of the crusade into all the provinces of Christendom; and his apostolic exhortations resounded from the shores of the Danube and the Vistula to the banks of the Tigris and the Thames.[180]

Commissaries were chosen to make the decisions of the Holy See known to all Christians: their mission was to preach the holy war, and reform manners; to invoke at the same time the knowledge of the learned and the courage of warriors. In many provinces, the mission of preaching the crusade was confided to the bishops; Cardinal Peter Robert de CourÇon, who was then in France, as legate of the pope, received great powers from the Holy See; and travelled through the kingdom, exhorting Christians to take up the cross and arms.

The cardinal de CourÇon had been in his youth the disciple of Foulke of Neuilly, and had gained great celebrity by his eloquence. The multitude flocked from all parts to hear so distinguished a preacher of the Word, clothed in all the splendour of Romish power. “The legate,” says Fleury, “had the power of regulating everything that was connected with tournaments; and, which will appear more singular, the faculty of granting a certain indulgence to those who were present at the sermons in which he preached the crusade.” Faithful to the spirit of the religion of Jesus Christ, the cardinal de CourÇon gave the cross to all Christians who asked for it, without reflecting that women, children, old men, the deaf, the blind, the lame, could not make war against the Saracens; or that an army could not be formed as the Gospel composed the feast of the father of the family. Thus this liberty of entering into the holy bands, accorded without distinction or choice, only disgusted the barons and knights, and cooled the ardour of the common soldiers.[181]

Among the orators whom the pope associated with the cardinal de CourÇon, one of the most remarkable was James of Vitri, whom the Church had already placed in the rank of its celebrated doctors. Whilst he preached the crusade in the different provinces of France,[182] the fame of his virtues and talents extended even to the East. The canons of PtolemaÏs demanded him of the pope as their pastor and bishop; and the wishes of the Christians of Palestine were immediately granted. James of Vitri, after having excited the warriors of the West to take arms, became afterwards a witness of their labours, and related them in a history which has come down to our times.

The preaching of the holy war awakened everywhere the charity of the faithful. Philip Augustus gave up the fortieth part of his territorial revenues towards the expenses of the crusade, and a great number of nobles and prelates followed his example.[183] As boxes had been placed in all churches to receive the alms of the charitable, these alms brought considerable sums into the hands of the cardinal de CourÇon, who was accused of having appropriated to himself the gifts offered to Jesus Christ. These accusations were the more eagerly received, from the legate having taken upon him to exercise, in the name of the Holy See, an authority which was displeasing to both the monarch and his people. The cardinal, without the approbation of the king, levied taxes, enrolled warriors, forgave debts, lavished both rewards and punishments, and, in a word, usurped all the prerogatives of sovereignty. The exercise of such an unbounded power was the cause of trouble to all the provinces.[184] To prevent disorders, Philip Augustus thought it necessary to lay down regulations which should specify to the general council, the individual position of the Crusaders, and the exemptions and privileges they were to enjoy.

Whilst the cardinal de CourÇon continued to preach the crusade throughout the provinces of France, the archbishop of Canterbury was earnestly engaged in inciting the people of England to take up arms against the infidels. During a length of time, the kingdom of England had been troubled by the violent contentions of the commons, the barons, and even the clergy, who had taken advantage of the excommunications[185] launched by the pope against King John, to obtain a confirmation of their liberties. The English monarch, when subscribing the conditions that had been dictated to him, had yielded much more to necessity and force, than to his own inclinations; he wished earnestly to retract what he had granted, and in order to place his crown under the protection of the Church, he took the cross, and swore to go and fight against the Saracens. The sovereign pontiff placed faith in the submission and promises of the king of England; and after having preached a crusade against this prince, whom he accused of being an enemy of the Church, he employed the whole authority of the Holy See, and all the thunders of religion in his defence.

King John had no other motive in taking the cross but to deceive the pope, and obtain the protection of the Church; the sign of the Crusaders was assumed by him only as a means of preserving his power; a false and deceitful policy, which was soon unmasked, and, without doubt, assisted much in diminishing the public enthusiasm for the holy war. The barons of England, in their turn excommunicated by the pope, employed themselves in defending their liberties, and paid no attention to the holy orators who called upon them to embark for Asia.

The empire of Germany was not less disturbed than the kingdom of England. Otho of Saxony, after having been, during ten years, the object of all the predilections of the Holy See, drew upon himself all at once the implacable hatred of Innocent, by putting forth some claims to certain domains of the Church, and to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Not only was he himself excommunicated, but the cities even that remained faithful to him were placed under an interdict. The sovereign pontiff opposed Frederick II., son of Henry VI., to Otho, in the same manner as he had opposed Otho to Philip of Swabia. Germany and Italy were immediately in a state of agitation and trouble. Frederick, who was crowned king of the Romans at Aix la Chapelle, took the cross, from a sentiment of gratitude, and with the hope of securing the support of the Holy See in ascending the imperial throne.

Otho meanwhile neglected no means of preserving the empire, and resisting the views and undertakings of the court of Rome. He made war against the pope, and allied himself with all the enemies of Philip Augustus, who had declared for Frederick. A formidable league, composed of the king of England and the counts of Flanders, Holland, and Boulogne, threatened France with an invasion. The capital and provinces of that kingdom were already shared among the leaders of this league, when Philip gained the celebrated battle of Bouvines. This memorable victory[186] secured the independence and honour of the French monarchy, and restored peace to Europe. Otho, conquered, lost his allies, and sunk beneath the thunders of the Church.

The period was now arrived at which the council summoned by the pope was to meet. From all parts of Europe, ecclesiastics, nobles, princes, and the ambassadors of princes, repaired to the capital of the Christian world. The deputies from Antioch and Alexandria, with the patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem, came to Rome to implore the support of the nations of Christendom; the ambassadors of Frederick, Philip Augustus, and the kings of England and Hungary, in the names of their sovereigns, came to take their places in the council. This assembly, which represented the universal Church, and in which were nearly five hundred bishops and archbishops, and more than a hundred abbots and prelates from all the provinces of the East and West, took place in the church of the Lateran,[187] and was presided over by the sovereign pontiff. Innocent opened the council by a sermon, in which he deplored the errors of his age and the misfortunes of the Church. After having exhorted the clergy and the faithful, to sanctify by their morals, the measures he was about to take against heretics and the Saracens, he represented Jerusalem as clothed in mourning, exhibiting the chains of her captivity, and calling upon all the prophets to lend their voices to reach the hearts of the Christians.

“Oh! ye,” said Jerusalem by the mouth of the pontiff, “who pass along the public roads, behold, and see if ye have ever witnessed grief like mine. Hasten then all, O ye that love me, to deliver me from the depth of my miseries! I, who was the queen of all nations, am now subjected to a tribute; I, who was formerly filled with people, am now left desolate and almost alone! The roads of Sion mourn, because no one comes to my solemnities. My enemies have crushed down my head; all my sacred places are profaned; the Holy Sepulchre, once so splendid, is covered with disgrace; there, where of late the Son of God was adored, worship is now offered up to the son of perdition and hell. The children of the stranger load me with outrages, and, pointing to the cross of Jesus, say to me, Thou hast placed thy trust in vile wood; we shall see whether this wood can save thee in the hour of danger.”[188]

Innocent after having thus made the mourning Jerusalem eloquent, conjured the faithful to take pity on her misfortunes, and arm for her deliverance. He terminated his exhortation by these words, which breathe both his grief and his ardent zeal:—“My beloved brethren, I give myself up entirely to you; if you think it best, I promise to go in person with the kings, princes, and nations; you shall see if, by my cries and my prayers, I shall be able to excite them to fight for the Lord, to avenge the insults of the crucified, whom our sins have banished from the land wetted with his blood, and sanctified with the mystery of our redemption.”

The discourse of the pontiff was listened to in religious silence; but as Innocent spoke of several objects at the same time, and as his oratory was full of allegories, he did not at all succeed in awakening the enthusiasm of the assembly. The fathers of the council appeared to be not less affected by the abuses introduced into the Church, than by the reverses of the Christians of the East; in the first place the assembly employed itself in endeavouring to find means to reform ecclesiastical discipline, and check the progress of heresy.

In a declaration of faith, the council explained the doctrine of Christians, and recalled to their minds the symbol of evangelical belief. They opposed truth to error, persuasion to violence, and the virtues of the Gospel to the passions of sectarians and innovators: happy would it then have been for the Christian church, if the pope had followed this example of moderation; and if, whilst defending the rights of religion, he had not forgotten the rights of sovereigns and humanity. By an apostolic decree, proclaimed amidst the council, Innocent deposed the count of Thoulouse, who was considered the protector of heresy, and gave his states to Simon de Montfort, who had fought against, or rather slaughtered the Albigeois.

Innocent could not pardon the count of Thoulouse for having provoked a war which had agitated Christendom, and suspended the execution of his designs for the Eastern crusade. The violent policy of the sovereign pontiff aimed at striking terror into all heretics, and encouraging Christians to arm for the cause of Jesus Christ and that of his vicar upon earth.

After having condemned the new errors, and pronounced the anathemas of the Church against all who strayed from the way of the faith, the pontiff and the fathers of the council gave their attention to the Christians of the East, and the means of promptly succouring the Holy Land. All the dispositions expressed in the bull of convocation were confirmed; it was decreed that all ecclesiastics should pay the twentieth of their revenues towards the expenses of the crusade; that the pope and the cardinals should pay the tenth of theirs, and that there should be a truce of four years among all Christian princes. The council launched the thunders of excommunication against all princes that should molest the march of pilgrims, and against all that should furnish infidels with provisions or arms: the sovereign pontiff promised to direct the preparations for the war, to contribute three thousand silver marks and to supply, at his own expense, several vessels for the transport of the Crusaders.

The decisions of the council and the speeches of the pope made a profound impression upon the minds of the western Christians. All the preachers of the holy war were formally directed to recall the faithful to a sense of penitence, and to prohibit dances, tournaments, and public sports; to reform morals and to revive in all hearts the love of religion and virtue. They were commanded, after the example of the sovereign pontiff, to make the complaints of Jerusalem resound in the palaces of princes; and to earnestly solicit monarchs and nobles to assume the cross, so that the people might be induced to do so likewise.

The decrees concerning the holy wars were published in all the churches of the West; in several provinces, particularly in the north, of Europe, the prodigies and miraculous apparitions that had excited enthusiasm at the period of the first crusades, again became common; luminous crosses appeared in the heavens, and made the inhabitants of Cologne and the cities in the vicinity of the Rhine believe that God favoured the holy enterprise, and that the divine power promised the defeat and ruin of the infidels to the arms of the Crusaders.

The orators redoubled their ardour and zeal to engage the faithful to take a part in the holy war. From the pulpits imprecations were poured forth against the Saracens, always accompanied by a repetition of the words of Christ: “I am come to establish war.” The eloquence of prelates, bishops, and pastors had no other aim than summoning all Christian warriors to arms. The voices of preachers were not the only trumpet-calls; poetry herself, who had but recently revived in the southern provinces of France, chose the holy expeditions as the themes of her songs; and the profane muse of the troubadours mingled their notes with the animated words of the sacred orators. The Pierres d’Auvergne, the Ponces de Capdeuil, the Folquets de Romano, ceased to sing the love of ladies and the courtesy of knights, to celebrate in their verses, the sufferings of Christ and the captivity of Jerusalem. “The times are come,” said they, “in which it will be seen who are the men worthy of serving the Eternal. God now calls upon the valiant and chivalrous; they shall be his soldiers for ever, who, knowing how to suffer for their faith, and fight for God, shall prove themselves frank, generous, loyal, and brave; let the base lovers of life or seekers for gold remain behind. God now only calls upon the good and brave. It is his will that his faithful servants should secure salvation by noble feats of arms; and that glory obtained in fight should open to them the gates of heaven.”[189]

One of the minstrels of the holy war celebrates in his verses the zeal, the prudence, and courage of the head of the Church; and to induce the faithful to assume the cross, sings: “We have a sure and valorous guide, the sovereign pontiff Innocent.”

It then began to be hoped that the father of the Christians would himself lead the Crusaders, and sanctify the Asiatic expedition by his presence. The pope, in the council of the Lateran, had expressed a desire to assume the cross, and to go in person to take possession of the heritage of Christ; but the state of Europe, the progress of heresy, and, doubtless, also, the advice of the bishops and cardinals, prevented the accomplishment of his design.

As germs of dissension still subsisted between several European states, these discords might be prejudicial to the success of the holy war; and the pope sent forth emissaries to act as angels of peace; he himself repairing to Tuscany, to appease the quarrels that had broken out between the Pisans and Genoese. His words soothed down all angry passions; at his voice the most implacable enemies swore to forget their disputes, and unite to combat against the Saracens. His most ardent wishes appeared about to be fulfilled, and the whole West, obedient to his sovereign will, was ready to precipitate itself upon Asia, when he fell suddenly ill, and died, leaving to his successors the care and honour of finishing so great an enterprise.

Like all men who have exercised great power amidst political tempests, Innocent, after his death, was, by turns, praised and blamed with all the exaggeration of love and hatred. Some said he had been summoned to the heavenly Jerusalem, as God wished to reward his zeal for the deliverance of the holy places; whilst others had recourse to miraculous apparitions, and made saints speak in condemnation of his memory; sometimes he was seen pursued by a dragon, whose purpose was to inflict justice upon him; and at others he appeared surrounded by the flames of purgatory. Europe had been in a constant state of trouble during his pontificate; there was scarcely a kingdom upon which the wrath of the pontiff had not been poured out; and so many excesses, so many misfortunes had embittered men’s minds, that it was natural they should take a pleasure in believing that the vicar of Christ upon earth was expiating in another life the crimes of this. Innocent, nevertheless was irreproachable in his manners; at first he had evinced some degree of moderation; he loved truth and justice; but the unhappy condition of the Church, the obstacles of all kinds which he met with in his spiritual[190] government, irritated his character, and drove him to the excesses of a violent policy; at length, preserving no propriety or self-command, he burst forth with the ever-memorable and reprehensible words: “Sword, sword, spring from the scabbard, and sharpen thyself to kill.”[191] As he had undertaken far too much, he left serious embarrassments to those who might assume the reins of power after him; and such was the situation in which his policy had placed the Holy See, that his successors were obliged to follow up his maxims, and complete both the good and the evil he had begun. From this period, the history of the crusades will be incessantly interrupted by the quarrels of popes and princes, and we shall follow the pilgrims to the Holy Land amidst the clashing of the thunders launched by the various heads of the Church.

Censius Savelli, cardinal of St. Lucia, was chosen by the conclave to succeed Innocent, and governed the Church under the name of Honorius III. On the day after his coronation, the new pope wrote to the king of Jerusalem, to announce his elevation, and to revive the hopes of the Christians of Syria. “Let not the death of Innocent,” said he, “depress your courage; although I am far from being his equal in merit, I will show the same zeal for the deliverance of the Holy Land; and when the season shall arrive, will do everything in my power to assist you.” A pontifical letter, addressed to all bishops, exhorted them to continue to preach the crusade.

In order to secure success to the Oriental expedition, Innocent had first endeavoured to re-establish peace in Europe; and certainly the necessity in which the popes found themselves at such times, to promote concord among nations, was one of the greatest benefits of the holy wars. Honorius followed the example of his predecessor, and was desirous of calming all discords, even such as owed their origin to the pretensions of the Romish see. Louis VIII., son of Philip Augustus, at the solicitation of the pontiff, had taken arms against England, and was not willing to renounce the project of invading a kingdom so long subjected to the anger of the Church. The pope even stooped to supplications to disarm the redoubtable enemy of the king of England. He hoped that England and France, after having suspended their hostilities, would unite their efforts for the deliverance of the holy places; but these hopes were never accomplished. Henry III. ascended the throne of England after the death of John, and took the cross to secure the favour of the sovereign pontiff; but he had no idea of quitting his kingdom. The king of France, constantly occupied with the war against the Albigeois, and perhaps also with the secret designs of his ambition, satisfied himself with expressing the greatest respect for the authority of the Holy See, but took no part in the crusade.[192]

Most of the bishops and prelates of the kingdom, whom the sovereign pontiff had entreated to present an example of devotedness, exhibited much greater eagerness and zeal on this occasion than the barons and knights; many of them took the cross, and prepared to set out for the East. Frederick, who owed the imperial crown to the protection of the Church, renewed, in two solemn assemblies, his oath to make war against the Saracens. The example and promises of the emperor, whatever doubt might be entertained of their sincerity, had a powerful effect over the princes and people of Germany. The inhabitants of the banks of the Rhine, those of Friesland, Bavaria, Saxony, and Norway; the dukes of Austria, Moravia, Brabant, and Lemburg; the counts of Juliers, Holland, De Wit, and Loo; with the archbishop of Mayence and the bishops of Bamberg, Passau, Strasburg, Munster, and Utrecht, emulatively ranged themselves under the banners of the cross, and prepared to quit the West.

Among the princes who took the oath to fight against the Mussulmans, was Andrew II., king of Hungary. Bela, the father of the Hungarian monarch, had made a vow to go to the Holy Land; but not having been able to undertake the pilgrimage, he had, on his death-bed, required his son to accomplish his oath. Andrew, after having taken the cross, was for a long time detained in his states by the troubles to which his ambition had given birth, and which he had great difficulty in suppressing. Gertrude, whom he had married before the fifth crusade, made enemies of the whole court and nobility by her pride and her intrigues. This imperious princess[193] committed such extraordinary insults against the magnates of the kingdom, and inspired them with so violent a hatred, that they formed conspiracies against her life, and introduced murderers even into her palace. Disorders and misfortunes without number followed these crimes, the greatest of which, doubtless, was the impunity of the guilty.

In such circumstances policy would certainly have pointed it out to the king of Hungary, as his duty, to remain in his own states; but the spectacle of so many unpunished crimes, without doubt, alarmed his weakness, and strengthened his desire of getting at a distance from a court filled with his enemies. Like his mother, the widow of Bela,[194] he expected to find in the places consecrated by the sufferings of Christ, an asylum against the griefs which beset his life; the Hungarian monarch might likewise think that the holy pilgrimage would make him more respected by his subjects, and that the Church, ever armed in favour of royal crusaders, would defend the rights of his crown better than he himself could. He resolved at length to perform the vow he had made before his dying father, and earnestly set about preparations for his departure for Syria.

Andrew then reigned over a vast kingdom,—Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Galicia, and the province of Lodomira obeyed his laws, and paid him tribute; and throughout all these provinces, so lately enemies to the Christians, the crusades were preached. Hordes wandering amidst forests, listened to the complaints of Sion, and swore to fight against the infidels. Among the nations of Hungary, who, a century before, had been the terror of the pilgrim companions of Peter the Hermit, a crowd of warriors eagerly took the cross, and promised to follow their monarch to the Holy Land.

Vessels and fleets for the transport of the Crusaders were equipped in all the ports of the Baltic, the ocean, and the Mediterranean; and yet, at the very same time, a crusade was being preached against the inhabitants of Prussia, who still remained in the darkness of idolatry. Poland, Saxony, Norway, and Livonia armed their warriors to overthrow the idols of paganism on the banks of the Oder and the Vistula, whilst the other nations of the West were preparing to make war against the Saracens in the plains of JudÆa and Syria.

The still savage people of Prussia, separated by their religion and their customs from the other inhabitants of Europe, presented in the centre of Christendom, in the thirteenth century, a living picture of ancient paganism, and of the superstitions of the old nations of the North. Their character and their manners are worthy of fixing the attention of both the historian and his readers, fatigued, perhaps, by the constant repetition of the preaching of holy wars, and the distant expeditions of the Crusaders.

Much discussion has taken place concerning the origin of the ancient inhabitants of Prussia, and we have nothing on this head but conjectures and systems. The Prussians were, in person, like the Germans;[195] blue eyes, a spirited and lively look, ruddy cheeks, a lofty stature, a robust form, and light hair: this resemblance to the Germans was produced by climate, and not by the mixture of the nations; the inhabitants of Prussia had more affinity with the Lithuanians, whose language they spoke, and whom they imitated in their dress. They lived by the chase, fishing, and the flesh of their flocks; agriculture was not unknown to them; their mares furnished them with milk, their sheep with wool, their bees with honey; in commercial transactions they had very little to do with money: to prepare flax and leather, to split stones, to sharpen their arms, and to fashion yellow amber, constituted the whole of their industry. They marked time by knots tied in thongs, and the hours by the words twilight, light, dawn, sunrise, evening, the first sleep, &c. The appearance of the PleÏades directed them in their labours.

The months of the year bore the names of the productions of the earth, and of the objects presented to their eyes by each season; they knew the month of crows, the month of pigeons, that of cuckoos, of the green birch-trees, of the linden-trees, of corn, of the departure of the birds, of the fall of leaves, &c. Wars, the conflagrations of great forests, hurricanes, and inundations, formed the principal epochs of their history.

The people dwelt in huts built of earth, the rich in houses constructed of oak timber; there was not a city in Prussia. Some strong castles appeared upon the hills. This nation, though savage, recognised princes and nobles; he who had conquered enemies, and he who excelled in taming horses, attained nobility. The lords held the right of life and death over their vassals; the Prussians made no wars for the purpose of conquering an enemy’s country, but solely to defend their homes and their gods. Their arms consisted of the lance and the javelin, which they handled with much skill. The warriors named their chief, who was blessed by the high priest; before going to battle, the Prussians selected one of their prisoners of war, fastened him to a tree, and transfixed him with arrows.[196] They believed in omens; the eagle, the white pigeon, the crow, the stork, the bustard, promised victory; the stag, the wolf, the lynx, the mouse, the sight of a sick person, or even of an old woman, announced defeats or reverses; when presenting their hand, they offered peace; when swearing to treaties, they placed one hand upon their breast and the other upon the sacred oak. When victorious, they tried their prisoners of war, and the most distinguished among them expired at the stake,—a sacrifice to the gods of the country.

Amidst all their barbarous customs, the Prussians had the reputation of respecting the laws of hospitality. The stranger and the shipwrecked mariner were sure to find an asylum and succour among them; intrepid in war, simple and mild in peace, grateful but vindictive, respecting misfortune, they had more virtues than vices, and were only corrupted by the excess of their superstition.

The Prussians believed in another life; they called hell, Peckla; chains, thick darkness, and fetid waters constituted the punishment of the wicked. In the Elysian fields, which they called Rogus, beautiful women, banquets, delicious drink, dances, soft couches, and fine clothes were the rewards of virtue.

In a place called RemovÉ, arose a flourishing oak, which had witnessed the passage of a hundred generations, whose colossal trunk contained three images of their principal gods; the foliage daily dripped with the blood of immolated victims; there the high priest had established his abode, and there administered justice. The priests alone ventured to approach this holy place; the guilty slunk from it trembling. Perkunas, the god of thunder and fire, was the first among the deities of the Prussians; he had the countenance of an angry man, his beard was curled, and his head was surrounded with flames. The people called claps of thunder, the march or steps of Perkunas. Near the grove of RemovÉ, on the banks of a sulphureous spring, an eternal fire burned in honour of the god of thunder.

Near Perkunas, Potrimpus appeared, in the form of a young man, wearing a crown of wheat-ears; he was adored as the god of waters and rivers; he preserved mankind from the scourge of war, and presided over the pleasures of peace. By a strange contradiction, they offered up to this pacific divinity, the blood of animals, and that of the captives slaughtered at the foot of the oak; sometimes children were sacrificed to him; the priests consecrated the serpent to him, as symbolical of fortune.

Beneath the shade of the sacred tree, was still another idol, called Pycollos, the god of the dead; he bore the form of an old man, with grey hair, hollow eyes, and a pale countenance, his head enfolded in a shroud; his altars were heaps of human bones; the infernal deities were obedient to his laws; he inspired both grief and terror.

A fourth divinity, Curko, whose image ornamented the branches of the oak of RemovÉ, furnished mankind with the necessaries of life. Every year, at autumnal seed-time, his image was renewed; it consisted of a goat-skin, elevated upon a pole eight feet high, crowned with blades of corn; the priest sacrificed upon a stone, honey, milk, and the fruits of the earth, whilst the youth of both sexes formed a circle round the idol.

The Prussians celebrated several other festivals during spring and summer, in honour of the same god; at the spring festival, which took place on the 22nd of March, they addressed Curko in these words: “It is thou who hast chased away winter, and brought fair and fine days back to us; by thee the gardens and the fields rebloom; by thee the forests and the woods resume their verdure.” The inhabitants of Prussia had a crowd of other gods, whom they invoked for their flocks, their bees, the forests, the waters, harvest, commerce, the peace of families, and conjugal happiness; a divinity with a hundred eyes watched over the threshold of houses; one god guarded the yard, another the stable; the hunter heard the spirit of the forest howl amidst the tree-tops; the mariner recommended himself to the god of the sea. LaimelÉ was invoked by women in labour, and spun the lives of mankind. Tutelary divinities arrested the progress of conflagrations, caused the sap of the birch-trees to flow, guarded roads, and awakened workmen and labourers before the dawn of day. The air, the earth, the waters were peopled by gnomes or little gods, and with ghosts and goblins, which they called arvans. It was believed by all that the oak was a tree dear to the gods, and that its shade offered an asylum against the violence of men or the assaults of destiny. In addition to the oak of RemovÉ, the Prussians had several other trees of the same kind, which they considered the sanctuaries of their divinities. They consecrated also linden-trees, firs, maples, and even whole forests; they held in reverence fountains, lakes, and mountains; they adored serpents, owls, storks, and other animals: in short, in the countries inhabited by the Prussians, all nature was filled with divinities, and, up to the fourteenth century, it might be said of a European nation, as Bossuet said of ancient paganism, “Everything there was god, except God himself.”

A long time before the crusades, St. Adalbert had left his native country, Bohemia, to penetrate into the forests of Prussia, and endeavour to convert the Prussians to Christianity; but his eloquence, his moderation, or his charity, could not disarm the fury of the priests of Perkunas. Adalbert died, pierced with arrows, and received the palm of martyrdom; other missionaries shared the same fate; their blood arose against their murderers, and the report of their death, together with an account of the cruelties of a barbarous people, everywhere cried aloud upon the Christians of the North for vengeance. The neighbouring nations were constantly entertaining the resolution to take arms against the idolaters of Prussia. An abbot of the monastery of Oliva, more able, and still further, more fortunate than his predecessors, undertook the conversion of the pagans of the Oder and the Vistula, and succeeded, with the assistance of the Holy See, in getting up a crusade against the worshippers of false gods; a great number of Christians took the cross, at the summons of the pope, who promised them eternal life if they fell in fight, and lands and treasures if they triumphed over the enemies of Christ. The knights of Christ and the knights of the sword, instituted to subdue the pagans of Livonia, with the Teutonic knights, who in Palestine rivalled in power and glory the two other orders of the Temple and the Hospital, at the first signal flocked to the standards of the army assembled to invade Prussia, and convert its inhabitants: this war lasted more than two centuries. In this sanguinary struggle, if the Christian religion sometimes inspired its combatants with its virtues, the leaders of this long crusade were much more frequently influenced by vengeance, ambition, and avarice. The knights of the Teutonic order, whose bravery almost always amounted to heroism, remained masters of the country conquered by their arms. These victorious monks never edified the people they subdued, either by their moderation or their charity; and were often accused before the tribunal of the head of the Church, of having converted the Prussians, not to make them servants of Christ, but to increase the number of their own subjects and slaves.

We have only spoken of the people of Prussia, and of the wars made against them, to exhibit to our readers a nation and customs almost unknown to modern scholars even; and to show how far ambition and a thirst of conquest was able to abuse the spirit of the crusades: we hasten to return to the expedition that was being prepared against the Saracens.

Germany considered Frederick II. as the leader of the war about to be made in Asia; but the new emperor, seated on a throne for a long time shaken by civil wars, dreading the enterprises of the Italian republics, and perhaps those of the popes their protectors, thought it prudent to defer his departure for Palestine.

The zeal of the Crusaders, however, did not abate, and in their impatience they turned their eyes towards the king of Hungary to take the command in the holy war. Andrew, accompanied by the duke of Bavaria, the duke of Austria, and the German nobles who had taken the cross, set out for the East, at the head of a numerous army, and repaired to Spalatro, where vessels from Venice, Zara, Ancona, and other cities of the Adriatic, awaited the Crusaders, to transport them into Palestine.

In all the countries through which he marched, the king of Hungary was followed by the benedictions of the people. When he approached the city of Spalatro, the inhabitants and the clergy came out in procession to meet him, and conducted him to their principal church, where all the faithful were assembled to call down the mercy of Heaven upon the Christian warriors. A few days after, the fleet of the Crusaders left the port[197] of Spalatro, and set sail for the island of Cyprus, at which place were met the deputies of the king and the patriarch of Jerusalem, of the orders of the Temple and St. John, and of the Teutonic knights.

A crowd of Crusaders, who had embarked at Brindisi, at Genoa, and at Marseilles, preceded the king of Hungary and his army. Lusignan, king of Cyprus, and the greater part of his barons, influenced by the example of so many illustrious princes, took the cross, and promised to follow them into the Holy Land. All the Crusaders embarked together at the port of Lemisso, and landed in triumph at PtolemaÏs.

An Arabian historian says, that since the time of Saladin the Christians had never had so numerous an army in Syria.[198] Thanks to Heaven were offered up in all the churches, for the powerful aid it had sent to the Holy Land; but the joy of the Christians of Palestine was quickly troubled by the serious difficulty in which they found themselves to procure provisions for such a multitude of pilgrims.

This year (1217) had been barren throughout the richest countries of Syria;[199] and the vessels from the West had only been laden with machines of war, arms, and baggage. Deficiency of food was soon felt among the Crusaders, and led the soldiers to license and robbery; the Bavarians committed the greatest disorders; pillaging houses and monasteries, and devastating the neighbouring country; the leaders had no other means of reËstablishing order and peace in the army, but by giving the signal for war against the Saracens; and, to save the lands and dwellings of the Christians, they proposed to their soldiers to ravage the cities and territories of the infidels.

The whole army, commanded by the kings of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Hungary, encamped on the banks of the torrent of Cison. The patriarch of the holy city, in order to strike the imagination of the Crusaders, and prevent their forgetting the object of their enterprise, repaired to the camp, bringing with him a portion of the wood of the true cross, which he pretended to have been saved at the battle of Tiberias. The kings and princes came out, barefooted, to meet him, and received with respect the sign of redemption. This ceremony rekindled the zeal and enthusiasm of the Crusaders, whose ardent desire now was to fight for Christ. The army crossed the torrent, and advanced towards the valley of JesraËl, between Mount Hermon and Mount GelboÉ, without meeting an enemy. The leaders and soldiers bathed in the Jordan, and passed over the plain of Jericho, and along the shores of the great lake of Genesareth. The Christian army marched singing spiritual songs; religion and its remembrances had restored discipline and peace among them. Every object and place they beheld around them filled them with a pious veneration for the Holy Land. In this campaign, which was a true pilgrimage, they made a great number of prisoners without fighting a battle, and returned to PtolemaÏs loaded with booty.

At the period of this crusade, Malek-Adel no longer reigned over either Syria or Egypt. After having mounted the throne of Saladin by injustice and violence, he had descended from it voluntarily; the conqueror of all obstacles, and having no longer a wish to form, he became sensible of the emptiness of human grandeur, and gave up the reins of an empire that nobody had the power to dispute with him. Melik Kamel, the eldest of his sons, was sultan of Cairo; and Corradin[200] was sultan of Damascus. His other sons had received, as their shares of the empire, the principalities of Bosra, Baalbec, Mesopotamia, &c. Malek-Adel, relieved from the cares of government, visited his children by turns, and preserved peace among them. All he had reserved of his past power was the ascendancy of a great renown, and of a glory acquired by numberless heroic exploits; but this ascendancy held princes, people, and army in subjection. In moments of peril, his counsels became laws: the soldiers still considered him as their leader; his sons as their sovereign arbiter; and all Mussulmans as their defender and support.

The new crusade had spread terror among the infidels, but Malek-Adel calmed their fears by assuring them that the Christians would soon be divided amongst themselves, and by telling them that this formidable expedition resembled the storms which howl over Mount Libanus, and which disperse of themselves: neither the armies of Egypt, nor the armies of Syria, made their appearance in JudÆa; and the Crusaders assembled at PtolemaÏs were astonished at meeting no enemy to contend with. The leaders of the Christian army had resolved to direct their march towards the banks of the Nile; but winter, which was about to commence, would not permit them to undertake so distant an enterprise. To employ the soldiers, whom idleness always seduced into license, it was determined to make an attack upon Mount Tabor, where the Mussulmans had fortified themselves.

Mount Tabor, so celebrated in the Old and New Testament, arises like a superb dome amidst the vast plain of Galilee. The declivity of the mountain is covered with flowers and odoriferous plants; from the summit of Tabor, which forms a level of a league in extent, may be seen, travellers say, all the banks of the Jordan, the Lake of Tiberias, the Sea of Syria, and most of the places in which Christ performed his miracles.

A church, the erection of which was due to the piety of St. Helena, stood on the very spot where the transfiguration of Christ took place in presence of his disciples, and for a length of time attracted crowds of pilgrims. Two monasteries, built at the summit of Tabor, recalled for centuries the memory of Moses and Elias, whose names they bore; but, from the reign of Saladin, the standard of Mahomet had floated over this holy mountain; the church of St. Helena and the monasteries of Moses and Elias had been demolished, and upon their ruins was raised a fortress, from which the Mussulmans constantly threatened the territories of PtolemaÏs.

It was impossible to ascend Mount Tabor without encountering a thousand dangers; but nothing intimidated the Christian warriors: the patriarch of Jerusalem, who marched at their head, showed them the true cross, and animated them by his example and his eloquent words. Enormous stones rolled from the heights occupied by the infidels, who poured down an endless shower of javelins and arrows upon all the roads which led to the top of the mountain. The valour of the soldiers of the cross braved all the efforts of the Saracens; the king of Jerusalem distinguished himself by prodigies of bravery, and killed two emirs with his own hand. The summit of the mountain being attained, the Crusaders dispersed the Mussulmans, and pursued them to the gates of their fortress: nothing could resist their arms. But all at once several of the leaders began to entertain suspicions regarding the intentions of the sultan of Damascus; and the fear of a surprise acted the more strongly on their minds from no one having foreseen it. Whilst the Mussulmans retired filled with terror behind their ramparts, a sudden panic seized the conquerors: the Crusaders renounced the attack of the fortress, and the whole Christian army retreated without effecting anything; as if it had only ascended Mount Tabor to contemplate the spot rendered sacred by the transfiguration of the Saviour.

We could scarcely yield faith to the account of this precipitate flight, without the evidence of contemporary historians;[201] the ancient chronicles, according to their custom, do not fail to attribute to treachery an event they cannot comprehend; it appears to us, however, much more natural to suppose that the retreat of the Crusaders was produced by the discord and want of foresight which prevailed in all their undertakings.[202]

This retreat had most fatal results; whilst the leaders reproached each other with the disgrace of the army and the egregious error they had committed, the knights and soldiers sank into a state of discouragement. The patriarch of Jerusalem refused from that time to bear the wood of the true cross in the van of the Crusaders, as he found the sight of it could neither revive their piety nor reanimate their courage. The kings and princes who directed the crusade, wishing to retrieve so shameful a reverse before they returned to Palestine, led the army towards Phoenicia. In this new campaign no exploit signalized their arms being winter, a great number of the soldiers, overcome by cold, remained abandoned on the roads, whilst others fell into the hands of the Bedouin Arabs. On Christmas eve, the Crusaders, who were encamped between Tyre and Sarphat, were surprised by a violent tempest; wind, rain, hail, whirlwinds, incessant peals of thunder killed their horses, carried away their tents, and scattered their baggage. This disaster completed their despondency, and created a belief that Heaven refused them its support.

As they were in serious want of provisions, and the whole army could not subsist in one place, they resolved to divide themselves into four different bodies till the end of winter. This separation, which was made amidst mutual complaints, appeared to be the work of discord much more than of necessity. The king of Jerusalem, the duke of Austria, and the grand master of St. John encamped in the plains of CÆsarea; the king of Hungary, the king of Cyprus, and Raymond, son of the prince of Antioch, retired to Tripoli;[203] the grand masters of the Templars and the Teutonic knights, and Andrew d’Avesnes, with the Flemish Crusaders, went to fortify a castle built at the foot of Mount Carmel; the other Crusaders retired to PtolemaÏs with the intention of going back to Europe.

The king of Cyprus fell ill and died just as he was upon the point of embarking for his own kingdom. The king of Hungary was discouraged, and began to despair of the success of a war so unfortunately commenced. This prince, after a sojourn of three months in Palestine, thought his vow accomplished, and resolved, all at once, to return to his dominions.

The West had doubtless been surprised to see Andrew abandon his kingdom, torn by factions, to repair to Syria; and the Eastern Christians were not less astonished at seeing this prince leave Palestine without having done anything for the deliverance of the holy places. The patriarch of Jerusalem reproached him with inconstancy, and employed his utmost efforts to retain him beneath the banners of the cross; but finding Andrew would not yield to his prayers, he had recourse to threats, and displayed the formidable train of the weapons of the Church. Nothing, however, could shake the resolution of the king of Hungary, who satisfied himself with not appearing to desert the cause of Christ by leaving half his troops under the command of the king of Jerusalem.

After having quitted Palestine, Andrew remained for a long time in Armenia, appearing to forget his own enemies, as he had forgotten those of Christ. He came back into Europe through Asia Minor and beheld, whilst passing Constantinople, the wreck of the Latin empire, which ought to have roused him from his pious indolence, and have reminded him of his own dangers. The Hungarian monarch, who had left his army in Syria, took back with him a number of relics; such as the head of St. Peter, the right hand of the apostle Thomas, and one of the seven vases in which Christ changed water into wine at the marriage in Cana: his confidence in these revered objects made him negligent of the means of human prudence; and, if we may believe a contemporary chronicle,[204] when he returned into Hungary, the relics which he brought from the Holy Land sufficed for the suppression of all the troubles of his states, and caused peace, the laws, and justice, to nourish throughout his provinces. The greater part of the Hungarian historians, however, hold quite another language,[205] and reproach their monarch with having dissipated his treasures and his armies in an imprudent and an unfortunate expedition; the nobility and people took advantage of his long absence to impose laws upon him, and obtain liberties and privileges which weakened the royal power, and scattered the germs of a rapid decay in the kingdom of Hungary.

After the departure of the king of Hungary, a great number of Crusaders arrived from the ports of Holland, France, and Italy. The Crusaders from Friesland, Cologne, and the banks of the Rhine had stopped on the coast of Portugal, where they had conquered the Moors in several great battles, killed two Saracen princes, and mounted the banners of the cross upon the walls of Alcazar. They described the miracles by which Heaven had seconded their valour, and the apparition of angels, clothed in resplendent armour, who had fought on the banks of the Tagus, in the ranks of the soldiers of Christ.[206] The arrival of these warriors, with the account of their victories, revived the courage of the Crusaders who had remained in Palestine under the command of Leopold, duke of Austria; with such a powerful reinforcement, nothing was talked of but renewing the war against the Mussulmans.

The project of conquering the banks of the Nile often occupied the thoughts of the Christians; since the idea of a war in Egypt had been put forth by the pope himself amidst the council of the Lateran, it had been considered as an inspiration from Heaven; they only thought of the advantages of a rich conquest, and the perils of so difficult an enterprise appeared of no importance in the eyes of the soldiers of the cross.

The Christian army, commanded by the king of Jerusalem, the duke of Austria, and William, count of Holland, embarked at the port of PtolemaÏs, and landed within sight of Damietta, on the northern bank of the second mouth of the Nile. The city of Damietta,[207] situated at the distance of a mile from the sea, had a double rampart on the river side, and a triple wall on the land side; a tower arose in the middle of the Nile, and an iron chain, which reached from the city to the tower, prevented the passage of vessels. The city contained a numerous garrison, with provisions and munitions of war for a long siege. Damietta had already several times resisted formidable attacks of the Christians. Roger, king of Sicily, had made himself master of it in the preceding century, but he was not able to retain and defend it, against the united forces of the Mussulmans.

The Crusaders arrived before Damietta early in April; having pitched their tents in a vast plain, they had behind them lakes and pools abounding in fish of all kinds;[208] before them the Nile, covered with their vessels; a thousand canals, crowned with evergreen papyrus and reeds, intersected the lands, and spread freshness and fertility around them. In the fields which had so lately been the theatre of sanguinary contests, no traces of war were to be seen; harvests of rice covered the plains in which Christian armies had perished by famine; groves of oranges and citrons loaded with flowers and fruit; woods of palms and sycamores, thickets of jasmines and odoriferous shrubs, with a crowd of plants and wonders, unknown to the pilgrims, created the image of an earthly paradise, and made them fancy that Damietta must have been the first dwelling of man in his state of innocence. The aspect of a beautiful sky and a rich climate intoxicated them with joy, kept hope alive in their hearts, and held out to them the accomplishment of all the divine promises. In their religious and warlike enthusiasm, they believed they saw Providence prodigal of its miracles for the success of their arms; scarcely had they established their camp on the bank of the Nile, when an eclipse of the moon covered the horizon with darkness; and even this phenomenon inflamed their courage, as it appeared to them a presage of the greatest victories.

The first attacks[209] were directed against the tower built in the middle of the Nile; vessels, in which were placed towers, ladders, and drawbridges, approached the walls. The soldiers who manned them, braving the arrows and murderous machines of the Mussulmans, made several assaults; but prodigies of strength, courage, and skill were useless. The most intrepid of the Crusaders, victims of their own rash bravery and devotedness, perished, swallowed up by the waves, without being able to be succoured or avenged by their companions. In all the attacks, nothing could equal the impetuous valour of the Western warriors; but this valour was not seconded by either the prudence of the commanders or the discipline of the soldiers; each nation had its leader, its machines of war, its days for fighting; no order governed either attack or retreat; the soldiers on board the vessels wished to manoeuvre them, the sailors would fight.

The frequent checks they experienced, at length, however, taught them prudence: the lightest of their vessels ascended the Nile, and returning to cast anchor above the tower built in the middle of the river, attacked and broke asunder the bridge of boats which united the tower with the city. Industry likewise lent its assistance to the bravery of the Crusaders; machines of war were invented, of which no models had previously existed. An enormous wooden castle, built upon two vessels,[210] joined together by beams and joists, was admired as a miraculous invention, and considered as a certain pledge of victory. Upon this floating castle was a drawbridge, which could be lowered upon the tower of the Saracens, and galleries destined to receive the soldiers who were to attack the walls. A poor priest of the church of Cologne,[211] who had preached the crusade on the banks of the Rhine, and followed the Christian army into Egypt, was charged with the superintendence of the erection of this formidable edifice. As the popes in their letters always advised the Crusaders to take with them to the East men skilled in the mechanical arts,[212] the Christian army was in no want of workmen to perform the most difficult labours; the liberality of the leaders and soldiers supplied all the necessary expenses.

The whole army looked with impatience for the moment at which the enormous fortress should be brought near to the tower on the Nile; prayers were offered up in the camp for the protection of Heaven; the patriarch and the king of Jerusalem, the clergy and the soldiers, during several days, submitted to all the austerities of penitence,—all marched in procession barefooted to the seashore. The leaders had fixed upon the festival of the apostle St. Bartholomew as the day for the assault, and the Crusaders were filled with hope and ardour. They vied with each other in eagerness to be of the assaulting party, for which the best soldiers of each nation were selected, and Leopold, duke of Austria, the model of Christian knights, obtained the honour of commanding an expedition with which the first success of the crusade was connected.

On the appointed day, the two vessels surmounted by the wooden tower received the signal for moving. They carried three hundred warriors fully armed; and an innumerable multitude of Mussulmans assembled on the walls contemplated the spectacle with surprise mingled with dread. The two vessels pursued their silent course up the middle of the river, whilst all the Crusaders, either drawn up in battle-array on the left bank of the Nile, or dispersed over the neighbouring hills, saluted with loudest acclamations the moving fortress which bore the fortunes and the hopes of the Christian army. On drawing near to the walls the two vessels cast anchor, and the soldiers prepared for the assault. Whilst the Christians hurled their javelins and got ready their lances and swords, the Saracens poured upon them torrents of Greek fire, and employed every effort to make the wooden castle on which their enemies fought a prey to the flames. The one party was encouraged by the shouts and applauses of the Christian army, the other by the thousand times repeated acclamations of the inhabitants of Damietta. Amidst the fight, the machine of the Crusaders all at once appeared on fire; the drawbridge lowered on to the walls of the tower wavered and was unsteady; the flagstaff of the duke of Austria fell into the Nile, and the banner of the Christians remained in the hands of the Mussulmans. At this sight the Saracens uttered the most extravagant cries of joy, whilst groans and sounds of grief were heard along the shore on which the Crusaders were encamped; the patriarch of Jerusalem, the clergy, the whole army, fell on their knees, and raised their supplicating hands towards heaven.

But soon, as if God had been favourable to their prayers, the flames were extinguished, the machine was repaired, the drawbridge was replaced, and the companions of Leopold renewed the attack with more ardour than ever. From the top of their fortress they commanded the walls of the tower, and dealt mighty blows with sabre, spear, battle-axe, and iron mace. Two soldiers sprang upon the platform upon which the Saracens defended themselves; they carried terror among the besieged, who descended tumultuously to the first stage of the tower; the latter set fire to the floor, and endeavoured to oppose a rampart of flames between themselves and the enemies who rushed down in pursuit of them; but these last efforts of despair and bravery presented but a vain resistance to the Christian soldiers. The Mussulmans were attacked in all parts of the tower; and their walls, shaken by the machines, appeared to be sinking around them, and about to bury them beneath the ruins: in this hopeless condition they laid down their arms, and sued to their conquerors for life.

After this memorable victory, the Christians, masters of the tower of the Nile, broke the chain which impeded the passage of vessels, and their fleet was able to approach close to the ramparts of the city.

About the same time (September, 1217) Malek-Adel, who had rendered himself so formidable to the Christians, died in the capital of Egypt. He heard before his death of the victory which the Christians had gained at Damietta; and the Crusaders did not fail to say that he had sunk under the effects of despair, and that he carried with him to the tomb the power and glory of the Mussulmans.

The Christians, in their histories, have represented Malek-Adel as an ambitious, cruel, and stern prince; Oriental writers celebrate his piety and mildness. An Arabian historian boasts of his love of justice and truth,[213] and paints, by a single trait, the moderation of the absolute monarchs of Asia, when he says, “that the brother of Saladin listened without anger to that which displeased him.”

Historians unite in praising the bravery of the Mussulman prince, and the ability he displayed in the execution of all his designs. No prince knew better how to make himself obeyed, or to give to supreme power that brilliant exterior which strikes the imagination of nations, and disposes them to submission. In his court, he always appeared surrounded with the pomp of the East: his palace was as a sanctuary which no one durst approach: he rarely appeared in public; when he did, it was in a manner to inspire fear: as he was fortunate in all his undertakings, the Mussulmans had no difficulty in believing that the favourite of fortune was the favourite of Heaven: the caliph of Bagdad sent ambassadors to salute him king of kings. Malek-Adel was pleased to be styled in camps SeÏf Eddin[214] (the sword of religion), and this glorious name, which he had merited by his contests with the Christians, drew upon him the love and confidence of the soldiers of Islamism. He astonished the East by his abdication, as much as he had astonished it by his victories; the surprise he excited only added to his glory as well as to his power; and, that his destiny might in everything be extraordinary, fortune decreed that when he had descended from the throne, he should still remain master. His fifteen sons, of whom several were sovereigns, still trembled before him; nations prostrated themselves on his passage; up to the very hour in which he closed his eyes, his presence, his name only, maintained peace in his family and the provinces, and order and discipline in the armies.

At his death the face of everything began to change; the empire of the Ayoubites, which he had sustained by his exploits, gave tokens of decline; the ambition of the emirs, for a long time restrained, broke out into conspiracies against the supreme authority; a spirit of license began to be apparent in the Mussulman armies, and particularly among the troops that defended Egypt.

The Crusaders ought to have profited by the death of Malek-Adel, and the consequences it was sure to produce, by attacking the discouraged Mussulmans without intermission. But instead of following up their success, after they had obtained possession of the Tower of the Nile, they all at once neglected the labours of the siege, and appeared to have fallen asleep over their first victories. A great number of them, persuaded that they had done enough for the cause of Christ, only thought of embarking to return into Europe. Every vessel that left the port recalled to the pilgrims remembrances of home; and the beautiful sky of Damietta, which had inflamed their imaginations at the commencement of the siege, was not sufficient to retain them in a country which they began to consider as a place of exile.

The clergy, however, warmly censured the retreat and desertion of the Crusaders, and implored Heaven to punish the base soldiers who thus abandoned the standards of the cross. Six thousand pilgrims from Brittany, who were returning to Europe, were shipwrecked on the coast of Italy, and almost all perished; and the ecclesiastics, with the most ardent of the Crusaders, did not fail to see, in so great a disaster, a manifestation of divine anger. When the Crusaders of Friesland, after having deserted the banners of the Holy Land, had returned into the West, the ocean all at once broke through the dykes, and overflowed its customary boundaries; the richest provinces of Holland were submerged, and a hundred thousand inhabitants, with whole cities, disappeared beneath the waters. Many Christians attributed this calamity to the culpable retreat of the Frieson and Dutch Crusaders.

The pope beheld with pain the return of the pilgrim deserters from the cause of Christ. Honorius neglected nothing to secure the success of a war he had preached; and he every day, both by prayers and threats, pressed the departure of those who, after having taken the cross, delayed the accomplishment of their vow.

According to the usual custom of navigators, two periods of the year were fixed upon at which it was best to cross the sea. The pilgrims almost always embarked in the month of March and in the month of September, whether to repair to the East or to return to Europe; which caused them to be compared to those birds of passage that change their climate at the approach of a new season, and towards the end of fine weather.[215] At each passage, the Mediterranean was covered with vessels which transported Crusaders, some returning to their homes, others going to fight the infidels. At the very moment the Christians were deploring the loss of the Frieson and Dutch warriors, their spirits were restored by seeing Crusaders from Germany, Pisa, Genoa, Venice, and several provinces of France, arrive in the camp at Damietta.

Among the French warriors, history names HervÉ, count of Nevers; Hugh, count de la Marche; Miles de Bar-sur-Seine; the lords John of Artois and Ponce de Crancey; Ithier de Thacy, and Savary de MaulÉon; they were accompanied by the archbishop of Bordeaux, the bishops of Angers, Autun, Beauvais, Paris, Meaux, Noyon, &c. England also sent the bravest of her knights into Egypt. Henry III. had taken the cross after the council of the Lateran; but as he could not quit his dominions, at that time a prey to civil wars and torn by discord, the earls of Harcourt, Chester, and Arundel, with Prince Oliver,[216] were honoured with the charge of acquitting, in his name, the vow he had taken to fight in the East for the cause of Christ.

At the head of the pilgrims who arrived at that time in Egypt were two cardinals, whom the pope had sent to the Christian army. Robert de CourÇon, one of the preachers of the crusade, was charged with the mission of inculcating the moral precepts of Christ in the camp of the Crusaders, and animating the zeal and devotion of the soldiers by his eloquence. Cardinal Pelagius, bishop of Albano, was invested with the entire confidence of the Holy See; he brought with him the treasures that were to defray the expenses of the war; the Crusaders from Rome and several other cities of Italy marched under his orders, and recognised him as their military leader.

Cardinal Pelagius, by his position, was endowed with great authority in the Christian army, and his naturally imperious character led him to assume even more power than he had received from the Holy See. In whatever affair he was employed, he acknowledged no equal, and would not endure a superior. He had been known to oppose the sovereign pontiff in the bosom of the conclave; he would have resisted the most powerful monarchs, even in their own councils. Cardinal Pelagius, persuaded that Providence meant to make use of him to accomplish great designs, believed himself fit for all works, and appointed to all kinds of glory; when he had formed a determination, he maintained it with invincible obstinacy, and was influenced by neither obstacles nor perils, nor even by the lessons of experience. If Pelagius originated any advice in council, he supported it with all the menaces of the court of Rome, and often gave cause for a belief that the thunders of the Church had only been confided to his hands, that he might secure the triumph of his own opinions.

Pelagius had scarcely arrived in Egypt, when, as legate of the pope, he disputed the command of the army with John of Brienne. To support his pretensions, he asserted that the Crusaders had taken up arms at the desire of the sovereign pontiff; that they were the soldiers of the Church, and ought to recognise no other head than the legate of the Holy See: these assumptions gave great offence to the barons and principal leaders. From that time it was easy to foresee that discord would be introduced by him whose mission it was to establish peace; and that the envoy of the pope, charged to preach humility among Christians, was about to ruin everything by his mad presumption.[217] Cardinal de CourÇon died shortly after his arrival.

The continuator of William of Tyre, whilst deploring the death of this legate, who had been remarkable for his moderation, characterizes, by a single word, the conduct of Pelagius, and the consequences that might be expected from it, by saying: “Then died Cardinal Peter, and Pelagius lived, which was a great pity.”

In the mean time, the approach of danger had reunited the Mussulman princes. The caliph of Bagdad, whom James of Vitri[218] styles the pope of the infidels, exhorted the nations to take up arms against the Christians. All the sons of Malek-Adel, who reigned over the provinces of Syria and of Yemen, prepared to march to the assistance of Egypt. The sultan of Damascus, after having made several incursions into the territories of PtolemaÏs, gathered together his whole army, and resolved to go and defend Damietta. As he had reason to fear the Christians might take advantage of his absence to seize Jerusalem and fortify themselves in it, he caused the ramparts of the holy city to be demolished. He also ordered the fortress of Tabor, and all those that the Mussulmans held along the coasts of Palestine, to be destroyed; a vigorous measure that afflicted the infidels, but was calculated to afflict the Christians still more; as it proved to them that they had to contend with enemies animated by despair, and disposed to sacrifice everything to secure their own safety.

The sultan of Cairo encamped in the vicinity of Damietta, where he awaited the princes of his family. The garrison of the city received every day provisions and reinforcements, and was in a condition to resist the Christian army for a length of time. The preparations and the approach of the Mussulmans at length roused the Crusaders from their state of inaction. Animated by their leaders, but more by the appearance of danger and the presence of a formidable enemy; still led by the king of Jerusalem, who had resisted the pretensions of Pelagius, the Christian soldiers resumed the labours of the siege and made several assaults upon the city on the river side. The winter, which had just set in, did not at all prevent their attacks; nothing could equal the heroic constancy with which they braved, during several months, cold, rain, hunger, all the fatigues of war, and all the rigours of the season. A contagious malady committed great ravages in the Christian army: a frightful storm, which lasted three days, carried away the tents and the baggage of both leaders and soldiers; but nothing diminished the fury of the contests, which were incessantly renewed.

At length the Christians, having become masters of all the western bank of the Nile, determined to cross the river, and attack the city on the land side. The passage was difficult and dangerous; the sultan of Cairo had fixed his camp on the opposite shore; the plain on which the Crusaders wished to pitch their tents was covered with Mussulman soldiers; an unexpected event removed all obstacles.

We have spoken of the seditious spirit of the emirs, who, since the death of Malek-Adel, had openly shown their ambitious designs and sought to introduce divisions into the Mussulman armies. The most remarkable among these emirs, was the leader of a troop of Curds, named Emad-eddin,[219] who had taken a part in all the revolutions of Egypt and Syria. Associated with the destinies of the sons of Ayoub, this emir had witnessed the rise and fall of several Mussulman dynasties, and held in contempt the powers of which he knew both the source and the origin. An intrepid soldier, a faithless subject, always ready to serve his sovereigns in fight or betray them in a conspiracy, Emad-eddin could not endure a prince who reigned by the laws of peace, or recognise a power which was not the fruit of his intrigues or of a revolution. As fortune had always favoured his audacity, and as all his treacheries had been well rewarded, every fresh revolt augmented his credit and his renown; an enemy to all acknowledged authority, the hope of all who aspired to empire, he was almost as redoubtable as the Old Man of the Mountain, whose menaces made the most powerful monarchs tremble. Emad-eddin resolved to change the government of Egypt, and conceived the project of dethroning the sultan of Cairo, and replacing him by another of the sons of Malek-Adel.

Several emirs were drawn into this conspiracy. On the day appointed, they were to enter the tent of Melic-Kamel, and compel him, by violence, to renounce the supreme authority. The sultan was warned of the plot prepared against him, and on the eve of the day on which it was to be carried into effect, he left his camp in the middle of the night. The next day, at dawn, the conspirators were made aware that their designs had been discovered; they endeavoured in vain to draw the soldiers into a revolt; the greatest confusion prevailed throughout the camp; among the emirs, some gathered around Emad-eddin, and swore to follow his fortunes; others, doubtful of the success of his enterprise, remained silent; many took an oath to defend Melic-Kamel. Amidst these debates, the Mussulman army, conscious that they were without a leader, feared they might be surprised by the Christians. A panic terror all at once seized upon the soldiers, who abandoned their tents and their baggage, and rushed in the greatest disorder in the traces of their fugitive sultan.

This retreat, of which the Christians could not imagine the cause, and which their historians explain by a miracle from heaven,[220] opened to them the passage of the Nile. The army hastened to cross the river, took possession of the Mussulman camp, made an immense booty, and drew near to the walls of Damietta.

The panic, however, which had put the Mussulman troops to flight, had not at all communicated itself to the garrison of the city: this intrepid garrison offered the most vigorous resistance, and gave the army of Melic-Kamel[221] time to recover from its fright. The sultan of Damascus soon joined his brother the sultan of Cairo. Emad-eddin and the other leaders of the conspiracy were arrested and loaded with chains. Order and discipline were reËstablished among the Saracens, and the Christian army had to contend with all the united forces of the infidels, impatient to repair their check, and recover the advantages they had lost.

The burning days of summer were approaching: the Nile, increased by the rains of the tropics, began to issue from its bed. The Christian army was encamped under the walls of Damietta, having the lake Menzaleh in its rear. The Saracens came and pitched their tents at a short distance from the camp of the Christians, who, oppressed by the consuming heat of the season and the climate, were subject every day to the spirited attacks of the infidels. In one of these conflicts, the Mussulmans got possession of a bridge which the Crusaders had thrown over the Nile; the banks of the river were covered with dead, and the Christian army only owed its safety to the heroic bravery of the duke of Austria, the king of Jerusalem, and the grand masters of St. John and the Temple. Soon after, another battle was fought still more bloody than the first. In this fight, as it is described by James of Vitri, an ocular witness, not a person among the Christians was idle: the clergy were at prayers or attending the wounded; whilst the women and children carried water, wine, food, stones, and javelins, to the combatants. Whirlwinds of scorching dust arose in the air, and enveloped the two armies. The cries of the wounded and the dying, the sound of the trumpets, and the clashing of arms resounded from the neighbouring hills and from both shores of the Nile. Sometimes the Saracens were put to flight, and whole battalions, says James of Vitri, disappeared submerged in the Nile, as formerly the armies of Pharaoh perished in the Red Sea. Sometimes the Christians were repulsed in their turn, and left a great number of their warriors on the field of battle: the carnage lasted during the whole day, without either side being able to claim the victory. Whilst the two armies were contending with such fury on the banks, the Genoese and the Pisans, on board their vessels, made an attack upon the ramparts of the city. Several of their ships were consumed by the Greek fire, and the bravest of their soldiers were crushed beneath the beams and stones hurled from the top of the walls. At the approach of night the Crusaders returned to their tents, despairing of ever being able to subdue the Saracens, and reproaching each other with want of courage in this unfortunate day.

On the morrow fresh disputes arose between the horse and foot soldiers,[222] each of which bodies accused the other with having been the cause of the losses the army had experienced. These debates became so warm that at length the foot and the horse both demanded, with loud cries, to be led again to battle, and rushed tumultuously out of the camp, to give convincing proofs of their bravery; the leaders could neither restrain nor direct the ardour and impetuosity of their soldiers, who fought in disorder, and were repulsed by the Saracens after a horrible carnage.

At this period a holy person, named Francis of Assise, made his appearance in the Christian army, whose reputation for piety was spread throughout the Christian world, and had preceded him into the East. From his earliest youth, Francis had left the paternal roof to lead a life of edification. One day, whilst present at mass in a church in Italy, he was struck with the passage of the Gospel in which our Saviour says, “Take with you neither gold nor silver, nor other moneys; neither scrips for the journey, nor sandals, nor staff.” From that period Francis had held in contempt all the riches of this world, and had devoted himself to the poverty of the apostles; he travelled through countries and cities, exhorting all people to penitence. The disciples who followed him braved the contempt of the multitude, and glorified themselves with it before God: when asked whence they came, they were accustomed to answer, “We are poor penitents from Assise.”

Francis was led into Egypt by the fame of the crusade, and by the hope of there effecting some great conversion. The day preceding the last battle, he had a miraculous presentiment of the defeat of the Christians, and imparted his prediction to the leaders of the army, who heard him with indifference. Dissatisfied with the Crusaders, and devoured by the zeal of a mission from God, he then conceived the project of securing the triumph of the faith by his eloquence and the arms of the Gospel alone. He directed his course towards the enemy’s camp, put himself in the way of being taken prisoner by the Saracen soldiers, and was conducted into the presence of the sultan. Then Francis addressed Melic-Kamel,[223] and said to him, “It is God who sends me towards you, to point out to you the road to salvation.” After these words, the missionary exhorted the sultan[224] to embrace the Gospel; he challenged in his presence all the doctors of the law, and to confound imposture and prove the truth of the Christian religion, offered to cast himself into the midst of a burning funeral-pile. The sultan, astonished, ordered the zealous preacher from his presence, who obtained neither of the objects of his wishes, for he did not convert the sultan, nor did he gather the palm of martyrdom.

After this adventure, St. Francis returned to Europe, where he founded the religious order of the Cordeliers, who at first, possessing neither churches, monasteries, lands, nor flocks, spread themselves throughout the West, labouring for the conversion of penitents. The disciples of St. Francis sometimes carried the word of God among savage nations; some went into Africa and Asia, seeking, as their master had done, errors to confute and evils to endure; they frequently planted the cross of Christ upon the lands of the infidels, and in their harmless pilgrimages, constantly repeated the scriptural words, Peace be with you; they were only armed with their prayers, and aspired to no glory but that of dying for the faith.

The Crusaders had been encamped seventeen months before the walls of Damietta, and not a single day had passed without a murderous conflict. The Mussulmans, although they had obtained some advantages, began to lose all hope of triumphing over an enemy proof against the evils of war and an unhealthy climate. Report proclaimed the approaching arrival of the emperor of Germany, who had taken the cross, and this news, whilst it sustained the courage of the Christians, made the Mussulmans tremble at the idea of having to contend with the most powerful of the monarchs of the West. The sultan of Damascus, in the name of all the princes of his family, sent ambassadors to the camp of the Crusaders to ask for peace. He offered to abandon to the Franks the city and kingdom of Jerusalem, and only to reserve to themselves the places of Krak and MontrÉal, for which they proposed to pay a tribute. As the ramparts and towers of the holy city had been recently destroyed, the Mussulmans engaged to pay two hundred thousand dinars to re-establish them; they further agreed to give up all Christians made prisoners since the death of Saladin.

The principal leaders of the Christian army were called together to deliberate upon the proposals of the Mussulmans. The king of Jerusalem, the French barons, the English, Dutch, and Germans, were of opinion that the terms should be acceded to, and the peace accepted: the king of Jerusalem would regain his kingdom, and the barons of the West would see the happy end of a war that had detained them so long from their homes.

“By accepting the peace they attained the object of the crusade,—the deliverance of the holy places. The Christian warriors had besieged Damietta during seventeen months, and the siege might be still prolonged. Many Crusaders daily returned to Europe; whilst crowds of Mussulman warriors as constantly joined the standards of the sultans of Cairo and Damascus. If they should take Damietta, they would be but too happy to exchange it for Jerusalem. The Mussulmans offered to give, before victory, quite as much as they could demand after having subdued them. It was not wise to refuse that which fortune offered to bestow upon them without conflicts or perils. The effusion of blood should be avoided, and they ought to reflect, that victories purchased by the death of the soldiers of the cross, were such as were most acceptable to the God of the Christians.”

The king of Jerusalem and most of the barons spoke thus, and endeavoured to bring to their opinion the Italian nobles and the body of the prelates, whom Cardinal Pelagius led in an opposite direction. The legate of the pope regarded himself as the head of this war, and he wished it to continue, in order to prolong his power and to procure for him additional renown. “He could see nothing in the proposals of the enemy but a new artifice to delay the capture of Damietta, and gain time. The Saracens offered nothing but desert countries and demolished cities, which would fall again into their power. Their only object was to disarm the Christians, and furnish them with a pretext for returning into the West. Things had gone too far to allow them to retreat without dishonour. It was disgraceful for Christians to renounce the conquest of a city they had besieged seventeen months, and which could hold out no longer. They must take possession of it first, and then they should know what was best to be done—once masters of Damietta, the Crusaders might conclude a glorious peace, and reap all the advantages of victory.”

The motives alleged by Cardinal Pelagius were not unreasonable, but the spirit of party and faction reigned in the council of the leaders of the crusade. As it always happens in similar circumstances, every one formed his opinion not upon that which he believed to be useful and just, but upon that which appeared most favourable to the party he had embraced; some advised that the siege should be prosecuted, because the king of Jerusalem had offered a contrary opinion; others wished the proposed capitulation should be accepted, because this capitulation was rejected by the legate of the pope. The Christian army exhibited a strange spectacle. On one side, John of Brienne and the most renowned warriors were advocates for peace; on the other, the legate and most of the ecclesiastics demanded with great warmth the continuation of the war: they deliberated during several days without a chance of bringing the two parties to an agreement; and whilst the discussions became more intemperate, hostilities were renewed: then all the Crusaders united to prosecute the siege of Damietta.

The sultan of Cairo employed every means to throw succours into the city, and keep up the courage of the garrison and the inhabitants. Some Mussulman soldiers, taking advantage of the darkness of night, attempted to effect an entrance into the place; a few were able to gain and pass through the gates, but by far the greater number were surprised and massacred by the Crusaders, who kept constant and close watch around the walls.

The news which the sultan, Melic-Kamel, received from Damietta, became every day more alarming, the Mussulman army, not daring to succour the besieged, remained inactive, and confined themselves to the defence of their own intrenchments. Communication was soon entirely cut off between the place and the camp of the infidels; some divers crossed the Nile through the Christian fleet, attained Damietta, and returned to inform the sultan that pestilence, famine, and despair reigned throughout the city. The Mussulmans had recourse to all sorts of stratagems to convey food to the garrison; sometimes they filled leather sacks with provisions, which, being abandoned to the stream of the Nile, floated under the ramparts of the city; at others, they concealed loaves in the sheets that enveloped dead bodies, which, being borne on by the waters, were stopped in their course by the besieged. It was not long before these stratagems were discovered by the Christians, and then famine began to make horrible ravages; the soldiers, overcome by fatigue and weakened by hunger, had not the strength to fight or guard the towers and ramparts. The inhabitants, given up to despair, abandoned their houses, and fled from a city that presented nothing but images of death: many came to implore the pity of the Crusaders. The commander of Damietta, whose name history has not preserved, in vain endeavoured to keep up the courage of the people and the soldiers. To prevent desertion, he caused the gates of the city to be walled up; and from that period neither the sultan of Cairo nor the Crusaders were able to know what was passing in the besieged place, in which a dismal silence reigned, and which, according to the expression of an Arabian author, was no longer anything but a closed sepulchre.

The Christians had placed their machines at the foot of a tower, and as they saw no one defending it, the legate, at the head of the Italian Crusaders, took advantage of a dark and stormy night to penetrate within the first inclosure of the walls. The king of Jerusalem and the other leaders resolved at the same time to make an assault and enter the city, sword in hand. As soon as day appeared, the boldest ascended into the tower, which they found deserted, and called aloud upon their companions to join them. The Christian army applauded their success, and answered by shouts of joy; the soldiers flew to arms, and instantly put the rams in motion. The walls were scaled, the gates were beaten to pieces, and a passage opened; the eager Crusaders rushed forward with naked swords and ready lances to encounter the enemy; but when they penetrated into the streets, a pestilential odour enveloped them, and a frightful spectacle made them recoil with horror! The public places, the mosques, the houses, the whole city, were strewed with dead![225] Old age, infancy, ripened manhood, maiden beauty, matronly grace—all had perished in the horrors of the siege! At the arrival of the Crusaders, Damietta contained seventy thousand inhabitants; of these only three thousand of the most robust remained, who, ready to expire, glided like pale, fading shadows among tombs and ruins.

This horrible spectacle touched the hearts of the Crusaders, and mingled a feeling of sadness with the joy their victory created. The conquerors found in Damietta immense stores of spices, diamonds, and precious stuffs. When they had pillaged the city, it might have been believed, says an historian, that the warriors of the West had conquered Persia, Arabia, and the Indies. The ecclesiastics launched the thunders of excommunication against all who secreted any part of the booty; but these menaces had no effect upon the cupidity of the soldiers: all the wealth brought to the public stock only produced two hundred thousand crowns, which were distributed among the troops of the victorious army.

Damietta boasted a celebrated mosque, ornamented by six vast galleries and a hundred and fifty columns of marble, surmounted by a superb dome, which towered above all the other edifices of the city. This mosque, in which, on the preceding evening, Mussulmans had lifted their imploring, tearful eyes to their prophet, was consecrated to the virgin mother of Christ, and the whole Christian army came thither to offer up thanks to Heaven for the triumph granted to arms. On the following day the barons and prelates assembled in the same place, to deliberate upon their conquest; and, by a unanimous resolution, the city of Damietta was assigned to the king of Jerusalem. They then turned their attention to the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants who had escaped pestilence and famine. James of Vitri, when describing the miseries of Damietta, and speaking of the horrible famine which swept away so many families during the siege, sheds tears over the little children who in vain asked their dead parents for bread.[226] The fate of such of those as remained alive inspired the virtuous bishop of PtolemaÏs with pity, and he purchased many of them, in order to have them baptized and brought up in the Christian religion. The pious charity of the prelate, however, could only procure them eternal life, for they almost all died after having been baptised. All the Mussulmans who had sufficient strength to work received liberty and bread, and were employed in cleansing and purifying the city. Whilst the leaders were thus watching over a mourning city, and gave their anxious attentions to prevent new calamities, the spectacle that Damietta presented, and the empoisoned air they breathed within its walls, obliged the Christian army to return to their camp, and wait for the time at which the conquered city might be inhabited without danger.

When the news of the taking of Damietta was spread through Syria and Upper Egypt, the Mussulman nations, seized with terror, flew to their mosques to implore the intervention of their prophet against the enemies of Islamism. The sultans of Cairo and Damascus sent ambassadors to the caliph of Bagdad, conjuring him to exhort all true believers to take arms to defend the religion of Mahomet. The caliph contemplated with grief the calamities about to fall upon the princes of the family of Saladin; but other dangers threatened him more nearly. Tartar hordes had issued from their mountains, invaded several provinces of Persia, and were advancing towards the Euphrates. The caliph, far from being able to assist the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt by his prayers and exhortations, invoked their succour to defend his capital, and turn aside the storm ready to burst over the whole East. When the Mussulman ambassadors returned to Damascus and Cairo, their accounts added new alarms to those which the conquests of the Christians had already inspired.

The Ayoubite princes, however, did not delay endeavouring to unite all their efforts against the Crusaders, postponing, to a more favourable moment, the defence of the head of Islamism. The Mussulman nations had a much greater dread of the invasion of the Christians than of the irruptions of the hordes of Tartary. The conquerors whom nations fear the most, are those that desire to change the laws and religion of the conquered country. The Tartars, whose habits and manners were not formed, easily complied with those of the people they subdued; the Christians, on the contrary, only made war to destroy all and enslave all. Already rich cities, great provinces, were in their power: everything had changed its form under their domination. Thus the Mussulman princes and people, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea, forgot or neglected the storm which growled over Persia and was advancing slowly towards Syria, and resolved to take arms against the Crusaders, who were masters of the Nile.

After the taking of Damietta, the Mussulman soldiers who defended Egypt were struck with such excessive fear, that, during several days, not one of them durst face a Christian soldier. The Egyptian warriors who guarded the fortress of Tannis, built beyond the lake Menzaleh, abandoned their ramparts at the approach of a few Crusaders, and thus one of the firmest bulwarks of the Mussulman empire fell without defence into the hands of the Franks. From that time, the Christians had reason to believe they had no more enemies on the banks of the Nile; and, during the rigours of winter, many of the pilgrims returned to Europe. Half the army took advantage of the March passage to quit Egypt; such as remained under the banners of the crusade forgot the labours and perils of war, and gave themselves up to indulgence and voluptuousness, to all the pleasure which the approach of spring, and the fine climate and beautiful sky of Damietta inspired.

During the leisure of peace, the divisions which had so often interrupted the course of the war, soon revived; the taking of Damietta had inflamed the pride of Cardinal Pelagius, who, in the Christian army, spoke as a conqueror and commanded as a master. The king of Jerusalem was so dissatisfied, that he abandoned a city that had been given to him, and quitted an army of which he was the head, to retire to PtolemaÏs.

New Crusaders, however, eager to signalize their valour against the Mussulmans, arrived daily. The duke of Bavaria, with four hundred German knights and barons, sent by Frederick II., landed on the banks of the Nile. A short time afterwards, the Christian army received into its ranks Crusaders from Milan, Pisa, and Genoa, and prelates and archbishops conducted a crowd of defenders of the cross, who came from the various provinces of Germany, and from France and Italy. The sovereign pontiff had neglected nothing to secure the success of the holy war; he sent to Cardinal Pelagius provisions for the army, and a considerable sum of money, partly from his own treasury, and partly from the charity of the faithful of the West.[227] The legate was desirous of profiting by the succours he had just received, and proposed to follow up the war, and march directly against the capital of Egypt. The clergy adopted the advice of Pelagius, but such of the Crusaders as saw with disgust a prelate at the head of warriors, refused to take up arms. The duke of Bavaria and the barons and knights would acknowledge no leader but the king of Jerusalem; the legate Pelagius was obliged to send deputies to John of Brienne, who, pressed by the pope himself, was at length prevailed upon, and consented, after an absence of several months, to come back and take the command of the army.

Whilst the Crusaders remained thus in inaction, all the Mussulmans were flying to arms: the sultans of Damascus and Aleppo, the princes of Hamah, Balbec, and of Arabia, assembled fresh armies. After the taking of Damietta, the sultan of Cairo had retired, with his troops, to the spot where the two eastern branches of the Nile separate: there he daily beheld troops of Mussulman warriors join his standard, and, awaiting a favourable opportunity, he constructed a palace in the centre of his camp, surrounded by walls.

The Mussulmans there built houses, baths, and bazaars, and the camp of the sultan became a city, called Mansourah, which was destined to be celebrated in history by the defeat and ruin of the Christian armies.

As soon as the king of Jerusalem returned to Damietta, the leaders of the Crusaders assembled in council, to deliberate upon what they had to do: the legate of the pope was the first to offer his opinion, and proposed to march against the capital of Egypt. “We must attack the evil at its source, and, in order to conquer the Saracens, destroy the foundation of their power. Egypt supplies them with soldiers, provisions, and arms. By taking possession of Egypt, we should cut off all their resources. At no period were the soldiers of the cross animated by more zeal; never were the infidels more depressed. To lose such an opportunity was to betray the common cause. When a great empire was attacked, prudence commanded the assailants not to lay down their arms till they had subdued it; by stopping after the first victory, they exhibited more weakness than moderation. The eyes of the whole Christian world were upon the army of the Crusaders; it was not only the deliverance of the holy places that was looked for from their valour, but the death of all the enemies of Christ, the destruction of every nation that had imposed a sacrilegious yoke upon the city of God.”

The bishops, the prelates, and most of the ecclesiastics were loud in their applause of the speech of the legate; but John of Brienne, who did not at all partake of their opinion, arose, and protesting his devotion to the cause of Christ, began by appealing to the assembly, if any one could be more interested in the conquests of the Christians in the East, than the man who had the honour to be king of Jerusalem. He then pointed out how imprudent it would be to go up the Nile at the very moment at which that river was beginning to overflow, and would most likely inundate the roads which led to Cairo. “Mark,” said he, “all the perils of the expedition proposed to you. We are to march into an unknown land, through the midst of an enemy’s country: if conquered, there can be no place of asylum for us; if conquerors, our victories will only weaken our army. However easy it may be for us to conquer provinces, it will be almost impossible for us to defend them. The Crusaders, always eager to return to Europe, are incalculably more serviceable in gaining battles than in securing the possession of conquered countries. Nobody can suppose, that with the brave bands that surround us, we entertain any fear of the Mussulman armies which are gathering together from all parts; but in order to secure our safety, we must not only subdue our enemies, we must destroy them—we have not to deal with an army, but with an entire nation animated by despair. The whole Mussulman race are about to become so many intrepid soldiers, impatient to shed their blood in the field of battle. But what do I say? we shall have much less to dread from their courage than from their timid prudence. They will not fail to shun the fight, and will wait until diseases, want, fatigue, discord, the inconstancy of men’s minds, the overflowing of the Nile, and the heat of the climate shall have triumphed over our efforts and secured the failure of all our enterprises.”

John of Brienne strengthened his opinion by other motives, with which his knowledge of the art of war supplied him, and terminated his speech by saying, “That Damietta and Tannis were powerful enough to restrain the people of Egypt; that it was necessary to recapture the cities they had lost, before they thought of conquering countries that had never been in their possession; and that, in short, they had not assembled under the banners of the cross to besiege Thebes, Babylon, or Memphis, but to deliver Jerusalem, which opened its gates to the Christians, and which they could fortify against all the attacks of the infidels.”

This moderate and pacific language would well have become the mouth of an envoy of the pope; but Pelagius listened to the king of Jerusalem with the most evident impatience: he answered, that weakness and timidity screened themselves behind the veil of moderation and prudence; that Christ did not summon to his defence such wise and far-sighted soldiers, but warriors who sought for battle rather than for reasons, and who could see the glory of an enterprise, and be blind to its dangers. The legate added several more reasons to those he had already advanced, and expressed them with great bitterness; at length, led away by the heat of the discussion, he threatened all those who did not partake of his opinions with excommunication. Most of the leaders, and the king of Jerusalem himself, fearing to be excommunicated, but dreading much more to see the least suspicion cast upon their bravery, at length yielded to the obstinate will of Pelagius: the council of the barons and the bishops decided that the Christian army should leave Damietta, and march against the capital of Egypt.

This army, composed of more than seventy thousand men, advanced up the banks of the Nile. A numerous fleet, laden with provisions, arms, and machines of war, ascended the river at the same time. The Christian army passed through Farescour and several other villages, that had been abandoned by their inhabitants; all fled away at the approach of the Crusaders, who began to believe they should meet with no obstacle to their victories, and celebrated, beforehand, the conquest of Memphis and Cairo. The legate of the pope exulted in the resolution he had dictated to the Christian army; and, full of confidence in a prediction that had been made concerning him in his youth, the presumptuous cardinal flattered himself that he was about to overthrow the worship of Mahomet; and indulged in the most insulting railleries against those who had been opposed to the war. Without fighting a single battle, the Christians gained the extremity of the Delta, at the angle formed by the arm of the river which descends towards Damietta and the canal of Almon, whose waters flow into the sea on the eastern side. The Saracens were encamped in the plain of Mansourah, on the opposite bank of the river: the Crusaders halted on the hither shore, and their fleet cast anchor as near to them as possible.

The sultan of Damascus, and the princes of Aleppo, Balbec, Hamah, and Bosra, had united their troops with those of the sultan of Cairo. The Nile, whose bank was covered with intrenchments, presented a barrier very difficult to be overcome. But Melic-Kamel did not dare to match himself with the Crusaders; dreading their rash bravery, so accustomed to sport with perils and triumph over all obstacles. Reports of the arrival of Frederick, and of the approach of the Tartars, kept the Mussulmans in a continual state of alarm, and made them anxious to terminate a war which exhausted their resources, consumed their strength, and did not promise them, even in victory, a compensation for so many efforts and so many sacrifices.

Ambassadors were sent to propose peace to the leaders of the Christian army: the Mussulmans offered their enemies, if they would consent to an entire cessation of hostilities, to give up to them Damietta and its territories, and to restore Jerusalem, with all the places of Palestine that had been conquered by Saladin.

These conditions assured to the Christians all the advantages of both war and peace. The king of Jerusalem, and most of the barons, who saw the difficulties and perils of the expedition they had entered upon, listened with as much surprise as joy to the proposals of the infidels, and did not hesitate to accept them; but they had absolutely no power in the army. The legate, who exercised an arbitrary authority, and who was constantly dreaming of conquests, persisted in thinking that these pacific proposals were only the effects of fear, and that the enemy who sued for peace was the one with whom war should be prosecuted with most spirit.

The ambassadors returned to the camp of the Mussulmans, to announce that the Christians refused the peace: their account excited indignation, and indignation roused courage. When the Ayoubite princes proposed peace, they were in possession of ample means to carry on the war with advantage; they every day received reinforcements, and their camp rapidly assumed a more formidable aspect; but soon a terrible auxiliary, against whose attacks Pelagius had no defence, came to the assistance of the Mussulmans, and procured them a complete triumph without either battles or danger.

The Christian warriors, who flattered themselves they had now only to deal with a conquered enemy, were satisfied with surrounding their camp with a ditch and a wall; the army remained for several days in this position, without making an effort either to attack the Saracens or pass the Nile. Pelagius, who was constantly promising victory to his soldiers, remained, nevertheless, in a state of inactivity in his tent. During this period, many of the Crusaders grew weary of a war in which no battles were fought; some fancied that the cause no longer stood in need of their assistance; whilst others, with more foresight, feared coming reverses: more than ten thousand Crusaders abandoned the camp and returned to Damietta.

The Christian army had been for more than a month in face of the enemy, always in expectation of the victories that had been promised to them. At length, the overflowing of the Nile, in a most alarming manner, disturbed their imagined security. The Saracens opened the sluices, and filled all the canals of Lower Egypt. The Mussulman fleet, which had not been able to ascend the Nile by Damietta, took advantage of the canals, and came up with the Christian ships. In a single engagement, the vessels of the Crusaders were almost all dispersed and consumed by the Greek fire: from that moment terror seized upon the Christians, for they were in want of provisions, and had neither means nor hopes of obtaining any. The Saracens, after having crossed the Nile on bridges, occupied all the circumjacent hills. The Christian soldiers wandered about the fields at hazard, pursued by the waves of the rising river, and by the Mussulmans, whose bravery they had so lately held in contempt. The whole army was on the point of being submerged or perishing with hunger, and had no hope but in the clemency of an enemy with whom they had recently refused to make peace.

In this extremity, the king of Jerusalem and the principal leaders of the Christians sent several of their knights to offer the Saracens battle; but the latter were neither sufficiently imprudent, nor sufficiently generous to accept a proposal dictated by despair. The Crusaders were exhausted with hunger and fatigue; the cavalry sunk into, and encumbered by mud and slime, could neither advance nor retreat; the foot-soldiers cast away their arms; the baggage of the army floated away upon the waters, and nothing was heard but groans and lamentations. “When the Christian warriors,” says an Arabian historian, “saw nothing before them but death, their minds sank into a state of despondency, and their backs bent beneath the rod of God, to whom be all praise!”

Pelagius must then have been sensible of the full extent of his error: his project of marching to Cairo had, doubtless, something great in it, if it could have been executed; but the presumptuous legate disdained all counsels, all lessons of experience, and foresaw none of the obstacles he was certain to meet with on his route; he conducted an army filled with discontent; the soldiers had neither that confidence nor that enthusiasm that leads men to brave dangers or cheerfully encounter fatigue. The king of Jerusalem, the duke of Bavaria, and a great number of the barons were his personal enemies, and took very little interest in the success of an enterprise of which they had disapproved.

Amidst the cries and lamentations of an army to which he had promised victory, Pelagius was obliged to negotiate for peace, and his pride humbled itself so far as to implore the clemency of the Saracens. Christian ambassadors, among whom was the bishop of PtolemaÏs, went to propose a capitulation to the conquerors; they offered to give up the city of Damietta, and only asked for the Christian army liberty to return to PtolemaÏs.

The Mussulman princes assembled in council to deliberate upon the proposals of the Crusaders. Some were of opinion they should be accepted; others declared that all the Christians ought to be made prisoners of war. Among those who proposed the harshest measures, the sultan of Damascus, an implacable enemy of the Franks, was conspicuous. “No treaty can be made,” said he, “with warriors without humanity and without faith. We should remember their barbarities in war and their treachery in peace. They armed themselves to ravage provinces, to destroy cities, and overthrow the worship of Mahomet. Since fortune has placed these most cruel enemies of Islamism, these devastators of the East, in the hands of the true believers, we ought to immolate them to the safety of the Mussulman nations, and take an advantage of our victory that will create a terror among the people of the West for ever.”

Most of the princes and emirs, animated by fanaticism and vengeance, applauded this violent speech. The sultan of Cairo, more moderate, and, doubtless, more prescient than the other leaders, dreading likewise the arrival of Frederick and the invasion of the Tartars, combated the opinion of the sultan of Damascus, and advised that the capitulation of the Franks should be accepted. “All the Franks were not comprised in this army now in their power; other Crusaders guarded Damietta, and might be able to defend it; the Mussulmans had sustained a siege of eight months, the Christians might hold out as long. It was more advantageous for the princes of the family of Saladin to return to their cities than to retain a few of their enemies in chains. If they destroyed one Christian army, the West, to avenge the defeat of its warriors, was able to send numberless legions into the East. They ought not to forget that the Mussulman armies had lost a portion of that spirit of obedience and discipline that was the sole guarantee of victory; that they were worn out with fatigue, and sighed for repose. Other enemies than the now disarmed Christians, other perils than those they had just escaped, might soon hang over both Syria and Egypt.[228] It was wise to make peace at this moment, in order to prepare for fresh contests, for new wars, perhaps much more cruel than that which they had now an opportunity of terminating with so much glory to the Mussulman arms.”

The speech of Melik-Kamel brought back the princes of his family to sentiments of moderation.[229] The capitulation was accepted; the sultan of Cairo sent his own son to the camp of the Christians as a pledge for his word. The king of Jerusalem, the duke of Bavaria, the legate of the pope, and the principal leaders repaired to the camp of the Saracens, and remained as hostages till the accomplishment of the treaty.

When the deputies of the imprisoned army came to Damietta and announced the disasters and captivity of the Christians, their account drew tears from the crowd of Crusaders who at that time arrived from the West. When these same deputies informed them that the city must be given up to the infidels, the most intrepid of the Franks could not restrain their indignation, and refused to recognise a treaty so disgraceful to the soldiers of the cross. The greatest tumult prevailed throughout the city. Some, filled with despair, determined to return to Europe, and prepared to desert the banners of the cross; others ran towards the ramparts, and getting possession of the towers, swore to defend them.

A few days after, fresh deputies arrived to declare that the king of Jerusalem and the other leaders of the army would be obliged to give up PtolemaÏs to the Mussulmans if they refused to surrender Damietta. In order to overcome the obstinate resistance of those who wished to defend the city, and who reproached the imprisoned army with disgracing the Christians, they added, that this army, though defeated, had obtained a prize worthy of their former exploits, for the Saracens had engaged to restore to them the true cross of the Saviour, which had fallen into the hands of Saladin at the battle of Tiberias. The fear of losing PtolemaÏs, the hope of regaining the cross of Christ, together with the speeches of the deputies, brought back the spirit of peace and resignation to the minds of the most ardent of the Crusaders, and disposed them to the performance of the conditions of the treaty.

In the mean time, the Christian army having lost their tents and their baggage, passed many days and many nights in a plain covered with the waters of the Nile. Hunger, disease, and inundation threatened their entire destruction. The king of Jerusalem, then in the camp of the Saracens, upon being informed of the horrible distress of the Christians, went to conjure Melik-Kamel to have pity on his disarmed enemies. The continuator of William of Tyre, who is our guide in this part of our history, reports, in his old, quaint language, the touching interview between John of Brienne and the sultan of Egypt. “The king sat down before the sultan, and began to weep; the sultan, on seeing the king weep, said, ‘Sire, why do you weep?’ ‘Sire, I have good cause,’ replied the king, ‘for I behold the people whom God has confided to me perishing amidst the waters, and dying with hunger.’ The sultan felt great pity at seeing the king weep, and he wept also; then he sent thirty thousand loaves to the poor as well as the rich; and sent the same quantity daily during four days.”[230]

Melik-Kamel caused the sluices to be closed, and the waters rapidly retired from the plain; as soon as Damietta was surrendered to the Mussulmans, the Christian army began its retreat. The Crusaders, who owed their liberty and lives to the mercy of the Saracens, passed through the city which had cost them so many conflicts and so much labour; and, weeping, quitted the banks of the Nile, where so short a time before they had sworn to make the cause of Christ triumphant. They bore away in sadness the wood of the true cross, the identity of which they had reason to suspect, since it no longer performed miracles, and was not for them now the signal of victory. The sultan of Egypt caused them to be accompanied by his son, who had orders to provide for all their wants on their route. The Saracen leaders were impatient to get rid of an army that had threatened their empire; they could scarcely give credit to their own triumph, and some little apprehension was, no doubt, mingled with the pity with which their conquered enemies inspired them.

Great rejoicings had been made at PtolemaÏs for the victories obtained by the Christians on the banks of the Nile; they believed that they already saw the holy places delivered, and the empire of the Saracens destroyed. Consternation took place of their joy on seeing the army return. As in all the other reverses which their arms had met with, the Christians mutually reproached each other with their defeat; they accused the leaders of ambition, and the king of Jerusalem of weakness; the Templars and Hospitallers, who had on all occasions set an example of courage and the most generous devotedness, were obliged to make a public apology for their conduct. When it became known in the West that Damietta had fallen again into the hands of the Saracens, all the faithful were affected by the deepest grief,[231] and sought, by their prayers, to mitigate the anger of Heaven. Violent murmurs arose against the legate Pelagius, and represented him to the sovereign pontiff as the author of all the disasters of the crusade; but Honorius was not willing to condemn his minister, and reproached Frederick, who had three times renewed his vow to fight against the infidels, with having remained an idle spectator of an unfortunate war, and with having neglected to succour his brethren of the East.

Frederick, who had sent vessels, provisions, and soldiers to the holy war, thought that he had fully performed his part in the crusade, and was at first much astonished at the reproaches of the Holy See. When the pope threatened him with the anger of Heaven and the thunders of Rome, he could not restrain his indignation; in his letters the emperor complains bitterly of the tyranny of both Innocent and Honorius, and talks of opposing war to war, and vengeance to injustice. After this, Honorius, who acted less from the dictates of his own mind than after the policy of his predecessors, changed his tone, attempted to justify both Innocent and himself, and, employing prayers instead of menaces, conjured Frederick to have pity on the Church of the East.

This paternal language appeased Frederick; in an interview which he had with the pope at Veroli, the emperor of Germany repeated his vow to repair to Palestine at the head of an army. In another assembly, which was held some time afterwards at Verona, the pope endeavoured to engage Frederick, on account of his own interests; he proposed to him to espouse Yolande, daughter of John of Brienne, and heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem. The grand masters of the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Teutonic order, with the patriarch and the king of Jerusalem, all summoned to Italy to deliberate on the affairs of the crusade, approved of a union which would secure them the assistance of a powerful monarch. Frederick accepted a kingdom which he promised to defend, and consented to undergo excommunication if he failed in his promises.

After the conference of Verona, King John of Brienne visited the principal states of Europe, for the purpose of soliciting aid for the Holy Land. At the time of John’s arrival in France, the French were mourning the death of Philip Augustus. The king of Jerusalem assisted at the funeral ceremonies of his master and benefactor, who, at his death, had bequeathed three thousand silver marks to the defenders of Palestine. After having paid the last duties to Philip, John went first to England, and afterwards to Germany, in both of which countries his presence and his discourses strongly moved Christians with the misfortunes of the Holy Land.

The emperor Frederick, on his part, made all the requisite preparations for an expedition which he was to lead in person; he ordered vessels to be constructed in all the ports of Sicily for transporting the Crusaders. “Heaven and earth,” wrote he to the pope, “are witnesses that I desire the success of the Christian arms with my whole soul, and that I will neglect nothing that can assist in securing the success of the holy enterprise.” In all his letters Frederick exhorted the sovereign pontiff to employ every means to augment the numbers of the soldiers of Christ. Become, all at once, more zealous for the crusade than the pope himself, he reproached the court of Rome with being sparing in indulgences, and with confiding the preaching of the crusade to vulgar orators; he advised the pope to redouble his efforts to appease the quarrels of Christian princes, and to compel the kings of France and England to sign a peace, in order that the nobles and people of these two kingdoms might take part in the crusade. Frederick not being able to go into Germany, sent thither the grand master of the Teutonic order, with directions to exhort the landgrave of Thuringia, the duke of Austria, the king of Hungary, and the other princes of the empire, to take the oath to fight against the infidels. He undertook to furnish the Crusaders with vessels, provisions, arms, and everything necessary for the expedition beyond the sea; in short, he displayed so much activity, and showed so much ardour and zeal, that all the attention of the Christians was directed towards him, and he was considered as the soul, the moving principle, and the head of the holy enterprise.

The Christians of Palestine placed all their hopes in him; the patriarch of Alexandria, in a letter to the pope, said that they looked for the emperor of Germany on the banks of the Nile and the Jordan, as formerly the saints had looked for the coming of the Messiah or Saviour of the world. The patriarch spoke with grief of the oppression and servitude that had been inflicted upon the Christians established in Egypt since the last invasion of the Crusaders. The unfortunate disciples of Christ were not allowed to keep in their dwellings either arms or horses, nor even to bear a crucifix at the funeral processions of their relations; a hundred and fifteen of their churches had been destroyed since the conquest of Damietta. Oppressed by tributes,[232] condemned to disgraceful labours, banished from their homes, wandering around their temples and their altars, they invoked the mercy of Heaven and the valour of the warriors of the West for their deliverance.

The report of Frederick’s preparations was spread even to the remote nations of Georgia; and the queen of that country wrote to the head of the Church of Rome, that the constable of her kingdom and a great number of warriors only waited for the arrival of the emperor of Germany, to fly to the assistance of Palestine. The Georgians had the reputation of being a warlike people, and were dreaded by the Mussulmans; their pilgrims enjoyed the privilege of entering Jerusalem without paying the tribute imposed upon other Christians. When the sultan of Damascus caused the ramparts of the holy city to be destroyed, the warriors of Georgia swore to avenge the outrage committed on the city of God; but an invasion of the Tartars prevented them from leaving their own territories.[233] Since that period, the hordes of Tartary having directed their ravages towards other countries, the Crusaders of Caucasus and the shores of the Caspian Sea promised to unite themselves in the plains of Syria and Egypt, with the Crusaders from the banks of the Rhine and the Danube.

Frederick, however, was not yet in a position to perform his so often repeated promises; the kingdom of Sicily and Naples contained germs of discord and rebellion; the republics of Lombardy were openly opposed to the emperor of Germany; and the Holy See, which observed with anxiety the ambitious projects of Frederick upon Italy, encouraged all the enemies of a power of which it dreaded the too close neighbourhood. Thus, the policy of the court of Rome, the revolts of Sicily, and the enterprises of the Italian republics, would not allow the emperor to lead his armies into Asia. Frederick demanded of the pope the indulgence of a delay of two years for the performance of his vow; founding his request upon the length of time required for assembling his armies, and declared that he was not willing to begin the war before the expiration of the truce made with the Mussulmans; thus showing much more respect for treaties with infidels, than had till that time been common among Christians, indeed, more respect than he had himself shown. The pope, although much dissatisfied, could not refuse the delay the emperor demanded; he, however, dissembled his anger, and contented himself with requiring fresh promises, which were made, as all the rest had been, with the greatest solemnity.

The new vows of Frederick were strengthened by his marriage with the heir of the king of Jerusalem. The marriage was celebrated at Rome, amidst the benedictions of the clergy and the acclamations of the people; all the Christians of the West heard of it with joy, and this union appeared to them to be the most certain pledge of the victories the Crusaders would gain over the infidels. John of Brienne, who assisted at the ceremony, congratulated himself upon having obtained an emperor for a son-in-law and a supporter; but his joy was not of long duration. Frederick, after his marriage, only saw in him the brother of that Gauthier de Brienne, who had borne the title of king of Naples and Sicily; he considered him as an enemy to his power, a dangerous rival, and he disputed the possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem with him. The pope was secretly pleased at this claim or pretension, as he hoped it would promote the interests of the crusade. Honorius was delighted to see the ambition of the emperor mix itself up with the great designs for the execution of which he was so anxious. Frederick was therefore acknowledged king of Jerusalem. Thus John of Brienne, who had always proved himself the most ardent apostle of the holy war, deprived of his crown, and from that time a stranger to the affairs of Palestine, was obliged to wait in retirement and silence for a favourable opportunity to avenge himself on his son-in-law, and recover his kingdom.

Frederick carried on his preparations for the holy war, and appeared more than ever disposed to set out for the East. The crusade was preached, in the name of the head of the Church, in all the kingdoms of Europe; the sovereign pontiff wrote to the princes to exhort them to suspend their divisions and occupy themselves solely with the war beyond the sea.

As hostilities had just been renewed between England and France, Honorius ordered Louis VIII. to lay down his arms, and threatened him with excommunication, if he did not immediately make peace. The king of France, before he obeyed the orders of the pope, was desirous of completing the conquest of Poitou; and whilst the thunders of Rome were growling over his head, the people and clergy were returning Heaven thanks for his victories, in every church of his kingdom.

The war against the English was not the only obstacle to the departure of the French Crusaders for the Holy Land; the exterminating crusade against the Albigeois was still going on, and Louis VIII. took a more active interest in it than his father Philip had done. When Louis VIII. had concluded a truce with England, he at length resolved to take the cross, and made a vow, not to go and fight against the Saracens in Asia, but against the heretics in Languedoc. In this crusade the king of France had the double advantage of scarcely going out of his own territories, and of making conquests that might some day enlarge his kingdom. The lords and barons followed Louis into the southern provinces, and thought no more about the deliverance of Jerusalem.

At the same time the envoys of the pope and the emperor were busy in exhorting the nations of Germany to succour the Christians of Palestine. Their orations, which at first had great success, ended by diminishing both confidence and enthusiasm. As the pope had recommended the preachers to be prodigal of the indulgences of the Church, the people beheld with astonishment the greatest criminals take the cross, and swear to expiate their sins by the holy pilgrimage. They remembered that St. Bernard had called thieves and murderers to the defence of Christ; but opinions and morals began to change, and that which had succeeded in the preceding century was now only a source of reproach. The monk of Upsberg, a contemporary author, informs us that the facility granted to the most vicious of mankind to redeem their crimes by taking up arms and the cross, only served to increase great offences, and cool the zeal of the true defenders of Christ.[234]

The orators who preached the crusade in England gathered more fruit from their labours, but owed great part of their success to celestial phenomena, which came very opportunely to second their eloquence. A luminous crucifix, with the marks of the five wounds of the Saviour, appeared suddenly in the heavens. This miraculous spectacle greatly inflamed the enthusiasm of the people; and, if we may believe Matthew Paris, more than sixty thousand English took the oath to arm themselves for the deliverance of the tomb of Christ.

Spain was constantly the seat of a sanguinary war between the Moors and the Christians; the one party supported by warriors from Africa, the other by knights and soldiers from the provinces of France, fought battles every day without destroying their means of either attack or defence: amidst such wars, in which, by turns, Mahomet and Christ were invoked, Spain was not likely to hear or attend to the complaints and appeals of Jerusalem.

Another enthusiasm than that of the crusades,—an ardent desire for liberty,—then agitated the finest countries of Italy. The greater part of the cities, acted upon by jealousy and the other passions of republics, were all at war among themselves; fighting sometimes for territory, and sometimes for independence. In all these small states, parties attacked and pursued each other with fury, and disputed the exercise of power, sword in hand. Some of the cities, principalities, and baronies invoked the authority of the pope, others that of the emperor of Germany; the factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines troubled every city, and created divisions in most families. These discords and civil wars naturally turned the attention of Christian nations from the crusades.

The cities of Lombardy had formed a powerful confederacy, which gave Frederick continual cause of inquietude, and detained him in the West; Honorius employed every means in his power to re-establish peace, and direct men’s minds towards his darling object; and at last succeeded in getting the Lombard republics to join the emperor of Germany for the deliverance of the holy places.

Although the people had lost some portion of their enthusiasm for the holy war, it was still possible to form a redoubtable army, by gathering together all the warriors that had taken the cross in the various countries of Europe; and the new Crusaders were ordered to meet at the port of Brindisi, where vessels were being prepared to transport them to the East. On their arrival in the kingdom of Naples, the emperor of Germany supplied them with provisions and arms; everything was ready, and the pope was about, at length, to see his wishes accomplished, and receive the reward of all his labours and preachings, when inexorable death deprived Christendom of its head.

Gregory IX., who succeeded him, had all the abilities, the virtues, and the ambition of Innocent III. In the execution of his designs, he feared neither difficulties nor perils; the most violent measures had no terrors for his obstinacy or audacity, when the triumph of his will was in question. Gregory had scarcely ascended the pontifical throne, when the preparations for the holy war engrossed all his thoughts, and became the principal object of his active solicitude.

The Crusaders assembled in Apulia had much to suffer from the influences of the climate and the season; the sovereign pontiff neglected nothing to alleviate their distresses and hasten their departure. He exhorted the emperor to embark, by saying to him, “The Lord has placed you in this world as a cherubim with a flaming sword, to direct those who stray from the way of the tree of life.” Frederick at length yielded to the prayers of the pope, and sailed from the port of Brindisi with his fleet and army. Prayers were being put up for the prosperity of his voyage and the success of his expedition, in all the provinces of his empire, when, at the end of three days, being attacked by the malady that had made such ravages in the Christian army, he retraced his course, and landed in the port of Otranto.

Gregory had celebrated the departure of Frederick as a triumph of the Church; he considered his return as an absolute revolt against the Holy See. The little city of Agnani, to which the pope had retired, witnessed the rage of the pontiff, and beheld the birth of that formidable storm which so long disturbed the Christian world. Accompanied by the cardinals and several bishops, Gregory repaired to the principal church, and having mounted the pulpit, before the assembled people, he pronounced a sermon which had for its text, “It is necessary that scandals should arise.” After having called upon the prophets, and spoken of the triumph of St. Michael over the dragon, he launched against Frederick all the anathemas of the Church.

The emperor at first sent messengers to the pope to explain and justify his conduct; but the inexorable Gregory refused to listen to them, and complained to all the sovereigns of Europe, representing Frederick as a faithless and perjured prince. He accused him of having consigned his wife Yolande to close imprisonment, in which she died of grief; of having left the Crusaders to perish with hunger, thirst, and heat in the plains of Apulia; and of having, at last, under the frivolous pretext of sickness, violated his oath and deserted the banners of Christ, in order to return to the customary enjoyments of his kingdom. He made him many other reproaches; and in his anger called down upon him the maledictions of all Christians.

Frederick, exceedingly irritated, replied to the accusations of Gregory with much bitterness. In his apology, which he sent to all the princes of Christendom, he complained strongly of the usurpations of the Holy See, and exposed, in the most odious colours, the policy and ambitious designs of the court of Rome. “The Church of Rome,” said he, “sends legates everywhere, with power to punish, to suspend, and excommunicate, not with the designs of spreading the word of God, but to heap up money, and reap that which they have not sown.” The emperor reminded the princes, in his letters, of the violences which the pope had exercised against the count of Thoulouse and the king of England; he said that the domains of the clergy did not now satisfy the ambition of the Holy See, and that the sovereign pontiffs wished to lay their hands upon every kingdom. From that moment open war was declared between the pope and the emperor; neither of them possessed a pacific character or a love of quiet; both were animated by boundless ambition, jealous to excess of their power, implacable in their revenge, and always ready to employ the arms which the Church or fortune placed in their hands. Gregory displayed an indefatigable activity, leaving his enemies no repose, but pursuing them at the same time with the thunders of religion and war. In addition to the arms of eloquence, the pontiff did not disdain to employ satire; the manifestoes which he published against his adversaries constantly recalled the spirit of the denunciations made by the prophets. These denunciations, mixed with obscure allegories, gave to his words a dark and mysterious tone, which caused him to be considered as the interpreter of angry Heaven. Frederick was neither a less able prince nor a less redoubtable enemy: the art of war contained no stratagems or secrets with which he was unacquainted; policy dictated no means that he scrupled to employ. Endowed with all the gifts of mind, and with a keen spirit of raillery, he was as competent to confound his enemies in a discussion, as to conquer them in the field of battle. Descended, on the female side, from those famous Normans who had conquered Sicily and the kingdom of Naples, he united, as they had done, courage with subtlety, and audacity with dissimulation: to please the court of Rome, he had made barbarous laws against heretics; and, now become the enemy of the popes, he did not fear to arm heretics or Saracens against the court of Rome. When the kingdom of Jerusalem was offered to him, he set no great value upon the acquisition; but he accepted it with joy, in order to increase his popularity in the Christian world, and to arm himself, one day, against the sovereign pontiff with a title, which was then held in universal veneration.

A war between such enemies must necessarily prove terrible, and spread desolation and confusion throughout Christendom. Gregory, on his return to Rome, repeated his excommunications in the church of St. Peter; Frederick, in order to revenge himself, seduced into his party most of the Roman nobles, who took up arms, insulted the sovereign pontiff at the very foot of the altar, and compelled him to abandon the capital of the Christian world. The pope, driven from his states, pursued his enemy with more fury than ever; and, availing himself of the formidable authority of the Church, he released the subjects of Frederick from their oath of fidelity, by reminding them that they could owe no obedience to those who opposed themselves to God and his saints. On his side, Frederick drove the Templars and Hospitallers from the kingdom of Naples, plundered the churches, and ill-treated all ecclesiastics whom he suspected of being attached to the party of the Holy See. He sent troops to ravage the patrimony of St. Peter, and enlisted the Saracens established in Sicily, under the banners of a Christian prince, to combat the head of the Christian church. The Roman states were ravaged, and given up to the horrors of war. The eyes of all Europe were fixed upon these deplorable scenes, and every one seemed to have forgotten the holy war.

The Christians of Palestine, however, never ceased to implore aid from the West. A letter to the pope from the patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishops of CÆsarea and Bethlehem, and the grand masters of the three military orders, painted in strong colours the despair into which the Christians of the East had fallen, when they learnt that Frederick had deferred his departure. The pope received their complaints with expressions of sorrow and kindness, and communicated them to the faithful with greater zeal, from their furnishing him with a fresh opportunity of accusing the emperor of Germany. But the nations of the West, occupied with their own dangers, and terrified at the sight of the violent storms that had recently burst forth, were not in the least moved by either the lamentations from Palestine or the pressing exhortations of Gregory. In this unfortunate position of European affairs, the Christian colonies, abandoned to themselves and their own feeble resources, and a prey to the greatest disorders, must have been invaded and entirely destroyed, if Providence had not stirred up fresh discords among their enemies.

During the siege of Damietta, the common danger had united the children of Malek-Adel; after victory, ambition resumed the place of fear; and the Ayoubite princes quarrelled for the provinces which their union had wrested from the power, or saved from the invasion of the Christians. Conraddin, sultan of Damascus, dreading the views of Melik-Kamel, called Gelaleddin, prince of the vast empire of Carismia, to his aid. The sultan of Cairo, in great apprehension of the consequences of this alliance, turned his eyes towards the princes of the West. During several years, the report alone of the preparations of Frederick had been a source of terror to the Mussulman powers. The emperor of Germany was considered, in the East, as the head of all the nations of Europe. The sultan of Egypt attached the greatest importance to the disarming of a formidable enemy; and as the complaints of the pope, and the report of the discords that had broken out among the Christians, had reached his ears, he conceived a hope of finding in Frederick a sincere ally and a powerful auxiliary.[235]

Melik-Kamel sent presents and ambassadors to the emperor of Germany; he invited Frederick to come into the East, and promised to deliver Jerusalem up to him. This proposition gave the emperor as much surprise as joy; and he, in reply, sent an ambassador into Egypt, to ascertain the exact intentions of the sultan of Cairo, and offer him his friendship. The envoy of Frederick was received at the court of the sultan with the greatest honours, and returned to announce to his master that Melik-Kamel was ready to favour his expedition to Palestine.

This negotiation, with which the pope and the Christians of the West were perfectly unacquainted, made Frederick determine to follow up the project of the crusade: he had, besides, several other motives for not renouncing the Eastern enterprise. He knew that John of Brienne was on the point of returning to Palestine, and resuming possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The pope continued to represent him as the enemy of Christ, and the scourge of Christians. To secure the failure of the plan of John of Brienne, and, at the same time, reply to the sovereign pontiff in a victorious manner, Frederick resolved to embark for the Holy Land. He was desirous of proclaiming his intention with the greatest pomp; and caused a magnificent throne to be erected in the plain of Barletta, which he ascended in the presence of an immense crowd of spectators. In all the splendour of imperial magnificence, he presented himself invested with the pilgrim’s cross, and announced to the assembled people that he was about to set out for Syria. In order to give more solemnity to this pompous ceremony, and affect the hearts of the multitude, the emperor caused his will to be read with a loud voice; and the barons and nobles swore at the foot of the throne, to see that his last commands should be executed, if he should chance to lose his life, either in the perils of the sea or the wars of the East.

When the pope learnt this determination of Frederick’s, he sent ecclesiastics to forbid him to embark. The sovereign pontiff reproached the emperor with presenting to the Christian world the scandal of a crusade directed by a prince reproved of God: as the fleet of Frederick consisted of only twenty galleys, and as he took with him only six hundred knights, Gregory reproached him with not having fulfilled his promises, and compared his imprudent attempts to the expedition of a captain of pirates. The emperor did not condescend to make any reply to the messengers of the pope; the more opposition the head of the Church gave to his departure, the more impatient Frederick appeared to set out and accomplish his design: in his indignation, he congratulated himself at having to brave the anger of the Church and the arms of the Saracens at the same time. He left the greater part of his army in Sicily; charging his lieutenant, the duke of Spoleto, to negotiate for peace with the pope, but at the same time to carry on the war commenced against the Roman states with unabated vigour.

When he heard of the departure of the emperor, Gregory was in the little city of Assisi, occupied in the canonization of St. Francis. During several days, he had sung nothing but hymns of hope and joy: “Francis,” said he, “had appeared like the star of morning, like the orb of day, like the moon in its splendour.” This language of peace, this festive pomp, were all at once interrupted by the maledictions that the pope pronounced against Frederick: the sovereign pontiff repaired to the foot of the altar, and there implored Heaven to confound the pride of impious monarchs, and frustrate all their sacrilegious enterprises.

The emperor, notwithstanding, arrived safely on the coast of Syria, and was received at PtolemaÏs by the patriarch, the clergy, and the grand masters of the military orders. For some days, the Christians of the East viewed him as the liberator and the king of Jerusalem; but a change speedily took place. Two disciples of St. Francis, sent by the pope, came to announce to the faithful that they had received a prince rebellious to the will of the Church. From that moment, contempt, hatred, and mistrust took place of respect and submission. They began by perceiving that Frederick was followed by only a small number of warriors, and that he had not troops enough to render him formidable to either the Saracens or the Christians. Nothing was talked of in PtolemaÏs but the excommunication of the pope, and the means of withdrawing themselves from obedience to a heretic prince: never had the deliverance of Jerusalem been less thought of.

At the moment in which Frederick arrived in Syria, Conraddin, sultan of Damascus, died; and the death of this prince gave birth to more discords among the Mussulman powers. The principality of Damascus was governed by a young inexperienced prince; and the spirit of license and insubordination, which had, in the last wars, been already observed among the troops of Syria and Egypt, made, every day, greater progress, and put all the Mussulman thrones in peril.

The sultan of Cairo, when informed of the arrival of Frederick, came into Palestine, at the head of an army. Some asserted that he came to defend Jerusalem, and to fight with the Christians; but his true design was to take advantage of the chances of war, and of the discords which everywhere prevailed, to get possession of Damascus, and defeat the plans of the enemies that jealousy and ambition had raised up against him among the Mussulmans and princes of his family.

The emperor of Germany marched out of PtolemaÏs, at the head of his small army, and directed his course towards the mountains of Naplouse. He had sent Count Thomas de Celano to Melik-Kamel, to remind him of his promises, and to tell him, that, being master of the most vast provinces of the West, he was not come into Asia for the purpose of making conquests; that he had no other design but that of visiting the holy places, and taking possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which belonged to him.[236] The sultan received the ambassador of Frederick with due respect; but whether he was ashamed to make peace before he had begun the war, or whether he feared to draw upon himself the hatred of the Mussulmans, by showing too much deference for a Christian prince, he at first made no reply to the propositions that were made to him.

Nevertheless the two princes sent fresh ambassadors, charged on both sides to express a desire for peace; both were placed in embarrassing circumstances, being surrounded by enemies who blamed their proceedings, and did not allow them to publish all their sentiments freely. The Mussulman army from Damascus, encamped in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, watched all the movements of the sultan of Egypt, and seemed much more disposed to fight with him than to repulse the Christians. The emperor of Germany found himself in the presence of two hostile armies, and that which he himself commanded inspired him with no more confidence than he inspired in it. The Hospitallers and Templars had left him, and followed him at a distance; in the camp of the Christians no one durst pronounce the name of the prince who commanded the army. Frederick had been obliged to withdraw the standard of the empire, and his orders were only issued to the soldiers of the cross in the name of God and of the Christian republic.

In this difficult situation, Frederick and Melik-Kamel were equally sensible of the necessity for peace, and of the danger of commencing war; they therefore gave more employment to their ambassadors than to their soldiers; this crusade was nothing but a long negotiation, disapproved of by both Christians and infidels. As the two sovereigns covered their policy with a veil of profound mystery, it was easy for hatred to spread and procure countenance for sinister reports. Criminal intentions were discovered in the simplest actions. In the Christian army it was conceived that Frederick had committed a crime by sending his sword and cuirass to the sultan of Cairo, as a pledge of his wish for peace. Among the Mussulmans, Melik-Kamel was reproached with seeking an alliance with the enemies of Islamism, by sending to the leader of the Franks an elephant, some camels, and the rarest productions of Arabia, India, and Egypt. The scandal reached its height when the emperor received as a present from the sultan of Cairo, a troop of girls, brought up, according to the custom of the Orientals, to sing and dance in the banqueting-hall.

At length prejudices were carried so far on both sides, that Frederick was judged more favourably of by his enemies than by his own army; and Melik-Kamel would sooner have found grace among the Christians than among his own troops. The infidels regarded the emperor of Germany as a prince full of wisdom and moderation; Abulfeda, and all the Arabian authors, have celebrated the qualities and virtues of the monarch of the Franks, whilst the continuator of William of Tyre only speaks of this prince with bitterness, and reports in his history, that all the apostles and other Christians had great doubt and great suspicion that he was far gone in infidelity, and warm in his belief in the law of Mahomet.

Hatred soon broke out in acts of treachery and the most odious plots. As the emperor had expressed an intention of going to bathe in the waters of the Jordan, the Templars addressed a letter to Melik-Kamel, pointing out the means of surprising the head of the Christian array in his pilgrimage: the sultan of Cairo despised such treachery, and sent the letter he had received to Frederick. At the same time Melik-Kamel learnt that the sultan of Damascus had declared war against him, and would be joined by several other Mussulman princes. The sultan of Cairo and the emperor of Germany had carried on their negotiations for peace during several months, but now, pressed on all sides by enemies, and surrounded by dangers, even in their own camp, they at length resolved to end the matter, and conclude a treaty, which would permit them to dispose of their forces for their security or for their personal ambition. They agreed between themselves, that they would make a truce of ten years, and that Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Thoron should be given up to Frederick or his lieutenants.[237] According to the conditions of the treaty, the Mussulmans were to retain in the holy city, the mosque of Omar and the free exercise of their worship: the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli were not comprised in the treaty. The emperor of Germany undertook to divert the Franks from every kind of hostility against the subjects or lands of the sultan of Egypt.

When the articles of the treaty became known in the two camps, the peace was considered by both as impious and sacrilegious.[238] The imauns and cadis, invoking the name of the caliph of Bagdad, loudly condemned a truce which conveyed away from the Mussulmans the holy city, which they called the house of God, the city of the prophet. The prelates and bishops, speaking in the name of the pontiff of Rome, declaimed vehemently against a treaty which left mosques standing by the side of the Holy Sepulchre, and in some sort confounded the worship of Mahomet with that of Christ. When the envoy of the emperor of Germany went to Damascus, to procure the ratification of the treaty which had been concluded, the sultan and his vizier refused to hear him. The peace made with the Christians was a subject of affliction and scandal for all true believers. One of the most celebrated orators of Islamism pronounced the panegyric of Jerusalem in the great mosque; and, when recalling in pathetic terms the loss the Mussulmans had experienced, he drew tears from all the assembled people.

The patriarch of Jerusalem placed an interdict upon the recovered holy places, and refused pilgrims permission to visit the sepulchre of Christ. Jerusalem was no longer, in the eyes of Christians, the holy city and the heritage of the Son of God; when the emperor made his public entrance, the faithful preserved a sullen and melancholy silence as he passed along. Accompanied by the German barons and the Teutonic knights, he repaired to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was hung with mourning, and appeared as if guarded by the angel of reprobation; all the ecclesiastics had deserted the sanctuary, and everything wore the air of abomination and desolation. Frederick himself took the crown, and placing it upon his head, he was proclaimed king of Jerusalem without any religious ceremony; the images of the apostles were veiled; nothing was seen around the altars but swords and lances; and the sacred vaults gave back no sounds but the noisy acclamations of warriors.

After his coronation, Frederick wrote to the pope and to all the princes of the West, that he had reconquered Jerusalem without the effusion of blood; in his account he endeavoured to enhance the splendour and merit of this victory, which must fulfil all the hopes of the Christian world. At the same time, the patriarch wrote to Gregory, and all the faithful of Christendom, to show them the impiety and the disgrace of the treaty Frederick had just concluded. When he heard of the success of the emperor, the sovereign pontiff deplored the conquest of Jerusalem as he would have deplored its loss, and compared the new king of JudÆa to those impious monarchs whom the anger of God placed upon the throne of David.

Frederick was not able to remain long in the holy city, which resounded with imprecations against him. He returned to PtolemaÏs, where he found only revolted subjects and Christians scandalized at his successes. The patriarch and the clergy placed an interdict upon the city during the time the emperor should remain in it; all religious worship was suspended; the altars were deprived of their ornaments, and the crosses, relics, and images of the saints were cast upon the ground; no more bells, no more religious hymns were to be heard; a melancholy silence prevailed in the sanctuary, where mass was celebrated in a low voice, and with closed doors. The dead were buried in the fields, without funeral ceremonies or monumental stones; everything, in short, denoted a season of great calamities, and a dread of the vengeance of Heaven: it was thus that the liberator of Jerusalem was welcomed at PtolemaÏs.

It was Passion-week, and this religious period gave additional influence to the clergy and more solemnity to the maledictions of the Church. Frederick found himself obliged to negotiate for peace with the Christians, as he had done with the infidels, and being unable to regain their good-will he still further exasperated them by his violence. He caused the gates of the city to be closed, and prohibited the bringing in of provisions; he planted archers and arbalatiers in every place where they could insult the Templars and pilgrims; and by his orders, mendicant preaching monks were dragged from the foot of the altar, and beaten with rods in the public places of the city.

Hatred and vengeance were carried, on both sides, to the greatest excess. It was impossible for the emperor, surrounded as he was by enemies, to remain long at PtolemaÏs, in addition to which motive, he daily received letters from Europe urging his return. Two formidable armies, under the banners of the Holy See, had entered the kingdom of Naples, pillaged the cities, ravaged the country, mutilated prisoners, and committed all kinds of enormities. These armies were under the command of John of Brienne, impatient to revenge his own injuries, and two Sicilian counts, whom the emperor of Germany had driven from the kingdom of Naples.

Frederick at length quitted Palestine and returned to his own dominions. As he left PtolemaÏs, the inhabitants chanted hymns of deliverance and joy. He accused the Templars of having endeavoured to deliver him up to the Saracens; the Templars, on their part, accused him of having wished to surrender all the Christian cities to the sultan of Cairo: these accusations, and a thousand others, dictated by hatred, ought to inspire the historian with great and just suspicions. The Christians might have urged against Frederick a much more reasonable reproach; he had taken no means to secure his conquest, and they were warranted in believing that he had only made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the view of annoying the Holy See, and dating a reply to the inculpations of Gregory from the holy places: having attained his object, he had deceived the faithful, by inviting them to a city that he was disposed neither to defend nor fortify. In addition to this, Frederick himself felt very little pride in the advantages of which he made such a pompous display throughout Europe; and the crusade in which he had taken a part was frequently the object of his pleasantries and sarcasms.

On his return to Italy, he found a much more serious war than that he had carried on in Asia. The pope had not only levied troops to ravage his states, he had induced the Lombard republics to take up arms against him. John of Brienne, deprived of his title of king of Jerusalem, determined to endeavour to be acknowledged emperor, and his pretensions were supported by all that was then held most sacred, the authority of the Church and the right of victory. The presence of Frederick restored courage to his subjects, whose fidelity was still unshaken; he met his enemies in several engagements, in which he always gained the advantage. The army of John of Brienne was dispersed, and the pontifical troops quitted all the cities and provinces they had conquered, in the greatest disorder.

The pope, learning that fortune had deserted his banners, again had recourse to the thunders of religion, and employed the most terrible of its denunciations against Frederick. He declared that all were excommunicated who should hold any kind of commerce with the emperor, all who should sit at his table, be present at his councils, celebrate divine service before him, or offer him any mark of attachment or respect. Frederick was terrified at this sentence, which was published with great solemnity in all parts of Europe, particularly in his own dominions; and sent ambassadors to the pope, who, in spite of the thunders with which he was armed, dreaded the consequences of war, and showed himself disposed to receive the submission of an enemy he dreaded.

After a negotiation of several days, a treaty was made, in which the conquered pope dictated laws to his conqueror, and appeared, whilst receiving peace, to accord a pardon. But in spite of this treaty of peace, the effects of discord still subsisted, and were felt even in the East, where debates, raised in the name of the Church, had divided men’s minds, and depressed the general courage; and where the Christian states, for which Europe had taken up arms, remained without support and without defence. As Frederick had abandoned Jerusalem without fortifying it,[239] the Christians were in constant dread of the invasion of the Mussulman peasants, whom the hopes of pillage attracted from the mountains of Naplouse. The great bell of the church of the Holy Sepulchre often gave warning of the approach of an enemy eager for carnage; and most of the inhabitants retired with their terrified families, some to the fortress of St. David, which was still standing among the ruins, and others into desert places.

The patriarch of Jerusalem, the prelates, barons, and people of Palestine, who had no longer either a leader or a king, in vain implored the assistance of the warriors and princes of the West: prayers and complaints so frequently repeated, had no power to awaken in the hearts of the faithful either the sentiments of pity or the enthusiasm which had so often caused them to take up arms and the cross. They could have no faith in perils that followed so closely upon victory; and they despaired of ever being able to assure the deliverance of a country which required to be delivered so often.

The pope, however, had not abandoned the project of the crusade, and still entertained the hope of reviving the ardour and zeal of the Christian warriors by his exhortations. He convoked an assembly at Spoleto, at which Frederick, with the patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem assisted. It was resolved in this assembly, to renew the war in Palestine, notwithstanding the truce concluded with the sultan of Cairo.

Gregory was impatient to accomplish his designs, and proclaim the laws of the Church in the rich countries of the East; and, to employ the time till warriors could be gathered together, he sent several missionaries across the sea, armed with the sword and the word, to endeavour to convert the infidels of Syria and Egypt. The sovereign pontiff was so persuaded of the success of this pacific crusade, that he wrote to the caliph of Bagdad, the sultan of Damascus, and the principal Mussulman chiefs, to exhort them to embrace Christianity.[240] History does not say what the fate was of these mendicant preachers in the East; but the caliph of Bagdad and the Mussulman princes did not cease to be inveterate enemies to the Christians. Gregory IX. was better inspired and more fortunate when he sent sacred orators into several of the provinces of the West, to appease the troubles and civil wars that were so injurious to the cause of religion, and diverted the minds of the people from the great enterprise of the holy wars.

The disciples of St. Dominick and St. Francis of Assisi, charged with a mission worthy of the Gospel, pervaded cities and countries, preaching peace and concord. Among the preachers thus sent to pacify states, Brother John of Vicentia made himself conspicuous by the miracles effected by his eloquence.[241] In all the countries he visited, the nobles, the peasants, the citizens, and the warriors flocked to listen to him, and swore to pardon all injuries and terminate all quarrels. After having re-established peace in several cities troubled by the spirit of jealousy, and animated by the stormy passions of undefined, ill-understood liberty, he announced that he should preach in the plain of Peschiera, on the banks of the Adige. All the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, headed by their clergy and their magistrates, repaired to the place appointed, to listen to the Angel of Concord[242] and the orator of public peace. In the presence of more than four hundred thousand auditors, Brother John mounted a pulpit elevated in the centre of the plain of Peschiera; a profound silence prevailed throughout the assembly; every eye was fixed upon the holy preacher; his words seemed to descend from heaven. He took for his text these words of the Scripture: “I give you my peace, I leave you my peace.” After having drawn a frightful picture of the evils of war and the effects of discord, he ordered the Lombard cities to renounce their enmities, and dictated to them, in the name of the Church, a treaty of universal pacification. At no period had the middle ages presented a more sublime and touching spectacle; the historian of that time, who has nothing but troubles and wars to describe, ought to be delighted at an opportunity to tell of such an imposing and solemn scene, wherein religion recalled assembled nations to a sense of all that her maxims contain that is most consoling and salutary. The discourse of Brother John filled his auditory with a holy love of peace, and the cities then at war swore, before him, to forget for ever the subjects of their long divisions and eternal rivalries.

These evangelical discourses restored to Italy a few days of peace, and gave the Holy See an opportunity of preaching a new crusade with success. Gregory addressed pastoral instructions to all the bishops and prelates of Christendom. In his letters to the French bishops, he applied these words of Christ to the holy war: “If any one would come with me, let him renounce himself, let him take up my cross and follow me.” The sovereign pontiff declared all who would not employ their utmost efforts to conquer the heritage of Christ, guilty of treason. The circulars of the pope ordered all the faithful, of both sexes, to pay a denier per week towards the expenses of the crusade. The head of the Church compared these alms to those which St. Paul solicited for the poor of Jerusalem, and did not fear to assert, beforehand, that they would suffice for the maintenance of the army of Crusaders for ten years.

The preaching of this crusade was confided to the fraternities of St. Dominick and St. Francis, which had, in Asia, missionaries for the conversion of infidels, and in the West, preachers to re-establish peace among Christians; the new apostles of the holy war received from the pope the power, not only to give the cross, but to commute the vow of pilgrimage to a pecuniary alms, a practice that had never been seen since the beginning of the crusades; they had likewise the faculty of granting indulgences for several days to all who came to listen to their sermons. According to the spirit of their institutions, the disciples of St. Francis and St. Dominick lived amidst austerities and penance; they devoted themselves to poverty, and were bound to furnish a constant example of Christian humility; but, in this instance, the pope desired they should be received into monasteries and cities with pomp and ceremony; and that the clergy should come out to meet them, with the banners and most splendid ornaments of their churches. Whether this magnificence changed the simplicity of their manners, or that the people did not like to behold men whom they had lately seen devoted to evangelical poverty, treated with ceremonial pomp, the preachers of the crusade inspired their auditors with neither esteem nor respect, and the crowd diminished every day. As they received abundant alms, of which no one could see the employment, neither the solemnity of their mission nor the sanctity of their characters could screen them from the suspicions and accusations of the multitude: the murmurs and complaints which arose on all sides, at length weakened the authority of their words, and assisted in cooling the zeal and devotion of the Christians for the holy war.

The enthusiasm of the people, which Christian eloquence could not revive, stood in need of the example of the most illustrious princes and warriors. France was then at peace; the war against the Albigeois was drawing towards its end: most of the knights and barons, reared amidst battles, could not endure rest, and sighed for an opportunity of signalizing their warlike temperament. They took the oath to go into Asia and fight against the Saracens.

Thibault V., count of Champagne, and king of Navarre, son of Thibault, who died before the fifth crusade, undertook to discharge the vow his father had made to the Church and to Christ. The king of Navarre was celebrated among knights and among troubadours; his muse, which had sung profane loves, now gave voice to the complaints of Jerusalem, and awakened, by Christian songs, the ardour of the soldiers of the cross. “Learn,” said he, “that heaven is closed to all those who will not cross the seas to visit and defend the tomb of God. Yes, all the brave, all who love God and glory, will not hesitate to take up the cross and arms. Those who prefer repose to honour, those who dread perils, will remain alone in their homes. Jesus Christ, in the day of judgment, will say to the one party: ‘You, who helped me to bear my cross, go to the place in which dwell the angels and my mother Mary;’ he will say to the others: ‘You, who have not succoured me, descend to the abode of the wicked.’”[243] The example and the exhortations of Thibault attracted princes, barons, and knights from all the provinces of France.

Pierre de Dreux, duke of Brittany, whom the clergy surnamed Mauclerc, because, in his youth, he had abandoned the ecclesiastical state, wished to expiate his numerous felonies, his unjust wars, his tyranny towards his subjects, his perfidies towards his allies, by the holy pilgrimage. Hugh IV., duke of Burgundy, the counts of Bar, Ferez, MÂcon, Joigny, Sancoure, and Nevers; Simon de Montfort, Andrew de Vitri, Amaury fils, Geoffrey d’Ancenes, and a crowd of barons and knights took the cross, and engaged to follow the duke of Brittany and the king of Navarre into Palestine.

As the preaching of the crusade had been accompanied by several abuses that might prove injurious to the success of the holy expedition, a council assembled at Tours, employed itself in remedying and stopping the evil at its source. We have seen, on preceding occasions, that preachers of the crusades, by receiving criminals under the banners of the cross, had scandalized Christian knights; and crusades, as was seen in the twelfth century, were not considered as a means of salvation for the faithful, and as the way of the Lord, in which all the world might enter. Great criminals no longer found a place in the ranks of the pious defenders of Christ. The council of Tours decided that Crusaders, arrested by justice, should be transferred to the hands of an ecclesiastical judge, who would pay no respect to their privileges, and should even take the cross from them, if he found them guilty of homicide or any other great crime committed against divine and human laws.

As in other crusades, the people were led into violent excesses against the Jews, whom they accused of having immolated the God for whom they were going to fight, and who retained immense treasures in their hands, whilst the Crusaders were obliged to pledge their property to perform the voyage to Palestine. In order to stop the course of these popular violences, the council forbade any ill-treatment of the Jews, either by plundering them of their wealth or by doing them personal injury, under pain of heavy ecclesiastical censures.

Another abuse, not less prejudicial to the Crusaders than all the others, had been likewise observed. The preachers of the holy wars and many other theologians had permitted Crusaders to buy off their vow by paying a sum of money equal to that which they would have expended in their pilgrimage:[244] this abuse caused great scandal among the faithful, but the Holy See, which derived considerable sums from it, paid no attention to the complaints made on account of it in England and many other states of Europe.

The Crusaders were preparing for their departure, when, all at once, a fresh cry of alarm resounded through the West. The empire of the Latins, at Constantinople, was reduced to the lowest extremity. After the reigns of Baldwin of Flanders and his son Henry, the family of Courtenay, called to the throne, derived nothing from their exaltation but the griefs and reverses inseparable from the government of an empire which is hastening to decay. Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, when on his way to take possession of the throne of Baldwin, was surprised and massacred in Macedonia, by the orders of Theodore Comnenus, prince of Epirus. A short time afterwards, the empress, who had arrived at Constantinople by sea, died of grief, on learning the tragical end of her husband. Robert of Courtenay, second son of Peter, only ascended the throne to experience the rapid decline of the empire; conquered in a great battle by Vataces, the successor of Lascaris, he lost all the provinces situated beyond the Bosphorus and the Hellespont; whilst, on the other side, the prince of Epirus took possession of Thessaly and a great part of Thrace. Constantinople, threatened by formidable enemies, beheld from its towers the standards of the Greeks of Nice and of the barbarians of Mount Hemus, floating near its walls and insulting its majesty. Amidst these various disasters, Robert died, leaving, as his only successor, his brother Baldwin, still in his childhood. John of Brienne, whom fortune had made, for a short period, king of Jerusalem, was called to the tottering throne of Constantinople, at the moment that the Greeks and Bulgarians, animated by the ardour of pillage, were at the gates of the capital. Their fleets penetrated to the port, their numerous battalions were preparing to scale the ramparts; but the new emperor fought several battles with them, obtained possession of their ships, and dispersed their armies. The miraculous victories of John of Brienne added greatly to his renown, but only served to diminish his forces: after having defeated his enemies, he found himself without an army; and whilst the poets were comparing him to Hector, Roland, and Judas MachabÆus,[245] he was obliged to wait in his capital for succours that had been promised him, and which never arrived. More than eighty years of age, he terminated his active career in contesting with the barbarians the remains of a power which had been founded by arms, and the miserable wreck of which could only be preserved by prodigies of valour.

The ruins which surrounded him in his last moments must have made him sensible of the nothingness of human grandeur, and produced sentiments of Christian humility. He had passed the early days of his life amidst the austerities of the cloister. On his death-bed he laid aside the imperial purple, and was desirous of breathing his last sigh in the habit of a Cordelier. A simple French knight, seated for some few days upon two thrones, both ready to pass away, son-in-law of two kings,[246] father-in-law of two emperors, John of Brienne only left, when dying, the remembrance of his extraordinary exploits, and the example of a wonderful destiny. Young Baldwin, who had married his daughter, and who was to have succeeded him, was unable to obtain his inheritance; and departing as a fugitive from his capital, he wandered through Europe as a suppliant, braving and enduring the contempt of princes and nations. Spectacle worthy of pity! the successor of the CÆsars, clothed in the purple, was beheld imploring the charity of the faithful, begging for the assistance granted to the lowest indigence, and frequently not obtaining that for which he sued.

Whilst the emperor of the East was thus travelling through Italy, France, and England, Constantinople was left without an army, and sacrificed for the defence of the state, even to its relics, the objects of the veneration of the people, and the last treasures of the empire. The sovereign pontiff was touched with the misery and degradation of Baldwin, and, at the same time, could not hear without pity the complaints of the Latin church of Byzantium: he published a new crusade for the defence of the empire of the East.

The Crusaders, who were about to set out for the Holy Land, were invited to lend their assistance to their brethren of Constantinople; but the prayers and exhortations of the Holy See produced but very feeble effects; opinions were divided; some wished to defend the empire of the Latins, others, the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The French princes and nobles, however, persisted in their resolution of going to fight against the Saracens in Asia. The barons and knights either pawned or sold their lands to purchase horses and arms, quitted their donjons and their castles, and tore themselves from the embraces of their wives. Thibault, their leader and interpreter, bade adieu to France in verses which are still extant, and which express, at the same time, the devotion of a Christian and the spirit of chivalry. His muse, at once pious and profane, deplores the torments of love, the griefs of absence, and celebrates the glory of the soldiers of Christ; to console himself for having left the lady of his thoughts, the king of Navarre invokes the Virgin Mary, the lady of the heavens, and finishes his complaints, by this verse, which so admirably paints the manners of the time:

Quand dame perds, Dame me soit aidant.[247]

Other troubadours, after the example of the king of Navarre, sang the departure of the pilgrims; they promised, in their verses, the indulgences of the crusade to the warriors that would set out for Syria, advising the dames and demoiselles not to listen to those that should be left in Europe; for, said they, there will remain none but cowards: all the brave are going to seek glory in the battles of the East. Whilst France was repeating the songs of the troubadours, and prayers were offered up to Heaven in the churches for the success of the expeditions, the Crusaders from all the provinces of the kingdom commenced their march, directing their course towards the port of Marseilles, where vessels waited, to transport them into Asia; all were animated by the most ardent zeal for the deliverance of the holy places; but the pope, at whose voice they had taken up arms, no longer applauded their enthusiasm. Gregory, who had made himself a great many formidable enemies in the West, appeared to have forgotten a war he had so warmly promoted, and was entirely engrossed by his own dangers.

Most of the leaders of the crusade were assembled at Lyons to deliberate upon the best means of carrying on their enterprise, when they received a nuncio from the sovereign pontiff, who commanded them to return to their homes. This unexpected order from Gregory IX. gave great offence to the princes and barons, who told the envoy of the court of Rome, that the pope might change his policy, and disapprove of that which he himself had set on foot; but that the defenders of the cross, they who had devoted themselves to the service of Christ, would remain steadfast in their intentions. “We have made,” added they, “all our preparations; we have pledged or sold our lands, our houses, and our goods; we have quitted our friends and our families, giving out our departure for Palestine: religion and honour forbid us to retrace our steps.”[248]

As the pope’s nuncio wished to speak and uphold the authority of the Church, and as he accused the barons of betraying the cause they were going to defend, the Christian warriors could not restrain their indignation; the soldiers and leaders were so exasperated, that they even ill-treated the ambassador of the pontiff; and, but for the intercession and prayers of the prelates and bishops, would have immolated him to their anger.

Scarcely had the Crusaders dismissed the pope’s nuncio with contempt, than deputies arrived from the emperor of Germany, equally supplicating them to suspend their march, and wait till he had collected his troops, in order to place himself at their head. The knights and barons, animated by a sincere zeal for the objects of their expedition, could not comprehend the meaning of the delays thus attempted to be thrown in the way of it, and sighed over the blindness of the powers that wished to turn them aside from the road to salvation. The king of Navarre, the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, with most of the nobles that had taken the cross, persisted in the design of accomplishing their vow, and embarked for Syria at the port of Marseilles.

A new misunderstanding had broken out between the pope and Frederick, who were disputing the sovereignty of Sardinia; all the passions were soon engaged in this quarrel, and armed themselves, by turns, with the vengeance of Heaven and the furies of war. Gregory, after having excommunicated Frederick afresh, was determined to attack his reputation, and degrade him in the opinion of his contemporaries. Monitories and briefs from the pope were read in all the churches of Europe, in which the emperor was represented as an impious man, an accomplice of heretics and Saracens, an oppressor of religion and humanity. Frederick replied to the accusations of the sovereign pontiff by the most violent invectives; he addressed himself to the Romans, to excite them against the Holy See, and called upon all the princes of Europe to defend his cause as their own.[249] “Kings and princes of the earth,” said he, “look upon the injury done to us as your own, bring water to extinguish the fire that has been kindled in our neighbourhood; a similar danger threatens you.” The irritated pope hurled all the thunders of the Church against his adversary; and even went so far as to preach a crusade against the emperor, saying, “There was more merit in combating a prince who was rebellious to the successors of St. Peter, than in delivering Jerusalem.” Throughout this scandalous contest, the Church was allowed to possess nothing that was sacred, the authority of princes nothing that was legitimate; on one side, the sovereign pontiff considered all who remained faithful subjects to the emperor as the ministers and accomplices of the demon; on the other, the emperor would not acknowledge the pope as the vicar of Christ. At last, Gregory promised the imperial crown to any Christian prince who would take up arms against the emperor, and drag him from his throne: Louis IX., more wise than the Church itself, refused the empire which was offered to him for his brother Robert, and employed earnest but vain endeavours to restore peace to Europe, disturbed by the pretensions and menaces of the pope.

They soon came to hostilities; and Frederick, after having gained a great victory over the Milanese, and carried terror amongst all the republics of Lombardy, marched towards Rome at the head of an army. Gregory, who had no troops at all, went through the streets of his capital at the head of a procession; he exhibited to the Romans the relics of the apostles, and, melting into tears, told them he had no means of defending this sacred deposit without their assistance. The nobility and people, touched by the prayers of the pope, swore to die in defence of the Holy See. They set about preparations for war, they fortified the city with the greatest expedition; and when the emperor drew near to the gates, he saw those same Romans, who, a short time before, had embraced his cause against the pope, drawn up in battle-array on the ramparts, determined to die in the cause of the head of the Church. Frederick besieged the city, without being able to get possession of it; in his anger, he accused the Romans of perfidy, and revenged himself by exercising horrible cruelties on his prisoners. The hatred enkindled between the pope and the emperor soon passed into the minds of the people, and the furies of civil war devastated the whole of Italy.

Amidst such general disorder and agitation, the cries and prayers of the Christians of Palestine were scarcely audible. At the expiration of the truce concluded with Frederick, the sultan of Damascus re-entered Jerusalem, and destroyed the tower of David and the weak ramparts erected by the Christians: this conquest, which revived the courage of the Mussulmans, necessarily produced more than proportionate despair among the unfortunate inhabitants of the Holy Land. Instead of receiving within its walls the innumerable armies that fame had announced, PtolemaÏs only had to welcome the arrival of a few unarmed pilgrims, who had nothing to relate but the deplorable quarrels of Christian monarchs and princes. Most of the communications with the East were closed; all the maritime powers of Italy were contending for the empire of the sea; sometimes in league with the sovereign pontiff, sometimes with the emperor. Several of the Crusaders who had sworn to go to Constantinople or PtolemaÏs, took part in the crusade that had been preached against Frederick; others resolved to proceed to Syria by land, and almost all perished in the mountains and deserts of Asia Minor; the French lords and princes, who, in spite of the orders of the pope, set out for Asia from the ports of Provence, were able to bring with them into Palestine but a very small number of warriors.

At the period of the arrival of these Crusaders, the East was not less troubled than the West. Melik-Kamel, the sultan of Cairo, had recently died, and his death became the signal for many sanguinary wars among the princes of his family, who disputed by turns the kingdom of Egypt, and the principalities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Hamah. Amidst these divisions, the emirs and the Mamelukes, whose dangerous support was constantly sought for, were accustomed to dispose of power, and proved themselves more formidable to their sovereigns than to the enemies of Islamism. Supreme authority seemed to be the reward of victory or of skill in treachery; the Mussulman thrones were environed by so many perils, that a sultan of Damascus was seen abandoning his sceptre, and seeking retirement, saying, “a hawk and a hound afforded him more pleasure than empire.” The princes, divided among themselves, called for the succour of the Carismians and other barbarous nations, who burnt their cities, pillaged their provinces, completed the destruction of the powers they came to defend, and perfected all the evils that were born of discord.

The Crusaders might have taken advantage of all these troubles, but they never united their forces against the enemy they had sworn to contend with; the kingdom of Jerusalem had no government capable of directing the forces of the crusade; the crowd of pilgrims had no tie, no common point of interest which could hold them together for any length of time under the same standards: scattered troops of soldiers were to be seen, but there was nowhere an army; each of the leaders and princes followed a plan of his own, declared war or proclaimed peace in his own name, and appeared to fight entirely for his own ambition or renown.

The duke of Brittany, followed by his knights, made an incursion into the lands of Damascus, and returned to Ptolemais with a rich booty; the other Crusaders, jealous of the success of this expedition, were desirous of distinguishing themselves by exploits, and formed the project of attacking the city of Gaza. As they marched without order or precaution, they were surprised and cut to pieces by the Saracens. The duke of Burgundy, who was at the head of this expedition, escaped the pursuit of the conquerors almost alone, and came back to PtolemaÏs, to deplore the loss of his knights and barons, who had all met with slavery or death on the field of battle. This reverse, instead of uniting the Christians more closely, only increased their discords; in the impossibility of effecting any triumph for their arms, they treated separately with the infidels, and made peace, as they had made war. The Templars and some leaders of the army agreed for a truce with the sultan of Damascus, and obtained the restitution of the holy places; on their side, the Hospitallers, with the count of Champagne, and the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, concluded a treaty with the sultan of Egypt, and undertook to defend him against the Saracens who had just given up Jerusalem to the Christians.

After having disturbed Palestine by their disorders, the Crusaders abandoned it to return to Europe, and were replaced at PtolemaÏs by some English, who arrived under Richard of Cornwall, brother to Henry III. Richard, who possessed the tin and lead mines of the county of Cornwall, was one of the richest princes of the West: if old chronicles are to be believed, Gregory had forbidden him to go to the East, hoping that he would consent to remain in Europe, and would impart a portion of his treasures to the Holy See, to procure the indulgences of the crusade. When Richard arrived before PtolemaÏs, he was received by the people and the clergy, who went out to meet him, singing, “Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This prince was the grandson of Richard Coeur de Lion,[250] whose courage and exploits had rendered him so famous in the East. The name alone of Richard spread terror among the Saracens; the prince of Cornwall equalled his ancestor in bravery; he was full of zeal and ardour, and his army shared his enthusiasm for religion and glory. He prepared to open the campaign, and everything seemed to promise success; but, after a march of some days, and a few advantages obtained over the enemy, finding himself very ill-seconded by the Christians of Palestine, he was obliged to renew the truce made with the sultan of Egypt. As the whole fruit of his expedition, he could only obtain an exchange of prisoners, and permission to pay the honours of sepulture to the Christians killed at the battle of Gaza.

Without having seen either the walls of Jerusalem or the banks of the Jordan, Richard embarked for Italy, where he found the pope still engaged in the war against Frederick. All Europe was in a blaze; a council convoked for the peace of the Church had not been able to assemble; the emperor still besieged the city of Rome, and threatened the head of Christendom. Amidst this general disorder, Gregory died, cursing his implacable adversary, and was succeeded by Celestine IV., who only wore the tiara sixteen days. The war was continued with renewed fury, the Church remained without a head, and Christ without a vicar upon earth; the cardinals wandered about dispersed; Frederick holding several of them in chains. “The court of Rome,” says Fleury, “was desolate, and fallen into great contempt.” This deplorable anarchy lasted nearly two years; all Christendom was loud in complaints, and demanded of Heaven a pope able to repair the evils of Europe and the Church.

The conclave met at length, but the election of Innocent IV., made amidst trouble and discord, put an end to neither the public scandal nor the furies of the war, which grieved all true Christians. The new pontiff followed the example of Innocent III. and Gregory IX., and soon surpassed all their excesses. Under his pontificate, disorder continued increasing, until it had reached its height. The Christians of Greece and Palestine were quite forgotten. Missionaries in vain perambulated the kingdoms of the West, to exhort the faithful to make peace among themselves, and turn their arms against the Saracens; many of these angels of peace were proscribed by Frederick, who was, at once, at war with the sovereign pontiff, the emperor of the East, and all those who, in taking the cross, had sworn to defend Rome, or to deliver Constantinople or Jerusalem. We will not attempt to describe the violent scenes of which the West, but particularly Italy, was the theatre. Attention becomes fatigued by dwelling long upon the same pictures; the wars and revolutions which lend so much life to history finish by presenting only a wearisome, twice-told tale; and thus, likewise, may the reader perceive that the passions have their uniformity and tempests their monotony.

Each of the preceding crusades had a distinct object, a march which could be easily followed, and was only remarkable for great exploits or great reverses. That which we have just described, which embraces a period of thirty years, is mingled with so many different events, with so many clashing interests, so many passions foreign to the holy wars, that it at first appears to present only a confused picture; and the historian, constantly occupied in relating the revolutions of the East and of the West, may with reason be accused of having, as a European Christian, forgotten Jerusalem and the cause of Christ.

When we have read the twelfth book of this history, we perceive that we are already far from the age that gave birth to the crusades, and witnessed their brilliant progress. When comparing this war with those that preceded it, it is easy to see that it has a different character, not only in the manner in which it was conducted, but in the means employed to inflame the zeal of the Christians, and induce them to take up arms.

When we observe the incredible efforts of the popes to arm the nations of the West, we are at first astonished at the small quantity of success obtained by their exhortations, their menaces, and their prayers. We have but to compare the Council of Clermont, held by Urban, with the Council of the Lateran, presided over by Gregory. In the first, the complaints of Jerusalem excite the tears and sobs of the auditory; in the second, a thousand different objects intrude, to occupy the attention of the fathers of the Church, who express themselves upon the misfortunes of the Holy Land, without emotion and without pain. At the voice of Urban, knights, barons, and ecclesiastics all swore together to go and fight against the infidels; the council became, in a moment, an assembled host of intrepid warriors: it was not so at the Council of the Lateran, in which no one took the cross, or burst forth into an expression of that high enthusiasm which the pope desired to awaken in all hearts.

We have drawn attention, in the course of our recital, to the circumstance of pilgrims being permitted by the preachers of the holy war to buy off their vow by paying a sum of money; this mode of expiating sins appeared to be a scandalous innovation: and the indulgence of the missionaries of the holy war, who thus released the faithful from the pilgrimage, made them lose a considerable portion of their ascendancy. They were not, as formerly, the messengers of Heaven; the multitude no longer endowed them with the power of working miracles; they were even sometimes obliged to employ the menaces and promises of the Church to draw hearers to their sermons; in short, at length the people ceased to consider them as the interpreters of the gospel, and saw in them only the collectors of the dues of the Holy See. This sale of the privileges of the crusade, purchased at an extravagant price, necessarily checked the effects of all generous passions, and, in the minds of Christians, confounded that which belonged to Heaven with that which belonged to earth.

Preceding ages were unacquainted with any other motive but religion and its promises.[251] The companions of Peter the Hermit and Godfrey, the warriors who followed Louis the Young, Philip Augustus, Richard Coeur de Lion, Boniface, and Baldwin of Flanders, could not have possibly believed that gold could be made a substitute for the merit and glory of the holy war.

We find another remarkable difference in the preaching of this crusade,—the refusal to admit great criminals under the banners of the cross. The astonishment which the enrolment of a crowd of obscure persons in the holy militia caused among the Christian knights, suffices to denote a great change in the manners and opinions of the Crusaders. The sentiment of honour, which is allied with a love of glory, and has a tendency to establish distinctions among men, appears to have prevailed over the purely religious feeling which inspires humility, acknowledges the equal rights of all Christians, and confounds repentance with virtue. The crusade, into which none were admitted but men of acknowledged bravery and good conduct, ceased, in some sort, to be a simply religious war, and began to resemble other wars, in which leaders have the power of selecting the soldiers they have to command.

The enthusiasm for the holy wars only revived at intervals, like a fire upon the point of going out of itself; the people required some great event, some extraordinary circumstance, some striking example of princes or warriors, to induce them to take arms against the infidels; the subtleties of theologians, who insisted upon everything being subservient to their discussions, contributed to cool the remains of that pious and warlike ardour, which, till that time, it had been found necessary to moderate and restrain within just limits. Disputes were started in the schools upon such questions as these: In what case was a Christian exempt from the accomplishment of his vow? What sum was sufficient to redeem a promise made to Christ? If certain pious exercises could be substituted for pilgrimage? If an heir was bound to fulfil the oath of a testator? Whether the pilgrim who died on his way to the Holy Land, had more merit in the eyes of God than one who died on his return?[252] Whether a wife could take the cross without the consent of her husband, or the husband without the consent of the wife? &c. From the moment in which all these questions were solemnly discussed, and, upon several points, the opinions of theologians differed, enthusiasm, which never reasons, was rendered languid by the cold arguments of the doctors; and pilgrims appeared to yield less to the transports of a generous feeling, than to the necessity of performing a duty or of following an established rule.

This sixth crusade was more abundant in intrigues and scandalous quarrels than in military exploits; the Christians never united all their efforts against the infidels; no spirit of order presided over their enterprises; the Crusaders, who only held their mission of their zeal, set out at the time their will or their fancy selected; some returned to Europe without having faced a Saracen in fight; others abandoned the colours of the cross, after a victory or a defeat; and fresh Crusaders were constantly summoned to defend the conquests or repair the faults of those that had preceded them. Although the West had counted in this crusade more than five hundred thousand of her warriors departing for Palestine or Egypt, great armies were rarely assembled on the banks of the Nile or the Jordan. As the Crusaders were never gathered together in great bodies, they were not subjected to famine, or the other scourges that had so fearfully thinned the ranks of the early defenders of the cross; but if they experienced fewer reverses, if they were better disciplined, we may say that they showed none of that ardour, or of those lively passions which men communicate to each other, and which acquire a new degree of force and activity amidst a multitude assembled for the same cause and under the same banners.

By transferring the theatre of the war to Egypt, the Christians no longer had before their eyes, as in Palestine, the revered places and monuments, which could recall to them the religion and the God they were about to fight for; they had no longer before them and around them the river Jordan, Libanus, Thabor, or Mount Sion, the aspect of which had so vividly affected the imagination of the first Crusaders.

When the people of Europe heard the head of the Church exhort the faithful to the conquest of Jerusalem, and at the same time curse Frederick, the liberator of the holy city, the object of the crusade lost its sacred character in the eyes of Christians. The emperor of Germany, after his return from his expedition, sometimes said, “If God had been acquainted with the kingdom of Naples, he never could have preferred the barren rocks of Jerusalem to it.” These sacrilegious words of Frederick must have been a great subject of offence to pilgrims; but, indeed, this prince only sent to the Holy Land such of his subjects as he was dissatisfied with, or wished to punish. The popes also condemned to pilgrimage the great criminals whom society rejected from its bosom, which was very repugnant to the manners and opinions of the nobles and knights of Europe. As a crowning misfortune, the reverses or exploits of the Crusaders beyond the seas frequently created divisions among the princes of the West. From that time, Palestine was no longer, in the eyes of the faithful, a land of blessedness, flowing with milk and honey, but a place of exile. From that time Jerusalem was less considered the city of God and the heritage of Christ, than a subject of discord, or the place in which were born all the storms that disturbed Christendom.

In the other crusades, the popes had been satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm of pilgrims, and addressing prayers to Heaven for the success of the Crusaders; but in this war, the heads of the Church insisted upon directing all the expeditions, and commanding, by their legates, the operations of the Christian armies. The invasion of Egypt was decided upon in the Council of the Lateran, without a thought of asking the advice or opinions of any of the skilful captains of the age. When hostilities began, the envoys of the pope presided over all the events of the war; weakening the ardour of the soldiers of the cross, by their ambitious pretensions, as well as by their ignorance. They let all the fruits of victory slip through their hands, and gave birth to an injurious rivalry between the spiritual and the temporal powers. This rivalry, this reciprocal mistrust, were carried so far, that the sovereign pontiff and the emperor of Germany, by turns, arrested the march of the pilgrims; the first fearing that the Crusaders, on embarking for Palestine, would become the soldiers of Frederick; the second, that these same soldiers might become the defenders of the temporal power of the popes.

At the period of which we have just retraced the history, so many crusades were preached at once, that the eyes of the faithful were necessarily diverted from the first object of these holy expeditions. Called upon to defend so many causes, no one could distinguish which was the cause of God and Jesus Christ; so many interests presented themselves at the same time to the attention of Christians, and were recommended to the bravery of warriors, that they gave birth to hesitation and reflection; and these produced indifference. Europe, for a length of time in a state of fermentation, was undergoing the vague uncertainty of a change; states began to think more of their independence, people of their liberty. The passions which politics bring forth, took the place of passions of which religion is the motive.

The sanguinary quarrels of the emperor and the popes contributed greatly to the revolution which was brought about in men’s minds: the motive which animated the heads of the Church was not always a religious one; the emperor of Germany and the pontiffs of Rome had pretensions to the domination of Italy, and had been, for a long time, engaged in a rivalry of ambition. Gregory could not see Frederick master of the kingdom of Naples without great pain; and when he pressed him to go into Asia, to make war upon the Saracens, he might have been compared to that personage of ancient fable, who, in order to get rid of his rival, sent him to combat the Chimera.

Four popes, although of a different character, finding themselves in the same circumstances, pursued the same policy. Frederick, by his cruelties, injustice, and extravagant ambition, often justified the violences of the Holy See, of which he was, by turns, the ward, the protector, and the enemy; like his predecessors, he made no secret of his project of restoring the empire of the CÆsars; and, had it not been for the popes, it is not improbable that Europe would have been brought under the yoke of the emperors of Germany.

The policy of the sovereign pontiffs, whilst weakening the imperial power, favoured, in Germany, the liberty of cities, and the growth and duration of small states; we do not hesitate to add, that the thunders of the Church preserved the independence of Italy, and perhaps that of France, which was less ill treated by the court of Rome than neighbouring nations. The French monarchy took advantage of the troubles that existed on the other side of the Rhine, and of the interdict set upon England, to repel the invasions of the English and Germans; and, at the same time, availed itself of the absence of the king of Navarre, the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, with several other great vassals, whom the crusade attracted beyond the seas, to increase the prerogatives of the royal authority, and extend the limits of the kingdom.

England herself owes something to the authority of the popes, who, by overwhelming John Lackland with excommunications, rendered him powerless in his attempts to enslave the English people, or to resist the demands of the barons and the commons. This is a truth which impartial history cannot deny or doubt, and which disposes us not to approve, but to blame with less bitterness, excesses and abuses of power of which all the effects have not been deplorable.[253] The populace of London, who burn every year the effigy of the pope, would be much astonished if, amidst a fanatical delirium, they were told that the army which once fought for the independence of Great Britain was called the army of God and of the Holy Church; if they were reminded that the great charter of the Forest, the first monument of British liberty, was the fortunate fruit of the menaces and thunders of the Church of Rome, and that this charter would never have been granted by John, without the redoubtable influence and the imperious counsels of the sovereign pontiff.[254]

Without wishing to justify the domination of the popes, we may say that they were led to grasp at supreme power by the circumstances in which Europe was placed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. European society, without experience or laws, and plunged in ignorance and anarchy, cast itself into the arms of the popes, and believed that it placed itself under the protection of Heaven.

As nations had no other ideas of civilization than such as they received from the Christian religion, the sovereign pontiffs naturally became the supreme arbiters between rival or neighbouring countries; amidst the darkness which the light of the Gospel had a continued and never-ending tendency to diminish, their authority must naturally have been the first established and the first recognised; temporal power stood in need of their sanction; people and kings implored their support and consulted their wisdom: they believed themselves authorized to exercise a sovereign dictatorship.

This dictatorship was often exercised to the advantage of public morality and social order; it often protected the weak against the strong; it arrested the execution of criminal plots; it re-established peace between states; and it preserved a young society from the excesses of ambition, licentiousness, and barbarism. When we cast our eyes over the annals of the middle ages, we cannot help being struck by one of the most beautiful spectacles that human society has ever presented,—it is that of Christian Europe recognising but one religion, having but one law, forming as it were but one empire, governed by a single head, who spoke in the name of God, and whose mission was to make the Gospel reign upon earth.

In the general reflections by which we shall terminate this work, we will enter into much greater developments upon this head; we will compare modern Europe with the Europe of the middle ages, and we will make it clear that, if we have acquired some wisdom in the art of civilization, we are still far from having turned it to the advantage of public liberty: nations are at the present day led away by the spirit of the French revolution, as they were in the middle ages by the spirit of the court of Rome and enthusiasm for the crusades. The French revolution began by liberal ideas, it was continued by victories. The military spirit allied itself with the fanaticism of new ideas, as it formerly allied itself with religious enthusiasm. On casting a glance over our Europe, we are astonished at seeing two contradictory things, which should naturally exclude each other; we see almost everywhere a tendency to favour the propagation of liberal ideas, and at the same time an inclination to increase the mass of armies; it is difficult to explain a policy which tends, on the one side, to multiply the apostles of liberty, on the other to multiply soldiers; which, by turns, proclaims a principle, and raises a regiment; which speaks, at the same time, of recruiting, and of a constitution; which appears never to have laws enough, and yet is insatiable of cannons and bayonets. It is easy to foresee the near and distant results of such a monstrous amalgamation.[255] Everything leads us to believe that these results, like those of the crusades and the influence of the pope in the middle ages, will not turn out entirely for the advantage of civilization.

But without dwelling longer on these distressing reflections, we will return to our subject, from which, perhaps, we have strayed too long. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the nations of Europe, subject to the authority of St. Peter, were united together by a tie more strong than that of liberty. This motive, this tie, which was that of the universal Church, for a length of time kept up and favoured the enthusiasm for and the progress of holy wars. Whatever may have been the origin of the crusades, it is certain they never would have been undertaken without that unity of religious feelings which doubled the strength of the Christian republic. The Christian nations, by the agreement of their sentiments and their passions, showed the world all that can be done by enthusiasm, which increases by communication, and that lively faith, which, spread among men, is a miraculous power, since the Gospel accords it the faculty of moving mountains. In proportion as people, united by one same spirit, separated, and ceased to make one common cause, it became more difficult to collect together the forces of the West, and pursue those gigantic enterprises of which our age can scarcely perceive the possibility.

It may have been observed, that the pontifical authority and the enthusiasm for the crusades experienced the same vicissitudes; the opinions and the exaltation of the religious spirit which caused men to take up arms, necessarily, at the same time, increased the influence of the sovereign pontiffs. But springs so active and so powerful could not possibly last long; they broke by the violence with which they were employed.

The popes, invested with authority without limit, exercised that authority without moderation; and as the abuse of power brings on, sooner or later, its own ruin, the empire of the sovereign pontiffs finished by declining as other empires have done. Their fall commenced with their long contests with Frederick; all Europe was called upon to judge their cause; their power, founded upon opinion, the origin of which was entirely religious, lost much of its prestige by being given over to the discussions of men of the world.

At the same time that the sovereign pontiffs abused their power, the spirit and enthusiasm that had produced the holy wars were likewise abused. Many Christian princes took the cross, sometimes to obtain the protection of the popes; sometimes as a pretext for assembling armies, and enjoying the temporal advantages accorded to the soldiers of Christ. The leaders of Christendom, without having originated the wars of the East, were eager to profit by them; in the first place, to extend their dominions, and in the next to gratify violent passions. From that moment society sought other supports than that of the Holy See, and warriors another glory than that of the crusades.

Thibault, king of Navarre, who, in his verses, had preached the war beyond the seas, was disgusted at the troubles excited in Europe by the heads of the Church, and deplored with bitterness a time full of felony, envy, and treachery. He accused the princes and barons of being without courtoisie, and reproached the popes with excommunicating those who were most in the right (ceux qui avaient le plus raison). If a few troubadours still raised their voices to exhort Christians to take up the cross and arms, the greater part did not partake of their enthusiasm for the holy wars; and beheld nothing in these pilgrimages beyond the seas, but the griefs of a long absence, and the rigours of a pious exile.

In a Tenson[256] which has come down to us, Folquet de Romans asks Blaccas, the model of troubadours and of knights, whether he will go to the Holy Land? After having answered that he loves and is beloved, and that he will remain at home with his ladye-love, (she was countess of Provence), Blaccas thus ends his simple song:—

“Je ferai ma pÉnitence,
Entre mer et Durance,
AuprÈs de son manoir.”[257]

“I will perform my penitence
Between the sea and swift Durance,
Near to my lady’s bower.”

These sentiments belonged to the manners of troubadours and knights; but at the time of the first crusades, religious ideas were much more mixed up with ideas of gallantry; a poet, invited to take the cross, would not have dared to speak of his ladye-love,[258] without likewise speaking of the mercy of God and the captivity of Jerusalem.

During the other crusades, the religion and morality of the Gospel resumed their empire, and spread their benefits everywhere; at the voice of the holy orators, Christians became penitent and reformed their morals; all political tempests were laid by the simple name of Jerusalem, and the West remained in profound peace.[259] It was not so at the period we have just described; Europe was perhaps never more agitated, or, perhaps, more corrupted than during the thirty years which this crusade lasted.

In the relations between the Christians and Mussulmans, little respect had, to this time, certainly, been paid to treaties; but in this crusade, contempt for sworn faith and forgetfulness for the laws of nations were carried to an extreme: signing a truce was a preparation for war;—the Christian armies owed their safety to a treaty of peace; and the sovereign pontiff, far from respecting the conditions of it, preached a new crusade against the infidels. It must be allowed, also, that the most solemn treaties were often violated by the Mussulmans. The duration of peace depended solely upon the want of power in both parties to resume hostilities with advantage. The least hope of success was sufficient to induce them to fly to arms; the slightest circumstance was an excuse for rekindling all the flames of war. The continuator of William of Tyre says, with great ingenuousness, when speaking of the death of a sultan of Damascus: “When the sultan died, all the truces died with him.” These words alone are sufficient to give an idea of the state of the East during the sixth crusade, and of the small degree of respect then entertained for the laws of peace and war.

If, in the preceding crusade, the expedition of the soldiers of the cross against Greece did not produce great advantages to the West, it at least illustrated the arms of the Venetians and the French. In the war we have just described, the knights and barons who took the cross, added nothing to their glory or their renown. The Crusaders who were fortunate enough to revisit their homes, brought back with them nothing but the remembrance of most shameful disorders. A great number of them had nothing to show their compatriots but the chains of their captivity; nothing to communicate but the contagious disorders of the East.

The historians we have followed are silent as to the ravages of the leprosy among the nations of the West; but the testament of Louis VIII., an historical monument of that period, attests the existence of two thousand lÉproseries (hospitals for lepers) in the kingdom of France alone. This horrible sight must have been a subject of terror to the most fervent Christians; and was sufficient to disenchant, in their eyes, those regions of the East, where, till that time, their imaginations had seen nothing but prodigies and marvels.

Among the abuses then made of the spirit of the crusades, and the misfortunes they brought in their train, we must not forget the civil and religious wars of which France and several other countries of Europe were the theatre. In their expeditions into the East, Christians had become familiarized with the idea of employing force and violence to change men’s hearts and opinions. As they had long made war against infidels, they were willing to make it, in the same manner, against heretics; they first took up arms against the Albigeois, then against the pagans of Prussia; for the same reason, and in the same manner, that they had armed themselves against the Mussulmans.

Modern writers have declaimed with great vehemence and eloquence against these disastrous wars; but long before the age in which we live, the Church had condemned the excesses of blind fanaticism.[260] Saint Augustine, St. Ambrose, the fathers of councils, had long taught the Christian world that error is not destroyed by the sword, and that the truths of the Gospel ought not to be preached to mankind amidst threats and violences.

The crusade against the Prussians shows us all that ambition, avarice, and tyranny can exhibit that is most cruel and barbarous; the tribunal of history cannot judge with too much severity the leaders of this war, the ravages and furies of which were prolonged during more than a century; but, whilst condemning the excesses of the conquerors of Prussia, we must admit the advantages Europe gained by their victories and exploits. A nation that had been separated from all other nations by its manners and customs, ceased to be a foreigner in the Christian republic. Industry, laws, religion, which marched in the train of the conquerors, to moderate and remove the evils of war, spread their blessings among hordes of savages. Many flourishing cities arose from amidst the ashes of forests, and the oak of Remove,[261] beneath the shade of which human victims had been immolated, was replaced by churches, in which the virtues and charity of the Gospel were inculcated. The conquests of the Romans were sometimes more unjust, then wars more barbarous; they procured less advantages to the civilized world, and yet they have never ceased to be objects of the admiration and eulogy of posterity.

The war against the Albigeois was more cruel and more unfortunate than the crusade directed against the nations of Prussia. Missionaries and warriors outraged, by their conduct, all the laws of justice and of the religion whose triumph they pretended to aim at. The heretics, naturally, sometimes employed reprisals against their enemies; both sides armed with the steel and axe of murderers and executioners, humanity had to deplore the most guilty excesses.

When casting a retrospective glance over the annals of the middle ages, we are particularly grieved to see sanguinary wars undertaken and carried on in the name of a religion of peace, whilst we can scarcely find an example of a religious war among the ancients and under the laws of paganism.[262] We must believe that modern nations and those of antiquity have, and had the same passions; but, amongst the ancients, religion entered less deeply into the heart of man or into the spirit of social institutions. The worship of false gods had no positive dogma; it added nothing to morality; it prescribed no duties to the citizen; it was not bound up with the maxims of legislation, and existed, in some sort, only upon the surface of society. When paganism was attacked, or when a change was effected in the worship of false gods, the affections, morals, and interests of pagan society were not deeply wounded. It was not thus with Christianity, which, particularly in the middle ages, mixed itself up with all civil laws, recalled man to all the duties due to his country, and united itself with all the principles of social order. Amidst the growing civilization of Europe, the Christian religion was blended with all the interests of nations; it was, in a manner, the foundation of all society; it was society itself: we cannot wonder, then, that men were passionate in its defence. Then all who separated themselves from the Christian religion, separated themselves from society; and all who rejected the laws of the Church, ceased to acknowledge the laws of their country. We must consider the wars against the Albigeois and the Prussians in this light; they were rather social wars than religious wars.