Part 25

The final collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem had been really determined by the battle of Gaza in 1244, and by the deposition of the Ayyubite dynasty by the Mamelukes. The Ayyubites had always been, on the whole, chivalrous and tolerant: Saladin and his successors, Malik-al-Adil and Malik-al-Kamil, had none of them shown an implacable enmity to the Christians. The Mamelukes, who are analogous to the janissaries of the Ottoman Turks, were made of sterner and more fanatical stuff; and Bibars, the greatest of these Mamelukes, who had commanded at Gaza in 1244, had been one of the leaders in 1250, and was destined to become sultan in 1260, was the sternest and most fanatical of them all. The Christians were, however, able to maintain a footing in Syria for forty years after St Louis' departure, not by reason of their own strength, but owing to two powers which checked the advance of the Mamelukes. The first of these was Damascus. The kingdom of Jerusalem, as we have seen, had profited by the alliance of Damascus as early as 1130, when the fear of the atabegs of Mosul had first drawn the two together; and when Damascus had been acquired by the rule of Mosul, the hostility between the house of Nureddin in Damascus and Saladin in Egypt had still for a time preserved the kingdom (from 1171 onwards). Saladin had united Egypt and Damascus; but after his death dissensions broke out among the members of his family,[53] which more than once led to wars between Damascus and Cairo. It has already been noticed that such a war between the sons of Malik-al-Adil accounts in large measure for the success of the Sixth Crusade; and it has been seen that the battle of Gaza was an act in the long drama of strife between Egypt and northern Syria. The revolution in Egypt in 1250 separated Damascus from Cairo more trenchantly than they had ever been separated since 1171: while a Mameluke ruled in Cairo, Malik-al-Nasir of Aleppo was elected as sultan by the emirs of Damascus. But an entirely new and far more important factor in the affairs of the Levant was the extension of the empire of the Mongols during the 13th century. That empire had been founded by Jenghiz Khan in the first quarter of the century; it stretched from Peking on the east to the Euphrates and the Dnieper on the west. Two things gave the Mongols an influence on the history of the Holy Land and the fate of the Crusades. In the first place, the south-western division of the empire, comprising Persia and Armenia, and governed about 1250 by the Khan Hulaku or Hulagu, was inevitably brought into relations, which were naturally hostile, with the Mahommedan powers of Syria and Egypt. In the second place, the Mongols of the 13th century were not as yet, in any great numbers, Mahommedans; the official religion was "Shamanism," but in the Mongol army there were many Christians, the results of early Nestorian missions to the far East. This last fact in particular caused western Europe to dream of an alliance with the great khan "Prester John," who should aid in the reconquest of Jerusalem and the final conversion to Christianity of the whole continent of Asia. The Crusades thus widen out, towards their close, into a general scheme for the christianization of all the known world.[54] About 1220 James of Vitry was already hoping that 4000 knights would, with the assistance of the Mongols, recover Jerusalem; but it is in 1245 that the first definite sign of an alliance with the Mongols appears. In that year Innocent IV. sent a Franciscan friar, Joannes de Piano Carpini, to the Mongols of southern Russia, and despatched a Dominican mission to Persia. Nothing came of either of these missions; but through them Europe first began to know the interior of Asia, for Carpini was conducted by the Mongols as far as Karakorum, the capital of the great khan, on the borders of China. Again in 1252 St Louis (who had already begun to negotiate with the Mongols in the winter of 1248-1249) sent the friar William of Rubruquis to the court of the great khan; but again nothing came of the mission save an increase of geographical knowledge. It was in the year 1260 when it first seemed likely that any results definitely affecting the course of the Crusades would flow from the action of the Mongols. In that year Hulagu, the khan of Persia, invaded Syria and captured Damascus. His general, a Christian named Kitboga, marched southwards to attack the Mamelukes of Egypt, but he was beaten by Bibars (who in the same year became sultan of Egypt), and Damascus fell into the hands of the Mamelukes. Once more, in spite of Mongol intervention, Damascus and Cairo were united, as they had been united in the hands of Saladin; once more they were united in the hands of a devout Mahommedan, who was resolved to extirpate the Christians from Syria.

While these things were taking place around them, the Christians of the kingdom of Jerusalem only hastened their own fall by internal dissensions which repeated the history of the period preceding 1187. In part the war of Guelph and Ghibelline fought itself out in the East; and while one party demanded a regency, as in 1243, another argued for the recognition of Conrad, the son of Frederick II., as king. In part, again, a commercial war raged between Venice and Genoa, which attracted into its orbit all the various feuds and animosities of the Levant (1257). Beaten in the war, the Genoese avenged themselves for their defeat by an alliance with the Palaeologi, which led to the loss of Constantinople by the Latins (1261), and to the collapse of the Latin empire after sixty years of infirm and precarious existence. On a kingdom thus divided against itself, and deprived of allies, the arm of Bibars soon fell with crushing weight. The sultan, who had risen from a Mongolian slave to become a second Saladin, and who combined the physique and audacity of a Danton with the tenacity and religiosity of a Philip II., dealt blow after blow to the Franks of the East. In 1265 fell Caesarea and Arsuf; in 1268 Antioch was taken, and the principality of Bohemund and Tancred ceased to exist.[55] In the years which followed on the loss of Antioch several attempts were made in the West to meet the progress of the new conqueror. In 1269 James the Conqueror of Aragon, at the bidding of the pope, turned from the long Spanish Crusade to a Crusade in the East in order to atone for his offences against the law matrimonial. An opportune storm, however, gave the king an excuse for returning home, as Frederick II. had done in 1227; and though his followers reached Acre, they hardly dared venture outside its walls, and returned home promptly in the beginning of 1270. More serious were the plans and the attempts of Charles of Anjou and Louis IX., in which the Crusades may be said to have finally ended, save for sundry disjointed epilogues in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Charles of Anjou had succeeded, as a result of the long "crusade" waged by the papacy against the Hohenstaufen from the council of Lyons to the battle of Tagliacozzo (1245-1268), in establishing himself in the kingdom of Sicily. With the kingdom of Frederick II. and Henry VI. he also took over their policy--the "forward" policy in the East which had also been followed by the old Norman kings. On the one hand he aimed at the conquest of Constantinople as Henry VI. had done before; and by the treaty of Viterbo of 1267 he secured from the last Latin emperor of the East, Baldwin II., a right of eventual succession. On the other hand, like Frederick II., he aimed at uniting the kingdom of Jerusalem with that of Sicily; and here, too, he was able to provide himself with a title. On the death of Conradin, Hugh of Cyprus had been recognized in the East as king of Jerusalem (1269); but his pretensions were opposed by Mary of Antioch, a granddaughter of Amalric II., who was prepared to bequeath her claims to Charles of Anjou, and was therefore naturally supported by him. But the policy of Charles, which thus prepared the way for a Crusade similar to those of 1197 and 1202, was crossed by that of his brother Louis IX. Already in 1267 St Louis had taken the cross a second time, moved by the news of Bibars' conquests; and though the French baronage, including even Joinville himself, refused to follow the lead of their king, Prince Edward of England imitated his example. Louis had been led to think that the bey of Tunis might be converted, and in that hope he resolved to begin this eighth and last of the Crusades by an expedition to Tunis. Charles, as anxious to attack Constantinople as he was reluctant to attack Tunis, with which Sicily had long had commercial relations, was forced to abandon his own plans and to join in those of his brother.[56] St Louis had barely landed in Tunis when he sickened and died, murmuring "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" (August 1270); but Charles, who appeared immediately after his brother's death, was able to conduct the Crusade to a successful conclusion. Negotiating in the spirit of a Frederick II., and acting not as a Crusader but as a king of Sicily, he not only wrested a large indemnity from the bey for himself and the new king of France, but also secured a large annual tribute for his Sicilian exchequer. So ended the Eighth Crusade--much as the Sixth had done--to the profound disgust of many of the crusaders, including Prince Edward of England, who only arrived on the eve of the conclusion of the treaty. Baulked of any opportunity of joining in the main Crusade, Edward, after wintering in Sicily, conducted a Crusade of his own to Acre in the spring of 1271. For over a year he stayed in the Holy Land, making little sallies from Acre, and negotiating with the Mongols, but achieving no permanent results. He returned home at the end of 1272, the last of the western crusaders; and thus all the attempts of St Louis and Charles of Anjou, of James of Aragon and Edward of England left Bibars still in possession of all his conquests.

Two projects of Crusades were started before the final expulsion of the Latins from Syria. In 1274, at the council of Lyons, Gregory X., who had been the companion of Edward in the Holy Land, preached the Crusade to an assembly which contained envoys from the Mongol khan and Michael Palaeologus as well as from many western princes. All the princes of western Europe took the cross; not only so, but Gregory was successful in uniting the Eastern and Western churches for the moment, and in securing for the new Crusade the aid of the Palaeologi, now thoroughly alarmed by the plans of Charles of Anjou. Thus was a papal Crusade begun, backed by an alliance with Constantinople, and thus were the plans of Charles of Anjou temporarily thwarted. But in 1276 Gregory X. died, and all his plans died with him; there was to be no union of the monarchs of the West with the emperor of the East in a common Crusade. Charles was able to resume his plans. In 1277 Mary of Antioch ceded to him her claims, and he was able to establish himself in Acre; in 1278 he took possession of the principality of Achaea. With these bases at his disposal he began to prepare a new Crusade, to be directed primarily (like that of Henry VI. in 1197, and like his own projected Crusade of 1270) against Constantinople. Once more his plans were crossed finally and fatally: the Sicilian Vespers, and the coronation of Peter of Aragon as Sicilian king (1282), gave him troubles at home which occupied him for the rest of his days. This was the last serious attempt at a Crusade on behalf of the dying kingdom of Jerusalem which was made in the West; and its collapse was quickly followed by the final extinction of the kingdom. A precarious peace had reigned in the Holy Land since 1272, when Bibars had granted a truce of ten years; but the fall of the great power of Charles of Anjou set free Kala'un the successor of Bibars' son (who reigned little more than two years), to complete the work of the great sultan. In 1289 Kala'un took Tripoli, and the county of Tripoli was extinguished; in 1290 he died while preparing to besiege Acre, which was captured after a brave defence by his son and successor Khalil in 1291. Thus the kingdom of Jerusalem came to an end. The Franks evacuated Syria altogether, leaving behind them only the ruins of their castles to bear witness, to this very day, of the Crusades they had waged and the kingdom they had founded and lost.

9. _The Ghost of the Crusades._--The loss of Acre failed to stimulate the powers of Europe to any new effort. France, always the natural home of the Crusades, was too fully occupied, first by war with England and then by a struggle with the papacy, to turn her energies towards the East. But it is often the case that theory develops as practice fails; and as the theory of the Holy Roman Empire was never more vigorous than in the days of its decrepitude, so it was with the Crusades. Particularly in the first quarter of the 14th century, writers were busy in explaining the causes of the failures of past Crusades, and in laying down the lines along which a new Crusade must proceed. Several causes are recognized by these writers as accounting for the failure of the Crusades. Some of them lay the blame on the papacy; and it is true that the papacy had contributed towards the decay of the Crusades when it had allowed its own particular interests to overbear the general welfare of Christianity, and had dignified with the name and the benefits of a Crusade its own political war against the Hohenstaufen. Others again find in the princes of Europe the authors of the ruin of the Crusades; they too had preferred their own national or dynastic interests to the cause of a common Christianity. They had indeed, as has been already noticed, done even more; they had used the name of Crusade, from the days of Henry VI. onwards, as a cover and an excuse for secular ambitions of their own; and in this way they had certainly helped, in very large measure, to discourage the old religious zeal for the Holy War. Other writers, again, blame the commercial cupidity of the Italian towns; of what avail, they asked with no little justice, was the Crusade, when Venice and Genoa destroyed the naval bases necessary for its success by their internecine quarrels in the Levant (as in 1257), or--still worse--entered into commercial treaties with the common enemy against whom the Crusades were directed? On the very eve of the Fifth Crusade, Venice had concluded a commercial treaty with Malik-al-Kamil of Egypt; just before the fall of Acre the Genoese, the king of Aragon and the king of Sicily had all concluded advantageous treaties with the sultan Kala'un. A fourth cause, on which many writers dwelt, particularly at the time when the suppression of the Templars was in question, was the dissensions between the two orders of Templars and Hospitallers, and the selfish policy of merely pursuing their own interest which was followed by both in common. But one might enumerate _ad infinitum_ the causes of the failure of the Crusades. It is simplest, as it is truest, to say that the Crusades did not fail--they simply ceased; and they ceased because they were no longer in joint with the times. The moral character of Europe in 1300 was no longer the moral character of Europe in 1100; and the Crusades, which had been the active and objective embodiment of the other worldly Europe of 1100, were alien to the secular, legal, scholastic Europe of 1300. While Edward I. was seeking to found a united kingdom in Great Britain; while the Habsburgs were entrenching themselves in Austria; above all, while Philippe le Bel and his legists were consolidating the French monarchy on an absolutist basis, there could be little thought of the holy war. These were hard-headed men of affairs--men who would not lightly embark on joyous ventures, or seek for an ideal San Grail; nor were the popes, doomed to the Babylonian captivity for seventy long years at Avignon, able to call down the spark from on high which should consume all earthly ambitions in one great act of sacrifice.

But it is long before the death of any institution is recognized; and it was inevitable that men should busy themselves in trying to rekindle the dead embers into new life. Pierre Dubois, in a pamphlet "_De recuperatione Sanctae Terrae_," addressed to Edward I. in 1307, advocates a general council of Europe to maintain peace and prevent the dissensions which--as, for instance, in 1192--had helped to cause the failure of past Crusades. Along with this advocacy of internationalism goes a plea for the disendowment of the Church, in order to provide an adequate financial basis for the future Crusade. Other proposals, made by men well acquainted with the East, are more definitely practical and less political in their intention. A blockade of Egypt by an international fleet, an alliance with the Mongols, the union of the two great orders--these are the three staple heads of these proposals. Something, indeed, was attempted, if little was actually done, under each of these three heads. The plan of an international fleet to coerce the Mahommedan is even to this day ineffective; but the Hospitallers, who acquired a new basis by the conquest of Rhodes in 1310, used their fleet to enforce a partial and, on the whole, ineffective blockade of the coast of the Levant. The union of the two orders, already suggested at the council of Lyons in 1245, was nominally achieved by the council of Vienne in 1311; but the so-called "union" was in reality the suppression of the Templars, and the confiscation of all their resources by the cupidity of Philippe le Bel. The alliance with the Mongols remained, from the first to the last, something of a chimera; and the last visionary hope vanished when the Mongols finally embraced Mahommedanism, as, by the end of the 14th century, they had almost universally done.