Part 61

The middle class was a far more important body than in either the England or the France of that day. Palestine during the Crusades was not visited exclusively for religious or military reasons. Besides being a goal of pilgrimage, it was also what California or Australia was in the middle of the last century—a place where shrewd men of business could make money rapidly. Long before the first Crusade, there had been an Italian colony from Amalfi at Jerusalem, in the capture of which a Genoese detachment had assisted; colonies from Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Marseilles followed; in the monastery of La Cava is a deed of Baldwin IV, granting the ships of the monks access to the Syrian coast; we even find an “English quarter” at Acre[939]. Owing to the small numbers of the nobility, and the constant need of recruiting its ranks after its losses in battle, it was easy for the wealthy members of the middle class to enter the aristocracy, while, from the nature of its occupations, it was thrown into much closer contact with the natives. Mixed marriages were consequently commoner among the _bourgeoisie_, although Baldwin I and II and Josselin I of Edessa married Armenians, and Baldwin III and Amaury I Greeks.

The issue of these mixed marriages was known as the _Poulains_[940]. These half-castes, who corresponded to the Γασμοῦλοι of Frankish Greece, are not depicted in flattering terms by contemporary writers. Jacques de Vitry[941], the Bishop of Acre, describes them as “nourished in delights, soft and effeminate, more accustomed to baths than to battles, given to uncleanliness and luxury, dressed in soft garments like women, slothful and idle, cowardly and timid, little esteemed by the Saracens,” with whom they were ready to make peace, and from whom they were prone to accept assistance against their fellow Christians in their internecine quarrels. They were, alike by nature and interest, opposed to the arrival of fresh bodies of Crusaders, because war interfered with their business and interrupted their commercial relations with the Moslems, whose family life they imitated, veiling their wives, shutting them up in Oriental seclusion, and allowing them to go out thrice a week to the baths, but only once a year to church. This undue preference of cleanliness to godliness had disastrous effects, for it led the ladies to intrigue all the more to get out.

The worthy Bishop, speaking doubtless from personal experience, adds that the _Poulains_ swindled the ingenuous pilgrims by overcharges at inns, by exorbitant prices in shops, and by giving them poor exchange. Worse still, they despised these Christian “boxers” and exiles, calling them fatuous idiots for their pains—for to the _Poulains_ the Holy Land had no halo. They wore flowing robes, as even the first King of Jerusalem had done, while a coin of Tancred of Antioch represents him with a turban; and their whole outlook was Oriental rather than European. Indeed, Foucher, Baldwin I’s chaplain, remarked quite early how soon the Westerner became an Easterner in Palestine, and how the Crusader who married an Armenian or a Syrian soon forgot the land of his birth, adopting the comfortable maxim—“ubi bene, ibi patria.” Hence the marked contrast between the Frankish residents, and still more the _Poulains_, and the newly-arrived Crusaders. Hence, too, the often far too harsh judgments passed by the latter, especially after the second crusade in 1148. Like the Philhellenes, who went to Greece in the War of Independence, expecting to find the Peloponnese peopled by the superhuman heroes of Plutarch, instead of by men like themselves, they did not realise that poor human nature, even under conditions far more favourable, could not have possibly shone resplendent in the tremendous setting of the Holy Land. Consequently, they were often disillusioned, whereas men like William of Tyre, born and living in the country, were far fairer in their judgments, because they measured the Holy Land by the standard of other and more prosaic lands and not by the unattainable perfection of the greatest figure in all history, with whom it must ever be associated.

Society in the Crusading States was, it must be remembered, even apart from the _Poulains_, an extraordinary mixture of races. Even an Austrian army did not contain so many nationalities as the Crusaders. The Franks, as they were generically called, included Normans (at first the dominant race), French (who ousted the Normans, and thenceforth maintained their influence, culture and language, as they did nearly two centuries later at the Court of Athens), English, Welsh, Irish, Scots, Flemings, Italians, Germans (these not very numerous), and Scandinavians. Jacques de Vitry considered the Italians as the most satisfactory. He describes them as “prudent, temperate in eating and drinking, ornate and prolix in speaking, but circumspect in counsel, diligent in managing their own public affairs, and a very necessary element in the country, not only in battle, but at sea and in business, especially in the import trade. Since they are sober in food and drink, they live longer than other Western nations in the East”; and “they would be very formidable to the Saracens, if they would cease fighting among themselves.” Unfortunately, the rivalries between Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans were even more serious than the feuds between the Normans and the French; and the possession of the Church of St Saba at Acra (two pillars of which are now outside St Mark’s Venice) led to an Italian colonial war, in which we may find one cause of the final loss of the Holy Land. These Italian colonies, indeed, formed practically an _imperium in imperio_. Their respective quarters in the Syrian towns were the property of their governments, which appointed their officials (called “Consuls” in the Genoese and Pisan colonies, “Bailies” in the Venetian), often from among the most celebrated families of the Venetian Republic. Venice had also what we should call a Consul-General, a “Bailie” for all Syria; and both she and Genoa received a large portion of the harbour dues at Tyre and Acre. The Italian colonies had their own tribunals, like the consular courts in Turkey in our own day. Thus, Italian interests in the Holy Land were considerable and mainly commercial. To Venice and Genoa foreign affairs were—the affairs of their merchants.

The French and the English settlers were “less composed and more impetuous, less circumspect in action and more full of superfluity in food and drink, more lavish in expense and less cautious in talk, hasty in counsel, but more fervent in almsgiving, and more vehement in battle, and most useful for the defence of the Holy Land, and very formidable to the Saracens.”

Besides these various elements among the Crusaders, Palestine contained a large variety of indigenous races. Of these the native Christians of Arab speech, collectively known as Syrians, were the most favoured. Baldwin I gave them marked privileges at Jerusalem, and they could give evidence on oath. But they were of little use in war, except as archers; and are accused by Jacques de Vitry of betraying the secrets of the Christians to the Saracens, whose customs they largely imitated. The Maronites of the Lebanon were, however, noted for their military prowess and for the help which they rendered to the Franks.

Next to the Syrians came the Armenians, reckoned the best fighters of the Orientals, who, from the proximity of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia to the County of Edessa, often assisted the Frank Counts, and copied their feudal arrangements. It is noticeable that the _Assizes of Antioch_ have come to us through the Armenian, and that the Court of Sis, like that of Jerusalem, had its seneschal, its marshal, and its constable. The Greeks were regarded as opponents of the Latins; and, when Saladin took Jerusalem, he allowed them to remain. But we could scarcely expect them to view with sympathy the annexation of the Greek states of Edessa (still governed by a Greek official at the time of the Latin conquest) and Antioch, which only fourteen years before had been nominally a part of the Greek Empire. And Anna Comnena describes her father’s alarm at the march of large armies of foreigners across his rich and peaceful dominions who might (and in 1204 did) say with the Roman centurion: _Hic manebimus optime!_

Historians of the Moslem Arabs admit that, except in war time, Christians and Moslems lived together in harmony. There are examples of friendship, and even of adopted brotherhood, between Frank barons and Moslem emirs, who used to grant each other mutual permits to hunt. Every reader of _The Talisman_ knows of the mutual courtesies between Richard I and Saladin, who sent medical aid to a sick opponent, but even more curious was the action of Guy de Lusignan, whose first act, on exchanging the Kingdom of Jerusalem for that of Cyprus, was to ask his former captor how to keep the island. Many Franks spoke Arabic; and it was even found necessary for commercial purposes to coin money bearing in Arabic characters the name of Mohammed and the date of the Moslem era! The merchants of Tyre and Acre, where these heretical coins were minted, protested that “business is business”; but the Papal Legate, who accompanied Louis IX on the sixth crusade, was so scandalised that he reported the matter to Pope Innocent IV, who excommunicated all who coined them. The wily merchants, however, circumvented his prohibition by minting similar coins with Christian inscriptions and the year of our Lord, both in Arabic, and with a cross in the centre of the coin. Of this hybrid currency, which began in 1251, there are several specimens. Like Frederick II in Sicily, the later Princes of Antioch and Counts of Tripolis had Saracen guards; and, under the name of _Turcoples_, given originally to Turks born of Greek mothers, Moslems entered the Christian armies as light cavalry. Of actual Turks there were few, for they had overrun Syria too short a time before the Crusades to take root in Palestine. Like the Franks, and like the Turks in the Balkans, they were only a garrison.

Special interest attaches to the Jews, at this period only a small section of the population, and, as usual, exclusively urban. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Palestine about 1173, found two hundred Jews in the ghetto at Jerusalem beneath the Tower of David, where they had a monopoly of the dyeing trade, and twelve, all dyers, at Bethlehem. The largest Jewish colonies were, as was natural, in the great commercial towns, Tyre and Acre; and the total in the whole of the Latin states was only 7000 to 8000. They could not hold land, and were classed below the Moslems, but practised successfully as doctors and bankers, and had their own judges. Many had come from the south of France. A few Samaritans still survived at Nâbulus, the biblical Shechem, and at Cæsarea.

Below all these freemen came the slaves, including Christians, partly prisoners of war and partly imported. The _Assizes of Jerusalem_ contain special regulations for the slave-trade (largely in Venetian and Genoese hands), but the legislators felt some scruples about allowing a Christian slave to be sold to a Moslem. There was one other very undesirable element in the population—persons who had left their country for their country’s good; for it was not unusual to pardon criminals on condition that they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and never returned. The Bishop of Acre complains of this practice of making the Holy Land a convict station, just as some of our colonies did in the first half of the last century; and he quotes the Horatian tag, that people, who cross the sea, change the climate, but not their character. Nor does he approve of the tourist, who came from mere curiosity and not from devotion.

Among this heterogeneous mass the smallness of the Frankish forces makes us marvel that the Latin Kingdom lasted for 99 years at Jerusalem and for nearly 200 at Acre. The _Assizes_[942] inform us that the paper strength of the royal army was only 577 knights and 5025 foot-soldiers, to which we must add the contingents of the two great Military Orders and the _Turcoples_. At no time, in actual warfare, did the total armed forces of the four Crusading States much exceed 25,000; at Hattin—the Hastings of the Holy Land—Guy de Lusignan had only some 21,000 men under his command; Baldwin I crossed the Euphrates with only 80 knights to take Edessa; and some of the great battles of Tancred were fought by only 200 knights. William of Tyre[943], writing a few years before the catastrophe of 1187, explains the greater success of the Franks in the earlier years of the kingdom by their piety and courage as contrasted with the immorality and diminished martial spirit of his contemporaries. Other causes were the lack of military skill of the Moslems of that generation, and the disunion of their chiefs. When, however, Saladin united Syria and Egypt in his strong hand, the fate of the little Frankish colony was sealed. Disunion of allies neutralised the splendid courage of our Richard I in his attempt to restore what had been lost; Frederick II was a Crusader _malgré lui_; and in the thirteenth century many Franks, realising that the end was at hand, left for the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus, or for Armenia, leaving as the most important factors in the Latin population the Italian colonies and the Religious Orders.

The Knights of St John, who originally took their name from St John the Merciful[944], a Cypriote who became Patriarch of Alexandria, arose at the time of the conquest in connection with the hospital, founded at Jerusalem a generation earlier by a citizen of Amalfi. Their first aim was to tend and nourish the sick, then to guard pilgrims up from the coast, and next to fight against the Infidels. They never forgot their original object, and pilgrims were enthusiastic in their praise. Indeed, Saladin is said to have gained admission to their hospital at Acre as a patient to see whether all that he heard about their beneficence was true. Gradually, as the feudal barons found it harder to defend their castles, they handed them to the Knights, who specially chose difficult frontier positions. Margat, Krak des Chevaliers, Chastel-Rouge, Gibelin and Belvoir were their chief fortresses; and Mount Tabor was one of their possessions.

The Templars, founded in 1118 to protect the pilgrims on their way from the coast, enjoyed a less enviable reputation. William of Tyre[945] remarks, that “for a long time they maintained their original object, but subsequently forgot the duty of humility.” They were accused of greed and selfishness, and of being too anxious to stand well with Moslem Princes, with whom they sometimes made a separate peace, to the detriment of Christendom. Thus they warned a Moslem chief of an intended raid by our Prince Edward. Their treachery to the sect of the Assassins scandalised the Court of Jerusalem and immensely damaged Christian interests. The chief of that terrible community, the “Old Man,” as he was called, whose territory was separated from the County of Tripolis by boundary stones, marked on the Christian side with a cross, on that of the Assassins with a knife, had sent an envoy to King Amaury I, offering to embrace Christianity, on condition that the Templars consented to forego the tribute paid to them by the Assassins. All had been arranged, and the diplomatist was on his way home, when the Templars assassinated the Assassin[946].

The Templars’ vow of poverty contrasted ill with their immense wealth, which enabled them, in 1191, to buy Cyprus from Richard I, and to lend a large sum to our Henry III. They acted as bankers; and through their hands passed the money collected in the West for future crusades. They were suspected, too, of heretical opinions, and were accused of initiating their novices with pagan rites. They possessed eighteen fortresses, of which Tortosa was the most important; but the Order did not long survive the loss of the Holy Land, being abolished by Clement V in 1312.

Less important were the Teutonic Knights, the _Brüder vom deutschen Hause_ of Freytag’s well-known historical novel—an off-shoot of the Hospitallers—because the Germans contributed little towards the foundation of the Frankish states, and their distinct Order was not founded till after the first capture of the Latin capital. Their principal sphere of activity was not in Palestine but in Prussia, where they laboured to civilise the barbarous Prussians—a task in which they do not appear to have been altogether successful. A lasting memorial of their activity is the former Prussian fortress of Thorn—a name said to be derived from the castle of Toron in the Holy Land, once their possession. To us a more interesting Order is that of the Hospital of “the Master and Brothers of St Thomas of Canterbury,” at Acre, founded in 1191, in which Edward I showed interest, and which was transferred after the fall of Acre to Cyprus, where it still existed in 1350. A hospital for poor British pilgrims was also founded at Acre in 1254[947].

Palestine was a fruitful land during the Frankish period, although we hear much of the plagues of locusts and field-mice. Contemporary visitors wrote enthusiastically about the gardens of Jericho and the fertile plains of Jezreel and Tripolis, with its vineyards, its olive-yards, and its sugar plantations, whence the cane was taken to the factory at Tyre. The wines of Engaddi were as noted as in the Song of Solomon; and the vintages of Bethlehem and Jerusalem were highly esteemed. Jericho produced grapes so huge that “a man could scarcely lift a bunch of them”—a statement which shows that the vines had not degenerated since the days when the spies of Moses “cut down” from the brook of Eschcol “one cluster of grapes, and bare it between two upon a staff.” Even the silent waters of the Dead Sea were then traversed by fruit barges; and in the so-called “Valley of Moses” to the south of it the olive-trees formed “a dense forest.” There was more wood than now, and consequently more water, but corn had to be imported, for the harvests of Moab, Hebron, Bethlehem (“the house of bread”), and Jericho did not suffice to feed the population. The Sea of Galilee was as full of fish as in the time of Our Lord, and boats plied upon its waters. But, owing to the general insecurity of the open country, few of the cultivators of the soil were Franks; and, where we find Latin peasants, they are usually not far from the shelter of fortified towns. Of manufactures the most important were those of silk at Tripolis, Tiberias, and Tyre, dyeing, and pottery; the glass of Tyre is specially praised by its Archbishop, and the goldsmiths had a street all to themselves at Jerusalem.

Civilisation, so far as comfort was concerned, had reached a high level. Every castle had its baths; and minstrels and dancers appeared at the entertainments of the barons, while we read of theatrical performances at a coronation. A considerable amount of gambling went on in royal circles. Baldwin III was devoted to dice; the Prince of Antioch and the Count of Edessa were so busy with their dice-boxes during a campaign, that they demoralised many of their officers; the Count of Jaffa was so deeply engrossed in a game of dice that he was playing in the street of the Tanners at Jerusalem, that he allowed himself to be assassinated. Hunting with the falcon, and, in Arab fashion, with the cat-like animal known as the _carable_, were favourite amusements. It seems strange that nothing was done to encourage horse-breeding; and, as the Moslems were loth to sell horses to be used against themselves, the Franks usually imported their steeds from Apulia. Every spring it was the custom of the Frankish chivalry to take their horses to feed on the rich grass at the foot of Mt Carmel; and there, by the brook Kishon, where Elijah slew the prophets of Baal, tournaments were held, in which Saracen chiefs sometimes took part, and after which the combatants refreshed themselves with sherbet, made from the snows of Lebanon.

We must not expect a military colony, always fighting for its existence, to be very productive of literature. But perhaps the best specimen of mediæval history, the great work of William of Tyre, was produced by a Frank born in the Holy Land. The author possessed the two greatest qualities for writing the history of his own times: personal acquaintance with the principal actors in the drama by reason of his high official position, and at the same time fearless love of truth. He tells us that he was well aware of the perils to which he thus exposed himself; and, if it be true that he was poisoned in Rome by order of a rival whom he had denounced, his forebodings were only too accurate. Having been a diplomatist, a prelate, a royal tutor, and chancellor of the kingdom, he possessed an unrivalled experience of men and affairs; and, as is usual with such persons, he was much more moderate in his judgments of human frailty than purely literary or monastic chroniclers. The abrupt close of his work in 1183 has been ascribed to the desire of powerful enemies to suppress the facts about the last years of Jerusalem—a further proof of his dreaded influence.

A lesser luminary was Renaud, baron of Sagette, who amazed the pundits of Saladin by his Oriental scholarship; and the cult of French novels was diffused among the nobles of the Holy Land, whose legal knowledge was considerable. Philip of Navarre[948], the celebrated pleader, who has left a treatise showing how to make the worse cause appear the better in the feudal courts, tells us that he owed his knowledge of legal practice to the accident of being appointed reader of romances to the Seneschal of Jerusalem, who in return taught him law. The pleader, who also composed a historical work, and a treatise on the four ages of man, and was an opponent of the higher education of women, is described by Florio Bustron, the Cypriote historian, as a “huomo universale.”

In estimating the architectural results of the Frankish rule, we must remember the short time available—so far as all but the coast towns were concerned. But a traveller, who visited the country in 1185, tells us that the Franks had done much for the mural decoration of their churches, of which, beginning with Tancred’s church on Mt Tabor in 1111, they erected a number down to the catastrophe of Hattin. William of Tyre specially mentions the munificence of Queen Mélisende in founding a church and convent at Bethany, of which her youngest sister was Superior, and her splendidly bound copy of the Gospels is in the British Museum. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in the Cathedral and Castle of Tortosa, still linger traces of the Crusaders. It has been remarked that in their architecture more than in aught else the Franks of Palestine remained Westerners.