History for ready reference, Volumes 1 to 5

Part 197

Chapter 1973,483 wordsPublic domain

"Like all the great movements of mankind, the Crusades must be traced to the coincidence of many causes which influenced men of various nations and discordant feelings, at the same period of time, to pursue one common end with their whole heart. Religious zeal, the fashion of pilgrimages, the spirit of social development, the energies that lead to colonisation or conquest, and commercial relations, only lately extended so widely as to influence public opinion, all suddenly received a deep wound. Every class of society felt injured and insulted, and unity of action was created as if by a divine impulse. The movement was facilitated by the circumstance that Europe began to adopt habits of order just at the time when Asia was thrown into a state of anarchy by the invasions of the Seljouk Turks. Great numbers of pilgrims had always passed through the Byzantine empire to visit the holy places in Palestine. We still possess an itinerary of the road from Bordeaux to Jerusalem, by the way of Constantinople, written in the fourth century for the use of pilgrims. Though the disturbed and impoverished state of Europe, after the fall of the Western Empire, diminished the number of pilgrims, still, even in times of the greatest anarchy, many passed annually through the Eastern Empire to Palestine. The improvement which dawned on the western nations during the eleventh century, and the augmented commerce of the Italians, gave additional importance to the pilgrimage to the East. About the year 1064, during the reign of Constantine X., an army or caravan of seven thousand pilgrims passed through Constantinople, led by the Archbishop of Mentz and four bishops. They made their way through Asia Minor, which was then under the Byzantine government; but in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem they were attacked by the Bedouins, and only saved from destruction by the Saracen emir of Ramla, who hastened to their assistance. These pilgrims are reported to have lost 3,000 of their number, without being able to visit either the Jordan or the Dead Sea. The invasions of the Seljouks [see TURKS (THE SELJUKS): A. D. 1073-1092] increased the disorders in Palestine. … In the year 1076 the Seljouk Turks took possession of Jerusalem, and immediately commenced harassing the pilgrims with unheard-of exactions. The Saracens had in general viewed the pilgrims with favour, as men engaged in fulfilling a pious duty, or pursuing lawful gain with praiseworthy industry, and they had levied only a reasonable toll on the pilgrims, and a moderate duty on their merchandise; while in consideration of these imposts, they had established guards to protect them on the roads by which they approached the holy places. The Turks, on the contrary, acting like mere nomads, uncertain of retaining possession of the city, thought only of gratifying their avarice. They plundered the rich pilgrims, and insulted the poor. The religious feelings of the Christians were irritated, and their commerce ruined; a cry for vengeance arose throughout all Europe, and men's minds were fully prepared for an attempt to conquer Palestine, when Peter the Hermit began to preach that it was a sacred duty to deliver the tomb of Christ from the hands of the Infidels."

_G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, book 3, chapter 2, section 1._

CRUSADES: A. D. 1091. The Council of Clermont.

Pope Urban II., one of two rival pontiffs then contending for recognition by the Church, entered with great eagerness into the movement stirred by Peter the Hermit, and gave it a powerful impulse through his support, while obtaining for himself, at the same time, a decisive advantage over his competitor, by the popularity of the agitation. A great Council was convened at Piacenza, A. D. 1094, and a second at Clermont, in the autumn of the same year, to deliberate upon the action to be taken. The city of Clermont could not contain the vast multitude of bishops, clergy and laity which assembled, and an army of many thousands was tented in the surrounding country. To that excited congregation, at a meeting in the great square of Clermont, Pope Urban addressed a speech which is one of the notable utterances of History. "He began by detailing the miseries endured by their brethren in the Holy Land; how the plains of Palestine were desolated by the outrageous heathen, who with the sword and the firebrand carried wailing into the dwellings and flames into the possessions of the faithful; how Christian wives and daughters were defiled by pagan lust; how the altars of the true God were desecrated, and the relics of the saints trodden under foot. 'You,' continued the eloquent pontiff (and Urban II. was one of the most eloquent men of the day), 'you, who hear me, and who have received the true faith, and been endowed by God with power, and strength, and greatness of soul,—whose ancestors have been the prop of Christendom, and whose kings have put a barrier against the progress of the infidel,—I call upon you to wipe off these impurities from the face of the earth, and lift your oppressed fellow-Christians from the depths into which they have been trampled.' … The warmth of the pontiff communicated itself to the crowd, and the enthusiasm of the people broke out several times ere he concluded his address. He went on to portray, not only the spiritual but the temporal advantages that would accrue to those who took up arms in the service of the cross. Palestine was, he said, a land flowing with milk and honey, and precious in the sight of God, as the scene of the grand events which had saved mankind. That land, he promised, should be divided among them. Moreover, they should have full pardon for all their offences, either against God or man. 'Go, then,' he added, 'in expiation of your sins; and go assured, that after this world shall have passed away, imperishable glory shall be yours in the world which is to come.' The enthusiasm was no longer to be restrained, and loud shouts interrupted the speaker; the people exclaiming as if with one voice, 'Dieu le veult! Dieu le veult!' … The news of this council spread to the remotest parts of Europe in an incredibly short space of time. Long before the fleetest horseman could have brought the intelligence, it was known by the people in distant provinces; a fact which was considered as nothing less than supernatural. But the subject was in everybody's mouth, and the minds of men were prepared for the result. The enthusiastic merely asserted what they wished, and the event tallied with their prediction."

_C. Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions: The Crusades, (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 7, chapter 6._

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CRUSADES: A. D. 1094-1095, Peter the Hermit and his appeal.

"About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the holy sepulchre was visited by an hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy in France. His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries, and the oppression of the Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of Constantine. 'I will rouse,' exclaimed the hermit, 'the martial nations of Europe in your cause;' and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint, and no sooner did he land at Bari, than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff. His stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively, and he possessed that vehemence of speech which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul. He was born of a gentleman's family (for we must now adopt a modern idiom), and his military service was under the neighbouring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade. Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, this zealous missionary traversed, with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received with one hand, he distributed with the other; his head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body was wrapt in a coarse garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode was sanctified in the public eye by the service of the man of God. He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the highways. … When he painted the sufferings of the natives and pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was melted to compassion; every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged the warriors of the age to defend their brethren and rescue their Saviour: his ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs and tears, and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent appeals to Christ and his Mother, to the saints and angels of paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. The most perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence; the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the supreme pontiff."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 58. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALSO IN: _J. C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, book 6, chapter 4 (volume 4)._

CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099. The First Great Movement.

The first army of Crusaders to set out on the long march to Jerusalem was a mob of men, women and children which had not patience to wait for the organized movement of the military leaders. They gathered in vast numbers on the banks of the Moselle and the Meuse, in the spring of 1096, with Peter the Hermit for their chosen chief. There were nine knights, only, in the swarm, and but few who had horses to ride, or efficient arms to bear, or provisions to feed upon. Knowing nothing, and therefore fearing nothing, they marched away, through France, Germany, Hungary and beyond, begging food where they could and subsisting by pillage when it needed. A knight called Walter the Penniless led the van, and Peter followed, with his second division, by a somewhat different route. Walter escaped serious trouble until he reached the country of the savage Bulgarians. Peter's senseless mob provoked the just wrath of the Hungarians by storming the small city of Semlin and slaying 4,000 of its inhabitants. The route of both was lined with the bones of thousands who perished of hunger, of exposure, of disease, and by the swords of Hungarians and Bulgarians. A third and a fourth host of like kind followed in their wake, led by a monk, Gotschalk, a priest named Volkmar, and a Count Emicon. These terrorized even more all the countries through which they passed,—especially where Jews were to be hunted and killed,—and were destroyed in Hungary to almost the last man. Peter and Walter reached Constantinople with 100,000 followers, it is said, even yet, after all who had fallen by the way. Still refusing to wait for the better appointed expeditions that were in progress, and still appalling eastern Christendom by their lawless barbarities, they passed into Asia Minor, and their miserable career soon came to an end. Attacking the Turks in the city of Nicæa,—which had become the capital of the Seljouk sultan of Roum,—they were beaten, routed, scattered, slaughtered, until barely 3,000 of the great host escaped. "Of the first Crusaders," says Gibbon, "300,000 had already perished before a single city was rescued from the infidels,—before their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their enterprise." Meantime the knights and princes of the crusade had gathered their armies and were now (in the summer of 1096) beginning to move eastward, by different routes. Not one of the greater sovereigns of Europe had enlisted in the undertaking. The chiefs of one armament were Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of the Lower Lorraine, or Brabant; his brothers, Eustace, count of Boulogne, and Baldwin; his cousin, Baldwin de Bourg, with Baldwin, count of Hainaut, Dudon de Contz, and other knights celebrated in the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso. This expedition followed nearly the route of Peter the Hermit, through Hungary and Bulgaria, giving hostages for its orderly conduct and winning the good-will of those countries, even maddened as they were by the foregoing mobs. {628} Another larger following from France was led by Hugh, count of Vermandois, brother of the king of France; Robert, duke of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror; Stephen, count of Blois, the Conqueror's son-in-law, and Robert, count of Flanders. These took the road into Italy, and to Bari, whence, after spending the winter, waiting for favorable weather, they were transported by ships to Greece, and pursued their march to Constantinople. They were followed by a contingent from southern Italy, under Bohemond, the Norman prince of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard, and his knightly cousin, Tancred. A fourth army, gathered in southern France by count Raymond of Toulouse and Bishop Adhemer, the appointed legate and representative of the pope, chose still another route, through Lombardy, Dalmatia and Macedonia, into Thrace. On passing through the territories of the Byzantine emperor (Alexius I.), all the crusaders experienced his distrust, his duplicity, and his cautious ill-will—which, under the circumstances were natural enough. Alexius managed so well that he extorted from each of the princes an acknowledgment of his rights of sovereignty over the region of their expected conquests, with an oath of fealty and homage, and he pushed them across the Bosphorus so adroitly that no two had the opportunity to unite their forces under the walls of Constantinople. Their first undertaking in Asia [May and June, A. D. 1097] was the siege of Nicæa, and they beleaguered it with an army which Gibbon believes to have been never exceeded within the compass of a single camp. Here, again, they were mastered by the cunning diplomacy of the Greek emperor. When the sultan of Roum yielded his capital, he was persuaded to surrender it to Alexius, and the imperial banner protected it from the rage of the discomfited crusaders. But they revenged themselves on the Turk at Dorylæum, where he attacked them during their subsequent march, and where he suffered a defeat which ended all fighting in Asia Minor. Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, now improved his opportunities by stealing away from the army, with a few hundred knights and men, to make conquests on his own account; with such success that he won the city of Edessa, with a sweep of country around it, and founded a principality which subsisted for half a century. The rest fared on, meeting no opposition from infidel swords, but sickening and dying by thousands, from heat and from want of water and food, until they came to Antioch. There, the Turkish emir in command, with a stout garrison of horse and foot, had prepared for a stubborn defence, and he held the besiegers at bay for seven months, while they starved in their ill-supplied camps. The city was delivered to them by a traitor, at length, but prince Bohemond, the crafty Norman, secured the benefit of the treason to himself, and forced his compatriots to concede to him the sovereignty of Antioch. The sufferings of the crusaders did not end with the taking of the city. They brought famine and pestilence upon themselves anew by their greedy and sensual indulgence, and they were soon under siege in their own turn, by a great army which the Turks had brought against them. Death and desertion were in rivalry to thin their wasted ranks. The survivors were in gloom and despair, when an opportune miracle occurred to excite them afresh. A lance, which visions and apparitions certified to be the very spear that pierced the Redeemer's side, was found buried in a church at Antioch. Under the stimulus of this amazing discovery they sallied from the town and dispersed the great army of the Turks in utter rout. Still the quarrels of the leaders went on, and ten months more were consumed before the remains of the Latin army advanced to Jerusalem. It was June, A. D. 1099, when they saw the Holy City and assailed its formidable walls. Their number was now reduced to 40,000, but their devotion and their ardor rose to frenzy, and after a siege of little more than a month they forced an entrance by storm. Then they spared neither age nor sex until they had killed all who denied the Savior of mankind—the Prince of Peace.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 58. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALSO IN: _J. F. Michaud, History of the Crusades, book 1._

_W. Besant and E. H. Palmer, Jerusalem, chapter 6._

_C. Mills, History of the Crusades, chapters 2-6._