Part 199

"Every traveller returning from Syria brought a prayer for immediate help from the survivors of the Third Crusade. It was necessary to act at once if any portion even of the wreck of the kingdom of Jerusalem were to be saved. Innocent the Third, and some, at least, of the statesmen of the West were fully alive to the progress which Islam had made since the departure of the Western kings. In 1197, however, after five years of weary waiting, the time seemed opportune for striking a new blow for Christendom. Saladin, the great Sultan, had died in 1193, and his two sons were already quarreling about the partition of his empire. The contending divisions of the Arab Moslems were at this moment each bidding for the support of the Christians of Syria. The other great race of Mahometans which had threatened Europe, the Seljukian Turks, had made a halt in their progress through Asia Minor. … Other special circumstances which rendered the moment favourable for a new crusade, combined with the profound conviction of the statesmen of the West of the danger to Christendom from the progress of Islam, urged Western Europe to take part in the new enterprise. The reigning Pope, Innocent III., was the great moving spirit of the Fourth Crusade." The popular preacher of the Crusade was found in an ignorant priest named Fulk, of Neuilly, whose success in kindling public enthusiasm was almost equal to that of Peter the Hermit. Vast numbers took the cross, with Theobald, count of Champagne, Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, Simon de Montfort, Walter of Brienne, Baldwin, count of Flanders, Hugh of St. Pol, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne and future historian of the Crusade, and many other prominent knights and princes among the leaders. The young count of Champagne was the chosen chief; but he sickened and died and his place was taken by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. {632} It was the decision of the leaders that the expedition should be directed in the first instance against the Moslem power in Egypt, and that it should be conveyed to the attack of Egypt by sea. Venice, alone, seemed to be able to furnish ships, sailors and supplies for so great a movement, and a contract with Venice for the service was concluded in the spring of 120l. But Venice was mercenary, unscrupulous and treacherous, caring for nothing but commercial gains. Before the crusaders could gather at her port for embarkation, she had betrayed them to the Moslems. By a secret treaty with the sultan of Egypt, the fact of which is coming more and more conclusively to light, she had undertaken to frustrate the Crusade, and to receive important commercial privileges at Alexandria as compensation for her treachery. When, therefore, in the early summer of 1202, the army of the Crusade was collected at Venice to take ship, it encountered difficulties, discouragements and ill-treatments which thickened daily. The number assembled was not equal to expectation. Some had gone by sea from Flanders; some by other routes. But Venice had provided transport for the whole, and inflexibly demanded pay for the whole. The money in hand was not equal to this claim. The summer was lost in disputes and attempted compromises. Many of the crusaders withdrew in disgust and went home. At length, in defiance of the censures of the pope and of the bitter opposition of many leaders and followers of the expedition, there was a bargain struck, by the terms of which the crusaders were to assist the Venetians in taking and plundering the Christian city of Zara, a dreaded commercial rival on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, belonging to the king of Hungary, himself one of the promoters of the very crusade which was now to be turned against him. The infamous compact was carried out. Zara was taken, and in the end it was totally destroyed by the Venetians. In the meantime, the doomed city was occupied by the crusading army through the winter, while a still more perfidious plot was being formed. Old Dandolo, the blind doge of Venice, was the master spirit of it. He was helped by the influence of Philip, one of the two rivals then fighting for the imperial crown in Germany and Italy. Philip had married a daughter of Isaac II. (Angelos), made emperor at Constantinople on the fall of the dynasty of Comnenus, and that feeble prince had lately been dethroned by his brother. The son and heir of Isaac, named Alexius, had escaped from Constantinople and had made his way to Philip imploring help. Either Philip conceived the idea, or it was suggested to him, that the armament of the Crusade might be employed to place the young Alexius on the throne of his father. To the Venetians the scheme was more than acceptable. It would frustrate the Crusade, which they had pledged themselves to the sultan of Egypt to accomplish; it would satisfy their ill-will towards the Byzantines, and, more important than all else, it would give them an opportunity to secure immeasurable advantages over their rivals in the great trade which Constantinople held at command. The marquis of Montferrat, commander of the Crusade, had some grievances of his own and some ambitions of his own, which made him favorable to the new project, and he was easily won to it. The three influences thus combined—those of Philip, of Dandolo, and of Montferrat—overcame all opposition. Some who opposed were bribed, some were intimidated, some were deluded by promises, some deserted the ranks. Pope Innocent remonstrated, appealed and threatened in vain. The pilgrim host, "changed from a crusading army into a filibustering expedition," set sail from Zara in the spring of the year 1203, and was landed, the following June, not on the shores of Egypt or Syria, but under the walls of Constantinople. Its conquest, pillage and brutally destructive treatment of the great city are described in another place.

_E. Pears, The Fall of Constantinople, chapters 8-13._

ALSO IN: _G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, 716-1453, book 3, chapter 3._

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 59. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

See, also, BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1203-1204

CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1283. Against the heathen Sclavonians on the Baltic.

See LIVONIA: 12TH-13TH CENTURIES; and PRUSSIA: 13TH CENTURY.

CRUSADES: A. D. 1209-1242. Against the Albigenses.

See ALBIGENSES.

CRUSADES: A. D. 1212. The Children's Crusade.

"The religious wars fostered and promoted vice; and the failure of army after army was looked on as a clear manifestation of God's wrath against the sins of the camp. This feeling was roused to its highest pitch when, in the year 1212, certain priests—Nicolas was the name of one of these mischievous madmen—went about France and Germany calling on the children to perform what the fathers, through their wickedness, had been unable to effect, promising that the sea should be dry to enable them to march across; that the Saracens would be miraculously stricken with a panic at the sight of them; that God would, through the hands of children only, whose lives were yet pure, work the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre. Thousands—it is said fifty thousand—children of both sexes responded to the call. They listened to the impassioned preaching of the monks, believed their lying miracles, their visions, their portents, their references to the Scriptures, and, in spite of all that their parents could do, rushed to take the Cross, boys and girls together, and streamed along the roads which led to Marseilles and Genoa, singing hymns, waving branches, replying to those who asked whither they were going, 'We go to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy Sepulchre,' and shouting their rallying cry, 'Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross.' They admitted whoever came, provided he took the Cross; the infection spread, and the children could not be restrained from joining them in the towns and villages along their route. Their miserable parents put them in prison; they escaped; they forbade them to go; the children went in spite of prohibition. They had no money, no provisions, no leaders; but the charity of the towns they passed through supported them. At their rear streamed the usual tail of camp followers. … There were two main bodies. One of these directed its way through Germany, across the Alps, to Genoa. On the road they were robbed of all the gifts which had been presented them; they were exposed to heat and want, and very many either died on the march or wandered away from the road and so became lost to sight; when they reached Italy they dispersed about the country, seeking food, were stripped by the villagers, and in some cases were reduced to slavery. {633} Only seven thousand out of their number arrived at Genoa. Here they stayed for some days. They looked down upon the Mediterranean, hoping that its bright waves would divide to let them pass. But they did not; there was no miracle wrought in their favour; a few of noble birth were received among the Genoese families, and have given rise to distinguished houses of Genoa; among them is the house of Vivaldi. The rest, disappointed and disheartened, made their way back again, and got home at length, the girls with the loss of their virtue, the boys with the loss of their belief, all barefooted and in rags, laughed at by the towns they went through, and wondering why they had ever gone at all. This was the end of the German army. That of the French was not so fortunate, for none of them ever got back again at all. When they arrived at Marseilles, thinned probably by the same causes as those which had dispersed the Germans, they found, like their brethren, that the sea did not open a path for them, as had been promised. Perhaps some were disheartened and went home again. But fortune appeared to favour them. There were two worthy merchants at Marseilles, named Hugh Ferrens, and William Porcus, Iron Hugh and Pig William, who traded with the East, and had in port seven ships, in which they proposed to convey the children to Palestine. With a noble generosity they offered to take them for nothing, all for love of religion, and out of the pure kindness of their hearts. Of course this offer was accepted with joy, and the seven vessels laden with the happy little Crusaders, singing their hymns and flying their banners, sailed out from Marseilles, bound for the East, accompanied by William the Good and Hugh the Pious. It was not known to the children, of course, that the chief trade of these merchants was the lucrative business of kidnapping Christian children for the Alexandrian market. It was so, however, and these respectable tradesmen had never before made so splendid a coup. Unfortunately, off the Island of St. Peter, they encountered bad weather, and two ships went down with all on board. What must have been the feelings of the philanthropists, Pig William and Iron Hugh, at this misfortune? They got, however, five ships safely to Alexandria, and sold all their cargo, the Sultan of Cairo buying forty of the boys, whom he brought up carefully and apart, intending them, doubtless, for his best soldiers. A dozen refusing to change their faith were martyred. None of the rest ever came back. Nobody in Europe seems to have taken much notice of this extraordinary episode."

_W. Besant and E. H. Palmer, Jerusalem, chapter 18._

ALSO IN: _J. H. Michaud, History of the Crusades, appendix number 28._

_G. Z. Gray, The Children's Crusade._

CRUSADE: A. D. 1212. Against the Moors in Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1146-1232.

CRUSADE: A. D. 1216-1229. The Sixth Movement. Frederic II. in Jerusalem.

For six years after the betrayal of the vows of the crusaders of 1202-1204—who sacked Constantinople instead of rescuing Jerusalem—the Christians of Palestine were protected by a truce with Saphadin, the brother of Saladin, who had succeeded the latter in power. Hostilities were then rashly provoked by the always foolish Latins, and they soon found themselves reduced to sore straits, calling upon Europe for fresh help. Pope Innocent III. did not scruple to second their appeal. A new crusade was preached with great earnestness, and a general Council of the Church—the Fourth of Lateran—was convened for the stimulation of it. "The Fifth Crusade [or the Sixth, as more commonly numbered], the result of this resolution, was divided in the sequel into three maritime expeditions: the first [A. D. 1216] consisting principally of Hungarians under their king, Andrew; the second [A. D. 1218] composed of Germans, Italians, French and English nobles and their followers; and the third [A. D. 1228] led by the Emperor Frederic II. in person. … Though the King of Hungary was attended by the flower of a nation which, before its conversion to Christianity, had been the scourge and terror of Western Europe, the arms of that monarch, even aided by the junction of numerous German crusaders under the dukes of Austria and Bavaria, performed nothing worthy of notice: and after a single campaign in Palestine, in which the Mussulman territories were ineffectually ravaged, the fickle Andrew deserted the cause and returned with his forces to Europe. His defection did not prevent the duke of Austria, with the German crusaders, from remaining, in concert with the King of Jerusalem, his barons, and the knights of the three religious orders, for the defence of Palestine; and, in the following year, the constancy of these faithful champions of the Cross was rewarded by the arrival of numerous reinforcements from Germany. … It was resolved to change the scene of warfare from the narrow limits of the Syrian shore to the coast of Egypt, … and the situation of Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, pointed out that city as the first object of attack." After a siege of seventeen months, during which both the besieged and the besiegers suffered horribly, from famine and from pestilence, Damietta was taken (A. D. 1219), Nine-tenths of its population of 80,000 had perished. "Both during the siege and after the capture of Damietta, the invasion of Egypt had filled the infidels with consternation; and the alarm which was betrayed in their counsels proved that the crusaders, in choosing that country for the theatre of operations, had assailed the Mussulman power in its most vital and vulnerable point. Of the two sons of Saphadin, Coradinus and Camel, who were now uneasily seated on the thrones of Damascus and Cairo, the former, in despair of preserving Jerusalem, had already demolished its fortifications; and the brothers agreed in repeatedly offering the cession of the holy city and of all Palestine to the Christians, upon the single condition of their evacuating Egypt. Every object which had been ineffectually proposed in repeated Crusades, since the fatal battle of Tiberias, might now have been gloriously obtained by the acceptance of these terms, and the King of Jerusalem, the French and English leaders, and the Teutonic knights, all eagerly desired to embrace the offer of the Sultans. But the obstinate ambition and cupidity of the surviving papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius, of the Italian chieftains, and of the knights of the other two religious orders, by holding out the rich prospect of the conquest and plunder of Egypt, overruled every wise and temperate argument in the Christian councils, and produced a rejection of all compromise with the infidels. {634} After a winter of luxurious inaction, the legate led the crusading host from Damietta toward Cairo (A. D. 1220)." The expedition was as disastrous in its result as it was imbecile in its leadership. The whole army, caught by the rising of the Nile, was placed in so helpless a situation that it was glad to purchase escape by the surrender of Damietta and the evacuation of Egypt. The retreat of the greater part of these crusaders did not end until they had reached home. Pope Honorius III. (who had succeeded Innocent III. in 1216) strove to shift responsibility for the failure from his wretched legate to the Emperor Frederic II., who had thus far evaded the fulfilment of his crusading promises and vows, being occupied in struggles with the papacy. At length, in 1228, Frederic embarked for Palestine with a small force, pursued by the maledictions of the pope, who denounced him for daring to assume the Cross while under the ban of the church, as much as he had denounced him before for neglecting it. But the free-thinking Hohenstauffen cared little, apparently, and went his way, shunned scrupulously by all pious souls, including the knights of Palestine, except those of the Teutonic order. With the help of the latter he occupied and refortified Jaffa and succeeded in concluding a treaty with the Sultan which restored Jerusalem to the Christians, reserving certain rights to the Mahometans; giving up likewise Bethlehem, Nazareth and some other places to the Christians, and securing peace for ten years. Frederic had married, a few years before, for his second empress, Iolante, daughter and heiress of the titular king of Jerusalem, John de Brienne. With the hand of this princess, he received from her father a solemn transfer of all his rights to that shadowy throne. He now claimed those rights, and, entering Jerusalem, with the Teutonic knights (A. D. 1229), he crowned himself its king. The patriarch, the Templars and the Hospitallers refused to take part in the ceremony; the pope denounced Frederic's advantageous treaty as soon as he had news of it, and all that it gained for the Christians of Palestine was thrown away by them as speedily as possible.

_Major Procter, History of the Crusades, chapter 5, section 2._

"No Crusader, since Godfrey de Bouillon, had effected so much as Frederick the Second. What would he not have obtained, had the Pope, the Patriarch and the Orders given him their hearty cooperation?"

_T. L. Kington, History of Frederick II., chapter 8._

CRUSADES: A. D. 1238-1280. Against the Bogomiles.

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: 9TH-16TH CENTURIES (BOSNIA, ETC.)

CRUSADES: A. D. 1242. The Invasion of Palestine by the Carismians.

See JERUSALEM: A. D. 1242.

CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254. The Seventh Movement. Expedition of Saint Louis to Egypt.