The age of the crusades

After the lapse of eight hundred years the story of the crusades still furnishes the most fascinating, if not the most instructive, pages of Christian history. Romance has enter...

Cardinal Baronius, the historian of the church down to the year 1198, designated the period which then closed as the Dark Ages. The propriety of the title has insured its perpet...

The call for the crusades, while appealing powerfully to the warlike disposition of the people, would not have succeeded in rousing Europe had there not been in the popular hear...

In accounting for the crusades we must consider the governmental condition of Europe at the time. Under no other system than that of feudalism would it have been possible to uni...

The once luxuriant civilization of Rome had been swept away by the Northern invaders as completely as a freshet despoils the fields when it not only destroys standing vegetation...

We shall fail to appreciate the inception of the crusades if we overlook the influence of the papal policy in the middle ages. These movements of Europe against Asia, being unde...

The rapid rise and wide-spread conquest of Mohammedanism make one of the most startling phenomena of history. If its story excites our wonder in these days, while we are watchin...

Old Testament religion made much of sacred places. In the early occupancy of Palestine, Hebron, Bethel, Shiloh, and Shechem were the resorts of the faithful; in later ages Jerus...

It has been customary to attribute the actual initiation of the crusades to the fiery eloquence of Peter the Hermit. This man was a native of Picardy, and was possessed of a spi...

The eloquence of Peter served him in the stead of more orderly methods of enlisting the people. Untrained masses of men, women, and children followed him from place to place, an...

The age, though degenerate, had nourished an order of men of far loftier type than those we have described. Godfrey of Bouillon was the most prominent figure. The chivalric spir...

The first objective chosen by the crusaders was Nicæa, a city sacred with the memories of the first great ecumenical council of the Christian church, in the time of Constantine....

From Nicæa the Christians advanced (June 29, 1097) through Asia Minor towards the Holy Land. Their march was over a roadless country, threading the ravines and climbing the prec...

The crusading hosts passed, with incredible toil and suffering, through the remainder of Asia Minor. The perils of the Taurus chain of mountains nearly brought them to despair....

After seven months of valorous assault and defence, Antioch at length was gained. It fell, however, not as the prize of honorable conquest, but as the price of treachery, disgra...

The elation of the crusaders over the possession of Antioch was of briefest duration. Their three days’ license, in the enjoyment of what they had so ingloriously won, was termi...

The zeal of the mass of crusaders urged them to an immediate advance upon Jerusalem. This, however, was opposed by the discretion of Godfrey, who predicted the hardship of the c...

The Egyptian commandant of Jerusalem had not idly awaited the slow approach of its assailants. He had stored it abundantly with provisions, strengthened the walls with masonry a...

When wearied with gathering the spoil the crusaders deliberated how best to secure their possessions. This could be done only by maintaining peace within the city and adequate d...

In strange contrast with Godfrey was his brother Baldwin, the Prince of Edessa, whom the necessities of the infant kingdom, rather than his own merits, now called to the vacant...

Baldwin du Bourg was elected to the vacant throne of Jerusalem, Eustace, brother of Godfrey, having declined to contest it, magnanimously saying to his partisans, “Not by me sha...

One of the most significant fruits of the first crusade was the creation and growth of the military orders—the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, the Templars, and the Teuton...

During the fifty years (1096-1146) which had elapsed since the exodus of the first crusaders a new generation had grown up in Europe. Vast changes had taken place everywhere, in...

Pope Honorius delegated Bernard to preach throughout France and Germany the renewal of the holy war. Drawn as much by the fame of the monk as by the mandates of the king and the...

The return of the two royal crusaders was not so much of an affliction to the kingdom of Jerusalem as it was felt to be a disgrace to their own nations. Relieved of their rivalr...

In the meantime Saladin had gathered into his hand the reins of Egypt and western Asia. In 1185 the Christians of Palestine sent an appeal for aid to all the courts of Europe. T...

Forty years had elapsed since the ill-fated crusade of Louis VII. and Conrad (1147) to avenge the capture of Edessa by Zenghi, and the crowning calamity, the fall of Jerusalem i...

With the news of the fall of Jerusalem came William, Archbishop of Tyre (the chief chronicler for this time), to stir up Europe to avenge the great disaster. This man possessed...

The plain of Acre is surrounded by great natural defences. On the north is Mount Saron, the narrow pathway over which is called the “Ladder of Tyre”; on the south rises the bulw...

Richard I. was crowned King of England in September, 1189. In October there arrived in England a messenger from Philip of France, reminding the king of their mutual oaths to mak...

After the death of Saladin his empire fell to pieces. Afdhal, his eldest son, secured the title of Sultan of Damascus; another son, Aziz, that of Sultan of Egypt; and a third, D...

In the year 395 the Roman world was divided into the empires of the East and the West, and Constantinople became the rival capital of that on the Tiber. Eighty-one years later (...

In the year 1198 there came to the papal throne Innocent III., one of the most astute, tireless, and ambitious of the pontiffs, and, to those who accept the righteousness of the...

The grand departure of the crusaders from Venice had been fixed for June, 1202. At that time but a part of the leaders appeared. Some had taken ship from Bari, Genoa, and even t...

The Venetians and crusaders left Zara in ruins, its palaces and walls razed to the ground. They sailed for Corfu. Dandolo and Boniface waited five days until they were joined by...

Four days were spent in bringing over from the Asiatic side the provisions. Dandolo proposed to transport all the soldiers with his fleet and assault the water wall of the city,...

By April 8th all preparations were completed. It was determined to boldly cross the Golden Horn from Galata and assail the water front of the city. At a hundred points at once t...

Having conquered Constantinople and presumably the empire hitherto ruled from its palaces, it now devolved upon the Latins to select an emperor from their own race. Twelve elect...

The campaign of Europe against Constantinople wrought only evil among the Christian colonists of Syria and Palestine. In the time of their deepest need there were diverted from...

Pope Innocent III. comforted himself for this “slaughter of the innocents” by making the incident the basis of a new appeal for the relief of Palestine. “These children,” said h...

Frederick was one of the ablest men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, though not meriting the title given him by an English chronicler, “the Wonder of the World.” The gra...

By a strange providence the sacred places of Palestine were destined to fall for a while into other hands than any of the former great contestants, Christian, Saracen, or Turk.

The news of the Carismian invasion of Palestine reduced Europe to a condition of panic. It came on the heels of other adversities, which had shaken the stoutest hearts. The Lati...

For sixteen years the crusading impulse seemed dead, under the general belief in the hopelessness of further efforts. The songs of the Troubadours even were turned to lamentatio...

The picture of Europe at the inauguration of the crusades in the eleventh century, with which our volume opened, is very different from that in which we would portray the thirte...