Part 40

The besieged from their walls contemplated with terror the numbers of the enemy about to assail them. The disproportion was so great, that every Christian calculated he should have to combat fifty or sixty Turks. The sultan commenced the attack about three o’clock in the morning, by sending to the assault thirty thousand of his worst troops, in order to fatigue the besieged, and that the heaped-up bodies of this multitude might fill the ditches, and render access to the parapets the more easy. The stick and the scimitar were necessary to compel this forlorn hope to march: they all perished. At sunrise Mahomet ordered the trumpets to sound a fresh signal; the artillery thundered from all quarters, and quickly drove away all who had appeared on the walls. The Janissaries rushed to the breach, uttering horrible cries. Mahomet rode behind his troops upon a superb charger, in order to make them march forward with the greater celerity. Never was greater courage exhibited: the first Janissary who mounted the walls of Constantinople was to be made a pacha, and be loaded with wealth. Some climbed over the ruins of the walls, through a shower of arrows, darts, stones, and fire-balls. Standing on the tops of their ladders, others fought with the besieged, who repulsed them with their pikes, whilst others raised themselves upon the shoulders of their comrades to get to the breach. The whole city was busied in succouring its brave defenders; women, children, and old men brought them stones, joists, and bars of red-hot iron to launch at the Turks. The cannons, directed to the points where the Turks were thickest, all at once opened their ranks, and the Ottomans, who already touched the summit of the walls, were hurled into the ditches. Tor two hours they fought thus, with a fury equal to the danger of the besieged and the value of the city to be conquered; a cloud of arrows, dust, and smoke shrouded the combatants. Thirty Janissaries at length succeeded in mounting the walls, and killed and overthrew all who came in their way: they were soon followed by a crowd of daring comrades, animated by their example. In an instant the air resounded with cries of victory: the Turks had penetrated to the port. Zagan Pacha, who commanded the attack there, reproached the sailors with being less brave than the land troops. Encouraged by the success of the Janissaries, they made one more furious charge upon the Greeks. The latter wavered in their resistance; the sailors gained possession of a tower, and hoisted the standard of the crescent, whilst other Turks hewed an opening with their axes at several of the city gates, through which the rest of the army poured in crowds. Constantine, accompanied by a few of his guards and some faithful servants, threw himself, sword in hand, into the thickest of the Ottoman battalions. Less afflicted by the loss of his crown than by the terror of being loaded with irons and led in triumph through Asia, he continued fighting bravely, when a Turk cut off the half of his face with a stroke of his scimitar, and gave him the death he was seeking. With him fell the empire of the East, which had existed eleven hundred and forty-three years. One Constantine had founded it; another of the same name, not less brave but less fortunate, saw it perish. Mahomet caused his body to be sought for, and rendered it all the honours due to the sovereign of a great empire. More than forty thousand men were killed in this day’s conflict, and more than sixty thousand loaded with chains. Neither age nor sex, nor object ever so holy, was respected during three days in this unfortunate city; palaces, cloisters, sacred edifices, and private houses, were stained with the blood of their wretched inhabitants, and disgraced by all the crimes that barbarism, cruelty, and lust could devise. At the end of three days, order and discipline succeeded to carnage. Mahomet restored liberty to many of his captives, sent them back to their houses, promised them his protection, and engaged them to continue to cultivate the arts and commerce in a city he had chosen as the capital of his empire. This great event happened in the year 768 of the Hegira, and in the year of Christ 1453; in the reign of Charles VII. of France, and of Henry VI. of England.

A.D. 1807.

The course of the Mahometan conquests, and the spread of their religion, constitute one of the great events of the history of our globe. In about eight hundred years the disciples of the humble prophet had subdued or extended their influence over great part of Asia and the north of Africa, and had now not only gained a footing in Europe, but had taken its greatest capital. But here their great tide of success seems to have stopped; it was their culminating point. They have made partial conquests since; but, altogether, not so much as was achieved by Mahomet II.

WEINSBERG.

A.D. 1138.

Our only motive for noticing this unimportant siege is a desire of relieving the attention of the reader, too long fixed to perils of “the imminent deadly breach,” by an amusing anecdote.

In the year 1138, the duke of Wittemberg warmly opposed the election of Conrad III., who was proclaimed emperor; and when the new monarch had assumed the diadem, he refused to acknowledge him, and shut himself up in the little city of Weinsberg. The angry emperor immediately laid siege to the place: the garrison resisted his attacks with manly bravery, and only yielded to force and greatly superior numbers. The conqueror, at first, determined to submit all to fire and sword; but he relented in favour of the women, to whom he granted permission to depart, each carrying with her as much as she was able of what she most valued in the world. The wife of the duke took advantage of this indulgence to save the life of her husband. She mounted him upon her shoulders, and all the women of the city followed her example. When Conrad saw them going out loaded with this precious burden, and with the duchess at their head, he could not maintain either his gravity or his anger against such a spectacle: he pardoned the men for the sake of the women, and the city was saved.

LISBON.

A.D. 1147.

Alphonso, a prince of the house of Burgundy, having assumed the title of king of Portugal, felt that he could not truly be considered monarch of that country while his capital remained in the hands of the Saracens. Too weak to undertake the conquest himself, he made a religious crusade of it, and English and Flemings, who had embarked for the Holy Land, were induced by the prospect of greater wealth without going so far to attain it, to take up his cause. The great historian of the Crusades attributes this dereliction to a religious feeling, which operated as well in Portugal as in Palestine. We have no hesitation in agreeing that the Crusaders were acted upon in both countries by similar motives; in this case, it was too transparent to be possibly mistaken. The new auxiliaries covered the sea with their vessels, and blockaded the city, whilst Alphonso besieged it by land with an army much more brave than numerous. During five months, several assaults were given and sanguinary battles were fought. Willing to make one last and great attempt, Alphonso drew up his soldiers in order of battle before the place, and, making his dispositions for a general attack, said to them: “Warriors, I am about to lead you to glory; dare to conquer, and you will triumph. Advance boldly through stones, arrows, and fire; brave death, and nothing can resist your courage. Hasten, my friends, hasten to enrich yourselves with the spoils of the Arabs. You, warriors of the Cross, whom Heaven has sent, God will bless your arms; noble pay and rich possessions will be the reward of your valour.” He had scarcely finished speaking, when all the soldiers rushed to the walls; scrambling over one another up and over the ruins. Alphonso nobly supported the title of their leader; the besieged vainly opposed force to force, the Christians drove them in, in all quarters, and broke down the gate called Alfama. In a moment they were spread through the city; they massacred all found with arms in their hands, pillaged the wealth of the infidels, and planted the prince’s standard upon all the towers. The capture of Lisbon soon rendered Alphonso king of all Portugal.

DAMASCUS.

A.D. 634.

The Saracens attacked Damascus, with the hopes of a speedy capture, but the inhabitants made a brave resistance. The garrison was with difficulty restrained within the walls. At the moment the troops of the emperor Heraclius came to the succour of the city, two brothers, commanders of Damascus, made a vigorous sortie, pillaged the rear-guard of the Saracens, and carried off their women. The most important prisoner was Caulah, sister of Derar, one of the early heroes of Mahometanism, whose fanatical zeal produced such miraculous triumphs. Dazzled by the charms of his prize, Peter, one of the commanders of Damascus, wished to treat her as a conquered captive; but Caulah repulsed him with contempt. As if by a pre-concerted movement, she and her companions in misfortune seized the tent-poles, and ranging themselves back to back, refused to go to Damascus. Whilst hesitating to fight with women, though thus armed and resolute, Caled, _the sword of God_, came up, charged the Romans and made a horrible carnage: the army of Heraclius was defeated at Ainadin. Caled reappeared before Damascus, carried it by assault, and all the inhabitants were given up to indiscriminate slaughter. When Heraclius learned the fall of Damascus, he exclaimed, “Farewell to Syria!”

SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 1149.

Being compelled by the interest they inspire, to give at considerable length several of the sieges in which the Crusaders were engaged, we cannot spare room for more than a notice of that of Damascus, referring our readers for details, which will repay the research, to the pages of Michaud and Gibbon.

Louis VII., king of France, in company with Conrad III., emperor of Germany, who had led armies from Europe for the recovery of the Holy Land, laid siege to Damascus, one of the most delightfully situated and splendid cities in the world. By its populousness and wealth, Damascus excited the envy of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli, which were in the hands of the Christians, and probably affected their commerce. But it was neither the religion of the inhabitants nor the beauty of its position that tempted the Crusaders; it was enough for them to know that it was one of the richest cities of the East: nothing so soon induced a knight of the Cross to buckle on his spurs and take his lance, as the prospect of the plunder of an Oriental city. Damascus was well fortified on the east and on the south; but on the north, a multitude of gardens, inclosed with hedges and canals, formed its principal bulwark. And let not our readers smile at such a fortification; when every one of the innumerable hedges formed admirable ambuscades, and when every one of the thousands of trees was filled with archers instead of birds, the Crusaders found these gardens no “bed of roses.” It was these places, cut through by a vast number of sinuous paths, in which the Crusaders had to make their first assaults; and it required five days to carry all the positions, which were defended with the greatest firmness by the Saracens. They would have taken Damascus, if their usual enemy, Discord, had not prevailed among the Crusaders: like the bear-hunters of the fabulist, they quarrelled for the sovereignty of the city before they had taken it. By the perfidious advice of the Syrian barons, they abandoned the attack on the northern side, to make others on the east and the south. The Saracens immediately repossessed themselves of the gardens, which was the only point on which the city was weak: Damascus was missed, and the Crusaders disgracefully raised the siege.

ST. JEAN D’ACRE, or PTOLEMAIS.

A.D. 1191.

The ill success of the first Crusades appeared to redouble the zeal of the Christians for the recovery of the Holy Land. Great misfortunes had attended many of the enterprises, but vast numbers had been enriched by the plunder of magnificent cities, and some of the leaders had acquired territorial possessions. Rome, whose policy it was to keep up the fanaticism, did all in its power to promote these wicked, senseless expeditions, and never ceased calling the attention of Europe to Jerusalem defiled by the infidels, and its holy places profaned. These touching pictures, accompanied by numerous promises of indulgence, had a prodigious effect: France and England for a moment laid aside their quarrels; and their kings, Philip and Richard, levied armies for the delivery of the Holy Land. This was the golden age for ambitious popes and greedy princes or adventurers. Whether Celestine urged Cœur de Lion to undertake a mad expedition to the East, or Innocent III. hounded on Simon de Montfort to his massacre and plunder of the Albigeois, the motives were the same--thirst of power and influence in the pontiffs, and solid gain of wealth in their tools.

Followed by their numerous battalions, accompanied by their most powerful vassals, the two kings embarked and met at Messina. The artful Tancred, king of Sicily, nearly succeeded in his attempt to embroil the two monarchs; but a religious moderation quieted the nascent storm. The French directed their course towards St. Jean d’Acre, which city, having an excellent port, was equally necessary to the Christians to preserve Tyre and Tripoli, as it was to the Saracens to secure a communication between Egypt and Syria. For more than two years, Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, had besieged this important place with forces much less numerous than were employed in defending it. With an army increased by torrents of Crusaders, with which the West constantly inundated the East, and the wreck of the army of the emperor Frederick, Guy ventured to march against Saladin, who was advancing to succour Acre. Never had the Christian legions evinced more ardour; the combat was bloody, but the success doubtful. Each claimed the honour of the victory; but certainly the loss was least on the part of the Crusaders; they resumed the siege, and the besieged continued to defend themselves with the same vigour, when Philip Augustus arrived in the camp. His presence added greatly to the hopes of the besiegers: the walls of Acre were fast falling beneath the attacks of its numerous assailants; the victorious soldiers would speedily have achieved the long-delayed conquest, if the king of the French had not checked their courage out of courtesy for the English monarch: he thus lost the great opportunity of which the infidels made good use; they repaired their breaches; and with the strength of their walls their spirits revived also. At length Richard arrived, dragging in his train, bound in chains of silver, Isaac Comnenus, king, or as he ostentatiously styled himself, emperor of Cyprus, which island he had conquered during his voyage. A happy harmony presided over the first proceedings of the kings of France and England, who shared by turns both honour and danger. The army calculated upon seeing Acre yield to the first general assault. When the French monarch attacked the city, Richard mounted the trenches. On the following day the king of England conducted the assault, and Philip in his turn provided for the safety of the besiegers. The emulation which prevailed between the two nations and their kings produced extraordinary acts of valour.

Ptolemaïs, or Acre, saw indeed beneath its walls all the illustrious captains and warriors that Europe could then boast, and that in an age excelling most others in chivalric bravery. The tents of the Franks covered a vast plain, and their army presented a noble aspect. A spectator, on glancing his eye along the shore at the towers of Acre and the camp of the Christians, in which they had built houses and traced streets, traversed incessantly by an immense crowd, might have imagined he saw two rival cities which were at war with each other. Each nation had its separate quarter, and so many languages were spoken by the Crusaders, that the Mussulmans could not find interpreters enough to enable them to understand the prisoners. In this confused multitude, each people had a different character, different manners, and different arms; but at the signal of battle, all were animated with the same zeal and the same ardour. The presence of the two monarchs had re-established discipline, and Acre must soon have surrendered, if discord, that eternal enemy of the Christians, had not entered their camp with Richard.

Conrad of Montferrat and Guy de Lusignan both claimed the poor honour of being king of Jerusalem; and the kings of England and France took opposite sides; indeed, it was impossible for the headstrong self-willed Richard and the astute politic Philip to remain long friends in the same camp. Whenever Philip took the field, Richard played Achilles, and sulked in his tent. The besieged had never more than one of the monarchs to contend with at a time; and the Christian army really became less redoubtable for its accession of strength. Amidst their disputes, both monarchs fell dangerously ill; and their hatred and suspicion were so great, that each accused the other with having made an attempt upon his life. As Saladin sent them refreshments and physicians, and as they addressed frequent messages to him, each monarch reproached the other with keeping up an impious understanding with the Saracens.

They, however, began to be convinced that such dissensions jeopardized the safety of the army and the interests of the cause; the Jerusalem monarchy was amicably arranged, and the siege was resumed with fresh vigour. But the besieged had taken advantage of the respite granted to them by the Christian cabals, and had strengthened their fortifications. The besiegers were astonished at the opposition they met with. We should have told our readers that Saladin, with a numerous army, was on the heights above Acre; so that the Christians were between the two fires of his forces and the garrison of the city. Whenever the Crusaders attacked Acre, Saladin made a skirmishing dash at their camp. Many battles were fought at the foot of the hills; but on the two occasions of general assaults on the city, the Christians were obliged to return precipitately to defend their tents.

But time must exhaust the resources of a city so strongly beleaguered: the walls began to crumble under incessant attacks, and war, famine, and disease weakened the garrison; there were not soldiers enough to defend the walls and move about the cumbrous machines; the place wanted provisions, munitions of war, and Greek fire. The troops and the people began to murmur against Saladin and the emirs; and the commander of the garrison at length proposed a capitulation to Philip Augustus; but he swore by the God of the Christians that he would not spare a single inhabitant of Ptolemaïs if the Mussulmans did not restore all the cities that had fallen into their power since the battle of Tiberias.

Irritated by this determination, the chief of the emirs retired, saying that he and his companions would rather bury themselves beneath the ruins of the city than listen to such terms, and that they would defend Acre _as a lion defends his blood-stained lair_. On his return into the place, he communicated his courage, or rather his despair, to every heart. When the Christians resumed their assaults, they were repulsed with a vigour that astonished them. “The tumultuous waves of the Franks,” says an Arabian author, “rolled towards the place with the rapidity of a torrent; they mounted the half-ruined walls as wild goats ascend the steepest rocks, whilst the Saracens precipitated themselves upon the besiegers like stones detached from the summits of mountains.” In one general assault a Florentine knight of the family of Buonaguisi, followed by a few of his men, fought his way into one of the towers of the infidels, and got possession of the Mussulman banner that floated from it. Overpowered by numbers and forced to retreat, he returned to the camp, bearing off the flag he had so heroically won. In the same assault, Alberic Clement, the first marshal of France of whom history makes mention, scaled the ramparts, and, sword in hand, penetrated into the city, where he found a glorious death. Stephen, count of Blois, and several knights were burnt by the Greek fire, the boiling oil, the melted lead, and heated sand which the besiegers poured down upon all who approached the walls.

The obstinate ardour of the Mussulmans was sustained during several days; but as they received no succour, many emirs, at length despairing of the safety of Ptolemaïs, threw themselves by night into a bark, to seek an asylum in the camp of Saladin, preferring to encounter the anger of the sultan to perishing by the swords of the Christians. This desertion, and the contemplation of their ruined towers, filled the Mussulmans with terror. Whilst pigeons and divers constantly announced to Saladin the horrible distresses of the besieged, the latter came to the resolution of leaving the city by night, and braving every peril to join the Saracen army. But their project being discovered by the Christians, they blocked up and guarded every passage by which the enemy could possibly escape. The emirs, the soldiers, and the inhabitants then became convinced that they had no hope but in the mercy of the Christian leaders, and promised, if they would grant them liberty and life, to give up sixteen hundred prisoners, together with the wood of the true cross. By the capitulation, they engaged to pay two hundred thousand byzants of gold, and the garrison, with the entire population, were to remain hostages for the execution of the treaty.

A Mussulman soldier was sent from the city to announce to Saladin that the garrison had been forced to capitulate. The sultan, who was preparing to make a last effort to save the place, learnt the news with deep regret. He summoned a council to know if they approved of the capitulation; but scarcely were the principal emirs assembled in his tent, when they saw the standards of the Crusaders floating over the walls of Ptolemaïs.

The terms of the capitulation remained unexecuted; Saladin, under various pretexts, deferring the payments. Richard, irritated by a delay which appeared to him a breach of faith, revenged himself upon his prisoners. Without pity for disarmed enemies, or regard for the Christians he exposed to sanguinary reprisals, he massacred five thousand Mussulmans before the city they had so bravely defended, and within sight of Saladin, who shared the disgrace of this barbarity by thus abandoning his bravest and most faithful warriors.

Such was the conclusion of this famous siege, which lasted nearly three years, in which the Crusaders shed more blood and exhibited more bravery than ought to have sufficed for the subjugation of the whole of Asia. More than a hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought before the walls of the city; several flourishing armies came to recruit armies nearly annihilated, and were in their turn replaced by fresh armies. The bravest nobility of Europe perished in this siege, swept away by sword or disease.