CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES

“God willeth it,” the whole assembly cry; Shout which the enraptured multitude astounds! The Council roof and Clermont’s towers reply;-- “God willeth it!” from hill to hill rebounds, And, in awe-struck countries far and nigh, Through “Nature’s hollow arch” that voice resounds.

--WORDSWORTH.

[Sidenote: [306-1096 A.D.]]

The history of the Middle Ages presents no spectacle more imposing than the Crusades, in which are to be seen the nations of Asia and of Europe armed against each other, two religions contending for superiority, and disputing the empire of the world. After having been several times threatened by the Moslems, and a long time exposed to their invasions, all at once the West arouses itself, and appears, according to the expression of a Greek historian (Anna Comnena), to tear itself from its foundation, in order to precipitate itself upon Asia. All nations abandon their interests and their rivalries, and see upon the face of the earth but one single country worthy of the ambition of conquerors. One would believe that there no longer exists in the universe any other city but Jerusalem, or any other habitable spot of earth but that which contains the tomb of Jesus Christ. All the roads which lead to the Holy City are deluged with blood, and present nothing but the scattered spoils and wrecks of empires.

In this general confusion we may contemplate the sublimest virtues mixed with all the disorders of the wildest passions. The Christian soldiers have at the same time to contend against famine, the influence of climate, and enemies the most formidable; in the greatest dangers, in the midst of their successes and their constant discords, nothing can exhaust either their perseverance or their resignation. After four years of fatigue, of miseries, and of victories, Jerusalem is taken by the crusaders; but as their conquests are not the work of wisdom and prudence, but the fruit of blind enthusiasm and ill-directed heroism, they create nothing but a transient power.

The banner of the cross soon passes from the hands of Godfrey de Bouillon into those of his weak and imbecile successors. Jerusalem, now a Christian city, is obliged again to apply for succour to the West. At the voice of St. Bernard, the Christians take arms. Conducted by an emperor of Germany and a king of France, they fly to the defence of the Holy Land; but they have no longer great captains among them, they have none of the magnanimity or heroic resignation of their fathers. Asia, which beholds their coming without terror, already presents a new spectacle. The disciples of Mohammed awaken from their apathy; they are at once seized with a frenzy equal to that which had armed their enemies; they oppose enthusiasm to enthusiasm, fanaticism to fanaticism, and in their turn burn with a desire to shed their blood in a religious war.

[Sidenote: [1147-1532 A.D.]]

The spirit of discord which had destroyed their power is no longer felt but among the Christians. Luxury and the manners of the East weaken the courage of the defenders of the cross, and make them forget the object even of the holy war. Jerusalem, which had cost the crusaders so much blood, falls again into the power of the infidels, and becomes the conquest of a wise and warlike prince, who had united under his banner the forces of Syria and Egypt.

The genius and fortune of Saladin inflict a mortal blow upon the ill-assured power of the Christians in the East. In vain an emperor of the West, and two kings celebrated for their bravery, place themselves at the head of the whole powers of their states to deliver Palestine; these new armies of crusaders meet everywhere with brave enemies and invincible barriers, and all their united efforts produce nothing but illustrious disasters. The kingdom of Jerusalem, for whose ruins they contend, is no longer anything but a vain name; soon even the captivity and the miseries of the Holy City cease to inspire the sentiments of piety and enthusiasm that they had given birth to among the Christians. The crusaders, who had taken up arms for its deliverance, suffer themselves to be seduced by the wealth of Greece, and stop short to undertake the conquest of Constantinople.

From that time the spirit of the crusaders begins to change; whilst a small number of Christians still shed their blood for the deliverance of the tomb of Jesus Christ, the princes and the knights are deaf to everything but the voice of ambition. The popes complete the corruption of the true spirit of the crusaders, by urging them on, by their preaching, against other Christian people, and against their own personal enemies. The holy wars then degenerate into civil wars, in which both religion and humanity are outraged.

These abuses of the Crusades, and the dire passions which had mixed themselves with them, plunge Europe in disorder and anarchy; when a pious king undertakes once more to arm the powers of the West against the infidels, and to revive among the crusaders the spirit which had animated the companions of Godfrey. The two wars directed by this pious chief are more unfortunate than all the others. In the first, the world is presented with the spectacle of a captive army and a king in fetters; in the second, that of a powerful monarch dying in its ashes. Then it is that the illusion disappears, and Jerusalem ceases to attract all the attention of the West.

Soon after, the face of Europe is changed; intelligence dissipates barbarism; the Crusades no longer excite the same degree of enthusiasm, and the first effect of the civilisation it begins to spread is to weaken the spirit of the fanaticism which had given them birth. Some few useless efforts are at times made to rekindle the fire which had burned so fiercely in Europe and Asia. The nations are so completely recovered from the pious delirium of the Crusades, that when Germany finds itself menaced by the Mussulmans who are masters of Constantinople the banner of the cross can with difficulty gather an army around it; and Europe, which had risen in a mass to attack the infidels in Asia, opposes but a feeble resistance to them on its own territories.

Such is, in a few words, the picture of the events and revolutions which the historian of the Crusades has to describe.

We do not now require much sagacity to discover in our ancient chronicles what is fabulous and what is not. A far more difficult thing is to reconcile, upon some points, the frequent contradictory assertions of the Latins, the Greeks, and the Saracens, and to separate, in the history of the Crusades, that which belongs to religious fanaticism, to policy, or to human passions.

In an age in which some value is set upon an opinion of the Crusades, it will be first asked if the wars of the Crusades were just. Upon this head we have but little to answer. Whilst the crusaders believed that they were obeying God himself by attacking the Saracens in the East, the latter, who had invaded a part of Asia possessed by Christian people, who had got possession of Spain, who threatened Constantinople, the coasts of Italy, and several countries of the West, did not reproach their enemies with making an unjust war, and left to fortune and victory the care of deciding a question almost always useless.

We shall think it of more importance here to examine what was the cause and the nature of these remote wars, and what has proved to be their influence on civilisation. The Crusades were produced by the religious and military spirit which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages. The love of arms and religious fervour were two dominant passions which, mingling in some way, lent each other a mutual energy. These two great principles, united and acting together, gave birth to the holy war; and carried, among the crusaders, valour, resignation, and heroism of character to the highest degree of eminence. Some writers have seen nothing in these great expeditions but the most deplorable excesses, without any advantage to the ages that succeeded them; others, on the contrary, maintain that we owe to them all the benefits of civilisation. It is not, at present, our business to examine these two conflicting opinions. Without believing that the holy wars have done either all the good or all the harm that is attributed to them, it must be admitted that they were a source of bitter sorrow to the generations that saw them or took part in them; but, like the ills and tempests of human life, which render man better and often assist the progress of his reason, they have forwarded the experiences of nations; and it may be said that, after having for a time seriously agitated and shaken society, they have, in the end, much strengthened the foundations of it. This opinion, when stripped of all spirit of exaggeration or system, will perhaps appear the most reasonable.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES

[Sidenote: [306-335 A.D.]]

From the earliest ages of the church, a custom had been practised of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Judea, full of religious remembrances, was still the promised land of the faithful; the blessings of heaven appeared to be in store for those who visited Calvary, the tomb of Jesus Christ, and renewed their baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Under the reign of Constantine, the ardour for pilgrimages increased among the faithful; they flocked from all the provinces of the empire to worship Jesus Christ upon his own tomb, and to trace the steps of their God in that city which had but just resumed its name, and which the piety of an emperor had caused to issue from its ruins. The Holy Sepulchre presented itself to the eyes of the pilgrims surrounded by a magnificence which redoubled their veneration. An obscure cavern had become a marble temple, paved with precious stones and decorated with splendid colonnades. To the east of the Holy Sepulchre appeared the church of the Resurrection, in which they could admire the riches of Asia, mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome. Constantine celebrated the thirty-first year of his reign by the inauguration of this church, and thousands of Christians came, on occasion of this solemnity, to listen to the panegyric of Christ from the lips of the learned and holy bishop Eusebius.

[Sidenote: [335-493 A.D.]]

St. Helena, the mother of the emperor, repaired to Jerusalem, at a very advanced age, and caused churches and chapels to be built upon Mount Tabor, in the city of Nazareth, and in the greater part of the places which Christ had sanctified by his presence and his miracles. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land became much more frequent. The pilgrims, no longer in dread of the persecutions of the pagans, could now give themselves up, without fear, to the fervour of their devotion; the Roman eagles, ornamented with the cross of Jesus Christ, protected them on their march; they everywhere trampled under foot the fragments of idols, and they travelled amidst the abodes of their fellow-Christians.

When the emperor Julian, in order to weaken the authority of the prophecies, undertook to rebuild the temple of the Jews, numerous were the prodigies related by which God confounded his designs, and Jerusalem, for that attempt even, became more dear to the disciples of Jesus Christ. The Christians did not cease to visit Palestine. St. Jerome, who, towards the end of the fourth century, had retired to Bethlehem, informs us in one of his letters that pilgrims arrived in crowds in Judea, and that around the holy tomb the praises of the Son of God were to be heard, uttered in many languages. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were so numerous that several doctors and fathers of the church thought it their duty to point out the abuses and danger of the practice. They told Christians that long voyages might turn them aside from the path of salvation; that their God was not confined to one city; that Jesus Christ was everywhere where faith and good works were to be found; but such was the blind zeal which then drew the Christians towards Jerusalem that the voice of the holy doctors was scarcely heard. As soon as the people of the West became converted to Christianity, they turned their eyes to the East. From the depths of Gaul, from the forests of Germany, from all the countries of Europe, new Christians were to be seen hastening to visit the cradle of the faith they had embraced.

[Sidenote: [493-750 A.D.]]

When the world was ravaged by the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were not at all interrupted. Pious travellers were protected by the hospitable virtues of the barbarians, who began to respect the cross of Christ, and sometimes even followed the pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these times of trouble and desolation, a poor pilgrim who bore his scrip and staff often passed through fields of carnage, and travelled without fear amidst armies which threatened the empires of the East and the West.

Illustrious families of Rome came to seek an asylum at Jerusalem, and upon the tomb of Jesus Christ. Christians then found, on the banks of the Jordan, that peace which seemed to be banished from the rest of the world. This peace, which lasted several centuries, was not troubled before the reign of Heraclius. Under this reign, the armies of Chosroes, king of Persia, invaded Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; the Holy City fell into the hands of the worshippers of fire; the conquerors bore away into captivity vast numbers of Christians, and profaned the churches of Jesus Christ. All the faithful deplored the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and shed tears when they learned that the king of Persia had carried off, among the spoils of the vanquished, the cross of the Saviour, which had been preserved in the church of the Resurrection. Heraclius, after ten years of reverses, triumphed, and brought back to Jerusalem the Christians whose chains he had broken. Then was to be seen an emperor of the East, walking barefooted in the streets of the Holy City, carrying on his shoulders to the summit of Calvary the wood of the true cross, which he considered the most glorious trophy of his victories.

But the joy of the faithful was not of long duration. Towards the beginning of the seventh century there had arisen, in an obscure corner of Asia, a new religion, opposed to all others which preached dominion and war. Mohammed had promised the conquest of the world to his disciples, who had issued almost naked from the deserts of Arabia. By his passionate doctrine he was able to inflame the imagination of the Arabs, and on the field of battle knew how to inspire them with his own impetuous courage. His first successes, which must have greatly exceeded his hopes, were like so many miracles, increasing the confidence of his partisans and carrying conviction to the minds of the weak and wavering. After the death of the prophet of Mecca, his lieutenants and the companions of his first exploits carried on his great work.

JERUSALEM UNDER THE SARACENS

[Sidenote: [750-860 A.D.]]

Amidst the first conquests of the Saracens, they had turned their eyes towards Jerusalem. According to the faith of the Moslems, Mohammed had been in the city of David and Solomon; it was from Jerusalem that he set out to ascend into heaven in his nocturnal voyage. The Saracens considered Jerusalem as the house of God, as the city of saints and miracles. The Christians had the grief of seeing the church of the Holy Sepulchre profaned by the presence of the chief of the infidels. Although Omar had left them the exercise of their worship, they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The caliph ordered a mosque to be erected on the spot whereon the temple of Solomon had been built. In the meantime, the presence of Omar, of whose moderation the East boasts, restrained the jealous fanaticism of the Moslems. After his death the faithful had much more to suffer; they were driven from their houses, insulted in their churches; the tribute which they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine was increased, and they were forbidden to carry arms or to mount on horseback. A leathern girdle, which they were never allowed to be without, was the badge of their servitude; the conquerors would not permit the Christians to speak the Arab tongue, sacred to the disciples of the _Koran_; and the people who remained faithful to Jesus Christ had not liberty even to pronounce the name of the patriarch of Jerusalem, without the permission of the Saracens.

All these persecutions could not stop the crowd of Christians who repaired to Jerusalem, the sight of the Holy City sustaining their courage as it heightened their devotion. There were no evils, no outrages, that they could not support with resignation, when they remembered that Christ had been loaded with chains and had died upon the cross in the places they were about to visit. The Christians of Palestine, however, enjoyed some short intervals of security during the civil wars of the Mussulmans. The dynasty of the Omayyads, which had established the seat of the Moslem empire at Damascus, was always odious to the ever-formidable party of the Alids, and employed itself less in persecuting the Christians than in preserving its own precarious power. Merwan II, the last caliph of this house, was the most cruel towards the disciples of Christ; and when he, with all his family, sank under the power of his enemies, the Christians and the infidels united in thanks to heaven for having delivered the East from his tyranny.

The Abbasids, established in the city of Baghdad which they had founded, persecuted and tolerated the Christians by turns. The Christians, always living between the fear of persecution and the hope of a transient security, saw at last the prospect of happier days dawn upon them with the reign of Harun ar-Rashid, the greatest caliph of the race of Abbas. Under this reign the glory of Charlemagne, which had reached Asia, protected the churches of the East. His pious liberality relieved the indigence of the Christians of Alexandria, of Carthage, and Jerusalem. The two greatest princes of their age testified their mutual esteem by frequent embassies: they sent each other magnificent presents; and, in the friendly intercourse of two powerful monarchs, the East and the West exchanged the richest productions of their soil and their industry. There was no doubt policy in the marks of esteem which Harun lavished upon the most powerful of the princes of the West. He was making war against the emperors of Constantinople, and might justly fear that they would interest the bravest among Christian people in their cause. To take from the Franks every pretext for a religious war, which might make them embrace the cause of the Greeks, and draw them into Asia, the caliph neglected no opportunity of obtaining the friendship of Charlemagne; and caused the keys of the Holy City and of the Holy Sepulchre to be presented to him.

Whilst the Arabians of Africa were pursuing their conquests towards the West, whilst they took possession of Sicily, and Rome itself saw its suburbs and its churches of St. Peter and St. Paul invaded and pillaged by infidels, the servants of Jesus Christ prayed in peace within the walls of Jerusalem. To the desire of visiting the tomb of Jerusalem was joined the earnest wish to procure relics, which were then sought for with eagerness by the devotion of the faithful. All who returned from the East made it their glory to bring back to their country some precious remains of Christian antiquity, and above all the bones of holy martyrs, which constituted the ornament and the riches of their churches and upon which princes and kings swore to respect truth and justice. The productions of Asia likewise attracted the attention of the people of Europe.

[Sidenote: [860-1050 A.D.]]

In short, the Christians of Palestine and the Moslem provinces, the pilgrims and travellers who returned from the East, seemed no longer to have any persecutions to dread, when all at once new storms broke out in the East. The children of Harun soon shared the fate of the posterity of Charlemagne, and Asia, like the West, was plunged into the horrors of anarchy and civil war. The gigantic empire of the Abbasids crumbled away on all sides, and the world, according to the expression of an Arabian writer, was within the reach of him who would take possession of it. The Greeks then appeared to rouse themselves from their long supineness, and sought to take advantage of the divisions and the humiliation of the Saracens. Nicephorus Phocas took the field at the head of a powerful army, and recaptured Antioch from the Moslems. Deprived of the powerful stimulus of fanaticism, Nicephorus found among the Greeks more panegyrists than soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against the Saracens. His triumphs were confined to the taking of Antioch, and only served to create a persecution against the Christians of Palestine.

Zimisces resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon religion and the empire. On all sides preparations were set on foot for a fresh war against the Saracens. The nations of the West were no strangers to this enterprise, which preceded, by more than a year, the first of the Crusades. After having defeated the Mussulmans on the banks of the Tigris, and forced the caliph of Baghdad to pay a tribute, Zimisces penetrated, almost without resistance, into Judea, took possession of Cæsarea, of Ptolemais, of Tiberias, Nazareth, and several other cities of the Holy Land.

After this first campaign, the Holy Land appeared to be on the eve of being delivered entirely from the yoke of the infidels, when the emperor died poisoned. His death at once put a stop to the execution of an enterprise of which he was the soul and the leader. The Christian nations had scarcely time to rejoice at the delivery of Jerusalem, when they learned that the Holy City had again fallen into the hands of the Fatimite caliphs, who, after the death of Zimisces, had invaded Syria and Palestine. Hakim, the third of the Fatimite caliphs, signalised his reign by all the excesses of fanaticism and outrage. Unfixed in his own projects, and wavering between two religions, he by turns protected and persecuted Christianity.

The inconstancy of Hakim, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor, guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians. In the eleventh century the Latin church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain. There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Even the weak and timid sex was not deterred by the perils of a long voyage.[b]

CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS

[Sidenote: [1000-1050 A.D.]]

Though pilgrimages were generally considered acts of virtue, yet some of the leaders of the church accounted them useless and criminal. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, in the fourth century, dissuades his flock from these journeys. They were not conscientious obligations, he said, for in the description of persons whom Christ had promised to acknowledge in the next world the name of pilgrim could not be found. A migratory life was dangerous to virtue, particularly to the modesty of women.

The necessity of making a pilgrimage to Rome and other places was often urged by ladies, who did not wish to be mewed in the solitary gloom of a cloister, “chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.” In the ninth century, a foreign bishop wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, requesting, in very earnest terms, that English women of every rank and degree might be prohibited from pilgrimising to Rome. Their gallantries were notorious over all the continent. “_Perpaucæ enim sunt civitates in Longobardia, vel in Francia, aut in Gallia, in qua non sit adultera vel meretrix generis Anglorum: quod scandalum est, et turpitudo totius ecclesiæ._” Muratori, _Antiquitates Italiæ Med. Ævi, Dissert. 58_, vol. V., p. 58. “There are few cities in Lombardy, in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not an English adultress or harlot, to the scandal and disgrace of the whole church.” Morality did not improve as the world grew older. The prioress in Chaucer, demure as she is, wears a bracelet on which was inscribed the sentence, “_Amor vincit omnia._” The gallant monk, in the same pilgrimage, ties his hood with a true-lover’s knot.

Horror at spectacles of vice would diminish with familiarity, and the moral principle would gradually be destroyed. Malice, idolatry, poisoning, and bloodshed disgraced Jerusalem itself; and so dreadfully polluted was the city that, if any man wished to have a more than ordinary spiritual communication with Christ, he had better quit his earthly tabernacle at once than endeavour to enjoy it in places originally sacred, but which had been since defiled. Some years after the time of Gregory, a similar description of the depravity at Jerusalem was given by St. Jerome, and the Latin father commends a monk who, though a resident in Palestine, had but on one occasion travelled to the city. The opinions of these two venerable spiritual guides could not stem the torrent of popular religion. The coffers of the church were enriched by the sale of relics, and the dominion of the clergy became powerful in proportion to the growth of religious abuses and corruptions. Pilgrims from India, Ethiopia, Britannia, and Hibernia went to Jerusalem; and the tomb of Christ resounded with hymns in various languages. Bishops and teachers would have thought it a disgrace to their piety and learning if they had not adored their Saviour on the very spot where his cross had first shed the light of his Gospel.

The assertion, that “the coffers of the church were enriched by the sale of relics,” requires some observations; because the sale of one relic in particular encouraged the ardour of pilgrimages, and from the ardour the Crusades arose. During the fourth century, Christendom was duped into the belief that the very cross on which Christ had suffered had been discovered in Jerusalem. The city’s bishop was the keeper of the treasure, but the faithful never offered their money in vain for a fragment of the holy wood. They listened with credulity to the assurance of their priests that a living virtue pervaded an inanimate and insensible substance, and that the cross permitted itself every day to be divided into several parts, and yet remained uninjured and entire. Thus Erasmus says, in his entertaining dialogue on pilgrimages, that “if the fragments of the cross were collected, enough would be found for the building of a ship.” It was publicly exhibited during the religious festivities of Easter, and Jerusalem was crowded with pious strangers to witness the solemn spectacle. But after four ages of perpetual distribution, the world was filled with relics, and superstition craved for a novel object. Accordingly, the Latin clergy of Palestine pretended that on the vigil of Easter, after the great lamps in the church of the Resurrection had been extinguished, they were relighted by God himself. People flocked from the West to the East in order to behold this act of the Divinity, and to catch some portion of a flame which had the marvellous property of healing all diseases, mental as well as bodily, if those who received it had faith.[c]

[Sidenote: [1050-1076 A.D.]]

The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at length so general that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as soldiers they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054, Litbert, bishop of Cambray, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.

Ten years after, seven thousand Christians set out together from the banks of the Rhine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of the Crusades, crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having visited the churches of Byzantium, the pilgrims of the West traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. The emir of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey. After having lost more than three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

THE TURKS IN POWER

[Sidenote: [1076-1088 A.D.]]

New perils and the most violent persecutions at this period threatened both the pilgrims of the West and the Christians of Palestine. Asia was once again about to change masters, and tremble beneath a fresh tyranny. During several centuries the rich countries of the East had been subject to continual invasions from the wild hordes of Tatary. The Turks, issuing from countries situated beyond the Oxus, had rendered themselves masters of Persia. Palestine yielded to the power of the Turks. The conquerors spared neither the Christians nor the children of Ali, whom the caliph of Baghdad represented to be the enemies of God. The Egyptian garrison was massacred, and the mosques and the churches were delivered up to pillage. The Holy City was flooded with the blood of Christians and Mussulmans.

Other tribes of Turks, led by Suleiman, penetrated into Asia Minor. They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. The standard of the prophet floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Thousands of children had been circumcised. Everywhere the laws of the _Koran_ took the place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries and churches. The Greeks had never had to contend against more cruel and terrible enemies than the Turks. In the midst of revolutions and civil wars, the Greek Empire was hastening to its fall.

Whilst the empire of the East approached its fall and appeared sapped by time and corruption, the institutions of the West were in their infancy. The empire and the laws of Charlemagne no longer existed. Nations had no relations with each other; and mistaking their political interests, made wars without considering their consequences or their dangers, and concluded peace without being at all aware whether it was advantageous or not. Royal authority was nowhere sufficiently strong to arrest the progress of anarchy and the abuses of feudalism. At the same time that Europe was full of soldiers and covered with strong castles, the states themselves were without support against their enemies, and had not an army to defend them.

Ten years before the invasion of Asia Minor by the Turks, Michael Ducas, the successor of Romanus Diogenes, had implored the assistance of the pope and the princes of the West. He had promised to remove all the barriers which separated the Greek from the Roman church, if the Latins would take up arms against the infidels. Gregory VII then filled the chair of St. Peter. The hope of extending the religion and the empire of the holy see into the East made him receive kindly the humble supplications of Michael Ducas. Excited by his discourses, fifty thousand pilgrims agreed to follow Gregory to Constantinople, and thence to Syria; but the affairs of Europe suspended the execution of his projects.

Every day the power of the popes was augmented by the progress of Christianity, and by the ever-increasing influence of the Latin clergy. Rome was become a second time the capital of the world, and appeared to have resumed, under the monk Hildebrand, the empire it had enjoyed under the cæsars. Armed with the two-edged sword of Peter, Gregory loudly proclaimed that all the kingdoms of the earth were under the dominion of the holy see, and that his authority ought to be as universal as the church of which he was the head. These dangerous pretensions, fostered by the opinions of his age, engaged him immediately in violent disputes with the emperor of Germany. He desired also to dictate laws to France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and England; and thinking of nothing but making himself acknowledged as the great arbiter of states, he launched his anathemas even against the throne of Constantinople, which he had undertaken to defend, and gave no more attention to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

After the death of Gregory, Victor III, although he pursued the policy of his predecessor and had to contend against the emperor of Germany and the party of the anti-pope Guibert (Clement III), did not neglect the opportunity of making war against the Mussulmans. The Saracens, inhabiting Africa, disturbed the navigation of the Mediterranean, and threatened the coast of Italy. Victor invited the Christians to take arms, and promised them the remission of all their sins if they went to fight against the infidels. The inhabitants of Pisa, Genoa, and several other cities, urged by their zeal for religion and their desire to defend their commerce, equipped fleets, levied troops, and made a descent upon the coasts of Africa, where, if we are to believe the chronicles of the time, they cut in pieces an army of one hundred thousand Saracens.[b]

PETER THE HERMIT

[Sidenote: [1088-1095 A.D.]]

The true story of the first Crusade is, as Kugler[d] says, sufficiently marvellous. It was a vast awakening in which religion, adventure, and design forced the European peoples out of their narrow lines of life and brought the West and East again in contact, and it grows in strangeness as we trace the story in detail. But monkish, uncritical writings which record the vague traditions of that great uprising have not rested satisfied with the marvellous truth: they have added much that is legendary. Among the legends that have failed to stand the test of recent scholarship, is the famous one which made Peter the Hermit the originator of the first Crusade. We may now feel sure that it was not Peter but Urban II who set going the great impetus; but the legend of Peter the Hermit has grown into the story of the first Crusade, and won its place in history from the belief of centuries. The reader must, however, be aware, as he reads it, that we have no authentic account of Peter’s preaching before the Council of Clermont. He was probably one of the preachers who scattered the enthusiasm of that council in northeastern France. His preaching was likely limited to the land where he could be understood in the vernacular, and his real influence is rather to be estimated by the rabble that followed him and Walter the Penniless, to leave their bones by the Danube or Bosporus. So much prefaced, let us turn to the story.

As the legend runs, Peter, an obscure hermit, came from his retreat, and followed into Palestine the crowd of Christians who went to visit the holy places.[a] The sight of Jerusalem excited him much more than any of the other pilgrims, for it created in his ardent mind a thousand conflicting sentiments. In the city, which exhibited everywhere marks of the mercy and the anger of God, all objects inflamed his piety, irritated his devotion and his zeal, and filled him by turns with respect, terror, and indignation. After having followed his brethren to Calvary and the tomb of Christ he repaired to the patriarch of Jerusalem. The white hairs of Simeon, his venerable figure, and above all the persecution which he had undergone, bespoke the full confidence of Peter, and they wept together over the ills of the Christians. The patriarch resolved to implore, by his letters, the help of the pope and the princes of Europe, and the hermit swore to be the interpreter of the Christians of the East and to rouse the West to take arms for their deliverance.

After this interview, the enthusiasm of Peter knew no bounds; he was persuaded that heaven itself called upon him to avenge its cause. One day, whilst prostrated before the Holy Sepulchre, he believed that he heard the voice of Christ, which said to him: “Peter, arise! hasten to proclaim the tribulations of my people; it is time that my servants should receive help, and that the holy places should be delivered.” Full of the spirit of these words, which sounded unceasingly in his ears, and charged with letters from the patriarch, he quitted Palestine, crossed the seas, landed on the coast of Italy, and hastened to cast himself at the feet of the pope. The chair of St. Peter was then occupied by Urban II, who had been the disciple and confidant of both Gregory and Victor. Urban embraced with ardour a project which had been entertained by his predecessors; he received Peter as a prophet, applauded his design, and bade him go forth and announce the approaching deliverance of Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: [1095-1096 A.D.]]

Peter the Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, visited all parts of France, and the greatest portion of Europe, inflaming all hearts with the same zeal that consumed his own. He travelled mounted on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girded with a thick cord, covered with a long frock, and a hermit’s hood of the coarsest stuff. The singularity of his appearance was a spectacle for the people, whilst the austerity of his manners, his charity, and the moral doctrines that he preached caused him to be revered as a saint wherever he went.

He went from city to city, from province to province, working upon the courage of some and upon the piety of others; sometimes haranguing from the pulpits of the churches, sometimes preaching in the high-roads or public places. His eloquence was animated and impressive, and filled with those vehement apostrophes which produce such effects upon an uncultivated multitude. He described the profanation of the holy places, and the blood of the Christians shed in torrents in the streets of Jerusalem. He invoked, by turns, heaven, the saints, the angels, whom he called upon to bear witness to the truth of what he told them. He apostrophised Mount Zion, the rock of Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, which he made to resound with sobs and groans. When he had exhausted speech in painting the miseries of the faithful, he showed the spectators the crucifix which he carried with him; sometimes striking his breast and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding torrents of tears. The people followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was received everywhere as a messenger from God.

THE APPEAL OF THE EMPEROR ALEXIUS

In the midst of this general excitement, Alexius Comnenus, who was threatened by the Turks, sent ambassadors to the pope, to solicit the assistance of the Latins. “Without the prompt assistance of all the Christian states,” he wrote, “Constantinople must fall under the most frightful domination of the Turks.” He reminded the princes of Christianity of the holy relics preserved in Constantinople, and conjured them to save so sacred an assemblage of venerated objects from the profanation of the infidels. After having set forth the splendour and the riches of his capital, he exhorted the knights and barons to come and defend them; he offered them his treasures as the reward of their valour, and painted in glowing colours the beauty of the Greek women, whose love would repay the exploits of his liberators. Thus, nothing was spared that could flatter the passions or arouse the enthusiasm of the warriors of the West.

COUNCILS OF PLACENTIA AND CLERMONT

In compliance with the prayers of Alexius and the wishes of the faithful, the sovereign pontiff convoked a council at Placentia, in order there to expose the dangers of the Greek and Latin churches in the East. The preachings of Peter had so prepared the minds and animated the zeal of the faithful, that more than two hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, and thirty thousand of the laity obeyed the invitation of the holy see. The council was so numerous that it was obliged to be held in a plain in the neighbourhood of the city. The Council of Placentia, however, came to no determination upon the war against the infidels. The deliverance of the Holy Land was far from being the only object of this council: the declarations of the empress Adelaide, who came to reveal her own shame and that of her husband, anathemas against the emperor of Germany and the anti-pope Guibert, occupied, during several days, the attention of Urban and the assembled fathers.

A new council assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne. Before it gave up its attention to the holy war, the council at first considered the reform of the clergy and ecclesiastical discipline; and it then occupied itself in placing a restraint upon the license of wars among individuals. In these barbarous times even simple knights never thought of redressing their injuries by any other means than arms. It was not an uncommon thing to see families, for the slightest causes, commence a war against each other that would last during several generations; Europe was distracted with troubles occasioned by these hostilities. In the impotence of the laws and the governments, the church often exerted its salutary influence to restore tranquillity; several councils had placed their interdict upon private wars during four days of the week, and their decrees had invoked the vengeance of heaven against disturbers of the public peace. The Council of Clermont renewed the Truce of God, and threatened all who refused “to accept peace and justice” with the thunders of the church. One of its decrees placed widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers under the safeguard of religion. They declared, as they had already done in other councils, that the churches should be so many inviolable sanctuaries, and that crosses, even, placed upon the high-roads, should become points of refuge against violence.

Humanity and reason must applaud such salutary decrees; but the sovereign pontiff, although he presented himself as the defender of the sanctity of marriage, did not merit the same praises when he pronounced in this council an anathema against Philip I. But such was then the general infatuation, that no one was astonished that a king of France should be excommunicated in the very bosom of his own kingdom. The sentence of Urban could not divert attention from an object that seemed much more imposing, and the excommunication of Philip scarcely holds a place in the history of the Council of Clermont. The faithful, gathered from all the provinces, had but one single thought; they spoke of nothing but the evils the Christians endured in Palestine, and saw nothing but the war which was about to be declared against the infidels. Enthusiasm and fanaticism, which always increase in large assemblies, were carried to their full height. Urban at length satisfied the impatience of the faithful--impatience which he, perhaps, had adroitly excited, and which was the surest guarantee of success.

The council held its tenth sitting in the great square or place of Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense crowd. Followed by his cardinals, the pope ascended a species of throne which had been prepared for him; at his side was Peter the Hermit, clad in that whimsical and uncouth garb which had everywhere drawn upon him the attention and the respect of the multitude. Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented, as he had done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the infidels.

As Urban proceeded, the sentiments by which he was animated penetrated to the very souls of his auditors. When he spoke of the captivity and the misfortunes of Jerusalem, the whole assembly was dissolved in tears; when he described the tyranny and the perfidy of the infidels, the warriors who listened to him clutched their swords, and swore in their hearts to avenge the cause of the Christians. Urban redoubled their enthusiasm by announcing that God had chosen them to accomplish his designs, and exhorted them to turn those arms against the Moslems which they now bore in conflict against their brothers. They were not now called upon to revenge the injuries of men, but injuries offered to divinity; it was now not the conquest of a town or a castle that was offered to them as the reward of their valour, but the riches of Asia, the possession of a land in which, according to the promises of the Scriptures, flowed streams of milk and honey.

“Christian warriors,” he exclaimed, “who seek without end for vain pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have to-day found true ones. You who have been so often the terror of your fellow-citizens, go and fight against the barbarians, go and fight for the deliverance of the holy places; you who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Maccabees, go and merit an eternal reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will be your heritage; if you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will not forget that he shall have found you in his holy ranks. This is the moment to prove that you are animated by a true courage; this is the moment in which you may expiate so many violences committed in the bosom of peace, so many victories purchased at the expense of justice and humanity. If you must have blood, bathe your hands in the blood of the infidels. I speak to you with harshness, because my ministry obliges me to do so: soldiers of hell, become soldiers of the living God! When Jesus Christ summons you to his defence, let no base affections detain you in your homes; see nothing but the shame and the evils of the Christians; listen to nothing but the groans of Jerusalem, and remember well what the Lord has said to you: ‘He who loves his father and his mother more than me, is not worthy of me; whoever shall abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall be recompensed a hundredfold, and possess life eternal.’”

At these words the auditors of Urban displayed an enthusiasm that human eloquence had never before inspired. The assembly arose in one mass as one man, and answered him with a unanimous cry, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”[46] Pity, indignation, despair, at the same time agitated the tumultuous assembly of the faithful; some shed tears over Jerusalem and the fate of the Christians; others swore to exterminate the race of the Moslems; but, all at once, at a signal from the sovereign pontiff, the most profound silence prevailed. Cardinal Gregory, who afterwards occupied the chair of St. Peter under the name of Innocent II, pronounced, in a loud voice, a form of general confession, the assembly all fell upon their knees, beat their breasts, and received absolution for their sins. All the faithful decorated their garments with a red cross. From that time, all who engaged to combat the infidels were termed “bearers of the cross,”[47] and the holy war took the name of “Crusade.” The faithful solicited Urban to place himself at their head; but the pontiff, who had not yet triumphed over the anti-pope Guibert, who was dealing out at the same time his anathemas against the king of France and the emperor of Germany, could not quit Europe without compromising the power and the policy of the holy see. He refused to be chief of the crusade, and named the bishop of Puy apostolic legate with the army of the Christians.

THE FRENZY OF EUROPE

He promised to all who assumed the cross the entire remission of their sins. Their persons, their families, their property, were all placed under the protection of the church and of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The council declared that every violence exercised upon the soldiers of Christ should be punished by anathema, and recommended its decrees in favour of the bearers of the cross to the watchful care of all bishops and priests. It regulated the discipline and the departure of those who had enrolled themselves in the holy ranks, and for fear reflection might deter any from leaving their homes, it threatened with excommunication all those who did not fulfil their vows.

It might be said that the French had no longer any other country than the Holy Land, and that to it they were bound to sacrifice their ease, their property, and their lives. This enthusiasm, which had no bounds, was not long in extending itself to the other Christian nations; the flame which consumed France was communicated to England, still disturbed by the recent conquest of the Normans; to Germany, troubled by the anathema of Gregory and Urban; to Italy, agitated by its factions; to Spain, even, although it had to combat the Saracens on its own territory.

The devotion for pilgrimages, which had been increasing during several centuries, became a passion and an imperative want for most Christians; everyone was eager to march to Jerusalem, and to take part in the crusade, which was, in all respects, an armed pilgrimage. The situation in which Europe was then placed no doubt contributed to increase the number of pilgrims. “All things were in such disorder,” says William of Tyre, “that the world appeared to be approaching to its end, and was ready to fall again into the confusion of chaos.” Everywhere the people groaned under a horrible servitude; a frightful scarcity of provisions, which had during several years desolated France and the greater part of the kingdoms of the West, had given birth to all sorts of brigandage and violence; and these proving the destruction of agriculture and commerce increased still further the horrors of the famine. Villages, towns even, became void of inhabitants, and sank into ruins. The people abandoned a land which no longer nourished them, or could offer them either repose or security: the standard of the cross appeared to them a certain asylum against misery and oppression. According to the decrees of the Council of Clermont, the crusaders were freed from all imposts, and could not be pursued for debts during their voyage. At the name of the cross the very laws suspended their menaces, tyranny could not seek its victims, nor justice even the guilty, amidst those whom the church adopted for its defenders. The assurance of impunity, the hope of a better fate, the love of license, and a desire to shake off the most sacred ties, actuated a vast proportion of the multitude which flocked to the banners of the crusade.

Many nobles who had not at first taken the cross, and who saw their vassals set out, without having the power to prevent them, determined to follow them as military chiefs, in order to preserve some portion of their authority. It was known that two or three hundred Norman pilgrims had conquered Apulia and Sicily from the Saracens. The lands occupied by the infidels appeared to be heritages promised to knights whose whole wealth consisted in their birth, their valour, and their sword.

We should nevertheless deceive ourselves if we did not believe that religion was the principle which acted most powerfully upon the greater number of the crusaders. In ordinary times men follow their natural inclinations, and only obey the voice of their own interest; but in the times of the Crusades, religious fever was a blind passion which spoke louder than all others. Religion permitted not any other glory, any other felicity to be seen by its ardent defenders, but those which she presented to their heated imagination. Love of country, family ties, the most tender affections of the heart, were all sacrificed to the ideas and the opinions which then possessed the whole of Europe. Moderation was cowardice, indifference treason, opposition a sacrilegious interference. The power of the laws was reckoned as nothing amongst men who believed they were fighting in the cause of God. Subjects scarcely acknowledged the authority of princes or lords in anything which concerned the holy war; the master and the slave had no other title than that of Christian, no other duty to perform than that of defending his religion, sword in hand.

They whom age or condition appeared to detain in Europe, and whom the council had exempted from the labours and perils of the crusade, caused the heaven which called them to the holy war to speak aloud. Women and children imprinted crosses upon their delicate and weak limbs, to show the will of God. Monks deserted the cloisters in which they had sworn to die, believing themselves led by a divine inspiration; hermits and anchorites issued from forests and deserts, and mingled with the crowd of crusaders. What is still more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers, quitting their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and promised, whilst receiving the cross, to go and expiate them in Palestine.

Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which everyone was eager to quit. Artisans, traders, labourers, abandoned the occupations by which they subsisted; barons and lords even renounced the domains of their fathers. The lands, the cities, the castles, for which they had but of late been at war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors, and were given up, for small sums, to those whom the grace of God had not touched, and who were not called to the happiness of visiting the holy places and conquering the East.

Contemporary authors relate several miracles which assisted in heating the minds of the multitude. Stars fell from the firmament; traces of blood were seen in the heavens; cities, armies, and knights decorated with the cross were pictured in the clouds. We will not relate all the other miracles reported by historians, which were believed in an age in which nothing was more common than prodigies, in which, according to the remark of Fleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed greatly over that for the true. Our readers will find quite enough of extraordinary things in the description of so many great events for which the moral world, and even nature herself, seemed to have interrupted their laws. What prodigy, in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once, and like a single man march in arms towards the East?

The Council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November, 1095, had fixed the departure of the crusaders for the festival of the Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land. As soon as the spring appeared, nothing could restrain the impatience of the crusaders, and they set forward on their march to the places at which they were to assemble. The greater number went on foot; some horsemen appeared amongst the multitude; a great many travelled in cars; they were clothed in a variety of manners, and armed, in the same way, with lances, swords, javelins, iron clubs, etc. The crowd of crusaders presented a whimsical and confused mixture of all ranks and all conditions; women appeared in arms in the midst of warriors, prostitution not being forgotten among the austerities of penitence. Old age was to be seen with infancy, opulence next to misery; the helmet was confounded with the frock, the mitre with the sword. Around cities, around fortresses, in the plains, upon the mountains, were raised tents and pavilions; everywhere was displayed a preparation for war and festivity. Here was heard the sound of arms or the braying of trumpets; whilst at a short distance the air was filled with psalms and spiritual songs. From the Tiber to the ocean, and from the Rhine to the other side of the Pyrenees, nothing was to be seen but troops of men marked with the cross, who swore to exterminate the Saracens, and were chanting their songs of conquest beforehand. On all sides resounded the war-cry of the crusaders: “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”

Families, whole villages, set out for Palestine, and drew into their ranks all they met with on their passage. They marched on without forethought, and would not believe that he who nourishes the sparrow would leave pilgrims clothed with the holy cross to perish with want. Their ignorance added to their illusion, and lent an air of enchantment to everything they saw; they believed at every moment they were approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The children of the villagers, when they saw a city or a castle, asked if that was Jerusalem. Many of the great lords, who had passed their lives in their rustic donjons, knew very little more on this head than their vassals; they took with them their hunting and fishing appointments, and marched with their falcons on their wrists, preceded by their hounds. They expected to reach Jerusalem enjoying themselves on the road, and to exhibit to Asia the rude luxury of their castles.

In the midst of the general delirium, no sage caused the voice of reason to be heard; nobody was then astonished at that which now creates so much surprise. These scenes so strange, in which everyone was an actor, could only be a spectacle for posterity.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[46] _Dieu le veut_ was pronounced in the language of the times _Dieu le volt_, or _Diex le volt_.

[47] The cross which the faithful wore in this crusade was of cloth, and sometimes even of red-coloured silk. Afterwards they wore crosses of different colours. The cross, a little in relief, was sewed upon the right shoulder of the coat or mantle, or else fastened on the front of the helmet, after having been blessed by the pope or some bishop. The prayers and ceremonies used on this occasion are still to be found in the Romish ritual. On returning from the Holy Land, they removed this mark from the shoulder and placed it on the back, or else wore it at the neck.