BOOK XIII.

SEVENTH CRUSADE.

A.D. 1242-1245.

WHEN I began this work, I was far from being aware of the task I was imposing upon myself; animated by the interest of my subject, full of a too great confidence in my own powers, like those villagers who, when they set out for the first crusade, fancied every city they saw to be Jerusalem, I constantly believed I was approaching the end of my labours. As I advanced in my career, the horizon expanded before me, difficulties multiplied at every step, so that to sustain my courage, I have often been obliged to recall to my mind the kindness with which the early volumes of this history have been received by the public.

The difficulty did not consist in placing a narrative of the holy wars before our readers; it became necessary to present exact ideas of the manners and characters of the nations which, in any way, took part in them. We have endeavoured to make all the peoples known who have in turn passed across the scene: the Franks, with their soldier-like roughness, their love of glory, and their generous passions; the Turks and Saracens, with their military religion and their barbarous valour; the Greeks, with their corrupted manners, their character at once superstitious and frivolous, and their vanity, which with them supplied the place of patriotism: a new nation is now about to offer itself to the pencil of history, and mingle with the events of which we are attempting to give the picture. We are about to say a few words upon the manners and conquests of the Tartars in the middle ages.

The hordes of this nation, at the period of the sixth crusade, had invaded several countries of Asia, and the progress of their arms had a great influence over the policy of the Mussulman powers of Syria and Egypt, which were then at war with the Christians. At the time of which we are speaking, the fame of their victories filled the East, and spread terror even to the most remote countries of Europe.

The Tartars inhabited the vast regions which lie between ancient Emaüs, Siberia, China, and the Sea of Kamschatka; they were divided into several nations, which all boasted of having the same origin; each of these nations, governed by a khan, or supreme leader, was composed of a great number of tribes, each tribe commanded by a particular chief, called Myrza. The produce of the chase, the milk of their mares, and the flesh of their flocks, satisfied the simple wants of the Tartars; they lived under tents with their families; and moveable dwellings, drawn by oxen, transported from one place to another their wives, their children, and all they possessed. In summer, the whole tribe drew towards the northern countries, and encamped upon the banks of a river or a lake; in winter, they directed their course southward, and sought the shelter of mountains that could protect them from the icy winds of the north.

The Tartar hordes assembled every year, in either autumn or spring. In these assemblies, which they called _Couraltaï_, they deliberated on horseback, upon the march of the tribes, the distribution of the pasturages, and peace and war. It was from the bosom of this tumultuous assembly that issued the legislation of the people of Tartary; a simple and laconic legislation, like those of all barbarous nations, whose only objects are to maintain the power of the leaders, and keep up discipline and emulation among the warriors.

The nations of Tartary acknowledged one God, the sovereign of heaven, to whom they offered up neither incense nor prayers. Their worship was reserved for a crowd of genii, whom they believed to be spread through the air, upon the earth, and amidst the waters; a great number of idols, the rough work of their own hands, filled their dwellings, followed them in their courses, and watched over their flocks, their slaves, and their families. Their priests, brought up in the practices of magic, studied the course of the stars, predicted future events, and employed themselves in abusing the minds of the people by sorcery. Their religious worship, which inculcated no morality, had neither softened their rude manners nor ameliorated their character, which was as boisterous and unkindly as their climate. No monument raised under the auspices of religion, no book inspired by it, reminded them of deeds of glory, or laid before them precepts and examples of virtue. In the course of their wandering life, the dead, whom they sometimes dragged with them in their waggons, appeared to them an annoying burden, and they buried them in haste in retired places; where, covering them with the sands of the desert, they were satisfied with concealing them from the eyes or the outrages of the living.

Everything that might fix them to one spot rather than another, or lead them to change their manner of living, excited the animadversion and disdain of these races. Of all the tribes that inhabited Mogul Tartary, one alone was acquainted with writing, and cultivated letters; all the rest despised commerce, arts, and learning; which constitute the true splendour of polished societies. The Tartars disdained the idea of building; in the twelfth century their vast country contained but one city,[263] the extent of which, according to the monk Rubruquis, did not equal that of the little town of Saint Denis. Confining themselves to the care of their flocks, they regarded agriculture as a degrading occupation, only fit to employ the industry of slaves or conquered people. Their immense plains had never become yellow with harvests sown by the hand of man; no fruit had there ripened which he had planted. The spectacle most agreeable to a Tartar was the desert, upon which grass grew without cultivation or the field of battle covered with ruin and carnage.

As the limits of their pastures were under no regulation, frequent quarrels necessarily arose among the Tartars; the spirit of jealousy constantly agitated the wandering hordes; the ambitious leaders could endure neither neighbours nor rivals. Thence civil wars; and from the bosom of civil wars issued a fully-armed despotism, to support which the people flocked with cheerfulness, because it promised them conquests. The entire population was military, to whom fighting appeared to be the only true glory, and the most noble occupation of man. The encampments of the Tartars, their marches, their hunting-parties, resembled military exhibitions. Habit imparted so much ease and firmness to their seat on horseback, that they took their food, and even indulged in sleep, without dismounting. Their bow, of an enormous size, announced their strength and skill; their sharp steel-headed arrows flew to an immense distance, and struck down the bird amidst its rapid career, or pierced through and through the bear or tiger of the desert; they surpassed their enemies in the rapidity of their evolutions; they excelled them in the perfidious art of fighting whilst flying; and retreat was often, for them, the signal of victory. All the stratagems of war appeared familiar to them; and as if a fatal instinct had taught them all that could assist in the destruction of the human race, the Tartars, who built no cities, knew how to construct the most formidable machines of war, and were not unacquainted with any means that could spread terror and desolation among their enemies. In their expeditions, their march was never impeded by the inclemency of seasons, the depth of rivers, the steepness of precipices, or the height of mountains. A little hardened milk, diluted with water, sufficed for the food of a horseman during several days; the skin of a sheep or a bear, a few strips of coarse felt, formed his garments. The warriors showed the most blind obedience to their leaders, and, at the least signal, were ready to encounter death in any shape. They were divided into tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands; their armies were composed of all that could handle the bow or lance; and what must have caused their enemies as much surprise as terror, was the order and discipline that prevailed in a multitude that chance seemed to have gathered together. According to their military legislation, the Tartars were never allowed to make peace but with a conquered enemy; he who fled from battle, or abandoned his companions in danger, was punished with death; they shed the blood of men with the same indifference as that of wild animals, and their ferocity added greatly to the terror which they inspired in their enterprises.

The Tartars, in their pride, despised all other nations, and believed that the whole world ought to be subject to them. According to certain opinions, transmitted from age to age, the Mogul hordes abandoned the north to the dead they left behind them in the deserts, and kept their faces constantly directed towards the south, which was promised to their valour. The territories and the riches of other nations excited their ambition; and, possessing neither territories nor riches themselves, they had almost nothing to fear from conquerors. Not only their warlike education, but their prejudices, their customs, the inconstancy of their character, everything with them seemed to favour distant expeditions and warlike invasions. They carried with them neither regrets nor endearing remembrances from the countries they abandoned; and if it be true, when we say that country is not within the walls of a city, or the limits of a province, but in the affections and ties of family, in the laws, manners, and customs of a nation, the Tartars, when changing their climate, had always their country with them. The presence of their wives, of their children; the sight of their flocks and their idols, everywhere inflamed their patriotism, or love of their nation, and sustained their courage. Accustomed to consult their own inclinations, and take them for their sole rule of conduct, they were never restrained by the laws of morality or by feelings of humanity; as they had a profound indifference for all the religions of the earth, this indifference even, which aroused no hatred in other nations, facilitated their conquests, by leaving them the liberty of readily receiving or embracing the opinions and creeds of the people they conquered, and whom they thus completely subjected to their laws.

In very remote antiquity, the hordes of Tartary had several times invaded the vast regions of India, China, and Persia, and had extended their ravages even into the West: the ambition or the caprice of a skilful leader, excess of population, want of pasturage, the predictions of a wizard, were quite sufficient to inflame this tumultuous race, and precipitate them in a mass upon distant regions. Woe to the people whom the Tartars encountered in their passage! At their approach, empires fell with a horrible crash; nations were driven back upon one another, like the waves of the sea; the world was shaken and covered with ruins. History has preserved the remembrance of several of their invasions; the most remote posterity will never pronounce without a species of terror the names of the Avari, the Huns, the Heruli, of all those wandering nations who, some flowing from the depths of Tartary, and others dragged in the wake of the conquerors or driven before them, poured down upon the tottering empire of the Romans, and divided the spoils of the civilized world amongst them: in the middle ages, the wars of the Tartars were compared to tempests, inundations, or the bursting forth of volcanoes; and the resigned nations believed that the justice of God held these innumerable swarms of barbarians in reserve in the north, to pour out his anger upon the rest of the earth, and chastise corrupted nations by their hands.

The Tartars never proved themselves more redoubtable than under the reign of Gengiskhan. Temugin, which was the first name of the heroic barbarian, was born of a prince who reigned over some hordes of ancient Mogulistan.[264] Traditions relate that the seventh of his ancestors was engendered in the womb of his mother by the miraculous influence of the rays of the sun. At the birth of Temugin, his family remarked with joy some coagulated blood in the hands of the infant, a sinister presage for the human race, in which flattery or superstition saw the future glory of a conqueror. Some historians inform us that nothing was neglected in the education of Temugin; others, more worthy of faith, affirm that he could not read; but all agree in saying that he was born for war, and to command a warlike people. Endowed with great penetration of mind, and with a sort of eloquence, knowing how to dissemble in season, skilful in working upon the passions, uniting bravery to a boundless ambition, that was never checked by any scruple, he had all the qualities and all the vices which lead to empire among barbarians, and sometimes even among polished nations. His natural propensities developed themselves in adversity, which hardened his character, and taught him to brave everything in order to carry out his designs. From the age of fourteen, despoiled of his paternal heritage, and a fugitive with the khan of the Karaïtes, he sacrificed without pain the most holy duties of hospitality to his future grandeur. The khan of the Karaïtes was known by the name of Prester John among the Christians of the middle ages,[265] who celebrated his conversion to Christianity, and considered him as one of the most fervent apostles of the Gospel, which, doubtless, he never had known. He confided the care of his states to young Temugin, who insinuated himself into the favour of the army, and dethroned his benefactor. As he had outraged all the laws of morality to usurp empire, he violated all the laws of humanity to maintain himself in it. Seventy of his enemies plunged into seventy caldrons of boiling water, and the skull of the chief of the Karaïtes enchased in a golden box, announced very plainly what the master was whom fortune was about to place over the nations of Asia.

Victory was to achieve what treachery, violence, and ingratitude had begun; the arms of Temugin and his lieutenants subdued successively all the hordes whose camps arose between the wall of China and the Volga. Temugin was the all-powerful leader of many millions of shepherds and warriors, impatient to quit their own climate and invade the regions of the south. In order to attach the companions of his victories to his fortunes, he was desirous of reigning by their suffrages, and called together a couraltaï or general diet, in which he was proclaimed sovereign of the Moguls. The ambition of Temugin did not neglect the influence of superstition; he took the title of Gengis, _king of kings_, or _master of the world_, and fame gave out that he had received this pompous title from a prophet who descended from heaven upon a white horse.

Eastern historians have praised Gengiskhan for having given laws to nations he had conquered. These laws, the aim of which was to maintain the peace of families, and to direct the minds of the people towards war, for a length of time retained the obedience and the respect of the Moguls. As Gengiskhan, in his legislation, acknowledged one God, the sovereign of the earth and heaven, and, at the same time, permitted all kinds of creeds, some modern writers have taken occasion to boast of his religious tolerance. But what could be the tolerance of a savage conqueror, who caused himself to be styled the son of the sun, the son of God; who himself followed no worship, and to whom all religions were equally indifferent, provided they crossed neither his ambition nor his pride?

The lieutenants and warriors of Gengiskhan had recognised him with the greater joy, as universal conqueror and master of the earth, from the hopes they entertained of enriching themselves with the spoils of all the nations subdued by his arms. His first enterprises were directed against China, of which empire he had been the vassal. Neither the barrier of the great wall, nor the ascendancy of knowledge and arts, nor the use of gunpowder, said to be then known among the Chinese, was able to defend a flourishing empire against the attacks of a multitude, whom the thirst for booty and a warlike instinct, urged forward to face perils, and rendered invincible.

The wars we have seen in our days, and of which we deplore the calamities, give nothing but a feeble idea of these gigantic invasions, in which many millions of men perished by sword and famine. China experienced twice all the evils inseparable from a war which appeared to be directed by the genius of destruction; and, in the space of a few years, the most ancient and the most powerful kingdom of Asia, covered with blood and ruins, and deprived of half its population, became one of the provinces of the new empire founded by the shepherds of Mogulistan.

The conquest of Carismia soon followed that of China; Carismia was close to the frontiers of the Mogul empire, and, on one side extended to the Gulf of Persia, and on the other, to the limits of India and Turkistan. Gengis learnt that a Tartar caravan and three of his ambassadors had been massacred in one of the cities of the Carismians. It is easy to imagine the effect that this news would produce upon the emperor of the Moguls, who himself compared the anger of kings to the fire of conflagrations, which the lightest wind may light up.[266] After having fasted and prayed, during three days and three nights, upon a mountain, where a hermit announced to him, the second time, the conquest of the whole world, the terrible Gengiskhan commenced his march, at the head of seven hundred thousand Tartars. This army met that of the Carismians on the banks of the Jaxartes; Mahomet, sultan of Carismia, who had several times carried his victorious arms into Turkistan and Persia, commanded the host of the Carismians. The plain in which this battle was fought was covered by twelve hundred thousand combatants; the shock was terrific, the carnage horrible; victory was adverse to Mahomet, who, from that day, together with his family and the whole of his nation, sunk into the lowest abyss of misfortune.

The cities of Otrar, Bochara, Samarcand, Candahar, and Carismia, besieged by an innumerable multitude, fell in turn into the power of the conqueror, and witnessed the extirpation of their garrisons and inhabitants. We cannot suppress a feeling of pity when history presents to us, on one side, an entire population flying from their devastated homes, to seek an asylum in deserts and mountains; and on the other, the family of a powerful monarch dragged into slavery or groaning in exile; and this monarch himself, whose prosperity all Asia had boasted or envied, abandoned by his subjects, and dying with misery and despair in an island of the Caspian Sea.

The army of Gengiskhan returned to Tartary, loaded with the spoils of Carismia: the sovereign of the Moguls[267] appeared to form the desire of governing his conquests in peace; but the world, agitated by his victories, and always eager to throw off his yoke, together with the warlike spirit of his nation, to whom he had afforded a glimpse of the riches of other people, would not permit him again to enjoy repose; he was on the point of undertaking a third expedition against China, which seemed disposed to rebel, when death put an end to his career. Some historians assert that he was struck dead by thunder, as if Heaven had determined itself to crush the instrument of its wrath;[268] others, much more worthy of belief, inform us that the Tartar hero died in his bed, surrounded by his children, to whom he recommended to preserve union among themselves, that they might achieve the conquest of the world. Octaï, the eldest of his sons, succeeded him in the empire, and, according to the custom of the Moguls, the great men assembled and said to him, “We wish, we pray, we command you to accept of entire power over us.” The new emperor answered by this formula, which contains the whole spirit of the despotic governments of the East: “If you desire that I should be your khan, are you resolved to obey me in everything; to come when I shall call you, to go where I shall send you, and to put to death all those I shall command you to kill?” After they had answered “Yes,” he said to them, “Henceforth my simple word shall serve me as a sword.” Such was the government of the Tartars. Octaï was about to reign over an empire composed of several great empires; his brothers and nephews commanded the innumerable armies that had conquered China and Carismia; they governed in his name in the north, in the south, and the east, kingdoms of which the extent was scarcely known; each of his lieutenants was more powerful than the greatest kings of the earth, and all obeyed him as his slaves. For the first time, perhaps, concord was preserved among conquerors; and this monstrous union effected the ruin of all the nations of Asia: Turkistan, Persia, India, the southern provinces of China, which had escaped the ravages of the first invasion, all that remained of the empire of the Abassides and of that of the Seljoucides—all fell before the arms of the redoubtable posterity of Gengiskhan. Many of the sovereigns whom, in these days of disorder and calamity the chance of war hurled from their thrones, had invoked the succour of the Moguls, and favoured the enterprises of that warlike people against neighbouring or rival powers. Fortune enveloped them all in the same ruin, and oriental history compares them to the three dervises whose indiscreet wishes and prayers reanimated, in the desert, the bones of a lion, who sprang up from the bosom of the sand and devoured them.

The conquest of the richest countries of Asia had inflamed the enthusiasm of the Tartars to such a degree, that it would have been impossible for their leaders to confine them within the limits of their own territories, or bring them back to the peaceful labours of pastoral life. Octaï, whether desirous of obeying the paternal instructions, or whether he felt the necessity of employing the restless and turbulent activity of the Moguls, resolved to turn his arms towards the West. Fifteen hundred thousand shepherds or warriors inscribed their names upon the military register; five hundred thousand of the most robust were selected for the great expedition; the others were to remain in Asia, to maintain the submission of the vanquished nations, and complete the conquests commenced by Gengiskhan. Rejoicings, which lasted forty days, preceded the departure of the Mogul army, and were as a signal of the desolation they were about to spread among the countries of Europe.

In their rapid course, the Tartars crossed the Volga, and penetrated, almost without obstacle, into Muscovy, then a prey to the fury of civil war. The devastation of their country, the conflagrations of Kiow and Moscow, and the disgraceful yoke that so long oppressed these northern regions, were the punishments due to the feeble resistance of the Muscovites. After the conquest of Russia, the multitude of Moguls, led by Batou, son of Tuli, directed their victorious course towards Poland and the frontiers of Germany, and repeated, wherever they went, the horrors of Attila and his Huns. The cities of Lublin and Warsaw disappeared on their passage, and they laid waste both shores of the Baltic. In vain the duke of Silesia, the Polish palatines, and the grand master of the Teutonic order, united their forces to arrest the progress of this new scourge of God;[269] the generous defenders of Europe succumbed upon the plains of Lignitz, and nine sacks, filled with human ears, were the trophy of the victory of the barbarians. The Carpathian mountains presented but a feeble barrier to these invincible hordes; and the Tartars soon burst like a fearful tempest over the territories of those Hungarians who, two centuries before, had, like them, quitted the deserts of Scythia, and conquered the fertile banks of the Danube. Bela, king of Hungary, had recently attracted forty thousand families of Comans into his dominions, who betrayed him; the palatines and magnates of the kingdom were divided among themselves, and not even the aspect of danger could induce them to unite or submit themselves to the laws of the monarch. Disobedience, treachery, and discord, delivered the whole kingdom up to the furies of a pitiless enemy; the flocks, the harvests, the entire wealth of the country, became the prey of the Moguls; half the population was exterminated. Of all the cities of Hungary, only three offered an earnest and true resistance, and thus preserved themselves from scenes of carnage and destruction. The shepherds of Scythia, who could not read, have left to the vanquished the task of describing their conquests, and we have great difficulty in crediting the accounts of the old Hungarian chronicles, when they describe the unheard-of cruelties by which the Moguls disgraced their victories;[270] but several provinces entirely depopulated and changed into deserts, the ruins of two thousand churches, fifty destroyed cities, the traditions of these great disasters transmitted from age to age, and the terror that pervaded Europe, are evidences so worthy of faith, that we cannot reject them.

In the general consternation, it is surprising that the Moguls did not direct their arms against the Latin empire of Constantinople, then menaced by the Greeks, and little better than a ruin; but the shepherds of the desert did not employ themselves in inquiries concerning the interior revolutions of states or of the signs of their decay; they preserved, as did all the nations of Asia, a vague and confused idea of the power of the armies of ancient Byzantium, but took little heed whether the moment were come to attack it and conquer it. The great advantages which the imperial city derived from its position between Europe and Asia, did not at all strike the Tartars, who were ignorant of both navigation and commerce, and infinitely preferred rich pastures to the sumptuous edifices of great capitals. Thus we may equally believe, either that the city of Constantine was protected on this occasion by the memories of its past greatness, or that it owed its safety to the contempt and indifference of the barbarians.

The Franks established in Syria enjoyed the same good fortune as the Greeks of Byzantium. The armies of the Moguls had not yet crossed the Euphrates.

Whilst the tumult of war and the fall of empires resounded from the Yellow River to the Danube, the Christians of Palestine, protected by the discords of the Saracens, resumed possession of Jerusalem: they were beginning to repair the walls of the holy city, and rebuild the churches; and thanked Heaven in peace, for having preserved them from the scourges that were devastating the rest of the world. The Tartars were scarcely aware of the existence or the name of a country for which so much blood had been spilt, and were not likely to be attracted to the revered but barren banks of the Jordan, by either the hopes of booty or by the remembrances which excited the warlike enthusiasm of the nations of the West. Happy would it have been for the Christian colonies, if a people, conquered by the Moguls, driven from their own territories, and seeking an asylum everywhere, had not come to disturb their transient security, and plunge the city of Christ into fresh calamities.

After the death of Mahomet, sultan of Carismia, his son Gelaleddin gathered together an army. The valour which he displayed in several battles astonished his enemies, and, for a moment, brought back to his standard the sad remains of his empire; fortune favoured his expeditions into Georgia and India; but at last he forgot the lessons of adversity amidst the intoxication of pleasures; he lost all his conquests, and perished miserably among the Curds, where he had sought refuge. The Carismian warriors, incessantly pursued by the Tartars, abandoned a country they could no longer defend, and, under the command of one of their leaders named Barbakan, spread themselves through Asia Minor and Syria.

These hordes, banished from their own country, marched, sword and torch in hand, and, in their despair, seemed to wish to avenge upon other nations the evils they had suffered from the Tartars. History describes these furious bands, wandering along the banks of the Orontes and the Euphrates, dragging in their train a multitude of men and women that had fallen into their hands; a great number of waggons conveyed the spoils of the ravaged provinces they passed through. The most brave of them ornamented their lances with the hair of those they had immolated in fight. Clothed in the produce of pillage, their army presented a spectacle at once terrific and ridiculous. The Carismian warriors had no resource but in victory, and all the harangues of their leaders consisted of these words: _You will conquer, or you will die_. They gave no quarter to their enemies on the field of battle; when conquered themselves, they submitted to death without a complaint. Their fury spared neither Christians nor Mussulmans; all they met on their passage were their enemies; their approach spread terror everywhere, put the distracted peoples to flight, and changed cities and towns into deserts.

The Mussulman powers of Syria several times united in a league against the Carismians, and drove them back to the other side of the Euphrates. But the spirit of rivalry which at all times divided the princes of the family of Saladin, soon recalled an enemy always redoubtable notwithstanding defeats. At the period of which we are speaking, the princes of Damascus, Carac, and Emessa had just formed an alliance with the Christians of Palestine; they not only restored Jerusalem, Tiberias, and the principality of Galilee to them, but they promised to join them in the conquest of Egypt, a conquest for which the whole of Syria was making preparations. The sultan of Cairo, to avenge himself upon the Christians who had broken the treaties concluded with him, to punish their new allies, and protect himself from their invasion, determined to apply for succour to the hordes of Carismia; and sent deputies to the leaders of these barbarians, promising to abandon Palestine to them, if they subdued it.

This proposition was accepted with joy, and twenty thousand horsemen, animated by a thirst for booty and slaughter, hastened from the further parts of Mesopotamia, disposed to be subservient to the vengeance or anger of the Egyptian monarch. On their march they ravaged the territory of Tripoli and the principality of Galilee, and the flames which everywhere accompanied their steps, announced their arrival to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Fortifications scarcely commenced, and the small number of warriors in the holy city, left not the least hope of being able to repel the unexpected attacks of such a formidable enemy. The whole population of Jerusalem resolved to fly, under the guidance of the knights of the Hospital and the Temple. There only remained in the city the sick and a few inhabitants who could not make their minds up to abandon their homes and their infirm kindred. The Carismians soon arrived, and having destroyed a few intrenchments that had been made in their route, they entered Jerusalem sword in hand, massacred all they met, and as, amidst a deserted city the conquerors found no victims to glut their vengeance with, they had recourse to a most odious stratagem to lure back the inhabitants who had taken flight. They raised the standards of the cross upon every tower, and set all the bells ringing. The crowd of Christians who were retiring towards Jaffa, marched on in silence, and advanced but slowly, constantly hoping that Heaven would be touched by their misery, and, by some miracle, lead them back to the homes they had quitted: from time to time, their eyes involuntarily turned towards the holy city. All at once they saw the banners of the Cross unfurled, and the sound of the sacred brass, which every day called them to prayers, resounded in their ears. The news soon spread that either the barbarians had marched their army in another direction, or that they had been repulsed by the Christians who were left in the city. They became soon persuaded that God had taken pity on his people, and would not permit the city of Christ to be defiled by the presence of a sacrilegious horde. Seven thousand fugitives, deceived by this hope, returned to Jerusalem and gave themselves up to the fury of the Carismians, who put them all to the sword. Torrents of blood flowed through the streets and along the roads. A troop of nuns, children, and aged people, who had sought refuge in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, were massacred at the foot of the altars. The Carismians finding nothing among the living to satisfy their fury, burst open the sepulchres, and gave the coffins and remains of the dead up to the flames; the tomb of Christ, that of Godfrey of Bouillon, the sacred relics of the martyrs and heroes of the faith, nothing was respected, and Jerusalem then witnessed within its walls such cruelties and profanations as had never taken place in the most barbarous wars, or in days marked by the anger of God.[271]

In the mean time, the grand masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers, assembled with the patriarch of Jerusalem and the nobles of the kingdom, in Ptolemaïs, endeavoured to devise means by which the Carismians might be repulsed and Palestine saved. All the inhabitants of Tyre, Sidon, Ptolemaïs, and other Christian cities, able to bear arms, repaired to their standards. The princes of Damascus, Carac, and Emessa, whose assistance the Christians implored, united their forces, and assembled an army to stop the progress of the general devastation. This Mussulman army soon arrived in Palestine. Its appearance before the walls of Ptolemaïs raised the courage of the Franks, who, in so pressing a danger, appeared to have no repugnance to fight in company with the infidels. Almansor, prince of Emessa, who commanded the Mussulman warriors, had recently signalized his valour against the hordes of Carismia. The Christians took pleasure in relating his victories in the plains of Aleppo, and on the banks of the Euphrates. He was received in Palestine as a liberator, and carpets bordered with gold and silk were spread upon his passage. “The people,” says Joinville, “considered him as one of _the best barons of paganism_.”

The preparations of the Christians, the zeal and ardour of the military orders, the barons, and prelates; the union that subsisted between the Franks and their new allies, altogether seemed to form a presage of success in a war undertaken in the names of religion, humanity, and patriotism. The Christian and Mussulman armies, united under the same banners, set out from Ptolemaïs, and encamped upon the plains of Ascalon. The army of the Carismians advanced towards Gaza, where they were to receive provisions and reinforcements sent by the sultan of Egypt. The Franks became impatient to meet their enemies, and to avenge the deaths of their companions and brethren massacred at Jerusalem. A council was called, to deliberate upon the best mode of proceeding. The prince of Emessa and the more wise among the barons thought it not prudent to expose the safety of the Christians and their allies to the risk of a battle. It appeared to them most advisable to occupy an advantageous position, and wait, without giving battle, till the natural inconstancy of the Carismians, want of provisions, or discord, might assist in dispersing this vagabond multitude, or lead them into other countries.

Most of the other chiefs, among whom was the patriarch of Jerusalem, did not agree with this opinion, and could see nothing in the Carismians but an undisciplined horde that it would be very easy to conquer and put to flight: any delay in attacking them would only raise their pride and redouble their audacity. Every day the evils of war were increasing; humanity and the safety of the Christian colonies required that they should promptly put an end to so many devastations, and that they should make haste to chastise the brigands, whose presence was at once an opprobrium and a calamity for the Christians, and all the allies of the Christians.

This opinion, too congenial with the impatient valour of the Franks, prevailed in the council. It was resolved to march, and offer the enemy battle.

The two armies met in the country of the ancient Philistines. Some years before, the duke of Burgundy and the king of Navarre, surprised in the sandy plains of Gaza, had lost the best of their knights and soldiers. Neither the sight of places where the Crusaders had been defeated, nor the remembrance of their recent disaster, diminished the imprudent ardour of the Christian warriors; as soon as they perceived the enemy, they were eager for the signal for battle. The Christian army was divided into three bodies; the left wing, in which were the knights of St. John, was commanded by Gauthier de Brienne, count of Jaffa, nephew to king John, and son of that Gauthier who died at the conquest of Naples. The Mussulman troops, under the orders of the prince of Emessa, formed the right wing. The patriarch of Jerusalem, surrounded by his clergy, with the wood of the true cross borne before him, the grand master of the Templars with his knights, and the barons of Palestine with their vassals, occupied the centre of the army.

The Carismians formed their line of battle slowly, and some degree of disorder was observable in their ranks. Gauthier de Brienne was anxious to profit by this circumstance and attack them with advantage; but the patriarch restrained his valour by a severity not less contrary to the interests of the Christians than to the spirit of the Gospel.[272]

The count of Jaffa, having been excommunicated for detaining in his hands a castle to which the prelate laid claim, asked, before he commenced the encounter in which he might lose his life, to be relieved from his excommunication. The patriarch twice rejected his prayer, and refused to absolve him. The army, which had received the benedictions of the priests and bishops, arising from their knees, awaited in silence the signal for battle. The Carismians had formed their line and advanced, uttering loud cries and discharging a cloud of arrows. Then the bishop of Rama, in complete armour, impatient to signalize his bravery against the enemies of the Christians, approached the count of Jaffa, exclaiming, “Let us march,—the patriarch is wrong: I absolve you, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” After having pronounced these words, the intrepid bishop of Rama and Gauthier de Brienne, followed by his companions in arms, rushed amidst the ranks of the enemy, burning to obtain victory or the crown of martyrdom.

The two armies were soon generally engaged, and mingled on the field of battle. The ardour to conquer was equal on both sides; neither the Christians nor their enemies could be ignorant that a single defeat must cause their ruin, and that their only safety was in victory. On this account, the annals of war present no example of a more murderous and obstinate contest; the battle began with the dawn, and only ended at sunset. On the following morning fighting was renewed with the same fury; the prince of Emessa, after having lost two thousand of his horsemen, abandoned the field of battle, and fled towards Damascus. This retreat of the Mussulmans decided the victory in favour of the Carismians; the Christians for a long time sustained the repeated shocks of the enemy; but at length, exhausted by fatigue and overwhelmed by a multitude, almost all were either killed or taken prisoners. This sanguinary battle cost life or liberty to more than thirty thousand Christian and Mussulman warriors; the prince of Tyre, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and some of the prelates, with great difficulty escaped the slaughter, and retired to Ptolemaïs. Among the warriors who regained the Christian cities, there were only thirty-three knights of the Temple, twenty-six Hospitallers, and three Teutonic knights.

When the news of this victory reached Egypt, it created a universal joy; it was announced to the people by sound of drums and trumpets; the sultan ordered public rejoicings throughout the provinces, and all the public edifices of the capital were illumined during three nights. In a short time the prisoners arrived at Cairo, mounted on camels, and pursued by the insulting clamours of the multitude. Before their arrival, the heads of their companions and brethren killed at the battle of Gaza were exhibited on the walls. This horrible monument of their defeat foreboded all they had to fear for themselves from the barbarity of the conquerors. They were cast into dungeons, where they were abandoned to the mercies of cruel gaolers, and where they had the melancholy satisfaction of embracing the barons and knights made prisoners in the last crusade.

Whilst all Egypt was celebrating the victory of Gaza, the inhabitants of Palestine deplored the death and captivity of their bravest warriors. As long is any hope existed of conquering the Carismians with the assistance of the Mussulmans of Syria, their alliance had created neither mistrust nor scruple; but reverses quickly revived prejudices; the last disaster was attributed to divine justice, irritated by having seen the banners of Christ mingled with those of Mahomet. On the other hand, the Mussulmans believed they had betrayed the cause of Islamism by allying themselves with the Christians; the aspect of the cross on the field of battle awakened their fanaticism and diminished their zeal for a cause which appeared to be that of their enemies. At the moment of beginning the fight, the prince of Emessa was heard to pronounce these words: “I am armed for battle, and yet God tells me, in the depths of my heart, that we shall not be victorious, because we have sought the friendship of the Franks.”

The victory of the Carismians delivered up the greater part of Palestine to the most redoubtable enemies of the Christian colonies. The Egyptians took possession of Jerusalem, Tiberias, and the cities ceded to the Franks by the prince of Damascus. The hordes of Carismia ravaged all the banks of the Jordan, with the territories of Ascalon and Ptolemaïs, and laid siege to Jaffa. They dragged the unfortunate Gauthier de Brienne in their train, hoping that he would cause a city that belonged to him to open its gates to them: this model of Christian heroes was fastened to a cross before the walls. Whilst thus exposed to the eyes of his faithful vassals, the Carismians loaded him with insults, and threatened him with instant death if the city of Jaffa offered the least resistance. Gauthier, braving death, exhorted the inhabitants and the garrison, with a loud voice. to defend themselves to the last extremity. “Your duty,” cried he, “is to defend a Christian city; mine is to die for you and Jesus Christ.” The city of Jaffa did not fall into the hands of the Carismians, and Gauthier soon received the reward of his generous devotedness. Sent to the sultan of Cairo, he perished beneath the brutal blows of a furious mob, and thus obtained the palm of martyrdom for which he had wished.

In the mean time, fortune, or rather the inconstancy of the barbarians, came to the assistance of the Franks, and delivered Palestine from the presence of an enemy nothing could resist. The sultan of Cairo sent robes of honour and magnificent presents to the leaders of the victorious hordes, proposing to them to crown their exploits by directing their arms against the city of Damascus. The Carismians immediately laid siege to the capital of Syria. Damascus, which had been hastily fortified, was able to oppose but a very slight resistance to their impetuous attacks. Having no hope of succour, they opened their gates, and acknowledged the domination of the sultan of Egypt. It was then that the Carismians, inflated by their victory, demanded, in a menacing tone, that the lands that had been promised to them in Palestine should immediately be given up to them. The sultan of Cairo, who dreaded such neighbours, attempted to defer the fulfilment of his promise. In the fury which his refusal created, the barbarians offered their services to the prince whom they had just despoiled of his states, and laid fresh siege to Damascus, in order to deprive the Egyptians of it. The garrison and the inhabitants defended themselves with obstinacy; the fear of falling into the hands of a pitiless enemy supplying the place of courage. All the evils that war brings in her train, even famine itself, appeared to them a less terrible scourge than the hordes assembled under their ramparts.

The sultan of Egypt sent an army to assist the city, which was augmented by the troops of Aleppo and of several of the principalities of Syria. The Carismians were conquered in two battles. After this double defeat, Oriental history scarcely mentions their name, or furnishes us with means of following their track. The greater part of those that escaped the sword perished with hunger and misery in the countries they had devastated; the most brave and the best disciplined went to seek an asylum in the states of the sultan of Iconium: and if faith can be given to the conjectures of some historians,[273] they were the obscure origin of the powerful dynasty of the Ottomans.

The Christians of Palestine must have been grateful to Heaven for the destruction of the Carismians; but the loss of Jerusalem and the defeat of Gaza could not permit them to indulge in many joyful sensations. They had lost their allies, and could reckon upon nothing but enemies among the Mussulmans. The sultan of Egypt, whose alliance they had rejected, was extending his dominions in Syria, and his power became every day more formidable. The cities which the Christians still retained on the coasts of the sea were almost all without defenders. The orders of St. John and the Temple had offered the sultan of Cairo a considerable sum for the ransom of his prisoners; but the sultan refused to listen to their ambassadors, and threatened them with all the terrors of his wrath: these two bodies, formerly so much dreaded by the Mussulmans, were no longer able to serve the cause of the Christians with any advantage, and were compelled to wait, in a state of inaction, till the warlike nobility of Europe should come to replace the knights held in captivity by the infidels, or swept away on the field of battle. The emperor of Germany made not the least effort to save the wreck of his feeble kingdom; he had sent several warriors to protect his rights in Ptolemaïs; but as these rights were not recognised, the presence of the imperial troops only added to the other scourges that desolated the Holy Land, that of discord and civil war.

Palestine, threatened every day with a fresh invasion, could not entertain the smallest hope of being succoured by the other Christian states of the East. The Comans, a barbarous people from the confines of Tartary, and who surpassed the hordes of Carismia in ferocity, ravaged the banks of the Orontes, and submitted everything in the principality of Antioch to fire and sword; the king of Armenia was in dread, at the same time, of the ravages of the Tartars, and of the aggressions of the Turks in Asia Minor; the kingdom of Cyprus, a prey to factions, had recently been the theatre of a civil war, and had reason to fear the incursions of the Mussulman nations of Syria and Egypt. In this deplorable situation, it might be believed that the kingdom of Godfrey was on the eve of perishing entirely, and that all that remained of the Christians in the Holy Land would soon share the fate of the Carismians. But, on turning their eyes towards the West, the Franks of Palestine again felt their hopes and their courage revive; more than once the Christian states of Syria had owed their safety, and even a few days of prosperity and glory, to the excess of their abasement and misery. Their groans and complaints were seldom heard in vain by the warlike nations of Europe, and their extreme distress became almost always the signal for a new crusade, the very report of which was enough to make the Saracens tremble.

Valeran, bishop of Berytus, had been sent into the West to solicit the protection of the pope and the assistance of princes and warriors. The pope received the envoy of the Christians with kindness, and promised his succour to the Holy Land. But the West was at that period agitated by troubles: the quarrel that had broken out between the Holy See and the emperor of Germany was carried on with an animosity that disgraced both religion and humanity. Frederick II. exercised all sorts of violences against the court of Rome and the partisans of the sovereign pontiff; the pope, every day more irritated, invoked the arms of the Christians against his enemy, and promised the indulgences of the crusade to all who would minister to his anger.

On another side, the Latins established at Constantinople were environed by the greatest perils. The emperor Baldwin II., after having conducted a feeble reinforcement to his capital, had returned into the West, and was, the second time, soliciting the alms and the succours of the faithful to sustain the deplorable remains of his empire, exposed, almost without defence, to the attacks of the Greeks and Bulgarians. At the same time, the Tartars continued to ravage the banks of the Danube, and threaten Germany; their barbarous exploits had carried terror to the very extremities of Europe; everywhere the excited imagination of nations represented these terrible conquerors as monsters vomited up by hell, clothed in hideous forms, and endowed with strength against which no man was able to contend. The deficiency of communication, which did not allow of exact information as to their march, gave birth to the most frightful rumours. Fame declared at one time they were invading Italy, and immediately afterwards, that they were ravaging the banks of the Rhine; every nation dreaded their prompt arrival, every city believed they were at its gates.

It was amidst this general disorder and consternation, that Innocent IV., a refugee at Lyons, resolved to convoke an œcumenic council in that city, to remedy the evils that desolated Christendom in both the East and the West.[274] The sovereign pontiff, in his letters addressed to the faithful, exposed the deplorable situation of the Romish Church, and conjured the bishops to come around him, and enlighten him with their counsels. The patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Aquilæa, a great number of prelates and doctors, with several secular princes, responded to the invitation of the head of the Church. Among the crowd of bishops, one alone seemed to attract general attention; this was the bishop of Berytus; his presence, and the grief impressed upon his brow, reminded the assembly of all the misfortunes of the Holy Land. Baldwin II., emperor of Byzantium, created very little less notice; and his suppliant attitude but too plainly showed what the empire founded by the sixth crusade had become.

Most of the Western monarchs had sent their ambassadors to this assembly, in which the safety and the great interests of the Christian world were about to be discussed. Frederick in particular, who had so long been the object of the anger of the sovereign pontiff, neglected nothing to turn aside the thunders suspended over his head, and ministers invested with his confidence were commissioned to defend him before the fathers of the council. Among the deputies of the emperor of Germany, history names Pierre Desvignes, who had written, in the name of Frederick, eloquent letters to all the sovereigns of Europe, to complain of the tyranny exercised by the Holy See; and Thadæus of Suesse, who was not prevented by the profession of arms from employing the arts of eloquence, or fathoming the depths of the study of laws. The latter had often served his master with glory amidst the perils of war, but he had never had an opportunity of showing so much firmness, courage, and devotion as in this assembly, in which the court of Rome was about to put forth all its power and realize all its threats.

Before the opening of the council, the pope held a congregation in the monastery of St. Just, where he had chosen to fix his residence. The patriarch of Constantinople exposed the deplorable state of his church: heresy had resumed its empire in a great part of Greece, and the enemies of the Latin church were advancing to the very gates of Constantinople; the bishop of Berytus read a letter, in which the patriarch of Jerusalem and the barons and prelates of Palestine described the ravages of the Carismians, and showed that the heritage of Christ was upon the point of becoming the prey of the barbarians, if the West did not take arms for its defence. The dangers and misfortunes of the Christians of the East affected the fathers of the council deeply. Thadæus, taking advantage of their emotion, announced that the emperor, his master, fully partook of their profound grief, and that he was ready to employ all his powers for the defence of Christendom. Frederick promised to arrest the progress of the irruption of the Tartars, to re-establish the domination of the Latins in Greece, to go in person to the Holy Land, and to deliver the kingdom of Jerusalem; he still further promised, in order to put an end to all divisions, to restore to the Holy See all he had taken from it, and to repair all wrongs offered to the sovereign pontiff. Such lofty promises, made by the most powerful monarch of Christendom, created as much joy as surprise in the greater part of the bishops; the whole assembly appeared impatient to know what would be the reply of Innocent. The pope proved inflexible, and rejected with scorn propositions, as he said, already made several times, and which had no other guarantee but the too suspicious loyalty of Frederick. He was determined to view the new protestations of the emperor as nothing but a fresh artifice to deceive the Church, and turn aside the course of its justice. “_The axe_,” added he, “_is already lifted, and ready to cut the roots of the tree_;” words very ill assorted with the charity of the Gospel, and which plainly show that Innocent had prepared the solemn pomp of a council with less purpose to oppose the foes of Christendom than to prepare the fall, and consummate the ruin of his personal enemy.

The pope held this preparatory sitting in order to make a trial of his strength, and to become acquainted with the dispositions of the bishops. A few days afterwards, the council was opened with great solemnity in the metropolitan church of St. John; the sovereign pontiff, wearing the tiara, and clothed in pontifical robes, was placed upon an elevated seat, having on his right hand the emperor of Constantinople, and on his left the count of Provence and the count of Thoulouse. After having given out the _Veni Creator_, and invoked enlightenment from the Holy Ghost, he pronounced a discourse, for the subject of which he took the five griefs with which he was afflicted, and compared them to the five wounds of the Saviour of the world upon the cross. The first was the irruption of the Tartars; the second, the schism of the Greeks; the third, the invasion of the Holy Land by the Carismians; the fourth, the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline and the progress of heresy; and the fifth, the persecution he endured from Frederick.

Whilst describing the misfortunes of Christendom, the pontiff could not restrain his tears. His voice, if we may believe a contemporary historian, was often stifled by sobs; he conveyed to all hearts the sentiments by which he was affected; but he soon abandoned the language of compassion and despair, and assumed that of anger and menace. The Tartars, the Carismians, and the Mussulmans, inspired him with less hatred than the emperor of Germany, and it was for this prince he reserved all the thunders of his eloquence. He reproached him, in the most vehement expressions, with all the crimes that could draw upon his head the maledictions of his age, the hatred of his contemporaries, and the contempt of posterity. When the pope had pronounced his discourse, a profound silence reigned throughout the assembly; it appeared to the greater part of the terrified bishops that the voice of Heaven had made itself heard for the purpose of condemning Frederick: all eyes were turned upon the deputies of the emperor, and no one could believe that either of them would dare to reply to the interpreter of the anger of Heaven. All at once Thadæus of Suesse arose, and addressed the council, calling upon God, who searches all hearts, to witness that the emperor was faithful to all his promises, and had never ceased to endeavour to serve the cause of the Christians. He combated all the accusations of the sovereign pontiff, and in his reply did not hesitate to allege numerous complaints against the court of Rome.[275] The angry pope replied from his lofty throne; he again accused the emperor, and evinced but too great a desire to find him guilty: the first sitting of the council, entirely occupied with these violent debates, exhibited the unedifying spectacle of a contest between the head of the faithful, who accused a Christian prince of perjury, felony, heresy, and sacrilege; and the minister of an emperor, who reproached the court of Rome with having exercised an odious despotism, and committed revolting iniquities.

This contest, the results of which were likely to prove equally injurious to the head of the Church and the head of the Empire, was prolonged during several days; it doubtless scandalized all those that the pope had not associated with him in his resentments, and most of the bishops must have been afflicted at being thus diverted from the principal object of the convocation.

At length, however, the calamities of the Eastern Christians, the captivity of Jerusalem, and the dangers of Byzantium engaged the attention of the fathers of the council. The pope and the assembly of prelates decided that a new crusade should be preached for the deliverance of the Holy Land and the Latin empire of Constantinople. They renewed all the privileges granted to Crusaders by preceding popes and councils, as well as all the penalties directed against such as should favour either pirates or Saracens: during three years all who should take the cross would be exempted from every kind of tax or public office; but if after taking the vow they did not perform it, they incurred excommunication. The council recommended to the barons and knights to reform the luxury of their tables and the splendour of their dress; they advised all the faithful, and particularly ecclesiastics, to practise works of charity, and to arm themselves with all the austerities of penitence against the enemies of God. In order to obtain the protection of Heaven by the intercession of the Holy Virgin, the pope and the fathers of the council ordered that the octave of the Nativity should be celebrated in the church. In several councils Christian knights had been forbidden to take part in the profane solemnities of tournaments; the council of Lyon renewed the prohibition, persuaded that these military festivals might turn aside the minds of the warriors from the pious thoughts of the crusades, and that the expenses they occasioned would render it impossible for the bravest of the lords and barons to make the necessary preparations for the pilgrimage beyond the seas. The council ordered that the clergy should pay the twentieth part of their revenue, and the sovereign pontiff and cardinals the tenth of theirs, to provide for the expenses of the holy war. Half of the revenues of all non-resident benefices was specially reserved for the assistance of the empire of Constantinople. The decrees of the council ordered all whose mission it was to preach the word of God, to urge princes, counts, barons, and the corporations of cities, to contribute to the extent of their power to the success of the holy war; the same statutes recommended the clergy to show to the faithful that sacrifices offered to the crusade were the surest means of redeeming their sins; but above all they recommended the clergy to excite the faithful, in the tribunal of penitence, to multiply their offerings, or at least to bequeath in their testaments something for the assistance of the Christians of the East.

It was thus the council declared war against nations opposed to the Christians, and prepared means for assuring the triumphs of the soldiers of Christ. We are nevertheless surprised that the pope said nothing about preaching a crusade against the Tartars, whose invasion he had compared to one of the wounds of the Saviour on the cross. In the state of desolation in which Hungary was then placed, none of the bishops of that unfortunate kingdom had been able to appear at the council, and no friendly voice was raised to direct attention to, or implore favour for the Hungarian nation. The Tartars, it is true, repulsed by the duke of Neustadt, had fallen back from the banks of the Danube; but there was great reason to dread their return: to prevent fresh invasions, the council contented itself with advising the Germans to dig ditches and build walls on the roads the Tartarian hordes were likely to take. These measures, which even then must have been known to be insufficient, assist us at the present day in forming an opinion of the spirit of improvidence and blindness which then presided over political councils. Who can fail to be surprised at seeing, in an assembly so grave as a council, Europe pressed to lavish its treasures and sacrifice its armies for the deliverance of Constantinople and Jerusalem, whilst the most redoubtable of the barbarians were at their doors, and threatening to invade their own territories?

We may, however, remark, that Frederick himself had solicited the powers of Europe to assist him in repelling the Tartars; and the pope took much less interest in succouring the empire than he did in endeavouring to wrest it from Frederick. Innocent seemed very little disposed to set an example of that spirit of concord and charity which the council had just recommended to Christian princes; history can but deplore the zeal and ardour he evinced in carrying out his projects of vengeance against the emperor of Germany, at the risk of arousing evil passions, of perpetuating discord, and thus giving up the West to the invasion of the barbarians. In the second sitting of the council he was preparing to crush his enemy and completely overwhelm him with the weight of ecclesiastical power, when Thadæus of Suesse demanded a delay of a few days, to allow the emperor to come in person to justify his conduct and demonstrate his loyalty. The defender of Frederick hoped that the presence of a powerful monarch, by awakening in the minds of the assembly the respect due to the majesty of kings, would bring about the triumph of justice. The pope consented, though very unwillingly, to defer the accomplishment of his menaces; but the emperor could not condescend to appear as a suppliant before an assembly convoked by the most implacable of his enemies: he did not come to the council, and when the required period of delay had expired, the sovereign pontiff took advantage of his absence to reproach him afresh with his bad faith, and his resistance to the laws of the Church.

At the moment in which the assembly of the bishops tremblingly awaited the terrible sentence, the English ambassadors arose to complain of the agents of the court of Rome, whose ambition and avarice were ruining the kingdom of England; they at the same time protested against the feudal supremacy which the pope, in consequence of a cession made by King John, pretended to exercise over the English monarchy and nation. These claims could not restrain the ever-boiling anger of the sovereign pontiff. In vain Thadæus again rose to urge that a great number of bishops were absent—that several princes had not sent their ambassadors to the council; in vain he declared that he should appeal from this to a more numerous and more solemn council; nothing could turn aside the storm or retard the hour of vengeance. Innocent at first replied with moderation to the deputies of England, and even to those of Frederick; but soon assuming the tone of a judge and a master, “I am,” said he, “the vicar of Jesus Christ; all that which I shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, according to the promises of the Son of God made to the prince of the apostles; and therefore, after having deliberated upon it with our brethren the cardinals, and with the council, I declare Frederick attainted and convicted of sacrilege and heresy, to be excommunicated and degraded from the empire; I absolve from their oaths, for ever, all who have sworn fidelity to him; I forbid any, under pain of excommunication incurred by that single fault, to henceforth yield him obedience; to conclude, I command the electors to elect another emperor, and I reserve to myself the right of disposing of the kingdom of Sicily.”

During the reading of this sentence, the pope and the prelates held lighted wax tapers in their hands, and bent towards the earth in sign of malediction and anathema. The envoys of Frederick retired filled with confusion and despair; Thadæus of Suesse was heard to pronounce these words of the Scripture: “_O terrible day! O day of anger and calamity!_” A deep and melancholy silence prevailed throughout this assembly, into the bosom of which it appeared as if the bolts of heaven had just fallen amidst awful peals. The pope alone appeared collected, and his countenance was radiant with joy; he gave out the _Te Deum_, as if he had obtained a victory over the infidels, and declared that the council had terminated its labours.

Such was the council of Lyons, too celebrated in the annals of the middle ages, which has frequently supplied the enemies of religion with a pretext for attacking the judgments of the Church. The pope in his opening discourse had deplored the progress of heresy; but always more eager to combat the enemies of his power than those of religion, he did not propose a single measure to arrest the progress of the new errors. In this council, which had no tendency to the enlightenment of the faithful, the majesty of kings was violently outraged; all the maxims of the rights of nations, and all the precepts of scriptural charity were in it trampled under foot. When Innocent announced the intention of deposing the emperor, not a single bishop raised his voice to divert the sovereign pontiff from this revolting use of his power. The real wrongs that Frederick had committed against the Church; the remembrance of the persecutions he had exercised towards several bishops; the intention which they believed he entertained of plundering the clergy; the threatening language and tone of the pope; that invincible influence under which all feel themselves in a numerous assembly—all assisted in preventing any of the bishops from pleading the cause of reason or recalling the maxims of the Gospel to the mind of the enraged pontiff. Nevertheless the fathers of the council, whatever might be their prejudices or their resentments, did not take part in all the fury of Innocent, and did not actively assist in carrying out his acts of injustice and violence.

The pope did not appeal to their wisdom, and seemed afraid to ask their opinions. Without repeating here that which has frequently been said in schools of theology, impartial history must disapprove of the silent neutrality of the council; but it must at the same time assert that the odious decree against Frederick was not an act of the Church; that the bishops and prelates did not give their formal approbation to it; and that the shame of this great iniquity fails entirely upon the memory of Innocent.[276]

It was at this deplorable period that the cardinals, by order of the pope, clothed themselves for the first time in the scarlet robe, a symbol of persecution, and a sad presage of the blood that was about to flow. Frederick was at Turin when he heard of his condemnation; at this news he called for his imperial crown, and placing it upon his head, exclaimed in a loud and angry voice, “There it is, and before it shall be wrested from me, my enemies shall well know the terror of my arms; let this pontiff tremble, who has broken every tie that bound me to him; he at length permits me henceforth to listen to nothing but the dictates of my just anger.” These threatening words announced a formidable contest, and every friend of peace must have been seized with terror: the fury which animated the emperor and the pope quickly passed into the minds of the people; in the provinces of Germany and Italy all flew to arms. Amidst the agitation in which the West was then plunged, it is probable that Jerusalem and the Holy Land would have been quite forgotten, if a powerful and highly-revered monarch had not placed himself at the head of the crusade which had been proclaimed in the council of Lyons.

The preceding year, at the very moment the nations of the West heard of the last misfortunes of Palestine, Louis IX. of France fell dangerously