Part 2 (1/2)

34. At this crisis, while Noureddin, the Sultan of Aleppo, and Amalric, the Christian King of Jerusalem, were the rival powers in Syria, occurred a circ.u.mstance which exercised considerable influence on the subsequent course of events, and which makes necessary a retrospective glance.

35. At the time of the first crusade Palestine was the scene of a violent contest between the Turks, who had poured down from the North, conquering as they went, and the Fatimites of Egypt, who had possessed Syria for nearly a century. The Turks had at first been irresistible.

The Fatimites, however, had been able to recover Jerusalem from the hands of their enemies, and held it when besieged by the Christians.

Interrupted in their conflict with each other for the sovereignty of Palestine, the Fatimites and Turks turned their arms with one accord against the invader. In the person of Noureddin the Turkish power was now increasing. The Fatimite dynasty of Egypt, meanwhile, had long been showing signs of decay, the caliphs having become mere tools in the hands of their viziers. In 1163 one of these viziers, Shawer, finding himself expelled from his post by a rival, sought refuge at the court of Aleppo, and applied to the sultan for a.s.sistance.

Noureddin eagerly embraced an opportunity for obtaining a footing in Egypt, and sent two persons, Chyrkouh and his nephew Saladin, to displace the usurping vizier and re-establish Shawer. They, however, usurped the government, and Shawer applied to the King of Jerusalem, Amalric, for a.s.sistance. Amalric in turn attempted usurpation, and again the officers of Noureddin came to the aid of Shawer. The vizier paid the penalty of his fickleness by losing his head, and his post was occupied by Chyrkouh, who, while ruling Egypt as a vizier of the Fatimite caliph, was in reality the lieutenant of Noureddin.

36. On the death of Chyrkouh, Saladin was appointed to the viziers.h.i.+p.

The caliph fancied that he would now regain the control of his own dominions, but he little knew the character of his new vizier. Saladin soon effected a revolution in Egypt, declared the Fatimite dynasty to be at an end, and subjected the country once more to the nominal authority of the Bagdad caliphs, whom Noureddin professed to reverence as the supreme heads of the Mohammedan Empire. Nor did he stop here.

He soon showed a disposition to shake off the supremacy of Noureddin, and the sultan of Aleppo was marching into Egypt to vindicate his authority, when he suddenly died in the year 1171.

37. Saladin now saw the great obstacle to his ambition removed, and began to aim at realizing those schemes of sovereignty which Noureddin had projected. The state of the Christian kingdom during the ten or twelve years which followed directly favored his plans. Civil dissensions arose which the keen eye of Saladin discovered, and, already master of all Syria, he resolved to complete his greatness by the conquest of Palestine. Accordingly, when in the year 1157 it was known that he was on his march against Jerusalem, the Christian crusaders saw the necessity of abandoning their dissensions and uniting cordially against the invader. Town after town surrendered to the victorious Saracen, and, in October, 1187, Jerusalem itself, after fourteen days' defense, was obliged to submit to his mercy. The conduct of Saladin on this occasion was more generous than might have been expected. A moderate ransom was fixed for every individual, on the payment of which he was at liberty to remove with his goods to whatever place he chose. To the Christian ladies, Saladin's conduct was courteous in the extreme, so that it became a remark among the Latins of Palestine that Saladin was a barbarian only in name.

38. Thus, after ninety years, was the Holy City again inhabited by the infidel, and all the fruits of the first crusade lost, as it seemed to the world. Saladin now possessed the whole of Palestine, with the single exception of the city of Tyre, which was gallantly defended by Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat.

39. The epidemic frenzy which had been gradually cooling was now extinct, or nearly so, and the nations of Europe looked with cold indifference upon the armaments of their princes. But chivalry was now in all its glory, and it continued to supply armies for the Holy Land.

Poetry more than religion inspired the Third Crusade. The knights and their retainers listened with delight to the martial and amatory strains of the ministrels, minnesingers, and troubadors. Men fought not so much for the holy sepulchre as to gain glory for themselves in the best and only field where glory could be obtained. They fought not as zealots, but as soldiers, not for religion, but for honor.

40. The first to take the field was the ill.u.s.trious German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. Marching from Ratisbon at the bead of a magnificent army in 1189, he fought his way through the Greek dominions, advanced through Asia Minor, conquering as he went, and was already on the borders of Palestine, when, imprudently bathing, he was cut off in the seventieth year of his age. His army suffered greatly from the difficulties of their march and the attacks of the Saracens.

The wrecks of it under Frederick's son, the Duke of Swabia, proved a most valuable reinforcement to the Christians in Syria, who had by this time rallied and combined against the domination of Saladin, laying siege to the city of Acre on the sea-coast, a town of so much importance that the possession of it was considered almost equivalent to being master of the whole country.

41. Upon this siege, commenced in August, 1189, was concentrated all the force at the command of the Christians in Palestine, the remnants of the two great military orders the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers, the survivors of Frederick's army, together with such bodies of crusaders as were continually arriving from Europe by sea.

Guy de Lusignan was the commander of the besieging forces, and so skillfully was his army fortified that Saladin was unable to dislodge him. For two-and-twenty months the siege continued, and many engagements had taken place between the Christian army and that of Saladin, which occupied the mountains to the south, but without visible advantage on either side.

42. Such was the position of affairs when, early in the summer of 1191, Philip, of France, and Richard Coeur de Lion, of England, arrived with their fleets. The struggle was soon over, and on the 12th of July, 1191, Acre surrendered to the Christians. Had the crusaders been united among themselves, the fall of this city might have been but preliminary to the recovery of the whole country. The rivalry of the kings of France and England, however, prevented their cordial co-operation, and, not long after the capture of Acre, Philip ruined the cause of the crusade by returning to Europe.

43. After gaining many important successes against Saladin, and earning for himself the reputation of the most valiant knight of the age, Richard, involved in disputes with the other chiefs of the crusade, and anxious to revisit England, where his presence was becoming daily more necessary, was glad to conclude an honorable peace. Saladin, on his part, was equally willing to end a struggle which had cost him so much. A truce was concluded for three years and eight months, during which Christian pilgrims were to enjoy the liberty of visiting Jerusalem without hindrance.

44. Saladin entertained many Christians in his own palace, from which they returned, their tongues laden with praises of the n.o.ble infidel.

Richard and Saladin never met, but each admired the prowess and n.o.bleness of soul of his rival.

45. The Christians and Moslems no longer looked upon each other as barbarians, to whom mercy was a crime. Each host entertained the highest admiration for the bravery and magnanimity of the other, and in their occasional truces met upon the most friendly terms. When Richard, the lion-hearted king of England, lay in his tent consumed by a fever, there came into the camp camels laden with snow, sent by his enemy, the Sultan Saladin, to a.s.suage his disease, the homage of one brave soldier to another. But, when Richard was returning to England, it was by a Christian prince that he was treacherously seized and secretly confined.

46. It was on the 25th of October, 1192, that Richard set sail for Europe. Forced by stress of weather to land at Zara, he made the attempt to journey through the continent, and was arrested and held a prisoner while pa.s.sing through the dominions of his enemy and former fellow-crusader, the archduke of Austria, and remained in prison in Vienna for several months. He returned to England in 1194, and died in 1199. His great antagonist, Saladin, had died in 1193, not long after the Christian armies left Palestine. At the end of the crusade, the Crescent waved as defiantly as ever over the land of Israel.

THE FOURTH CRUSADE.

47. The fourth crusade, from 1195 to 1198, led by Henry VI of Germany, was equally a failure. There were gained some brilliant victories, but dissensions divided the armies, and at last a truce was made with the Mohammedans. It is true that these victories made the crusaders masters of the sea-coast, but, when the armies departed, the Christian king found himself in possession of cities which he was unable to garrison, and which he felt would be held only by the sufferance of the enemy.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE.

48. In the year 1203 a new crusade was set on foot, commanded by several of the most powerful n.o.bles of Italy and France. Instead of marching at once against the infidels, the crusaders suffered themselves to be drawn into a contest with the Greek empire. Just at this time the emperor of the Greeks had been deposed and deprived of his eyes by his own brother. His son, Alexius, fled to Europe, and pet.i.tioned the a.s.sistance of the Latin princes against the usurper, promising in return to use his efforts to bring about a union of the Greek with the Latin church, and to employ all the resources of his kingdom against the infidels of Syria. The temptation of such a prospect could not be resisted; the crusaders marched into Greece, laid siege to Constantinople, and took the city by storm A. D. 1204, thereby establis.h.i.+ng Latin Christianity in the eastern metropolis, but at what a cost. Neither the works of G.o.d nor man were respected by the invaders; they vented their brutal ferocity upon the one, and satisfied their avarice upon the other. ”In St. Sophia, the silver was stripped from the pulpit, an exquisite and highly-prized table of oblation was broken in pieces, the sacred chalices were turned into drinking-cups, the gold fringe was ripped off the veil of the sanctuary. a.s.ses and horses were led into the churches to carry off the spoil.

49. ”Many beautiful bronze pieces, above all price as works of art, were broken into pieces to be sold as old metal. The finely chiseled marble was also destroyed by the same spirit of vandalism. Two thousand people were put to the sword; had there been less plunder, the slaughter would in all probability have been much greater.”

50. For fifty years the empire was ruled over by the Franks. Meanwhile the knights, plunged in the luxury of the city, heeded not the appeals from Palestine, but allowed the besieged and suffering, for whose rescue they had enlisted, to linger and die without an effort on their behalf. Moved to desperation, in this emergency, the Christians sent to Europe a heart-rending cry for help.

THE SIXTH CRUSADE.

51. The urgent appeal from Palestine caused Pope Innocent III to earnestly preach a new crusade, and he crowned his labors and appeals with his famous exclamation, ”Sword, sword, start from thy scabbard, and sharpen thyself to kill.” Though the many disastrous and fruitless expeditions had so dampened the ardor of men that they gave little heed to his appeals, the zeal of the young was kindled for the cause to which their elders seemed so indifferent.