Part 19 (1/2)
Syria had been overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, shortly after the death of Mohammed, and the Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the infidels. The Arab, however, shared the veneration of the Christian for the places a.s.sociated with the life of Christ and, in general, permitted the Christian pilgrims who found their way thither to wors.h.i.+p unmolested. But with the coming of a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh century, the pilgrims began to bring home news of great hards.h.i.+ps. Moreover, the eastern emperor was defeated by the Turks in 1071 and lost Asia Minor. The presence of the Turks in possession of the fortress of Nicaea, just across from Constantinople, was of course a standing menace to the Eastern Empire. When the energetic Emperor Alexius (1081-1118) ascended the throne he endeavored to expel the infidel. Finding himself unequal to the task, he appealed for a.s.sistance to the head of Christendom, Urban II. The first great impetus to the Crusades was the call issued by Urban at the celebrated council which met in 1095 at Clermont in France.
[Sidenote: Urban II issues the call to the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, 1095.]
In an address, which produced more remarkable immediate results than any other which history records, the pope exhorted knights and foot soldiers of all ranks to give up their usual wicked business of destroying their Christian brethren in private warfare and turn instead to the succor of their fellow-Christians in the East. Otherwise the insolent Turks would, if unchecked, extend their sway still more widely over the faithful servants of the Lord. ”Let the Holy Sepulcher of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially urge you on, and the holy places which they are now treating with ignominy and irreverently polluting.” Urban urged besides that France was too poor to support all its people, while the Holy Land flowed with milk and honey. ”Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest the land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves.” When the pope had finished, all who were present exclaimed, with one accord, ”It is the will of G.o.d.” This, the pope declared, should be the rallying cry of the crusaders, who were to wear a cross upon their bosoms as they went forth, and upon their backs as they returned, as a holy sign of their sacred mission.[127]
[Sidenote: The motives of the crusaders.]
The Crusades are ordinarily represented as the most striking examples of the simple faith and religious enthusiasm of the Middle Ages. They appealed, however, to many different kinds of men. The devout, the romantic, and the adventurous were by no means the only cla.s.ses that were attracted. Syria held out inducements to the discontented n.o.ble who might hope to gain a princ.i.p.ality in the East, to the merchant who was looking for new enterprises, to the merely restless who wished to avoid his responsibilities at home, and even to the criminal who enlisted with a view of escaping the results of his past offenses. It is noteworthy that Urban appeals especially to those who had been ”contending against their brethren and relatives,” and urges those ”who have hitherto been robbers now to become soldiers of Christ.” The conduct of many of the crusaders indicates that the pope found a ready hearing among this cla.s.s. Yet higher motives than a love of adventure and the hope of conquest impelled many who took their way eastward. Great numbers, doubtless, went to Jerusalem ”through devotion alone, and not for the sake of honor or gain,” with the sole object of freeing the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidel.
[Sidenote: Privileges of the crusaders.]
To such as these the pope promised that the journey itself should take the place of all penance for sin. The faithful crusader, like the faithful Mohammedan, was a.s.sured of immediate entrance into heaven if he died repentant in the holy cause. Later the Church exhibited its extraordinary authority by what would seem to us an unjust interference with business contracts. It freed those who, with a pure heart, entered upon the journey from the payment of interest upon their debts, and permitted them to mortgage property against the wishes of their feudal lords. The crusaders' wives and children and property were taken under the immediate protection of the Church, and he who troubled them incurred excommunication.[128] These various considerations help to explain the great popularity of undertakings that, at first sight, would seem to have promised only hards.h.i.+ps and disappointment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUTES OF THE CRUSADERS]
[Sidenote: Peter the Hermit and his army.]
74. The Council of Clermont met in November. Before spring (1096) those who set forth to preach the Crusade, above all the famous Peter the Hermit, who was formerly given credit for having begun the whole crusading movement, had collected, in France and along the Rhine, an extraordinary army of the common folk. Peasants, artisans, vagabonds, and even women and children, answered the summons, all fanatically intent upon rescuing the Holy Sepulcher, two thousand miles away. They were confident that the Lord would sustain them during the weary leagues of the journey, and grant them a prompt victory over the infidel. The host was got under way in several divisions under the leaders.h.i.+p of Peter the Hermit,[129] and of Walter the Penniless and other humble knights. Many of the crusaders were slaughtered by the Hungarians, who rose to protect themselves from the depredations of this motley horde.
Part of them got as far as Nicaea, only to be slaughtered by the Turks.
This is but an example, on a large scale, of what was going on continually for a century or so after this first great catastrophe.
Individual pilgrims and adventurers, and sometimes considerable bodies of crusaders, were constantly falling a prey to every form of disaster--starvation, slavery, disease, and death--in their endeavors to reach the Holy Land.
[Sidenote: The First Crusade, 1096.]
The conspicuous figures of the long period of the Crusades are not, however, to be found among the lowly followers of Peter the Hermit, but are the knights, in their long coats of mail. A year after the summons issued at Clermont great armies of fighting men had been collected in the West under n.o.ble leaders;--the pope speaks of three hundred thousand soldiers. Of the various divisions which were to meet in Constantinople, the following were the most important: the volunteers from Provence under the papal legate and Count Raymond of Toulouse; inhabitants of Germany, particularly of Lorraine, under G.o.dfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin, both destined to be rulers of Jerusalem; and lastly, an army of French and of the Normans of southern Italy under Bohemond and Tancred.[130]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Knight of the First Crusade.]
The distinguished knights who have been mentioned were not actually in command of real armies. Each crusader undertook the expedition on his own account and was only obedient to any one's orders so long as he pleased. The knights and men naturally grouped themselves around the more noted leaders, but considered themselves free to change chiefs when they pleased. The leaders themselves reserved the right to look out for their own special interests rather than sacrifice themselves to the good of the expedition.
[Sidenote: Hostilities between the Greeks and the crusaders.]
Upon the arrival of the crusaders at Constantinople it quickly became clear that they had little more in common with the Greeks than with the Turks. Emperor Alexius ordered his soldiers to attack G.o.dfrey's army, encamped in the suburbs of his capital, because their chief at first refused to take the oath of feudal homage to him. The emperor's daughter, in her remarkable history of the times, gives a sad picture of the outrageous conduct of the crusaders. They, on the other hand, denounced the ”schismatic Greeks” as traitors, cowards, and liars.
The eastern emperor had hoped to use his western allies to reconquer Asia Minor and force back the Turks. The leading knights, on the contrary, dreamed of carving out princ.i.p.alities for themselves in the former dominions of the emperor and proposed to control them by right of conquest. Later we find both Greeks and western Christians shamelessly allying themselves with the Mohammedans against each other. The relations of the eastern and western enemies of the Turks were well ill.u.s.trated when the crusaders besieged their first town, Nicaea. When it was just ready to surrender, the Greeks arranged with the enemy to have their troops admitted first. They then closed the gates against their western confederates and invited them to move on.
[Sidenote: Dissension among the leaders of the crusaders.]
The first real allies that the crusaders met with were the Christian Armenians, who brought them aid after their terrible march through Asia Minor. With their help Baldwin got possession of Edessa, of which he made himself prince. The chiefs induced the great body of the crusaders to postpone the march on Jerusalem, and a year was spent in taking the rich and important city of Antioch. A bitter strife then broke out, especially between the Norman Bohemond and the count of Toulouse, as to who should have the conquered town. After the most unworthy conduct on both sides, Bohemond won, and Raymond set to work to conquer a princ.i.p.ality for himself on the coast about Tripoli.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of the Crusaders' States in Syria]
[Sidenote: Capture of Jerusalem.]
In the spring of 1099 about twenty thousand warriors finally moved upon Jerusalem. They found the city well walled and in the midst of a desolate region where neither food nor water, nor the materials to construct the apparatus necessary for the capture of the town, were to be found, The opportune arrival at Jaffa of galleys from Genoa furnished the besiegers with supplies, and, in spite of all the difficulties, the place was taken in a couple of months. The crusaders, with their customary barbarity, ma.s.sacred the inhabitants. G.o.dfrey of Bouillon was chosen ruler of Jerusalem and took the modest t.i.tle of ”Defender of the Holy Sepulcher.” He soon died and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who left Edessa in 1100 to take up the task of extending the bounds of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: Founding of Latin kingdoms in Syria.]
It will be observed that the ”Franks,” as the Mohammedans called all the western folk, had established the centers of four princ.i.p.alities. These were Edessa, Antioch, the region about Tripoli conquered by Raymond, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The last was speedily increased by Baldwin; with the help of the mariners from Venice and Genoa, he succeeded in getting possession of Acre, Sidon, and a number of coast towns.