James M. Ludlow

“ The Christians, coming near, fell every man upon his knees in prayer, then rose to make the charge. Raymond struck the column of Turks and Persians; Tancred led his braves through the Moors and Egyptians; Godfrey crushed the Ethiopians, who resisted him but for an instant with their long flails armed with balls of iron; Robert of Normandy wrested the standard from the hands of Afdhal himself. As the Moslems cast away their bows and javelins to hasten their flight, the Christians cast away theirs that they might speed the pursuit with the sword. ”

“ Society could not endure another generation of its own putridity. The secular powers were utterly impotent to cope with the gigantic evils that were abroad in every land. Even had they possessed the disposition to champion the virtues, such sovereigns as the King of France, the Emperor of Germany, the new Norman King of England, were altogether engrossed in holding their precarious crowns, surrounded as they were by a multitude of feudal lords, some of whom could collect in their own names a larger force than that which would rise to defend the throne. ”

“ The lords and barons of France, the most high and the most powerful, have sent us to you to pray you in the name of God to take pity on Jerusalem, which the Turks hold in bondage. They cry to you for mercy and supplicate you to accompany them to avenge the disgrace of Jesus Christ. They have made choice of you because they know that no people that be upon the sea have such powers as your nation. ”

“ Mohammed eagerly imbibed the better philosophy. Familiarity with the religion of the Jews, and some acquaintance with the doctrine of Jesus, whom he accepted as a true prophet, doubtless gave shape and vividness to his better faith. His meditations on the grand themes of religion were, to his excited imagination, rewarded by definite revelation. He rose inspired with the conviction,—which became the call for a new civilization in the Orient,—“Great is God, and Mohammed is His prophet!” Islam, or resignation to the sovereign will of Allah, became the title and spirit of the new religion. ”

“ Conan de Bethune made response for the Latins: “Go tell your master that the earth we tread upon does not belong to him, but is the heritage of the prince you see seated among us,” pointing to young Alexius. “A usurper is the enemy of all princes; a tyrant is the foe of mankind. Your master can escape the justice of God and men only by restoring his brother and nephew to the throne.”
Dandolo then tried the spirit of the people of Constantinople. A splendid galley bearing young Alexius moved close along the walls of the city. ”

“ This appeal to human greed led many to leave the direct march upon Jerusalem, which was but sixteen miles away, and to expend in petty conquests or robberies the ardor which for weary months had been augmenting as they approached the grand object of the crusades. A faithful multitude, however, pushed on. They took off their shoes as they realized that they were on holy ground. Tancred, with a band of three hundred, making a circuit southward by night, set the standard of the cross on the walls of Bethlehem, to signal the birth of the kingdom in the birthplace of its King. ”

“ Tunis, on the North African coast, was the rendezvous of innumerable Moslem pirates, whose swift ships and desperate crews menaced all the passable water between France and the Holy Land. The city itself was regarded as an inestimable prize, stored as it was with the riches of commerce and plunder. But most priceless, in the thought of Louis, was its king, of whom it was rumored that he inclined to the Christian faith. Louis declared that he would willingly die in a dungeon if by any means he might be the hand of Providence leading so noble a convert to the foot of the cross. ”

“ THE MOHAMMEDAN MENACE—THE RISE OF ISLAM—SARACENS—TURKS. The rapid rise and wide-spread conquest of Mohammedanism make one of the most startling phenomena of history. If its story excites our wonder in these days, while we are watching its decadence, we may imagine the consternation wrought when its swarming hosts, with the prestige of having conquered all western Asia, were breaking through the barriers of Christendom.
We shall greatly mistake this movement if we regard it as a mere irruption of brute force such as characterized the assaults of the barbarians upon the Roman empire. ”

“ These and all the kings of Islam are with me; Babylon, with its dependencies, the land of Damascus, and Jerusalem on the sea-coast, ... and the land of Sudia, with its provinces. If you wish for war, we will meet you in the power of the Lord; but if you wish for peace, we will restore to you the holy cross, and liberate all Christian captives, and permit pilgrims to come freely and do them good. And may Allah give us counsel!” A rumor was current, based, doubtless, upon the clemency of Saladin to the Christians, that he was himself contemplating conversion to the faith of Europe. ”

“ Mark’s in Venice were saved from the general wreck, to stand as a monument among the Venetians not of the glory, but of the vandalism of their ancestors.
But more than the spoils of art and treasure, the sacred relics stored in Constantinople excited the saintly cupidity of the conquerors. In their greed for these objects men utterly forgot the divine law, and silenced the last remonstrance of human conscience. Martin Litz, Abbot of Basel, worming his way through the pillage piles in a church, came upon an old Greek monk at prayer. “Your relics or your life!” ”

“ Twenty thousand Carismian horsemen ravaged Tripoli and Galilee and appeared suddenly before Jerusalem. The inhabitants fled; the few who remained were indiscriminately massacred. Finding nothing left to appease the appetite of their swords, the conquerors unfurled the banner of the cross from the walls and rang the bells of the churches, thus luring back to the city a multitude of the fugitives, upon whom they satiated their cruelty. Seven thousand of these helpless creatures perished at the gates. Not satisfied with the spoil of the living, the Carismians rifled the abodes of the dead. ”

“ We do not come for the purpose of turning you aside from your holy enterprise, but to offer you an easy and sure means of accomplishing your noble designs.... We propose to you to turn your victorious arms towards the capital of Greece, which groans under the rod of a usurper, and to assure yourselves forever of the conquest of Jerusalem by that of Constantinople.... We will not tell you how easy a matter it would be to wrest the empire from the hands of a tyrant hated by his subjects ”

“ Robert of Normandy, snatching his white banner, drove through the densest ranks of the foe with the watchword of “Deus vult!” followed by Tancred, who was made doubly valiant by having seen his brother William fall, pierced with arrows. The captives were rescued, but the crusaders were exhausted, and retired in despair behind the stockade of their camp. At noon, however, the air was rent with new trumpet-calls. The hilltop shone with the armor of the knights under Godfrey. The charge of this redoubtable warrior and fifty chosen comrades broke upon the Turks like a thunderbolt. ”

“ One day, when the orders for general assault had been issued, the various divisions found themselves without leaders and without plans. Disorder was followed by panic, augmented by the report that Malek-Ahdel had been joined by Aziz, the son of Saladin and Sultan of Egypt, and that soon this force would be upon them. A furious tempest swept over the mountain. Their superstition heard in the thunders the malediction of heaven, and saw in the freshets which obliterated the paths the vengeance of nature for their having turned aside from the conquest of Jerusalem. ”

“ Khalil marched his troops beneath the walls.
The capture of the place was inevitable. The certain destruction that awaited them affected the inhabitants as once the people of Jerusalem, who cried, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The revelry of the self-abandoned multitude ceased only in their ruin. The assault of the foe was quickly rewarded. Just a century after its recovery from the Moslems through the valor of Richard Cœur de Lion, Acre fell back again to their possession. Sixty thousand Christians were borne away to slavery or put to death. ”

“ Young Alexius entered the city, riding, with a retinue of knights, between Dandolo and Baldwin of Flanders, and followed by the Latin clergy; they were met at the gates by the various ranks of Greek ecclesiastics, arrayed in splendid vestments. The churches throughout the city resounded with thanksgiving and the streets with festivity, while within the palace Isaac, having endured a dungeon for eight years, embraced his son whom he could not see. ”

“ Since, in your obedience to the Crucified One, you took upon yourself the vow to deliver the Holy Land from the power of the pagans, and since you were forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to attack any Christian land or to damage it, unless its inhabitants opposed your passage or refused you what was necessary, and since you had neither right nor pretence of right over Greece, you have slighted your vow; you have preferred earthly to heavenly riches; but that which weighs more heavily upon you than all this is that you have spared nothing that is sacred, neither age nor sex. ”

“ The most serious consequence of the capture of Constantinople by the Latins was the new hope and 295opportunity imparted to the Turks. The Greeks, with all their weaknesses, had for generations been a buffer between Islam and Europe. The empire had stood like a wall across the great highway of the Asiatic incursion. If the Greeks had been generally the losers in the struggle, they had maintained sufficient power to occupy the arms of their contestants, leaving the Christians of the West free to prey upon the Moslems of Syria and adjacent countries. ”

“ The church, in hopeless inability to check the universal passion for fight, sought only to direct it to the suppression of ecclesiastical enemies. Pope Paschal (1099) exhorted Count Robert of Flanders to persecute to the utmost the Emperor Henry, saying, “By such battles you shall obtain a place in the heavenly Jerusalem.” Bernard, without dispute the holiest man of the next century, offered no excuse or palliation for his harangue to the faithful: “Let them kill the enemy or die. To submit to die for Christ, or to cause one of His enemies to die, is naught but glory.” ”

“ In spite of the showers of arrows that greeted them at every dividing wall, the Christians steadily made their way. In the front ranks was the young King of Jerusalem, with his redoubtable Knights of St. John and Knights Templars. The King of France pressed next with his braves, eager to redeem by splendid victory the disaster of their coming. The German emperor, with such meagre remnant of his army as he could muster, protected the rear. At the little river which flows beneath the western wall of the city the invaders met their first check. ”

“ Many writers are disposed to analyze the motives of Saladin and to attribute his clemency to politic foresight in subduing the hatred as well as the arms of his enemies. But surely the annals of war are too barren of such acts of humanity to allow us to mar the beauty of the simple narration; and the virtues of Christians in such circumstances have not been so resplendent that they may not emulate the spirit of one who was their noblest foe.
The new lord of Jerusalem purged the sacred city of what to him was the taint of idolatry, the worship of Jesus. ”

“ Louis, unable to issue commands that could be heard, set a splendid example of heroism by dashing with his squires into the thickest ranks of the foe. He so far outstripped his quickest attendants that he soon found himself alone, surrounded by six stalwart Moslems, who endeavored to capture him, his royal person being revealed by his gorgeous uniform. With great strength and skill, which his countrymen have never ceased to celebrate, he extricated himself from the danger and, joined by his guards, led the army in a resistless charge. Their valor saved that day. ”

“ The impoverished baron might exchange his half-ruined castle for some splendid estate beyond the Ægean, and the vulgar crowd, if they did not find Jerusalem paved with gold like the heavenly city, would assuredly tread the veins of rich mines or rest among the flowers of an earthly paradise. ”

“ THE FEUDAL SYSTEM—GENERAL PRINCIPLES—INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE. In accounting for the crusades we must consider the governmental condition of Europe at the time. Under no other system than that of feudalism would it have been possible to unify and mobilize the masses for the great adventure. Had Europe then been dominated by several great rulers, each with a nation at his control, as the case has been in subsequent times, even the popes would have been unable to combine the various forces in any enterprise that was not purely spiritual. ”

“ Alexius was kept a virtual prisoner in the Blachern, defended by his Warings. Mourtzouphlos came to the palace, and, persuading Alexius that a mob was about to attack him, pretended to conduct him to a place of safety. Getting him thus to his own tent, Mourtzouphlos put the young man in irons, shod himself with the vermilion buskins, and strode out, proclaiming that he was emperor.
With vast energy the usurper set about refortifying the city. He impressed Dandolo and Boniface with the fact that they had now to deal with a man not unlike themselves in ability and daring. ”