Crusades

“ We have said, when commencing our history, that the crusades offered the spectacle of a sanguinary and terrible struggle between two religions which contended for the empire of the world; the victory to belong to that one of these two religions which would inspire its disciples and defenders with the most generous sentiments, and which, favouring among them the progress of civilization, would give them the greater force and power to defend their territories and assure their conquests. ”

“ What is most astonishing in the history of the crusades, is to observe that the defeats of the Christians in Asia, excited, among the warlike populations of Europe, much more enthusiasm than their victories. The preachers of the holy wars, to persuade Christian warriors to take up arms against the infidels, said nothing of the glory and the power of Jerusalem; but endeavoured, in their pathetic lamentations, to exaggerate the perils, the misfortunes, and the decline of the Christian colonies. ”

“ Crusades appear to have been dignified by numbers when they followed some crushing disaster—the loss of Edessa in 1144, or the fall of Jerusalem in 1187—and were led by kings and emperors; or when, like the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, they achieved some conspicuous success or failure. But it is important to bear in mind the continuity of the Crusades—the constant flow of new forces eastward and back again westward; for this alone explains why the Crusades formed a great epoch in civilization, familiarizing, as they did, the West with the East. ”

“ Thus began the Crusades, those romantic expeditions which, combining religious fervor with military ardor, united the various nations of Europe from the shores of the Baltic to the Straits of Gibraltar, and from the banks of the Danube to the Bay of Biscay, in one common cause, and poured the mingled tide of fanatics, warriors and adventurers, upon the plains of Asia. ”

“ It used to be the fashion to regard the Crusades as mere fantastic exhibitions of a temporary turbulent religious fanaticism, aiming at ends wholly visionary, and missing them, wasting the best life of Europe in colossal and bloody undertakings, and leaving effects only of evil for the time which came after. ”

“ Preached on French soil by a pope of French descent, the Crusades began—and they continued—as essentially a French (or perhaps better Norman-French) enterprise; and the kingdom which they established in the East was essentially a French kingdom, in its speech and its customs, its virtues and its vices. It was natural that France should be the home of the Crusades. She was already the home of the Cluniac movement, the centre from which radiated the truce of God, the chosen place of chivalry ”

“ The exhortations of the sovereign pontiff were addressed to none but indifferent hearts in the nations of England, France, and Spain. Neither the sentiment of humanity, nor that of patriotism, had power to revive the enthusiasm to which the spirit of religion and chivalry had in past times given birth. Distant crusades, whatever was their object, began to be considered as only the work of a jealous policy, the springs of which were set in motion, to banish the princes and nobles whose power and wealth were coveted. ”

“ But these discoveries, when they once became known in Europe, entirely occupied that active, enterprising, and adventurous spirit which had so long kept up the ardour for expeditions against the infidels. The direction of men’s minds, views of policy, speculations of commerce, all were changed; and the great revolution of the crusades on its decline, was seen, in some sort, to clash with the new revolution which was born of the discovery and conquest of a new world. ”

“ Thus the Crusades are really worthy to be chronicled by historians above anything else which took place in the Middle Ages, since they gave birth to mighty agencies, which still are vital forces in society,—even as everything in American history pales before that awful war which arrayed, in our times, the North against the South in desperate and deadly contest ”

“ Knowledge, however, continued to increase and spread, and assisted greatly in polishing the manners of the nations of Europe. One proof that the crusades were not unconnected with these first steps of civilization is, that knowledge and letters first flourished among the peoples enriched by the commerce which the holy wars favoured, as in Italy; and with the peoples who had most communication with the Orientals, as the Spaniards. Two inventions were destined to complete this happy revolution, and mark the commencement and the end of the period of the crusades. ”

“ In the seventeenth century, so abounding in men of genius, the heroic bravery of the Crusaders was admired, their reverses were deplored, and, without a question as to the good or evil which these distant expeditions had brought about, the pious motives which had made the warriors of the West take arms were respected. The eighteenth century, which had adopted all the opinions of the Reformation, and exaggerated them,—the eighteenth century did not spare the crusades, and did not fail to accuse the ignorance, barbarity, and fanaticism of our ancestors as the causes of them. ”

“ But if it be true that letters owed a part of their progress to the influence of the crusades, it must be confessed that the Crusaders did not always show themselves disposed to profit by them for themselves: nothing can exceed the ignorance of the Crusaders who then set out for the East. ”

“ Like the conquests of Alexander the Great, the crusades opened up a new world.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRUSADES When all is said, the crusades remain one of the most remarkable movements in history. They exhibited the nations of western Europe for the first time making a united effort for a common end. The crusaders were not hired soldiers, but volunteers, who, while the religious fervor lasted, gladly abandoned their homes and faced hardship and death in pursuit of a spiritual ideal. They failed to accomplish their purpose, yet humanity is the richer for the memory of their heroism and chivalry. ”

“ All the seas were free, and the most distant provinces communicated with each other by easy and commodious routes; cities exchanged the objects of their arts and their industry, climates their various productions, nations their knowledge. If the crusades had subdued the East to Christianity, it is fair to believe that this grand spectacle, which the human race had only once beheld, would have been repeated in modern times, and opinions would not now be divided as to the advantages of the holy wars. ”

“ The most intrepid of the Crusaders, victims of their own rash bravery and devotedness, perished, swallowed up by the waves, without being able to be succoured or avenged by their companions. In all the attacks, nothing could equal the impetuous valour of the Western warriors; but this valour was not seconded by either the prudence of the commanders or the discipline of the soldiers; each nation had its leader, its machines of war, its days for fighting; no order governed either attack or retreat; the soldiers on board the vessels wished to manœuvre them, the sailors would fight. ”

“ The era of the crusades is almost evenly divided by the date which all scholars, following Baronius, regard as marking the end of the worst and the beginning of better times. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were the battle-ground on which the grim spectres of the old met the bright advancing spirits of the new civilization. ”

“ In representing the Crusaders as citizens of the Church, Rousseau doubtless, meant to say that the popes were the origin of the crusades, and that the soldiers of the cross defended the temporal power of the popes. We at once reply that the crusades owed their birth and growth to the religious and warlike enthusiasm that animated the nations of the West in the twelfth century, and that without this enthusiasm, which was not the work of the heads of the Church, the preachings of the Holy See would not have been able to collect a single army under the banners of the cross. ”

“ So the First Crusade, with its motive of religious zeal, is in some degree distinguishable from those which followed when knighthood was in different flower. If not the Crusades themselves, at least the Chansons of the trouvères who sang of them, follow a change corresponding with the changing taste of chivalry: they begin with serious matters, and are occupied with the great enterprise; then they become adventurous in theme, romantic, till at last even romantic love is infelicitously grafted upon the religious rage that won Jerusalem. ”

“ When the ages to which the events of which we have spoken belonged become better known, the spirit of these events and their consequences will be better understood and better judged of: we are about to exhibit societies such as they were in the middle ages, and the progress they have made towards civilization; leaving to enlightened readers the care of appreciating that which belongs to the crusades.
We will in the first place examine the state of the different powers of Europe, and will begin with France. ”

“ THE CRUSADES AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE Finally, it must be noted how much the crusades contributed to intellectual and social progress. They brought the inhabitants of western Europe into close relations with one another, with their fellow Christians of the Roman Empire in the East, and with the natives of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. The intercourse between Christians and Moslems was particularly stimulating, because the East at this time surpassed the West in civilization. The crusaders enjoyed the advantages which come from travel in strange lands and among unfamiliar peoples. ”

“ The former was the driving force which made the First Crusade successful, where later Crusades, without its stimulus, for the most part failed; the latter was the one staunch ally which alone enabled Baldwin I. and Baldwin II. to create the kingdom of Jerusalem. So far as the Crusades led to permanent material results in the East, they did so in virtue of these two forces. Unregulated enthusiasm might of itself have achieved little or nothing; enthusiasm caught and guided by the astute Norman, and the no less astute Venetian or Genoese, could not but achieve tangible results. ”

“ They are chiefly interesting for their results, and results which were unforeseen. A philosopher sees in them the hand of Providence,—the overruling of mortal wrath to the praise of Him who governs the universe. I know of no great movement of blind forces so pregnant with mighty consequences.
The Crusades were a semi-religious and a semi-military movement. They represent the passions and ideas of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,—its chivalry, its hatred of Mohammedanism, and its desire to possess the spots consecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. ”

“ The Crusaders exhibited another spectacle with which antiquity was unacquainted—the union of religious humility with the love of glory. History shows us constantly these haughty heroes, the terror of Asia and the Mussulmans, bending their victorious brows to the dust, and marching from conquest to conquest, covered with the sack of penitence. The priests, who exhorted them in battle, only raised their courage by reproaching them with their sins. ”

“ The story of the Florentine Synod has brought us to the eve of the fall of Constantinople, Before we come to the effects of that calamity, we must go back for a moment to say something about the relations between Latins and Byzantines at the time of the Crusades.
1. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The melancholy story of the Crusades themselves does not concern our subject. There are few so great disillusionments in history. The idea of a Crusade was everything that is chivalrous and unselfish. ”

“ At the beginning of the thirteenth century, whilst the enterprises which were still called crusades were becoming more and more degenerate in character and potency, there was born in France, on the 25th of April, 1215, not merely the prince, but the man who was to be the most worthy representative and the most devoted slave of that religious and moral passion which had inspired the crusades. ”

“ The great external event of the Middle Ages was the Crusades,--indeed, they were the only common enterprise in which Europe ever engaged. Such an event ought to be very interesting, since it has reference to conflicting passions and interests. Unfortunately, in a literary point of view, there is no central figure in the great drama which the princes of Europe played for two hundred years, and hence the Crusades have but little dramatic interest. No one man represents that mighty movement. ”

“ Certainly during the middle ages they were serviceable even to the cause of humanity, for those very Crusades eventually benefited Europe. They drew forth many turbulent spirits, who, had they remained at home, would have fallen into intestine broils, and kept up the feudal governments. ”

“ The Crusades established an intercourse between the East and the West, which if often hostile, has nevertheless kept an open channel for that interchange of thought and industry, which in the single department of comparative philology has made possible a marvelous advance into an unsuspected region of knowledge. ”

“ Amidst the darkness of the night, the Crusaders could not see which way to direct their blows, and when they did obtain some trifling advantage, they did not dare to pursue their enemy; they advanced fighting, and in disorder; fearing to lose themselves, such as were at any distance from their companions, called upon them by name; such as adhered closely to the standard, ran against and impeded each other in their march: over the whole plain nothing was heard but the neighing of horses, the clash of arms, and cries of rage and despair ”