Third Crusade

“ The Third Crusade, and the most famous, which began in the year 1189, of which Philip Augustus of France, Richard Coeur de Lion of England, and Frederic Barbarossa of Germany were the leaders,--the three greatest monarchs of their age,--was also signally unsuccessful. Feudal armies seem to have learned nothing in one hundred years of foreign warfare ”

“ The last Crusade had, after all, been under papal control: if Richard I. had directed the Third Crusade, and the policy of the Hohenstaufen and the Venetians had directed the Fourth, it was a papal legate who had steered the Fifth to its ultimate fate. The Crusade of Frederick II. in 1228–1229 finds its analogy in the projected Crusade of Henry VI.; it is essentially lay. It is unique in the annals of the Crusades. ”

“ The people burned with zeal to undertake the pious task; and when Pope Urban, at the Council of Clermont, in 1095 A. D., gave the sanction of the Church to the enterprise, all Europe rushed to arms. Those who vowed to do battle for the [Pg xxi] holy cause bore the sign of the cross, and hence the expedition to Palestine was called a "crusade," from the Latin word crux, meaning cross.
The history of this First Crusade is given in the sketch of Godfrey de Bouillon, and that of the Third Crusade in connection with the story of Richard Cœur-de-Lion. ”

“ RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES FAILURE OF THE CRUSADES The crusades, judged by what they set out to accomplish, must be accounted an inglorious failure. After two hundred years of conflict, after a vast expenditure of wealth and human lives, the Holy Land remained in Moslem hands. It is true that the First Crusade did help, by the conquest of Syria, to check the advance of the Turks toward Constantinople. But even this benefit was more than undone by the weakening of the Roman Empire in the East as a result of the Fourth Crusade. ”

“ The greatest advantage the crusades could have bestowed upon the peasants, was the momentary cessation of brigandage, and the peace which reigned in the country, all the time the wars against the Saracens were being carried on.
It is probable that serfs in Europe were not better treated, according to the legislation and customs of the West, than they were in the Holy Land, according to the Assizes of Jerusalem. There is no doubt that peasants taken from the glebe for the crusade became free men; but most of them perished by misery or by the swords of the Mussulmans. ”

“ East. On one side, Germany, still without an emperor, though with three pretenders to the empire, could spare no warriors for the Holy Land. England was a prey to a civil war, in which the barons wore a white cross as their badge of union against the king, and in which priests exhorted them to the fight, pointing to heaven as the reward of their bravery and their rebellion. This strange crusade precluded all thoughts of one beyond the seas. France was the only kingdom from which the prayers of the Christians of Palestine were not repulsed ”

“ The precarious empire which had been founded in 1204 drained away all the vigorous adventurers of the West for its support for many years to come, and the Holy Land was starved to feed a land less holy, but equally greedy of men. [45] No basis for the Crusades was ever to be found in the Latin empire of the East; and Innocent, after vainly hoping for the new Crusade which was to emerge from Constantinople, was by 1208 compelled to return to the old idea of a Crusade proceeding simply and immediately from the West to the East. ”

“ Vessels and fleets for the transport of the Crusaders were equipped in all the ports of the Baltic, the ocean, and the Mediterranean; and yet, at the very same time, a crusade was being preached against the inhabitants of Prussia, who still remained in the darkness of idolatry. Poland, Saxony, Norway, and Livonia armed their warriors to overthrow the idols of paganism on the banks of the Oder and the Vistula, whilst the other nations of the West were preparing to make war against the Saracens in the plains of Judæa and Syria. ”

“ The age of the crusades covers the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For two hundred years, to use the vigorous language of the Greek princess Anna Comnena, who witnessed the first crusade, “Europe was loosened from its foundations and hurled against Asia.” As an Alpine glacier presses down into the valley, only to melt away at the summer line, yet with renewed snows repeals the fatal experiment from year to year, so seven times Western Christendom replenished its mighty armaments, to see them destroyed at the border-land of Oriental conquest. ”

“ Strange destiny of the warriors of this crusade, who had quitted the West to conquer the city and lands of Jesus Christ, and whom fortune had conducted into places filled with the remembrances of the gods of Homer and the glory of profane antiquity!
The Crusaders were not allowed to felicitate themselves long upon their conquests. Possessors of an empire much more difficult to be preserved than invaded, they had not the ability to master fortune, who soon took from them all that victory had bestowed. ”

“ This sixth crusade was more abundant in intrigues and scandalous quarrels than in military exploits; the Christians never united all their efforts against the infidels; no spirit of order presided over their enterprises; the Crusaders, who [300] only held their mission of their zeal, set out at the time their will or their fancy selected; some returned to Europe without having faced a Saracen in fight; others abandoned the colours of the cross, after a victory or a defeat; and fresh Crusaders were constantly summoned to defend the conquests or repair the faults of those that had preceded them. ”

“ This senseless rage completed the alienation of men’s minds, and the fanaticism of heresy was added to the furies of civil war.
As the court of Rome, under the imposing pretext of the crusade, levied tributes in all the states of Europe to keep up the fire of sedition and revolt, so many violences, and so much injustice infused dissatisfaction everywhere, and gave birth to a spirit of opposition among nations even, that had been exempt from the consequences of the terrible quarrel. The commissaries of the Holy See ruined the provinces of France ”

“ After having thus run the danger of losing his life, Edward, cured of his wounds, only thought of concluding a truce with Bibars; and being recalled into England by the prayers of Henry III., whose successor he was, he quitted the East without having done anything important for the cause he had sworn to defend. Thus all the results of this crusade, which had so much alarmed the Mussulmans, were reduced, on one side, to the massacre of the unarmed population of Nazareth, and on the other, to the vain conquest of the ruins of Carthage. ”

“ The knights of Christ and the knights of the sword, instituted to subdue the pagans of Livonia, with the Teutonic knights, who in Palestine rivalled in power and glory the two other orders of the Temple and the Hospital, at the first signal flocked to the standards of the army assembled to invade Prussia, and convert its inhabitants: this war lasted more than two centuries. In this sanguinary struggle, if the Christian religion sometimes inspired its combatants with its virtues, the leaders of this long crusade were much more frequently influenced by vengeance, ambition, and avarice. ”

“ The second crusade, although unfortunate, procured several advantages for Europe. The peace which reigned in the West, caused states to flourish, and repaired, in some sort, the disasters of a distant war. It was held [378] shameful to carry arms in Europe, whilst the Crusaders were contending with the Saracens in the East. Religion itself watched over Germany, which had been so long troubled by civil wars. Conrad, a weak monarch without character, who had lost his army in Asia, was more powerful on his return from Palestine than he had been before he quitted his dominions. ”

“ If it be allowed that no wars are more sanguinary than religious wars, there are certainly none in which it is more difficult for a conqueror to extend or preserve his conquests. This is a very important observation, if we would appreciate the results of this crusade.
On all occasions where bravery alone was required, nothing can be comparable to the exploits of the Crusaders. ”

“ From the end of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century, between the crusade of Philip Augustus and that of St. Louis, it is usual to count three crusades, over which we will not linger. Two of these crusades—one, from 1195 to 1198, under Henry VI., Emperor of Germany, and the other, from 1216 to 1240, under the Emperor Frederick II. and Andrew II., King of Hungary—are unconnected with France, and almost exclusively German, or, in origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe. They led, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to wars, negotiations, and manifold complications ”

“ Within fifty years after the conquest the feudal machinery was in ruin, and the strategic points, one after another, passed into the hands of the strongest force of the age, the force which was incarnate imagination.
The fortresses built by the monks were the ramparts of Christendom, and among the remains which have survived the past, perhaps none are more impressive than the huge castles of the crusaders in the gorges of the Syrian mountains ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, Crusade followed Crusade for more than one hundred and fifty years, until nine armies, comprising more than three millions of men, laid their bodies down to decay and their bones to whiten on the plains and hill-sides of the East.
Among all the enterprises, none were more wild and wicked than those which are called the "Crusades of the children." Emissaries from Rome went throughout Western Europe, preaching and declaring that God would only give the Holy Land into the hands of innocent children. ”

“ But otherwise the new political situation created by the Crusade was dangerous, ultimately fatal, to the Empire. For its lands and seas became a highway from western Europe to the Latin colonies in Syria; the Byzantine government was forced to take precautions to protect itself against the crusading expeditions which travelled to the Holy Land; and these precautions were regarded by the western powers as a hindrance to the sacred objects of the crusades. The bitter religious antagonism between the Greek and Latin Christians increased the mutual distrust and the danger. ”

“ The Crusades occupied men’s minds during the last twenty years of the twelfth century. The thirteenth began with one of the most celebrated of the popes, Innocent III., who, [267] following in the footsteps of Gregory VII., made emperors and kings to tremble by his threats of excommunication, and preached the crusade against the infidels and the Albigenses. His two successors, Honorius III. and Gregory IX., imitated his zeal and resolution. ”

“ The true statement is that the Fourth Crusade was only an incident (not in itself decisive) in a world-movement which doomed the Eastern Empire to extinction—namely, the eastward movement of western Europe which began in the 11th century with the rise of the Normans and the First Crusade. Henceforward the Empire was a middle state, pressed between expanding forces on the east and on the west, and its ultimate disappearance was inevitable. ”

“ There was, at least, as much religious merit in the Mussulmans, who fought to defend their faith. A philosopher may deduce beneficial results from the crusades, particularly to Europe; but he will be much puzzled to prove that that which we now consider a truly Christian spirit, influenced many of the warriors that carried them out, or the churchmen that promoted them. The Inquisition and the crusade against the Albigeois were of the same age, and the principal agents in them equally prostituted the name of religion in their horrors.—Trans. ”

“ In such a state of things, a great event like that of a crusade was likely to turn men’s minds from dangerous novelties, and make them rally round the sanctuary. The sovereign pontiff could not avoid seeing in a holy war the double advantage of defending Jerusalem against the enterprises of the Saracens, and the Church and himself against the attacks of heretics and innovators. ”

“ The bishops returning home preached the crusade as they went, and in a few weeks a glowing enthusiasm had spread throughout France down to the provinces of the Rhine. Then began a movement which, soon extending over all the West, like a second migration of nations, lasted for two centuries. The crusades cost Europe between five and six millions of men, and yet in the end that which had been striven after was not attained. ”

“ In this crusade the Franks appeared to be more polished than they had been till that time. Great monarchs making war against each other without ceasing to give evidences of mutual esteem and generous feeling, was a new spectacle for the world. Subjects followed the example of their princes, and lost beneath the tent much of their barbarism. The Crusaders were sometimes admitted to the table of Saladin, and emirs received at that of Richard. By thus mingling together, Saracens and Christians might make a happy exchange of usages, manners, knowledge, and even virtues. ”