Crusade

“ 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. ”

“ We are crusading to-day, not for the remission of sins, but for the abolition of sinning, of economic and industrial sinning. The crusade to Christ's sepulchre was paltry compared with the splendour and might of our crusade to-day toward manhood. There are millions of us afoot. ”

“ When they came to a resting-place after many days' march, mud-stained or white with dust, weary and footsore, their horses lame, their mules overladen with the burdens of those that had died by the way, beards half grown, hair unkempt, faces grimy, clothes worn shapeless, they were more like a multitude of barbarians wandering upon the plains of Asia than like nobles of France and high-born Crusaders. ”

“ When they come back to their homes they bring enthusiastic memories of the glories of the East, and soon the spirit of sheer adventure replaces, almost insensibly, religious feeling, and crusade follows crusade, till we find one that does not even pretend to go to Palestine, but devotes itself to the conquest of Constantinople, full of riches and luxuries undreamed of in France. ”

“ Every war, therefore, became a crusade; and the warrior, animated by a religious enthusiasm like that of the early Saracen or the Christian crusader, was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it, for the imperishable crown of martyrdom. ”

“ World spiritual crusade, mightiest agency yet conceived for the systematic execution of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan, has been befittingly ushered in through successive, magnificent victories won by Bahá’u’lláh’s crusaders in virgin territories in every continent of the globe. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ One morning, as an excuse for his elegant idleness—of which he began to feel slightly ashamed, when he was forced to see how busy this delicate little girl was, and generally on the behalf of others—he repeated to her the speech he had addressed to his mother, of his wanting a modern crusade to induce him to put on his armor.
“But there is a crusade going on all around us, for every one of us, always,” she said, opening her eyes wide. ”

“ It would be difficult to believe that any one of the counsellors of the king of France perceived, in all their extent, these salutary results of the crusade, which were recognized long after, and which have only been properly appreciated in the age in which we live. On the other hand, they had no conception that a war in which all the most dangerous passions should be brought into action would be accompanied by great misfortunes and calamitous disorders. Ambition, license, the spirit of enthusiasm, all so much to be dreaded by the country, might also bring about the ruin of armies. ”

“ No one will deny the strength of the religious sentiment which, in answer to that message, speedily marshalled the hosts of the first crusade; but the restless life of oppressed and burdened races found in the new enterprise an outlet through which it poured itself like a rising tide. For the first time in its history Western Europe had a common purpose and united in a common undertaking. In the farthest hamlet the overshadowing power of the feudal lord became for the time being tributary to the authority of the Church, summoning Europe to fight its battles and protect its sacred places. ”

“ They were shut out from the solace of human converse; no one might give them shelter while living, or Christian burial when dead. At length a crusade was proclaimed against them. Preachers were sent abroad through Europe to sound the trumpet of vengeance, and to assemble the nations. The pope wrote to all Christian princes, exhorting them to earn their pardon and win heaven rather by bearing the cross against heretics than by marching against the Saracens. ”

“ SPIRITUAL CRUSADE TO BE LAUNCHED IN EUROPE To the fourth, and by far the most momentous, the most arduous, the most challenging task to be carried out under the Second Seven Year Plan—the systematic launching of a crusade in a mighty, a tormented, a spiritually famished continent, a continent drawn, in recent years through political developments as well as through improvement in the means of transportation, so close to the great republic of the West, and constituting a stepping-stone on the road leading to the redemption of the Old World—I must now direct the attention of my readers. ”

“ After having spoken of the heroic deeds and of all that was wonderful in the first crusade, I will turn my attention to the immediate effects it produced upon Europe and Asia. We are sufficiently well acquainted with the evils by which it was followed; great disasters are the familiar subjects of history, but the slow and almost insensible progress of the good that may result from a great revolution, is much less easily perceived. ”

“ The time, then, has come to undertake a crusade, as it were, against an enemy whom we shall not have to cross the seas to seek, because he has cunningly penetrated to our firesides, there to sit beside us and to disturb and destroy the peace of the family. ”

“ Yet, in these early days, joined with many a germ of evil, was a grandeur of thought, a self-devotion, and truly religious spirit, which will hardly allow us to call the first Crusade other than a glorious and a Holy War. ”

“ The first crusade found men of all nationalities eager to follow its leaders, the preachers of the last crusade appealed to deaf ears. Europe was indifferent to the cause which for two centuries had found orators as eloquent as Bernard of Clairvaux and leaders as pure as Godfrey, as daring as Richard, as devoted as St. Louis, and yet religious zeal was not dead, nor had the sanctions of religion lost their sacredness. The secret of the change in European sentiment lay in the enlargement and liberation of European life which the crusades had secured. ”

“ Not until 1918, when it fell to a mixed force of French, British, and Indian troops, did Jerusalem slip once more from the Moslem grasp....
One more crusade remains to be noted, an expedition to Tunis by this same Louis IX, who died of fever there.
§11
The essential interest of the crusades for the historian of mankind lies in the wave of emotion, of unifying feeling, that animated the first. Thereafter these expeditions became more and more an established process, and less and less vital events. The First Crusade was an occurrence like the discovery of America ”

“ When the Crusade had failed I determined to turn forever from the world, and to devote my life to prayer and penance; and so casting aside my armor I made my way here, and took up my abode in a cave in this valley, where at that time were many thousands of other hermits—for the Saracens, while they gained much money from fines and exactions from pilgrims who came to Jerusalem, and fought stoutly against those who sought to capture that city, were in the main tolerant, and offered no hindrance to the community of men whom they looked upon as mad. ”

“ These expeditions from the West were called ‘Crusades’, and pious adventurers went with them from all parts of Europe. A man who died upon a crusade thought that he was fairly sure of going straight to Heaven. ”

“ 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 crusading spirit, generally nourished by incentives wholly foreign to the principles of religion, which, however, always afforded a convenient pretext for the most flagrant outrages against humanity, was by no means dormant in Europe. Another crusade was proclaimed by the Holy See. The passions of rapacious adventurers were inflamed with the hope of conquest, while the promise of unlimited pardons, indulgences, and booty attracted to the standard of the Cross a motley concourse of criminals, outlaws, and fanatics. ”

“ The crusaders were again compelled to endure the outrages and perfidies of the Greek. As in the First Crusade, the Christian armies dragged in their train a great number of children, women, and old men, who could do nothing toward victory but greatly augmented the disaster of defeat. The piety and heroism of the First Crusade had degenerated into a love of show and military splendor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, whether rightly or wrongly, it seems to me that a sporadic crusade such as the one you have now undertaken — not to capture the Holy Land, but merely to destroy one little stronghold of the infidels therein — is an utter waste of power, in so much that even if crowned with momentary success, it could have no permanent result while the hills that command it and its water-supply are still in the hands of the enemy. ”

“ Whatever may be said of the Great Crusade, it will at least be allowed by all men, and for all time, that had the princes and soldiers of other nations done as your majesty and your followers have done, the holy city would have fallen into our hands within a month of our putting foot upon the soil. ”

“ A fresh crusade was preached in France, England, Germany, and even in the kingdoms of Castile, Arragon, and Portugal. The people everywhere listened with pious seriousness to the preachers of the crusade; but murmurs generally arose against the levying of the tenths. The clergy of Rouen, with the university and parliament of Paris, opposed the impost openly. In Germany complaints were more violent than elsewhere. ”

“ WHY THE CRUSADES CEASED In spite of these and other reasons the Christians of Europe might have continued much longer their efforts to recover the Holy Land, had they not lost faith in the movement. But after two centuries the old crusading enthusiasm died out, the old ideal of the crusade as "the way of God" lost its spell. Men had begun to think less of winning future salvation by visits to distant shrines and to think more of their present duties to the world about them. ”

“ Whilst glancing thus at the principal states of Europe, we are particularly struck with the great diversity that exists in the manners, the institutions, and the destinies of nations. How is it possible to follow the march of civilization amidst so many republics and monarchies, some bursting with splendour from the bosom of barbarism, others sinking into ruins? And how is it possible to point out the influence of the crusades through so many revolutions, which have often the same causes, but whose effects are so different, and sometimes so opposite? ”

“ Then we turn our eyes to the countries on the other side of the Mediterranean, and think again of the First Crusade, where half a million men poured out their lives to recover Jerusalem, only to have it wrested from their hands again ”

“ The Western Emperor was at open war with the Pope who preached the crusade. The kings of Spain had their own crusade to wage. The kings of England and France were of all men in their kingdoms the least likely to join in the enterprise.The crusades a Latin movement. The kingdoms of the North were as yet hardly stirred by the voice of Urban. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”