Crusader

“ 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 crusade was preached in all the provinces of Germany, and the letters of the emperor and the pope kindled the zeal of the Christian warriors everywhere; never had an enterprise against the infidels been undertaken under more favourable auspices. As Germany undertook the crusade almost singly, the glory of the German nations seemed as much interested in this war as religion itself. Henry was [15] to command the holy expedition; and the Crusaders, full of confidence and hope, were preparing to follow him to the East. ”

“ The effects of the Crusades upon the social life of the Western nations were marked and important. Giving opportunity for romantic adventure, they were one of the principal fostering influences of Chivalry; while by bringing the rude peoples of the West in contact with the culture of the East, they exerted upon them a general refining influence.
The influence of the Crusades upon the intellectual development of Europe can hardly be overestimated. Above all, they liberalized the minds of the crusaders. ”

“ Thus the Romish worship associated itself with the victories of the Crusaders, and made its empire acknowledged wherever the banners of the conquerors floated.
Nothing now opposed the arms of the Crusaders; all trembled before them; fame wafted everywhere the accounts of their exploits and their power; but, on casting a glance into the future the leaders had great reason to fear that the retreat or death of their warriors would leave the empire they had founded destitute of defenders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus men, women, and children, princes and serfs, priests and laymen, in a countless, motley throng, surged toward that mighty cross and tomb whose possessor was raised above the limitations of the flesh.
85 The crusaders had no commissariat and no supply train, no engines of attack, or other weapons than those in their hands, and the holy relics they bore with them. There was no general, no common language, no organization; and so over unknown roads, and through hostile peoples, they wandered from the Rhine to the Bosphorus, and from the Bosphorus to Syria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The pope and the leaders of the Christian army forbade Crusaders to enter the holy city without having conquered it; and they, who did not always prove so docile, obeyed the prohibition without pain. More than a hundred thousand warriors that had left Europe for the purpose of delivering Jerusalem, returned to their homes without having entertained perhaps one thought of visiting the tomb of Christ, for which they had taken up arms. The thirty ounces of gold promised by the emperor to all who should cross the sea to fight the infidels, very much increased the number of the Crusaders ”

“ Crusaders did not fight only for the possession of a sepulchre, but they took up arms to defend their religion wherever it might be attacked, and to make it triumphant among all nations that rejected its laws and refused its benefits. The diversity of interests which set the Crusaders in action, necessarily divided their forces, weakened their enthusiasm, and was sure to be injurious to the success of a holy war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They had preserved far more of it, and more of the old fineness of feeling that went with it, than had survived in Greece itself, or in any part of the Teutonized empire of Rome. The Crusaders got glimpses of its influence, at least, and a curiosity was wakened, which sent students into Moorish Spain, and opened scholarly interchanges which greatly advanced learning in Europe. Rising Power of the Church. Not the least important effect of the Crusades was the atmosphere of religion which they caused to envelope the great affairs of the time, and which they made common in politics and society. ”

“ In the cities and the plains, those unworthy Crusaders found everywhere men as ferocious and implacable as themselves, who appeared—to employ the words of the historians of the times—to [73] have been placed upon the passage of the pilgrims as instruments of divine wrath. A very small number escaped the carnage. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. THE CRUSADERS AND PILGRIMS.
A MONK HISTORIAN ON THE CRUSADES.
The old chroniclers are elated with a fine enthusiasm when narrating the exploits of the first Crusaders. Orderic the monk, who died about 1141, thus describes the situation: “Lo, the crusade to Jerusalem is entered on by the inspiration of God; the people of the West miraculously flock together from many nations, and are led in one united army to fight against the execrable Saracens, who so long had defiled with their abominations all that is sacred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The decline and fall of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem forms a sordid story of jealousy, and intrigue, of futile ambition and divided counsels, of perjury and perfidy. The Crusaders intermarried with the women of the country, and, except so far as it was constantly recruited from Europe, the race rapidly degenerated. With no resources at their back, except the charity of Europe, the Crusaders yet had dreams of worldly aggrandisement, which included in their ken the whole of Egypt and Syria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have seen what evils the Crusaders had endured in the expeditions to the East; among the crowd of pilgrims there were always some who had not sufficient virtue to pass through the ordeal of great misfortunes: on the arrival of Louis IX. in Egypt, that country already contained many of these perjured and unfaithful Christians, who, in the perils and calamities of preceding wars, had forsaken the God of their fathers. All these renegadoes were despised by the Saracens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was agreed that all the spoils should be deposited in three churches, selected for the purpose; and the leaders commanded the Crusaders to bring, in common, the whole of the booty, and threatened with death and excommunication all who should abstract anything from the prize of the valour, and the recompense due to the labours of the whole army. Many soldiers, and even some knights, allowed themselves to be led away by avarice, and retained valuable objects that fell into their hands. ”

“ Amidst the excessive abundance that reigned in their camp, the Crusaders gave themselves up to intemperance; in a country in which pagan fables placed the altars of voluptuousness, the virtue of the pilgrims was every day exposed to fresh trials; a protracted [371] idleness relaxed the discipline of the army, and, to crown these evils, a pestilential disease exercised great ravages among the defenders of the cross. The pilgrims had to lament the death of more than two hundred and fifty knights from this calamity. ”

“ Although the West had counted in this crusade more than five hundred thousand of her warriors departing for Palestine or Egypt, great armies were rarely assembled on the banks of the Nile or the Jordan. As the Crusaders were never gathered together in great bodies, they were not subjected to famine, or the other scourges that had so fearfully thinned the ranks of the early defenders of the cross ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the Tiber to the ocean, and from the Rhine to the other side of the Pyrenees, nothing was to be seen but troops of men marked with the cross, who swore to exterminate the Saracens, and were chanting their songs of conquest beforehand. On all parts resounded the war-cry of the Crusaders “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”
Fathers themselves conducted their children, and made them swear to conquer or die for Jesus Christ. Warriors tore themselves from the arms of their wives and from their families, promising to return victorious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every child has heard of the Crusades, in which the nobles and knights and soldiers of the Middle Ages went to fight against the Turks to win back the Holy Sepulchre. These wars were called "crusades," from the cross which the Crusaders wore as badges. The word was made from the Latin word crux, which means "cross." But crusade has now become a general word. We speak of a "temperance crusade," of a "peace crusade," and so on. The word has come to have the general meaning of efforts made by people for something which they believe to be good ”

“ The Crusaders, however, had great cause to fear that the Greeks, recovered from their first panic, might become aware of the small number of their enemies, and succeed in overwhelming them by their multitudes; they resolved, therefore, to take advantage of the fear they had inspired, and gave their whole attention to forward the preparations for attacking enemies that had provided nothing for their defence. ”

“ For we may surely not regard the people as of better moral fibre, and therefore more susceptible to ideal motives, than the princes and commanders who led the crusading armies. Of these, however, only the hot-blooded nobles of southern France can primarily pass for representatives of that churchly enthusiasm with which, according to the tradition well-tinged with legend, the crusaders as a whole are said to have been seized. ”

“ All the leaders assembled in council in the king’s vessel; some proposed to defer the descent till the vessels which had been dispersed by the tempest should rejoin them: “To attack the infidels without having all their forces, would be to give them an advantage that might greatly elevate their pride; and even if success were certain, it appeared but just to wait, that all the Crusaders might have their share of the glory they came so far to seek.” Some went still further, and spoke of the embarrassments and perils of a descent in an unknown country ”