Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAP. had been ratified by oaths and hostages; and the poorest LIX. soldier of Frederic's army was furnished with three marks of silver to defray his expenses on the road. But every engagement was violated by treachery and injustice; and the complaints of the Latins are attested by the honest confession of a Greek historian, who has dared to prefer truth to his country. Instead of a hospitable reception, the gates of the cities, both in Europe and Asia, were closely barred against the crusaders; and the scanty pittance of food was let down in baskets from the walls. Experience or foresight might excuse this timid jealousy; but the common duties of humanity prohibited the mixture of chalk, or other poisonous ingredients, in the bread; and should Manuel be acquitted of any foul connivance, he is guilty of coining base money for the purpose of trading with the pilgrims. In every step of their march they were stopped or inisled; the governors had private orders to fortify the passes and break down the bridges against them; the stragglers were pillaged and murdered; the soldiers and horses were pierced in the woods by arrows from an invisible hand; the sick were burnt in their beds; and the dead bodies were hung on gibbets along the highways. These injuries exasperated the champions of the cross, who were not endowed with evangelical patience; and the Byzantine princes, who had provoked the unequal conflict, promoted the embarkation and march of these formidable guests. On the verge of the Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia," rewarded the hospitable Laodicea, and deplored the hard necessity that had stained his sword with any drops of Christian blood. In their intercourse with the monarchs of Germany and France, the pride of the Greeks was exposed to an anxious trial. They might boast that on the first interview the seat of Louis was a low stool, beside the throne of Manuel;18 but no sooner had the French king transported his army beyond the Bosphorus, than he refused the offer of a second conference, unless his brother would meet him on equal terms, either on the sea or land. With Conrad and Frederic, the ceremonial was still nicer and more difficult; like the successors of Constantine, they styled themselves emperors of the Romans; 19 and firmly maintained the purity

16 Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in the third he commanded against the Franks the important post of Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected with national prejudice and pride.

17 The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by Nicetas, while the anonymous German accuses the rudeness of his countrymen (culpâ nostru.) History would be pleasant, if we were embarrassed only by such contradictions. It is likewise from Nicetas, that we learn the pious and humane sorrow of Frederic.

18 χθαμαλη έδρα, which Cinnamus translates into Latin by the word Σελλιου. Ducange works very hard to save his king and country from such ignominy (sur Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p. 317-320.) Louis afterward insisted on a meeting in mari ex æquo, not ex equo, according to the laughable readings of some MSS.

19 Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum (Anonym. Canis. p. 512.)

of their title and dignity. The first of these representatives of CHAP. Charlemagne would only converse with Manuel on horseback LIX. in the open field; the second, by passing the Hellespont ratherthan the Bosphorus, declined the view of Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor, who had been crowned at Rome, was reduced, in the Greek epistles, to the humble appellation of Rex, or prince of the Alemanni; and the vain and feeble Angelus affected to be ignorant of the name of one of the greatest men and monarchs of the age. While they viewed with hatred and suspicion the Latin pilgrims, the Greek emperors maintained a strict, though secret, alliance with the Turks and Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained, that by his friendship for the great Saladin, he had incurred the enmity of the Franks; and a mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public exercise of the religion of Mahomet.20

III. The swarms that followed the first crusade, were Turkish destroyed in Anatolia by famine, pestilence, and the Turkish warfare. arrows and the princes only escaped with some squadrons of horse to accomplish their lamentable pilgrimage. A just opinion may be formed of their knowledge and humanity; of their knowledge, from the design of subduing Persia and Chorasan in their way to Jerusalem; of their humanity, from the massacre of the Christian people, a friendly city, who came out to meet them with palms and crosses in their hands. The arms of Conrad and Louis were less cruel and imprudent; but the event of the second crusade was still more ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek Manuel is accused by his own subjects of giving seasonable intelligence to the sultan, and treacherous guides to the Latin princes. Instead of crushing the common foe, by a double attack at the same time, but on different sidees the Germans were urged by emulation, and the French were retarded by jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met by the returning emperor, who had lost the greatest part of his army in glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the Mæander. The contrast of the pomp of his rival hastened the retreat of Conrad; the desertion of his independent vassals reduced him to his hereditary troops; and he borrowed some Greek vessels to execute by sea the pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying the lessons of experience, or the nature of war, the king of France advanced through the same country to a similar fate. The vanguard, which bore the royal banner and the oriflamme of St. Denys, 21

[ocr errors]

princeps. Yet

The public and historical style of the Greeks was Pa
Cinnamus owns, that Ιμπερατερ is synonymous to Βασιλευς.
20 In the Epistles of Innocent III. (xiii. p. 184,) and he history of Bobadin
(p. 129, 130,) see the views of a pope and a cadi on this singular toler ation.
21 As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the vassals and advocates
of the monastery of St. Denys. The saints' peculiar banner, which ey received
from the Abbot, was of a square form, and a red or flaming colour.
oriflamme appeared at the head of the French armies from the xiiith to the xvith
century (Ducange sur Joinville, dissert. xviii. p. 224-253.)

1

The

CHAP. had doubled their march with rash and inconsiderate speed; LIX. and the rear, which the king commanded in person, no longer found their companions in the evening camp. In darkness and disorder they were encompassed, assaulted, and overwhelmed by the innumerable hosts of Turks, who, in the art of war, were superior to the Christians of the twelfth century. Louis, who climbed a tree in the general discomfiture, was saved by his own valour, and the ignorance of his adversaries; and with the dawn of day he escaped alive, but almost alone, to the camp of the vanguard. But instead of pursuing his expedition by land, he was reduced to shelter the relics of his army in the friendly seaport of Satalia. From thence he embarked for Antioch; but so penurious was the supply of Greek vessels, that they could only afford room for his knights and nobles; and the plebeian crowd of infantry was left to perish at the foot of the Pamphylian hills. The emperor and the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem; their martial trains, the remnant of mighty armies, were joined to the Christian powers of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final effort of the second crusade. Conrad and Louis embarked for Europe with the personal fame of piety and courage; but the Orientals had braved these potent monarchs of the Franks, with whose names and military forces they had been so often threatened. Perhaps they had still more to fear from the veteran genius of Frederic the First, who, in his youth had served in Asia under his uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and Italy had taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even the princes of the empire, were accustomed under his reign to obey. As soon as he lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the Greek frontier, he plunged into the salt and barren desert, a land (says the historian) of horror and tribulation. During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat, to multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to struggle and to suffer; and such was the measure of his calamities, that when he reached the gates of Iconium, no more than one thousand knights were able to serve on horseback. By a sudden and resolute assault, he defeated the guards, and stormed the capital of the sultan, who humbly sued for pardon and

22 The original French histories of the second crusade, are the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the ivtholume of Duchesne's Collection. The same volume contains many original letters of the king, of Suger his minister, &c. the best documents of authentic history.

23 Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam, sterilem inamænam, Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language of a sufferer.

24 Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, prædones sine ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518. 25 See in the anonymous writer in the collection of Canisius, Tagino, and Bohadin (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arsian, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both Saladin and Frederic.

peace. The road was now open, and Frederic advanced in a CHAP? career of triumph, till he was unfortunately drowned in a petty LIX. torrent of Cilicia. The remainder of his Germans was consumed by sickness and desertion; and the emperor's son expired with the greatest part of his Swabian vassals at the siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes, Godfrey of Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa alone could achieve the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their success was a warning; and in the last and most experienced age of the crusades, every nation preferred the sea to the toils and perils of an inland expedition.

of the en

of the cru

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple Obstinacy event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise thusiasm congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perse-adus. verance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes, on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity : the nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings: their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced by the voice of their holy orators: and among these, Bernard, the monk, or the saint, may claim the most honourable place. About eight years before the first Character conquest of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family, in Bur- of St. Bergundy; at the age of three and twenty, he buried himself in od 459 the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervour of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux in Champagne ;

26 The desire of comparing two great men, has tempted many writers to drown Frederic in the river Cydnus, in which Alexander so imprudently bathed. (Q. Curt. I. iii. c. 4, 5.) But from the march of the emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course. 27 Marinus Sanutus, A. D. 1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus Ecclesiæ per terram nullatenus est ducenda. He resolves, by the Divine aid, the objection, or rather exception, of the first crusade (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, 1. ii. pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)

28 The most authentic information of St. Bernard must be drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by Pére Mabillon, and reprinted at Venice, 1750, in six volumes in folio. Whatever friendship could recollect, or superstition could add, is contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in the vith volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the prefaces of the Benedictine editors.

Clairvaux, surnamed the valley of Absynth, is situate among the woods

and mission

1091-1153.

CHAP. and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble LIX. station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age

31

has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the
honours of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them
are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at
least superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race
of superstition, they attained the prize for which such num-
bers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard
stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his composi-
tions are not devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to
have preserved as much reason and humanity as may be re-
conciled with the character of a saint. In a secular life, he
would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance;
by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against
the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities,
the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe, and the
founder of one hundred and sixty convents.
Princes and pon-
tiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures: France,
England, and Milan, consulted and obeyed his judgment in a
schism of the church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of
Innocent the Second; and his successor Eugenius the Third
was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard. It was in the
proclamation of the second crusade, that he shone as the mis-
sionary and prophet of God, who called the nations to the de-
fence of his holy sepulchre." At the parliament of Vezelay
he spoke before the king; and Louis the Seventh, with his
nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of
Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the em-
peror Conrad: a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language,
was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and
gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was
the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own
success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and
castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes, that
only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven
widows. The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him

near Bar sur Auhe in Champagne. St. Bernard would blush at the pomp of the church and monastery; he would ask for the library, and I know not whether he would be much edified by a tun of 800 muids (914 1-7th hogsheads) which almost rivals that of Heidelberg (Melangés Tirés d'une Grande Bibliotheque, tom. xlvi. p. 15-20.)

30 The disciples of the saint (Vit. 1, 1. iii. c. 2, p. 1232, Vit. ii. c. 16, No. 45, p. 1383,) record a marvellous example of his pious apathy. Juxta lacum etiam Lausannensem totius diei itinere pergens, penitus non attendit aut se videre non vidit. Cum enia vespere facto de eodem lacû socii colloquerentur, interrogabat eos ubi lacus ille esset; et mirati sunt universi. To admire or despise St. Bernard, as he ought, the reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his library the beauties of that incomparable landscape.

Otho Frising. I. i. c. 4, Bernard. Epist. 363, ad Francos Orientales, Opp. tom. i. p. 333, Vit. 1. I. iii. c. 4. tom. vi. p. 1235.

32 Mandastis et obedivi....multiplicati sunt super numerum; vacuantur was et castella; et penc jam non inveniunt quem apprehendant septem muli

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »