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HISTORY OF FRANCE
BY M. GUIZOT
VOLUME II.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
XVII. THE CRUSADES, THEIR DECLINE AND END. 9
XVIII. THE KINGSHIP IN FRANCE 65
XIX. THE COMMUNES AND THE THIRD ESTATE 205
XX. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. PHILIP VI. AND JOHN II. 249
XXI. THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 328
XXII. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. CHARLES V. 358
LIST OF STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
BRIDGE OF TOULOUSE FRONTISPIECE.
PREACHING THE SECOND CRUSADE 13
ST. LOUIS ADMINISTERING JUSTICE 46
ST. LOUIS MEDIATING BETWEEN HENRY III. AND HIS BARONS 136
THE SICILIAN VESPERS 156
THE TOWN AND FORTRESS OF LILLE 164
LIST OF WOOD-CUT ILLUSTRATIONS.
Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land 10
Defeat of the Turks 16
The Christians of the Holy City defiling before Saladin. 28
Richard Coeur de Lion having the Saracens beheaded. . 37
Sire de Joinville 55
The Death of St. Louis 64
Thomas de Marie made Prisoner 69
Louis the Fat on an Expedition 69
The Battle of Bouvines 81
Death of De Montfort 104
De la Marche's parting Insult 126
"It is rather hard Bread." 146
The Battle of Courtrai 167
Colonna striking the Pope 185
The Hanging of Marigny 200
The Peasants resolved to Live according to their own Inclinations and
their own Laws. . . . 209
Insurrection in favor of the Commune at Cambrai 214
Burghers of Laon 220
View of the Town of Laon 223
Bishop Gaudri dragged from the Cask 224
The Cathedral of Laon 233
Homage of Edward III. to Philip VI. 250
Van Artevelde at his Door 264
"See! See!" she cried 283
Statue of James Van Artevelde 296
Queen Philippa at the Feet of the King 314
John II., called the Good 318
"Father, ware right! Father, ware left!" 326
King John taken Prisoner 326
Arrest of the Dauphin's Councillors 334
Charles the Bad, King of Navarre 335
The Louvre in the Fourteenth Century 336
Stephen Marcel 342
The Murder of the Marshals 345
"In his Hands the Keys of the Gates." 354
Charles V. 371
Big Ferre 376
Bertrand du Guesclin 388
Putting the Keys on Du Guesclin's Bier 407
A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.
CHAPTER XVII.----THE CRUSADES, THEIR DECLINE AND END.
In the month of August, 1099, the Crusade, to judge by appearances, had
attained its object. Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians, and
they had set up in it a king, the most pious and most disinterested of
the crusaders. Close to this ancient kingdom were growing up likewise,
in the two chief cities of Syria and Mesopotamia, Antioch and Edessa, two
Christian principalities, in the possession of two crusader-chiefs,
Bohemond and Baldwin. A third Christian principality was on the point of
getting founded at the foot of Libanus, at Tripolis, for the advantrge of
another crusader, Bertrand, eldest son of Count Raymond of Toulouse. The
conquest of Syria and Palestine seemed accomplished, in the name of the
faith, and by the armies of Christian Europe; and the conquerors
calculated so surely upon their fixture that, during his reign, short as
it was (for he was elected king July 23, 1099, and died July 18, 1100,
aged only forty years), Godfrey de Bouillon caused to be drawn up and
published, under the title of Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of laws, which
transferred to Asia the customs and traditions of the feudal system, just
as they existed in France at the moment of his departure for the Holy
Land.
Forty-six years afterwards, in 1145, the Mussulmans, under the leadership
of Zanghi, sultan of Aleppo and of Mossoul, had retaken Edessa. Forty-
two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el-Eddyn), sultan of Egypt
and of Syria, had put an end to the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem; and
only seven years later, in 1194, Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England,
after the most heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving in sight of
Jerusalem, retreated in despair, covering his eyes with his shield, and
saying that he was not worthy to look upon the city which he was not in a
condition to conquer. When he re-embarked at St. Jean d'Acre, casting a
last glance and stretching out his arms towards the coast, he cried,
"Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty; and may He
grant me long life enough to return hither and deliver thee from the yoke
of the infidels! "A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph of
the first crusaders, and the dominion they had acquired by conquest in
the Holy Land had become, even in the eyes of their most valiant and most
powerful successors, an impossibility.
[Illustration: Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land----10]
Nevertheless, repeated efforts and glory, and even victories, were not
then, and were not to be still later, unknown amongst the Christians in
their struggle against the Mussulmans for the possession of the Holy
Land. In the space of a hundred and seventy-one years from the
coronation of Godfrey de Bouillon as king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the
death of St. Louis, wearing the cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand
crusades were undertaken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns
of Christian Europe; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of
Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively engaged
therein. And they all failed. It were neither right nor desirable to
make long pause over the recital of their attempts and their reverses,
for it is the history of France, and not a general history of the
crusades, which is here related; but it was in France, by the French
people, and under French chiefs, that the crusades were begun; and it was
with St. Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the banner of the cross, that
they came to an end. They received in the history of Europe the glorious
name of _Gesta Dei per Francos_ (God's works by French hands); and they
have a right to keep, in the history of France, the place they really
occupied.
During a reign of twenty-nine years, Louis VI., called the Fat, son of
Philip I., did not trouble himself about the East or the crusades, at
that time in all their fame and renown. Being rather a man of sense than
an enthusiast in the cause either of piety or glory, he gave all his
attention to the establishment of some order, justice, and royal
authority in his as yet far from extensive kingdom. A tragic incident,
however, gave the crusade chief place in the thoughts and life of his
son, Louis VII., called the Young, who succeeded him in 1137. He got
himself rashly embroiled, in 1142, in a quarrel with Pope Innocent II.,
on the subject of the election of the Archbishop of Bourges. The pope
and the king had each a different candidate for the see. "The king is a
child," said the pope; "he must get schooling, and be kept from learning
bad habits."
"Never, so long as I live," said the king, "shall Peter de la Chatre (the
pope's candidate) enter the city of Bourges." The chapter of Bourges,
thinking as the pope thought, elected Peter de la Chatre; and Theobald
II., Count of Champagne, took sides for the archbishop elect. Mind your
own business," said the king to him; "your dominions are large enough to
occupy you; and leave me to govern my own as I have a mind." Theobald
persisted in backing the elect of pope and chapter. The pope
excommunicated the king. The king declared war against the Count of
Champagne; and went and besieged Vitry. Nearly all the town was built of
wood, and the besiegers set fire to it. The besieged fled for refuge to
a church, in which they were invested; and the fire reached the church,
which was entirely consumed, together with the thirteen hundred
inhabitants, men, women, and children, who had retreated thither. This
disaster made a great stir. St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux and the
leading ecclesiastical authority of the age, took the part of Count
Theobald. King Louis felt a lively sorrow, and sincere repentance. Soon
afterwards it became known in the West that the affairs of the Christians
were going ill in the East; that the town of Edessa had been re-taken by
the Turks, and all its inhabitants massacred. The kingdom of Jerusalem,
too, was in danger. Great was the emotion in Europe; and the cry of the
crusade was heard once more. Louis the Young, to appease his troubled
conscience, and to get reconciled with the pope, to say nothing of
sympathy for the national movement, assembled the grandees, laic and
ecclesiastical, of the kingdom, to deliberate upon the matter.
Deliberation was more prolonged, more frequently repeated, and more
indecisive than it had been at the time of the first crusade. Three
grand assemblies met, the first in 1145, at Bourges; the second in 1146,
at Vezelai, in Nivernais; and the third in 1147, at Etampes; all three
being called to investigate the expediency of a new crusade, and of the
king's participation in the enterprise. Not only was the question
seriously discussed, but extremely diverse opinions were expressed, both
amongst the rank and file of these assemblies, and amongst their most
illustrious members. There were two men whose talents and fame made them
conspicuous above all; Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the intimate and able
adviser of the wise king, Louis the Fat, and St. Bernard, Abbot of
Clairvaux, the most eloquent, most influential, and most piously
disinterested amongst the Christians of his age. Though both were
ecclesiastics, these two great men were, touching the second crusade,
of opposite opinions. "Let none suppose," says Suger's biographer and
confidant, William, monk of St. Denis, "that it was at his instance or by
his counsel that the king undertook the voyage to the Holy Land.
Although the success of it was other than had been expected, this prince
was influenced only by pious wishes and zeal for the service of God. As
for Suger, ever far-seeing and only too well able to read the future, not
only did he not suggest to the monarch any such design, but he
disapproved of it so soon as it was mentioned to him. The truth of it
is, that, after having vainly striven to nip it in the bud, and being
unable to put a check upon the king's zeal, he thought it wise, either
for fear of wounding the king's piety, or of uselessly incurring the
wrath of the partisans of the enterprise, to yield to the times." As for
St. Bernard, at the first of the three assemblies, viz., at Bourges,
whether it were that his mind was not yet made up or that he desired to
cover himself with greater glory, he advised the king to undertake
nothing without having previously consulted the Holy See; but when Pope
Eugenius III., so far from hesitating, had warmly solicited the aid of
the Christians against the infidels, St. Bernard, at the second assembly,
viz., at Vezelai, gave free vent to his feelings and his eloquence.
After having read the pope's letters, "If ye were told," said he, "that
an enemy had attacked your castles, your cities, and your lands, had
ravished your wives and your daughters, and had profaned your temples,
which of you would not fly to arms? Well, all those evils, and evils
still greater, have come upon your brethren, upon the family of Christ,
which is your own. Why tarry ye, then, to repair so many wrongs, to
avenge so many insults? Christian warriors, He who gave His life for you
to-day demandeth yours; illustrious knights, noble defenders of the
cross, call to mind the example of your fathers, who conquered Jerusalem,
and whose names are written in heaven! The living God hath charged me to
tell unto you that He will punish those who shall not have defended Him
against His enemies. Fly to arms, and let Christendom re-echo with the
words of the prophet, 'Woe to him who dyeth not his sword with blood!'
"At this fervent address the assembly rang with the shout of the first
crusade, 'God willeth it! God willeth it!' The king, kneeling before
St. Bernard, received from his hands the cross; the queen, Eleanor of
Aquitaine, assumed it, like her husband; nearly all the barons present
followed their example; St. Bernard tore up his garments into crosses for
distribution, and, on leaving the assembly, he scoured the country
places, everywhere preaching and persuading the people. The villages and
castles are deserted," he wrote to the pope; "there is none to be seen
save widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers are alive." Nor did
he confine himself to France; he crossed into Germany, and preached the
crusade all along the Rhine. The emperor, Conrad III., showed great
hesitation; the empire was sorely troubled, he said, and had need of its
head. "Be of good cheer," replied St. Bernard "so long as you defend
His heritage, God himself will take the burden of defending yours." One
day, in December, 1146, he was celebrating mass at Spire, in presence of
the emperor and a great number of German princes. Suddenly he passed
from the regular service to the subject of the crusade, and transported
his audience to the last judgment, in the presence of all the nations of
the earth summoned together, and Jesus Christ bearing his cross, and
reproaching the emperor with ingratitude. Conrad was deeply moved, and
interrupted the preacher by crying out, "I know what I owe to Jesus
Christ: and I swear to go whither it pleaseth Him to call me." The
attraction became general; and Germany, like France, took up the cross.
[Illustration: PREACHING THE SECOND CRUSADE----13]
St. Bernard returned to France. The ardor there had cooled a little
during his absence; the results of his trip in Germany were being waited
for; and it was known that, on being eagerly pressed to put himself at
the head of the crusaders, and take the command of the whole expedition,
he had formally refused. His enthusiasm and his devotion, sincere and
deep as they were, did not, in his case, extinguish common sense; and he
had not forgotten the melancholy experiences of Peter the Hermit. In
support of his refusal he claimed the intervention of Pope Eugenius III.
"Who am I," he wrote to him, "that I should form a camp, and march at the
head of an army? What can be more alien to my calling, even if I lacked
not the strength and the ability? I need not tell you all this, for you
know it perfectly. I conjure you by the charity you owe me, deliver me
not over, thus, to the humors of men." The pope came to France; and the
third grand assembly met at Etampes, in February, 1147. The presence of
St. Bernard rekindled zeal; but foresight began to penetrate men's minds.
Instead of insisting upon his being the chief of the crusade, attention
was given to preparations for the expedition; the points were indicated
at which the crusaders should form a junction, and the directions in
which they would have to move; and inquiry was made as to what measures
should be taken, and what persons should be selected for the government
of France during the king's absence. "Sir," said St. Bernard, after
having come to an understanding upon the subject with the principal
members of the assembly, at the same time pointing to Suger and the Count
de Nevers, "here be two swords, and it sufficeth." The Count de Nevers
peremptorily refused the honor done him; he was resolved, he said, to
enter the order of St. Bruno, as indeed he did. Suger also refused at
first, "considering the dignity offered him a burden, rather than an
honor." Wise and clear-sighted by nature, he had learned in the reign of
Louis the Fat, to know the requirements and the difficulties of
government. "He consented to accept," says his biographer, "only when he
was at last forced to it by Pope Eugenius, who was present at the king's
departure, and whom it was neither permissible nor possible for him to
resist." It was agreed that the French crusaders should form a junction
at Metz, under the command of King Louis, and the Germans at Ratisbonne,
under that of the Emperor Conrad, and that the two armies should
successively repair by land to Constantinople, whence they would cross
into Asia.
Having each a strength, it is said, of one hundred thousand men, they
marched by Germany and the Lower Danube, at an interval of two months
between them, without committing irregularities and without meeting
obstacles so serious as those of the first crusade, but still much
incommoded, and subjected to great hardships in the countries they
traversed. The Emperor Conrad and the Germans first, and then King Louis
and the French, arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of
1117. Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning there;
and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mixture of caresses
and malevolence, promises and perfidy, as had distinguished his
grandfather. "There is no ill turn he did not do them," says the
historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was the first to cross into
Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskilfulness or treason, the guides
with whom he had been supplied by Manuel Comnenus led him so badly that,
on the 28th of October, 1147, he was surprised and shockingly beaten by
the Turks near Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up amongst the
French, who had not yet left Constantinople; and some of their chiefs,
and even one of their prelates, the Bishop of Langres, proposed to make,
without further delay, an end of it with this emperor and empire, so
treacherously hostile, and to take Constantinople in order to march more
securely upon Jerusalem. But King Louis and the majority of his knights
turned a deaf ear: "We be come forth," said they, "to expiate our own
sins, not to punish the crimes of the Greeks; when we took up the cross,
God did not put into our hands the sword of His justice;" and they, in
their turn, crossed over into Asia Minor. There they found the Germans
beaten and dispersed, and Conrad himself wounded and so discouraged that,
instead of pursuing his way by land with the French, he returned to
Constantinople to go thence by sea to Palestine. Louis and his army
continued their march across Asia Minor, and gained in Phrygia, at the
passage of the river Meander, so brilliant a victory over the Turks that,
"if such men," says the historian Nicetas, abstained from taking
Constantinople, one cannot but admire their moderation and forbearance."
[Illustration: Defeat of the Turks----16]
But the success was short, and, ere long, dearly paid for. On entering
Pisidia, the French army split up into two, and afterwards into several
divisions, which scattered and lost themselves in the defiles of the
mountains. The Turks waited for them, and attacked them at the mouths
and from the tops of the passes; before long there was nothing but
disorder and carnage; the little band which surrounded the king was cut
to pieces at his side; and Louis himself, with his back against a rock,
defended himself, alone, for some minutes, against several Turks, till
they, not knowing who he was, drew off, whereupon he, suddenly throwing
himself upon a stray horse, rejoined his advanced guard, who believed him
dead. The army continued their march pell-mell, king, barons, knights,
soldiers, and pilgrims, uncertain day by day what would become of them on
the morrow. The Turks harassed them afield; the towns in which there
were Greek governors residing refused to receive them; provisions fell
short; arms and baggage were abandoned on the road. On arriving in
Pamphylia, at Satalia, a little port on the Mediterranean, the
impossibility of thus proceeding became evident; they were still, by
land, forty days' march from Antioch, whereas it required but three to
get there by sea. The governor of Satalia proposed to the king to embark
the crusaders; but, when the vessels arrived, they were quite inadequate
for such an operation; hardly could the king, the barons, and the knights
find room in them; and it would be necessary to abandon and expose to the
perils of the land-march the majority of the infantry and all the mere
pilgrims who had followed the army. Louis, disconsolate, fluctuated
between the most diverse resolutions, at one time demanding to have
everybody embarked at any risk, at another determining to march by land
himself with all who could not be embarked; distributing whatever money
and provisions he had left, being as generous and sympathetic as he was
improvident and incapable, and "never letting a day pass," says Odo of
Deuil, who accompanied him, "without hearing mass and crying unto the God
of the Christians." At last he embarked with his queen, Eleanor, and his
principal knights; and towards the end of March, 1148, he arrived at
Antioch, having lost more than three quarters of his army.
Scarcely had he taken a few days' rest when messengers came to him on
behalf of Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, begging him to repair without
delay to the Holy City. Louis was as eager to go thither as the king and
people of Jerusalem were to see him there; but his speedy departure
encountered unforeseen hinderances. Raymond, of Poitiers, at that time
Prince of Antioch by his marriage with Constance, granddaughter of the
great Bohemond of the first crusade, was uncle to the Queen of France,
Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was, says William of Tyre, "a lord of noble
descent, of tall and elegant figure, the handsomest of the princes of the
earth, a man of charming affability and conversation, open-handed and
magnificent beyond measure," and, moreover, ambitious and eager to extend
his small dominion. He had at heart, beyond everything, the conquest of
Aleppo and Caesarea. In this design the King of France and the crusaders
who were still about him might be of real service; and he attempted to
win them over. Louis answered that he would engage in no enterprise
until he had visited the holy places. Raymond was impetuous, irritable,
and as unreasonable in his desires as unfortunate in his undertakings.
He had quickly acquired great influence over his niece, Queen Eleanor,
and he had no difficulty in winning her over to his plans. "She," says
William of Tyre, "was a very inconsiderate woman, caring little for royal
dignity or conjugal fidelity; she took great pleasure in the court of
Antioch, where she also conferred much pleasure, even upon Mussulmans,
whom, as some chronicles say, she did not repulse; and, when the king,
her husband, spoke to her of approaching departure, she emphatically
refused, and, to justify her opposition, she declared that they could no
longer live together, as there was, she asserted, a prohibited degree of
consanguinity between them." Louis, "who loved her with an almost
excessive love," says William of Nangis, was at the same time angered and
grieved. He was austere in morals, easily jealous, and religiously
scrupulous, and for a moment he was on the point of separating from his
wife; but the counsels of his chief barons dissuaded him, and, thereupon,
taking a sudden resolution, he set out from Antioch secretly, by night,
carrying off the queen almost by force. "They both hid their wrath as
much as possible," says the chronicler; "but at heart they had ever this
outrage." We shall see, before long, what were the consequences. No
history can offer so striking an example of the importance of
well-assorted unions amongst the highest as well as the lowest, and of
the prolonged woes which may be brought upon a nation by the domestic
evils of royalty.
On approaching Jerusalem, in the month of April, 1148, Louis VII. saw
coming to meet him King Baldwin III., and the patriarch and the people,
singing, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" So soon
as he had entered the city, his pious wishes were fulfilled by his being
taken to pay a solemn visit to all the holy places. At the same time
arrived from Constantinople the Emperor Conrad, almost alone and in the
guise of a simple pilgrim. All the remnant of the crusaders, French and
German, hurried to join them. Impatient to exhibit their power on the
theatre of their creed, and to render to the kingdom of Jerusalem some
striking service, the two Western sovereigns, and Baldwin, and their
principal barons assembled at Ptolemais (St. Jean d'Acre) to determine
the direction to be taken by their enterprise. They decided upon the
siege of Damascus, the most important and the nearest of the Mussulman
princedoms in Syria, and in the early part of June they moved thither
with forces incomplete and ill united. Neither the Prince of Antioch nor
the Counts of Edessa and Tripolis had been summoned to St. Jean d'Acre;
and Queen Eleanor had not appeared. At the first attack, the ardor of
the assailants and the brilliant personal prowess of their chiefs, of the
Emperor Conrad amongst others, struck surprise and consternation into the
besieged, who, foreseeing the necessity of abandoning their city, laid
across the streets beams, chains, and heaps of stones, to stop the
progress of the conquerors and give themselves time for flying, with
their families and their wealth, by the northern and southern gates. But
personal interest and secret negotiations before long brought into the
Christian camp weakness, together with discord. Many of the barons were
already disputing amongst themselves, at the very elbows of the
sovereigns, for the future government of Damascus; others were not
inaccessible to the rich offers which came to them from the city; and it
is maintained that King Baldwin himself suffered himself to be bribed by
a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold which were sent to him by
Modjer-Eddyn, Emir of Damascus, and which turned out to be only pieces of
copper, covered with gold leaf. News came that the Emirs of Aleppo and
Mossoul were coming, with considerable forces, to the relief of the
place. Whatever may have been the cause of retreat, the crusader-
sovereigns decided upon it, and, raising the siege, returned to
Jerusalem. The Emperor Conrad, in indignation and confusion, set out
precipitately to return to Germany. King Louis could not make up his
mind thus to quit the Holy Land in disgrace, and without doing anything
for its deliverance. He prolonged his stay there for more than a year
without anything to show for his time and zeal. His barons and his
knights nearly all left him, and, by sea or land, made their way back to
France. But the king still lingered. I am under a bond," he wrote to
Suger, "not to leave the Holy Land, save with glory, and after doing
somewhat for the cause of God and the kingdom of France." At last, after
many fruitless entreaties, Suger wrote to him, "Dear king and lord, I
must cause thee to hear the voice of thy whole kingdom. Why dost thou
fly from us? After having toiled so hard in the East, after having
endured so many almost unendurable evils, by what harshness or what
cruelty comes it that, now when the barons and grandees of the kingdom
have returned, thou persistest in abiding with the barbarians? The
disturbers of the kingdom have entered into it again; and thou, who
shouldst defend it, remainest in exile as if thou wert a prisoner; thou
givest over the lamb to the wolf, thy dominions to the ravishers. We
conjure thy majesty, we invoke thy piety, we adjure thy goodness, we
summon thee in the name of the fealty we owe thee; tarry not at all, or
only a little while, beyond Easter; else thou wilt appear, in the eyes of
God, guilty of a breach of that oath which thou didst take at the same
time as the crown." At length Louis made up his mind and embarked at St.
Jean d'Acre at the commencement of July, 1149; and he disembarked in the
month of October at the port of St. Gilles, at the mouth of the Rhone,
whence he wrote to Suger, "We be hastening unto you safe and sound, and
we command you not to defer paying us a visit, on a given day and before
all our other friends. Many rumors reach us touching our kingdom, and
knowing nought for certain, we be desirous to learn from you how we
should bear ourselves or hold our peace, in every case. And let none but
yourself know what I say to you at this present writing."
This preference and this confidence were no more than Louis VII. owed to
Suger. The Abbot of St. Denis, after having opposed the crusade with a
freedom of spirit and a far-sightedness unique, perhaps, in his times,
had, during the king's absence, borne the weight of government with a
political tact, a firmness, and a disinterestedness rare in any times.
He had upheld the authority of absent royalty, kept down the pretensions
of vassals, and established some degree of order wherever his influence
could reach; he had provided for the king's expenses in Palestine by good
administration of the domains and revenues of the crown; and, lastly, he
had acquired such renown in Europe, that men came from Italy and from
England to view the salutary effects of his government, and that the name
of Solomon of his age was conferred upon him by strangers his
contemporaries. With the exception of great sovereigns, such as
Charlemagne or William the Conqueror, only great bishops or learned
theologians, and that by their influence in the Church or by their
writings, had obtained this European reputation; from the ninth to the
twelfth century, Suger was the first man who attained to it by the sole
merit of his political conduct, and who offered an example of a minister
justly admired, for his ability and wisdom, beyond the circle in which he
lived. When he saw that the king's return drew near, he wrote to him,
saying, "You will, I think, have ground to be satisfied with our conduct.
We have remitted to the knights of the Temple the money we had resolved
to send you. We have, besides, reimbursed the Count of Vermandois the
three thousand livres he had lent us for your service. Your land and
your people are in the enjoyment, for the present, of a happy peace. You
will find your houses and your palaces in good condition through the care
we have taken to have them repaired. Behold me now in the decline of
age: and I dare to say that the occupations in which I have engaged for
the love of God and through attachment to your person have added many to
my years. In respect of the queen, your consort, I am of opinion that
you should conceal the displeasure she causes you, until, restored to
your dominions, you can calmly deliberate upon that and upon other
subjects."
On once more entering his kingdom, Louis, who, at a distance, had
sometimes lent a credulous ear to the complaints of the discontented or
to the calumnies of Suger's enemies, did him full justice and was the
first to give him the name of Father of the country. The ill success of
the crusade and the remembrance of all that France had risked and lost
for nothing, made a deep impression upon the public; and they honored
Suger for his far-sightedness whilst they blamed St. Bernard for the
infatuation which he had fostered and for the disasters which had
followed it. St. Bernard accepted their reproaches in a pious spirit:
"If," said he, "there must be murmuring against God or against me, I
prefer to see the murmurs of men falling upon me rather than upon the
Lord. To me it is a blessed thing that God should deign to use me as a
buckler to shield Himself. I shrink not from humiliation, provided that
His glory be unassailed." But at the same time St. Bernard himself was
troubled, and he permitted himself to give expression to his troubled
feelings in a singularly free and bold strain of piety. "We be fallen
upon very grievous times," he wrote to Pope Eugenius III.; "the Lord,
provoked by our sins, seemeth in some sort to have determined to judge
the world before the time, and to judge it, doubtless, according to His
equity, but not remembering His mercy. Do not the heathen say, 'Where is
now their God?' And who can wonder? The children of the Church, those
who be called Christian, lie stretched upon the desert, smitten with the
sword or dead of famine. Did we undertake the work rashly? Did we
behave ourselves lightly? How patiently God heareth the sacrilegious
voices and the blasphemies of these Egyptians! Assuredly His judgments
be righteous; who doth not know it? But in the present judgment there is
so profound a depth, that I hesitate not to call him blessed whosoever is
not surprised and offended by it."
The soul of man, no less than the shifting scene of the world, is often a
great subject of surprise. King Louis, on his way back to France, had
staid some days at Rome; and there, in a conversation with the pope, he
had almost promised him a new crusade to repair the disasters of that
from which he had found it so difficult to get out. Suger, when he
became acquainted with this project, opposed it as he had opposed the
former; but, at the same time, as he, in common with all his age,
considered the deliverance of the Holy Land to be the bounden duty of
Christians, he conceived the idea of dedicating the large fortune and
great influence he had acquired to the cause of a new crusade, to be
undertaken by himself and at his own expense, without compromising either
king or state. He unfolded his views to a meeting of bishops assembled
at Chartres; and he went to Tours, and paid a visit to the tomb of St.
Martin to implore his protection. Already more than ten thousand
pilgrims were in arms at his call, and already he had himself chosen a
warrior, of ability and renown, to command them, when he fell ill, and
died at the end of four months, in 1152, aged seventy, and "thanking the
Almighty," says his biographer, "for having taken him to Him, not
suddenly, but little by little, in order to bring him step by step to the
rest needful for the weary man." It is said that, in his last days and
when St. Bernard was exhorting him not to think any more save only of the
heavenly Jerusalem, Suger still expressed to him his regret at dying
without having succored the city which was so dear to them both.
Almost at the very moment when Suger was dying, a French council,
assembled at Beaugency, was annulling on the ground of prohibited
consanguinity, and with the tacit consent of the two persons most
concerned, the marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Some
months afterwards, at Whitsuntide in the same year, Henry Plantagenet,
Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, espoused Eleanor, thus adding to his
already great possessions Poitou and Aquitaine, and becoming, in France,
a vassal more powerful than the king his suzerain. Twenty months later,
in 1154, at the death of King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet became King of
England; and thus there was a recurrence, in an aggravated form, of the
position which had been filled by William the Conqueror, and which was
the first cause of rivalry between France and England and of the
consequent struggles of considerably more than a century's duration.
Little more than a year after Suger, on the 20th of April, 1153,
St. Bernard died also. The two great men, of whom one had excited and
the other opposed the second crusade, disappeared together from the
theatre of the world. The crusade had completely failed. After a lapse
of scarce forty years, a third crusade began. When a great idea is
firmly fixed in men's minds with the twofold sanction of duty and
feeling, many generations live and die in its service before efforts are
exhausted and the end reached or abandoned.
During this forty years' interval between the end of the second and
beginning of the third crusade, the relative positions of West and East,
Christian Europe and Mussulman Asia, remained the same outwardly and
according to the general aspect of affairs; but in Syria and in Palestine
there was a continuance of the struggle between Christendom and Islamry,
with various fortunes on either side. The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem
still stood; and after Godfrey de Bouillon, from 1100 to 1180, there had
been a succession of eight kings; some energetic and bold, aspiring to
extend their young dominion, others indolent and weak upon a tottering
throne. The rivalries and often the defections and treasons of the petty
Christian princes and lords who were set up at different points in
Palestine and Syria endangered their common cause. Fortunately similar
rivalries, dissensions, and treasons prevailed amongst the Mussulman
emirs, some of them Turks and others Persians or Arabs, and at one time
foes, at another dependants, of the Khalifs of Bagdad or of Egypt.
Anarchy and civil war harassed both races and both religions with almost
equal impartiality. But, beneath this surface of simultaneous agitation
and monotony, great changes were being accomplished or preparing for
accomplishment in the West. The principal sovereigns of the preceding
generation, Louis VII., King of France, Conrad III., Emperor of Germany,
and Henry II., King of England, were dying; and princes more juvenile and
more enterprising, or simply less wearied out,--Philip Augustus,
Frederick Barbarossa, and Richard Coeur de Lion,--were taking their
places. In the East the theatre of policy and events was being enlarged;
Egypt was becoming the goal of ambition with the chiefs, Christian or
Mussulman, of Eastern Asia; and Damietta, the key of Egypt, was the
object of their enterprises, those of Amaury I., the boldest of the kings
of Jerusalem, as well as those of the Sultans of Damascus and Aleppo.
Noureddin and Saladin (Nour-Eddyn and Sala-Eddyn), Turks by origin, had
commenced their fortunes in Syria; but it was in Egypt that they
culminated, and, when Saladin became the most illustrious as well as the
most powerful of Mussulman sovereigns, it was with the title of Sultan of
Egypt and of Syria that he took his place in history.
In the course of the year 1187, Europe suddenly heard tale upon tale
about the repeated disasters of the Christians in Asia. On the 1st of
May, the two religious and warlike orders which had been founded in the
East for the defence of Christendom--the Hospitallers of St. John of
Jerusalem and the Templars--lost, at a brush in Galilee, five hundred of
their bravest knights. On the 3d and 4th of July, near Tiberias, a
Christian army was surrounded by the Saracens, and also, ere long, by the
fire which Saladin had ordered to be set to the dry grass which covered
the plain. The flames made their way and spread beneath the feet of men
and horses. "There," say the Oriental chroniclers, "the sons of Paradise
and the children of fire settled their terrible quarrel. Arrows hurtled
in the air like a noisy flight of sparrows, and the blood of warriors
dripped upon the ground like rain-water." "I saw," adds one of them who
was present at the battle, "hill, plain, and valley covered with their
dead; I saw their banners stained with dust and blood; I saw their heads
laid low, their limbs scattered, their carcasses piled on a heap like
stones." Four days after the battle of Tiberias, on the 8th of July,
1187, Saladin took possession of St. Jean d'Acre, and, on the 4th of
September following, of Ascalon. Finally, on the 18th of September, he
laid siege to Jerusalem, wherein refuge had been sought by a multitude of
Christian families driven from their homes by the ravages of the infidels
throughout Palestine; and the Holy City contained at this time, it is
said, nearly one hundred thousand Christians. On approaching its walls,
Saladin sent for the principal inhabitants, and said to them, "I know as
well as you that Jerusalem is the house of God; and I will not have it
assaulted if I can get it by peace and love. I will give you thirty
thousand byzants of gold if you promise me Jerusalem, and you shall have
liberty to go whither you will and do your tillage, to a distance of five
miles from the city. And I will have you sup-plied with such plenty of
provisions that in no place on earth shall they be so cheap. You shall
have a truce from now to Whitsuntide, and when this time comes, if you
see that you may have aid, then hold on. But if not, you shall give up
the city, and I will have you conveyed in safety to Christian territory,
yourselves and your substance." "We may not yield up to you a city where
died our God," answered the envoys: "and still less may we sell you."
The siege lasted fourteen days. After having repulsed several assaults,
the inhabitants saw that effectual resistance was impossible; and the
commandant of the place, a knight named Dalian d'Ibelin, an old warrior,
who had been at the battle of Tiberias, returned to Saladin, and asked
for the conditions back again which had at first been rejected. Saladin,
pointing to his own banner already planted upon several parts of the
battlements, answered, "It is too late; you surely see that the city is
mine." "Very well, my lord," replied the knight: "we will ourselves
destroy our city, and the mosque of Omar, and the stone of Jacob: and
when it is nothing but a heap of ruins, we will sally forth with sword
and fire in hand, and not one of us will go to Paradise without having
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