THE CRUSADES.*
HUMAN nature never shows its weakness so clearly as when it sets out to perform some noble and heroic achievement, towards which it is urged by the purest motives and a desire to attain to the holiest ideal. It is reasonable enough, if we only look at man as he is, instead of trying to imagine him as he should be, to expect that the strain of striving after a lofty purpose should be in itself more than sufficient for his strength, so that there is all the more excuse for his stumbling by the way. Just as in ordinary life our gravest mistakes are generally committed "on principle," so in history, whenever we read of a nation or society being prompted to any action or movement by a severely exalted motive, we may always expect to find rapacity, perfidy, and hypocrisy running riot to a greater or less extent. For instance, when the French people, stirred by the teaching of the eighteenth-century philosophers, set itself to the task of inaugurating a new era of universal peace and brotherhood, the natural course of events produced the September massacres and the miseries and bloodshed of Napoleon's wars. But such examples will occur in plenty to any thoughtful reader of history, and we may at once tarn to the consideration of the most striking instance of the working of this principle, as presented in the story of the Crusades. It is the most striking, because the ideal on which this movement was based was certainly the noblest and purest that ever stirred a great body of men into heroic action. There was no thought of earthly gain or glory ; for the sake of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land from the power of the infidel, men were bidden to sell or mortgage all that they had, to leave their countries to the danger of foreign war, and their wives and little ones to all the perils that were ever present in those turbulent days, and to march through inhospitable and hostile lands, or to adopt the even more terrible alternative of a long voyage in a crowded, ill-provisioned, insanitary, and unseaworthy ship, to attack a foe whose numbers no man could count, and who fought with the climate and the natural features of the country in his favour. There is no parallel in history to the effect of that marvellous thrill of religions enthusiasm which ran through Western Christendom at the end of the eleventh century. And there is no story more tragio than that of the feuds with which the strength of the Crusaders was from first to last enfeebled, and of the selfishness and greed and all the petty vices which appear through all the tale of this struggle. The movement is admirably described in this volume of the "Story of the Nations" Series. The style is clear and direct, and the different threads of the corn. plea narrative are never allowed to become entangled. We are given the whole story of the Latin Kingdom of Palestine from its foundation at the end of the First Crusade down to its final collapse on the capture of Acre by the Turks in 1291. The growth of the Moslem power is carefully traced, and there are interesting chapters on the history of the great Orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, and the Latin Kingdom of Cyprus, • The Crusades : the Story of the Latin Kingdom of jeraealena By T. A. Archer and Charles Lethbridge Kingdord. "The Story of the Nations " London: T. Fisher IInwn.
and on the arms and equipment and military methods of the doughty warriors of those days. From the very first, the zeal of sincere Crusaders seems to have been imitated in a very halting fashion by adventurers who came to the wars for sheer love of enterprise and desire for booty; while that very zeal, in its most genuine form, was apt to run off into ques- tionable side-issues ; for instance, one of the first results of Peter the Hermit's preaching was an outburst of Jewish per- secution conducted in a spirit of " wanton rapine and murder." At Mayence the Jewish community bought the Archbishop's protection, and took refuge in his palace ; even here, however, they were attacked by the rabble under a certain Count Emicho, and butchered, men, women, and children together.
The Crusaders on the march seem to have been want- ing in the most elementary notions of discipline, and even of common honesty towards those who received them kindly. For instance, an army of Germans, led by a priest named Gotschalk, were welcomed by Caloman of Hungary, "whose kindness they requited in the usual way, by plunder and drunken disorder." And naturally enough, the Hungarians massacred the pilgrims. Of course, these ebullitions may have been merely owing to the deficient organisation of the motley hosts who marched together, but the conduct of the chiefs was almost always equally bad. They wrangled endlessly among themselves and with the Byzantine Emperors, and but very few of them seem to have been men of ordinary piety. For instance, it is astonishing to find that at the end of the First Crusade, when the Holy City has been wrested from the hands of the infidel, and the spotless Godfrey de Bouillon has been appointed the first King of Jerusalem, the chief spiritual office—the Patriarchate —was entrusted to one Arnulf, who was, " according to Raymond of Agiles, a man of loose life whose notorious amours were the theme of popular songs in the Crusading camp." That such a position should have been conferred on a man whose morals were by no means beyond suspicion, seems to prove either cynical indifference to such questions, or a great dearth of even outwardly decent priests among the Crusaders. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is an unedify- ing record of personal strife and of jealousy between the great Orders, and mistrust of the Eastern Franks and the Western ; rich booty from despoiled caravans, and the luxuries of Oriental life, seem to have diverted the warriors of the Cross more and more from the objects for which they originally took their vows, and at last, in 1228, a so-called Crusade was led by the Emperor Frederick II., who openly flouted the Papal power, and was believed to have written a "book of extreme blasphemy on the Three Impostors—Moses, Christ, and Mohammed." The authors of the book before us confess that " only of a few Crusaders, as of Godfrey and St. Louis, can we predicate absolute purity of motive." Naturally, the "indulgences " granted to all who took part in these wars drew many worthless wastrels to fight under the banner of the Cross, and the valour with which the Crusaders fought on all occasions is the one entirely satisfactory point about their history. It is not possible, of course, to trust the figures given by contemporaries implicitly, any more than we can altogether accept the miraculous appearances of warriors in shining armour who are so often described as turning the tide of battle at perilous moments. Bnt there can be no doubt that the Frankish knights fought generally against fearful odds, and under conditions of climate and ground that were all in favour of the light Saracen horsemen. To an English reader the most interesting part of the military history will be the campaigns in which our own Richard Ccear-de-Lion bore him- self so gallantly, in spite of the treachery of his French and Austrian allies. As a typical battle-piece we will quote the following description from the account of Richard's famous march to Jaffa :- "About 9 o'clock the battle began with an attack by Saladin's negro troops and Bedouins—pestilent footmen with bows and round targes—in their rear the heavier Turkish troops kept up an incessant din with their drums and cymbals. Again and again the Turks rushed down on the rear of the Christians. At last the Hospitallers could bear up no longer, and begged Richard to let them make but one charge. Richard, however, would permit no deviation from his plans. The heavy horses of his cavalry, with their armoured riders, were no match for the swift-footed Arab steeds of the lightly clad Saracens ; it would be worse than useless to charge till the enemy was well within their grasp So the Hospitallers endeavoured to still endure the renewed onset of the foe ; one knight in despair invoked the great warrior-saint of the Crusaders : Oh, St. George! Why dost thou leave us to be destroyed ? Christendom perisheth because we strive not against this accursed race.' Then the Grand Master petitioned the King in person, but Richard still replied : 'It must be borne.' Most of the Hospitallers murmured, but obeyed; two knights, however —the marshal of the Order and Baldwin de Carew, ' a right good warrior, bold as a lion '—burst from the ranks, and overthrew each his man ; the remaining Hospitallers could no longer be restrained, and out they charged to their comrades' aid. The battle soon became general, and for a time threatened to go ill for the Crusaders ; but when Richard himself came up on his Cyprian bay, the Turks fell back before him as he clove his way into their ranks with his sword. The Christians then resumed their march, and were already encamping outside the walls of ArslIf when the enemy attacked once more ; but again the Turks turned in headlong flight as Richard galloped up to the rescue,. thundering out his war-cry, ' God and the Holy Sepulchre aid
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Such were the Crusaders, and such was their prowess. Though they failed to keep the Holy City in Christian hands, and though their conduct fell very short of the lofty profes- sions embodied in their vows, it cannot be said that their effort was futile. For centuries they acted as the outpost of Western civilisation, and held the Moslem hordes in check. Moreover, the effect of these wars in quickening commerce and intercourse between East and West, was invaluable to the industrial development of Europe, which was also in- directly assisted by the weakening of the baronial power through the drain of the best fighting blood towards Pales- tine, which left the honest burghers leisure to build up the power of the towns and trading corporations in comparative peace.
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