Crusades and Jihads
The Crusades : Iron Men and Saints. By Harold Lamb. (Thornton Butterworth. 10s. 6d.)
WHAT has Muhammad II to do with the Crusades ? We find him at the frontispiece of Dr. Lamb's volume, three centuries before the time of which we expect to read. And there is no explanation, except perhaps that it is a good
picture. •
• The poet in Dr. Lamb seizes on vivid incidents, but the scholar in him keeps them in their due place. His knowledge of the time—those strange 117 years between the rising of the first tidal wave towards Jerusalem and the pathetic Children's Crusade of 1212—is great indeed, and there is material here gathered together almost for the first time that should be of assistance to other chroniclers. But we cannot honestly say that Dr. Lamb has told a good story.
Perhaps we expected too much. His Ghengiz Khan gave so vivid a picture of the Mongol horde ; of the life of camps, marches and countermarches, pageants and hunting parties and battles, that we had hoped that here, with the chivalry of Christendom as his subject, he would have given us a connected narrative of those confused and heroic years when the Cross first met the Crescent. But it is easier to paint the portrait of a nomad chieftain than a succession of battler pieces extending over two continents and centuries. We do not know whether a short popular book on the Crusades will ever be written : Dr. Lamb has come near to success : much of his work has genius, and all of it has knowledge, yet in the end we are not satisfied. We have been told to much, or not enough.
Perhaps an escape into fiction would have suited the reader's purpose better. We are told, for instance, that we shall never know for certain the reasons which led Urban to preach the First Crusade, yet Dr. Lamb suggests such a good theory concerning the Pope's motives that a whole book might be built round them. And the treachery of Alexis, the Siege of Jerusalem (magnificently told in these pages), the exploits of our Lion Heart, the dreams of Godfrey de Bouillon, the victory of Ascalon, and the founding of the., Templars might all furnish narratives of transcendent interest. Dr. Lamb might, in fact, devote the rest of his life to romances of the Crusades ; instead, he has packed a dozen books into one, and in doing so he has broken down at least; this reviewer's powers of assimilation.
For the old chronicles to which the author has been at pains to refer are cloudy and difficult to follow. We need more maps, fewer names, a more coherent arrangement of material. Yet in spite of its faults, this is a memorable book. We have rarely read anything better than the opening de- scription of the age of chivalry, and the spirit that moved first the masses, then the princes of Europe to set out in scorn of danger and death to free the Sepulchre of Christ.
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