Читать книгу History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6) - Guizot François - Страница 37

The news, spreading through Europe, caused amongst all classes there, high and low, a deep feeling of sorrow, anger, disquietude, and shame. Jerusalem was a very different thing from Edessa. The fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem meant the sepulchre of Jesus Christ fallen once more into the hands of the infidels, and, at the same time, the destruction of what had been wrought by Christian Europe in the East, the loss of the only striking and permanent gage of her victories. Christian pride was as much wounded as Christian piety. A new fact, moreover, was conspicuous in this series of reverses and in the accounts received of them; after all its defeats and in the midst of its discord, Islamry had found a chieftain and a hero. Saladin was one of those strange and superior beings who, by their qualities and by their very defects, make a strong impression upon the imaginations of men, whether friends or foes. His Mussulman fanaticism was quite as impassioned as the Christian fanaticism of the most ardent crusaders. When he heard that Reginald of Chatillon, Lord of Karat, on the confines of Palestine and Arabia, had all but succeeded in an attempt to go and pillage the Caaba and the tomb of Mahomet, he wrote to his brother Malek-Adhel, at that time governor of Egypt, “The infidels have violated the home and the cradle of Islamism; they have profaned our sanctuary. Did we not prevent a like insult (which God forbid!) we should render ourselves guilty in the eyes of God and the eyes of men. Purge we, therefore, our land from these men who dishonor it; purge we the very air from the air they breathe.” He commanded that all the Christians who could possibly be captured on this occasion should be put to death; and many were taken to Mecca, where the Mussulman pilgrims immolated them instead of the sheep and lambs they were accustomed to sacrifice. The expulsion of the Christians from Palestine was Saladin’s great idea and unwavering passion; and he severely chid the Mussulmans for their soft-heartedness in the struggle. “Behold these Christians,” he wrote to the Khalif of Bagdad, “how they come crowding in! How emulously they press on! They are continually receiving fresh re-enforcements more numerous than the waves of the sea, and to us more bitter than its brackish waters. Where one dies by land, a thousand come by sea. … The crop is more abundant than the harvest; the tree puts forth more branches than the axe can lop off. It is true that great numbers have already perished, insomuch that the edge of our swords is blunted; but our comrades are beginning to grow weary of so long a war. Haste we, therefore, to implore the help of the Lord.” Nor needed he the excuse of passion in order to be cruel and sanguinary when he considered it would serve his cause; for human lives and deaths he had that barbaric indifference which Christianity alone has rooted out from the communities of men, whilst it has remained familiar to the Mussulman. When he found himself, either during or after a battle, confronted by enemies whom he really dreaded, such as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem or the Templars, he had them massacred, and sometimes gave them their death-blow himself, with cool satisfaction. But, apart from open war and the hatred inspired by passion or cold calculation, he was moderate and generous, gentle towards the vanquished and the weak, just and compassionate towards his subjects, faithful to his engagements, and capable of feeling sympathetic admiration for men, even his enemies, in whom he recognized superior qualities, courage, loyalty, and loftiness of mind. For Christian knighthood, its precepts and the noble character it stamped upon its professors, he felt so much respect and even inclination that the wish of his heart, it is said, was to receive the title of knight, and that he did, in fact, receive it with the approval of Richard Coeur de Lion. By reason of all these facts and on all these grounds he acquired, even amongst the Christians, that popularity which attaches itself to greatness justified by personal deeds and living proofs, in spite of the fear and even the hatred inspired thereby. Christian Europe saw in him the able and potent chief of Mussulman Asia, and, whilst detesting, admired him.

After the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, the Christians of the East, in their distress, sent to the West their most eloquent prelate and gravest historian William, Archbishop of Tyre, who, fifteen years before, in the reign of Baldwin IV., had been Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem. He, accompanied by a legate of Pope Gregory VIII., scoured Italy, France, and Germany, recounting everywhere the miseries of the Holy Land, and imploring the aid of all Christian princes and peoples, whatever might be their own position of affairs and their own quarrels in Europe. At a parliament assembled at Gisors, on the 21st of January, 1188, and at a diet convoked at Mayence on the 27th of March following, he so powerfully affected the knighthood of France, England, and Germany, that the three sovereigns of these three states, Philip Augustus, Richard Coeur de Lion, and Frederick Barbarossa, engaged with acclamation in a new crusade. They were princes of very different ages and degrees of merit, but all three distinguished for their personal qualities as well as their puissance. Frederick Barbarossa was sixty-seven, and for the last thirty-six years had been leading, in Germany and Italy, as politician and soldier, a very active and stormy existence. Richard Coeur de Lion was thirty-one, and had but just ascended the throne where he was to shine as the most valiant and adventurous of knights rather than as a king. Philip Augustus, though only twenty-three, had already shown signs, beneath the vivacious sallies of youth, of the reflective and steady ability characteristic of riper age. Of these three sovereigns, the eldest, Frederick Barbarossa, was first ready to plunge amongst the perils of the crusade. Starting from Ratisbonne about Christmas, 1189, with an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, he traversed the Greek empire and Asia Minor, defeated the Sultan of Iconium, passed the first defiles of Taurus, and seemed to be approaching the object of his voyage, when, on the 10th of June, 1190, having arrived at the borders of the Selef, a small river which throws itself into the Mediterranean close to Seleucia, he determined to cross it by fording, was seized with a chill, and, according to some, drowned before his people’s eyes, but, according to others, carried dying to Seleucia, where he expired. His young son Conrad, Duke of Suabia, was not equal to taking the command of such an army; and it broke up.

The majority of the German princes returned to Europe: and “there remained beneath the banner of Christ only a weak band of warriors faithful to their vow, a boy-chief, and a bier. When the crusaders of the other nations, assembled before St. Jean d’Acre, saw the remnant of that grand German army arrive, not a soul could restrain his tears. Three thousand men, all but stark naked, and harassed to death, marched sorrowfully along, with the dried bones of their emperor carried in a coffin. For, in the twelfth century, the art of embalming the dead was unknown. Barbarossa, before leaving Europe, had asked that, if he should die in the crusade, he might be buried in the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem; but this wish could not be accomplished, as the Christians did not recover the Holy City, and the mortal remains of the emperor were carried, as some say, to Tyre, and, as others, to Antioch, Where his tomb has not been discovered.” (Histoire de la Lutte des Papes et des Empereurs de la Maison de Souabe, by M. de Cherrier, Member of the Institute, t. i., p. 222.)

Frederick Barbarossa was already dead in Asia Minor, and the German army was already broken up, when, on the 24th of June, 1190, Philip Augustus went and took the oriflamme at St. Denis, on his way to Vezelai, where he had appointed to meet Richard, and whence the two kings, in fact, set out, on the 4th of July, to embark with their troops, Philip at Genoa, and Richard at Marseilles. They had agreed to touch nowhere until they reached Sicily, where Philip was the first to arrive, on the 16th of September; and Richard was eight days later. But, instead of simply touching, they passed at Messina all the autumn of 1190, and all the winter of 1190–91, no longer seeming to think of anything but quarrelling and amusing themselves. Nor were grounds for quarrel or opportunities for amusements to seek. Richard, in spite of his promise, was unwilling to marry the Princess Alice, Philip’s sister; and Philip, after lively discussion, would not agree to give him back his word, save “in consideration of a sum of ten thousand silver marks, whereof he shall pay us three thousand at the feast of All Saints, and year by year in succession, at this same feast.” Some of their amusements were not more refined than their family arrangements, and ruffianly contests and violent enmities sprang up amidst the feasts and the games in which kings and knights nearly every evening indulged in the plains round about Messina. One day there came amongst the crusaders thus assembled a peasant driving an ass, laden with those long and strong reeds known by the name of canes. English and French, with Richard at their head, bought them of him; and, mounting on horseback, ran tilt at one another, armed with these reeds by way of lances. Richard found himself opposite to a French knight, named William des Barres, of whose strength and valor he had already, not without displeasure, had experience in Normandy. The two champions met with so rude a shock that their reeds broke, and the king’s cloak was torn. Richard, in pique, urged his horse violently against the French knight, in order to make him lose his stirrups; but William kept a firm seat, whilst the king fell under his horse, which came down in his impetuosity. Richard, more and more exasperated, had another horse brought, and charged a second time, but with no more success, the immovable knight. One of Richard’s favorites, the Earl of Leicester, would have taken his place, and avenged his lord; but “let be, Robert,” said the king: “it is a matter between him and me;” and he once more attacked William des Barres, and once more to no purpose. “Fly from my sight,” cried he to the knight, “and take care never to appear again; for I will be ever a mortal foe to thee, to thee and thine.” William des Barres, somewhat discomfited, went in search of the King of France, to put himself under his protection. Philip accordingly paid a visit to Richard, who merely said, “I’ll not hear a word.” It needed nothing less than the prayers of the bishops, and even, it is said, a threat of excommunication, to induce Richard to grant William des Barres the king’s peace during the time of pilgrimage.

Such a comrade was assuredly very inconvenient, and might be under difficult circumstances very dangerous. Philip, without being susceptible or quarrelsome, was naturally independent, and disposed to act, on every occasion, according to his own ideas. He resolved, not to break with Richard, but to divide their commands, and separate their fortunes. On the approach of spring, 1191, he announced to him that the time had arrived for continuing their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and that, as for himself, he was quite ready to set out. “I am not ready,” said Richard; “and I cannot depart before the middle of August.” Philip, after some discussion, set out alone, with his army, on the 30th of March, and on the 14th of April arrived before St. Jean d’Acre. This important place, of which Saladin had made himself master nearly four years before, was being besieged by the last King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, at the head of the Christians of Palestine, and by a multitude of crusaders, Genoese, Danish, Flemish, and German, who had flocked freely to the enterprise. A strong and valiant Mussulman garrison was defending St. Jean d’Acre. Saladin manoeuvred incessantly for its relief, and several battles had already been fought beneath the walls. “When the King of France arrived, he was received by the Christians besieging,” say the chronicles of St. Denis, “with supreme joy, as if he were an angel come down from heaven.”. Philip set vigorously to work to push on the siege; but at his departure he had promised Richard not to deliver the grand assault until they had formed a junction before the place with all their forces. Richard, who had set out from Messina at the beginning of May, though he had said that he would not be ready till August, lingered again on the way to reduce the island of Cyprus, and to celebrate there his marriage with Berengaria of Navarre, in lieu of Alice of France. At last he arrived, on the 7th of June, before St. Jean d’Acre; and several assaults in succession were made on the place with equal determination on the part of the besiegers and the besieged. “The tumultuous waves of the Franks,” says an Arab historian, “rolled towards the walls of the city with the rapidity of a torrent; and they climbed the half-ruined battlements as wild goats climb precipitous rocks, whilst the Saracens threw themselves upon the besiegers like stones unloosed from the top of a mountain.” At length, on the 13th of July, 1191, in spite of the energetic resistance offered by the garrison, which defended itself “as a lion defends his blood-stained den,” St. Jean d’Acre surrendered. The terms of capitulation stated that two hundred thousand pieces of gold should be paid to the chiefs of the Christian army; that sixteen hundred prisoners and the wood of the true cross should be given up to them; and that the garrison as well as all the people of the town should remain in the conquerors’ power, pending full execution of the treaty.

Whilst the siege was still going on, the discord between the Kings of France and England was increasing in animosity and venom. The conquest of Cyprus had become a new subject of dispute. When the French were most eager for the assault, King Richard remained in his tent; and so the besieged had scarcely ever to repulse more than one or other of the kings and armies at a time. Saladin, it is said, showed Richard particular attention, sending him grapes and pears from Damascus; and Philip conceived some mistrust of these relations. In camp the common talk, combined with anxious curiosity, was, that Philip was jealous of Richard’s warlike popularity, and Richard was jealous of the power and political weight of the King of France.

When St. Jean d’Acre had been taken, the judicious Philip, in view of what it had cost the Christians of East and West, in time and blood, to recover this single town, considered that a fresh and complete conquest of Palestine and Syria, which was absolutely necessary for a re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem, was impossible: he had discharged what he owed to the crusade; and the course now permitted and prescribed to him was to give his attention to France. The news he received from home was not encouraging; his son Louis, hardly four years old, had been dangerously ill; and he himself fell ill, and remained some days in bed, in the midst of the town he had just conquered. His enemies called his illness in question, for already there was a rumor abroad that he had an idea of giving up the crusade, and returning to France; but the details given by contemporary chroniclers about the effects of his illness scarcely permit it to be regarded as a sham. “Violent sweats,” they say, “committed such havoc with his bones and all his members, that the nails fell from his fingers and the hair from his head, insomuch that it was believed—and, indeed, the rumor is not yet dispelled—that he had taken a deadly poison.” There was nothing strange in Philip’s illness, after all his fatigues, in such a country and such a season; Saladin, too, was ill at the same time, and more than once unable to take part with his troops in their engagements. But, however that may be, a contemporary English chronicler, Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, relates that, on the 22d of July, 1191, whilst King Richard was playing chess with the Earl of Gloucester, the Bishop of Beauvais, the Duke of Burgundy, and two knights of consideration, presented themselves before him on behalf of the King of France. “They were dissolved in tears,” says he, “in such sort they could not utter a single word; and, seeing them so moved, those present wept in their turn for pity’s sake. ‘Weep not,’ said King Richard to them; ‘I know what ye be come to ask; your lord, the King of France, desireth to go home again, and ye be come in his name to ask on his behalf my counsel and leave to get him gone.’ ‘It is true, sir; you know all,’ answered the messengers; ‘our king sayeth, that if he depart not speedily from this land, he will surely die.’ ‘It will be for him and for the kingdom of France,’ replied King Richard, ‘eternal shame, if he go home without fulfilling the work for the which he came, and he shall not go hence by my advice; but if he must die or return home, let him do what he will, and what may appear to him expedient for him, for him and his.’ ” The source from which this story comes, and the tone of it, are enough to take from it all authority; for it is the custom of monastic chroniclers to attribute to political or military characters emotions and demonstrations alien to their position and their times. Philip Augustus, moreover, was one of the most decided, most insensible to any other influence but that of his own mind, and most disregardful of his enemies’ bitter speeches, of all the kings in French history. He returned to France after the capture of St. Jean d’ Acre, because he considered the ultimate success of the crusade impossible, and his return necessary for the interests of France and for his own. He was right in thus thinking and acting; and King Richard, when insultingly reproaching him for it, did not foresee that, a year later, he would himself be doing the same thing, and would give up the crusade without having obtained anything more for Christendom, except fresh reverses.

On the 31st of July, 1191, Philip, leaving with the army of the crusaders ten thousand foot and five hundred knights, under the command of Duke Hugh of Burgundy, who had orders to obey King Richard, set sail for France; and, a few days after Christmas in the same year, landed in his kingdom, and forth-with resumed, at Fontainebleau according to some, and at Paris according to others, the regular direction of his government. We shall see before long with what intelligent energy and with what success he developed and consolidated the territorial greatness of France and the influence of the kingship, to her security in Europe and her prosperity at home.

From the 1st of August, 1191, to the 9th of October, 1192, King Richard remained alone in the East as chief of the crusade and defender of Christendom. He pertains, during that period, to the history of England, and no longer to that of France. We will, however, recall a few facts to show how fruitless, for the cause of Christendom in the East, was the prolongation of his stay and what strange deeds—at one time of savage barbarism, and at another of mad pride or fantastic knight-errantry—were united in him with noble instincts and the most heroic courage. On the 20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d’Acre, he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude the conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him up to time, he ordered the decapitation, before the walls of the place, of, according to some, twenty-five hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman prisoners remaining in his hands.

The only effect of this massacre was, that during Richard’s first campaign after Philip’s departure for France, Saladin put to the sword all the Christians taken in battle or caught straggling, and ordered their bodies to be left without burial, as those of the garrison of St. Jean d’Acre had been. Some months afterwards Richard conceived the idea of putting an end to the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, which he was not succeeding in terminating by war, by a marriage. He had a sister, Joan of England, widow of William II., king of Sicily; and Saladin had a brother, Malek-Adhel, a valiant warrior, respected by the Christians. Richard had proposals made to Saladin to unite them in marriage and set them to reign together over the Christians and Mussulmans in the kingdom of Jerusalem. The only result of the negotiation was to give Saladin time for repairing the fortifications of Jerusalem, and to bring down upon King Richard and his sister, on the part of the Christian bishops, the fiercest threats of the fulminations of the Church. With the exception of this ridiculous incident, Richard’s life, during the whole course of this year, was nothing but a series of great or small battles, desperately contested, against Saladin. When Richard had obtained a success, he pursued it in a haughty, passionate spirit; when he suffered a check, he offered Saladin peace, but always on condition of surrendering Jerusalem to the Christians, and Saladin always answered, “Jerusalem never was yours, and we may not without sin give it up to you; for it is the place where the mysteries of our religion were accomplished, and the last one of my soldiers will perish before the Mussulmans renounce conquests made in the name of Mahomet.” Twice Richard and his army drew near Jerusalem, “without his daring to look upon it, he said, since he was not in a condition to take it.” At last, in the summer of 1192, the two armies and the two chiefs began to be weary of a war without result. A great one, however, for Saladin and the Mussulmans was the departure of Richard and the crusaders. Being unable to agree about conditions for a definitive peace, they contented themselves, on both sides, with a truce for three years and eight months, leaving Jerusalem in possession of the Mussulmans, but open for worship to the Christians, in whose hands remained, at the same time, the towns they were in occupation of on the maritime coast, from Jaffa to Tyre. This truce, which was called peace, having received the signature of all the Christian and Mussulman princes, was celebrated by galas and tournaments, at which Christians and Mussulmans seemed for a moment to have forgotten their hate; and on the 9th of October, 1192, Richard embarked at St. Jean d’Acre to go and run other risks.

Thus ended the third crusade, undertaken by the three greatest sovereigns and the three greatest armies of Christian Europe, and with the loudly proclaimed object of retaking Jerusalem from the infidels, and re-establishing a king over the sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa perished in it before he had trodden the soil of Palestine. King Philip Augustus retired from it voluntarily, so soon as experience had foreshadowed to him the impossibility of success. King Richard abandoned it perforce, after having exhausted upon it his heroism and his knightly pride. The three armies, at the moment of departure from Europe, amounted, according to the historians of the time, to five or six hundred thousand men, of whom scarcely one hundred thousand returned; and the only result of the third crusade was to leave as head over all the most beautiful provinces of Mussulman Asia and Africa, Saladin, the most illustrious and most able chieftain, in war and in politics, that Islamry had produced since Mahomet.

From the end of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century, between the crusade of Philip Augustus and that of St. Louis, it is usual to count three crusades, over which we will not linger. Two of these crusades—one, from 1195 to 1198, under Henry VI., Emperor of Germany, and the other, from 1216 to 1240, under the Emperor Frederick II. and Andrew II., King of Hungary—are unconnected with France, and almost exclusively German, or, in origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe. They led, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to wars, negotiations, and manifold complications; Jerusalem fell once more, for a while, into the hands of the Christians; and there, on the 18th of March, 1229, in the church of the Resurrection, the Emperor Frederick II., at that time excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX., placed with his own hands the royal crown upon his head. But these events, confused, disconnected, and short-lived as they were, did not produce in the West, and especially in France, any considerable reverberation, and did not exercise upon the relative situations of Europe and Asia, of Christendom and Islamry, any really historical influence. In people’s lives, and in the affairs of the world, there are many movements of no significance, and more cry than wool; and those facts only which have had some weight and some duration are here to be noted for study and comprehension. The event which has been called the fifth crusade was not wanting, so far, in real importance, and it would have to be described here, if it had been really a crusade; but it does not deserve the name. The crusades were a very different thing from wars and conquests; their real and peculiar characteristic was, that they should be struggles between Christianity and Islamism, between the fruitful civilization of Europe and the barbarism and stagnation of Asia. Therein consist their originality and their grandeur. It was certainly on this understanding, and with this view, that Pope Innocent III., one of the greatest men of the thirteenth century, seconded with all his might the movement which was at that time springing up again in favor of a fresh crusade, and which brought about, in 1202, an alliance between a great number of powerful lords, French, Flemish, and Italian, and the republic of Venice, for the purpose of recovering Jerusalem from the infidels. But from the very first, the ambition, the opportunities, and the private interests of the Venetians, combined with a recollection of the perfidy displayed by the Greek emperors, diverted the new crusaders from the design they had proclaimed. What Bohemond, during the first crusade, had proposed to Godfrey de Bouillon, and what the Bishop of Langres, during the second, had suggested to Louis the Young, namely, the capture of Constantinople for the sake of insuring that of Jerusalem, the first crusaders of the thirteenth century were led by bias, greed, anger, and spite to take in hand and accomplish; they conquered Constantinople, and, having once made that conquest, they troubled themselves no more about Jerusalem. Founded, May 16th, 1204, in the person of Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders, the Latin empire of the East existed for seventy years, in the teeth of many a storm, only to fall once more, in 1273, into the hands of the Greek emperors, overthrown in 1453 by the Turks, who are still in possession.

One circumstance, connected rather with literature than politics, gives Frenchmen a particular interest in this conquest of the Greek empire by the Latin Christians; for it was a Frenchman, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, seneschal of Theobald III., Count of Champagne, who, after having been one of the chief actors in it, wrote the history of it; and his work, strictly historical as to facts, and admirably epic in description of character and warmth of coloring, is one of the earliest and finest monuments of French literature.

But to return to the real crusades.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, whilst the enterprises which were still called crusades were becoming more and more degenerate in character and potency, there was born in France, on the 25th of April, 1215, not merely the prince, but the man who was to be the most worthy representative and the most devoted slave of that religious and moral passion which had inspired the crusades. Louis IX., though born to the purple, a powerful king, a valiant warrior, a splendid knight, and an object of reverence to all those who at a distance observed his life, and of affection to all those who approached his person, was neither biassed nor intoxicated by any such human glories and delights; neither in his thoughts nor in his conduct did they ever occupy the foremost place; before all and above all he wished to be, and was indeed, a Christian, a true Christian, guided and governed by the idea and the resolve of defending the Christian faith and fulfilling the Christian law. Had he been born in the most lowly condition, as the world holds, or, as religion, the most commanding; had he been obscure, needy, a priest, a monk, or a hermit, he could not have been more constantly and more zealously filled with the desire of living as a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and of insuring, by pious obedience to God here, the salvation of his soul hereafter. This is the peculiar and original characteristic of St. Louis, and a fact rare and probably unique in the history of kings. (He was canonized on the 11th of August, 1297; and during twenty-four years nine successive popes had prosecuted the customary inquiries as to his faith and life.)

It is said that the Christian enthusiasm of St. Louis had its source in the strict education he received from Queen Blanche, his mother. That is overstepping the limits of that education and of her influence. Queen Blanche, though a firm believer and steadfastly pious, was a stranger to enthusiasm, and too discreet and too politic to make it the dominating principle of her son’s life any more than of her own. The truth of the matter is that, by her watchfulness and her exactitude in morals, she helped to impress upon her son the great Christian lesson of hatred for sin and habitual concern for the eternal salvation of his soul. “Madame used to say of me,” Louis was constantly repeating, “that if I were sick unto death, and could not be cured save by acting in such wise that I should sin mortally, she would let me die rather than that I should anger my Creator to my damnation.”

In the first years of his government, when he had reached his majority, there was nothing to show that the idea of the crusade occupied Louis IX.‘s mind; and it was only in 1239, when he was now four and twenty, that it showed itself vividly in him. Some of his principal vassals, the Counts of Champagne, Brittany, and Macon, had raised an army of crusaders, and were getting ready to start for Palestine; and the king was not contented with giving them encouragement, but “he desired that Amaury de Montfort, his constable, should, in his name, serve Jesus Christ in this war; and for that reason he gave him arms and assigned to him per day a sum of money, for which Amaury thanked him on his knees, that is, did him homage, according to the usage of those times. And the crusaders were mighty pleased to have this lord with them.”

Five years afterwards, at the close of 1244, Louis fell seriously ill at Pontoise; the alarm and sorrow in the kingdom were extreme; the king himself believed that his last hour was come; and he had all his household summoned, thanked them for their kind attentions, recommended them to be good servants of God, “and did all that a good Christian ought to do. His mother, his wife, his brothers, and all who were about him kept continually praying for him; his mother, beyond all others, adding to her prayers great austerities.” Once he appeared motionless and breathless; and he was supposed to be dead. “One of the dames who were tending him,” says Joinville, “would have drawn the sheet over his face, saying that he was dead; but another dame, who was on the other side of the bed, would not suffer it, saying that there was still life in his body. When the king heard the dispute between these two dames, our Lord wrought in him: he began to sigh, stretched his arms and legs, and said, in a hollow voice, as if he had come forth from the tomb, ‘He, by God’s grace, hath visited me, He who cometh from on high, and hath recalled me from amongst the dead.’ Scarcely had he recovered his senses and speech, when he sent for William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, together with Peter de Cuisy, Bishop of Meaux, in whose diocese he happened to be, and requested them ‘to place upon his shoulder the cross of the voyage over the sea.’ The two bishops tried to divert him from this idea, and the two queens, Blanche and Marguerite, conjured him on their knees to wait till he was well, and after that he might do as he pleased. He insisted, declaring that he would take no nourishment till he had received the cross. At last the Bishop of Paris yielded, and gave him a cross. The king received it with transport, kissing it, and placing it right gently Upon his breast.” “When the queen, his mother, knew that he had taken the cross,” says Joinville, “she made as great mourning as if she had seen him dead.”

Still more than three years rolled by before Louis fulfilled the engagement which he had thus entered into, with himself alone, one might say, and against the wish of nearly everybody about him. The crusades, although they still remained an object of religious and knightly aspiration, were from the political point of view decried; and, without daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical, had no desire to take part in them. Under the influence of this public feeling, timidly exhibited but seriously cherished, Louis continued, for three years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of his kingdom and to his relations with the European powers, as if he had no other idea. There was a moment when his wisest counsellors and the queen his mother conceived a hope of inducing him to give up his purpose. “My lord king,” said one day that same Bishop of Paris, who, in the crisis of his illness, had given way to his wishes, “bethink you that, when you received the cross, when you suddenly and without reflection made this awful vow, you were weak, and, sooth to say, of a wandering mind, and that took away from your words the weight of verity and authority. Our lord the pope, who knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation. Lo! we have the puissance of the schismatic Emperor Frederick, the snares of the wealthy King of the English, the treasons but lately stopped of the Poitevines, and the subtle wranglings of the Albigensians to fear; Germany is disturbed; Italy hath no rest; the Holy Land is hard of access; you will not easily penetrate thither, and behind you will be left the implacable hatred between the pope and Frederick. To whom will you leave us, every one of us, in our feebleness and desolation?” Queen Blanche appealed to other considerations, the good counsels she had always given her son, and the pleasure God took in seeing a son giving heed to and believing his mother; and to hers she promised, that, if he would remain, the Holy Land should not suffer, and that more troops should be sent thither than he could lead thither himself. The king listened attentively and with deep emotion. “You say,” he answered, “that I was not in possession of my senses when I took the cross. Well, as you wish it, I lay it aside; I give it back to you;” and raising his hand to his shoulder, he undid the cross upon it, saying, “Here it is, my lord bishop; I restore to you the cross I had put on.” All present congratulated themselves; but the king, with a sudden change of look and intention, said to them, “My friends, now, assuredly, I lack not sense and reason; I am neither weak nor wandering of mind; and I demand my cross back again. He who knoweth all things knoweth that until it is replaced upon my shoulder, no food shall enter my lips.” At these words all present declared that “herein was the finger of God, and none dared to raise, in opposition to the king’s saying, any objection.”

In June, 1248, Louis, after having received at St. Denis, together with the oriflamme, the scrip and staff of a pilgrim, took leave, at Corbeil or Cluny, of his mother, Queen Blanche, whom he left regent during his absence, with the fullest powers. “Most sweet fair son,” said she, embracing him; “fair tender son, I shall never see you more; full well my heart assures me.” He took with him Queen Marguerite of Provence, his wife, who had declared that she would never part from him. On arriving, in the early part of August, at Aigues-Mortes, he found assembled there a fleet of thirty-eight vessels with a certain number of transport-ships which he had hired from the republic of Genoa; and they were to convey to the East the troops and personal retinue of the king himself. The number of these vessels proves that Louis was far from bringing one of those vast armies with which the first crusades had been familiar; it even appears that he had been careful to get rid of such mobs, for, before embarking, he sent away nearly ten thousand bow-men, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even French, whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection, he desired nothing further. The sixth crusade was the personal achievement of St. Louis, not the offspring of a popular movement, and he carried it out with a picked army, furnished by the feudal chivalry and by the religious and military orders dedicated to the service of the Holy Land.

The Isle of Cyprus was the trysting-place appointed for all the forces of the expedition. Louis arrived there on the 12th of September, 1248, and reckoned upon remaining there only a few days; for it was Egypt that he was in a hurry to reach. The Christian world was at that time of opinion that, to deliver the Holy Land, it was necessary first of all to strike a blow at Islamism in Egypt, wherein its chief strength resided. But scarcely had the crusaders formed a junction in Cyprus, when the vices of the expedition and the weaknesses of its chief began to be manifest. Louis, unshakable in his religious zeal, was wanting in clear ideas and fixed resolves as to the carrying out of his design; he inspired his associates with sympathy rather than exercised authority over them, and he made himself admired without making himself obeyed. He did not succeed in winning a majority in the council of chiefs over to his opinion as to the necessity for a speedy departure for Egypt; it was decided to pass the winter in Cyprus, and during this leisurely halt of seven months, the improvidence of the crusaders, their ignorance of the places, people, and facts amidst which they were about to launch themselves, their headstrong rashness, their stormy rivalries, and their moral and military irregularities aggravated the difficulties of the enterprise, great as they already were. Louis passed his time in interfering between them, in hushing up their quarrels, in upbraiding them for their licentiousness, and in reconciling the Templars and Hospitallers. His kindness was injurious to his power; he lent too ready an ear to the wishes or complaints of his comrades, and small matters took up his thoughts and his time almost as much as great.

At last a start was made from Cyprus in May, 1249, and, in spite of violent gales of wind which dispersed a large number of vessels, they arrived on the 4th of June before Damietta.

The crusader-chiefs met on board the king’s ship, the Mountjoy; and one of those present, Guy, a knight in the train of the Count of Melun, in a letter to one of his friends; a student at Paris, reports to him the king’s address in the following terms: “My friends and lieges, we shall be invincible if we be inseparable in brotherly love. It was not without the will of God that we arrived here so speedily. Descend we upon this land and occupy it in force. I am not the King of France. I am not Holy Church. It is all ye who are King and Holy Church. I am but a man whose life will pass away as that of any other man whenever it shall please God. Any issue of our expedition is to usward good; if we be conquered we shall wing our way to heaven as martyrs; and if we be conquerors, men will celebrate the glory of the Lord; and that of France, and, what is more, that of Christendom, will grow thereby. It were senseless to suppose that God, whose providence is over everything, raised me up for nought: He will see in us His own, His mighty cause. Fight we for Christ; it is Christ who will triumph in us, not for our own sake, but for the honor and blessedness of His name.” It was determined to disembark the next day. An army of Saracens lined the shore. The galley which bore the oriflamme was one of the first to touch. When the king heard tell that the banner of St. Denis was on shore, he, in spite of the pope’s legate, who was with him, would not leave it; he leaped into the sea, which was up to his arm-pits, and went, shield on neck, helm on head, and lance in hand, and joined his people on the sea-shore. When he came to land, and perceived the Saracens, he asked what folk they were, and it was told him that they were the Saracens; then he put his lance beneath his arm and his shield in front of him, and would have charged the Saracens, if his mighty men, who were with him, had suffered him.

This, from his very first outset, was Louis exactly, the most fervent of Christians and the most splendid of knights, much rather than a general and a king.

Such he appeared at the moment of landing, and such he was during the whole duration, and throughout all the incidents of his campaign in Egypt, from June, 1249, to May, 1250: ever admirable for his moral greatness and knightly valor, but without foresight or consecutive plan as a leader, without efficiency as a commander in action, and ever decided or biassed either by his own momentary impressions or the fancies of his comrades. He took Damietta without the least difficulty. The Mussulmans, stricken with surprise as much as terror, abandoned the place; and when Fakr-Eddin, the commandant of the Turks, came before the Sultan of Egypt, Malek-Saleh, who was ill, and almost dying, “Couldst thou not have held out for at least an instant?” said the sultan. “What! not a single one of you got slain!” Having become masters of Damietta, St. Louis and the crusaders committed the same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus: they halted there for an indefinite time. They were expecting fresh crusaders; and they spent the time of expectation in quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city. They made away with it, they wasted it blindly. “The barons,” said Joinville, “took to giving grand banquets, with an excess of meats; and the people of the common sort took up with bad women.” Louis saw and deplored these irregularities, without being in a condition to stop them.

At length, on the 20th of November, 1249, after more than five months’ inactivity at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once more in motion, with the determination of marching upon Babylon, that outskirt of Cairo, now called Old Cairo, which the greater part of them, in their ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and where they flattered themselves they would find immense riches, and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew captives. The Mussulmans had found time to recover from their first fright, and to organize, at all points, a vigorous resistance. On the 8th of February, 1250, a battle took place twenty leagues from Damietta, at Mansourah (the city of victory), on the right bank of the Nile. The king’s brother, Robert, Count of Artois, marched with the vanguard, and obtained an early success; but William de Sonnac, grand master of the Templars, and William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, leader of the English crusaders but lately arrived at Damietta, insisted upon his waiting for the king before pushing the victory to the uttermost. Robert taxed them, ironically, with caution. “Count Robert,” said William Longsword, “we shall be presently where thou’lt not dare to come nigh the tail of my horse.” There came a message from the king ordering his brother to wait for him; but Robert made no account of it. “I have already put the Saracens to flight,” said he, “and I will wait for none to complete their defeat;” and he rushed forward into Mansourah. All those who had dissuaded him followed after; they found the Mussulmans numerous and perfectly rallied; in a few moments the Count of Artois fell, pierced with wounds, and more than three hundred knights of his train, the same number of English, together with their leader, William Longsword, and two hundred and eighty Templars, paid with their lives for the senseless ardor of the French prince.

The king hurried up in all haste to the aid of his brother; but he had scarcely arrived, and as yet knew nothing of his brother’s fate, when he himself engaged so impetuously in the battle that he was on the point of being taken prisoner by six Saracens who had already seized the reins of his horse. He was defending himself vigorously with his sword, when several of his knights came up with him, and set him free. He asked one of them if he had any news of his brother; and the other answered, “Certainly I have news of him: for I am sure that he is now in Paradise.” “Praised be God!” answered the king, with a tear or two, and went on with his fighting. The battle-field was left that day to the crusaders; but they were not allowed to occupy it as conquerors, for, three days afterwards, on the 11th of February, 1250, the camp of St. Louis was assailed by clouds of Saracens, horse and foot, Mamelukes and Bedouins. All surprise had vanished, the Mussulmans measured at a glance the numbers of the Christians, and attacked them in full assurance of success, whatever heroism they might display; and the crusaders themselves indulged in no more self-illusion, and thought only of defending themselves. Lack of provisions and sickness soon rendered defence almost as impossible as attack; every day saw the Christian camp more and more encumbered with the famine-stricken, the dying, and the dead; and the necessity for retreating became evident. Louis made to the Sultan Malek-Moaddam an offer to evacuate Egypt, and give up Damietta, provided that the kingdom of Jerusalem were restored to the Christians, and the army permitted to accomplish its retreat without obstruction. The sultan, without accepting or rejecting the proposition, asked what guarantees would be given him for the surrender of Damietta. Louis offered as hostage one of his brothers, the Count of Anjou, or the Count of Poitiers. “We must have the king himself,” said the Mussulmans. A unanimous cry of indignation arose amongst the crusaders. “We would rather,” said Geoffrey de Sargines, “that we had been all slain, or taken prisoners by the Saracens, than be reproached with having left our king in pawn.” All negotiation was broken off; and on the 5th of April, 1250, the crusaders decided upon retreating.

This was the most deplorable scene of a deplorable drama; and at the same time it was, for the king, an occasion for displaying, in their most sublime and most attractive traits, all the virtues of the Christian. Whilst sickness and famine were devastating the camp, Louis made himself visitor, physician, and comforter; and his presence and his words exercised upon the worst cases a searching influence. He had one day sent his chaplain, William de Chartres, to visit one of his household servants, a modest man of some means, named Gaugelme, who was at the point of death. When the chaplain was retiring, “I am waiting for my lord, our saintly king, to come,” said the dying man; “I will not depart this life until I have seen him and spoken to him: and then I will die.” The king came, and addressed to him the most affectionate words of consolation; and when he had left him, and before he had re-entered his tent, he was told that Gaugelme had expired. When the 5th of April, the day fixed for the retreat, had come, Louis himself was ill and much enfeebled. He was urged to go aboard one of the vessels which were to descend the Nile, carrying the wounded and the most suffering; but he refused absolutely, saying, “I don’t separate from my people in the hour of danger.” He remained on land, and when he had to move forward he fainted twice. When he came to himself, he was amongst the last to leave the camp, got himself helped on to the back of a little Arab horse, covered with silken housings, and marched at a slow pace with the rear-guard, having beside him Geoffrey de Sargines, who watched over him, “and protected me against the Saracens,” said Louis himself to Joinville, “as a good servant protects his lord’s tankard against the flies.”

Neither the king’s courage nor his servants’ devotion was enough to insure success, even to the retreat. At four leagues’ distance from the camp it had just left, the rear-guard of the crusaders, harassed by clouds of Saracens, was obliged to halt. Louis could no longer keep on his horse. “He was put up at a house,” says Joinville, “and laid, almost dead, upon the lap of a tradeswoman from Paris; and it was believed that he would not last till evening.” With his consent, one of his lieges entered into parley with one of the Mussulman chiefs; a truce was about to be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking off his ring from his finger as a pledge that he would observe it. “But during this,” says Joinville, “there took place a great mishap. A traitor of a sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began calling to our people, ‘Sirs knights, surrender, for such is the king’s command: cause not the king’s death.’ All thought that it was the king’s command; and they gave up their swords to the Saracens.” Being forthwith declared prisoners, the king and all the rear-guard were removed to Mansourah; the king by boat; and his two brothers, the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and all the other crusaders, drawn up in a body and shackled, followed on foot on the river bank. The advance-guard, and all the rest of the army, soon met the same fate.

Ten thousand prisoners—this was all that remained of the crusade that had started eighteen months before from Aigues-Mortes. Nevertheless the lofty bearing and the piety of the king still inspired the Mussulmans with great respect. A negotiation was opened between him and the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, who, having previously freed him from his chains, had him treated with a certain magnificence. As the price of a truce and of his liberty, Louis received a demand for the immediate surrender of Damietta, a heavy ransom, and the restitution of several places which the Christians still held in Palestine. “I cannot dispose of those places,” said Louis, “for they do not belong to me; the princes and the Christian orders, in whose hands they are, can alone keep or surrender them.” The sultan, in anger, threatened to have the king put to the torture, or sent to the Grand Khalif of Bagdad, who would detain him in prison for the rest of his days. “I am your prisoner,” said Louis; “you can do with me what you will.” “You call yourself our prisoner,” said the Mussulman negotiators, “and so, we believe you are; but you treat us as if you had us in prison.” The sultan perceived that he had to do with an indomitable spirit; and he did not insist any longer upon more than the surrender of Damietta, and on a ransom of five hundred thousand livres (that is, about ten million one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs, or four hundred and five thousand two hundred and eighty pounds, of modern money, according to M. de Wailly, supposing, as is probable, that livres of Tours are meant). “I will pay willingly five hundred thousand livres for the deliverance of my people,” said Louis, “and I will give up Damietta for the deliverance of my own person, for I am not a man who ought to be bought and sold for money.” “By my faith,” said the sultan, “the Frank is liberal not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go tell him that I will give him one hundred thousand livres to help towards paying the ransom.” The negotiation was concluded on this basis; and victors and vanquished quitted Mansourah, and arrived, partly by land and partly by the Nile, within a few leagues of Damietta, the surrender of which was fixed for the 7th of May. But five days previously a tragic event took place. Several emirs of the Mamelukes suddenly entered Louis’s tent. They had just slain the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, against whom they had for some time been conspiring. “Fear nought, sir,” said they to the king; “this was to be. Do what concerns you in respect of the stipulated conditions, and you shall be free.” Of these emirs one, who had slain the sultan with his own hand, asked the king, brusquely, “What wilt thou give me? I have slain thine enemy, who would have put thee to death, had he lived;” and he asked to be made knight. Louis answered not a word. Some of the crusaders present urged him to satisfy the desire of the emir, who had in his power the decision of their fate. “I will never confer knighthood on an infidel,” said Louis; “let the emir turn Christian; I will take him away to France, enrich him, and make him knight.” It is said that, in their admiration for this piety and this indomitable firmness, the emirs had at one time a notion of taking Louis himself for sultan in the place of him whom they had just slain; and this report was probably not altogether devoid of foundation, for, some time afterwards, in the intimacy of the conversations between them, Louis one day said to Joinville, “Think you that I would have taken the kingdom of Babylon, if they had offered it to me?” “Whereupon I told him,” adds Joinville, “that he would have done a mad act, seeing that they had slain their lord; and he said to me that of a truth he would not have refused.” However that may be, the conditions agreed upon with the late Sultan Malek-Moaddam were carried out; on the 7th of May, 1250, Geoffrey de Sargines gave up to the emirs the keys of Damietta; and the Mussulmans entered in tumultuously. The king was waiting aboard his ship for the payment which his people were to make for the release of his brother, the Count of Poitiers; and, when he saw approaching a bark on which he recognized his brother, “Light up! light up!” he cried instantly to his sailors; which was the signal agreed upon for setting out. And leaving forthwith the coast of Egypt, the fleet which bore the remains of the Christian army made sail for the shores of Palestine.

The king, having arrived at St. Jean d’Acre on the 14th of May, 1250, accepted without shrinking the trial imposed upon him by his unfortunate situation. He saw his forces considerably reduced; and the majority of the crusaders left to him, even his brothers themselves, did not hide their ardent desire to return to France. He had that virtue, so rare amongst kings, of taking into consideration the wishes of his comrades, and of desiring their free assent to the burden he asked them to bear with him. He assembled the chief of them, and put the question plainly before them. “The queen, my mother,” he said, “biddeth me and prayeth me to get me hence to France, for that my kingdom hath neither peace nor truce with the king of England. The folk here tell me that, if I get me hence, this land is lost, for none of those that be there will dare to abide in it. I pray you, therefore, to give it thought, for it is a grave matter, and I grant you nine days for to answer me whatever shall seem to you good.” Eight days after, they returned; and Guy de Mauvoisin, speaking in their name, said to the king, “Sir, your brothers and the rich men who be here have had regard unto your condition, and they see that you cannot remain in this country to your own and your kingdom’s honor, for of all the knights who came in your train, and of whom you led into Cyprus twenty-eight hundred, there remain not one hundred in this city. Wherefore they do counsel you, sir, to get you hence to France, and to provide troops and money wherewith you may return speedily to this country, to take vengeance on these enemies of God who have kept you in prison.” Louis, without any discussion, interrogated all present, one after another, and all, even the pope’s legate, agreed with Guy de Mauvoisin. “I was seated just fourteenth, facing the legate,” says Joinville, “and when he asked me how it seemed to me, I answered him that if the king could hold out so far as to keep the field for a year, he would do himself great honor if he remained.”