Читать книгу The History of France (Vol. 1-6) - Guizot François - Страница 36

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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 advantage 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.

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.

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.”

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 sent ten Mussulmans to hell.” Saladin understood enthusiasm, and respected it; and to have had the destruction of Jerusalem connected with his name would’ have caused him deep displeasure. He therefore consented to the terms of capitulation demanded of him. The fighting men were permitted to retreat to Tyre or Tripolis, the last cities of any importance, besides Antioch, in the power of the Christians; and the simple inhabitants of Jerusalem had their lives preserved, and permission given them to purchase their freedom on certain conditions; but, as many amongst them could not find the means, Malek-Adhel, the sultan’s brother, and Saladin himself paid the ransom of several thousands of captives. All Christians, however, with the exception of Greeks and Syrians, had orders to leave Jerusalem within four days. When the day came, all the gates were closed, except that of David by which the people were to go forth; and Saladin, seated upon a throne, saw the Christians defile before him. First came the patriarch, followed by the clergy, carrying the sacred vessels, and the ornaments of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. After him came Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem, who had remained in the city, whilst her husband, Guy de Lusignan, had been a prisoner at Nablous since the battle of Tiberias. Saladin saluted her respectfully, and spoke to her kindly. He had too great a soul to take pleasure in the humiliation of greatness.