CRUSADES. 



311 



Crusades, in a' traffic, which the necessities of the crusaders could 

 ^■^"Y"""* ' no t fail to render lucrative. Having taken Nice, and 

 defeated Solyman, in 1097, they proceeded eastward, 

 where Baldwin conquered Edessa, and erected it into 

 a separate principality for himself. In the end of 

 1098, they took the town, but not the citadel of An- 

 tioch; and an army of 600,000 Saracens, which had 

 moved to the relief of the latter, was totally defeated 

 and dispersed by the besiegers. In 1099, the crusa- 

 ders, with little more than a twentieth part of their 

 original number, advanced to Jerusalem, which, after 

 a siege of forty days, was taken by storm, and all its 

 • inhabitants, except the Christians, sacrificed in a gene- 

 ral massacre. At this scene of barbarity, Peter was 

 present, in the character of a chaplain, for which he 

 had judiciously exchanged that of a general ; but his 

 patron Urban died before the gratifying intelligence 

 could reach him. The heroic Godfrey was raised by 

 the army to the throne of Jerusalem ; and in the first, 

 and only year of his reign, he added double security to 

 his conquest, by defeating the Egyptian sultan, with 

 an innumerable army, at Ascalon. He was, notwith- 

 standing, defrauded of the reward of his valour, by a 

 papal legate, whom the clergy elected to the patriarch- 

 ate of his new kingdom, and who contrived to include 

 the temporal in the spiritual power, leaving to God- 

 frey only the little principality of Jaffa, and a few im- 

 munities in that of Jerusalem. The crusaders, after 

 seeing their object accomplished, began to return to 

 Europe; and the few who remained in the Christian 

 settlements of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Edessa, to which 

 a fourth was added, by erecting the Syrian Tripoli in- 

 to a domain for the young count of Tholouse, were 

 obliged to depend for defence against the Turks, on 

 the gradual accession of adventurers, whom the fame 

 of their previous exploits allured from Christendom. 

 An army of these recruits, amounting to 200,000, was 

 collected by Hugh, brother of Philip I. king of France ; 

 but they never reached their destination, being cut off 

 in hostilities, first with the Greeks, or afterwards with 

 Solyman, who still occupied the open country of Asia 

 Minor. 



The Christians, at length, finding themselves sur- 

 rounded with foes, (for even the emperor, though their 

 liege-lord, viewed them with the same hostility which 

 he had felt for their Moslem predecessors,) supplicated 

 a second crusade, which was preached, in 1146, by 

 Bernard, the sainted founder of the monastic order of 

 Bernardines. His eloquence having persuaded Louis 

 VII. of France, and Conrad III. of Germany, with 

 500,000 of their subjects, to assume the cross, Conrad 

 took the lead, but was defeated by the Turks near Ico- 

 nium, and with difficulty escaped to Antioch. Louis, 

 a short time after, suffered a similar fate ; and both re- 

 turned home, after witnessing the ruin of the finest ar- 

 mies winch their countries had ever produced. The 

 disastrous issue of these attempts for their relief, only 

 hastened the decline of the Christian principalities in 

 Asia. Adversity created divisions among them, which 

 might have been still more fatal, had not equal discord 

 prevailed among their enemies, which gave the former 

 iin opportunity of forming an alliance (1166) with the 

 Saracens of Egypt against the Turks of Syria. This, 

 however, was of short duration ; and had it been more 

 permanent, could not have availed to resist the illus- 

 trious Saladin, who, about the middle of the 12th cen- 

 tury, raised himself, from a humble attendant of the 

 saliphs, to the sovereignty of Persia, Arabia, Syria, and 



VOL VII. PART I. 



Egypt. The next object of his ambition was the con- OusaJe 

 tiguous kingdom of Jerusalem ; and in the battle of Ti- """""V^ 

 berias, having defeated its army, and taken Guy of 

 Lusignan, who then wore the crown, he made himself 

 master of the city in 1187. Saladin, however, whose 

 valour was equalled by his generosity and wisdom, 

 though he restored Mohammedism, tolerated Christian- 

 ity in his new conquest; but a few cities on the coast 

 was all of which the Christians retained an indepen- 

 dent possession in the East. 



Though, in a rational age, the capture of Jerusalem 

 should not have affected the happiness of Europe ; yet 

 as ideal evils are frequently the greatest, it was felt 

 through Christendom as an intolerable calamity, and 

 the Pope (Clement IV.) took advantage of this sensa- 

 tion, to unite its sovereigns in a new crusade. The 

 great thrones of the West were, at this time, occupied 

 by princes of eminent talents, who employed them as 

 the fashion of the age prescribed. Philip the Second 

 of France, Richard the First of England, and the Ger- 

 man Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, engaged with much 

 zeal in the expedition ; but the last of these princes 

 having defeated the Greeks, who had preferred an alli- 

 ance with Saladin to one with the crusaders, and having, 

 afterwards, been twice successful against the sultan of 

 Iconium, was drowned accidentally in crossing a river. 

 The French and English kings were more fortunate, and 

 arrived at Ptolemais while besieged by the Asiatic Chris- 

 tians, with a force which, when united with the besie- 

 gers, made an army of 300,000 men. Ptolemais was 

 taken, but Philip, disgusted with the real or affected 

 superiority of his rival, returned home; and Richard 

 had the glory of defeating Saladin, undiminished by 

 the claims of a partner. The army, however, being 

 reduced, not more by the usual waste of war, than by 

 those intestine quarrels which are fatal to almost every 

 military coalition, he, like the preceding leaders, re- 

 turned, unaccompanied even by its remains, to Europe. 

 Judging of others by his own generous nature, he took 

 his way through Austria, though he had quarrelled with 

 its prince in the East, and being arrested, was kept in 

 prison till an immense ransom had been procured from 

 his subjects. Before his departure from Syria, he had 

 made a peace with Saladin, who soon after died. 



Notwithstanding the misery which had been the uni- 

 form result of the crusades, such was the prevalence 

 of fashion, or the ascendancy of the priesthood, that 

 fresh adventurers were ever ready to renew them. In 

 1202, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, collected an army 

 to act against the Mohammedans, but began, as usual, 

 with the Christians of Greece. Arriving at Constanti- 

 nople during a disputed succession, his interference 

 tempted one claimant to assassinate his rival, and Bald- 

 win, after dispatching the survivor by a public execu- 

 tion, and indulging his followers with the plunder of 

 the city, sat down on the imperial throne of the East- 

 ern empire. In this splendid acquisition, it is not sur- 

 prising that the original object of the crusade was for- 

 gotten, and that the adventurers preferred the destruc- 

 tion of their fellow Christians, and the spoils of an em- 

 pire, to a doubtful contest with the Saracens, and the re- 

 covery of a sepulclrre. Only a few knights crossed to 

 Asia, and the fourth expedition terminated without a 

 single conquest from those against whom it had been 

 equipped. 



The frenzy of Europe, however, continued unabat- 

 ed ; and John de Brienne, a young French gentleman, 

 being appointed King of Jerusalem, and taking the aid 

 3b 



