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 see the helm of the Crusades wrenched from his grasp; and the Albigensian Crusade against the heretics of southern France was soon afterwards to show that the example could be followed, and that the land-hunger of the north French baronage could exploit a Crusade as successfully as ever did Hohenstaufen policy leagued with Venetian cupidity. The Crusade lost its élan when it became a move in a political game. If the Third Crusade had been directed by the lay power towards the true spiritual end of all Crusades, the Fourth was directed by the lay power to its own lay ends; and the political and commercial motives, which were deeply implicit even in the First Crusade, had now become dominantly explicit. In a simpler and more immediate sense, the capture of Constantinople was detrimental to the movement from which it sprang. The precarious empire which had been founded in 1204 drained away all the vigorous adventurers of the West for its support for many years to come, and the Holy Land was starved to feed a land less holy, but equally greedy of men. No basis for the Crusades was ever to be found in the Latin empire of the East; and Innocent, after vainly hoping for the new Crusade which was to emerge from Constantinople, was by 1208 compelled to return to the old idea of a Crusade proceeding simply and immediately from the West to the East.

The Fifth Crusade, 1218–1221.—The glow and the glamour of the Crusades disappear save for the pathetic sunset splendours of St Louis, as Dandolo dies, and gallant Villehardouin drops his pen. But before St Louis sailed for Damietta there intervened the miserable failure of one Crusade, and the secular and diplomatic success of another. The Fifth Crusade is the last which is started in that pontificate of Crusades—the pontificate of Innocent III. It owed its origin to his feverish zeal for the recovery of Jerusalem, rather than to any pressing need in the Holy Land. Here there reigned, during the forty years of the loss of Jerusalem, an almost unbroken peace. Malik-al-Adil, the brother of Saladin, had by 1200 succeeded to his brother’s possessions not only in Egypt but also in Syria, and he granted the Christians a series of truces (1198–1203, 1204–1210, 1211–1217). While the Holy Land was thus at peace, crusaders were also being drawn elsewhere by the needs of the Latin empire of Constantinople, or the attractions of the Albigensian Crusade. But Innocent could never consent to forget Jerusalem, as long as his right hand retained its cunning. The pathos of the Children’s Crusade of 1212 only nerved him to fresh efforts. A shepherd boy named Stephen had appeared in France, and had induced thousands to follow his guidance: with his boyish army he rode on a wagon southward to Marseilles, promising to lead his followers dry-shod through the seas. In Germany a child from Cologne, named Nicolas, gathered some 20,000 young crusaders by the like promises, and led them into Italy. Stephen’s army was kidnapped by slave-dealers and sold into Egypt; while Nicolas’s expedition left nothing behind it but an after-echo in the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But for Innocent these outbursts of the revivalist element, which always accompanied the Crusades, had their moral: “the very children put us to shame,” he wrote; “while we sleep

they go forth gladly to conquer the Holy Land.” In the fourth Lateran council of 1215 Innocent found his opportunity to rekindle the flickering fires. Before this great gathering of all Christian Europe he proclaimed a Crusade for the year 1217, and in common deliberation it was resolved that a truce of God should reign for the next four years, while for the same time all trade with the Levant should cease. Here were two things attempted—neither, indeed, for the first time —which 14th century pamphleteers on the subject of the Crusades unanimously advocate as the necessary conditions of success; there was to be peace in Europe and a commercial war with Egypt. This statesmanlike beginning of a Crusade, preached, as no Crusade had ever been preached before, in a general council of all Europe, presaged well for its success. In Germany (where Frederick II. himself took the cross in this same year) a large body of crusaders gathered together: in 1217 the south-east sent the duke of Austria and the king of Hungary to the Holy Land; while in 1218 an army from the north-west joined at Acre the forces of the previous year. Egypt had already been indicated by Innocent III. in 1215 as the goal of attack, and it was accordingly resolved to begin the Crusade by the siege of Damietta, on the eastern delta of the Nile. The original leader of the Crusade was John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem (who had succeeded Amalric II., marrying Maria, the daughter of Amalric’s wife Isabella by her former husband, Conrad of Montferrat); but after the end of 1218 the cardinal legate Pelagius, fortified by papal letters, claimed the command. In spite of dissensions between the cardinal and the king, and in spite of the offers of Malik-al-Kamil (who succeeded Malik-al-Adil at the end of 1218), the crusaders finally carried the siege to a successful conclusion by the end of 1219. The capture of Damietta was a considerable feat of arms, but nothing was done to clinch the advantage which had been won, and the whole of the year 1220 was spent by the crusaders in Damietta, partly in consolidating their immediate position, and partly in waiting for the arrival of Frederick II., who had promised to appear in 1221. In 1221 Hermann of Salza, the master of the Teutonic order, along with the duke of Bavaria, appeared in the camp before Damietta; and as it seemed useless to wait any longer for Frederick II., the cardinal, in spite of the opposition of King John, gave the signal for the march on Cairo. The army reached a fortress (erected by the sultan in 1219; afterwards, from 1221, the town of Mansura), and encamped there at the end of July. Here the sultan reiterated terms which he had already offered several times before—the cession of most of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the surrender of the cross (captured by Saladin in 1187), and the restoration of all prisoners. King John urged the acceptance of these terms. The legate insisted on a large indemnity in addition: the negotiations failed, and the sultan prepared for war. The crusaders were driven back towards Damietta; and at the end of August 1221 Pelagius had to make a treaty with Malik-al-Kamil, by which he gained a free retreat and the surrender of the Holy Cross at the price of the restoration of Damietta. The treaty was to last for eight years, and could only be broken on the coming of a king or emperor to the East. In pursuance of its terms the crusaders evacuated Egypt, and the Fifth Crusade was at an end. It is difficult to decide whether to blame the legate or the emperor more for its failure. If Frederick had only come in person, a single month of his presence might have meant everything: if Pelagius had only listened to King John, the sultan was ready to concede practically everything which was at issue. Unhappily Frederick preferred to put his Sicilian house in order, and the legate preferred to listen to the Italians, who had their own