Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/662

Rh 028 CRUSADES army which should have defended the capital, while the true cross fell into the hands of the conquerors. Against Conquest of the comparatively defenceless city Saladin now advanced; Jerusalem j^ jje p] e( jg e d himself that, if it were surrendered, he &quot; would provide for the inhabitants new homes in Syria, and would supply them with the money which they might need. His offer was refused, and Saladin made a vow that he would take ample vengeance. But when at length the issue was seen to be inevitable and the besieged threw themselves on his mercy, Saladin agreed that the nobles and fighting men should be sent to Tyre, and that the Latin inhabitants should be reduced to slavery, only if they failed to pay a ransom fixed according to age and sex. Having entered the city Saladin advanced to the mosque of Omar. As he approached, the cross, which still flashed on its summit, was hurled to the ground and trailed through Causes the mire. Thus fell the Latin kingdom eighty-eight years lea.iing to after Godfrey became the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. tlie fa 1 of At no time had it exhibited any signs of real stability. kinaOouu Resting on the ru l e that n faith was to be kept with the unbeliever, it justified treachery. It recognized no title to property except in the Christians, and the tempta tion thus held out to robbery went far to demoralize the people. It kept up constant irritation by petty forays, while it did little to promote military science or discipline. Its leaders were for the most part devoid of statesmanship. As banded together rather for a religious than a political purpose, they could withdraw from the enterprize as soon as they had fulfilled their vows, and thus the cohesion needed for its permanent success was unattainable. More than all, it had to put up with, if it did not sanction, the growth of societies, each of which claimed independent jurisdiction over its own members. The great military orders of the Hospital and the Temple had come into existence as fraternities devoted to works of mercy in behalf of poor pilgrims. But under the conditions of their sojourn in Palestine it was necessary to bear arms; the bearing of arms involved the need of discipline; and the military discipline of a brotherhood animated by monastic enthusiasm became formidable. These orders were further strengthened by privileges and immunities conferred, some by the kings of Jerusalem, some by the popes. Their freedom from tithe brought them into direct antagonism with the clergy, and the clergy in their turn complained that these orders gave shelter to excommunicated persons, while the fiercest enmity of the Templar was reserved for his brother of the order of the Hospital of St John. On a kingdom composed of such elements as these the old curse of the house divided against itself cannot fail to descend. Tie third It may have been something like the insight of a states- crusaJe. mail -which } e( j King Amalric to fix his thoughts on the conquest of Egypt, as the means, not only of preventing the co-operation of hostile powers to the north and the south of the Latin kingdom, but of opening a country .of vast resources to the merchant and the trader. There can be no doubt that these considerations prompted the Lateran Council, 1179, to declare that the first object of every crusade should be the conquest of Damietta; but with this determination these enterprizes ceased to be strictly crusades, and the old spirit is seen again only in the royal saint, Louis IX. For the time the fall of Jerusalem seemed to waken again the impulse which had stirred the hearts of Godfrey and Tancred. On the plain between Gisors and Trie the pleadings of William, archbishop of Tyre, prevailed with Henry II. of England and Philip Augustus of France to assume the cross, 1188. Having thus far shown a marked reluctance to the undertaking, Henry may now have really meant to fulfil his promise; but the quarrels and treachery of his sons interposed a fatal hind rance, and soon brought him to his grave. For his son and successor, Richard, the idea of rescuing the holy city from the Turk had an irresistible attraction, and his whole mind was bent on raising money for the purpose. This task done, he met the French king at Vezelai, where forty- four years ago Louis VII. had listened to the vehement eloquence of Bernard. The two sovereigns made their way to Sicily, while the Emperor Frederick I. (Barbarossa) was advancing with his host to Constantinople. Frederick himself was drowned in a Cilician river, 1190, and of Dea those whom he had brought across the Bosphorus not a tenth, ^ rei it is said, reached Antioch. The efforts of the Latins of I- Palestine were now directed chiefly against Acre, which had been besieged for two years before Richard and Philip set foot on the Holy Land. The former was prostrated with fever; but his fiery zeal proved stronger than his sickness, and Saladin was compelled, 1191, to assent to a com pact which bound him to surrender the true cross, and to give hostages for the payment of 200,000 pieces of gold within forty days. The money was not paid in time, and the hostages, numbering 3000 or more, were all, it is said, slaughtered on the summit of a hill from which the tragedy might be seen in the camp of Saladin. The sequel of the story tells us of battles won and lost to little purpose. The victory of Richard at Azotus opened the road to Jaffa and Fra Jerusalem, and the army had advanced as far as Ramlah, vict when the men of Pisa, with the knights of the Hospital Ricl and the Temple, insisted that the troops could never be kept together after the recovery of Jerusalem, and thus that its re-conquest would really be fatal to the crusade. In June 1192 Richard again led his forces towards the holy city, and was again foiled by the lack of a commissariat and the destruction of the wells and cisterns which far miles round had been shattered by the enemy. His prowess was signally shown in the relief of Jaffa; but in the issue he obtained from Saladin simply a truce for three years and eight months, which in sured to pilgrims the right of entering Jerusalem untaxed; and thus, leaving the Holy Land, he set out on the home ward journey which was to be interrupted by a long cap tivity in a Tyrolese castle as the prisoner of Henry VI. Although this third crusade had been marked by the woful waste of splendid opportunities, it had still secured to the Christians the possession of a long strip of coast, bounded by two important cities, which might serve as a base of operation in future enterprizes, while it had also done much to neutralize the results which Saladin had looked for from his earlier victories. The fourth crusade may be dismissed in a few words. The It was an enterprize set on foot by the knights of St John, crus; 1193, seconded by Pope Celestine III. in the hopes of getting rid of the Emperor Henry VI., the son of Barbarossa, who claimed the island of Sicily, and encour aged by Henry as a means for promoting his own designs. Henry had no intention of going on the errand himself; but his barons with their followers defeated the Turks be tween Tyre and Sidon, 1196, recovered Jaffa which had been taken after Richard s departure, obtained possession of Berytus, and lost all that they had gained by their folly and disunion in the siege of the castle of Thoron, 1197. Jaffa was again taken by the Saracens; and the Latin kingdom became little more than a title with which Isabella, the sister of Baldwin IV., linked that of Cyprus on her marriage with Amalric of Lusignan, who had succeeded his brother Guy as sovereign of that island. The fifth crusade was an undertaking of vastly greater The importance. Innocent III., who now sat in St Peter s crus! chair, was a man of incomparably loftier genius than Urban II., and he was raised to the Pontifical throne, 1198, at a time when the European world generally seemed in a state of dissolution. He saw at once how in such a state