Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/664

Rh 630 CRUSADES Wise policy of Henry I. Latins in Thrace, 1205. Eager for vengeance, Baldwin marched against him ; but he was taken prisoner, and the army was saved only by the skill and heroism of Villehardouin, who has left us a narrative of the campaign. The liberation of Baldwin was demanded by the Pope ; the reply was that he had died. The cause was never known ; and for a year his brother Henry, who was elected to succeed him, refused to take the title of emperor. The ten years of Henry s reign, 1206-1216, stand out in pleasant contrast with the lives of the emperors who were to follow him. Henry at the least saw that his brother had made a fatal mistake in confining the work of government exclu sively to the Latins. Greeks were again admitted to public offices and honours; to the imposition of a foreign liturgy or of a foreign dogma Henry offered a passive resistance, while his throne, placed on the right hand of the patriarch s chair in the church of Sancta Sophia, was significant of his thoughts on the question of Papal supremacy. With his death the male line of the counts of Flanders came to an end. In a fatal moment the offer of his crown was accepted by Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, the husband of Henry s sister Yolande. Like Baldwin, Peter fell into the hands of his enemies on his eastward journey, and died without seeing the city of which he was the sovereign, 1218. During the reign of his successor Robert, the second son of Yolande, the range of Latin dominion was rapidly narrowed. When Robert died, Baldwin, Yolande s youngest son, was still a child only seven years old ; and John of Brienne, the titular king of Jerusalem, was raised to the imperial throne. At length, after his death, the second Baldwin became emperor ; but the twenty-five years of his reign he spent chiefly in distant lands, begging for help in money. In vain the Pope proclaimed a crusade in his behalf. The end was drawing nigh. The envoys sent by him to Michael Palaeologus were bidden to tell their master that he might have peace on the payment of an annual tribute amounting to the whole revenue from customs and excise at Constanti nople. A few years later, 1261, Baldwin was driven from the imperial city, and spent the rest of his days wandering over Europe and telling the story of his misfortunes. So fell Fall of the the Latin empire, having dealt the death-blow to the hopes Latin em- which were dearest to the heart of Pope Innocent III. The reconcilemenfc of fcne Eastern with the Western Church would, he knew, be best achieved by a close union between the subjects of the Eastern and the Western empires. The policy of the Latin emperors had opened a gulf of separa&amp;lt;- tion which has not to this day been closed, and had con verted the dislike and suspicion of former generations into vehement jealousy or furious hatred. When the Latin empire fell the era of the crusades was fast drawing to its close ; and of the expeditions which had been undertaken before its downfall one only was prompted by the spirit which had animated the hearers of Urban II, at Clermont. The conditions of the conflict were widely changed ; and the course adopted by the Christian leaders showed their conviction that the surest road to Jerusalem was by way of Egypt. Again and again this plan might have been carried out successfully ; and again and again the crusaders threw the chance away. Thus, in the year 1219, the Syrian Sultan Cnradin had offered peace to the besiegers of Damietta, pledging himself to surrender not merely the true cross but the whole of Palestine, with the exception of two forts for the protection of pilgrims bound to Mecca. The offer was rejected ; Damietta was taken and plundered ; and in the spring of 1220 the army insisted on attempting the conquest of Egypt. The Sultan Kameel offered them terms as favourable as those of Coradin, and these were also refused. The Nile rose ; and the Egyptians inundated the camp of their enemies, who in their turn were East The sixth crusade. compelled to sue for peace by surrendering Damietta. This disaster made the Pope Honorius III., who had been elected on the death of Innocent, still more anxious for the fulfil ment of the crusading vow which had long since been taken by the Emperor Frederick II., the grandson of As Barbarossa. In a conference at Ferentino, 1223, it was tio agreed that Frederick should marry lolante, the daughter ^ of the titular king of Jerusalem, and thus go forth as his u t heir to recover his own inheritance. Two years were allowed for preparation ; but it was found necessary at San Germano to grant two more. When at length Frederick married lolante in 1225, he declared that his father-in-law, John of Brienne, was king only by right of his wife, on whose death the title had passed to her daughter, and that thus Frederick was now king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem. Still the months rolled away, and the vow of Frederick remained unfulfilled. Honorius had already been obliged to remonstrate ; his successor Gregory Re IX., 1227, found himself constrained to use sharper of weapons. The contrast between the two men was marked ~ e, ] indeed. In Gregory IX., chosen Pope at the age of four- jx score years, the ascetic severity of Gregory the Great was united with the iron will of Gregory VII. Frederick was a young man of thirty-three, born and bred in Sicily, steeped in the luxury of a gorgeous and voluptuous court, where the charms of art and the refinements of literature and philosophy in some measure redeemed the sensuous indulgence at which Gregory would have stood aghast. The Pope had indeed enough to disquiet him in the reports which came from this Sicilian paradise. Frederick was spending his days amongst a motley company gathered from all the countries of Europe, a company in which Christians, Jews, and Saracens mingled freely. A society such as this could exist only in an atmosphere of tolerance, and tolerance in Gregory s eyes was only another name for indifference, and indifference of heresy: The spell, therefore, must be broken ; and Frederick must be sent forth to do battle in distant lands with the Infidels to whom he showed so dangerous a liking in his own. At length his forces were gathered at Brindisi, 1228, but fever broke out among them; and Frederick, having embarked, was compelled after three days to put into the harbour of Otranto. Gregory could endure no more. Frederick was solemnly excom- Ex municated, and the excommunication was followed by n i c interdict. Papal messengers forbade him now to leave Italy until he had made satisfaction for his offences against the church. Frederick retorted by sending his own envoys to demand the removal of the interdict, and then sailed to Ptolemais. Here he found friends in the Teutonic Knights and their grand-master Herman of Salza ; and although he was ready to fight, he was still more willing to gain his ends without bloodshed. At length a treaty signed by Fn the Sultan Kameel, 1229, surrendered to Frederick the ail( whole of Jerusalem with the exception of the mosque of K u Omar, and restored to the Christians the towns of Jaffa, Nazareth, and Bethlehem. Success thus achieved exasper ated rather than appeased the Pontiff. The interdict followed him to the holy city, and when he went to his coronation as king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Sepulchre, not a single priest took part in the rite, and Frederick was compelled to crown himself. The letters which he wrote to announce a success which he regarded as splendid roused only a storm of indignation. Gregory charged him with a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up the impostor Mahomet as an object of veneration or worship. The treaty with Kameel, which closed the sixth crusade, Tin was for ten years. On neither side, probably, was it cru strictly kept, and the injuries dono to pilgrims on their