Read Ebook: The History of the Crusades (vol. 1 of 3) by Michaud J Fr Joseph Fr Robson William Translator

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The possession of Jerusalem in no degree arrested the barbarous fury of the Turks. As their empire was recent and ill-established, as they were threatened with the armies of Cairo, and even with those of the West, their tyranny became restless, jealous, and violent. The Christians trembled under the hardest and most humiliating subjugation; they were despoiled of their property, and reduced to the most frightful degree of misery. They underwent much greater evils than they had suffered during the reign of Hakim.

A great number of those who had quitted their families and their country to visit the tomb of Christ, lost their lives before they were able to enjoy the felicity of saluting the holy city; and they who arrived at Jerusalem after having escaped a thousand dangers, found themselves exposed to the insults and cruelties of the new masters of Judea. The pilgrims of the Latin Church who returned into Europe, related all that they had suffered in their voyage, and told, with groans, of the outrages committed upon the religion of Christ. They had seen the holy sepulchre profaned, and the ceremonies of the Christians become the sport of the infidels; they had seen the patriarchs of Jerusalem and the venerable guardians of the holy places dragged from their sanctuary and cast ignominiously into dungeons. These recitals, exaggerated by repetition, flew from mouth to mouth, and drew tears from the eyes of the faithful.

Whilst the Turks, under the command of Toutousch and Ortock, were desolating Syria and Palestine, other tribes of that nation, led by Soliman, nephew of Malek-Scha, had penetrated into Asia Minor. They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. These countries, in which the Christian religion had first shone forth, and the greater part of the Greek cities whose names were conspicuous in the annals of the primitive church, sunk under the yoke of the infidels. The standard of the prophet floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Nicea had become the seat of a Mussulman empire, and the divinity of Christ was insulted in that city wherein the first oecumenic council had declared it to be an article of faith. The modesty of the virgins had been sacrificed to the brutal lust of the conquerors. Thousands of children had been circumcised. Everywhere the laws of the Koran took place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries and churches.

The Greeks had never had to contend against more cruel and terrible enemies than the Turks. Whilst the court of Alp-Arslan and Malek-Scha blazed with magnificence and cultivated the knowledge and intelligence of the ancient Persians, the rest of the people remained in a state of barbarism, and preserved, amidst the conquered nations, all the ferocious and savage manners of Tartary. The children of Seldjouc loved better to abide under their tents than in the walls of cities; they lived upon the milk of their flocks, disdaining both agriculture and commerce, in the conviction that war would supply all their wants. For themselves, their home was every region in which their arms could prevail and their flocks find rich pastures. When they passed from one country into another, all the members of the same family marched together; they took with them all that they loved, and all that they possessed. A constantly wandering life, and frequent quarrels among themselves and with their neighbours, kept up their military spirit. Every warrior carried his name inscribed upon his javelin, and swore to make it respected by his enemies. So eager were the Turks for battle, that it was quite sufficient if a chief sent his bow or his arrows among his tribe, to make them all instantly fly to arms.

The patience with which they supported hunger, thirst, and fatigue, rendered them invincible. No nation of the East surpassed them in horsemanship, or in skill with the bow; nothing could exceed the impetuosity of their attack, and they were at the same time redoubtable in flight, and implacable in victory. They were not guided in their expeditions by a desire for glory or a sense of honour, but simply by a love of destruction and pillage.

The report of their invasions had spread among the nations of Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and new migrations appeared to arrive every day to strengthen their armies. As they were docile in war, and turbulent and rebellious in peace, it was the policy of their chiefs to lead them constantly on to new conquests. Malek-Scha, with a view to get rid of his lieutenants rather than to reward them, had given them permission to attempt the conquest of the lands of the Greeks and Egyptians. It was an easy matter to raise armies, to which were promised the spoils of the enemies of the prophet and his legitimate vicar. All who had not shared in the booty of preceding wars flocked to the standards, and the wealth of Greece soon became the prey of Turkish horsemen, who had but recently issued from their deserts with woollen caps and stirrups of wood. Of all the hordes subject to the dynasty of Seldjouc the troops that invaded Syria and Asia Minor were the poorest, the most wild, and the most intrepid.

In the depth of their misery, the Greeks of the conquered provinces scarcely dared to lift their eyes to the sovereigns of Byzantium, who had not had the courage to defend them, and therefore left them no hope that they would assist them in their troubles. In the midst of revolutions and civil wars, the Greek empire was hastening to its fall. Since the reign of Heraclius, Constantinople had seen eleven of its emperors put to death in their own palace. Six of these masters of the world had terminated their days in the obscurity of cloisters; several had been mutilated, deprived of sight, and sent into exile; the purple, stained and degraded by so many revolutions, decorated only wicked and contemptible princes, or men without character or virtue. Their whole employment was their own personal safety; and they were compelled to share their power with the accomplices of their crimes, of whom they lived in a constant state of dread. They frequently sacrificed cities and provinces, to purchase from their enemies a few moments of security, and appeared to have nothing to ask of fortune beyond the existence of the empire during their own worthless lives.

The Greeks still cherished great names and great remembrances, of which they were proud, but which only served to show their present weakness and degradation. In the midst of the luxury of Asia and the monuments of Greece and Rome, they were scarcely less barbarous than other nations. In their theological disputes they had lost the true spirit of the Evangelists; among them everything was corrupted, even religion. A universal bigotry, says Montesquieu, depressed their courage and paralyzed the whole empire. They neglected the dangers of their country, and became zealots for a relic or for a sect. In war, superstition pointed out to the Greeks lucky and unlucky days, in which a general ought or ought not to give battle; and as religion inspired in them nothing beyond an apathetic resignation in reverses, they consoled themselves for the loss of provinces by accusing their inhabitants of heresy.

Among the Greeks, stratagem and perfidy were decorated with the name of policy, and received the same encomiums as valour; they esteemed it as glorious to deceive their enemies as to conquer them. Their soldiers were followed to the seat of war by light chariots, which carried their arms; and they had perfected every machine which could supply the place of courage in either sieges or battles. Their armies displayed great military pomp, but were deficient in soldiers. The only thing they inherited from their ancestors was a turbulent and seditious spirit, which mixed itself with their effeminated manners, and was sure to break out when their country was threatened with danger. Discord unceasingly reigned among both the army and the people; and they continued madly to dispute the right to an empire whose very existence was menaced, and blindly gave up its defence to barbarians and strangers. In short, the corruption of the Greeks was so great, that they could neither have endured a good prince nor good laws. Nicephorus Phocas, who had formed the project of re-establishing discipline, died assassinated. Zimisces had also paid with his life for his efforts to rouse the Greeks from their pusillanimous degradation. When the emperor Romanus-Diogenes was made prisoner by the Turks, his misfortunes were the signal for a fresh revolt against his person. Sent back with honours by the sultan of Persia, he met with nothing but executioners in an empire he had endeavoured to defend, and died with misery and despair in a desert island of the Propontis.

The Christian religion, which the Greeks had reduced to little formulae and the vain practices of superstition, was, with them, incapable of inspiring either great designs or noble thoughts. Among the nations of the West, as they were yet unacquainted with the disputed dogmas of Christianity, it had more empire over their minds, it disposed their hearts more to enthusiasm, and formed amongst them, at once, both saints and heroes.

Although religion might not always preach its doctrines with success, and its influence was subject to abuse, it had a tendency to soften the manners of the barbarous people that had invaded Europe; it afforded a holy authority to the weak; it inspired a salutary fear in the strong, and frequently corrected the injustice of human laws.

In the midst of the darkness which covered Europe, the Christian religion alone preserved the memory of times past, and kept up some degree of emulation among men. It preserved, also, for happier days, the language of the royal people, the only one capable of expressing the grand and noble ideas of moral virtue, in which the genius of legislation had elevated its most splendid monuments. Whilst despotism and anarchy pervaded the cities and the kingdoms of the West, the people invoked religion against tyranny, and the princes called in its aid against license and revolt. Often, mid the troubles of states, the title of Christian inspired more respect, and awakened more enthusiasm than did the name of citizen in ancient Rome. As the Christian religion had preceded all the then existing institutions, it naturally remained for a long time surrounded by the veneration and love of the people. Under more than one relation the nations appeared to recognise no other legislators than the fathers of the councils, no other code than that of the gospel and the holy Scriptures. Europe might be considered as a religious society, wherein the preservation of the faith was the principal interest, and in which men belonged more to the church than to the country. In such a state of things it was easy to inflame the minds of the people, by showing them that the cause of religion and of Christians stood in need of defence.

Every day the power of the popes was augmented by the progress of Christianity, and by the ever-increasing influence of the Latin clergy. Rome was become a second time the capital of the world, and appeared to have resumed, under the monk Hildebrand, the empire it had enjoyed under the Caesars. Armed with the two-edged sword of Peter, Gregory loudly proclaimed that all the kingdoms of the earth were under the dominion of the Holy See, and that his authority ought to be as universal as the church of which he was the head. These dangerous pretensions, fostered by the opinions of his age, engaged him immediately in violent disputes with the emperor of Germany. He desired also to dictate laws to France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and England; and thinking of nothing but making himself acknowledged as the great arbiter of states, he launched his anathemas even against the throne of Constantinople, which he had undertaken to defend, and gave no more attention to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

The pope Victor, however, died without realizing his promise of attacking the infidels in Asia. The glory of delivering Jerusalem belonged to a simple pilgrim, possessed of no other power than the influence of his character and his genius. Some assign an obscure origin to Peter the Hermit; others say he was descended from a noble family of Picardy; but all agree that he had an ignoble and vulgar exterior. Born with a restless, active spirit, he sought, in all conditions of life, for an object which he could meet with in none. The study of letters, bearing arms, celibacy, marriage, the ecclesiastical state, offered nothing to him that could fill his heart or satisfy his ardent mind. Disgusted with the world and mankind, he retired amongst the most austere cenobites. Fasting, prayer, meditation, the silence of solitude, exalted his imagination. In his visions he kept up an habitual commerce with heaven, and believed himself the instrument of its designs, and the depositary of its will. He possessed the fervour of an apostle, with the courage of a martyr. His zeal gave way to no obstacle, and all that he desired seemed easy of attainment. When he spoke, the passions with which he was agitated animated his gestures and his words, and communicated themselves to his auditors. Such was the extraordinary man who gave the signal to the Crusaders, and who, without fortune and without name, by the ascendancy of his tears and prayers alone, succeeded in moving the West to precipitate itself in a mass upon Asia.

The fame of the pilgrimages to the East drew Peter from his retreat, and he followed into Palestine the crowd of Christians who went to visit the holy places. The sight of Jerusalem excited him much more than any of the other pilgrims, for it created in his ardent mind a thousand conflicting sentiments. In the city, which exhibited everywhere marks of the mercy and the auger of God, all objects inflamed his piety, irritated his devotion and his zeal, and filled him by turns with respect, terror, and indignation. After having followed his brethren to Calvary and the tomb of Christ, he repaired to the patriarch of Jerusalem. The white hairs of Simeon, his venerable figure, and, above all, the persecution which he had undergone, bespoke the full confidence of Peter, and they wept together over the ills of the Christians. The hermit, his heart torn, his face bathed in tears, asked if there was no termination to be looked for, no remedy to be devised, for so many calamities? "Oh, most faithful of Christians!" replied the patriarch, "is it not plain that our iniquities have shut us out from all access to the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mussulmans, all the East is sunk into a state of slavery; no power on earth can assist us." At these words Peter interrupted Simeon, and pointed out to him the hope that the warriors of the West might one day be the liberators of Jerusalem. "Yes, without doubt," replied the patriarch, "when the measure of our afflictions shall be full, when God will be moved by our miseries, he will soften the hearts of the princes of the West, and will send them to the succour of the holy city." At these words Peter and Simeon felt their hearts expand with hope, and embraced each other, shedding tears of joy. The patriarch resolved to implore, by his letters, the help of the pope and the princes of Europe, and the hermit swore to be the interpreter of the Christians of the East, and to rouse the West to take arms for their deliverance.

Peter the Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, visited all parts of France, and the greatest portion of Europe, inflaming all hearts with the same zeal that consumed his own. He travelled mounted on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girded with a thick cord, covered with a long frock, and a hermit's hood of the coarsest stuff. The singularity of his appearance was a spectacle for the people, whilst the austerity of his manners, his charity, and the moral doctrines that he preached, caused him to be revered as a saint wherever he came.

He went from city to city, from province to province, working upon the courage of some, and upon the piety of others; sometimes haranguing from the pulpits of the churches, sometimes preaching in the high roads or public places. His eloquence was animated and impressive, and filled with those vehement apostrophes which produce such effects upon an uncultivated multitude. He described the profanation of the holy places, and the blood of the Christians shed in torrents in the streets of Jerusalem. He invoked, by turns, Heaven, the saints, the angels, whom he called upon to bear witness to the truth of what he told them. He apostrophized Mount Sion, the rock of Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, which he made to resound with sobs and groans. When he had exhausted speech in painting the miseries of the faithful, he showed the spectators the crucifix which he carried with him; sometimes striking his breast and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding torrents of tears.

The people followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was received everywhere as a messenger from God. They who could touch his vestments esteemed themselves happy, and a portion of hair pulled from the mule he rode was preserved as a holy relic. At the sound of his voice, differences in families were reconciled, the poor were comforted, the debauched blushed at their errors, nothing was talked of but the virtues of the eloquent cenobite; his austerities and his miracles were described, and his discourses were repeated to those who had not heard him, and been edified by his presence.

He often met, in his journeys, with Christians from the East, who had been banished from their country, and wandered over Europe, subsisting on charity. Peter the Hermit presented them to the people, as living evidences of the barbarity of the infidels; and pointing to the rags with which they were clothed, he burst into torrents of invectives against their oppressors and persecutors. At the sight of these miserable wretches, the faithful felt, by turns, the most lively emotions of pity, and the fury of vengeance; all deploring in their hearts the miseries and the disgrace of Jerusalem. The people raised their voices towards heaven, to entreat God to deign to cast a look of pity upon his beloved city; some offering their riches, others their prayers, but all promising to lay down their lives for the deliverance of the holy places.

In the midst of this general excitement, Alexius Comnena, who was threatened by the Turks, sent ambassadors to the pope, to solicit the assistance of the Latins. Some time before this embassy he had addressed letters to the princes of the West, in which he had described to them, in a most lamentable manner, the conquests of the Turks in Asia Minor. These savage hordes, in their debauches and in the intoxication of victory, had outraged both nature and humanity. They were now at the gates of Byzantium, and, without the prompt assistance of all the Christian states, Constantinople must fall under the most frightful domination of the Turks. Alexius reminded the princes of Christianity of the holy relics preserved in Constantinople, and conjured them to save so sacred an assemblage of venerated objects from the profanation of the infidels. After having set forth the splendour and the riches of his capital, he exhorted the knights and barons to come and defend them; he offered them his treasures as the reward of their valour, and painted in glowing colours the beauty of the Greek women, whose love would repay the exploits of his liberators. Thus, nothing was spared that could flatter the passions, or arouse the enthusiasm of the warriors of the West. The invasion of the Turks was, in the eyes of Alexius, the greatest misfortune that the chief of a Christian kingdom had to dread; and to avert such a danger, everything appeared to him just and allowable. He could support the idea of losing his crown, but not the shame of seeing his states subjected to the laws of Mahomet: if he was doomed one day to lose his empire, he could console himself for that loss, provided Greece escaped the Mussulman yoke, and became the prize of the Latins.

In compliance with the prayers of Alexius and the wishes of the faithful, the sovereign pontiff convoked a council at Plaisance, in order there to expose the dangers of the Greek and Latin Churches in the East. The preachings of Peter had so prepared the minds and animated the zeal of the faithful, that more than two hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, and thirty thousand of the laity obeyed the invitation of the Holy See. The council was so numerous that it was obliged to be held in a plain in the neighbourhood of the city.

At this assembly all eyes were turned upon the ambassadors of Alexius; their presence in the midst of a Latin council, announced sufficiently plainly the disastrous condition of the East. When they had exhorted the princes and the warriors to save Constantinople and Jerusalem, Urban supported their discourse and their prayers with all the reasons which the interests of Christianity and the cause of religion could furnish. The council of Plaisance, however, came to no determination upon the war against the infidels. The deliverance of the Holy Land was far from being the only object of this council: the declarations of the empress Adelaide, who came to reveal her own shame, and that of her husband, anathemas against the emperor of Germany and the anti-pope, Guibert, occupied, during several days, the attention of Urban and the assembled fathers.

It must be added, too, that among the states of Italy, in which country this council was held, the spirit of commerce and liberty began to weaken the enthusiasm of religion. The greater part of the cities only thought of the advantages that might accrue to them from the troubles; some entertaining hopes they would increase their wealth, others looking to them as a means of securing their independence, and none yielding so freely as other nations to the influence of the popes. Whilst the Christian world revered in Urban the formidable successor of Gregory, the Italians, whose charity he had frequently implored, were best acquainted with his disgraces and misfortunes: his presence did not in any degree warm their zeal, and his decrees were not always laws for them, who had seen him, from the depths of misery and in exile, launch his thunders against the thrones of the West.

The prudent Urban avoided trying to arouse the ardour of the Italians; he did not think their example at all likely to lead on other nations. In order to take a decided part in the civil war, and to interest all Europe in its success, he resolved to assemble a second synod, in the bosom of a warlike nation, which, from the most distant times, had been accustomed to give impulsion to Europe. The new council assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne, was neither less numerous nor respectable than that of Plaisance; the most renowned holy men and learned doctors came to honour it with their presence, and enlighten it with their counsels. The city of Clermont was scarcely able to contain within its walls all the princes, ambassadors, and prelates who had repaired to the council; "so that," says an ancient chronicle, "towards the middle of the month of November, the cities and villages of the neighbourhood were so filled with people, that they were compelled to erect tents and pavilions in the fields and meadows, although the season and the country were extremely cold."

The council held its tenth sitting in the great square or place of Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense crowd. Followed by his cardinals, the pope ascended a species of throne which had been prepared for him; at his side was Peter the Hermit, clad in that whimsical and uncouth garb which had everywhere drawn upon him the attention and the respect of the multitude. The apostle of the holy war spoke first of the outrages committed against the religion of Christ; he reverted to the profanations and the sacrileges of which he had been a witness; he pictured the torments and persecutions which a people, enemies to God and man, had caused those to suffer who had been led by religion to visit the holy places. He had seen, he said, Christians loaded with irons, dragged into slavery, or harnessed to the yoke, like the vilest animals; he had seen the oppressors of Jerusalem sell to the children of Christ permission to salute the temple of their God, tear from them even the bread of their misery, and torment their poverty itself to obtain their tribute; he had seen the ministers of God dragged from their sanctuaries, beaten with rods, and condemned to an ignominious death. Whilst describing the misfortunes and degradation of the Christians, the countenance of Peter was cast down, and exhibited feelings of consternation and horror; his voice was choked with sobs; his lively emotion penetrated every heart.

Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented, as he had done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the infidels. That land, consecrated by the presence of the Saviour, that mountain whereon he expiated our sins by his sufferings,--that tomb in which he deigned to be enclosed as a victim to death, had all become the heritage of the impious. The altars of false prophets were raised within those walls which had contained the august assembly of the apostles. God had no longer a sanctuary in his own city; the East, the cradle of the Christian religion, now witnessed nothing but sacrilegious pomps; impiety had spread its darkness over all the richest countries of Asia. Antioch, Ephesus, Nicea, had become Mussulman cities; the Turks had carried their ravages and their odious dominion even to the Straits of the Hellespont, to the very gates of Constantinople, and from thence they threatened the West.

The sovereign pontiff addressed himself to all the nations that were represented at the council, and particularly to the French, who formed the majority: "Nation beloved by God," said he, "it is in your courage that the Christian church has placed its hope; it is because I am well acquainted with your piety and your bravery, that I have crossed the Alps, and am come to preach the word of God in these countries. You have not forgotten that the land you inhabit has been invaded by the Saracens, and that but for the exploits of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, France would have received the laws of Mahomet. Recall, without ceasing, to your minds the danger and the glory of your fathers; led by heroes whose names should never die, they delivered your country, they saved the West from shameful slavery. More noble triumphs await you, under the guidance of the God of armies; you will deliver Europe and Asia; you will save the city of Jesus Christ,--that Jerusalem which was chosen by the Lord, and from whence the law is come to us."

As Urban proceeded, the sentiments by which he was animated penetrated to the very souls of his auditors. When he spoke of the captivity and the misfortunes of Jerusalem, the whole assembly was dissolved in tears; when he described the tyranny and the perfidy of the infidels, the warriors who listened to him clutched their swords, and swore in their hearts to avenge the cause of the Christians. Urban redoubled their enthusiasm by announcing that God had chosen them to accomplish his designs, and exhorted them to turn those arms against the Mussulmans which they now bore in conflict against their brothers. They were not now called upon to revenge the injuries of men, but injuries offered to divinity; it was now not the conquest of a town or a castle that was offered to them as the reward of their valour, but the riches of Asia, the possession of a land in which, according to the promises of the Scriptures, flowed streams of milk and honey.

The pontiff sought to awaken in their minds, by turns, ambition, the love of glory, religious enthusiasm, and pity for their Christian brethren. "There scarcely exists," said he, "a Christian family into which the Mussulmans have not brought mourning and despair. How many Christians every year leave the West, to find in Asia nothing but slavery or death! Bishops have been delivered over to the executioner; the virgins of the Lord have been outraged; holy places have been despoiled of their ornaments; the offerings of piety have become the booty of the enemies of God; the children of the faithful have forgotten in bondage the faith of their fathers, and bear upon their bodies the impression of their opprobrium. Witnesses of so many calamities, the Christians of Jerusalem would long since have left the holy city, if they had not imposed upon themselves the obligation of succouring and consoling pilgrims, if they had not feared to leave without priests, without altars, without worshippers, a land where still smokes the blood of Jesus Christ.

"I will not seek to dry the tears which images so painful for a Christian, for a minister of religion, for the common father of the faithful, must draw from you. Let us weep, my brethren, let us weep over the errors which have armed the anger of God against us; let us weep over the captivity of the holy city! But evil be to us, if, in our sterile pity, we longer leave the heritage of the Lord in the hands of the impious! Why should we taste here a moment's repose whilst the children of Jesus Christ live in the midst of torments, and the queen of cities groans in chains?

He promised to all who assumed the cross, the entire remission of their sins. Their persons, their families, their property, were all placed under the protection of the Church, and of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The council declared that every violence exercised upon the soldiers of Christ should be punished by anathema, and recommended its decrees in favour of the bearers of the cross to the watchful care of all bishops and priests. It regulated the discipline and the departure of those who had enrolled themselves in the holy ranks, and for fear reflection might deter any from leaving their homes, it threatened with excommunication all those who did not fulfil their vows.

Fame soon spread everywhere the war that had just been declared against the infidels. When the bishops returned to their dioceses, they still continued to bestow their blessings upon the crosses of the crowds of Christians that required to be led to the conquest of the Holy Land. Urban went through several provinces of France, to finish the work he had so happily begun. In the cities of Rouen, Tours, and N?mes he held councils, in which he deplored the fate of the Christians of the East: everywhere the people and the great, the nobles and the clergy, obeyed the pressing exhortations of the pontiff, and promised to take arms against the Mussulmans.

The devotion for pilgrimages, which had been increasing during several centuries, became a passion and an imperative want for most Christians; every one was eager to march to Jerusalem, and to take part in the crusade, which was, in all respects, an armed pilgrimage. The situation in which Europe was then placed, no doubt contributed to increase the number of pilgrims: "all things were in such disorder," says William of Tyre, "that the world appeared to be approaching to its end, and was ready to fall again into the confusion of chaos." Everywhere the people, as I have already said, groaned under a horrible servitude; a frightful scarcity of provisions, which had, during several years, desolated France and the greater part of the kingdoms of the West, had given birth to all sorts of brigandage and violence; and these proving the destruction of agriculture and commerce, increased still further the horrors of the famine. Villages, towns even, became void of inhabitants, and sank into ruins. The people abandoned a land which no longer nourished them, or could offer them either repose or security: the standard of the cross appeared to them a certain asylum against misery and oppression. According to the decrees of the council of Clermont, the Crusaders were freed from all imposts, and could not be pursued for debts during their voyage. At the name of the cross, the very laws suspended their menaces, tyranny could not seek its victims, nor justice even the guilty, amidst those whom the Church adopted for its defenders. The assurance of impunity, the hope of a better fate, the love of license, and a desire to shake off the most sacred ties, actuated a vast proportion of the multitude which flocked to the banners of the crusade.

Many nobles who had not at first taken the cross, and who saw their vassals set out, without having the power to prevent them, determined to follow them as military chiefs, in order to preserve some portion of their authority. The greater part of the counts and barons had no hesitation in quitting Europe, which the council had declared to be in a state of peace, as it no longer afforded them an opportunity of distinguishing themselves by their valour; they had all many crimes to expiate; "they were promised," says Montesquieu, "expiation in the indulgence of their dominant passion,--they took up, therefore, the cross and arms."

The clergy themselves set the example. Many of the bishops, who bore the titles of counts and barons, and who were accustomed to make war in defence of the rights of their bishoprics, thought it their duty to arm for the cause of Jesus Christ. The priests, to give greater weight to their exhortations, themselves assumed the cross; a great number of pastors resolved to follow their flocks to Jerusalem; not a few of them, as we shall see hereafter, having in their minds the rich bishoprics of Asia, and allowing themselves to be led by the hope of some day occupying the most celebrated sees of the Eastern church.

Ambition was, perhaps, not foreign to the devotion for the cause of Christ. If religion promised its rewards to those who were going to fight for it, fortune promised them, likewise, riches and the thrones of the earth. All who returned from the East, spoke with enthusiasm of the wonders they had seen, and of the rich provinces they had traversed. It was known that two or three hundred Norman pilgrims had conquered Apulia and Sicily from the Saracens. The lands occupied by the infidels appeared to be heritages promised to knights whose whole wealth consisted in their birth, their valour, and their sword.

We should nevertheless deceive ourselves if we did not believe that religion was the principle which acted most powerfully upon the greater number of the Crusaders. In ordinary times men follow their natural inclinations, and only obey the voice of their own interest; but in the times of the Crusades, religious fever was a blind passion, which spoke louder than all others. Religion permitted not any other glory, any other felicity to be seen by its ardent defenders, but those which she presented to their heated imagination. Love of country, family ties, the most tender affections of the heart, were all sacrificed to the ideas and the opinions which then possessed the whole of Europe. Moderation was cowardice, indifference treason, opposition a sacrilegious interference. The power of the laws was reckoned as nothing amongst men who believed they were fighting in the cause of God. Subjects scarcely acknowledged the authority of princes or lords in anything which concerned the holy war; the master and the slave had no other title than that of Christian, no other duty to perform than that of defending his religion, sword in hand.

They whom age or condition appeared to detain in Europe, and whom the council had exempted from the labours and perils of the crusade, caused the heaven which called them to the holy war to speak aloud. Women and children imprinted crosses upon their delicate and weak limbs, to show the will of God. Monks deserted the cloisters in which they had sworn to die, believing themselves led by a divine inspiration; hermits and anchorites issued from forests and deserts, and mingled with the crowd of Crusaders. What is still more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers, quitting their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and promised, whilst receiving the cross, to go and expiate them in Palestine.

Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which every one was eager to quit. Artisans, traders, labourers, abandoned the occupations by which they subsisted; barons and lords even renounced the domains of their fathers. The lands, the cities, the castles for which they had but of late been at war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors, and were given up, for small sums, to those whom the grace of God had not touched, and who were not called to the happiness of visiting the holy places and conquering the East.

Contemporary authors relate several miracles which assisted in heating the minds of the multitude. Stars fell from the firmament; traces of blood were seen in the heavens; cities, armies, and knights decorated with the cross, were pictured in the clouds. The monk Robert asserts that on the very day on which the council of Clermont determined on the holy war, that decision was proclaimed beyond the seas. "This news," adds he, "raised the courage of the Christians in the East, and caused despair among the nations of Arabia." As the most effective of prodigies, saints and kings of preceding ages were said to have issued from their tombs, and many Frenchmen declared they had seen the shade of Charlemagne exhorting the Christians to fight against the Mussulmans.

We will not relate all the other miracles reported by historians, which were believed in an age in which nothing was more common than prodigies, in which, according to the remark of Fleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed greatly over that for the true. The readers of this history will find quite enough of extraordinary things in the description of so many great events, for which the moral world, and even nature herself seemed to have interrupted their laws. What prodigy, in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once, and like a single man, march in arms towards the East?

The council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November, 1095, had fixed the departure of the Crusaders for the festival of the Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land; every other care, every other labour was suspended in the cities and the plains. In the midst of the general excitement, the religion, which animated all hearts, watched over public order. All at once there was no more robbery or brigandage heard of. The West was silent, to employ an expression from the Scripture, and Europe enjoyed during several months a peace that it had never before known.

They who had taken the cross encouraged each other, and addressed letters and sent ambassadors to hasten their departure. The benedictions of the heavens appeared to be promised to those who should be first ready to march to Jerusalem. Men even, who at the first had found fault with the delirium of the crusade, accused themselves of indifference for the cause of religion, and showed no less fervour than those who had given the example. All were eager to sell their possessions, but could find no purchasers. The Crusaders despised everything they could not carry with them; the productions of the earth were sold at a low price, which all at once brought back abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

In the midst of the general delirium, no sage caused the voice of reason to be heard; nobody was then astonished at that which now creates so much surprise. These scenes so strange, in which every one was an actor, could only be a spectacle for posterity.

A.D. 1096-1097.

THE number of Christians who had taken the cross in the greater part of the countries of Europe were quite sufficient to form many large armies. As these armies might exhaust the countries through which they had to pass, the princes and captains who were to conduct them agreed among themselves that they should not all set out at one time, but should pursue different routes, and meet again at Constantinople.

Whilst they were engaged in preparations for departure, the multitude who followed Peter the Hermit in his preachings, became impatient to advance before the other Crusaders; and being without a chief, they cast their eyes upon him whom they considered as an envoy from heaven. They chose Peter for their general; the cenobite, deceived by the excess of his zeal, believed that enthusiasm could alone answer for all the successes of war, and that it would be easy to conduct an undisciplined troop which had taken up arms at the sound of his voice. He yielded to the prayers of the multitude, and, clothed in his woollen mantle, a hood over his head, sandals on his feet, and only mounted on the mule upon which he had traversed Europe, he took upon himself the command. His troop, which set out from the banks of the Meuse and Moselle, proceeded towards Germany, and was increased upon the road by a vast number of pilgrims hastening from Champagne, Burgundy, and other parts of France. Peter soon saw from eighty to a hundred thousand men under his standard. These first Crusaders, dragging in their train women, children, old men, and numerous sick, began their march upon the faith of the miraculous promises made them by their general; in the persuasion they were filled with, that God himself called upon them to defend his cause, they hoped that rivers would open before their battalions, and that manna would fall from heaven to feed them. The army of Peter the Hermit was divided into two bodies; the vanguard marched under the orders of Walter the Penniless, whose surname, preserved by history, proves that the chiefs were as miserable as the soldiers. This vanguard only reckoned eight horsemen; all the rest went to the conquest of the East asking charity by the way. As long as the Crusaders were upon the French territory, the charity of the faithful who were on their route provided for their wants. They warmed the zeal of the Germans, amongst whom the crusade had not been preached. Their troop, which was considered everywhere as the people of God, met with no enemies on the banks of the Rhine; but new Amalekites, the Hungarians and the Bulgarians, awaited them on the shores of the Morava and the Danube.

The Hungarians, who had issued from Tartary, had a common origin with the Turks, and, like them, had rendered themselves formidable to the Christians. In the tenth century they had invaded Pannonia, and carried the ravages of war into the richest countries of Europe. Nations terrified at the progress of their arms, considered them as a scourge which was sent as a forerunner of the end of the world. Towards the middle of the eleventh century they embraced the Christianity they had persecuted. Once obedient to the faith of the Gospel, they began to build cities and cultivate their land; they felt what it was to have a country, and ceased to be the terror of their neighbours. At the period of the first crusade, the Hungarians boasted of having a saint among their kings, but, still separated from the Christian republic by their position, they did not at all partake of the fervour of the Crusaders, and looked on with indifference at the preparations of Europe for the conquest of Asia.

The Bulgarians, who were descended from the ancient people of the Sclaves, had by turns protected and ravaged the empire of Constantinople. Their warriors had killed Nicephorus in battle, and the skull of an emperor, enchased in gold, served for a long time as a cup for their chiefs in the orgies of victory. They were afterwards conquered by Basil, who put out the eyes of fifteen thousand of his prisoners, and by this act of barbarity roused the whole nation against Greece. At the time of the crusade, Bulgaria was under the power of the Greek empire, but it despised the laws and the power of its masters. The Bulgarian people spread along the southern banks of the Danube, in the midst of inaccessible forests, preserved their savage independence, and only recognized the emperors of the East when they saw their armies. Although they had embraced Christianity, the Bulgarians did not consider the Christians as their brothers; they neither respected the laws of nations nor the rights of hospitality, and during the eleventh century they were the terror of the pilgrims of the West who journeyed to Jerusalem.

Such were the people whose territories the Crusaders were about to cross, and among whom want of discipline must necessarily expose them to the most direful reverses. When the vanguard entered Hungary, they were only disturbed in their march but by a few insults, which Walter had the prudence not to avenge; but the resignation of the pilgrims could not hold out long against the misery which every day increased. Want and its attendant evils soon dispersed all the sentiments of moderation to which religion had for a moment given birth in the hearts of its defenders. The governor of Bulgaria not having been able to furnish provisions, they spread themselves about over the country, carried off the flocks, burnt the houses, and massacred several of the inhabitants who opposed their violences. The irritated Bulgarians ran to arms, and fell upon the soldiers of Walter loaded with their booty. A hundred and forty Crusaders perished in the midst of flames, in a church in which they had taken refuge; the rest sought safety in flight. After this defeat, which he did not endeavour to repair, Walter continued his march through the forests of Bulgaria, pursued by famine, and dragging along the wreck of his army. He presented himself as a supplicant before the governor of Nissa, who was touched with the misery of the Crusaders, and gave them provisions, arms, and clothing.

The soldiers of Walter, tried by merited reverses, conducted by a chief who was wanting in neither skill nor courage, became again attentive to the voice of religion, and passed through Thrace without committing any disorders. After two months of fatigue and misery, they arrived under the walls of Constantinople, where the emperor Alexis permitted them to wait for the army of Peter the Hermit.

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