MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

Introduction

I.

 Condition of Europe, and of the Countries connected with Europe, in the beginning of the Twelfth Century

At the opening of the twelfth century those complicated political relations, that reciprocal action of different countries upon each other, that comprehensive system of statesmanship, which now unites the whole of Europe into a sort of federal commonwealth, did not exist. But in the course of the period of about 150 years, the history of which it is designed here to give, that system may be considered as nascent; owing its birth partly, perhaps, to the familiar intercourse produced by the Crusades amongst numerous individuals of nations till then scarcely conscious of each other’s existence, and to the value the Crusaders learned in those distant and prolonged expeditions to feel for mutual support and co-operation; but mainly to the authority, spiritual and temporal, so largely exercised, so universally claimed by the popes, and naturally tending to fashion all Christians into one family, under the paternal sovereignty of the popes. The history of the Holy Roman Empire, under the emperors of the Swabian dynasty, will therefore be the more easily intelligible if preceded by a sketch of the condition of Europe, and of those parts of Asia and Africa in communication with Europe at the close of the first quarter of the twelfth century, the date of the appearance of this dynasty amongst the competitors for the crown. A somewhat more detailed account of the state of Germany and of Italy, which, however repugnant to the liberal views of modern policy, must be classed together, as integral members of, and conjointly constituting the Holy Roman Empire, will be requisite, and must be accompanied and complicated by a brief exposition of the rise, progress, and state at the same epoch of the contest between the popes and the emperors, the then recognized spiritual and temporal heads of Christendom. An additional slight sketch of the intellectual and social state of the world in which the personages of the narrative lived and acted, may it is hoped be in itself interesting, and will assuredly assist the reader in forming an estimate of the character and conduct of those personages.

I.

CONDITION OF EUROPE, AND OF THE COUNTRIES CONNECTED WITH EUROPE, IN THE BEGINNING OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

Spain and Portugal, to begin with the western extremity of Europe, were then divided between their last conquerors, the Moslem Arabs, and their previous conquerors, the Christian Goths; who, driven in the first instance by the Arabs into the recesses of the Asturian and Pyrenean mountains, were gradually recovering by arms the territories that by arms had been wrested from them. But even in this common object, the Christians of the Peninsula did not act conjointly. The lost provinces of the Gothic monarchy of Spain, as they were reconquered, were formed into the separate and very small kingdoms of Oviedo, Galicia, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre, and the counties (meaning not provinces but principalities, so entitled and governed by earls) of Barcelona and Portugal, the respective sovereigns of which states, though all intent upon regaining land from the Mahommedans, were generally at war with each other, as well as with the common enemy, and eager, each to augment his own dominions, nearly regardless at whose cost. In the first quarter of the twelfth century, the bulk of these states was unusually united, although of some the union was evidently temporary. The opening of the century had seen Leon, in which Oviedo and Galicia had happily merged, Castile, and the two northern provinces of Portugal, form the kingdom of Alfonso VI, who, having been gallantly assisted in his conquests from the Moslem by two Burgundian princes, Earls Raymond of Burgundy, and Henry of Besançon, gave, in recompense of their services, to the first the hand of his daughter Urraca, with Galicia, as a vassal kingdom, for her portion; to the second, that of his illegitimate daughter Teresa, with the two Portuguese provinces, as a vassal county, for her’s. The subsequent death, in battle, of Alfonso’s only son, made Urraca his heir; and, as Queen of Leon and Castile, she, upon the death of her first husband, accepted for her second, Alfonso King of Aragon and Navarre. But this comprehensive union was most transient, if not illusory. The ambitious Alfonso strove to usurp the sovereignty of his wife’s dominions, in which she haughtily denied him any authority; and they were wholly engrossed by conjugal civil war, until pacified by a divorce, upon the plea of consanguinity. The king of Aragon and Navarre then turned his arms against the Spanish Arabs, and in many victories earned his surname of the Battler. Urraca was next engaged in similar broils with the son of her first marriage, Alfonso Raymond, who, upon his father’s death, had inherited Galicia; but, dissatisfied with so small a kingdom, was impatient to succeed to or supplant his mother in Leon and Castile. The county of Portugal was distracted in like manner—Alfonso Henriquez endeavouring to wrench the sceptre from his widowed mother, Countess Teresa. When he had effected this, he imprisoned her, and devoted himself very successfully to the war against the Mahommedans. The other Christian potentate of Spain, Raymond IV, Earl of Barcelona, which county comprised the whole of Catalonia, was then chiefly occupied in securing the French provinces that he had acquired with his wife Dulce, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Gilibert, the last king of the Arelat, or Lower Burgundy, who died a.d. 1092. Her share was now called the county of Provence, some lesser districts, forming the marquisate of Provence, having been assigned to the younger daughter, wife of the Earl of Toulouse. A considerable degree of liberty was enjoyed throughout the Christian portion of the Peninsula, evidently the result of the whole male population being habitually in arms against the Mahommedans. Every recovered town became an outwork against those from whom it had been wrested, and chartered rights and privileges were freely granted, to induce the citizens to defend that outwork heartily. The recent historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, Mr. Prescott, who has diligently explored Spanish archives, asserts, that acts of enfranchisement, meaning probably municipal charters, of even the eleventh century, are still extant.

The Mahommedan half of the Peninsula was not in a much more united condition. The mighty caliphate of Cordova, the population of which, south of the Douro, had once been estimated at 25,000,000, was extinct, having, upon the death of the last caliph, crumbled into ten petty kingdoms, mostly at war with each other as well as with the Christians. Their weakness attracted from Africa a fierce Arab tribe, called by Spaniards the Almoravides, who had previously made themselves masters of the north­western district of the southern continent, and formed it into the empire of Morocco. They quickly subjugated the disunited princes of Moslem Spain, and the Almoravide leader, Aly, was acknowledged sovereign of Spain and Morocco, by the hallowed title of Emir al Muminim, signifying Prince or Lord of the Faithful. But the learned and polished Spanish Arabs, impatient of the yoke of rude and ignorant barbarians, incessantly rebelled against Aly, and war raged from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. It scarcely need be added, that the western Peninsula was uninfluential in Europe. What little influence it did possess, appeared in attracting adventurers to a field of constant warfare, where the martial propensities of the age might be piously indulged against misbelievers; whilst, besides the favour of the church, booty or rich guerdon, as was apparent in the case of the Burgundian earls, might be hoped for, thus diverting crusaders from the Holy Land.

France, even already, as since, exercised a more active intervention in the affairs of other countries; but in the first quarter of the twelfth century, her government was feeble, and her power proportionately small. She was only recovering from the state of deplorable weakness and degradation, into which she had sunk under the latter Carolingians, and could hardly yet be called convalescent. Something less than a century and a half prior to the epoch under consideration, the third or Capetian dynasty had seized the throne, and much raised its dignity by the increase of power derived from the incorporation of the extensive territories of Hugues Capet with the crown domains, in those days almost the only source of public revenue. At this change of dynasty, Walloon, or the Romane Langue d’oil of northern Gaul became the court language, in lieu of the German spoken by the Frank Merovingians and Carolingians; the name of Western Frankland was softened into France, and the nation speedily forgot the German origin of that name. But if increased in power and strength, France was still far from strong, because far from one and indivisible; whilst all the land east of the Rhone, the Saone, and the Scheldt belonged to Germany, the remainder consisted of provinces really distinct in nationality, as Norman, Breton, Frank, and Romano-Gallic, speaking different languages, hardly regarding each other as compatriots, and severally ruled by vassal princes, often equal if not superior in power to their suzerain, such as—to say nothing of the Duke of Normandy, become King of England—the Dukes of Aquitaine, Brittany and Burgundy, the earls of Champagne, Poitou, Anjou, Toulouse, Flanders, &c., of whom the last two were Princes of the Empire, as well as Peers of France, Flanders being specifically divided into Neustrian and Austrasian Flanders, or Flandres sous la couronne and Flandres Imperiale, whilst Flemish, i.e. low German, was the vernacular tongue of both parts. To enhance this disunion, the northern and southern provinces acknowledged different codes of law, the former living under Frank, the latter under Roman legislation; hence some of the southern towns enjoyed such municipal franchises, inherited from their Roman founders or colonizers, as rendered them, Marseilles especially, more than half independent republics. Further to counteract the growing power of government, the illegal marriages of two successive kings, Robert and Philip, had provoked dissensions with the Roman see, ultimately, in both cases, bringing down a sentence of excommunication upon the royal offender. And such were then the terrors of this church thunderbolt, that the anathematized monarchs, deserted by their respective courts, could hardly find servants to perform the menial offices of their households.

Lewis VI, who in the year 1125 occupied the throne, or rather his able minister Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, had however begun the operation of strengthening the sovereign authority by administrative reforms, and other judicious measures, of which two claim mention even in such a sketch as this. The one, at the time seemingly far the most important, was the annexation of perhaps the largest vassal duchy, Aquitaine, and the county of Poitou to the royal domains, by marrying the youthful heiress of both, Duchess Elinor, to his son and heir, already crowned as his colleague. But these judicious nuptials failed to realize the beneficial effects anticipated; whilst the other measure, comparatively little thought of, granting towns in the northern provinces charters that gave them some small degree of self government, and thus weakening the great vassals by raising up a rival power, produced permanent advantages.

England was in the twelfth century, by her French provinces, more integrally connected with the continent than she can now, since the death of William IV dissolved her connexion with Hanover, be deemed; and already in the first quarter of that century, her Norman kings were full as mighty monarchs as the liege lords of their duchy of Normandy. William the Conqueror had ruled victorious Normans, as well as vanquished Saxons, with a rod of iron; thus, despite the bitter hatred borne by the latter to their oppressor, consolidating his authority, and rendering himself a very formidable rival to his suzerain. Under his sons this absolute despotism was, indeed, in some measure relaxed. The rivalry of the brothers for the crown, and the dissensions of William Rufus with the church, had enabled the Anglo-Norman great vassals to acquire something of that feudal power, which, if when preponderant fatal to all good government as to monarchy, has perhaps mainly preserved Europe from Asiatic slavery.

In England, however, this was as yet far from being the case. William Rufus, if less despotic than his father, had still been one of the most absolute of European sovereigns; Henry I, who reigned in 1125, had by his marriage with the Scotch Princess Matilda, niece to Edgar Atheling, blended the blood of  Alfred with that of the Norman conqueror, and thus in some measure reconciling the Anglo-Saxons to his sway, strengthened his authority, rendering it more secure than had been his brother’s or his father’s. The circumstance of his infant daughter being sought in marriage by the able as ambitious emperor Henry V, whilst, her brother being alive, she had no prospect of succeeding to the English throne, might be accepted as an European testimony to the dignity and stability of his position. But English, or rather Anglo-Saxon princesses, had long been wooed by continental sovereigns. Municipal rights and privileges secured by charter, there were at this time seemingly none in England, but the towns had enjoyed much substantial liberty under the Anglo-Saxon kings, and retained a large proportion thereof, notwithstanding Norman tyranny.

In Scotland reigned David, brother to the Queen of England; but so limited were the early relations of this kingdom, being confined to Rome in spiritual concerns, in temporal to England and some of the Scandinavian states, with which last it contended for the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland islands, that even this passing notice seems supererogatory.

It might be supposed that the same remark would apply to all the northern states of Europe; and in some degree this may be true, but not fully in respect to any, and would be altogether incorrect as to one portion of Scandinavia. Towards the close of the ninth century, each of the three countries comprehended under that name, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, had severally united its divided provinces into one distinct kingdom. Denmark, at the opening of the twelfth century, was considered as a dependency, if not actually as part, of Germany, her kings invariably doing homage to the reigning emperor at their accession. In fact, for want of a definite law of succession (little or no distinction being made between legitimate and illegitimate children, and age the point most considered), so much uncertainty seemed to hang over a Danish monarch’s right to his crown, that all eagerly sought for such an imperial sanction to their title, as acceptance of their homage. At home, these kings, few of whom died a natural death, were habitually engaged in civil war; and their foreign relations were chiefly wars with their several neighbours, the kings of Sweden, the dukes of Saxony, and some of the princes of Poland and of north-western Russia, for the sovereignty over the independent Heathen Slavonian tribes inhabiting the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic, from which sea they severed the two last-named states. Over none of these tribes, though they were often temporarily subdued, had any one of the belligerents, at the close of the first quarter of the twelfth century, established permanent authority.

It was only during this same quarter of a century that either Sweden or Norway had ceased to pour forth devastation upon Southern Europe, in swarms of pirates, led by their sea-kings, and excited by those singular warriors, whose extraordinary bursts of insane fury rather than uncontrollable valour, accompanied during the paroxysms by almost preternatural strength, procured them the distinctive appellation of Berserkr heroes, an epithet implying in the old Norse tongue that they fought unclothed or at least unprotected by armour. As late as the year 1107, Sigurd, king of South Norway—absolute unity not being as yet permanent in Scandinavia—had, at the age of nineteen, set forth with a fleet of sixty vessels, upon such a viking or piratical expedition. For two years he emulated the plundering and devastating exploits of his predecessors. Then landing in Portugal, he assisted Earl Henry to gain two victories over the Almoravids; and now, delighted thus to have fulfilled a religious duty—he called himself a Christian—whilst indulging his martial ardour, his viking spirit was sud­denly converted into the devout enthusiasm characterizing the age. Sigurd steered for the Holy Land, made crusaders of his pirates, and actively co-operated with Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, in the siege and capture of Sidon. Upon his return, he visited Constantinople, sold his fleet to the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, left him his pirate crusaders to man it, and, almost alone, made his way home by land, wedding a Russian princess on his road. This was the last viking expedition. Sigurd subsequently united the whole of Norway under his sceptre; then, growing weary of his Russian wife, he easily prevailed upon his Norwegian bishops to sanction his divorcing her, and marrying one of his subjects, with whom he had fallen in love. The external relations of Norway were chiefly with Scotland, arising out of their several claims to the above-named islands; those of Sweden, with Russia and Denmark, touching the sovereignty over some of the independent Slavonian tribes upon the Baltic.

Russia had originally consisted of a number of such independent Slavonian tribes, scattered between the Euxine and the White Sea, but not extending westward to the Baltic, or eastward to the Ural Mountains, from which last they were severed by Tartar hordes, as from the former by other Slavonians. Towards the close of the tenth century, some of these Russian tribes, weary of their incessant indecisive wars among themselves, and admiring the viking exploits of their Scandinavian neighbours—Varangians, as they called them, Varangian in their language signifying pirate,—invited one of these viking warriors, named Rurik, to be their common prince. Rurik eagerly accepted the invitation, and he and his immediate descendants speedily subjecting the neighbouring tribes, Tartar as well as Slavonian, who, as they were conquered, took the name of Russians, from Rossi, that of the tribe to which their Scandinavian conquerors belonged, reigned over the whole with the title of Grand Prince of the Russians. Neither the title of Czar, nor the city of Moscow, whence the nation was afterwards known as Moscovite, were then in existence. But scarcely was this grand principality constituted, ere, by division and subdivision amongst sons, it was again broken up into innumerable little states, ruled very independently by their several princes, who, nevertheless, all owned as their sovereign the Grand Prince of Kiew in Southern Russia. But even this degree of union became a cause of weakness rather than of strength. To the principality to which this sovereignty was attached, then Kiew, afterwards Vladimir in northern Russia, all the princes aspired, and for many generations it remained the lawful heritage of the oldest of the whole princely race, as was each principality of the oldest of its own branch. Hence, incessant civil wars amongst the princes for the supreme dignity, for sovereignty in the dependent principalities, for relative rank in respect to each other, &c. The foreign relations of the princes included wars with Sweden and Denmark for sovereignty over some of the independent Slavonian tribes, with Poland both for similarly clashing pretensions in regard to other of these tribes, and for territorial claims, their respective frontiers being undefined; and with Hungary upon the like conflicting frontier claims. But the principal intercourse of the Russians, commercial, amicable and hostile, was with the Greek empire, from which, through the marriage of a Constantinopolitan Princess to a Grand Prince, they had received Christianity, and such civilization as they yet possessed. But with the rest of Europe Russia held more communication than might be supposed; Russian princes applied to the German as well as to the Greek emperor for assistance in their wars, foreign or internal; and Russian princes and princesses intermarried with the royal families of Germany and France, as well as with the German princes of the empire. Even with England they were not unconnected; the exiled children of Edmund Ironside found their first asylum in Russia; and the family of Harold, when driven from England by the issue of the fatal battle of Hastings, having sought refuge in Denmark, his daughter Gyda was, by the intervention of King Swayne, Canute the Great’s nephew, married to the Russian grand prince.

In Poland, as far back as the close of the tenth century, Boleslas, then its prince, had received the regal title from the Emperor Otho III, and at the same time the Polish Church had been relieved from dependence upon the Archbishop of Magdeburg as its Metropolitan: the Pope having, in concurrence with the new King, erected Gnesen into an archbishopric, to which the primacy of Poland was attached. Thenceforward Boleslas and his successors had done, or refused to do, homage to the emperor for their crown, or had done it for some temporarily subjected Slavonian district, claimed as German, according to the relative strength of emperor and king. But during this period the royal title had been forfeited. Boleslas II, having been rebuked by the Bishop of Cracow for his notorious vices, murdered the venerable prelate upon the very steps of the altar, and the Pope, who canonized the victim, ever since, as St. Stanislas, the patron Saint of Poland, deprived the sacrilegious murderer of his regal dignity. Boleslas fled, no one knew whither, and his brother Vladislav, who succeeded to his authority, submitted to the Papal decree, contenting s himself with the title of duke. The condition of Poland seems to have been then, as it continued to be to the last hour of its existence, what might be termed a democracy of nobles. That is to say, the population consisted of nobles all equal among themselves, however different in fortune and in title, and of their slaves, who, if less completely slaves then than at a later period, were hardly esteemed part of the people; the whole governed by kings or by dukes, theoretically absolute, but practically enthralled by the nobles, save as their domination was counteracted by the nominal monarch’s talent and energy; able princes being despots, weak ones puppets. The frontiers of Poland, separated from the Baltic by independent, Hea­then Slavonian tribes, were to the north-east imperfectly defined; and to the south the possession of Walachia and Moldavia was disputed with her by Hungary and the Greek empire, whilst those provinces themselves asserted their independence of all three.

Hungary appears to have been early occupied by a mixed population of Gothic, Slavonian, and Turkish or Tartar race, together with the descendants of the old Roman colonists, as the Walachs call themselves, though they are rather held to be the aboriginal Dacians, slightly intermixed with Roman blood. In the ninth century the country was overrun by the Magyars, whose leader, Arpad, announcing himself as descended from the Hun, Attila, claimed the kingdom as that conqueror’s heir. These Magyars, concerning whom it is still a question whether they are Finns, Tartars, or Turks, showed themselves on shore worthy rivals of the piratical Northmen in devastating and desolating Europe, until decisively defeated by Otho the Great, A.D. 955. In the debility consequent upon this disaster, their marauding propensities gradually subsided. Their king, Geisa, was under these circumstances converted to Christianity by his wife, the beautiful Sarolta, a Transylvanian princess; and numbers following his example, received baptism. But their faith continued wavering until confirmed by the son of Geisa and Sarolta, Stephen, afterwards canonized, who surrendered Hungary to Pope Sylvester II, receiving it back in vassalage. The wise Sylvester, however, evidently treated this vassalage as purely spiritual, wherefore his successors scarcely claimed more authority over Hungary than over other European states. Towards Germany, Hungary appears, after Otho’s great victory, to have stood much in the same relation as Poland, her king doing homage to the emperor when weak or wanting his support, refusing it when able. Hungary was habitually at war with Poland for Moldavia, and other frontier districts; with Venice for Dalmatia, which, about the year 1125 the republic wrested from Stephen II, the minor son of King Kalmeny, or Koloman, and with Constantinople for the countries next to be mentioned.

From the Greek empire Poland and Hungary were then separated by three states, the very names of which were forgotten in their subsequent Turkish thraldom, till revived in the revolutionary movements of the current century. These were the kingdom of Bulgaria, which sometimes did and sometimes did not comprise Walachia, and the principalities of Servia and Bosnia. All three were originally Slavonian; but the first had been overrun and conquered by a Tartar horde from the Volga, whence their name, Bulgarians or Volgarians, who had in their turn been conquered, though scarcely subjugated by the Greek emperors. But in the decadency of the eastern empire, Bulgaria, like Servia and Bosnia, had half broken the yoke, now seeming to be established in independence, now again nominally subjected. The two principalities had to contend in like manner with Hungary, whose kings struggled for at least the suzerainty over them, as well as with the court of Constantinople.

The Greek, or, as it termed itself, the East Roman Empire, although still comprehending much the larger part of what has since been designated as Turkey in Europe and the western extremity of Asia Minor, retained little beyond the name of its pristine power and dignity. Externally threatened by the Turks upon the eastern, by the Bulgarians, and other half-barbarian, though European, nations upon the northern side, it was internally a prey to palace intrigues and conspiracies, producing the deposal and the murder of emperors, often followed by usurpation of the throne. Amidst these various perils the court of Constantinople had sunk deeper and deeper in Asiatic luxury, was more and more engrossed by Asiatic pomp and splendour, by enhancements of rank, and regulations of ceremonial, hiring foreign mercenaries, not only for a guard, but for the main strength of the army. These mercenaries were called Varangians, probably because the first were Scandinavians passing through Russia, and therefore known to the Greeks by their Russian name; Anglo-Saxons are said to have thronged into the Varangian corps after the Norman conquest, yet in spite of such dangers threatening such helpless imbecility, still did the name of the East Roman Empire command so much respect that those able and powerful western emperors, Charlemagne and Otho the Great esteemed a matrimonial alliance with it an object of policy. The first sought for himself the hand of the infamous Empress Irene, and happily failed. Otho successfully asked for his son, Otho II, the Princess Theophano, daughter of Romanus II, with the Constantinopolitan pretensions to Magna Grecia and Sicily, which upon the decline of the Carolingians had been revived, for her portion. This portion was nevertheless but a name, those provinces being then held, the first by Lombard and other native princes, whilst the few sea-port towns that still professed allegiance to the remote and feeble empire as the easiest means of securing actual independence, paid neither tribute nor obedience to the imperial Katapan, even when such an officer was able to occupy Bari; the second by the Saracens; and against neither had anything like an efficient attempt to inforce those pretensions been made for centuries. The loss of Sicily was virtually confessed if verbally concealed, by transferring the name of the theme, i.e. province, to Calabria. In the first quarter of the twelfth century, however, this empire was enjoying a transient renovation. Able and energetic emperors of the Comnenian race had reigned at Constantinople since the year 1081; had repressed palace intrigue, repulsed the Turks and Bulgarians, and, although offending the Franks by their arrogance (for still did the degenerate East Romans revel in inflated ideas of their own superiority over the barbarians of the west, had, even whilst dreading these barbarians, taken advantage of the success of the first crusade to recover some of the lost possessions of the empire; to wit, nearly, if not quite the whole south-western sea coast of Asia Minor, and to acquire a nominal suzerainty over some of the principalities gained by the Franks in Syria. The second of the dynasty, the brave, clement, wise and virtuous John, surnamed Kalo-Johannes, in ridicule of his want of beauty, was emperor in 1125.

Those Syrian principalities fall next under consideration, and from various circumstances claim a degree of attention utterly disproportionate to their magnitude, power and intrinsic value. One of these circumstances is the local connexion of the kingdom of Jerusalem with Christianity, of which it was the very birth-place; another, the immense influence it exercised over Europe, as constantly impelling to crusades, which crusades in their turn exercised a lasting influence over the development of European civilization. Another, of weight with the writer, and, it is hoped, the reader of these pages, is the acquisition of that kingdom by one of the sovereigns whose history they are to contain. In the first quarter of the twelfth century the very existence of these Syro-Frank states was so recent as to justify a few words touching their creation.

That Christian Europe ought to unite in order to wrest the Holy Land from misbelievers, and establish it as a Christian state, is an idea said to have originated with the learned Pope Sylvester II, before the close of the tenth century, when the oppressed Christians of Syria sought aid at his hands. He addressed an epistle in the name of the suffering Church of Jerusalem to the whole Catholic Church; but the Catholic Church did not respond to the appeal. Some strong excitement was required to render such a mighty common effort possible, and such excitement the following century supplied. When the fierce hordes of nomad Turcomans from the steppes of Tartary subjugated the civilized Arabs, reduced the caliph to puppethood, and finally tore Palestine from the clement Fatimid anti-caliphs of Egypt, the virtual toleration and protection previously enjoyed by Christians in their pilgrimages to the scenes con­secrated by religion ceased. The Turcomans had no motives for forbearance, and their cupidity was excited by the magnificence sometimes displayed upon occasions so unsuited to pomp as an act of devotion or of penance, i. e. a pilgrimage. Throughout Europe the minds of men were gradually inflamed by resentment of the outrages, the atrocities now perpetrated upon pilgrims connected with some of the hearers by the ties of blood or of vassalage, of both sexes, of the highest rank and of the holiest condition,—even a mitred abbess was among the victims seized for the harem. In the last half of this eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII, whose aid the frightened Constantinopolitan court had implored, and who hoped compliance would be repaid by the reunion of the Greek with the Latin Church, projected raising Christian Europe against the misbelieving barbarians, whose domination desecrated the holy city. The chord vibrated to his touch, since in one of his epistles he says, 50,000 men were ready to follow him upon such an expedition; but his own ambitious schemes in Europe interfered with the execution of this more disinterested scheme, and it dropped.

It was not till the pontificate of Urban II that the proper instrument for finally enkindling the well prepared mind of Europe appeared. This was Peter the Hermit, whose passionate description of the oppression, the sufferings of Christian pilgrims, which he had witnessed—ay, and undergone —firing the train, produced the sudden universal response to the Pope’s eloquent exhortation to take arms in the cause of God. Jerusalem had indeed even since Peter’s visit been recovered from the Turcomans by the Egyptian Fatemites; but this change had no effect upon European feelings, Turcoman and Arab appearing, it may be presumed, identical to the unlettered chivalry of the west. At Clermont, in Auvergne, where Urban II in person preached the crusade, the unanimous exclamation of Deus id vult! Deus id vult! (literally, God wills it, or more idiomatically, The will of God) resounded. The Pope accepting this shout as not only of good augury, but the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, solemnly said, “When the army of the Lord our God rushes upon his enemies, be that the battle cry!”

Whilst the princes who had taken the cross were diligently preparing for the distant and difficult enterprise, ignorant fanaticism, impatient of the inevitable delay, raised tumultuary armies from the very dregs of the people to forestall them. These were severally led by Gaultier de Perejo, a veteran knight, but from his poverty nicknamed Sans Avoir (i.e. have nought,) by the hermit himself, by a German priest, and, according to some writers of authority, a fourth, the largest, lowest, and most ruffianly of all, amounting to 200,000 persons, by a goat and a goose. The first-named two leaders alone had any idea of even attempting to enforce discipline, and they found it next Io impossible. All began their operations by massacring the Jews; all mistook every town they reached for Jerusalem; and nearly all perished by the way, victims partly to the hardships and privations of the march, inevitable for armies so constituted, out mainly to the revenge provoked by their own misconduct. The few survivors, with the hermit and the knight, reached Asia Minor, where they waited for a more orderly army, to which, when it began its march, the wreck of all four furnished recruits. This army, duly equipped and led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, but encumbered by crowds of non-combatants, passed through dangers, hardships and privations scarcely inferior to those that had destroyed, all but annihilated, its predecessors, whose remains it gathered up as it proceeded. In Asia Minor it was joined by other armies under divers princes and princely nobles; and in 1099 the united host had achieved the conquest, first of the principalities of Edessa and Antioch, and then of Jerusalem, with great part of Palestine. The conquests are calculated to have cost 880,000 European lives, reckoning the disorderly hordes at 250,000, and the victorious army at 710,000, women and children included, of whom 80,000 at the utmost appear to have even seen Jerusalem and the other settlements.

When the Holy City was taken, the next business of the Crusaders was to provide for its government and future security from Moslem or Pagan desecration. The princes felt themselves absolved from the engagements into which they had entered at Constantinople, to hold their conquests in vassalage of the Greek Emperor, by the complete violation of the reciprocal engagement into which Alexius Comnenus had entered, to supply therewith auxiliary forces, provisions, and all necessaries, in every way promoting the success of their enterprise. Holding themselves, therefore, free to dispose of their conquests at their pleasure, they, after much discussion, resolved to constitute an independent kingdom of Jerusalem, of which one of those who had redeemed the holy places with their blood should be king. After some little coquetting with Raymond, Comte de St. Gilles et Toulouse, the wealthiest amongst them, who had formed a little army of his own by supporting, and thus in fact drawing into his service, every knight and humbler warrior whose own resources were exhausted,—even some inferior nobles, who with their few retainers were in the same straits,—their choice fell upon the Duke of Lower Lorraine, apparently the most single-minded man, as well as the most distinguished leader amongst them. Godfrey, pious as valiant, declared that he should deem it sacrilege to wear a kingly crown there, where the Son of God was crowned with thorns; to receive royal honours where He, for the sins of mankind, had died upon the cross. Accordingly, whilst he cheerfully accepted the burthen, the duties, of sovereignty, he positively refused to be crowned, or to bear any higher title than Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre and Baron of Jerusalem. These his surviving comrades joyfully acknowledged, and proclaimed him sovereign at the close of July 1099.

And a burthen indeed the sovereignty he accepted was. The Crusaders now deemed their vow amply fulfilled, and the army broke up. Earl Raymond, resenting his disappointment of the crown, with the band which his money and their necessities had attached to his banner, separated himself from Godfrey, devoting his thoughts and means solely to that object for which he had previously impeded the operations against Jerusalem—the conquest of Tripoli as a principality for himself. The Italico-Norman, Bohemund, Prince of Antioch, and Godfrey’s own brother, Baldwin, Earl of Edessa, withdrew, with their followers, to those dominions which, by force and craft combined, they had acquired during their military pilgrimage, and the main body returned to Europe. Only about 300 knights, and 2,000 men of inferior condition serving on foot, remained to defend the newly-established little Christian kingdom against its numerous and potent enemies, and to complete the conquest of Palestine, without which its continued existence was evidently impossible.

Wilken, the diligent and highly esteemed German historian of the Crusades, who has been and will be chiefly relied upon in everything relative to the Syro-Frank states, says, that both Godfrey and Bohemund, in reverence for the holy city, received the investiture of their new states from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. But whether he did, or did not, take so peculiar a step, Godfrey lost no time in legislating for his new subjects; and invited all who should deem themselves equal to the task, to propose laws for the kingdom.

But Godfrey hardly saw the completion of their labours. Whether poisoned by the Moslem foes who feared him, or worn out by past fatigues and privations, and by present anxieties, he died within the year, when the veneration which his virtues and abilities had inspired induced the election of his brother Baldwin as his successor. Baldwin gladly accepted his nomination, transferred his county of Edessa to his nephew, Baldwin de Bourg, or Bruges, and, less scrupulous than Godfrey, was crowned King of Jerusalem. Baldwin I was a brave warrior, and recklessly cruel and perfidious as had been the course by which he had possessed himself of Edessa, he proved a good king for the infant kingdom. His reign of eighteen years was a scene of constant war with one or other of the neighbouring Moslem states, whether Turkish or Saracen, as some contemporaneous writers distinguish those north and east of Syria, i.e. the Turkish, from Syria itself and the Southern Arab states, including the African and even the European, which they term Saracen.

An incident of one of these wars is worth inserting, both as characteristic of the times and country, and to modern feelings little consonant with the reckless cruelty laid to Baldwin’s charge. Upon his march to encounter an invading Egyptian army, he found an Arab woman alone by the roadside, in the agonies of parturition. Flying with her husband before the advancing Christian army, she had been surprised by her hour of suffering and of hope, when her husband, in search of better assistance, had left her. Baldwin dismounted, covered her with his own cloak, supplied her with water from his private stock, and made every provision circumstances would allow for her comfort in so miserable a condition, as well as for her security. When, the following year, he was defeated, and closely besieged at Ramla, he was, one night, told that an Arab at the town gate insisted upon being admitted to him. This proved to be the woman’s husband, come to guide her benefactor safely through the besieging army. He would undertake only for one; but the King accepted the offer, and thus freed, found means to relieve Ramla.

For the conduct of these wars Baldwin had hoped to be reinforced by a supplementary crusade 250,000 or 300,000 strong, which the news of the triumphant success of the first had impelled, in unconnected bodies, to tread in its steps. But these new crusaders proved still more ungovernable than their predecessors. They were guilty of innumerable atrocities; they murdered friendly Christians, whom, because they could not understand their language, they took for Paynims, their generic name for non-Christians. These bodies of crusaders, whatever their numbers, were cut to pieces on their way through Asia Minor, A.D. 1102, and the disheartened survivors for the most part returned home, only a few of the more persevering prosecuting their journey to fight under the standard of Jerusalem.

The Greek empire, which should have valued the Syro-Frank states as outworks against the threatening Turks, was rather hostilely than friendlily disposed towards them. To say nothing of the crusaders’ tacit disavowal of the sovereignty claimed by Alexius, and promised by them, the rude warriors of the west had so scared as well as offended the Constantinopolitan court, even whilst doing prospective homage, that the interest of the empire was no counterpoise to its ill will. In addition to which, the enthusiastic religious zeal of the crusaders was so incomprehensible to the Greeks, that the passage of every new body awoke new fears of sinister designs, and the Franks were perhaps yet more dreaded than the Turks.

The chief European assistance obtained was afforded by the mercantile cities of Italy, Venice, Pisa and Genoa, and for this the King was compelled to pay a high price; compelled not merely to close his eyes to their violating capitulations he had concluded, plundering and slaughtering those whose lives and property he had guaranteed, but to grant them, in addition to enormous commercial privileges, whole districts of the seaport towns they had helped him to take, wherein to establish their factories, in actual independence of his lawful royal authority. Nor was this the worst of Baldwin’s position. The Syro-Frank states themselves were not cordially and steadily united against their Mohammedan foes, and throughout his reign he was harassed with civil wars, which will be sufficiently characterized by mentioning the origin of one of them. Bohemund of Antioch and Baldwin of Edessa having fallen into Turkish captivity, their dominions were defended and governed for them by the nephew of the former, Tancred, Prince of Galilee, Tasso’s hero. Upon recovering their liberty they showed their gratitude by demanding the surrender of all Tancred’s own conquests to be divided betwixt themselves. He, of course, refused, and the civil war in question ensued. But notwithstanding disappointments, difficulties and annoyances, the Christians proved superior to the Mahommedans, and Baldwin ma­terially enlarged his kingdom.

In 1118 he died childless, though thrice married, and in regard to his matrimonial career, an anecdote is related more in accordance with what might have been anticipated from the usurper of Edessa, than his courtesy to the suffering and helpless Arab woman, and not uninfluential upon the fortunes of Palestine. Baldwin had brought an European wife with him upon his crusade, but she died, and he espoused an Armenian princess. Afterwards, hearing that Adelaide, Countess dowager of Sicily, had accumulated great wealth during her regency for her son Roger, the second earl, and probably wanting money to carry on his incessant hostilities, he divorced this Armenian wife, and solicited the hand of the Countess. The offered title of queen proving irresistible, she repaired with her treasures to Jerusalem, and was solemnly wedded to Baldwin. But she had not borne the coveted title two years, when he pronounced his divorce illegal, and his consequent nuptials bigamy; recalled his repudiated second wife again to share his throne, and dismissed his third as no wife at all, retaining the riches she had brought with her, upon what plea it were hard to guess, unless perchance that he had spent the whole. Dishonoured and plundered, Adelaide returned to Sicily, and resentment at her shameful treatment, is said to have long prevented her royal descendants and their subjects from sharing in the crusades.

Upon the death of Baldwin, his nephew, Baldwin, Earl of Edessa, claimed the crown as his heir, and obtained it mainly by the exertions of his kinsman, Joscelin de Courtenay, to whom he made over Edessa in thankfulness. It is said that an elder brother of Godfrey and Baldwin, Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had accompanied them upon the crusade, but returned to his patrimonial earldom when his vow was discharged, had, upon the tidings of Baldwin’s death, set out for Palestine, in the hope of reaping his succession. Upon his road he learned the election of Baldwin II; and although urged to proceed, because he, as nearer of kin to the two deceased monarchs, would be preferred to his nephew, refused, exclaiming, “Far be it from me to provoke feuds in the realm that my two brothers, and so many of my fellow-christians sacrificed their lives to gain, where my Saviour shed his blood!” and like a worthy brother of Godfrey he returned home.

Baldwin II was as active a warrior as Baldwin I, and like him received much, by no means gratuitous, assistance from the Italian cities. For instance, his capture of Tyre was mainly owing to Venetian co-operation, which he had solicited, and which the Doge brought in person; but refused to act until promised a third of the city in full sovereignty. Yet such were the advantages flowing from the establishment of the Syro-Frank states to the trade of Venice, Pisa and Genoa, the pretty nearly exclusive channel of their communication with Europe, that those advantages might well have been deemed sufficient inducement to assist in extending and defending those states. Baldwin II’s career was not uniformly prosperous; nevertheless, by the year 1125, his kingdom had attained to within a trifle of its utmost dimensions, and by far the largest part of Palestine was subject to his sceptre.

Whether the principality of Antioch and the counties of Edessa and Tripoli were or were not members of the kingdom of Jerusalem, is still one of the disputed points of history. That for the interest of all parties they should have been so, is certain; and Heeren, a great authority upon such subjects, maintains that they were vassal states, but does not clear away the difficulties. The first two having been acquired by Bohemund and Baldwin, before the crusaders had even set foot in Palestine, it seems more likely that they would be held independent of the subsequently conquered kingdom, from which they were severed by considerable Moslem states, under Saracen Emirs. For Antioch, which, when Tancred died without children, absorbed his Cilician conquests, and far surpassed the kingdom in extent, its princes occasionally, and only occasionally did homage to the Greek emperors; but of them it was very really independent, and in all negotiations with Mahommedans has quite the appearance of an independent state, although in its internal affairs, the Kings of Jerusalem often interfered like suzerains. Edessa, though also large and remote, it can hardly be doubted would become a vassal county, when its earl became king; it was his to give at his pleasure, and he was not likely to give it otherwise. Tripoli, the great object of Earl Raymond’s desires, was not conquered till after his own death, when his son Bertram won it, probably as part of the existing kingdom. Its earls, though vassals very formidable to their sovereign, and often acting independently of him, habitually appear as members of the Jerusalem baronage.

The population of Syria prior to the arrival of the crusaders, was motley in races as in creeds. It consisted of Syrians, professedly of the Greek church, but split into Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, &c. &c., of Turks and Saracens, similarly divided, not only into the great Mahommedan sects of Soonees and Sheahs, but further subdivided into many minor sects, not worth enumerating;— and of Jews, in like manner split into many sects. To these are to be added, after the conquest, European settlers from France, Italy, England, Germany, all designated as Franks, though dissimilar to each other there as at home, and the progeny of such Franks by native women, known by the contemptuous name of poulains, literally colts, but idiomatically half-castes. The whole of the non-Frank population is represented by contemporaneous chroniclers as, morally and intellectually, in the most degraded condition; the half-castes as imbued with all the vices of the natives, effeminate, timid, quarrelsome, sensual, and exceeding the natives in their oriental jealous seclusion of the women, who, as a natural consequence, were thoroughly unprincipled. In confirmation of these reports, it is certain that a Synod sitting at Naplouse in 1120, enacted laws against the most revolting crimes, as though such were of daily occurrence. But against this, it is to be observed, in the first place, that in 1120 few poulains could be of an age to commit the crimes of men; in the next, that the Roman Catholic Franks, hating the Syrians as schismatics, oppressed and debased them; and finally, that in the northern states, Tancred, who in true chivalry was far in advance of his age, treating the natives differently, made good light infantry of them.

A kingdom thus situated and thus peopled, governed by a foreign conqueror, with a few foreign troops to guard him, pressed upon from three sides, and it might be said, from within, by enemies whose hatred of victorious invaders was embittered by difference of religion, hardly needed other causes of instability to ensure its downfall. Yet these were not wanting. Every evil of the feudal system was here in its most virulent activity, unsoftened by feelings of hereditary connexion, that could not but grow up with it at home, counteracted solely by the municipal rights granted to the towns, partly to invite settlers, partly because introduced by Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, in their own city districts. In this tottering state, where, if anywhere, a strong government was requisite, the great vassals strove as pertinaciously, and at least as successfully as any of their European brethren, to emancipate themselves from the authority of their acknowledged sovereign. The Pope claimed suzerainty over kingdom and principality, because recovered from misbelievers; and though little regard seems to have been paid to the claim, it served as a prop to the various pretensions with which the clergy harassed the monarchs. The confusion thus created, was augmented by the contests of the respective patriarchs of Jerusalem and of Antioch, for supremacy, and for the annexation of all newly acquired districts to their several provinces. And, as if such internal feuds were insufficient sources of weakness, the sort of co-sovereignty exercised by Venice, Pisa and Genoa, in the sea-port towns, involved the king in the wars provoked by their commercial rivalry.

But if one great Crusade had failed, bands, sometimes larger sometimes smaller, of armed-pilgrims seeking the remission of their sins through the agreeable penance of slaughtering Mahommedans, were perpetually visiting the Holy Land; and upon them, and that singular phenomenon of the middle ages, the monastic orders of chivalry, did the kingdom of Jerusalem mainly depend for the prolongation of its ever precarious existence. Such an institution as that of these monastic knights, requiring entire self-devotion to religion amidst the active life of the camp, blending the love of war with the love of God, could arise only in an age when every thing, opinion as well as feeling, was passion. And that these orders, if subsequently corrupt, were at their origin the very ideal, the sublimest poesy of pure chivalry, is admitted by a modern liberal, usually sneering, German author, who adds, “The infancy of the three Cosmo-historical Orders was characterized by a simplicity alike touching and exalted, their adolescence by splendour, and heroic feats of arms.” The three orders thus eulogized, are the Knights Templars, the Knights Hospitalers, or of St. John of Jerusalem, and the Teutonic, or Marian Knights. But as the third order was not yet in existence in the first quarter of the twelfth century, it is only of the other two that the rise has to be here described.

The last named of these two was the earliest in action, and in its peculiar character of Hospitalers preceded even the first Crusade. It was a kind of offset from a Benedictine monastery, established at Jerusalem in the eleventh century, with the sanction of the Egyptian Caliphs, by some merchants of Amalfi trading to Palestine, expressly as an hospital for sick and destitute pilgrims, and supported solely by the charity of its founders and their successors, and the gratitude of such pilgrims as possessed the means of requiting the services they had there received. When from these sources the monastery had accumulated sufficient funds, the abbot and his monks built a separate house for the reception of female pilgrims; and when the concourse of devotees rendered more accommodation necessary, a second for male pilgrims, which they dedicated to St. John Eleemosynarius. This Saint, a patriarch of Alexandria, being canonized for his charity, was an appropriate patron for an hospital; but when opulence and power began to impair the original simplicity of the order, a wish seems to have arisen to substitute St. John the Baptist, or St. John the Evangelist, for this less celebrated St. John, and which of those two was the patron intended, became another much disputed question.

When Godfrey, after Jerusalem was taken, visited the wounded, he found them carefully tended by these monks. He was charmed with all the arrangements of the monastery, especially the privations to which the confraternity condemned themselves, in order to supply their patients with expensive medicines or nourishment; and pronouncing it too valuable an establishment to be left dependent upon casual charity or casual gratitude, endowed it with lands in Brabant, the chief province of his European duchy. And now the monks especially devoted to hospital duties, severing themselves from the monastery under their Superior, Gerard d’Avesnes, or di Scala,—which was his name seems doubtful—assumed the designation of Hospitalers, and built a third separate house, as well for their own residence as for the reception of high-born pilgrims. They, at the same time, adopted the rule and dress of regular Augustinian Canons, adding to the costume an eight-pointed white cross, affixed to the left side of their black mantles. In 1113, they obtained from Pope Pascal II the sanction of their organization, together with exemption from payment of tithes, and from ecclesiastical subjection to bishop, archbishop, or patriarch. Three years later, their second Superior, Raymond du Puy, elected Grand Master upon Gerard’s death, completed the fundamental legislation of the new order. Their code required that every candidate for admission should be born in lawful wedlock of free Christian parents, and added to the regular monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, a pledged promise of moderation in word and deed, and of the faithful discharge of every duty of love and charity towards all Christians needing assistance. But so far, it will be observed, there is nothing chivalrous, nothing unclaustral in the functions of the Hospitalers; all the vows and duties are well befitting the character of a monk, being simply an improvement thereon. The super­addition of the office of champions of Christendom to that of nurses of sick and wounded Christians, occurred later.

Some inquirers into the origin of the Knights Templars (again a quaestio vexata, they are ever occurring) aver the founders to have been Hospitalers, who, irresistibly impelled by the martial spirit of the age, again separated themselves from their hospital brethren, to undertake the protection of pilgrims instead of the nursing of them. But this opinion, never very prevalent, is positively rejected by the more critical investigation of late times, which either pronounces that origin an insoluble problem, or adopts the following most generally received account. About the year 1119 the high reputation of the Hospitalers suggested to Hugue de Payen, and eight other noblemen, the idea of founding a rival monastic order, which should superadd to the ascetic practices, then so highly esteemed, instead of the feminine duty of tending the sick-bed, the masculine prerogative of wielding the sword, making this a religious duty. The fourth vow which they added to the usual three was, therefore, to defend pilgrims, and wage incessant war against misbelievers. The second clause of this fourth vow could not but be most acceptable to the king and the people of so imperilled a state as Palestine, and accordingly Baldwin II at once took the new order into especial favour. He gave this association of warrior-monks, who were without a home, a portion of his palace for their temporary abode, and they received a plot of ground whereon to build a monastery from the Chapter of the Temple, the name borne—when purified and consecrated as a church—by the Mosque Aksa el Sakhara, better known as Caliph Omar’s Mosque, placed in the centre of the site of the Temple of Solomon (the remainder of which, as a garden, surrounds it), that site where Abraham, devoutly submissive, prepared to sacrifice his son where his grandson Jacob was favoured with divine communion. This plot of ground, granted . by the Chapter, was adjacent to the Temple Church, whence the order took the name of Knights of the Temple, or Knights Templars. Notwithstanding the assistance thus early afforded them, so indigent for some years were the Templars, that when taking the field two knights were obliged to ride one horse, a fact recorded in the after period of their wealth and pomp, by the engraving upon the seal of the Order. During their poverty the Templars were often indebted to the Hospitalers for support. The distinctive garb they adopted was a white cloak, typifying their innocence and their charity towards all Christians, with a red cross, implying their expectation of dying martyrs, in battle against the Paynim. The inscription upon their black flag, the renowned Beauseant, namely, the first verse of the 113th Psalm, “Non nobis Domine non nobis sed omine tuo gloriam” was selected to express humility. But within ten years from their institution the condition of the Templars was entirely changed. Not only had they won from the Saracens booty and lands amply sufficient for all their lawful occasions, but as the fruit of the renown they had acquired by their prowess as efficient champions of Christianity in Asia, riches poured in upon them from all sides, and in all forms.

The constitution of the Templars, grounded upon the rule of the Benedictines, was not fully settled and sanctioned by the Pope in Council until the year 1128; but at once to complete the portraiture of this first and greatest of the orders of knight-monks, it may be allowable here, prematurely, to mention such points as seem essential to that portraiture. Every Knight Templar was to be of legitimate and noble birth, healthy, that he might be capable of adequately fulfilling his fourth vow, and free from debt, that neither might he be precluded, by imprisonment, from service in the field, nor the order impoverished by paying for him. A Knight Templar was never to retreat from fewer than four enemies; never, if made prisoner, to give more than his knife and his belt for his ransom. He could not individually possess money, and was, indeed, as much as might be, to get rid of his individuality. He was not to correspond with his nearest relations, except through his Superior; not to run a race, send out his esquire, bathe, take medicine, or be let blood, without his Superior's permission. At the frugal meal eaten in common, during which, to prevent idle conversation, portions of the Bible were read, he was to sit as long, and no longer, than his comrades. He was forbidden to kiss even his mother, to wear gold ornaments, at least without disguising them, should such be given him, by paint, or to pursue any idle sport, even hawking; only in lion hunting, as a useful, perilous, and honourable occupation, was he allowed to indulge.

Like the Hospitalers, the Templars were exempted from all external control, spiritual or temporal, save the Pope’s, and governed by a Grand Master, who acted as papal legate, each in the concerns of his own order, and to whom implicit obedience was due. This despotic authority was, however, tempered by the concurrent authority of a Council, formed of the Grand Dignitaries of the order, without whose consent he could neither make a law, appoint a high dignitary, undertake an expedition, nor alienate even an acre of land. Every officer of the order,—Commander, Preceptor, or the like—was similarly hampered by a Council of his own subordinate officers. The post of Grand Master was elective, and the mode of election is remarkable, as offering, perhaps, the first attempt at the systematic complication by which the Italian republics soon afterwards endeavoured to guard against the attainment of power by intimidation or corruption, and which at Venice attained, before the close of the next century, to the very idealization of complexity. Amongst the Templars, upon the death of a Grand Master, the commanders and baillis present appointed a Grand Commander, as provisional governor, and an Electoral Assembly. The sole business of this electoral assembly was to elect two Electors, who aggregated to themselves ten more, because twelve was the number of the Apostles; and these twelve chose for their president one of the chaplains attached to the order, as in some sort a representative of Our Saviour. Need it be added that this was done in simplicity of heart, to enhance the solemnity of an important transaction, without an idea of sacrilege, presumption, or even disrespect. The thirteen, by a mere majority—a majority of one sufficing—elected a Grand Master.

An inferior class of Templars, called Serving-Brothers, consisted of plebeians, in whom all the requisites of knights, except nobility, were indispensable. This second class of serving-brothers was subdivided into two classes, the first of which were all fighting men, distinguished by their dress from the knights to whom they supplied esquires. They formed separate squadrons in battle; and not only were they eligible to some of the inferior official situations whence inferior councils were taken, but of the thirteen electors of a grand master, four were always serving­brothers. The lower class consisted of menial attendants and handicraftsmen. There was yet a third class of Templars, called Lay Templars. These were married men, living in the world, but bound by the fourth vow of the order, fighting under its banner, and owing implicit obedience to the grand master. To increase their strength, the Templars no sooner had funds adequate to the expense than they hired native Syrians, whom, officered by knights, they trained and employed as light troops, both infantry and cavalry, and called Turcopoles, a name supposed to be derived from their business of driving away Turks, Turcos pellere; and in these Turcopoles, it is to be observed, no deficiency of any soldierly quality appears. As the wealth of the order increased, so did the number of knights, serving-brothers, and especially of Turcopoles, till, at the zenith of their fame and prosperity, the grand master, it is averred, could take the field at the head of 50,000 men.

The fame of the Templars speedily awakened a spirit of emulation in the Hospitalers. First, a few individuals, and gradually the whole Order, grew impatient of their confinement to the humble, but truly Christian duties to which they had devoted themselves, whilst the rival Order of Templars was glorified as undertaking the championship of Christendom. This feeling they indulged: they did not indeed abandon the task to which they were pledged; but they added to it the military functions of their rivals. This change induced another, and the title of Knights of St. John of Jerusalem began to supersede the simple one of Hospitalers, which, when retained, was modified as Knights Hospitalers; assuredly the most appropriate, as expressing this singular union of the character of a stalwart warrior with that of a sister of charity. These two military Orders were long the habitually effective defenders of the kingdom of Jerusalem, its best bulwark against the Moslem.

Of the adjacent states one only, with the exception of the provinces of Asia Minor, recovered by the Greek empire, was Christian, namely, Armenia; and it, even whilst professing fealty to Constantinople, and really independent, had been of little account. One reason of this insignificance may have been that Armenia belonged neither to the Latin or the Greek communion, having a peculiar Church of its own, differing from both in doctrine as in ritual, though professing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. About the year 1125 Armenia was subject, as a tributary state, to the Seljuk Turks. The Armenia, of which frequent mention will occur in connexion with the Syro-Frank states, is Lesser Armenia, at this period not yet in existence.

It remains only to speak of the Moslem neighbours of these states. The once formidable Commander of the Faithful, though still bearing the title of Caliph, still surrounded with oriental magnificence at Bagdad, had long been the mere shadow of departed power. When the descendants of Abbas supplanted those of Ommeyah in that high office, the Spanish Mahommedans repudiated the usurpers’ authority, proclaiming a Caliph of their own, in the person of the sole survivor of the deposed, or rather massacred dynasty. Those of Africa rejected the Bagdad Caliph as head only of the Soonee sect, which they deemed heretical, acknowledging in his stead a Sheah Caliph, the descendant of the prophet’s daughter Fatima, established in Egypt. But the far more numerous Soonees of Asia adhered to the original Caliph; and he was still a mighty potentate when the usual fate of Asiatic sovereign races befell the Abbasids. Gradually enervated by luxury and sensuality, the Caliphs were daily more enslaved by their ministers, till the single act of sovereignty they performed was nominating an Emir al Omrah (Lord of Lords, or Prince of Princes) to be viceroy over them, in Trinculo’s happy phrase. Even this miserable remnant of power was lost when Bagdad and the Caliph fell into the hands of the Turcomans, who, embracing the religion of those they had conquered, kept the head of that religion in a sort of honourable captivity, amidst empty pomp and luxury. From this utter degradation he had bee nominally relieved, about the middle of the eleventh century, by Togrul, the victorious chief of the Seljuk Turks, whom the Caliph in return named Sultan of Persia, and constituted his own vicegerent throughout the Caliphate. But if supreme over the Caliph, the Sultan of Persia did not enslave him, as had the petty chiefs; and whilst he, the Sultan, remained equally supreme over his Seljuks, his apparently free captive, the Commander of the Faithful, might, at Bagdad, fancy himself really so. Towards the end of the century, with the death of Malek Shah, this supremacy ceased Divers chiefs and princes of his own race, appointed by him governors of districts and provinces, made themselves virtually independent, under the several titles of Sultan, Atabeg, or Emir, according to the greater or less extent of their respective dominions. Of these the principal, in the first quarter of the twelfth century, were the Sultans of Iconium, Mosul, and Damascus, the last of whom had already sunk into the puppet of his Vizier, or Atabeg, a title said to be analogous to that of Maire du Palais.

In Egypt, which had not been overrun by Turcomans, reigned, as before intimated, a Sheah Anti-Caliph, the descendant and representative of Mahommed. But the Fatimid-caliphs had walked in the footsteps of their Abbasside antagonists; and becoming enervated amidst voluptuousness and luxury, had suffered their viziers, not only to usurp their whole authority with the title of Sultan-Vizier, but to render the office hereditary in their families. Egypt was now no formidable enemy.

The Syro-Franks had yet another neighbour state, to whom it were hard to say whether the designation of principality, sect, or band of outlaws, were most applicable. Somewhat prior to the first crusade, an individual named Al Hassan Subah, son to a holy man, a reputed worker of miracles, of the Sheah sect, established himself, with his followers, in the mountain range of Lebanon. He bore no higher title than Sheik, or Old Man, and seems never to have had more than sixty thousand subjects, but was the most despotic of princes. From amongst these few thousands he is believed to have constantly selected the finest and most promising boys to be trained for his purposes. He caused a superstition, bewildering, if not stupefying the intellect, to be instilled into these youths, through the most austere education, in the most rigorous seclusion, exchanged at intervals for orgies the most sensual, to and from which they were conveyed in a state of insensible intoxication, produced by a drug called Hashich, or Hashishi. Such licentious enjoyments they were taught to expect in this world or the next, as the certain recompense of implicit obedience to their sovereign. Thus lessoned, thus impressed, these youths were, upon arriving at manhood, the unhesitating instruments of the Sheik’s will, and were employed by him to assassinate whomsoever he pleased, whether Christian or Soonee Moslem, whether prince, emir, vizier, sultan, or caliph, might be the designated victim. Most of the murders commanded by the Sheik, some writers say all, appear to have been dictated by Sheah fanaticism.

But in some cases so difficult was it to discover any interest he could have in the life or death of the individual slain by his known emissaries—though the slightest motive, either of offence to revenge, or of object to attain, was admitted as sufficient—that the Sheik was thought by his contemporaries occasionally to sell the agency of his human tools, in order to defray the expense of their education. By Christians this strange potentate was called the Old Man of the Mountains; his people, either from his own name, Hassan, or from that of the drug used to stupefy them, Assassins, whence the word was generally adopted as synonymous with murderer. By Asiatics they are considered merely as a branch of the Ismailis, the name given by them to all secret Sheah associations, from that of Ismael, one of the twelve Imams, as the martyred descendants of Fatima and Aly are denominated. The main body of the Ismailis was established in the mountains of Persia, whence this colony had been sent to the Lebanon. The murder of a zealous Soonee Sultan of Mosul, by order of the Sheik, gave rise to the first alliance of the Syro-Franks with a Moslem. The Caliph, or those who acted in his name, imputing the crime less to fanaticism than to the money of a rival, the Sultan of Damascus, threatened the supposed instigator with war and deposal. The Sultan, or his Atabeg, though he had slaughtered Christians, and made drinking cups of their skulls, now sought assistance from Baldwin, obtained it, and remained unmolested by the Caliph or his Turkish masters. He subsequently thought the Assassins dangerous allies; and his son, upon succeeding to the viziership, is said to have massacred six thousand of them—a somewhat startling number. Al Hassan Subah died in 1124, and was succeeded, not by a son, but by the most energetic of his ministers, Buzruk Umed.

S. II.

CONDITION OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.