MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK I.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.—CONRAD III.

[1125—1146.]

End of Baldwin II’s Reign.—Accession of Fulk and Melisenda.—Rise of Zenghi.—Fulk's Policy and Death. — Melisenda and Baldwin III. — Internal Dissensions and Intrigues. — Relations with the Mohammedans.—Fall of Edessa.—Zenghis Death. —Preparations for the Crusade.

To explain the unavoidable diversion of Conrad’s thoughts from Rome and Italy, it will be necessary to take a retrospective survey of the history of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The reign of Baldwin II had been one of incessant warfare; in which he had gradually enlarged his dominions until they embraced nearly the whole of Palestine, little more than Ascalon remaining there to the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt. He has indeed been accused by some modern writers of having frequently, if not habitually, undertaken his expeditions rather with a view to plunder, or to the slaughter of misbelievers, than to the aggrandizement or security of his kingdom. No doubt he did so; and in one of these inroads, being taken prisoner by the Saracens, was obliged to ransom himself by the surrender, actual or promised, of some strong castles. When free, he did not fulfil his promise, and the Pope sanctioned his retention of the castles not yet delivered over. But to censure Baldwin for acts of this kind, is to judge him by the opinions of the nineteenth, not of the twelfth century. In his time, to keep faith with misbelievers was held to betray such lukewarmness in religion, as almost incurred the suspicion of infidelity; on the other hand, to slaughter them in battle, or even in cold blood, to obtain the opportunity of so doing by deceiving them, was esteemed not merely meritorious, but conduct so pleasing to God as to expiate sin—to earn Heaven. It is even averred that the monastic knights paid a fixed price for slain Mohammedans, either by the head or in the lump. Again, Baldwin had to carry on his wars, to defend as well as to extend his kingdom, chiefly through the armed pilgrims who resorted to the Holy Land to fight those whom as God’s enemies they abhorred, and to enrich themselves with their spoils. Had he disappointed the hopes of such a band, merely because policy or his plighted word required him just then to be at peace with his Moslem neighbours, he would have incurred universal contempt, and must have feared to check the affluence of crusaders, upon which he relied in war.

Baldwin II’s marriage with an Armenian princess produced only daughters; and in selecting a son-in-law to wear his ever precarious crown, he looked out for one who should be capable of defending a kingdom that might be said to exist only in and by the opinions and feelings of Christendom. His choice fell upon a French prince, Foulque, Comte d’ Anjou, the paternal grandfather of Henry II of England; who, some years before, had visited the Holy Land at the head of a small body of crusaders; had joined the Templars as a lay knight and distinguished himself by his prowess, leaving a brilliant reputation behind him. Whether he were or were not at that time a married man, is a point upon which contemporary authorities differ; and no argument can be drawn from his manner of joining the Templars, as he was too much a little potentate completely to merge his individuality in the Order. But whatever he might be then, he was now a widower of considerably advanced age. This last circumstance Baldwin II regarded as immaterial, and offered him the hand of his eldest daughter, Melisenda, with the prospect of the crown of Jerusalem as her portion. Fulk promptly accepted the offer, made over Anjou to his son, whose marriage with the dowager Empress, Maud of England, had been recently celebrated; and hastened to Jerusalem, where he was immediately united to  the Crown Princess, if she may, as acknowledged heir, be so entitled. His second daughter, Alice, Baldwin about the same time gave to Bohemund II of Antioch; and in 1131 he died, leaving his kingdom to Fulk and Melisenda jointly.

And jointly they reigned for twelve years; Fulk allowing his consort to participate to a very unusual degree in the business of administration. He was therefore laughed at for uxoriousness in his old age. But it may surely be supposed, that in so doing, he was actuated partly by the consciousness that the crown was more her’s than his; partly by finding in her the talents and energies befitting and necessary to a sovereign, which she is allowed to have possessed; and yet more by feeling that, as he could have little chance of living until his son by Melisenda should attain to man’s estate, it was meet to train her for the regency she would in all likelihood be called upon to exercise.

During these twelve years Fulk governed, according to modern estimation, well and wisely, though upon a system held by contemporaries to prove him in his dotage. He waged war only when he judged it advantageous to the kingdom so to do. He provided for the defence of the country by repairing and strengthening divers half-ruined fortresses, and he faithfully observed his treaties with his Moslem neighbours; whilst he adopted—or should it be said devised?—the then hardly-imagined policy of dividing his enemies, and tacitly opposing the more formidable, by supporting the weaker against them. The occasion for putting this scheme of policy in action was offered, if the scheme itself were not suggested, by the alarming progress of Emadeddin Zenghi, Atabeg of Mousul.

Zenghi, whose name the old Chroniclers improve into Sanguin, and hold to be descriptive of his character, was the first of the series of three mighty Moslem warriors and statesmen, who eventually overthrew the kingdom of Jerusalem. He is generally believed to have been the son of Margravine Ida of Austria, who, accompanying as a pilgrim the reinforcement of crusaders that was routed and, so to speak, annihilated in 1101, was taken prisoner, and placed in her captor’s harem. Other accounts, indeed, make Zenghi her captor and Noureddin her son; but this idea is controverted by the date; though both father and son may easily have had Christian mothers in captured pilgrims, Ida being one. But the fate of the Margravine is doubted, and another eminent German orientalist, Hammer-Purgstall, asserts Zenghi’s mother to have been a Negro slave from Zanguebar, whence his name. However this may be, he was handsome, valiant, able, ambitious, charitable to excess, and equally to excess a bigoted hater of Christians; Christian writers add that truth and honesty were strangers to his bosom. The modern historian who, upon their authority, thus depicts Zenghi, forgets to qualify the censure by confining it to his intercourse with those he deemed infidels, towards whom Moslem like Christian held truth and honesty rather sins than virtues. But even towards vanquished Christians Zenghi does not appear to have been extraordinarily cruel. Upon one occasion he will be seen to stop the butchery of Christians; and the only massacre imputed to him, took place at the capture of Asarib; when, a favourite of his having been slain during the siege, he slaughtered all the Christian inhabitants upon that slain favourite’s grave. Towards his Mohammedan subjects, old and new, he was an excellent ruler; he repressed the arrogance of the great, protected the poor and lowly, and introduced order and impartiality alike into the administration of justice and into the management of his finances, as the levying of taxes, tolls, &c. Equally as a patriot and as a zealous Moslem, he made the expulsion of the Frank conquerors from Syria the grand object of his life; but he saw that this was not an object to be accomplished by a mere Atabeg of Mosul, under the Sultan of Persia. His first measure, therefore, was td strengthen himself by reducing all neighbouring Emirs and Atabegs to subjection; whilst he lulled the Christians into security by carefully abstaining from any hostile demonstration towards them.

He began his operations with the conquest of Moslem Aleppo, which, situated as it was in the midst of the Frank states, separating the northern from the southern, must, it was evident, in enterprising hands, become a source of serious apprehensions. Nevertheless most of those states looked on with indifference, if they did not rejoice at wars amongst the Mohammedans, by which these were destroying each other; whilst they held the triumphant Atabeg’s forbearance towards themselves, and his bribes, if it be true that he did purchase the neutrality of any—Courtenay of Edessa has been suspected of so selling his neutrality—as indicative of his consciousness that they were his superiors in strength and prowess.

Fulk however was not to be so lulled by the illusions of short-sighted vanity. He saw the perils with which Zenghi’s success teemed, and endeavoured to obstruct his progress. When the conqueror of Aleppo prepared, by overthrowing the feeble Anar, Emir of Damascus, to possess himself of, and incorporate with his dominions, that potent principality, always deemed the most menacing to the safety, the existence, of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the King warned Anar of his danger, and offered to form a defensive alliance with him against Zenghi, upon condition of Anar’s paying twenty thousand gold pieces towards the expenses of the war, and ceding the strong and important city of Paneas to him, in case it should be taken by their combined forces. Anar gladly closed with the proposal; Fulk earned the promised guerdon by vigorously supporting the Moslem he did not fear, against him whom he dreaded. Zenghi was for the moment baffled; Anar remained Lord of Damascus, and Paneas became a bulwark of Palestine.

A charge of sacrificing policy to temper has been recently brought against this king, which would certainly be no offence in the eyes of his subjects. It is that through jealousy of the Greeks he neglected the opportunity offered him by the good-will of the warlike Greek Emperor, Kalo-Johannes Comnenus, of subduing the Moslem principalities between the Syro-Franks ana the new Constantinopolitan frontier. To the modern historian it appears self-evident that only as an outwork of the Eastern Empire could the Syro-Frank States hope for permanence; that as such they were invaluable to this empire; whence the closest alliance was the necessary interest of both Constantinople and Jerusalem. But in those days of fanaticism not only were schismatics nearly as much hated as Jews and Mohammedans, jealousy of the schismatic Greeks was so prevalent a sentiment both in Palestine and in Western Europe, that even a judicious monarch might be influenced by it. Besides which, Kalo- Johannes’ inforcement of his suzerainty over Antioch by arms, and his evident desire to extend it over the other Syro-Frank States, may surely be urged on behalf of that jealousy. A conquering Greek might well be a startling phenomenon. It is also averred that Zenghi craftily as skilfully stimulated the mutual distrust of Constantinople and Jerusalem.(228)

This jealousy of the Greek Emperor was the only point upon which Fulk and his subjects felt together. His pacific policy was deemed the timidity of old age; his war in support of Anar, though profitable in the acquisition of Paneas, a sacrilegious confederacy with God’s enemies; and his concession of authority to his Queen, the very culminating point, if not rather the nadir of a driveller’s weakness. The indignant contempt, provoked by this last offence, probably led to the twisting and improving an incident connected with the conjugal relation of the royal pair, and of which it is difficult now to understand all the bearings, into a story calculated to cover both King and Queen with infamy.

The story as related is this:—Hugues de Puiset, Earl of Joppa, having married a widow, was accused by her son of treason, in the shape of double adultery with Queen Melisenda. The feudal tribunal ordered the charge to be investigated by judicial combat; and upon the appointed day the accused, whatever might be his motive, aid not appear in the lists. His default was considered as a confession of, not cowardice but, guilt, and he was condemned. To avoid the consequent punishment, he revolted; then negotiated a compromise, and was banished from Palestine for three years—an inconceivably light punishment of the crime, if believed. Hugues prepared to obey by quitting Palestine in a vessel about to sail; but whilst awaiting his summons to embark, and, to pass the time, playing at dice in what is called a merchant’s booth, he was stabbed by a knight of Brittany. The wound did not prove mortal; he recovered, left Palestine pursuant to his sentence, and died in exile. The assassin was seized, tried and executed; and upon the scaffold declared his act to have been spontaneous, although he had expected to be rewarded rather than punished for it. Some chroniclers add that the original accusation was made at Fulk’s instigation; and the dying words of the knightly assassin certainly imply his belief that he was obliging the king in murdering his rival.

Now how much of this is truth, how much exaggeration if not falsehood, who, at this distance of time, may venture to say? Not only did no trial of the Queen follow upon that tacit confession of guilt by the accused, his non-appearance in the lists, not only did no sort of disgrace fall upon her, it is explicitly stated, in proof of the old King’s weak uxoriousness, that she thenceforward despotically governed her dotard consort. Not very consistent with the idea of his having instigated the accusation. It must be added that no other imputation was ever cast upon Melisenda’s chastity. She is said to have subsequently persecuted the enemies of the Lord of Joppa, which, as they were equally accusers of herself, is not surprising, and, if punished might be substituted for persecuted, could hardly be deemed an unreasonably vindictive measure.

In the year 1143 Fulk was killed by a fall from his horse, and left a son of thirteen, Baldwin III, as his heir, who was immediately crowned conjointly with his mother. Melisenda of course assumed the government; and, although she appears to have done so rather as hereditary sovereign than as Regent during her son’s minority, her proceedings were, if not actually uncensured, yet exempt from open and direct opposition.

Nevertheless, those who had murmured at the power exercised by the Queen conjointly with, and checked by, a veteran warrior and experienced ruler, could not be expected long to submit quietly to her sole sway. Moreover, she had imbibed her deceased consort’s maxims of government; and it may be supposed, that a woman who, not leading her armies in person, would be unbiassed by man’s disinterested love of war and fighting, might somewhat exaggerate maxims as just as they were pacific. But whether she did or not, and the judicious Wilken asserts that she governed with wisdom and energy, the Barons, and yet more the two Orders, to whom war with the infidels was the very condition of their existence, were indisposed to endure from her the restraint upon their Moslem-killing propensities, which they had hardly borne from her husband. They looked impatiently forward to the reign of a high- spirited boy, as promising not only adventurous enterprise and licence, but likewise to throw into their hands much of the power she firmly kept in her own. They accordingly in every imaginable way stimulated the son to regard his mother’s authority as an unjustifiable usurpation, under which he was wrongfully suffering. Nor was this a difficult task, Ambition, love of the excitement of war, and thirst of fame, are qualities of quicker growth than the judgment, which, at a later period, is said in Baldwin III to have tempered these active appetites: hence, whilst the lower classes blessed the mild, just and pacific government of their Queen, the court became a scene of intrigue and strife for power.

These intrigues were assisted by the result of an expedition which young Baldwin made in the first year of his mother’s regency, and to which she could not object, even if she wished to prevent it. A Mohammedan had, by the treacherously effected massacre of the garrison, possessed himself of a castle and town appertaining to the kingdom of Jerusalem, although situate beyond the frontiers. The boy King, the Barons, and the monastic Knights, hastened to recover it. They succeeded, not so much by fighting, as by cutting down the olive trees that were .the sole support of the inhabitants, whom dread of future destitution induced or compelled to surrender.

So much authority was the ambitious boy thus enabled to extort from his mother, that a couple of years later he was able, breaking the treaty concluded by his father with Anar of Damascus, to embrace the cause, and accept the proposals of one Tuntash, a Damascene rebel, whom the Emir had banished, and who offered to put Baldwin in possession of Bostra, of which he was Governor, as the price of his assistance. Enchanted with the prospect, Baldwin, despite the strenuous opposition of Melisenda, instantly declared war against Anar, and led an army into the territories of Damascus. The enterprise was as injudiciously conducted as it was wrongfully conceived. It is said that Baldwin, after entering the territory of Damascus, suffered Anar so to delude him with negotiations, as to keep him inactive whilst collecting troops, and inviting succours from his neighbours. When thus re­inforced, Anar broke off the negotiations, and the Christians attempted to advance, but found themselves surrounded and harassed at every step: meanwhile, Tuntash’s wife, taking fright at Anar’s numbers, opened the gates of Bostra to him, and the expected prize was lost. Baldwin—his hopes of the promised co-operation, and therefore of success in the object of the expedition baffled—was compelled to retreat amidst such swarms of enemies, as allowed him not an opportunity of attempting to strike a blow; and such were the sufferings of his army upon that retreat, incessantly harassed by the light Saracen cavalry, amidst the heat of a Syrian summer, the thirst of the desert, and the smoke of bushes purposely fired by the enemy, that the most sanguinary battle could hardly have equalled its destructive results. Tuntash, having disappointed the hopes he had raised, does not appear to have been encouraged to remain in Palestine; and rashly, even if relying upon the terms his wife might have made, returned to Damascus. His eyes were put out by Anar’s orders, and he died a beggar.

But prior to this unfortunate inroad, the first heavy and worse-boding blow had already fallen upon the Syro-Franks. Zenghi was now master of the greater part of Mesopotamia and Syria, and though Damascus still eluded his grasp, judged himself equal to beginning his great work, the expulsion of the Christian intruders from Moslem territories. He directed his first attack against the most detached, and therefore, however considerable in itself, the weakest of the Syro-Frank principalities. This was the county of Edessa, weak also in the character of its lord. The Joscelin de Courtenay, to whom Baldwin II, upon succeeding to the throne of Jerusalem, transferred his county, was no more; and his son, Joscelin II, had not inherited his father’s abilities with his principality, if he had his valour. Enterprising enough he was, when what he thought a favourable opportunity of aggrandizement offered, whether at the cost of Christian or Moslem; and he had thus alienated his powerful neighbour, the Prince of Antioch. This principality, like the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had devolved to a female, Constantia, grand daughter of the founder, Bohemund, and niece to Melisenda. She, with the consent of her vassals, and the approbation of Fulk and Melisenda, had married Raymond Comte de Poitou, a gallant warrior, of strength and prowess almost incredible, a younger brother of the father of Elinor, Queen of France, and nephew to King Fulk. Prince Raymond, as he was entitled upon his marriage, co-operated with his uncle in endeavouring to evade the authority of the Emperor Kalo-Johannes, but had in the end been obliged to submit, and do homage to him for Antioch. He was, from his chivalrous temper, often engaged in expeditions against the Turks; and whilst he was absent with his best troops upon one of these, Joscelin had perfidiously invaded the principality. He had gained nothing by the marauding attempt that could, even to an unscrupulous man, compensate its injustice; and in his general conduct he abandoned himself so completely to licentious pleasures, as to offend even his own, tolerably licentious, subjects. He was deemed regardless alike of religion and honour, and was strongly suspected of defraying the expenses of his orgies with money received from Zenghi, as the price of his neutrality, if not occasionally of his assistance.

Joscelin, whether or not a previously purchased ally, was, as before said, the Christian Prince whom Zenghi determined first to attack. The Earl was sojourning at the castle of Tellbascher—situated in a fair and fertile district west of the Euphrates, and consequently remote from the Mohammedan foe—the usual scene of his orgies, when the Emir, skilfully inducing him to suppose that he was absorbed in the subjugation of Kurd strongholds, and thus deluding him as to his real intentions, rapidly overran the eastern portion of the country, and sat down before Edessa itself. The city though inhabited chiefly by Armenian traders, amongst whom were scantily interspersed some Latin citizens, garrisoned but by a few mercenaries, and governed in the Earl’s absence by its Archbishop, made a gallant defence, and with timely succours, even if but small, might have finally repulsed the besiegers. But the Prince of Antioch, who alone could have supplied such timely aid, actuated more by resentment than by policy or enlarged patriotism, upon a clearly false plea of inability, positively refused to move. Melisenda has been accused of sacrificing her powerful vassal either to her pacific system, or to the jealousy too often reasonably entertained by feudal sovereigns of such powerful vassals. But the accusation was unfounded. With the utmost possible despatch she appears to have sent an army under her Constable Manasse, to the relief of Edessa; but from the neglect of Joscelin, and the ill-will of Raymond, the town could not hold out the time requisite to receive relief from Palestine.

The accounts of the siege differ. Its length is variously stated at seventeen and at twenty-eight days, during which the garrison, aided by the citizens, repelled their assailants; then Edessa fell, but how, is also very doubtful. Some chroniclers relate, that upon the night of Christmas day, 1144, although the walls were undermined and partially breached, the Edessans, neglecting all defensive measures, were absorbed in the usual festivities of the season when an Armenian, whose daughter had fallen a reluctant and struggling victim to the Earl’s lawless passions, treacherously opened a gate to the enemy. All Arab authorities agree that the town was stormed, whether the breach were defended or not; and modern writers impute the disaster solely to the avarice and cowardice of the immoderately wealthy Archbishop or rather the avarice solely, if he refused to advance money to pay the dissatisfied mercenaries their arrears. But in whatever way taken, the town was given up to be sacked; and the slaughter of the weak, the helpless, and the aged, as well as of fighting men, is described as so unprecedentedly horrible, that Zenghi upon entering was shocked at the scene of carnage before him, put a stop to both massacre and plunder, and restored such booty as could be collected to the owners. He is said to have rescued the Archbishop from gross ill-usage, and having done so, to have reproached him for his obstinate defence of the place. The prelate calmly replied, “I can now look my master in the face, for I have kept my oath.” The Moslem conqueror was touched, and changed his upbraidings into eulogies of his fidelity. It is to be hoped this is the true account, and not that the prelate was slain in attempting to escape with his hoarded treasures.

Slain he certainly was, probably having received mortal hurts before Zenghi rescued him; as was the historian, Matthew of Edessa.

Zenghi having garrisoned Edessa was proceeding to conquer the yet unsubdued districts of the country east of the Euphrates, when he was recalled to Mosul by the rebellion of one of his deputies. Whilst so occupied his career was, in less than two years, suddenly brought to a close; and the apprehensions too tardily conceived by the Syro-Franks were temporarily relieved. In September 1146, Zenghi was besieging a Kurd castle, when a slave, whom for some fault he had threatened with severe punishment, assassinated him in his tent. Two of his sons, Saifeddin and Noureddin, were grown up, and in their eagerness to divide, and to secure each to himself as much as possible of their father’s dominions, raised the siege, and apparently forgot, for the moment at least, all his mighty projects.

The use attempted to be made of this suspension of hostilities proved unfortunate. The troops of Jerusalem, upon finding themselves too late to prevent the fall of Edessa, appear to have returned home; the numbers that could thus, upon the spur of the moment, be raised to reinforce a garrison, being probably inadequate to acting in the open field against Zenghi. But to the Lord as to the Christian inhabitants of the captured town, the time seemed propitious for its recovery. Joscelin, at the invitation of his former vassals, hastened with a small troop of warriors to his lost capital, was admitted by the citizens, and with their help regained possession of the town ; the castle, to which the Turkish garrison retreated, proved too strong for his means. He nevertheless triumphed in his exploit, as though his success had been complete. But Noureddin, to whose share Aleppo and the western provinces, including Edessa, had fallen, was not the man to let his father’s conquests slip through his fingers. At the head of an army he flew to the relief of the castle of Edessa, and in co-operation with the troops there remaining, again besieged the town. It seems since its capture bv Zenghi to have remained half dismantled, some proof that, whether taken by force or by fraud, the walls had been largely breached. Joscelin judging it impossible to stand a siege in the actual condition of the place, at once decided to withdraw the garrison under shelter of the night, leaving the inhabitants to make the best terms they could : but they, dreading Noureddin’s vengeance for their preference of their Christian Lord, determined to accompany him. Both were unfortunate resolutions; the only effect of the last was to compel the small band of warriors to share the fate of the helpless ; whilst a capitulation, had the Earl proposed one, might have saved the lives of all. At the head of—it was computed—46,000 persons, warriors and citizens, men, women and children, Joscelin quitted the city at night, endeavouring if possible, to elude the notice of the enemy—an idle dream with such a following—and when discovered, to fight his way through their ranks. The second attempt proved as impossible as the first might have been prejudged. The troops in the castle observing the movement, fell upon the rear of the flying mass, whilst the front ranks were engaged with the besiegers; and the slaughter was yet more horrible than during the sack, when Zenghi had taken Edessa. The greater part both of troops and of inhabitants, perished in this desperate attempt; even those who did cut their way through the camp, being, for the most part, singly slain during their subsequent flight. Joscelin himself, after gallant and honourable exertions to save his people, and keeping up a running fight for some distance, escaped with great difficulty, and reached Samosata, the nearest Christian town, almost alone. Noureddin, in resentment of this insurrection against his authority, razed the fortifications, demolished the churches, which had been grossly desecrated in the previous sack ; and scarcely more than a relic remained of Edessa, that erst renowned bulwark of the Syro-Frank States against Mosul and Bagdad.

The evils apprehended from the loss of Edessa, so revered for its legendary holy honours, so valued militarily and politically, did not immediately follow. Zenghi’s sons were still engrossed in securing each his share of the provinces the father had agglomerated; and Noureddin, who inherited that father’s talents and views, felt that the inferiority of' his position, master of a part only instead of the whole of those provinces, must oblige him to defer for years any plan for expelling the Franks from Syria. Momentarily therefore all remained there in the usual state.

Not so in Europe. Since the annihilation in Asia Minor of the subsidiary Crusade, which, excited by the triumphs of the first, was hurrying to share in its glory, to defend the holy places—once again Christian property—nothing in the nature of a general Crusade had been thought of. Bands of crusaders indeed, as before said, were constantly repairing to Palestine, the most zealous or most penitent becoming Knights Templars, or Hospitalers; but it required something that should excite the public mind, either to exultation, like Godfrey’s conquest of Jerusalem, or to horror and terror of the Saracens, like this loss of Edessa, to produce the outpouring of the West upon the East. The exciting calamity had now befallen the Holy Land, and the appeal to Europe for protection from imminent, utter ruin was energetically answered. Eugenius III, in his French exile, instantly postponing his own need of imperial and royal support, directed St. Bernard to preach a crusade. He at the same time promulgated a bull, not only announcing that the families of crusaders would, during their absence, be under the special guardianship of the Holy See, but, in direct contradiction to all feudal principle, authorizing vavassours, if their lords should refuse them the pecuniary assistance needful to prepare them for their hallowed expedition, to raise the requisite sum by pledging their fiefs without the Lord’s consent.

The Abbot of Clairvaux, it has been already said, preferred the conversion to the slaughter of misbelievers; he considered war as a crime, justifiable only when unavoidable, when indispensable to self-defence. In Palestine he believed this to be now the case; and even if he had not, would hardly have permitted himself to question a papal decision, or to hesitate in obeying a papal command. He had for many months been, he still was, lying upon a sick bed, as he firmly believed his death-bed; from which he instantly arose to obey this mandate, and in the first instance employed his eloquence upon his own countrymen. Here he found the soil ready prepared for the seed he was to sow.

Lewis VII had succeeded to the French throne, and his conscience was troubled by remorse for a crime, which, as well as its cause, is illustrative of the habits and feelings of the age. His Queen, Elinor Duchess of Aquitaine, had at least connived at, if she had not formally permitted, the nuptials of her younger sister, Petronella, with a married man, the Comte de Vermandois, whose wife, his equal by birth and apparently of irreproachable conduct, was divorced solely to make room for a successor. The Comte de Champagne, indignant at such treatment of his sister, applied to the Pope to redress her wrongs, and the insults offered an illustrious family. The Queen resenting the brother’s interposition on behalf of his sister, in contravention of what she had authorized, instigated the King to war against his pre­sumptuous vassal. In the course of this war, waged with the fierceness of the times, Lewis, irritated by the pertinacious resistance of Vitry to his arms, had upon its capture ordered a church, in which 1300 persons, vassals of Champagne, had taken refuge, to be set on fire. It was burnt to the ground, and in it 1300 human beings. The deed done, the King was horror-stricken, but more at the sacrilegious manner in which the massacre had been perpetrated, than at its magnitude or atrocity. He would at once have undertaken a military pilgrimage in expiation of his crime, had not his, as his father’s, minister, the Abbe Suger, a wise if some­what despotic statesman, authoritatively kept him to the duties of his high station at home.

Bernard, like Suger, held that sovereigns had other duties, generally more important, more urgent, than taking the cross to fight in Palestine. And not sovereigns alone; he habitually discouraged abbots and monks from leaving their cloisters for that purpose. But he also thought there were occasions, the present—when the Pope called upon Christendom to preserve the Holy Sepulchre from Paynim pollution—being one, in which that duty became paramount. Lewis, with conscience as yet unrelieved, gladly listened to this doctrine. He convoked an assembly of the Estates of the Kingdom to meet at Vézelay at Easter, 1146, to hear the Abbot of Clairvaux preach the crusade. There, he himself upon his knees, received the Cross from the saintly Abbot’s hands. Elinor followed his example; but rather as Duchess of Aquitaine, independently expiating her remoter share in the sacrilegious massacre, as having been the instigator of the war, than as a Queen consort, submissively obeying her Lord and husband’s will. As Duchess of Aquitaine, she headed the Aquitaine and Poitou crusaders. The example of the royal pair aiding the eloquence of the preacher, which needed not adventitious aid, the cry of Diex le volt! or Deus Vult! rang to the sky as before; and such numbers asked for the cross, that long ere the demand could be supplied, large as had been the stock provided, it was quite exhausted, and Bernard tore up his garment to furnish more. The eager assembly would fain have induced the Abbot to undertake the guidance of the army his word had raised; but he answered, "To order battles is not my business, even had I the requisite skill and the command remained with the King". Pons, Abbot of Vézelay, built a church upon the spot in honour of this triumph of holy as enthusiastic eloquence; and in it the rostrum, rather than pulpit, from which the Saint had spoken, was long preserved.

England was at this time a prey to civil war, owing to the contest for the crown, between the Empress Maud, widow of Henry V of Germany, daughter and acknowledged heir of Henry I, and his nephew by a sister, Stephen Earl of Blois. In this contest David King of Scotland took part on behalf of his niece Maud, and therefore from no part of Britain could co-operation be hoped. In Sicily the strange repudiation and robbery of Roger’s mother, the dowager Grand-Countess, by Baldwin I, was still too keenly resented to allow of any chance of success in that quarter : and the Abbot of Clairvaux dedicated his further exertions solely to Germany.

He had already addressed a hortatory epistle upon the subject to the hierarchy and the people at large. But Conrad, who deemed his crusading duties long since discharged, declined to desert his monarchial duties for a distant expedition, not especially incumbent upon him. His lukewarmness appeared to infect the nation; and the Abbot was preparing to inforce his admonitions in person, when by a partial and unwelcome success his movements were unexpectedly accelerated, and their direction for the moment somewhat changed.

He learned that a monk belonging to some monastery upon the Rhine, a weak and ignorant bigot, named Radulf, had by his epistle been excited to volunteer the office of crusade preaching; that he had succeeded in raising a tumultuary host; and had pointed out the Jews as, like the Paynim, enemies of God, upon whom, being at hand, it would be proper preliminarily to vent their pious wrath, and flesh their as yet untried swords. The wealth of the Jews, combined with their religion, had rendered them objects alike of envy and of hatred. An idea so gratifying to both sentiments as Radulf’s was eagerly adopted; and the massacre of Jews in all the opulent commercial cities upon the banks of the Rhine, from Strasburg down to Cologne, was frightful. The prelates interposed for their protection, most of them in a genuine Christian spirit, a few perhaps in judicious policy; though some unhappily sold their beneficent intervention, or made conversion—in other words apostacy, for what else is compulsory conversion?—the condition of affording it. In vain Conrad, whilst he ordered the horrible accusations brought against the Jews to be duly investigated, invited the persecuted victims to seek an asylum in his Franconian domains. Nothing could stop the butchery, till St. Bernard himself repaired to the theatre of bloodshed. Upon reaching Mainz he interposed, at great personal risk, between some Jews and their murderers, and by his invincible energy rescued both them and himself. He sought the instigator and his followers. To the monk he represented that his duty was to weep and pray, not presuming to preach without express permission, and to consider cities as Purgatory, solitude as Paradise. Upon the misled multitude he inculcated that their duty was to pray for the conversion of the Jews, not to slaughter them whilst they were doing Christians no injury. Radulf was convinced, and retired to his cell; but the tempest he had evoked was not so easily allayed. So strong was the Judaeicidal appetite, that even St. Bernard’s eloquence, supported as it was by his saintly reputation, and by imperial authority and influence, is said to have proved inadequate to checking the popular excesses, until the miraculous cures he wrought, those of which Bishop Otho speaks, struck the infuriated rabble with an awe that compelled obedience to his precepts.

This task accomplished, the Abbot repaired to Frankfort, where Conrad then was, in order to overcome his reluctance to engage in a crusade. That well-founded reluctance was earnestly encouraged by the Duke of Swabia, who deemed an exclusive devotion to the care of his people to be alike the duty and the interest of a sovereign ; and it did not yield to a first or a second attack. Again and again the Abbot preached upon this topic; and whenever he did so, though few if any took the Cross, the throngs that crowded into the church were terrific. Upon one such occasion the zealous preacher, enfeebled, as well by his previous austerities and privations, as by the malady under which he had so long been labouring when Eugenius imposed this arduous task upon him, completely overpowered by the heat and exertion, fainted ; and the monarch in his own arms carried him out into the open air. But still Conrad did not take the Cross.

St. Bernard, in order to promote the success of his mission, had solicited the assistance of another of the remarkable personages of those times. This was Hildegard, like himself canonized after death, Abbess of a convent situate upon a hill above Bingen, and overlooking the valleys of the Rhine and the Nahe, which, with some assistance from the feudal Superior, Graf Meinhard, she had herself founded. Hildegard was of noble birth, very pious, very learned, the author of various profound treatises, and, although an habitual seer of visions, endowed with an intellect so acute and so powerful, that princes and prelates, monarchs and popes, sought her counsels; and she addressed home-truths to them, sparing the sins neither of laity nor clergy. Her visions she herself long distrusted, even whilst irresistibly impelled by them to prophecy, both verbally and in writing. She feared that they might be delusions, the offspring, not of disease, but of the direct intervention of Satan. To satisfy her conscience, Eugenius III, who, like the holy Abbot, diligently studied her writings and highly revered her, sent a commission of learned priests to investigate the nature and history of her case; and upon their report he pronounced them to be direct inspirations from God. Thenceforward she prophesied boldly. Conrad often consulted her; and St. Bernard implored her help in influencing him to the desired step; which help she is said to have afforded in a rather peculiar and indirect manner.

She crossed the Rhine, and is reported to have knelt in prayer, with uplifted hands, upon the Feldberg, the loftiest mountain of the Taunus range, whilst St. Bernard preached. Upon this occasion he abruptly interrupted the Mass he was celebrating, to impress upon the congregation, with even unwonted earnestness, the dangers of Jerusalem—the imperative duty of guarding the Holy Sepulchre from misbelievers. Then, addressing himself directly to Conrad, he so forcibly reproached him for his ingratitude to his Saviour, who had showered such blessings upon him, had elevated him to such dignity, that the Emperor was at last vanquished. With the words, “I acknowledge the will, the Grace of God, nor shall he find me an ingrate,” he at once, in the church, publicly received the Cross from the hands of the triumphant preacher. His example was immediately followed by his nephew, the already mentioned young Duke Frederic of Swabia, by the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Lorrain, and Zäringen, the Margraves of Styria and Carinthia, the Archbishop of Bremen, and the Bishops of Passau, Ratisbon, Freising, and Zeitz, amongst the Princes of the Empire; to whom must be added Welf, the pretender to Bavaria (who now appeared to have abandoned the idle claim he was unable to maintain, submitting to the decision of the Diet), with nobles immediate and mediate, and clergy in vast numbers. So extraordinary was the amount of enthusiasm at length awakened for the preservation of the kingdom of Jerusalem by the crusade-preacher’s exertions in Germany, that thieves and courtesans are said to have thronged to receive the cross, and join in the enterprise. The conversion of such profligate characters is reckoned amongst the Saint’s miracles.

The enthusiasm thus produced was not, however, in all as permanent as it was vehement. Some of the Abbot’s lower convertites appear, blending gainful crime with expiation, to have made the crusade itself an opportunity of exercising their former illicit trades. And amongst the nobler crusaders the zeal of the Duke of Saxony so far cooled while the expedition was yet in course of preparation, that he refused to join the armament for the remote Holy Land, declaring that he would fulfil his vow upon the Heathen Slavonians beyond the Elbe—a change of locality, could the Pope be induced to sanction it, equally convenient and advantageous to this somewhat wilful selector of his own duties. Not only did he spare himself the fatigue and expense of a tedious march on a distant, and, save in a spiritual sense, utterly unprofitable enterprise; but, by the forcible conversion of these Slavonian tribes he would really subject them to his duchy. By such an increase of his power, Henry, surnamed the Lion, hoped to augment his means and improve his chance of ultimately recovering Bavaria from his stepfather; to whom—his mother having died within a year from the transaction without leaving offspring by her second marriage—he no longer felt bound by any ties, and whom he was disinclined to acknowledge by any title but Margrave of Austria. The Duke of Zäringen concurred with his wife’s nephew in transferring the theatre of his crusade from Palestine to northern Germany. The Archbishop of Bremen, with most of the Saxon crusaders, also joined the seceding party.

That Conrad must have been both annoyed and alarmed by the defalcation of such important members of the enterprise, and yet more at the determination of the Duke of Saxony, who had already betrayed his restless ambition, to remain at home during his own absence, is certain. But he had neither power nor right to compel a reluctant vassal to fulfil a voluntary engagement, unconnected with feudal duties, in fact an engagement rather to the Pope than to himself: therefore without interfering with this change of purpose of the two Dukes, he proceeded with his own preparations. He procured the election of his eldest son Henry, as King, had him duly crowned, and caused him to receive the oaths of allegiance and the homage of all the immediate vassals. The sovereign authority was thus naturally his in the Emperor’s absence; and on account of his youthful inexperience the Archbishop of Mainz, and Wibald, Abbot of Corvey (a daughter abbey of the French abbey of Corvey), situated on the Weser, were assigned him as his counsellors. Conrad then enjoined the strict observance of the Landfriede, or realm’s peace—which was such an extension of the Truce of God as made it include the whole duration of the Crusade— in corroboration of, and addition to, the Papal injunction, to respect the property of absent Crusaders on pain of excommunication. This injunction was, upon the present occasion, made unusually comprehensive and stringent, insuring crusaders even against legal process for debt during their absence upon the service of God.

Conrad’s chief apprehension of disturbance to his son’s government arose from the lawless ambition Henry the Lion had betrayed in a recent occurrence. The childless Earl of Stade and Ditmarsen had been murdered, and his only brother and heir, Hartwig Dean of Bremen, announced his intention, being the last male of the line of Stade, of giving both counties to the archiepiscopal see, Ditmarsen at once, Stade, which was a fief of the see, at his own death. Archbishop Adalbero accordingly gave Hartwig investiture of Stade, and Conrad consigned the Stade banner to the Saxon Palsgrave Frederic, a son of the Dean’s sister, that he might act for his uncle in the administration of the county. But the young Duke of Saxony, alleging some contingent promise made by the Dean to Duchess Gertrude, laid claim as her heir to the county of Stade, if not to a yet larger part of the heritage, inforcing his pretensions with great violence. Conrad decided against him; but Henry, making both Archbishop and Dean prisoners, had compelled them to ransom themselves by surrender­ing Stade to him. Conrad feared that neither papal nor imperial laws would restrain this rapacious prince from taking advantage of the crusade to possess himself of Bavaria by force, during his own and Henry Jasomir’s absence. He therefore required and obtained from him an oath to defer moving in that matter until their return.

Having thus, as he best could, provided for the safety of his dominions during his hallowed expedition, Conrad turned his thoughts to the means of averting the evils that had obstructed the operations of the previous Crusades. To this end he opened negotiations with the sovereigns through whose realms he had to pass, the King of Hungary and the Emperor of the East-Romans. Geisa, who feared Conrad might again adopt the cause of his rival Boris, promptly agreed, not only to insure the crusading army an unmolested passage through Hungary, but likewise both to feed it whilst upon his territories, and to contribute a sum of money towards subsequent expenses, as his share of the Crusade.

Conrad might have anticipated that an amicable arrange­ment would be at least as easily made with the Court of Constantinople, which had so vital an interest in the maintenance of the Syro-Frank States. Negotiations had previously been carried on in the most friendly spirit between him and Kalo-Johannes, touching an alliance against their common enemy, the King of Sicily; and although this object had not been accomplished, had led to the marriage of Manuel Comnenes, who had now succeeded to his father, Kalo-Johannes, with Bertha von Sulzbach, sister to the German Empress. The connexion did not, as Conrad had hoped, promote his views. The influence of the personal charms of his sister-in-law (as Greek Empress new-christened Irene), was neutralized by the simple goodness of her—in Greek estimation—barbarian Frank nature, so utterly uncongenial to the East Romans. She was a mere nullity at the Constantinopolitan court; and Manuel, though brave even to temerity when he saw any advantage to be gained by war, had no idea of the chivalrous passion for feats of arms, then dominant in western Europe. Like his grandfather Alexius, whom he much resembled, he was too thoroughly Oriental in character to conceive the undertaking a toilsome and costly enterprise, such as a crusade, from motives untainted with self-interest. He distrusted both his brother-in-law and the French King. Further, he doubted whether, even supposing the professed, to be the real, purpose of the crusaders, their presence in Syria were to him desirable, as a dyke against the progress of the Turks, or objectionable, as impeding his own schemes for establishing at least his suzerainty over all the Latin States there. He could not decently, however, and therefore did not, refuse the Champions of the Cross a free passage, provided they bound themselves to a peaceable demeanour during their transit.

Such demeanour was equally requisite in Hungary; and to insure it Conrad put forth a code of excellent laws, inforcing the discipline of the army, and regulating all transactions and intercourse with the inhabitants of the countries to be traversed. Though very imperfectly obeyed, they were not altogether inefficient to the end in view. The Emperor appointed Ratisbon as the place, and Easter 1147 as the time, for the assembling of the German crusaders; while the King of France selected Metz in the German duchy of Upper Lorrain, perhaps to mark the perfect cooperation of the two monarchs, for the rendezvous of the French crusaders, at the later date of Whitsuntide, that the two armies might not, upon their march, interfere with each other. It appears to have been arranged, probably in consequence of Lewis’s selection of Metz, that the Lorrain division of German crusaders should accompany the French army.

CHAPTER V. CONRAD III. [1147—1148.]

The Second Crusade.—March of the German Crusaders.—Passage through Hungary.—Through the Greek Empire.—Intercourse with Constantinople.—March of the French Crusaders.—Disasters of the Crusaders in Asia Minor.—Crusaders in Palestine.—Siege of Damascus.—Of Ascalon.— Unsatisfactory end of the Crusade

The German Crusaders assembled, as had been preordained, at Ratisbon; Conrad took his station at their head, and soon after Easter 1147, the march began in the direction of Hungary. Geisa fulfilled his engagements; the Crusaders conformed to Conrad’s laws, and the kingdom was happily traversed. During this operation, the Emperor, in proof of his satisfaction, and in token of his abandoning the cause of Boris, affianced his son, the young king, to a sister of Geisa’s, although the marriage does not appear to have proceeded further.

Upon reaching the frontiers of the Eastern Empire the scene changed. Constantinopolitan Envoys there met the army, to insist upon Conrad’s swearing, in their presence, to keep the peace during his passage; the object apparently being thus to render any act of aggression the more sinful. Conrad was deeply offended, both at the suspicion which this precaution more than implied, and at the insult to his dignity; the coronation oath being apparently the last taken by monarchs in person. Some excuse for his excessive mistrust, Manuel might plead in the fact, that Roger was even then waging fierce war against him, upon the matrimonial quarrel before mentioned; Corfu had surrendered to his Grand-Admiral, George of Antioch, and Normans were overrunning Corinth, Thebes, and Athens; whence Manuel might naturally enough fear some concert among the three western potentates; though Conrad, knowing Roger his own enemy, would hardly understand the apprehension. But however offended, as a Crusader he had no choice, and took the oath required; whereupon a convention was made, regulating the supply of provisions by sale to the army, and of vessels in which to cross the Bosphorus. At the passage of the Danube the Greek Envoys are reported to have attempted to count the host, giving it up in despair when they had got to 900,000, which number it has been sought to reduce to 90,000. But when the numbers of armed followers of every knight, and of non-combatants who attached themselves to a crusade, are recollected, one number seems nearly as inconsistent as the other with the 70,000 knights, assigned by William of Tyre,—may it not be presumed reckoning their men-at-arms with the knights themselves?—to the German and to the French armies respectively.

No sooner had the Crusaders entered the Eastern Empire than complaints, accusations, and recriminations on both sides were heard, on both probably but too well founded. The Germans complained of the exorbitant price demanded by the Greeks for their provisions; the Greeks of plunder and ill-treatment by the Germans. And while it must be supposed that the inhabitants would be well disposed to make the most of a casual and extraordinary demand for their produce; it is self-evident that the passage of such a host as Conrad’s, depending for its daily bread upon the country traversed, must—unless magazines had been purposely prepared, or the country were in the habit of exporting corn and cattle—have very speedily completely consumed the stock of food on hand; when scarcity, and scarcity prices, would naturally ensue. On the other hand, unquestionably those of the Crusaders who had not wherewithal to purchase bread—and of these there were many independently of the converted robbers—would be pretty certain to seize with the strong hand upon the necessaries of life, at least; and but too likely to maltreat such as should attempt to defend their property. Conrad severely punished all convicted offenders. But his authority over the volunteer host was imperfect, and more would escape than could be convicted.

The wants, and with them the violence of the Crusaders, and the exasperation of the Greeks increased from day to day; and at Philippopolis, upon a provocation too absurd to be mentioned consistently with the dignity of history, were it not illustrative of the intellectual condition of the age, broke out into actual hostilities. In a tavern where some Germans were refreshing themselves, a juggler, either to amuse or to astound the barbarians, exhi­bited, amongst his sleight-of-hand tricks, some of the usual feats of oriental snake-charmers with serpents. Astounded the Germans were; but in their superstitious ignorance ascribed such familiarity with, such command over, venomous reptiles, to the Black Art; whence inferring that to kill the disciple and votary of Satan, would be to labour diligently in their vocation as Crusaders, they slew the juggler. His countrymen resented his death, and an affray ensued. The Bishop of Philippopolis, however, interfered to allay the irritation, and repress the vindictive fury of the Greeks; whilst Conrad and the German Princes similarly exerted themselves to quiet the excited Crusaders; and by their joint efforts the conflicting parties were at length separated, and apparently pacified. The march was then prosecuted something more tranquilly; although the troops sent from Constantinople under Prosuch—a Turcoman there educated and converted—to protect the natives, and repress the disorders of the Crusaders, sought to effect that object by putting all stragglers from the main body to death. In relation to a phenomenon so startling as a Turcoman general of a Christian king, it is to be remarked that, Scandinavia having ceased to recruit the ranks of the foreign mercenaries, upon whom the Eastern Empire had long depended for every military movement, with Varangians, their place had perforce been very much supplied from the wild Turcoman hordes. The employment of such troops as a guard against Christians, was in the eyes of the Crusaders demonstration of Manuel’s sacrilegious connexion with the enemies of God, and perfidious intentions towards themselves.

The efforts of the Commanders had however produced such an appearance of concord, that, when the army passed through Adrianople, a nobleman, reported to have been a relation of Conrad’s, being too ill to proceed with comfort, remained there, to await his recovery in a monastery, or a lodging dependent upon one. The tempting opportunity for vindictive retaliation was not overlooked by the angry Greeks, and he was presently assassinated, it was said, by Constantinopolitan soldiers, who seized the property of their victim. But they had neither done their work completely, nor had patience to wait till the flagitious deed could be perpetrated with more chance of impunity. Some of the murdered man’s attendants effected their escape, and carried the tidings of his fate to the army. Conrad immediately ordered a halt, and commissioned his nephew to return to Adrianople, in force sufficient to punish so flagrant a crime. Duke Frederic, who had kept his division of the army in far better order than the rest, hastened to obey. He led back a body of troops, overpowered the resistance offered by Prosuch, seized and hung the murderers, recovered the plundered property, and burnt the monastery to which his kinsman’s lodging had belonged. Then, having satisfied his desire for retributive justice, he listened to the remonstrances of his vanquished opponent, Prosuch, against punishing the innocent together with the guilty, and rejoined his uncle

The army resumed its march; but from this moment the mutual exasperation of Crusaders and Greeks knew no bounds. Prosuch would fain have sought a favourable position in which to give battle; but this, Manuel, who, however mistrustful of his unwelcome guests, wished not to quarrel with them if they really entertained no aggressive designs against himself, positively forbade. A prohibition for which he deserves the more credit, inasmuch as the elements themselves appeared to have confederated with the Greeks, for the chastisement of the multifarious acts of violence imputed to the Crusaders, and certainly offered Prosuch strong temptation to attack such troublesome visitors.

Upon a fair and cloudless September afternoon the . crusading army encamped between two streams, with the purpose of spending the next day in so convenient a situation, promising a satisfactory supply of clear water; there, in devout repose, to celebrate the nativity of the Blessed Virgin. But the period of equinoxial tempests was at hand. In the night a storm arose; a deluge of rain fell in the mountains, converting every rill and brook into a torrent. Overfed by these torrents both streams swelled, overflowed their banks, and before dawn swept away tents, baggage, cattle, and men, in undistinguished ruin. The camp of Duke Frederic, for which he had wisely selected a more elevated position, alone escaped the general devastation ; and thither fled Conrad with his half-brother Otho, Bishop of Freising, the historian, and all who were roused from sleep in time to escape from the flood. The loss of all kinds was immense; but the numerical strength of the army was in some measure recruited by the speedy arrival of the Lorrain division of Crusaders, who had not chosen to wait for the French.

The host now approached Constantinople, and it has been supposed that difficulties of etiquette alone prevented an interview between the Imperial brothers-in-law; of whom Manuel acknowledged no equal—no Roman Emperor but himself; the other, Conrad—who, although, for want of leisure to visit Italy, not yet crowned at Rome by the Pope, entitled himself Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire— successor of Caesar and Augustulus could acknowledge no superior. Assuredly the common forms of courtesy and hospitality would seem to have required, that the sovereign of the country should receive and entertain as his guest a brother sovereign, closely connected moreover with his own consort, who was traversing his dominions. But, from the tone of their correspondence, both Emperors appear to have sympathized too keenly with the reciprocal exasperation of their respective subjects, to render an interview either agreeable or advantageous. A short extract from that correspondence, showing as well the temper that had much to do with the unfortunate course of the immediately ensuing operations, as the style of diplomatic intercourse in the twelfth century, may not unaptly be here given.

Conrad, not his minister for foreign affairs, but the Emperor himself, or at least a private secretary in his name, wrote to Manuel: “He who judges by the event, without regard to causes and to objects in view, will neither praise wisely nor censure upon just grounds; will run the risk of confounding friend with foe, if the one be the author of a casual evil, the other of as casual a benefit. If stragglers from our innumerable host, incited either by curiosity or by want, have trespassed, have done mischief, consider the impossibility of preventing disorder in such multitudes, and blame not us.” To this apologetic missive the sarcastic and crafty as valiant Manuel replied, We, though well aware of the difficulty of controlling multitudes, took measures when you entered our Empire, calculated to protect you from injury, ourself from the reproach of ill-treating hereditary claimants upon our hospitality. But as you, an astute and experienced ruler, have proved that such matters can never be imputed to the leaders, we thank you for the lesson, and pray you not to suffer individuals to straggle, since it will be no fault of ours if such as do, suffer violence from the multitude.”

A correspondence conducted in such a tone was not likely to conciliate suspicious tempers, or to alleviate the difficulties created by etiquette of sovereignty between rival emperors. Although the Crusaders were now encamped in the immediate vicinity of Constantinople, all thoughts of an interview were abandoned, and Conrad merely requested the use of Greek vessels, as previously arranged, to transport his army across the Bosphorus. Manuel was at all events desirous of removing those whom he dreaded as enemies and hardly valued as friends, if such they were, to a distance from his capital, before they should be reinforced by the arrival of their allies; and readily supplied ships to carry them away. Conrad and his division of the Crusade passed over at once to Asia Minor.

Meanwhile the French portion of this same Crusade was on its way. The King and Queen of France had been joined at Metz by the Earls of Flanders, Toulouse, Dreux, Soissons, Ponthieu, Nevers and Maurienne—the last, a Burgundian vassal, probably joining them for convenience or relationship, being the maternal uncle of Lewis VII—as also by a son of the lately vanquished Earl of Champagne, and by an English band of crusaders under the Earl of Warwick and Lord Roger de Mowbray. Lewis began his inarch at the head of 70,000 knights or lances, whichever be meant, besides infantry. It had been prearranged that he should cross the Rhine at Worms, where he was both well received, and found vessels prepared for conveying his troops to the right bank of the river. But the insolence of some of the rabble, then seemingly inseparable from a crusading army, produced quarrels with the German boatmen employed in ferrying them over; some of which became so fierce, that the passengers, being the more numerous body, flung the boatmen overboard. The citizens, indignant at this ungrateful usage of their fellow townsmen, flew to arms, and much tumultuary fighting ensued, costing many idly lost lives on both sides. The city itself was with some difficulty preserved from destruction by fire at the hands of its pseudo-devout guests, who were at length transferred to the eastern side of the river. The French army next reached Ratisbon, where they found the vessels that had conveyed the baggage, &c., of the Germans down the Danube, sent back for their use; and as no mention occurs of disorders similar to those that took place at Worms, it is to be hoped that the French had learned not again to offend or quarrel with those, whose services were indispensable to them.

Upon leaving Ratisbon the French King followed the Emperor’s line of march, everywhere profiting by the bridges he had constructed or the vessels he had collected for the passage of rivers. He traversed Hungary, as Conrad had done, by convention with Geisa touching the supply of provisions (which the French it should seem were to purchase), and the observance of strict discipline. One incident, however, threatened to disturb this amicable arrangement. Boris, who had not, because deserted by Conrad, deserted himself, or renounced his hopes of inforcing his right to the crown, secretly repaired to the French camp, and besought the aid of Lewis in accomplishing his object. Lewis refused to interrupt his hallowed enterprise in order to wage war upon a Christian prince, even if he were an usurper. But if he declined compliance with the prayer of Boris, he equally rejected the demand of Geisa; who, learning the suspicious presence of his rival in the French camp where a Hungarian Greek had recognized him, claimed from the King of France the surrender of that rival’s person. Lewis, instead of complying, warned Boris of his danger, giving him his own horse on which to fly in disguise; and Geisa, satisfied with his deliverance from what had seemed an imminent danger, accepted Lewis’s excuses. As Boris will not reappear in these pages it may be here briefly stated, that he safely effected his escape, and, repairing to Constantinople, entered Manuel’s service, in which he thenceforward lived and ultimately died.

Upon entering the Greek Empire the French found difficulties as to food, fully equal to those the Germans had encountered. They suffered, probably, both from the previous drain and from the exasperation of the Greets against their crusading predecessors, whilst the French, from their mercurial temperament, were yet more intolerant than Germans of such annoyances. They unanimously imputed tergiversation if not actual treachery to the Greek Emperor; and Lewis, oblivious in his own cause of the scruples that had prevented his interfering in behalf of Boris, is said to have seriously discussed with his chief counsellors the expediency of taking Constantinople prior to crossing the Bosphorus. The reasons urged for the attempt were, that the negligence of the Byzantine Court, which had originally suffered the Holy Sepulchre to fall into Paynim hands, ought to be punished; and that these perfidious, schismatic Greeks appeared to be the main impediment to that habitual intercourse between Western Europe and the Syro-Frank States, necessary to the support of the latter. Upon mature deliberation, however, it was decided that the capture of a Christian, though schismatic, city, could not be esteemed the fulfilment of a vow to fight the Mohammedans in defence of the kingdom of Jerusalem, even if conducive to that defence; and the proposal was rejected.

As the King of France advanced no pretensions to imperial rank, no difficulties of etiquette opposed an interview between the two monarchs, and Lewis repaired to Constantinople. Manuel, whether he were or were not apprised that Lewis really had contemplated the seizure of Constantinople, seemed anxious to conciliate him. He received his royal visitor with Oriental politeness; with magnificent hospital­ity, intermingled with blandishments and professions of friendship, seemingly calculated to show that if Conrad had been differently treated, the fault must have lain with himself, not with the courteous Byzantine. But amidst all these amicable demonstrations the Emperor so thoroughly maintained his own superior dignity, that French vanity was rather wounded than flattered  while the army neither fared better, nor behaved better, than their German predecessors. The poorer crusaders were half starved, and the marauders of the host plundered the vicinity of the metropolis.

Lewis—charmed after the annoyances of his march with the pleasures of a court, luxurious beyond his previous imaginings—was disposed to linger at Constantinople, not­withstanding the dissatisfaction of his nobles and the sufferings of his troops. Elinor—who with her company of amazons had, from their appearing in public, been con­sidered by the Greeks, accustomed to Oriental seclusion of women, as a troop of courtesans, and insulted accordingly—was, in spite of these insults, no less so. Manuel, on the contrary, was most anxious to get rid of his much-distrusted visitors, and studied to expedite their departure. To this end he caused reports of great victories gained by the Ger­mans over the Turks of Asia Minor to be circulated. And now the French army—already impatient of the privations they were still enduring whilst their royal commander was indulging and recreating himself after his—feared that all the glory of the enterprise would be forestalled by their allies, as the vanguard of the Crusade, and became clamorous to proceed. Lewis could no longer close his ears to the general urgency, and requested means of trans­port over the Bosphorus. With these Manuel joyfully furnished him; and the French followed the Germans to Asia Minor.

Scarcely had they landed ere new dissensions occurred. Some wealthy traders visited the camp ; and whilst the leaders were dealing with them for their wares, the poorer pilgrims plundered their travelling-shops. The owners, obtaining no redress from the King, as little able as the Emperor, probably, to control his host of Crusaders, fled to Constantinople, to lay their complaints before Manuel. He judged it proper to pass over in person, in order to insist upon the observance of better discipline, so long as the army should remain upon his territories; and the resentment he expressed at the treatment of his peaceful subjects, could only be appeased by Lewis’s submitting to his demand, that the French nobles should do homage to him, pros­pectively, for all conquests to be made in Asia. His and Conrad’s refusals to allow of such homage had been one ground of Manuel’s distrust and ill-will; and it is to be re­membered that, however humiliating the demand may seem, the conquests hoped for were all of provinces torn from the Eastern Empire. Still his whole conduct relative to the Crusaders, whom Greek writers allow that he all along disliked and betrayed, seems inexplicable in a brave and able ruler. All these difficulties materially retarded the progress of the French, eager as they were to overtake their German precursors.

It was indeed high time that Lewis should overtake Conrad, although not in order to prevent those German precursors from monopolizing triumph and glory. In Asia Minor Conrad had found all the evils he had experi­enced in Roumelia—i.e. deficiency and reported adulteration of food, with exorbitant prices, and the murder of strag­glers from his ranks, as much by the Greek troops escorting him, as by the peasantry—enhanced by the apparent absence of administrative authorities to which to appeal. Under such circumstances, the suspicions previously con­ceived of the Greek Emperor revived, and led to new calamities.

When the choice between two roads to Syria—the one long-, through the dominions of Manuel, the other short, through those of the naturally inimical Seljuk Sultan of Iconium—was submitted to Conrad, he and his Council differed in opinion. Numbers thought the covert enmity of the Greeks, however noxious, less important, because less likely to obstruct and delay the advance of the army, than actual warfare with Turks, who, not being the assail­ants of the Syro-Franks, were not the especial misbelievers whom they were pledged to combat. Others, with Conrad and his nephew Frederic at their head, judged it better to fight their way through avowed foes by the shortest road, than to remain for any length of time exposed to the covert hostility of false friends. But, as before observed, at the head of a host of voluntary crusaders, the imperfect authority of a feudal sovereign was yet further reduced; and the Emperor had no power to compel obedience to his decision. The Crusaders did the worst thing possible; they divided. Those who preferred the longer coast-road, a large body, electing the Bishop of Freising their leader, set forward upon their protracted and weary march, during which they suffered, in a yet increased degree, all the annoyances and privations, often amounting to famine, that they had previously endured, and which the majority now pronounced intolerable.

Conrad, on his part, ordered the guides, furnished him by Manuel, to conduct him with his reduced force by the direct road across the Seljuk dominions. They so far obeyed that they did conduct him into those dominions; but they had been either charged by Manuel, or bribed by the Sultan, to mislead the Crusaders. By tedious as arduous paths they brought them into a desert, affording neither food nor water; and being threatened with the chastisement they merited, disappeared under cover of the night. The dawn discovered the Turkish host, in count­less multitudes, menacing the Christian army upon all sides.

The Crusaders, as before observed, had no desire for battles in Asia Minor, and endeavoured to prosecute their march. They were harassed at every step by the light Turkish cavalry, which, whilst inflicting upon such an encumbered mass disasters and losses insupportable, eluded, by the peculiar tactics adapted to its character, alike the regular engagement it seemed to provoke, and the charge or the pursuit of the heavily-armed German knights. These incessant skirmishes, in which only the Germans suffered, lasted many days. Conrad himself was twice wounded by the arrows of the Turks; and without a battle, without an opportunity of retaliation, it is averred that this army—which, after all his disasters, and its division, must have comprised at least 70,000 fighting men—was reduced to 7,000. Of women, children, and even male pilgrims, if . unarmed, no account was taken.

In this distressful condition, Conrad learned that the French division of the Crusade had reached Asia Minor, accompanied by a body of Templars under their Grand Master. Already the estates bestowed upon the two military Orders had diverted many of the brethren from their main duty, by requiring their presence, in their European establishments, save when recalled by some special emergency to Palestine; and those so recalled had now joined the King of France. Conrad at once resolved to fall back, with the poor remains of his army, upon his allies. Frederic carried the tidings of their disasters and intentions to the French camp; and Lewis, all jealous fears relieved, expressed the warmest sympathy for the suf­ferings of his brother Crusaders. The two monarchs met near Nicaea; and Lewis, warned by the calamities that had befallen the Emperor, resolved to take the longer way, through what he believed a friendly country, but not that pursued by Bishop Otho and his division. Upon the road he had selected—if for awhile he avoided the Turkish arrows, which, with faithful guides and the Templars’ experience in Turkish warfare, an undivided army hardly need have shunned—he encountered all the evils that Conrad had apprehended from Greek animosity, whether encouraged or not by Manuel.

The German Emperor did not long accompany his ally. Mortified at appearing through his losses in a position inferior to that of the French King, irritated by French presumption, that taunted the Germans with their disasters, as with the obligations under which they lay to their allies, and suffering in health both from his wounds, and from those hardships and privations that had prevented the tendance they required, he accepted the invitation which Manuel, now no longer fearing his army, but still anxious to prevent the union of the two crusading sovereigns, pressed upon him, to seek medical aid and repose in his Court. In the vicinity of Ephesus he embarked with his princes and chief nobles for Constantinople; flattering himself, perhaps, that, in his brother Emperor’s more conciliatory mood, he might obtain from him the. cordial assistance of which the Crusaders were so much in want. But Manuel, if relieved from his immediate apprehensions, still disliked the pre­sence of the Crusaders in Syria, and strove, with the most refined address, to evade Conrad’s requests, whilst he courted, amused, and detained him at Constantinople, studying bv all means to alienate and sever, both morally and physically, the Emperor and the French King from each other.

This policy in so far answered the Greek Emperor’s purpose, that of the body of Germans remaining as auxiliaries with the French army, many—disheartened by the absence of their Emperor, in addition to their past hardships and privations—persuaded themselves that they had done and suffered enough to discharge their vow, and were now free. They deserted to return home, or rather to attempt returning; for few indeed thus unconnectedly succeeded in so doing. Their loss was, however, ere long, made good, and the ranks of the braver spirits recruited, by the junction of the Dukes of Poland and Bohemia with their bands.

Meanwhile, amidst difficulties, annoyances, and priva­tions, such as have already been described, Lewis marched on, sharing, in proof of his devout penitence, all the hard­ships endured by the poorest pilgrim, and performing all the military duties incumbent upon the poorest knight, in his army. But the sufferings he had preferred to the necessity of fighting his way to the scene of action, did not ' permanently exempt him from the hostilities he was en­deavouring to avoid. The Turks, elated by their recent success, entered the Greek territories, to meet the new army of Crusaders, and oppose its passage of the Meander. For­tunately for the French this same spirit of elation impelled their enemies to abandon the system of warfare that had en­abled them really to defeat the Germans without ever giving battle, and they engaged in close combat with their fresh antagonists. They, much as they too had suffered from want and hardships, were in a very different condition from their unfortunate predecessors; and having the advantage of coming to close quarters with their enemies, defeated them with great slaughter, amply avenging their allies.

But here ended the success of King Lewis and his army. The ill-will of the Greeks, and the repugnance with which their Emperor viewed the Crusade, were no longer dis­sembled. The Greek towns, professing distrust of the good faith of the French, closed their gates against them, whilst opening them to the fugitive Turks. Manuel sent Lewis information that, having just concluded a truce for twelve years with the Sultan of Iconium, he must preserve a strict neutrality between them. But that the supply of pro­visions, always scanty, was thenceforward altogether withheld, must still be chiefly imputed to the timid suspicions, as well as to the disinclination of the inferior magistracy, and to the hatred borne by the whole Greek population to Latin Schismatics.

Not long afterwards the want of discipline, the self-willed imprudence prevalent in the French army, brought upon it a calamity, singly as overwhelming as had been the many undergone by the Germans. The vanguard had been ordered to encamp upon a height, commanding the road by which the army was to advance ; but perceiving a delight­fully fruitful valley beyond this height, the troops, heed­less of the consequences to the main body, deserted the inconvenient, allotted post, and eagerly hurried down to enjoy the refreshment there inviting them. The Turkish troops, that still hung upon the line of march, observing this important eminence unoccupied, hastened to seize it; and the French main body unexpectedly found enemies advantageously placed to oppose their progress, in the very position whence they had confidently expected protection during their passage. They were thus surprised in some disorder, and, though they made a gallant resistance, were in a short time nearly cut to pieces. The King, with difficulty swinging himself up, by the help of the branch of a tree, on to an insulated rock, there defended himself, until a party coming to his relief enabled him to escape, and join his vanguard. That, having taken no share in the battle, was still complete; and with it he at length reached Attalia, upon the sea-coast, in not much better plight than the German Emperor had joined him.

At Attalia the Greek authorities, professing friendship, proposed to furnish him ships, in which to transport the remnant of his army to Antioch. Lewis gladly accepted the offer. But the authorities demanded an exorbitant price for the use of their vessels. Lewis resisted; and, between haggling and the necessity of waiting for a fair wind, to which the royal Crusader seems to have thought him­self entitled, several weeks were lost. In the end, the French King, whether from ill-will or the poverty of the place, obtained barely vessels enough to convey himself and the higher classes of the Crusaders. With these he embarked, leaving all the humbler Crusaders—warriors, invalids, women, and children—to make their way by land, under the conduct of the Earls of Flanders and Archambaud de Bourbon, with the promised protection of an escort of Greek troops. To defray the expense of this escort, as also of nursing his sick, the King placed a sum of money in the hands of the Attalian authorities. The money was taken, but the sick received no tendance, and the promised escort never appeared.

Unescorted, therefore, the appointed chiefs found them­selves obliged to set forth with only a small body of drooping infantry, and the half-helpless, and now more than half-defenceless band committed to their guidance. But the attacks of the Turks were incessant, and, under such circumstances, sanguinarily successful; and the Earls, despairing of the possibility of executing the task assigned them, ere long deserted their charge. Escaping by sea with as many as could procure means of embarkation, they rejoined the King at Antioch. Of those who remained behind, struggling on by land, to the computed number again of 7,000, the majority were destroyed by the Turks, and obtained the crown of martyrdom in lieu of the palm­branch, indicative of a consummated pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The survivors were plundered, otherwise ill- used, and enslaved by the Greeks: the sick left at Attalia were massacred. The Turks, on the other hand, after their victory, showed humanity; and the consequence was, that some 3,000 Christians, preferring Turkish to Greek slavery, took refuge with their former enemies. Of these, very many are believed to have apostatized.

Of all the divisions of these two hosts of Crusaders, Bishop Otho’s alone reached Antioch in martial array, although not unscathed in numbers and condition. They had never been admitted into towns, and had with great difficulty procured, at exorbitant prices, food sufficient to support them under their toils. Still they reached Antioch in warrior guise; and were there joined by such German and Italian Crusaders as had preferred a sea-voyage to a land-march. The Earl of Toulouse, who, if he had joined Lewis at Metz, had not accompanied him, but returned to his principality to proceed, with his body of Crusaders, by sea, was of the number. Thus something like an army was again assembled.

The Prince and Princess of Antioch received their royal French relations—Raymond, it may be recollected, was Elinor’s uncle—with a splendid hospitality that, after the sufferings of the march through Asia Minor, proved yet more irresistible to their guests than had been the magnificence of Constantinople. Raymond was anxious to employ the warriors of the Cross in furthering his own schemes, and, as a step that way, to detain them at Antioch. To this end he sought in every way to please his niece, and render her residence there delightful to her. And in this he succeeded. Declaring herself too completely worn out with what she had undergone to prosecute her pilgrimage further, Elinor announced her intention of sojourning at Antioch, until the King should be ready to conduct her home. In this preference of her still youthful uncle’s society to his, Lewis's jealousy, and the dissensions of the royal pair, so disastrous in their consequences to France, are generally said to have originated; though some historians affirm that his jealousy alone had compelled his Queen to take the Cross. The King, nevertheless, postponing to the performance of his devotions at the Holy Sepulchre all other considerations, even his dissatisfaction with his wife’s conduct, and the necessary deliberations concerning the best employment of the crusading army, proceeded with merely an escort, it should seem, to Jerusalem.

There Conrad and the German princes, brought by Greek vessels from Constantinople to Ptolemais, or Akkon, since called Acre, or St. Jean d’Acre, joined him. The royal and noble pilgrims duly performed all the customary religious rites appertaining to a pilgrimage; and then repaired to Acre, if it may be allowable at once to adopt the later and more familiar form, there to meet Baldwin with his chief princes and nobles, as also the two Grand Masters, in order, resuming their more knightly character, to consult upon and concert a plan of operations. To Acre, moreover, those leaders, who had been left in charge of the troops remaining at Antioch to recover from their fatigues and sufferings, brought the forces, now recruited in health and strength, if but little in numbers.

At the Council there held, various proposals were made and discussed. The Emperor was bent upon the enterprise for which the crusade had been expressly undertaken, namely, the recovery of Edessa; and Prince Raymond earnestly supported his opinion. But Raymond desired to recover Edessa, not to restore it to its rightful though un­worthy Lord, who was manifestly unable to defend it, but to incorporate it with his own, i. e. his wife’s principality; and the King and Barons of Jerusalem, unwilling to augment the power of Antioch, of which they were already jealous, urged that the city, dismantled as it was, could not be a valuable bulwark to the kingdom, or indeed securely held, without either a great expenditure of time and money in fortifying it anew, or the possession of all the Moslem strongholds in its vicinity. Raymond then proposed the conquest of Aleppo, and the other Moslem states that separated Antioch from Jerusalem, and weakened both, by obstructing their inter­course and power of cooperation. Baldwin and the Jerusa­lemites might have preferred the conquest of Aleppo to the recovery of the more remote Edessa; but Aleppo, if taken, must from its locality have fallen to the share of Antioch; and the same jealousy induced the rejection of this plan. The two Grand Masters, warmly supported by the young King, then unfolded their scheme; it was the acquisition of Damascus. They represented that Damascus, both in strength and in geographical position, was a far more formidable enemy to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and, if acquired, would be a far more satisfactory bulwark against the Mohammedans, than Aleppo, Edessa, or any other place that could be named. They brought forward another Damascene rebel, the Emir of two towns appertaining to that principality, who vehemently pressed the subjugation of his former Lord, and asserted his own power of giving assistance to the invaders. The wishes of the monarch, boy as he was, whom they had come to aid, and the opinion of leaders so experienced in Syrian warfare as the Heads of the real champions of Christendom, naturally prevailed, and it was resolved to besiege that stronghold of Islam. Accordingly, in the month of June 1148, the German and French Crusaders, how cruelly soever reduced in numbers once more a respectable army, uniting with the troops of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and with the Knight Templars and Hospitalers, amounting altogether to 20,000 horse and 60,000 foot, marched for Damascus.

The situation of Damascus is described by all travellers as most beautiful; and relatively to the science of attack and defence, as understood in the twelfth century, the town was very strong; being defended by double walls, thick set with towers, and washed on one side by the river Barady, which afforded irrigation and fertility to the gardens, orchards, and vineyards, of the numerous villas adorning that side. Beyond them lay the plain spreading out widely till it became the desert. To the north-west the ground rises gradually to the foot of the Lebanon range of mountains.

Little deliberation was needful to decide, that only upon the villa side could Damascus, with any prospect of success, be attacked, because only here could the besieging army find the necessary supply of water; the Emir having compelled the inhabitants of all the villages within con­venient reach to fill up their wells and remove, carrying their cattle and stock of provisions with them. The villas had been kept as outworks, and of these the allies pre­pared, as their first operation, to make themselves masters. Baldwin, as the principal in the war, and the two Grand Masters, as a prerogative inherent in the character of the Orders of Knights Templars and Hospitalers, claimed the post of honour and of danger, the van, as their right. Lewis and his French Crusaders, reluctantly yielding to a claim so incontestable, formed the second battle as it was then called; and Conrad, whether on account of inferior numbers, of the protection and assistance he had, when in danger and distress, received from the French in their then unbroken strength, or yielding to avert dissensions, was obliged, notwithstanding his superior rank, to be content with the third.

Between the walls and hedges, a wide road led across the river to one of the city gates, whilst on either hand narrow paths wound amidst the inclosures. Along the wide road the besiegers moved to the attack; but the hedges and loopholed walls were lined with Turks, and flights of arrows met the assailants as they advanced. They turned from the main road to seek their invisible enemies by the narrow paths; but here again walls and hedges bristling with spears or pouring forth fresh flights of arrows, opposed their progress. Their array fell into no little disorder. But Baldwin's impetuosity, the never failing valiancy of the Monk-Knights, and the ardour of the Crusaders, in the end proved irresistible. They forced the enclosures, drove out the Turks, and pursued their victorious course to the bank of the river.

Here they had hoped to quench the intolerable thirst produced by hard fighting under a southern sun; but the Mohammedans had rallied, and occupied this important position in great strength. Here, therefore, the strug­gle was renewed, and here the Emperor was to find some compensation for the many mortifications he had endured. The victory was obstinately contested; twice the Jerusalemites, Templars and Hospitalers included, despite their utmost efforts, were repulsed; and the second battle was kept inactive, with no impugnment of French courage, by the sheer difficulties of the ground. But Conrad was not so to be baffled. His German knights possessed an advantage over their rivals in being trained to fight on foot as well as in the saddle and to this he had recourse. He hade them dismount, setting them the example, and on foot, at their head, he broke through the stationary ranks of French Cavalry before him, through the disordered ranks of the Palestine cavalry, before them, and fell, sword in hand, upon the enemy. When thus brought into action, Conrad is said to have displayed ex­traordinary personal prowess, and even to have performed a feat, similar to one recorded of Godfrey of Bouillon ; to wit, the slicing off, with a single stroke of his sword, the head and shoulder of a gigantic Turk, clad in complete armour; a feat yet more surprising when thus performed on foot than from the height of a horse’s back. His nephew Frederic upon this, as upon every occasion, vigorously seconded him; and by their joint exertions, duly supported by their small but stalwart band, they afforded their allies time to rally and return to the charge. Again victory declared for the Christians. The river was mastered ; the Mohammedans retreated within the city walls; and the victors encamped upon the theatre of abundance that their valour had won.

Amongst the most distinguished warriors on the Moslem side in this battle was the Kurd Nodshmeddin Eyub, the father of the celebrated Saladin, and founder of the Eyubite dynasty. He was then in the service of Noureddin, and, having been sent by him upon some mission to Anar, whose daughter Noureddin had married, took an active part in the defence of Damascus. His eldest son was among the slain, and young Saladin, although not more than eleven years old, is said to have been upon the field. Anar, who had commanded in person, was wholly discouraged by his defeat. Noureddin and Saifeddin, whose assistance he had solicited, though upon their march to his relief, were still far distant, and inferior in numbers to the united forces of the three Christian sovereigns. On both sides the early fall of the besieged city was anticipated.

But selfish ambition, petty interests, weakness, or treason, interfered to render the loss of life by which this advantage had been purchased, unavailing. Many are the reports as to the mode in which these noxious causes wrought their noxious effects. It is said that the apologue of selling the lion’s skin whilst planning the chase, was here for the thousandth time enacted, the princes quarrelling about the disposal of the expected conquest. According to this tale, Theodore Earl of Flanders, husband of Baldwin’s half-sister, Sybilla of Anjou, upon the plea of this being his second expedition in defence of the Holy Land, laid claim to Damascus, of course in vassalage to Jerusalem. The Earl was so warmly supported by the King of France as to offend the German Emperor; and whatever might be Baldwin’s individual inclination, the Jerusalem Baronage did not choose to resign so valuable a prize to an European intruder; while the Templars, whose right it ever was to lead when a place was to be stormed, wanted the principality for their Order.

Thus, through the very intensity of the desire for its possession, the disposition to conquer Damascus is supposed to have died away, in all but the Crusaders. Another report is that Baldwin, his Barons, and the Grand Masters wished not such a remote acquisition, and were very anxious to conciliate the potent protectors of Anar, Noureddin, and Saifeddin. A story refuted in respect to the young King by his character, brave even to rashness, and his age far too boyish for prudential consideration; to the Grand Masters, by the fact that they were the very persons who selected Damascus as the object of the enter­prise; though as regards the Barons, it is by no means unlikely that they might both be growing weary of the overbearing arrogance of the Crusaders, and think con­ciliating the foes they dreaded the safest course. A third report, resting upon very general Arab authority, is that Anar sent a threatening message to Baldwin and his Jerusa­lemites, intimating that if the siege were not immediately raised, he would deliver up the city to Noureddin, who was rapidly advancing at the head of an immense army; thus so augmenting the power of that already formidable prince, as must insure his speedy subjugation of Palestine. That very exaggerated rumours of the numerical strength of the approaching brothers were sedulously circulated, seems cer­tain; and if the receipt and the effect of the message be confined to Baldwin’s courtiers and counsellors, who might easily delude an inexperienced youth as to the purpose and probable result of the measures they advised, this is upon the whole the most probable explanation of the strange proceedings, to be narrated when the fourth report, the most irksome of all to believe, unless it also were limited to the courtiers and counsellors who fostered and stimulated the boy-king’s faults, alienating him from his sagacious mother, shall have been disposed of. This report is, that Anar offered enormous pecuniary bribes, either to Baldwin, or to the Barons, or to the Templars, or to the Hospitalers, or to any two, or three, or all of them, if they would either procure the raising of the siege by scaring away the Franks through rumours of the over­whelming numbers hastening to his relief, or baffle its apparently certain success, by inducing some ruinous change in the plan of attack. The story goes on to say, that when the work was done and the price to be received, the briber cheated the bribed; sent the mercenary traitors barrels apparently full of gold, but the contents of which, upon examination, proved to be brass, under a layer of gold. This disgraceful account is the one most generally adopted by European historians, because a letter still extant, addressed by Conrad to his habitual corres­pondent, the Abbot of Corvey, seems to give it confirmation. In this letter he says, “We have suffered from treason where it was least to be feared, through the avarice of the Jerusalemites and some princes.” It is however to be considered, in weighing the Emperor’s evidence, without in the least questioning his veracity, that he might be likely to impute to treason and bribery, what was simply the offspring of a dread of Noureddin’s power, which he would be incompetent to appreciate; and that even if bribery there were, he would hardly know where to fix the guilt.

But whatever were the cause, the hopes which the recent victory awakened were disappointed by the following inex­plicable proceeding. The Jerusalemites, upon the plea that the city walls were weaker on the other side, persuaded the crusading monarchs to remove their camp from the excel­lent position so hardly won, and pitch it in the situation previously rejected. The consequence is said to have been that, the walls being equally strong, still all assaults upon the town were repulsed, and the besiegers languished with­out water, almost without food. In this suffering and depressing condition the Crusaders were easily alarmed by the rumours in circulation of the imminent arrival of Noureddin, and of the innumerable myriads he was bringing to the relief of Damascus. The siege was raised.

Conrad and Lewis, however mortified at this result of their exertions, however disgusted at the general conduct of affairs in Palestine, had not quite renounced the hope of strengthening by enlarging, or rather consolidating, the kingdom of Jerusalem. They therefore agreed to co­operate in the siege of Ascalon, a strong town, just within the southern frontier of the Holy Land; the possession of which, as a defence against Egypt, seemed more important to its security than that of Damascus. They led the Crusaders thither and sat down before the place. But again their well digested schemes were foiled by the fault of those whom they were labouring to benefit. No Syro-Frank army, not even the Templars and Hospitalers, joined them at the appointed time; and in another letter from the Emperor to Abbot Wibald, appears the following passage:—“Faithful to our engagement we came to “Ascalon, but found no Syro-Latin Christians there. After waiting for .them eight days, we turned back, for he second time deceived by them.”

And now, finally and thoroughly disgusted with their allies, and disappointed of the success, the merit, the glory they had anticipated, the two crusading sovereigns began to recollect the claims of their own realms and subjects, as also of their own individual interests, upon their time and care. Conrad, with the poor remnant of his German host, embarked at Acre, upon the 8th of September of this same year 1148; and Lewis a little later followed his example. This last monarch upon his return was taken by some Greek vessels, whether pirates or in the Emperor’s service is not clear; but they were carrying him off a prisoner, when the Sicilian Admiral, in his triumphant cruize en­countering them, released the King of France from their clutches.

The Earl of Toulouse had not lived to take part in these operations; and as he was the eldest son of the Earl who conquered Tripoli, his death was ascribed to poison given him by his kinsman of the younger line, the Earl of Tripoli, fearing that he would claim the county. But as the deceased was accom­panied by his son, who survived to inherit his preten­sions, there seems to be no adequate motive to so flagitious a deed.

This crusade is estimated to have cost Europe 180,000 lives, including non-combatants; surely a moderate compu­tation, but which even if allowed to bj2 below the mark, fully extinguishes the Greek enumeration of 900,000 Germans at the passage of the Danube. One of the one hundred and eighty thousand may deserve specification, although for a claim upon our gratitude of which he himself was unconscious. Cacciaguida, the great-grandfather of Dante, made known to us by the poet as a censurer of modern luxury, that is to say, of the progress towards luxury made since this second Crusade, received, upon this expedition, knighthood from the hand of the Emperor, and the crown of martyrdom from that of a Turk.

CHAPTER VI.

CONRAD III. [1147—1152.]

Conrad at Constantinople. — King Henry's Govern­ment.—Relations with the Pope.—Henry the Lion's Crusade.—Conrad's Return. — Rebellion of Welf.— Henry the Lion.—Death of King Henry.—Of Conrad. —Of St. Bernard.—State of Europe and Palestine.

In Europe the failure of this, the second Crusade, provoked universal wrath. The Abbot of Clairvaux, who of all the disappointed must have been the most deeply grieved and wounded, was now severely blamed for having preached it. He pleaded, in his justification, the express commands of the Pope, which he was bound implicitly to obey; and he attributed the failure to the sins of the Crusaders, who had, he averred, shown themselves unworthy to be champions of the Cross. He further sought alleviation to his own profound disappointment and affliction, as also to the general mortification, in two considerations. The one, the firm belief that the expedition had, at all events, wrought the salvation of the souls of those who had fallen in so holy a cause;—and what imperilled souls, to say the least, he knew many of them to be! The other, that misfortunes, of whatever kind—however bewildering to human reason—could only befall their victims by the appointment of God, in his inscrutable wisdom.

Conrad landed at Constantinople, and there committed his army to the charge of his nephew, with instructions to lead it home, with all convenient despatch, by the same road by which they .had come forth. He himself, the mutual dis­trust that had originally alienated the two Emperors having now given place to cordial confidence, remained for some little time at the Greek Court; professedly to recruit his health, which was seriously impaired by the fatigues, hardships, and vexations of his Syrian campaign. His real motive for lingering appears to have been to concert offensive and defensive measures against the King of Sicily, then still at war with Manuel. Roger’s constantly increasing power, combined with his scarcely dissembled hostility to Conrad, the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, who as such claimed his homage, required constant vigilance; and Conrad’s ap­prehensions had been aroused anew by a recent visit of Duke Welf’s to Palermo. Welf, it will be remembered, had ver­bally renounced his pretensions to Bavaria, and joined in the crusade. But when the rites of pilgrimage had been per­formed at Jerusalem, he refused to take part in the siege of Damascus; and, as though he had gone forth solely as a pilgrim, not as a crusader, embarked at Acre for Europe; but deviated from his course to make a long halt at the Sicilian Court in his way to Germany. He had since re­turned thence to put the schemes concerted with Roger in execution. Conrad could not doubt but that the object of this visit was to concoct some hostile design against himself and his brother Henry Jasomir. To counteract their league it was desirable to draw closer the union of the two empires; to which end, and to secure Constantinopolitan support to the Duke of Bavaria, Conrad had asked and obtained for his brother a promise of the hand of Manuel’s sister or niece, Theodora. To expedite and complete the marriage, Henry had remained behind with Conrad ; and when all these arrangements were perfected, the Western Emperor was conveyed, together with his brother and new sister-in-law, in Greek vessels, to the head of the Adriatic, upon the road home. Conrad’s course was, in the first instance, rather to Lombardy, whence he was to co-operate in arms with the forces of the Eastern Empire against the Normans. But he presently found it expedient to visit Germany, prior to taking active measures in Italy.

The young King’s government during his father’s absence had, with the exception of some of those usual feuds and disorders which no Truce of God, or Realm’s-peace, unless inforced by irresistible power, could effectually restrain, been reasonably tranquil. At Rome, Eugenius III had re-established himself, reducing his republican flock to tolerable order. He had compelled the Senators to receive their appointment from him conjointly, at least, with the people; had recovered the often contested royalties, and had abolished the office of Patrician, restoring that of Imperial Prefect; which he had restored as a papal, not an imperial office. If this encroachment upon imperial rights was not quite what might have been expected from the Pope towards an Emperor, who was at that very moment sacrificing his own interests to those of Christendom, the Holy Father’s conduct was otherwise unobjectionable; he professed, and probably felt, friendly sentiments towards King Henry, and readily afforded him whatever support he required.

During Henry’s reign as vicegerent for his absent father, only two events of material importance appear to have occurred. One was the death of Frederic the One-eyed, Duke of Swabia. He was ill when his brother and his son, despite his earnest remonstrances, took the Cross; and, notwithstanding the consolations and pious admonitions of St. Bernard, vexation at their resolution, and anxiety as to the issue of their enterprise, so aggravated his malady, that it baffled his physician’s skill and speedily carried him off. Duke Frederic, upon reaching Germany, at the head of the surviving Crusaders in April, 1149, found his father in the tomb, and Welf in Swabia, eagerly attacking the Hohenstaufen patrimony. The rightful heir immediately assumed the title of Duke of Swabia, and proceeded to restore peace in his duchy, by recovering his possessions from his maternal uncle, punishing such vassals as had, since his father’s death—whether by joining Welf or in private feuds—violated the Truce of God, enjoined during the continuance of the Crusade. His appearance seems to have broken the schemes of the confederates; Welf retired, for the moment at least, to his own fiefs, and all was temporarily quiet.

The other event was one of more extensive interest, being the substitute Crusade against the Slavonians of Germany, which some of the vowed champions of the Holy Sepulchre chose to deem the equivalent of an expedition to Palestine. Yet was this substitute crusade scarcely viewed with a favourable eye by the most powerful of the princes, who had made it an excuse for remaining at home, namely, the Duke of Saxony, and his former rival, but now reconciled, kinsman and neighbour, the Margrave of Brandenburg. But these princes are said to have been gifted with a dexterity in adapting themselves to circumstances not very consonant with their surnames of the Lion and the Bear. The Heathen Slavonians, for whose forcible conversion the crusade was projected, had long paid tribute to both princes; who contemplated annexing, at no distant day, the tributary lands to their own respective dominions. Whether the Lion might not look prospectively to a lion’s share may be questionable ; but for the moment they acted in concert, and were little inclined to see their management of the war interfered with, or the, to them profitable, state of tribute ­paying peace interrupted. By the menace of a crusade they might hope to frighten those tributaries into vassalage, but evidently desired nothing more from it, certainly nothing through the intervention of their brother princes ; to avoid which they endeavoured to procrastinate the opening of the crusade. A third Saxon chief, the Archbishop (late Dean) of Bremen, was differently circumstanced. The bishops to whom—when these tribes professed Christianity—their spiritual concerns had been committed, were his suffragans; and his duty, as their Metropolitan, as well as his temporal interest, demanded their re-instalment. He, therefore, was impatient to see the crusade in action, but wanted power to urge his confederates onward. Nor could any cordiality exist between him and the Duke of Saxony, who had plundered him of half his patrimony ; although, when he had secured his booty, the Duke had sought to conciliate him by under­taking the punishment of his murdered brother’s assassins.

The manoeuvres of the Lion and the Bear, for a while deferred the commencement of hostilities, which were at length begun by the Slavonians themselves, impatient of the ever impending and ever postponed storm. One tribe broke into the territories of the Earl of Holstein, the pro­fessed friend and ally of Niklot, Prince of the Obodrites, and other western Slavonians. The irruption was so unexpected that they surprised, seized, and plundered Earl Adolfs new city of Lubeck, before he could muster forces to defend it, or even to oppose their further progress. Thus provoked, the Duke and Margrave could procrastinate no longer, and the former set up the standard of the Cross. The Saxon Crusaders—joined by the Duke of Zäringen, with his Swabian and Burgundian vassals, mostly Alsatians and Swiss; by the alienated kinsmen, who, competitors for the crown of Denmark, suspended their almost fraternal war, to engage in a crusade that might add a province to the contested kingdom; and by a Polish prince—crossed the Elbe and laid siege to Dubin

But if thus forced into action, the inclinations of Henry and Albert were unchanged. They were quite determined not to see the land, they already deemed their own, divided amongst their Danish, Polish, and German allies, nor even amongst their own vassals; not to cede, for instance, so considerable an island as Rugen to Abbot Wibald, whose vassals fought in the crusading army, and who claimed it for his abbey of Corvey. It is said the Damascus game, or one bearing close analogy to it, was played at Dubin. In various ways the Lion and the Bear baffled the designs of their allies, fairly wearying them out; and, finally, by prevailing upon the alarmed Slavonians again to receive baptism, which left no pretence for a Crusade, and to release the Danish prisoners taken in their recent piratical in­cursions, which left the Danes no political quarrel, they put an end to the war. The belligerent missionaries withdrew triumphant to their homes; when the Slavonians, regardless of their baptism, but paying tribute as before to Saxony and Brandenburg, relapsed into their pristine idolatry, and their habitual piracy. The chief result of this crusade seems to have been the marriage of the Duke of Saxony to his cousin dementia, daughter of the Duke of Zäringen, settled during its continuance. It was, perhaps, upon the strength of his thus redoubled alliance with Zäringen, that Henry now, without awaiting either the further proceedings of an Imperial Diet, or—as he was not only bound by all laws concerning crusaders, but pledged by oath to do—the return of his crusading sovereign, entitled himself Duke of Saxony and Bavaria.

This assertion of a claim, disallowed by the Diet and formally renounced by himself, was not the only annoying affair that greeted Conrad at his return. Although Welf’s invasion of Swabia appears to have been a rashly spontaneous attempt to profit by his brother-in-law’s death and his nephew’s absence, the suspicions, that his visit to Roger had awakened, were fully justified. The King of Sicily, eager to excite disturbances in Germany, had not only promised Welf ample supplies of money to support his empty pretensions to Bavaria, but sought through him to open a correspondence with the other pretender to that duchy, W elf's nephew; whose co-operation could be expected only upon the plan of two rivals joining to wrest from a third the prize, to be afterwards battled for between themselves. Ghibeline writers accuse Eugenius III of concurrence in these designs of his vassal-k.ing, which, when they became apparent, he strongly condemned But proof of such duplicity does not appear; nor without it should the pupil of St. Bernard be suspected of conduct so repugnant to his principles.

The rebellion thus planned not having been organized in time to profit by the absence of the Emperor, broke out soon after his return. Welf and his unfailing ally, the Duke of Zäringen, again invaded Bavaria; assisted by Hungarian troops, paid, in all likelihood, with Sicilian gold, whom Geisa, notwithstanding his friendly professions to the Emperor, sent to support his rebel; whilst Henry the Lion, whether in concert with his uncle or not, armed in Saxony. It is to be observed that some uncertainty touching the frontier of the Austrian march—Bavaria having once extended to the Raab if not to the Theiss, and Hungary since to the Ens—kept up constant ill-blood between Hungary and Bavaria. Thus aided, Welf was enabled to possess himself, not indeed of Bavaria, which Henry would hardly have suffered him to seize, but of some Hohenstaufen castles, and to carry the civil war, with its devastations and misery, across the Rhine, and even into Lorrain. Tidings of these troubles no sooner reached the Pope than, through the Abbot of Clairvaux, he transmitted to the Imperial Crusader the strongest assurances that from him the rebels neither had, nor should have, support or countenance; and that St. Bernard firmly believed the assurances he conveyed, there can be no doubt. Whether trusting them or not, Conrad diligently occupied himself with all necessary measures for extinguishing the rebellion. The command of the army raised for that purpose he entrusted to his son, and in February of the following year, 1150, King Henry completely routed the insurgents. The Duke of Swabia then solicited and obtained permission to mediate a cessation of hostilities, so painful to his feelings, between his paternal and maternal relations. He prevailed upon Welf to abandon his groundless pretensions to Bavaria, in consideration of being invested by the Emperor with several valuable fiefs; upon Conrad to grant this compensation; and enjoyed the high gratification of reconciling his two beloved uncles.

But only partial was this restoration of peace; and still was Conrad obliged to defer both his coronation progress to Rome, and the expedition against the King of Sicily, concerted with Manuel. If the uncle had abandoned an utterly unfounded pretension, the nephew only the more vehemently advanced his claim to Bavaria; a claim that was undeniable, save as invalidated by his father's rebellion and subsequent contumacy, the sentence of the Diet, and his own formal renunciation upon compromise. Henry the Lion asserted that his patrimonial duchy, of which he had already assumed the title, had been unjustly confiscated from his father; and he protested against his own renunciation upon two grounds—the first, that it had been surreptitiously extorted from a minor, incompetent thus to surrender his own rights, much more those of his pos­terity; the second, that the surrender was solely in favour of his mother, and, therefore, when she died, leaving no child but himself, her duchy came to him as her sole heir. Conrad referred the question to a Diet, as the only tribunal authorized to decide one of such magnitude, and summoned a Diet to assemble for this express purpose at Ulm.

But the Duke of Saxony, notwithstanding the general displeasure that Conrad’s transfer of Bavaria to Henry Jasomir had excited, feared the indisposition of his brother princes to see any individual of their body acquire so immense a preponderance as must result from the union of two of the original duchies ; and chose to rely rather upon his own arms than their decision. He did not attend the Diet, but appeared in arms upon the frontier of Bavaria and Swabia. Albert’s hopes revived upon the rebellion of his rival, which superseded the reference to a Diet; and Conrad, at his entreaty, invaded Saxony in concert with him, leaving the defence of Bavaria to the Dukes of Bavaria and Swabia.

This invasion recalled the Lion to defend the duchy of which he had possession, yet it should seem recalled him singly. He is said to have left his army to take care of itself (of course appointing a leader, but the accounts are little circumstantial and somewhat confused) making his way in disguise into Saxony, there to raise another army to oppose the invaders. But a heavy private mis­fortune that befel the Emperor interfered with the pro­secution of these operations, relieved the Duke from all immediate apprehensions, and occasioned a further delay of the projected expedition to Italy.

In the year 1151 Conrad lost his son Henry, his already elected and crowned colleague and successor. It was not to indulge his parental grief that be postponed his important avocations. The new arrangements, requisite in a matter so important as the succession, were now in his opinion his most urgent business, more urgent even than the re­pression of Henry the Lion’s ambition ; and necessarily to be completed before he should either risk his own person in battle, or again quit Germany ; whether to receive the Imperial crown in Rome, to arbitrate between the Pope and the Romans, who were again calling upon him to undertake that office, or to co-operate with Manuel. His only remaining son had barely completed his seventh year; and under existing circumstances Conrad would not suffer paternal affection to supersede the dictates of patriotic policy. He made no attempt to substitute the boy Frederic for the promising young man he and the empire had lost in King Henry; but recommended his nephew, Frederic Duke of Swabia, to the princes as his successor, upon the several grounds of his being then in the full vigour of manhood; distinguished alike for the highest intel­lectual qualities, as for energy, valour, and personal prowess; and of his blood relationship to the Welfs, which would tend to allay the chief feud that had distracted Germany during his own reign. For his infant son he merely requested that he might, when of man’s estate, be invested with the family duchy of Swabia, and the Fran­conian patrimony of his grandmother, the Princess Agnes.

These preparatory arrangements were only in progress; no Diet had as yet elected the subordinate colleague and future successor to the Emperor—at a later period entitled King of the Romans, and regularly so elected; nor is it certain even that any summonses for the purpose had been issued. A Diet was indeed upon the point of assembling at Bamberg, not a usual place for the sitting of Electoral Diets, and there was probably no present intention of taking any step beyond consulting the Princes of the Empire upon these plans, upon the chastisement of the contumacious Duke of Saxony, and the coronation expedition, when Conrad was seized with a sudden malady, with which the leechcraft of the age proved inadequate to grapple. Upon the 15th of February, 1152, after committing the regalia to the hands of the Duke of Swabia, Conrad expired, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. He was at the time supposed to have been poisoned by his Italian physician, a pupil of the highly reputed medical school of Salerno, at the instigation, according to some writers, of his constant enemy Roger; according to others, of Eugenius III, who was believed to dread his appearance in Italy, lest the repeated invitations of the Romans might have so stimulated his ambition, or so biassed his judgment in their favour, as to endanger the temporal sovereignty of the Popes. There is not only no proof of this crime, but no adequate motive alleged, the Duke of Saxony’s rebellion being certain to occupy the Emperor for some time at least in Germany; and consequently no rational ground for suspicion, beyond Conrad’s death being somewhat premature; but he, in answer to that, is said never to have thoroughly recovered from the hardships and the sufferings, physical and mental, undergone in Asia Minor. A modern writer has to contend with a strong desire to omit, either as wearisome or as absurd, this ever recurring accusation of poisoning, which would be ludicrous, were it not a revolting indication of the state of moral feeling. As such, the conscientious historian has no choice but to record it.

Conrad was a brave, upright, sensible, and pious man, a well intentioned and energetic monarch; but the embarrassments caused him by the enmity of the Welts, and the consequent exhaustion of his resources, together with the consumption of money, time, and human life by his crusade, not n little hampered and impaired the beneficial vigour of his government. If his reign gave birth to no new encroachments, papal or episcopal, upon the imperial authority, he was unable to recover any of the rights and privileges ceded by Lothar, to correct any of the abuses that had crept into the Church—and the extent of these may be inferred from the single fact, that in 1145 the Chapter of Liege, freed from monastic restraint, consisted, not of poor scholars, but of nine sons of kings, fourteen sons of dukes, thirty sons of earls, and seven of barons and knights—. Or to reduce the great vassals to reasonable subjection. To judge by an anecdote which a modern Italian writer has extracted from an old chronicler, he was at least an admirer of learning. The recent compatriot biographer of Italy’s great poet relates that Conrad, being entangled by a pro­fessed dialectician in a net of logic, uttered a regretful reflection upon the happiness of those who could devote their hours to such studies.

To avoid interrupting the history of the next reign with matter irrelevant thereto, the death of Conrad’s revered contemporary, the Abbot of Clairvaux, which took place the following year 1153, preceded by such characteristic incidents, relative to this extraordinary man, as have not hitherto found a fitting place, may be here, though some­what prematurely, inserted. St. Bernard’s dread of the presumption of human reason, rather than any doubt of its capacity to grapple with doctrinal questions, and his consequent mistrust of every deviation, even from esta­blished forms of speech upon religious topics, are strikingly exemplified in his intercourse with Abelard. The Abbot selected from the works of that erudite, as astute, dialec­tician, a number of propositions, which he denounced to a French Synod as heretical. The Synod summoned the accused teacher, who was then .Abbot of St. Gildas in Britanny (having resigned the Paraclete, as a nunnery, to Eloisa, who is stated to have there held a school of theology, Greek and Hebrew), to answer to the accusa­tion, and Abelard, promptly obeying, prepared to defend the assailed propositions, by proving them orthodox. But the Abbot of Clairvaux positively refused to risk his own orthodoxy by listening to arguments that might bewilder him, that he might be unable to refute whilst knowing them to be heretical, and insisted upon their being simply submitted to the Pope. The most remarka­ble part of the story perhaps, is that the arrogant, as able, Abelard, agreed so to submit his opinions, and when the Pope pronounced them heterodox, at once recanted them. St. Bernard, charmed by such humility united to such abilities, became thenceforward one of his staunchest friends; the other being Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, in whose abbey the accused had awaited the papal decision, and after receiving it passed the remainder of his life. While speaking of Abelard, it may be added that two letters, both addressed to Eloisa, yet exist, which go far to prove his submission and recantation honest; the one written in full confidence by himself, and con­taining his perfectly orthodox profession of faith; the other from the pen of Peter the Venerable, condoling with the Abbess of the Paraclete, upon the death of her friend, and giving a very touching account of the perfect piety that gilded the latter years, and the closing scene of his life.

When commanded by the Pope to put down heresy, not by disputation, but by simply preaching to heretics, our Abbot’s conduct was different. A monk, named Henry, whether French, Swiss or Italian, seems doubtful, impelled either by strong doctrinal opinions, or by impatience of the monotony of conventual duties, fled from his cloister; and leading an apparently vagabond life, as a missionary, by the fame of his learning and his ascetic habits, such as walking barefoot, eating the poorest food, and the like, collected in the south of France a number of disciples, who called themselves Henricians. What were the specific doctrines, beyond the rejection of infant baptism, that he taught, is again not clear; Whilst endeavouring to steer clear between contemporary Romanist bigotry that imputed every absurdity and every vice to every heretic, and the Protestant bigotry of later times, that regards every dissenter from the Church of Rome as a philosopher and a saint, it must be constantly borne in mind, that all extant information concerning early heretics is derived from their adversaries. Henry has been called a Manichean, then a favourite designation for a heretic; and it is known, that like Arnold of Brescia, he declaimed against the wealth of the Church, the luxury of prelates, the dissolute lives of monks and nuns, and the general unapostolic conduct of the clergy. But to oppose this, St. Bernard, the known steady censor of all such offences, though addressing his censures only to the offenders, not disturbing the minds of the laity with them, would scarcely have been selected. Some dogmas contrary to those of the Church of Rome he must have taught; and a suspicion that they might be licentious, arises from a letter of the Abbot of Clairvaux, which declares the heresiarch’s life to be so. In it he expressly states that Henry, after preaching all day, usually passed the night either with courtesans or with the wives of some of his flock. And even the admirers of Henry, who speak of him as rigid in his life, and famed for sanctity as well as learning, are said to admit the truth of this charge of libertinism.

Against, or rather to these Henricians, Eugenius III ordered Abbot Bernard to preach; and he, in obedience to the mandate, journeyed from his abbey to the county of Toulouse, where they chiefly abounded. His success in recalling them to the bosom of the Church was great; and is believed to have been chiefly due to his meekness, and to the evidence borne by his personal appearance to his own abstinence from the luxurious indulgences which his hearers so reprobated in the clergy, and which really seem to have been the main cause of their dissent from the Romish Church. In proof of this, it is related that, as he, one day at Toulouse, remounted his palfrey, after preaching to a congregation of Henricians, one of the heretics tauntingly cried, “Sir Abbot, your master did not ride so fat a horse!’’—“That I know, friend,” Bernard quietly an­swered: “but it is the nature of beasts to feed and grow fat. We shall be judged, not by our cattle but—ourselves.” As he spoke he opened his garment, showing his emaciated, fleshless neck and breast. The scoffer was silenced, and the greater part of the crowd converted.

But Abbot Bernard’s horror of heresy was not confined to such as were the offspring of bold or of astute human reason. His mysticism could not betray him into sanction­ing or conniving at mystic innovations. The Canons of Lyons having, in 1136, put forth the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, he, though professing especial devotion to the Virgin, sharply rebuked them for advancing a dangerous novelty, which must be offensive to the Blessed Virgin herself, who possessed more than a sufficiency of certain merits.

Proceeding to the death-bed of the zealous Abbot, we find it a scene of activity, for, lying upon it, he finished his trea­tise, De Considerations sui, addressed to Eugenius III. In this work he expresses, almost as strongly as could Arnold of Brescia, or the monk Henry, his disapprobation of the exercise of temporal power by ecclesiastics, even by the Pope, and also of the actual pomp, state, troops, dress, &c. &c. of the supreme pontiff, as unseemly in the successor of the fisherman, St. Peter. To a work of a different kind he was called as he still lay on his dying-bed, from which he rose to undertake it. The Archbishop of Treves re­quested him to effect a reconciliation between the citizens of Metz and a neighbouring nobleman, whose feud he him­self, though both parties were of his flock, found it impos­sible to appease. The Abbot, indefatigable in all good offices, regardless of suffering and of debility, repaired to Metz, with considerable difficulty, accomplished his mission of charity, and returned to Clairvaux to die amongst his monks, of whom he is said to have had ultimately seven hundred in his own abbey. He himself had founded seventy-two Cistercian monasteries in different countries, whilst such was the influence of his reputation upon that of his Order, that before his death the number of Cistercian cloisters is estimated at five hundred. He was canonized within twenty years after his death.

It were surely superfluous to add any character of Abbot Bernard, or to vindicate him from the sneers of philosophers, or even from the charge of ambition and of red-hot fury against heretics. A mystic and fanatic he might be, but mysticism and fanaticism were integral elements of the spirit of the age, and without them he could hardly have influenced his contemporaries. He seems the very imper­sonation of the purest religious feeling of the twelfth century.

With respect to the state of the known world at Conrad’s death, a few words, after what has been already stated, will suffice. Of the countries most connected with, and often dependent upon, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, it has been seen, was then quietly governed by Geisa, whilst in Poland the brother Dukes were still struggling for, and successively obtaining, supremacy. In Denmark Eric had not, like Canute, submitted to Lothar’s decision. He had continued the civil war; and both Niel and Magnus having fallen in battle, had possessed himself of the crown, with as little regard to his nephew Waldemar’s right, as Niel had shown to that of his nephew and Eric’s brother, Canute. But Eric himself was now in the tomb, and his son Swayn was struggling for the succession against Magnus’s son, Canute, both being legitimate heirs of illegitimate kings; whilst Waldemar, in modern acceptation from the first the only rightful heir, claiming nothing beyond his father’s duchy, with which he was invested, zealously supported the son of his father’s avenger against the son of his father’s murderer. To enter into these broils farther than is neces­sary to explain the intervention of the German sovereigns, were superfluous; but one Danish achievement of this epoch is illustrative of the social condition of the times. Such were the evils inflicted on the Danish shores by Slavonian piracy, that a citizen of Roeskilde founded a Gilde, under the name of the Roeskilde Brotherhood, for repressing it:—a proper instance of the Scandinavian sense of the word gilde. So dangerous was the service esteemed to which this brotherhood devoted itself, that they never embarked to prosecute their object without preparing themselves by Confession, Absolution, and receiving the Sacrament. The rules of the gilde were the equal division of all booty, and the release of all Christian slaves found in the hands of the pirates, if Danes, gratuitously; if strangers, upon paying a moderate ransom. What pecuniary assistance they might require to equip their vessels—they took nothing to sea with them but their arms—was repaid by a propor­tionate share of the booty.

With regard to unconnected and clearly independent countries, in the western peninsula, Countess Teresa, de­throned and imprisoned by her son, was dead; that son, Alfonso Henriques, having reconquered the greater part of Portugal from the Arabs, had received primarily from his triumphant army, and afterwards from the first Portuguese Cortes, celebrated as the Constituent Cortes of Lamego, the title of King. Castile and Leon were again dissevered, Alfonso VII having divided them between his two sons. Navarre in like manner was again dissevered from Aragon, with which, on the other hand, the county of Barcelona, i. e. Catalonia, was indissolubly united. And here occurred one of those instances of disinterested virtue and genuine piety, whether perfectly judicious or not, with which the inclination to refresh the mind of both writer and reader amidst so much perfidy, intrigue, inordinate ambition, and wanton cruelty, is irresistible. Happily it has not yet been reasoned away, though both overlooked and ridiculed it has been. When the bellicose consort of Queen Urraca, Alfonso of Aragon and Navarre, died without children, both those kingdoms were at a loss for a king. He, his only brother, Ramiro, being a monk, had bequeathed both to the Templars, but to this disposition neither would submit. Navarre proclaimed a remote scion of her own original royal race King; as Aragon did Ramiro, imploring the Pope to grant him a dispensation from his vows, that he might reign, marry, and save the royal line from extinction. It was granted; the monk ascended the throne, and mar­ried. Within the year his Queen bore him a daughter; when, esteeming the object for which the dispensation had been granted attained, he required the Cortes to acknow­ledge and swear allegiance to the infant Petronilla as their Queen; he married her in her cradle to Raymond V, Earl of Barcelona, committed the regency, till the baby Queen should be of age to govern, to him, and returned to his cell. In Moslem Spain, the Almoravide tyranny was at an end. A moslem sect, called the Almohades, or Al Mowa­hidin,  had risen against it in Morocco; and this division of the Almoravide forces had enabled the Spanish Arabs to throw off a yoke long impatiently borne. The Almohades, not having as yet emerged from Africa, Mos­lem Spain, temporarily emancipated, broke into almost as many small states as it contained large towns; many of which, during this period of Mohammedan weakness there, the Christian princes, especially Alfonso the Battler and Alfonso Henriques, conquered.

The state of France was unchanged. The dissensions of the King and Queen ran high, but had not yet severed Aquitaine and Poitou from the crown. Elinor laughed at the monarch, who, in obedience to priestly injunctions, had cut off the long flowing locks which, however un­manly in modern eyes, had long been the mark of royal dignity, and still denoted high birth and chivalry, scornfully complaining that she had married a monk in lieu of a king. Lewis on his part doubted her fidelity, but too well knew the value of her Aquitaine and Poitou principalities to repudiate their sovereign, at least until she should have brought him a son to unite them indissolubly with the crown of France.

In England, Stephen was now in tranquil possession of the crown, upon the understanding that the Empress Maud’s son, Henry Earl of Anjou, should succeed him; to which, upon the loss of his own only son, he readily assented. Scotland, like Ireland, was scarcely known in European politics.

Northern Scandinavia remained pretty much in the condition already described; but an incident of its recent history may be worth recording, as illustrative of manners. A Norwegian King, who died a.d. 1136, having left two sons, of the respective ages of five and three years, a col­lateral heir claimed the kingdom; when the champions of the joint minor kings deemed their heading their army so indispensable, that they carried the babies to the post they should have occupied as men; where one of them was crippled for life by the wounds he received in the arms of his warrior-nurse. The state of the church in both Sweden and Norway, being reported as alike disorderly and unsatis­factory, Eugenius III sent Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman, of whom more hereafter, to reform it. He endeavoured to inforce in both kingdoms the celibacy of the clergy and the payment of tithes; but was more suc­cessful in establishing a regular hierarchy in Norway, an Archbishop of Drontheim, or Nidaros, with his suffragan bishops in Iceland, the Faroe, the Shetland, and the Orkney islands.

In Russia the sovereignty had, long before the middle of this century, made one step towards the regular heredi­tary principle. The Grand Prince Vladimir, surnamed Monomach (probably after the Byzantine Emperor, Con­stantine Monomachus), an able and ambitious monarch, had achieved limitation to his own descendants, of the suc­cession still by eldership, not degree of relationship, to the dignity of grand-prince, thus excluding his innumerable kin of vassal princes. About this time Kiew had ceded to Vladimir the title  of grand-principality; but Moscow, though not yet elevated to supremacy, was no longer unknown. The Grand-Prince George Vladimirowitz, Vladimir Monmach’s son, passing through it whilst yet a village, was at once charmed with its situation, and, offended by some deficiency in its Lord’s marks of reverence; whereupon he put the disrespectful Lord to death, carried off the children of his victim, the sons as prisoners, the daughter for the wife of his own eldest son; and seizing the village, enlarged and raised it to the rank of a city, inviting, it is said, the most civilized of the Slavonians to people it.

The Greek Empire, it has been seen, was still, in an interval of tolerable prosperity, under the able, if not chivalrously honourable, Manuel Comnenus. It was at that moment engaged in an often-recurring war with Hungary for Servia, which resolutely asserted its independence of both realms.

In Syria, intolerance of a woman’s reign had, when Melisenda made an European kinsman, named Manasse, Constable, been inflamed to the utmost. The disgraceful end of the siege of Damascus, wheresoever the fault lay, had exasperated all discontents. Baldwin, who had long been impatient of his subjection to his mother, was easily stimulated to wrest the government from her by force of arms. He first compelled her to divide the kingdom with him ; and presently, hungering now for the whole as before for a part, forcibly reduced her to the single town of Neapolis. But if he unfilially indulged his ambition, it was not in a mere spirit of boyish vanity, or as the puppet of the courtiers and politicians, who had urged him on. The Archbishop of Tyre asserts that the disappointments and mortifications of his campaign with the Crusaders completely roused him from the vices and follies of youth, to undertake, with a strong sense of their reality, the cares of manhood and sovereignty. And although he still, more chivalrously than regally, indulged in some idly marauding incursions upon Moslem lands, when no longer irritated by Melisenda’s authority, he learned to value her wisdom, and seek her advice.

Whilst this was passing in the kingdom of Jerusalem, Noureddin was prosecuting the hostilities his father had begun against the northern Syro-Frank States. Earl Joscelin, who had been spurred to active exertion by the loss of Edessa, was taken prisoner, and never released. His Countess prepared vigorously to defend the remnant of her children’s heritage, but was utterly unable, single­handed, to offer any resistance to the Moslem arms. The pre-eminently chivalrous Prince Raymond fell in battle. The widowed Princess of Antioch, Constance, was totally unfit to supply the place of her lost consort ; but the Patriarch, who in this emergency seized the reins of govern­ment, made every preparation for defending the capital, against which Noureddin advanced. His measures and the natural strength of Antioch deterred the Moslem conqueror from a siege, to which he as yet deemed himself hardly equal. He passed under the walls, terrifying the Princess and the inhabitants with the display of his forces, performed the ablutions prescribed by his religion, in the sea, in token of having triumphantly reached its shore, and retired to devastate the less defended parts of the two principalities.

Baldwin now came to the assistance of the menaced ladies. But experience had taught him the value of his mother’s policy; and, instead of rushing into war with the powerful Noureddin, he made overtures to him on their behalf. The triumphant invader, wishing to increase his power for the final struggle by subjugating the still inde­pendent Mohammedan potentates within reach, prior to attacking the whole of the Christian States, agreed to a truce, pledging himself during its continuance to abstain from any inroad upon the remaining territories of Antioch and Edessa, provided the Princess, her son, and the Countess, renounced all pretension to what he had con­quered. For Constance this was sufficient; but it was so clear that the poor remainder of the county of Edessa could not repel invasion whenever the war should be renewed, that Baldwin advised the Countess to close with the pro­posal of the Emperor Manuel, who offered her a liberal pension for herself and her children upon condition of her surrendering the remainder of the county to him. She did so; and a Greek army, then in Cilicia, was sent to occupy and defend it.

Baldwin had an ulterior object in this advice, which was the increase of the Syro-Frank population of his own more especial dominions. All Edessans of this description, the Countess and her family included, upon the transfer of the district to the Byzantine Empire, migrated southwards, and escorted by Baldwin and his troops reached Palestine in safety. Manuel was the least gainer by the transaction; for Noureddin, holding the truce to be void in respect to the county when the Countess with whom it was made ceased to be a party concerned, immediately attacked the territory she had resigned. Constantinopolitan troops fought well only under their Emperor’s own eye, and Manuel was not in Syria; the whole province was finally lost to the Christians within the year, increasing the force of their most formidable enemy. Another incident that about this time tended to weaken the Syro-Frank States was the murder of the Earl of Tripoli. Although his having been suspected of poisoning the Earl of Toulouse may show him not a very estimable character, his death was an evil; being imputed to the native Syrians, it exasperated all of European origin against them, besides leaving Tripoli to a minor. Baldwin immediately committed the regency to the young. Earl’s mother, Countess Hodierna, Melisenda’s youngest sister; and thus both Antioch and Tripoli were ruled by women and children, and the kingdom of Jerusalem, or rather the Syro-Frank States were, for the first time, seriously threatened. For the southern frontier no apprehensions were entertained; the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt having already sunk deep into the degeneracy, the lethargy of voluptuous indolence, that seems to be the inevitable lot of every Oriental dynasty.

CHAPTER V. CONRAD III. [1147—1148.]

The Second Crusade.—March of the German Crusaders.—Passage through Hungary.—Through the Greek Empire.—Intercourse with Constantinople.—March of the French Crusaders.—Disasters of the Crusaders in Asia Minor.—Crusaders in Palestine.—Siege of Damascus.—Of Ascalon.— Unsatisfactory end of the Crusade