"I ask you, on your fealty, whether, if the ship were your own, and freighted with your own merchandise, you would leave her?"
And they replied all together "No!" for they liked better to put their bodies in peril of drowning than to buy a new ship at great cost.
"Why then," asked the king, "do you advise me to leave the ship?"
"Because," said they, "the stakes are not equal. For neither gold nor silver can be set against your person and the persons of your wife and children who are here; therefore we advise you not to put yourself or them in danger."
Then the king said, "Lords, I have heard your opinion and that of my people, and now I will tell you mine, which is this: If I leave the ship there are in her five hundred people and more who will land in this Isle of Cyprus, for fear of peril to their body—since there is none that does not love his life as much as I love mine—and these, peradventure, will never return to their own land. Therefore I like better to place my own person, and my wife, and my children in God's hands than do this harm to the many people who are here."
Their next adventure might have been more serious, at least for some of the crew. Sailing away in comparative safety in the damaged ship they came at length to the island of the sea called Pentelema, which was peopled by Saracens who were subjects of the King of Sicily and the King of Tunis.
"The queen begged the king to send thither three galleys to get fruit for the children; and the king consented, and ordered the masters of the galleys to go thither, and be ready to come back to him when his ship passed before the island. The galleys entered into a little port that was on the island; and it chanced that when the king's ship passed before the port, we got no tidings of the galleys.
"Then did the mariners begin to murmur among themselves.
"The king caused them to be summoned, and asked them what they thought of the matter. The mariners said it seemed to them that the Saracens had captured his people and his galleys.
"'But we advise and counsel you, sire, not to wait for them; for you are between the kingdom of Sicily and the kingdom of Tunis, which love you not at all. If, however, you suffer us to sail forward, we shall, during the night, have delivered you from peril, for we shall have passed through the strait.'
"'Truly,' said the king, 'I shall not listen to you, and leave my people in the hands of the Saracens without at least, doing all in my power to deliver them. I command you to turn your sails and we will fall upon them.'
"And when the queen heard this, she began to make great lamentation and said, 'Alas! this is all my doing!'
"While they were turning the sails of the king's ship and of the other ships, we saw the galleys coming from the island. When they came to the king, the king asked the mariners why they had tarried; and they replied that they could not help themselves, but that the fault lay with certain sons of burgesses of Paris, of whom there were six, who stayed eating the fruit of the gardens, wherefore they had been unable to get them off, nor could they leave them behind.
"Then the king commanded that the six burghers' sons should be put into the barge a-stern; at which they began to cry and to howl, saying, 'Sire, for God's sake, take for ransom all that we have, but do not put us there, where murderers and thieves are put; for we shall be shamed to all time.'
"The queen and all of us did what we could to move the king; but he would listen to none of us.
"So they were put into the barge, and remained there till we came to land; and they were there in such danger and distress that when the sea rose, the waves flew over their heads, and they had to sit down, lest the wind should carry them into the sea.
"And it served them right; for their gluttony caused us such mischief that we were delayed for eight good days, because the king had caused the ships to turn right about."
So at length Louis came to his own land of France; but his heart was full of longing for the "holy fields" of Palestine, and he was not content to live a life of luxury at the court while Jerusalem was yet in the hands of the infidel.
"After the king returned from overseas, he lived in such devotion that never did he wear fur of beaver or grey squirrel, nor scarlet, nor gilded stirrups and spurs. His clothing was of camlet and blue cloth, the fur on his coverlets and clothing was deer's hide, or the skin from the hare's legs, or lambskin. He was so sober in his eating that he never ordered special meats outside what his cook prepared; what was set before him that did he eat. He put water to his wine in a glass goblet, and according to the strength of the wine he added water thereto by measure; and would hold the goblet in his hand while they mixed water with his wine behind his table. He always caused food to be given to his poor, and after they had eaten, caused money to be given to them."
Thus, for the next fifteen years the king fulfilled the duties of his royal position in France; and all the while the voice of the East was calling, calling with insistent voice, as news of lost cities, quarrels between those who should have united themselves against the Saracens, and invasions of new and hostile races reached his ears.
CHAPTER XX
The Story of the Fall of Acre
"Because the chasuble is of red serge," said he,
"that signifies that this
Crusade shall be of little profit."
LE SIRE DE JOINVILLE: Memoirs of St Louis.
During the interval between the Eighth and Ninth Crusades, affairs in the Holy Land had gone from bad to worse.
The knights of the Hospital and Temple spent all their time in private quarrels and combats, and the merchants of Genoa and Pisa followed their evil example. The Moguls were continually harassing both Saracens and Christians, and when they were driven out by the combined forces of the two latter, the Sultan Bibars took the opportunity to seize the few towns that were left when the Crusade was over.
Nazareth was almost destroyed, Cæsarea, Joppa and Antioch fell, Acre was sorely threatened. In vain did Jerusalem call upon the Pope for help; his attention was fixed, not on Palestine but on Constantinople, where the Latin Empire had vanished, and a new Greek dynasty had been set up under Michael Palæologus. Absorbed in his desire to gain acknowledgment from this quarter, Clement IV. gave only half-hearted encouragement to a Ninth Crusade, yet he did succeed in stirring up enthusiasm in a somewhat unexpected quarter.
To England, still in the turmoil of the Baron's War, came the message of Clement reminding Henry III. of his old promise to take up the Cross; and the answer came, not from Henry, the inert and ineffective king, but from young prince Edward, his eldest son, moved perhaps rather by the expediency of employing his treasonable barons than by a keen desire for the freedom of Jerusalem.
One there was, however, who needed no urging, and had no base motives in his longing to start upon a Ninth Crusade. Saint Louis, as we have seen, had left his heart behind him in the Holy Land, and when he summoned all his barons to Paris in the Lent of 1267, it was not hard to guess the reason.
Among those who responded to the call went the Sire de Joinville, and, seeing how well he knew the mind of the king, it was no wonder that he should dream on the night of his arrival that he saw Louis on his knees, before an altar, whilst many prelates, duly vested, placed upon his shoulders a red chasuble of Rheims serge. Calling his chaplain, a very wise man, Joinville told him of the vision, and the priest at once said:
"Lord, you will see that the king will take the Cross to-morrow."
Joinville asked why he thought so; and he answered that it was because of the dream; for the chasuble of red serge signified the Cross; which was red with the blood that Christ shed from His side and His feet and His hands. "And because the chasuble is of Rheims serge," said he, "that signifies that the Crusade shall be of little profit, as you shall see if God gives you life," for Rheims serge was but poor and common material, and worth but very little.
So Joinville went to the king's chapel, and heard two knights talking there, one to the other. Then one said, "Never believe me if the king is not going to take the Cross here!"
And the other made answer, "If the king takes the Cross, this will be one of the most dolorous days that ever were in France. For if we do not take the Cross we shall lose the king's favour; and if we take the Cross we shall lose God's favour, because we shall not take it for His sake but for the sake of the king."
"So," adds Joinville, tersely, "it happens that on the following day the king took the Cross, and his three sons with him; and afterwards it befell that the Crusade was of little profit, according to the prophecy of my priest."
With this second expedition of Louis, Joinville himself had scant sympathy. He refused to join it on the ground that he owed a higher duty to his own poor and ruined people. And he held that those who advised the King to go "seeing how weak he was of body, for he could bear neither to drive nor to ride," were guilty of mortal sin.
"So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre, where I took leave of him, to the abbey of the Franciscans. And yet, weak as he was, if he had remained in France, he might have lived longer and done much good and many good works."
However that might have been, Louis' work as a Crusader was well-nigh over. He left France accompanied by the Kings of Navarre and Aragon, and by many of his barons, and by sixty thousand of his men. Driven by a tempest to Sardinia, the leaders decided to turn aside to Tunis, whose king was suspected of being willing to become a Christian. Landing on the site of the ancient town of Carthage, they had but pitched their tents when a plague of sickness broke out in the camp, and the King and his son were the first to be struck down.
When he knew that his end drew very near, St Louis caused himself to be laid upon a bed of ashes, in token of his penitence, and all through that last night they heard him murmur at intervals, with longing in his voice, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
But resignation to the Will of God was not difficult to a man whose character had been formed by a life of prayer and unselfish devotion.
"I will enter Thy house, O Lord, I will worship in Thy sanctuary," were the words of joy upon his lips, as he breathed his last.
"And it was at the same hour that the Son of God died upon the Cross for the world's salvation," says Joinville, who adds, moreover, the following touching tribute to the good king.
"A piteous thing and worthy of tears is the death of this saintly prince, who kept and guarded his realm so holily and loyally, and gave alms there so largely, and set therein so many fair foundations. And, like as the scribe who, writing his book, illuminates it with gold and azure, so did the said king illuminate his realm with the fair abbeys that he built, and the great number of alms-houses, and the houses for preachers and Franciscans, and other religious orders. And his bones were put in a casket and borne thence, and buried at St Denis, in France, where he had chosen his place of burial."
With St Louis died the deep religious side of the Crusades. Other kings had vague longings and desires, but none of them were driven to take part in the Holy War by the same fervent wish to lay down their lives for the Cause of God.
The work was now taken up by Edward, eldest son of the English King, Henry III. With him marched the great English nobles who had so lately been involved in the Barons' War; for Edward's main motive was to keep them employed and deprive them of opportunities for further rebellion.
Edward reached Tunis about seven weeks after the death of Louis, and found the camp in much disorder. The French barons were intent upon forcing the King of Tunis to pay tribute to the Sicilian sovereign, son of their late ruler, and were quite averse from proceeding at once on the Crusade. They all decided at length to go to Sicily for the winter, but the French Crusaders said openly that they wished the expedition deferred for at least four years. The death of the king and queen of Navarre and of the young queen of Louis' successor Philip the Bold, threw a gloom over their retreat, and before long all the French host returned to their native land.
Edward alone remained firm to his purpose, and in the following spring, with his little force of seven thousand men, he landed in Palestine. His first act was one of terrible revenge. Marching to Nazareth he took the town and put the Saracen inhabitants to the sword.
He then returned to Acre, only just in time to save the city from a Turkish raid; and there he seems to have had some curious intercourse with the Emir of Joppa, who pretended that he was anxious to become converted to Christianity.
But sickness fell upon Edward, and as he lay upon his bed, an assassin, sent as a bearer of letters from the Emir, gained admittance and struck the prince in the shoulder with a poisoned dagger.
Weak as he was, Edward had enough strength in reserve to grapple with the fellow, wrest the dagger from him and stab him to the heart. Doubtless the skilful nursing of his devoted wife, Eleanor, restored the prince to health, whether or no the story is true that she sucked the poison from the wound at the risk of her own life. The chronicles of the time give the credit to a clever young English doctor who cut away the poisoned flesh, but, however that may be, Edward had seen enough of the Holy Land to realise that his task was both dangerous and hopeless. When, therefore, letters from England urged his return on the score of his father's failing health, he hastened to make a ten years' truce with the Sultan, and to set out upon his homeward journey.
After his departure the old state of things was revived in the Holy Land. None knew who was in truth the rightful king, even in name, of the ill-fated kingdom of Jerusalem. The two great military orders of the Hospital and the Temple spent their time and energies in fighting with one another over their supposed rights; and the commercial rivalry of the Christian settlers from Genoa, Venice and Pisa, kept up a constant state of civil war which left them at the mercy of their enemies. In Acre, the one important town held by Christian rulers, so much fighting went on between the Christian inhabitants that much of the city had been quite destroyed.
Yet Acre was now the one hope, the one centre of Christianity in the Holy Land. To her walls had fled all those who had managed to escape when one town after another fell before the victorious march of the Sultan.
And so it came about that the city was filled with a mixture of nationalities, each of which claimed to be ruled by a separate authority. It was at one time governed by no less than seventeen rulers, "whence there sprang much confusion."
This wretched state of things did nothing more than stir up a feeling of mild uneasiness in Europe. Pope Gregory X., indeed, did his best to encourage a new Crusade, for he had been an eye-witness in Acre of the need of some active measure of reform. But he died before anything practical could be done. Some years later the Grand Master of the Templars made his way to the footstool of Pope Nicholas IV., and pleaded the cause of the hapless Christians.
The Pope, much moved, sent seventeen hundred mercenaries, or hired soldiers, at his own cost, to the relief of Acre; but these men, finding their wages were not paid, took to plundering the Saracen traders during a time of truce, and so earned for the Christians a worse reputation than ever.
These outrages, moreover, excited the indignation of the Egyptian Sultan, who prepared to attack Acre in the following spring, and meantime sent ambassadors to demand the surrender of the truce-breakers "under pain of open war." The Master of the Temple would have yielded to the justice of his demands, but the other political parties in the city were against any such idea, saying that it had always been the custom for the princes of the West to disregard any truce that might be of force in the East.
The views of the latter prevailed, and an embassy was sent to the Sultan, offering compensation, and assuring him that the offenders should be kept in prison till the truce had expired.
The Sultan Khalil listened in grim silence, and after a while replied with much dignity, "Your words are as the honey and sugar used to conceal the presence of a deadly poison. We have ourselves kept the truce with loyal intent, but such an offence cannot be suffered to pass unpunished. You may depart in full assurance that within the time appointed I will come against your city with a mighty host and destroy all, from the least to the greatest, by the sword."
Just before the return of the envoys with this threatening message, the spirits of the citizens had been much revived by the arrival in Palestine of Sir Otho de Grandison, the secretary and confidential friend of Edward I., with a small force and the information that Edward himself would shortly follow him.
The message of the envoys had filled the city with panic that was but slightly leavened with hope. They saw at length that their one chance lay in united action, and they determined to fight together for their city to the last. "And surely the princes oversea will send us timely help when they hear with what peril we are encompassed," was their cry.
Encouraged by their wish for unity the Patriarch sent them to their homes with the charge, "Be ye therefore constant, and ye shall behold the great help of the Lord come upon you."
So at length, when it was too late, all manner of energies were set to work. The city was refortified, a large store of arms was laid in, help was sent from Cyprus and the Islands of the Sea, until a force of nine hundred knights and eighteen thousand foot was within the walls. The care of the walls themselves was divided between Otho de Grandison, Henry, King of Cyprus, and the Master of the Teutonic Knights and the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, with whom served the Masters of the Knights of the Sword and of the Knights of the Holy Ghost.
"These are the men," says one of the narratives of the survivors, "by whose prudence and counsel the city was to be governed. Had they been of one heart and mind, Heaven is our witness, Acre would still rejoice in the fulness of her strength." For alas, the old discord between the Templars and the Hospitallers had broken out afresh, and there was little hope of united action within the walls.
In the middle of March, the Saracens first appeared before Acre, "while making the earth to tremble at the march of their mailed men and to shake at the noise of their drums and cymbals; while the gilded shields of the soldiers flashed as the rays of the sun across the hills and their spearheads danced in the sunlight like stars in the midnight sky."
The din made before the walls was incessant. "They bellowed like bulls; they barked like dogs; they roared like lions; and ever, as is their wont, they drummed their huge tom-toms with their heavy-knotted sticks."
Then the war-engines were set up "which poured by day and by night a ceaseless hailstorm of stones upon the walls and city."
A partly successful sortie returned with some captives and the news that "the arrows were flying thicker than the flakes of snow in winter"; and on the Good Friday of the year 1291 Otho and the Templars planned a more united attack upon the Saracen camp. But this the Patriarch, acting on the advice of traitors, absolutely forbade, and so the last chance of saving the ill-fated city disappeared.
Many of the citizens and some of the fighting men now fled from Acre whenever they had the opportunity, but a considerable force yet remained, quite enough indeed to hold the city had they been content to work together. This, however, seemed impossible, and Khalil went boldly on to undermine the walls. The first direct assault was aimed at that section which was guarded by Henry of Cyprus, and only the nightfall prevented the Saracens from forcing an entrance. During the hours of darkness the King of Cyprus, with all his followers, crept to the harbour and secretly sailed away to his own island. And this he did, not so much in fear as in despair of ever accomplishing aught, when the petty quarrels and rivalries within the city left him without support.
This fatal policy of disunion was even more apparent during the last four days of that terrible siege. The Templars would not lift a hand to aid the Hospitallers; their bitter hostility made them more eager to fight each other than the infidel.
Meantime the Saracens had bridged the moat, broken through the outer walls, and driven the defenders to the inner part of the city. The captains, who were sitting in council, hastily donned their armour and rode forth into the midst of the panic-stricken crowd.
"Shame upon you!" they cried. "Fools! you are not hurt. To the battle with you, by the faith of Christ," and with Matthew de Clermont at their head, they charged upon the invaders and drove them out beyond the breach.
For three days this sort of thing continued, the Crusaders patching up the breach by night that had been broken in by day. But at daybreak of Friday, May 18, Khalil made his final assault. In the midst of the deafening noise made by his drummers mounted on three hundred camels, an attack was made upon all parts of the wall at once. Within a few hours the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, rivals in life, were united in death. Overwhelmed by their loss, the Christians gave way, and though Otho de Grandison held out for awhile, it was soon clear that further resistance was impossible.
In the midst of the horror and confusion of the onrush of the Saracens through the doomed town, a terrific storm began to rage, while the sea rose to such a height that it became almost impossible to launch a boat or escape from the harbour.
The Patriarch had been carried aboard his own galley against his will, and in his wish to save as many of his people as possible, he allowed the vessel to be so overcrowded that she overturned, and all on board were lost. Many, however, did escape by water, and only a few, who had no desire save for righteousness, "remained behind to sell their lives dearly or to bargain with Saracen prisoners for their own lives."
Others held out in the Temple Tower, and when at length it fell, perished amid the ruins. Otho de Grandison was among those who managed to escape to Sidon, and afterwards to Cyprus.
So fell the last remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded with such pride and devotion nearly two hundred years before.
CHAPTER XXI
The Story of the Fall of Constantinople
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has passed away.
WORDSWORTH: On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic.
No story of the Crusades can be complete without some account of the last scene in the drama that had been played for so many years between East and West, and which was ended for the time when Constantinople fell.
Since the year 1261, the Eastern Empire had passed out of the hands of Latin rulers, and once more owned an Emperor of Greek origin, Michael Palæologus by name. But this fact brought it no accession of vigour or strength. Worn out and impoverished, and lacking a great ruler who would have held the scattered threads of Empire in a firm grasp, the power of Constantinople was bound to lie at the mercy of a determined foe.
She had been already threatened, about the middle of the thirteenth century, by the dreaded Moguls, and only escaped because the latter first turned their attention to Russia. But the way to her final destruction was laid open by Michael the Emperor himself.
The borders of the Greek Empire in Asia had been guarded for many years past by the natives of Bithynia, the border state, who held their lands on condition that they kept the castles of the frontier in a state of defence.
Their task was no easy one, for the Seljukian Turks, who ruled over the neighbouring district of Iconium, were always on the watch to enlarge their boundaries; but these border militia were very faithful to their task, and had kept the invaders at bay.
Now Michael, formerly the Regent, had won the imperial throne by foul treachery towards the child Emperor, John Ducas, whose eyes he put out and whom he left to languish for thirty years in a wretched dungeon. Uneasy lies the usurper's head, and Michael could not rest until he had disarmed or got rid of all those who were suspected of loyalty towards the throne of Ducas.
Among these latter were the native "militia men" of Bithynia, whom Michael now proceeded to disband. The force substituted to defend the borderland was quite inadequate for the task; and the weakest spot on the frontier was thus left practically unguarded.
A few years earlier, a certain Othman, a Turk, had become the vassal of the Seljukian Sultan, and had been granted a district of the Phrygian highlands, on the very borders of the Greek Empire, on condition that he would take up arms against the Greeks.
Not many years passed before Othman, through the death of the last Sultan of the Seljuk line, had stepped into his place as an independent prince and the future founder of the Ottoman Empire. He outlived Michael Palæologus and his successor, and managed before his death to push the frontiers of the Turkish Empire forward to the Sea of Marmora.
His son Orkhan completed the conquest of Bithynia—a comparatively easy task now that the mistaken policy of the Greek Emperors had turned the troops of "hardy mountaineers into a trembling crowd of peasants without spirit or discipline."
By the year 1333, nothing remained of the Greek Empire in Asia but the town of Chalcedon and the strip of land that faced Constantinople across the straits.
The rule of the Ottoman Turks over their newly-conquered territory was firm and just enough, and was strengthened by material drawn from the ranks of the vanquished inhabitants. One of their demands was that a yearly tribute of young boys should be paid to them by the Christians. At first a terrible rumour spread that these children were killed and eaten by the infidels. But what really happened was that these boys were trained very carefully as soldiers, and became the "Janissaries," or "New Soldiers" of the Ottoman army, against whom nothing could stand. They were forced, of course, to become followers of Islam, and they were appointed to all the highest offices of state. But their chief energy was reserved for the attacks made upon the land of their origin.
Gradually the Ottoman Turks crept nearer and nearer the heart of the Eastern Empire. A certain crafty Prime Minister of Constantinople, John Cantacugenus, in his determination to supplant his young sovereign, a child of nine, actually called in their aid and allowed them to over-run Thrace.
By the time that the usurper had won his way as joint ruler with his master, to the imperial throne, all that remained of the coveted empire was Constantinople, the towns of Adrianople and Thessalonica, and the Byzantine province in the Peloponnesus. His fatal alliance with the Turks had been cemented by a marriage between the Sultan Orkhan and his daughter Theodora; and when John Palæologus, the rightful sovereign, refused to submit to this arrangement of twin rulers, Cantacugenus at once called in his son-in-law to his help.
Once more the Ottomans swarmed into Thrace, and, though they found that Cantacugenus had been deposed and forced to become a monk, they were not disposed to retreat without some substantial indemnity. They seized upon and settled in a province of Thrace, and within two years had the whole district, together with the city of Adrianople, in their hands.
The next step was to the threshold of Constantinople itself, but for this the Turkish chieftain Murad was content to wait awhile. The capital was bound to fall in time, and he was first of all eager to make sure of his ground in Asia Minor.
During Murad's reign he extended his domain to the Balkans and up to the very walls of the imperial city; whilst the unhappy Emperor without an empire was thankful to escape for the present by acknowledging his supremacy, and even by taking up arms at his command against one of his own free towns.
For the next hundred and fifty years the Ottomans were only hindered from the invasion of Christendom by the determined action of the Servians and Hungarians. And meantime the chance of freeing the Greek Empire altogether from Ottoman rule had come and gone.
In 1402, when the Turkish Sultan Bajazet was pressing hard upon Constantinople, the great Tamerlane, chief of the Tartar hordes, who had already conquered Persia, Turkestan, Russia, and India, came down like a thunderbolt upon the ambitious plans of Bajazet. The latter defied the conqueror, saying, "Thy armies are innumerable? Be they so! But what are the arrows of the flying Tartar against the scimitars and battle-axes of my firm and invincible Janissaries?"
Alike in their religious faith and in their ambitions, these two men now became deadly rivals; but not even the "New Army" of the Ottoman could stand against the Tartar hordes.
One city after another fell and was sacked; Bajazet himself was taken, and imprisoned, according to one story, in an iron cage. Another and more modern version says that the great Tamerlane treated his captive with the utmost courtesy and consideration; and on the occasion of the victorious feast after the battle, placed a crown upon his head and a sceptre in his hand, promising that he should return to the throne of his fathers with greater glory than before. But Bajazet died before his generous conqueror could carry out his promises, and Tamerlane, taking his place, demanded tribute of his sons and of Manuel of Constantinople at the same time.
The two elder sons of Bajazet were now at variance over the poor remains of his empire. One of these bought the aid of Manuel by surrendering the coast of Thessaly and the seaports of the Black Sea, and the Emperor was able to keep these just so long as the war between the brothers continued to rage. Even after this had ended in the triumph over both of Mohammed, Bajazet's youngest son, Manuel could feel fairly safe, for of late years he had thrown in his lot with Mohammed and was allowed to hold his possessions in peace.
This period of civil war, was of course, the opportunity for the Greek ruler to have driven out the Ottomans from his former empire. But this opportunity was lost as so many others had been, and after Mohammed died in 1421, the empire was entirely surrendered to the Ottomans.
Mohammed's successor, Amurath, is thus described by one of his own historians. "He was a just and valiant prince, of a great soul, patient of labours, learned, merciful, religious, charitable; a lover and encourager of the studious, and of all who excelled in any art or science; a good Emperor and a great general.
"No man obtained more or greater victories than Amurath. Under his reign the soldier was ever victorious, the citizen rich and secure. If he subdued any country, his first care was to build mosques and caravanserais, hospitals and colleges. Every year he gave a thousand pieces of gold to the sons of the Prophet, and sent two thousands five hundred to the religious persons of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem."
Like the Emperor Charles V, a century later, this "perfect prince" laid down the reins of empire at the very height of his glory and "retired to the society of saints and hermits," at Magnesia. Twice he was recalled to the field of action, first by an invasion of the Hungarians, the second time by the insurrection of the "haughty Janissaries "; and with these latter, now humbled and trembling at his very look, the great Amurath remained until his death.
Meantime the doomed city of Constantinople had been further weakened by internal strife. Hoping to get aid from the Pope, John Palæologus, the Emperor, had publicly conformed to the Roman Church, with many of his followers. But the bulk of the inhabitants of Constantinople utterly refused to throw over the ancient faith of the Greek Church, and preferred to disown their Emperor. As one of them ominously muttered: "Better the turban of the Turk in Constantinople than the Pope's tiara."
Disappointed of his hopes of any practical aid from Rome, John worked on in terrified silence while the brave King of Poland and Hungary tried in vain to drive back the triumphant Turks. He died only three years before the dreaded Amurath, and was succeeded by his brother Constantine, bearer of the honoured name of the founder of the city, but destined to be the last Christian ruler of the Eastern Empire.
Before very long, Constantine found himself face to face with the young Mohammed, the son of Amurath, who was already surnamed the Conqueror.
The all-absorbing desire of Mohammed was the possession of Constantinople, in order that it might be made the capital of his own Empire. Some pretence therefore must be found for a rupture with his meek vassal Constantine. At that time there dwelt within the city a certain Ottoman prince named Orkhan, much given to plots and ambitions, on whose account the Emperor was paid a considerable sum by Mohammed, on condition that he was kept from doing any harm. Very unwisely Constantine sent envoys to press for a larger payment, and even went so far as to try to blackmail the Sultan by hinting that Orkhan had the better right to the throne.
The reply of Mohammed was a prompt order to his engineers to construct a series of forts between Constantinople and the Black Sea, and thus to begin the siege by isolating the city from her port and food supplies. The actual excuse for warfare was provided in an attack made by some Greek soldiers on the Turks who were pulling down a beautiful old church in order to use its stones for their fort. The Greeks were promptly cut to pieces, and when Constantine dared to remonstrate, Mohammed at once declared war.
In vain did the despairing Emperor seek for help from the West. Even Genoa and Venice were blind to the approaching loss of all their Eastern trade, and Rome could do little to help. When the Emperor made a strong appeal to his own subjects to rally to the protection of their city, they listened in sullen silence to the words of one who had renounced the faith of his ancestors and conformed to the Church of Rome. There was never the smallest chance of holding out against the vigorous young Sultan and his picked troops.
In the spring of 1453 the actual siege began. Mohammed made use of that gunpowder which was to revolutionise all the ancient modes of warfare, and the old walls of Constantinople shuddered and fell before the shock.
The besieged had their guns too, but they did more harm than good, for the walls were too narrow to hold them and were so shaken by the concussion that these weapons had to be abandoned.
Yet for a time, owing largely to the courage and spirit of Constantine, the city not only held out, but succeeded in sending five vessels into the midst of the Turkish fleet, sinking and otherwise destroying all with which they came into contact. For allowing this to happen, the Turkish admiral, in spite of his plea of an injured eye as the cause of the mishap, was sentenced to receive a hundred strokes from a golden rod in the presence of the angry Sultan.
But this victory was quickly counterbalanced by Mohammed, who had some of his vessels brought overland across the neck that lies between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, thus shutting out the city from the sea on both sides. After a siege of forty days the end came on May 29, 1453. A special effort was urged by the Sultan in these words: "The city and the buildings are mine, but I resign to you the captives and the spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty; be rich and happy. Many are the provinces of my Empire; the intrepid soldier who first ascends the walls of Constantinople shall be rewarded with the government of the fairest and most wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumulate his honours and fortunes above the measure of his own hopes."
The answer came loud and strong from every part of the camp.
"Allah is great! There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet."
Within the city all was in gloom and despair. The Emperor was blamed for not surrendering earlier; many said that the "repose and security of Turkish servitude" were far preferable to this last stand for freedom.
The unfortunate Constantine listened in silence, and then went to the Cathedral of St Sophia, where he partook of his last Sacrament. Rising from a brief and troubled rest at dawn, he mounted his horse to ride back to the breach in the falling walls. His few faithful friends and attendants pressed round the master who they knew was going to his death. Looking gravely down upon them, "he prayed one and all to pardon him for any offence that he might knowingly or unknowingly have committed against any man."
The crowd answered with cries and lamentations as he rode calmly to his fate. "The distress and fall of the last Constantine," says Gibbon, "are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Cæsars."
Standing in the gap made in the wall by the Gate of St Romanus, the Emperor and his little band awaited the rush of the Janissaries. One by one his men fell behind him and at his side, until he alone remained.
One more attack was made, and this time the infidels swarmed right into the town, trampling the body of the Emperor underfoot. All that long and dreadful day the wail of the captives ascended to the heavens, and when a search was made among the dead, only the golden eagles on his shoes identified the crushed and disfigured form of him who once was Constantine, last of his race.
The last scene in the grim drama was played when the Sultan came to the Church of St Sophia, and, riding upon his magnificent war-horse, passed in through the eastern door and bade the Mullah pronounce the formula of the faith of Islam from the high pulpit.
"Allah is great! There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet!"
The words resounded through the aisles of the great eastern church, as they had echoed first in the desert of Arabia nearly nine hundred years before that day.
Through well-nigh nine centuries we have traced the growth of Islam, and the part played by the Holy War in hindering its progress to the West; and, having recorded this last and successful attempt of the Mohammedans at establishing themselves in Europe, we will bring our story to an end with one last glance at the effect of this great movement upon Christendom.
CHAPTER XXII
The Effect of the Crusades
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends
of the earth.
RUDYARD KIPLING: Ballad of East and West.
The sacred fire of enthusiasm for the "Cause of God" still flickered faintly in Europe during the years that immediately preceded the fall of Constantinople. Our own Henry V., during his lifetime, sent out a knight of Burgundy, Gilbert de Lannoy, to see what chances there were of the success of a new Crusade; and Henry's dying words showed that he had not forgotten his design. "Good Lord, Thou knowest that mine intent had been, and yet is, if I may live, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem."
But with the fall of Constantinople, all further hope of wresting the Holy Land from the infidel came to an end. Never again did a prince of the West set out to recover those "holy fields," and to this day they are ruled by the Sultan of Turkey.
It is said of Columbus that he had in mind the idea of stirring up an Eastern War in the "Cause of God" before there had dawned upon him the vision of that Western enterprise which was to open the gate to a new world. And that religious zeal did not die with the Crusades is to be seen in the constant stream of pilgrims to the Holy Land which, for a hundred years, followed the final defeat of Christendom, and which, suspended though it was during the spiritual apathy of the eighteenth century, has continued down to the present day.
But the Age of Warfare was over when Constantinople fell, and with the dawn of that great awakening of thought and literature which we call the Renaissance, men turned away from bloodshed to the joys of discovery and enterprise in a new world.
A little later, when the Wars of the Reformation broke out, and Europe took up the sword anew, the whole spirit of the Western world had changed. The East had lost its glamour, and the antagonism between religious and political parties had waxed so hot in Christendom that the old feud between Christian and pagan was entirely laid aside.
Yet the Crusades, in spite of their apparent failure, had done a great work. First and foremost they had succeeded in deferring the rule of the Turk in Europe, and by the constant checks they offered to his progress, had prevented him from conquering anything but the merest fringe of the West. The advantage of this, apart from considerations of religion, will be seen at once if we compare the condition of the subjects of the Sultan with that of the more progressive of the Christian races of Europe.
But the benefits conferred upon Europe by the Crusades are by no means only of this negative character. The Saracen of the Middle Ages was a learned and cultured gentleman, skilled in medicine, in music, and in various other sciences, and, generally speaking, as much superior to the rough uneducated Crusader of the Western World as he was to the savage Ottoman Turk.
Foes though they were in name, there was always a certain amount of friendly intercourse between the Crusaders and the Saracens, and the former were bound to be affected in some degree by the civilisation of the latter. Sometimes a dark-faced "leech" would return in the train of a Crusading baron to Europe, and there would teach some of his mysteries of healing to the rough-and-ready doctors of the West.
To the Arabs we owe our "Arabic" system of numbers, used instead of the clumsy Roman figures, and the knowledge of the decimal notation, by which nearly every civilised country except our own reckons its money. From Architecture to Geography, all those branches of knowledge which distinguish the educated from the uneducated mind, may be traced back to the keen and subtle intelligence of the East.
Next perhaps in importance comes the opening up of the East to the West for purposes of Commerce. Many a knightly Crusader thought it no shame to carry on an extensive trade in the silks and spices of Palestine in order to fill his coffers upon his return and that he might be recompensed for the expenses of his undertaking. The constant crossing and recrossing of the Mediterranean soon set on foot a steady stream of commercial enterprise between the seaports of Italy and those of Syria, and the existence of a Latin Empire of Constantinople impelled Venice, the main cause of its establishment, to still closer communication with the East. To her, as "the Southern terminus of a great land trade-route," was carried the produce of England, Norway, Flanders, France and Germany as to a huge market, and she distributed it throughout the Eastern world, receiving in return the wealth of the latter to be carried back to Europe. It was only when the discovery of America opened up an entirely new field of enterprise that this great stream of commerce began to diminish.
Another effect of the Crusades was upon the great world of literature. Such a unique event as a Holy War was bound to inspire the writers of history even in the days when such writers were rarely to be found. William of Tyre was only one amongst several chroniclers of the First Crusade, and the story of the Crusades of later days have been vividly told by Richard of Devizes, Villehardouin and the Sire de Joinville, many of whose telling descriptions have been quoted in the pages of this book.
It was but natural that the gallant adventures of the Crusaders should form the theme of many of the epics and chansons of Chivalry. Charlemagne, Roland and Bevis of Hampton may never have seen the Holy Land, but they became the heroes of Crusading exploits nevertheless; while Richard Lion-Heart and Godfrey of Boulogne, actual leaders in the Holy War, became the central figures of more or less impossible legendary adventures.
Through all this stream of literature ran that quickening, inspiring spirit of hope—perhaps the greatest gift of the Crusades to a world which, in the years between the Empire of Charlemagne and the Renaissance, might easily have fallen into a deadened condition of indifference and disruption.
This is scarcely the place to speak of the great unifying effect upon Europe, nor of the influence of the movement upon the feudal conditions of the time; but we have seen enough to know that the Western World was decidedly the better, spiritually, mentally and physically, for that gigantic failure which we know as the Crusades.
List of Books Consulted
The following books have been especially useful in the compilation of this little volume. My thanks are also due to Messrs Dent for permission to use some extracts from Sir Frank Marzials' charming translation of Villehardouin's Chronicle and that of the Sire de Joinville in their "Everyman" series.
Archer and Kingsford. The Crusades; the Story of the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Chronicles of the Crusaders by Richard of Devizes, Geoffrey de
Vinsauf and the Sire de Joinville.
F. W. Cornish. Chivalry.
Sir G. W. Cox. Crusades.
W. E. Dutton. History of the Crusades.
J. F. Michaud. History of the Crusades.
H. Stebbing. History of Chivalry and the Crusades.
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.