The Turks abandoned Otranto, and the divisions which arose in the family of Mahomet suspended for a time the projects of Ottoman policy. Jem-Jem, whom the Latin chronicles call Zizim, disputed the empire with Bajazet, and being conquered, came into the West to await a favourable opportunity for recommencing the war. The Knights of Rhodes received him with great honours. He was afterwards sent into France, and, by one of the whimsical sports of fortune, an obscure commandery in the province of Auvergne became for a moment the asylum of a prince who pretended to the vast empire of the Crescent. His presence among the Christian powers gave serious uneasiness to Bajazet. The king of Hungary and the king of Naples had already promised to give the fugitive prince the support of their armies. The Ottoman emperor sent ambassadors to Charles VIII.; he informed the French monarch that his design was to conquer Egypt, and that he would voluntarily cede Jerusalem to him if he would place Zizim in his hands. At the same time, the sultan of Cairo sent one of the Latin fathers of the Holy Sepulchre to the pope, and requested also that the brother of Bajazet should be delivered up to him, as he wished to show him at the head of his army in a war against the Turks. He offered the sovereign pontiff, in exchange for such a great service, a hundred thousand gold ducats, the possession of the holy city, and even of the city of Constantinople, if they succeeded in driving the Turks from it. Charles VIII. had not arrived at the age for reigning, and the queen regent, engaged in reëstablishing peace in the kingdom, did not listen to the proposition of Bajazet. Neither did the pope accept the splendid offers of the sultan of Egypt; but the importance that appeared to be attached to the person of Zizim gave him the idea that he could himself derive some advantage from him. He demanded and obtained that the brother of Bajazet should be given up to him, and then he exhorted the Christian princes to unite with him, and promised to go in person to the conquest of Greece and Syria. The enterprise of Innocent VIII. reminds us of that of Pius II., and was destined to be equally unfortunate. The pontiff was employed in his scheme, with more zeal than success, when he died. Alexander VI., who succeeded him, had created for himself a name which repelled the confidence of the faithful, and left no hope that the preparations for a holy war would ever be able to divert him from the cares of his personal ambition, or tear him away from his profane affections.
The kingdom of Naples, however, which had occasioned so many wars, begun and carried on under the banners of the cross, gave rise, under these circumstances, to the idea of an enterprise which resembled a crusade. The duke of Milan, and several other small states, constantly occupied in disturbing Italy, and in calling thither foreign arms, for the purpose of increasing or preserving their own power, persuaded Charles VIII., then seated on the throne, to endeavour to establish the rights of the house of Anjou. Their solicitations and their brilliant promises awakened the ambition of the young king, who resolved to conquer the kingdom of Naples, and proclaimed the design of extending his views to the territories of the infidels.
The passion for arms, the spirit of chivalry, and the little that remained in men’s hearts of the ancient ardour for crusades and distant expeditions, seconded the enterprise of the French monarch. Public prayers were offered up, and processions were formed throughout the kingdom, for the success of an expedition against the Turks. The preachings, or rather the poetical inspirations of some writers of the time, announced to all Europe the deliverance of the East.
When Charles VIII. had passed the Alps with his army, all the nations of Italy received him with the most lively demonstrations of joy; the love of liberty, the spirit of devotion, the sentiment of gallantry, all the passions which then prevailed, appeared to attach some hope to the issue of this expedition. The nations looked to the king of France and his knights for their independence. Amidst the brilliant festivities of chivalry, the French warriors were received as the champions of the honour of ladies. They gave Charles VIII. the titles of envoy of God, of liberator of the Romish Church, and of defender of the faith. All the acts of the king gave reason to believe that his expedition had for its object the glory and safety of Christendom. He wrote to the bishops of France to demand of them the tenths of a crusade. “Our intention,” said he to them in his letters, “is not only to recover our kingdom of Naples, but to secure the welfare of Italy, and to effect the deliverance of the Holy Land.”
Whilst the nations on both sides of the Alps gave themselves up to hope and joy, terror reigned in the kingdom of Naples. Alphonso addressed himself to all his allies; he, in particular, implored the succour of the Holy See, and, by a singular contrast, whilst he placed his greatest hopes in the court of Rome, he sent ambassadors to Constantinople, to warn Bajazet of the projects of Charles VIII. respecting Greece, and to conjure the Mussulman emperor to assist him in defending his kingdom against the invasion of the French. Alexander VI., who had embraced the cause of the princes of Arragon, beheld with the most lively inquietude the triumphant march of the king of France, who was advancing towards Rome without encountering any obstacles. In vain he called to his aid both the states of Italy and the Mussulman masters of Greece; in vain he employed the ascendancy of his spiritual power; he soon found himself obliged to submit, and to open the gates of his capital to a prince whom he regarded as his enemy, and whom he had by turns threatened with the anger of Heaven and with that of Bajazet.
Thus the war which the king of France had sworn to make against the infidels began by a victory obtained over the pope. According to one of the conditions imposed upon the sovereign pontiff, the brother of Bajazet was placed in the hands of Charles VIII. The unfortunate Jem-Jem, who knew nothing of the policy of which he was soon to become the victim, thanked the pope for having restored him to liberty. He congratulated himself upon being protected by the great king of the West, and entertained no doubt that the victorious arms of the Christians would replace him on the Ottoman throne. Charles VIII., however, appeared but very little disposed to restore to him the empire of Constantinople, which he had just purchased for himself. In the course of the last century, an act was found in the chancery of Rome, by which Andrew Palæologus, the despot of Achaia, and nephew of Constantine, sold to the king of France all his claims to the empire of the East, for the sum of four thousand three hundred gold ducats! This act, by which an empire was sold in the presence of a notary, and which could only be ratified by victory, appears to us a very curious historical monument; and serves to enlighten us upon the spirit and policy of these remote times. We must admit, however, that the French monarch seemed even then to attach very little value to this kind of treaty, and fulfilled none of the conditions of it. His attention was principally directed towards the kingdom of Naples, which fortune was about to place in his hands, without requiring him to fight a single battle.
Whilst Charles prolonged his sojourn at Rome, Alphonso II., abandoned to his own resources, a prey to terror and remorse, and pursued by the complaints of the Neapolitans, descended from his throne, and went to bury himself in a monastery of Sicily. His son Ferdinand, who succeeded him, although he had driven the Turks out of the city of Otranto, and had been proclaimed liberator of Italy, could neither revive the courage of his army nor the fidelity of his subjects. From the moment the arrival of the French was announced, the yoke of the house of Arragon appeared to become every day more insupportable. When Charles quitted the Roman states, instead of encountering the armies of an enemy, he only met on his road with deputations which came to offer him the crown of Naples. The capital soon received him in triumph, and the whole kingdom placed itself under his subjection.
Fame was not long in carrying into Greece the news of the marvellous conquests of Charles VIII. The Turks of Epirus, struck with terror, dreaded every instant to see the French arrive. Nicolas Vignier adds, that Bajazet was possessed by such fear, that he caused all his navy to come to the Straits of St. George, to enable him to escape into Asia.
The presence of Zizim in the Christian army particularly excited the alarms of the Mussulmans; but fortune had exhausted all her prodigies in favour of the French. Jem-Jem, whom the king of France hoped to exhibit to the enemies of the faith, died almost suddenly on arriving in the kingdom of Naples. Alexander VI. was accused of bringing about this death; Bajazet having promised him three hundred thousand gold ducats, if he would aid his brother in escaping from the miseries of this life. Turkish historians relate this event after a different manner: they say that a barber of Constantinople, named Mustapha, was sent to poison Zizim; and, what paints with a single stroke the spirit and the character of the Ottoman despotism, when the barber returned to announce that the brother of the sultan was dead, Bajazet raised him to the post of vizier; so important did the service appear, and so worthy of reward was the crime.
The conquests of Charles VIII., which gave the Turks so much alarm, began to create lively inquietudes in several Christian states. A league was formed against the French, into which entered the pope, the emperor Maximilian, the king of Spain, and the principal states of Italy. After the example of Charles VIII., this league assumed as a pretext a war against the Turks; but its real design did not remain long concealed; for it solicited the approbation and the assistance of Bajazet. Policy, on this occasion, did not hesitate to sacrifice Christian victims, to cement an alliance with the disciples of the Koran. As the Greeks of Epirus and the Peloponnesus were eager to profit by the enterprise of the king of France to shake off the yoke of the Ottomans, they sent deputies into Italy. The senate of Venice caused these deputies to be arrested, and gave up their papers to the envoys of the sultan. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants of Greece perished victims to this base act of treachery.
On another side, the inconstancy of the people, who had at first been favourable to the arms of the king of France, and the discontent which is always inspired by the presence of a victorious army, all at once changed the state of things in the kingdom of Naples. The French, who had been received with so much enthusiasm, became odious, and the hopes of all were directed towards the family of Arragon, so recently abandoned. Charles, instead of directing his looks towards Greece, turned them towards France. Whilst he was in the act of causing himself to be crowned emperor of Byzantium and king of Sicily, his thoughts were fixed upon the abandonment of his conquests. It was a singular contrast which the spectacle presented, of preparations for a retreat, and a triumphal ceremony, going on at the same time. Whilst the nobility, the clergy, and all the public bodies of the state, came to congratulate the victorious prince, the people were invoking the protection of Heaven against him, and the French awaited in silence the order and signal for its departure. On the day following his coronation, and as if he had only come to Naples for the sake of this vain ceremony, Charles VIII. set out, accompanied by the most distinguished of his knights, and resumed sorrowfully the road to his own kingdom. On his arrival in Italy, he had heard nothing in his march but benedictions and songs of triumph. On his return, he heard only the maledictions of the people and the threats of his enemies. In the first place he had crossed Italy without opposition; in order to leave it, he was forced to give battle; and considered as a victory the liberty which was left to him to drag back the wreck of his army over the Alps.
Thus terminated this enterprise of Charles VIII., which at first was pretended to be a holy war, which was directed by a short-sighted policy, and the consequences of which became so fatal to France and Italy. Whilst the preparations for this war were going on, there appeared, as we have said above, several writings in prose and verse, in which great victories were predicted. The aim of these predictions was not only to excite the enthusiasm of the people, but to strengthen a weak and irresolute prince in his undertaking. When we read the prophetic songs and hymns of the poets, we may fancy we see the French setting out for the conquest of the holy places. But the scene changes when we turn our eyes to the pages of history. Everything leads us to conclude, that on this occasion religious opinions and sentiments of chivalry were but the auxiliaries of unfortunate ambition. It is particularly to this expedition that we may apply what J. J. Rousseau somewhere says of the crusades: “The intrigues of cabinets embroiled affairs, and religion was the pretext.”
The policy of Venice did not preserve her from the anger of Bajazet, who declared war against her. Alexander VI. published a jubilate, and demanded tenths of the clergy of Europe for the preparations for a crusade against the Turks. The emperor Maximilian, Louis XII., and the kings of Castile, Portugal, and Hungary, appeared to listen for a moment to the propositions of the pope. But reciprocal mistrust speedily dissolved this Christian league: in vain the preachers of the crusade repeated in their discourses the menaces of Bajazet; they could not overcome the indifference of the people; and the sovereign pontiff found everywhere equal obstacles to the levying of the tenths and the distribution of indulgences. The French clergy on this occasion braved ecclesiastical censures; and what shows the decline of the pontifical power, at least as far as regards the crusades, a simple decision of the Faculty of Theology of Paris was at that time sufficient to stand against all the terrible array of the menaces and thunders of Rome.
We have shown how and by what causes the spirit of the crusades had become enfeebled. Towards the end of the fifteenth century and the commencement of the sixteenth, two great events completed the diversion of attention from the East. America had recently been revealed to the ancient world, and the Portuguese had doubled the Cape of Good Hope. There is no doubt that the progress of navigation during the holy wars had contributed to the discoveries of Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus. But these discoveries, when they once became known in Europe, entirely occupied that active, enterprising, and adventurous spirit which had so long kept up the ardour for expeditions against the infidels. The direction of men’s minds, views of policy, speculations of commerce, all were changed; and the great revolution of the crusades on its decline, was seen, in some sort, to clash with the new revolution which was born of the discovery and conquest of a new world.
The Venetians, masters of the ancient routes and commerce of India, were the first to be aware of the changes that were in operation, the consequences of which must prove so injurious to them. They secretly sent deputies to the sultan of Cairo, as much interested as themselves in opposing the interests of the Portuguese. The deputation from Venice advised the sultan of Egypt to ally himself with the king of Calcutta and other Indian powers, to attack the fleets and troops of Portugal. The republic undertook to send into Egypt and to the coasts of Arabia artisans to found cannon, and carpenters to construct vessels of war. The Egyptian monarch, whose interests were the same as those of Venice, readily entered into the plan proposed to him; and in order to arrest the progress of the Portuguese in India, he endeavoured to inspire a fear with regard to the holy places, which had so long been, and still were, objects of veneration for the faithful of the West. He threatened to raze to the ground the church of the Holy Sepulchre, to cast the ashes and monuments of the martyrs to the winds, and to force all the Christians of his states to abjure the faith of Christ. A Cordelier of Jerusalem came to Rome to express the alarms of the Christians of Palestine, and of the guardians of the holy tomb. The pope was seized with terror, and hastened to send the Cordelier to the king of Portugal, whom he conjured to make the sacrifice of his new conquests to God and Christendom.[82] The Portuguese monarch received the envoy of the pope and the Oriental Christians with kindness, gave him considerable sums for the support of the holy places, and replied to the sovereign pontiff, that he did not at all fear seeing the threats of the sultan carried out, but, on the contrary, he hoped to burn both Mecca and Medina, and bring vast regions under the law of the Gospel, if the princes of Christendom were willing to coöperate with him.
The sultan of Egypt, who received tribute from all pilgrims, did not destroy the churches of Jerusalem, but he attempted an expedition against the Portuguese, in concert with the king of Cambay and Calcutta. They equipped at Suez a fleet composed of six galleys, a galleon, and four store-ships, in which were embarked eight hundred Mamelukes. The Egyptian fleet descended along the shores of the Red Sea, coasted Arabia, doubled the Gulf of Persia, and cast anchor at the island and in the port of Diu, one of the most important points for the commerce of India. It is of this expedition the author of the Lusiad speaks in his ninth book: “With the help of the fleets from the port of Arsinoë, the Calicutians hoped to reduce those of Emanuel to ashes; but the arbiter of heaven and earth always finds means to execute the decrees of his profound wisdom.”
The expedition of the Mamelukes, notwithstanding the success it at first obtained, produced not the results that the sultan of Cairo and the republic of Venice expected. The Portuguese, in their despair, endeavoured to persuade the king of Ethiopia to divert the course of the Nile. A project for shutting up the new routes of commerce and the passage of the Cape of Good Hope was scarcely more reasonable. Instead of having recourse to arms, the sultans of the Mamelukes would have much better served the interests of Venice, and those of their own power, if they had multiplied canals in their provinces, and opened a commodious, quick, and safe passage for the commerce of India: by that means they would have preserved for the navigation of the Mediterranean the advantage it had enjoyed for ages over the navigation of the ocean; and the maritime cities of Egypt and Italy would not have seen the sources of their prosperity suddenly dried up.
Whilst the republic of Venice contemplated with terror the causes of her future decline, she still inspired considerable jealousy by the splendour of her wealth and magnificence. Many complaints arose against the Venetians, who were universally accused of sacrificing everything to the interests of their commerce, and of betraying or serving the cause of the Christians, as fidelity or treachery became most profitable to them. In a diet which Maximilian convoked at Augsburg, Hélian, the ambassador of Louis XII., pronounced a vehement discourse against the Venetian nation. He reproached them, in the first place, with having thwarted, by their hostility and their intrigues, a league formed by the pope, the emperor of Germany, the king of France, and the king of Arragon, against the Turks. The orator then reproached the Venetians with having refused to succour Constantinople when besieged by Mahomet II. “Their fleet was in the Hellespont during the siege; they could hear the groans of a Christian people, sinking under the sword of the barbarians. Nothing could excite their pity. They remained unaffected and motionless, and when the city was taken, they purchased the spoils of the vanquished, and sold to the Mussulmans the unfortunate inhabitants of Greece, who had taken refuge beneath their banners. At a later period, when the Ottomans were besieging Otranto, not only cities and princes, but the mendicant orders, sent assistance to the besieged. The Venetians, whose fleet was then at anchor before Corfu, beheld with indifference, perhaps with joy, the dangers and the misfortunes of a Christian city. No, God cannot pardon a nation, which, by its avarice, its jealousy, and its ambition, has betrayed the cause of Christendom, and appears to maintain an understanding with the Turks, in order to reign with them over the East and over the West.” Hélian, on terminating his discourse, pressed the states and the princes to combine their efforts, to execute the decrees of divine justice, and complete the ruin of the republic of Venice.
This discourse, in which the name of Christianity was invoked, but which breathed nothing but vengeance and hatred, made a lively impression upon the assembly. The passions which inflamed the diet of Augsburg, and which left no room for a thought of a war against the Turks, but too plainly showed the state of agitation and discord in which Christendom was then plunged. It is not consistent with our purpose to speak of the league formed, in the first place, against Venice, or of the league afterwards formed against Louis XII., or of the events which brought trouble into Italy, and even into the bosom of the Church, then threatened with a schism.
At the council of the Lateran, convoked by Julius II., the disorders of Christendom were deplored, without the least remedy being proposed for them. They touched upon the war with the Turks, without bestowing any attention upon the means for carrying it on. The exhortations of the pope, which were supposed to be animated by an ambitious policy, inspired no confidence. The pontiff, whom Voltaire represents as a bad priest but a good prince, entered in an active manner into the wars between Christian powers. Since war was carried on in his name, he could not fill the honourable part of a conciliator, and enjoyed no longer the consideration attached to the title of Father of the Faithful. He was not able to reëstablish the peace he had himself broken, and found it impossible to direct an enterprise against the infidels.
The preaching for a crusade, so often repeated, no longer made any impression on men’s minds; misfortunes which never arrived had been so often announced to nations, that they ceased to awaken any alarm. After the death of Mahomet, the Turks seemed to have renounced all idea of conquering Europe. Bajazet at first attacked the Mamelukes of Egypt without success; he afterwards sunk into voluptuousness and the pleasures of the seraglio, which gave the Christians a few years of repose and safety. But as an indolent and effeminate prince did not fulfil the first condition of Ottoman despotism, which was war, he irritated the army, and his pacific tastes brought about his fall from the throne. Selim, who succeeded him, more ambitious and more cruel than Mahomet, accused of poisoning his father, and covered with the blood of his family, had scarcely attained empire before he promised to the janissaries the conquest of the world, and threatened, at the same time, Italy, Germany, Persia, and Egypt.
In the twelfth and last sitting of the fifth council of the Lateran, Leo X. took upon him to preach a crusade against the redoubtable emperor of the Ottomans. He ordered to be read before the fathers of the council a letter from the emperor Maximilian, who expressed great grief at seeing Christendom always exposed to the invasions of a barbarous nation.
At the same time the emperor of Germany, writing to his counsellor at the diet of Nuremberg, expressed the desire he had always felt of reëstablishing the empire of Constantine, and delivering Greece from the domination of the Turks. “We would willingly,” said he, “have employed our power and even our person in this enterprise, if the other leaders of Christendom had assisted.” When reading these letters of Maximilian, we might be led to believe that this prince was touched more than others by the misfortunes of the Greeks and the perils of Christendom. But the inconstancy and levity of his character would not allow him to carry on with ardour an enterprise to which he appeared to attach so much importance. He passed his life in forming projects against the Turks, and in making war against Christian powers; and in his old age consoled himself by thinking that the glory of saving Europe might perhaps one day belong to a prince of his family.
Whilst the Christian princes were thus reciprocally exhorting each other to take arms, without any one of them renouncing the interests of his own ambition, or offering an example of a generous devotion, Selim, after having conquered the king of Persia, attacked the army of the Mamelukes, dethroned the sultan of Cairo, and united to his vast dominions all the countries that the Franks had inhabited or possessed in Asia. Jerusalem then beheld the standard of the crescent floating over its walls, and the son of Bajazet, after the example of Omar, profaned by his presence the church of the Holy Sepulchre.[83] Palestine only fell under a fresh domination, and no change took place in the fate of the Christians. But as Europe dreaded the Turks more than the Mamelukes, against whom war had ceased to be carried on, the news of the conquests of Selim spread consternation and grief everywhere. It appeared to Christendom as if the holy city passed for the first time under the yoke of the infidels; and the sentiments of grief and mourning that the Christians then experienced, necessarily revived the idea of delivering the tomb of Christ.
We must add that the late victories of Selim completed the overthrow of all the powers in the East that had rivalled the Turks, and that whilst increasing in a fearful manner the strength of the Ottoman empire, they left it no other enemies to contend with but the nations of the West.
Leo X. contemplated seriously the dangers which threatened Christendom, and resolved to arm the principal powers of Europe against the Turks. The sovereign pontiff announced his project to the college of cardinals. The prelates most distinguished for their learning and their skill in negotiations, were sent into England, Spain, and Germany, with the mission of appeasing all quarrels that divided princes, and forming a powerful league against the enemies of the Christian republic. Leo X., who declared himself beforehand the head of this holy league, proclaimed a truce of five years among all the states of Europe, and threatened those who disturbed the peace with excommunication.
Whilst the pope was thus giving all his attention to preparations for a crusade, the poets and orators, whose labours he encouraged, represented him as already the liberator of the Christian world. The celebrated Vida, in a Sapphic ode addressed to Leo X., sang the future labours and conquests of the pontiff. Carried away by his poetical enthusiasm, he swore to go, clad in shining steel, to the extremities of the world, and to drink from a brazen helmet the waters of the Xanthus and the Indus. He boasts of cutting down with his sword the barbarous heroes of Asia, and fancies that he already sees posterity placing his name among those of warriors who had never known fear. Vida, in his ode, speaks of neither Christ nor the cross, but of Bellona and Apollo. His verses appear to be much less an inspiration of the Gospel than an imitation of Horace; and the praises he addresses to the head of the Christian Church resemble, both in tone and form, those which the bard of the Tiber addressed to Augustus. Whilst Vida, in profane verses, thus felicitated Leo X. upon the laurels he was about to gather amidst the labours and perils of a holy war, another writer not less celebrated, in a prose epistle printed at the head of the Orations of Cicero, addressed the sovereign pontiff with the same congratulations and the same eulogies. Novagero took delight in celebrating beforehand those days of glory in which the pope would return in triumph to the eternal city, after having extended the limits of the Christian world,—those happy days in which all Italy, in which all nations, should revere him as a divinity descended from heaven for their deliverance.
Italy was then filled with fugitive Greeks, amongst whom were some illustrious scholars, who exercised a great influence over men’s minds, and never ceased to represent the Turks as a barbarous and ferocious people. The Greek tongue was taught with success in the most celebrated schools, and the new direction of studies, with the admiration which the masterpieces of Greece inspired, added greatly to the hatred of the people for the fierce dominators of Byzantium, Athens, and Jerusalem. Thus all the disciples of Homer and Plato associated themselves, in some sort, by their wishes and their discourses, with the enterprise of the sovereign pontiff. It may have been remarked, that the manner of preaching the crusades, and the motives alleged to excite the ardour of the Christians, differed according to circumstances, and were almost always analogous to the prevailing ideas of each period. In the times of which we now speak, everything naturally bears the character and stamp of the great age of Leo X.; and if the crusade had been able to contribute to the restoration of letters, it was just that letters in their turn should do something in a war undertaken against the enemies of civilization and intelligence.
The envoys of the court of Rome were received with distinction in all the states of Europe, and neglected neither evangelical exhortations, nor seductions, nor promises, nor any of the resources of profane policy, to induce Christian princes to join the crusade proclaimed by the pope. The sacred college rejoiced at the success of their mission, and the pope, to prove his gratitude to Heaven, and to draw down divine blessings upon his enterprise, ordered that processions should be made and prayers put up, during three days, in the capital of the Christian world. He himself celebrated the divine office, distributed alms, and walked barefooted and with his head uncovered to the church of the Holy Apostles.
Sadoletus, secretary to the Holy See, one of the most distinguished favourites of the Muses, and who, in the judgment of Erasmus, possessed in his writings the copiousness and the manner of Cicero, pronounced, in the presence of the clergy and the Roman people, a discourse, in which he celebrated the zeal and the activity of the sovereign pontiff, the eagerness of the Christian princes to make peace with each other, and the desire they evinced to unite their powers against the Turks: the orator reminded his auditory of the emperor of Germany and the king of France, glorious pillars of Christendom; of the army of Charles, king of Castile, whose youth exhibited all the virtues of ripened age; of the king of England, the invincible defender of the faith; of Emanuel, king of Portugal, always ready to sacrifice his own interests to those of the Church; of Louis II., king of Hungary; and Sigismund, king of Poland; the first, a young prince, the hope of Christians; the second, worthy to be their leader; of the king of Denmark, with whose devotion to religion Europe was well acquainted; and of James, king of Scotland, the examples of whose family must keep him in the road of virtue and glory. Among the Christian states, upon which humanity and religion must build their hopes, Sadoletus did not forget the Helvetians, a powerful and warlike nation, which burned with such zeal for the war against the Turks, that its numerous bands of soldiers were already prepared to march, and only waited for the signal of the head of the Church. The holy orator finished by a vehement apostrophe against the race of the Ottomans, whom he threatened with the united forces of Europe, and by an invocation to God, whom he conjured to bless the arms of so many princes, of so many Christian nations, in order that the empire of the world might be wrested from Mahomet, and that the praises of Jesus Christ might at length resound from the south to the north, and from the west to the east.
Leo X. was constantly engaged with the crusade he had preached. He consulted with able captains, and acquired information concerning the strength of the Turks, and upon the means of attacking them with advantage: the most certain means was to raise numerous armies. In his letters to the princes and the faithful, he exhorted Christians not to neglect prayers and the austerities of penitence; but he recommended them above all things to prepare their arms, and to oppose their redoubtable enemies with strength and valour. In concert with the principal states of Christendom, he laid down the plan of the holy war. The emperor of Germany was to furnish an army to which the Hungarian and Polish cavalry should be united. The king of France, with all his forces, all those of the Venetians, and several states of Italy, and sixteen thousand Swiss, was to embark at Brindisi, and make a descent upon the coast of Greece; whilst the fleets of Spain, Portugal, and England, should set sail from Carthagena and the neighbouring ports, to transport Spanish troops to the shores of the Hellespont. The pope proposed to embark himself at the port of Ancona, to repair to Constantinople, under the walls of which city all the forces of the Christian powers were to meet.
This plan was gigantic, and never would the Ottoman empire have been in greater danger, if such vast designs could have been carried into execution. But the Christian monarchs were only able to observe the truce proclaimed by the pope, and which they had accepted for a very few months; each of them had engaged to furnish for the crusade troops which every day became more necessary to them in their own states, and which they wished to aggrandize or defend. The old age of Maximilian, and the approaching vacancy of the imperial throne, at that time held all the ambitious in a state of expectation: very shortly the rivalry of Charles V. and Francis I. rekindled war in Europe, and Christendom, disturbed by the quarrels of princes, no longer thought it probable they should be invaded by the Turks.
But these political dissensions were not the only obstacles to the execution of the projects of Leo X. Another difficulty arose from the levy of the tenths. The clergy everywhere appeared to have the same indifference for the wars which ruined them. The people dreaded to see their alms employed in enterprises which had not for object the triumph of religion. The legate of the pope in Spain addressed himself first to the Arragonese, who replied by a formal refusal, expressed in a national synod. Cardinal Ximenes declared, in the name of the king of Castile, that the Spaniards did not believe in the threats of the Turks, and that they would not give their money until the pope had positively announced how he would employ it. If the dispositions and the will of the court of Rome found less resistance and occasioned no troubles in England or France, it was because Cardinal Wolsey, minister of Henry VIII., was associated in the mission of the apostolic legate, and that Leo X. abandoned the tenths of his kingdom to Francis I.
We have before us several historical documents which have never been printed, and which throw a great light upon the circumstances of which we are speaking. The first is a letter from Francis I., dated from Amboise, the 16th of December, 1516, by which Master Josse de Lagarde, doctor in theology, vicar-general of the cathedral church of Thoulouse, is named commissary, touching the fact of the crusade in the diocese. The king of France exposes in another letter the aim of the jubilate that is about to be opened: it was to implore means to make war against the infidels, and conquer the Holy Land and the empire of Greece, detained and usurped by the said infidels. To these letters patent are joined instructions given by the king, in concert with the legate of the pope, for the execution of the bull which orders the preaching of the crusade in the kingdom of France during the two years 1517 and 1518. These instructions, in the first place, recommend the choice of good preachers, charged to make good and devout sermons to the people, and to explain the faculties and dispensations which are contained in the bull, as well as why the just and holy causes for which it is ordered, that during two years all other indulgences, all other general and particular pardons, are suspended and revoked.
After having spoken of the choice of preachers, and of the manner in which they ought to preach, the letters patent of the king give some instructions upon the choice of confessors. The commissary-general of the crusade could appoint as many as seemed necessary to him for every church in which were troncs et questes (poor-boxes and gatherings) for the jubilee. He was commanded to name six for the cathedral of the diocese, gens de bonne conscience, hors de suspicion (worthy people, above suspicion). The ecclesiastics thus chosen by the commissary had the mission to confess all such as were desirous of indulgences; and to avoid the disorders that might arise from the spirit of rivalry, they had, to the exclusion of all others, the power to make compositions and restitutions, and give absolution, &c. &c.
In short, the royal ordinance omitted none of the circumstances which accompanied the preaching of a crusade, or of the forms which ought to be adopted in the distribution of indulgences. It goes so far as to regulate the shape of the troncs placed in the churches to receive the offerings of the faithful, and the religious ceremonies that were to be observed during the jubilee.[84] Among other orders, one commanded that a great number of confessionals, or bills of absolution and indulgence, should be made; that these bills, signed by a notary, should be sent to the commissary-general, who would seal them WITH THE SEAL sent by the king, and that there should be left upon them a blank space for the name of him or her who wished to procure them. The royal instruction added, that the commissary should cause his tronc to be properly and handsomely set up, and that there should be in the centre of it a large handsome cross, upon which should be written, in great, fair letters, IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. In order that nothing might be wanting to excite the people to devotion, it was besides ordered, that solemn processions should be made, and that in them a handsome banner should be carried, upon which should be, on one side, the portraits of the pope and the king of France, and on the other, paintings full of Turks and other infidels.
In this ordinance, of which it gives us great pleasure to recall the spirit and the expressions, that which history particularly observes, is the numerous precautions against infidelity and fraud. The distributors of the indulgences were obliged to consult an assessment for their government in all expenses and reinstatements. The troncs, in which the money of the faithful was deposited, had three locks and three keys, and were only to be opened in the presence of witnesses; among the documents we have quoted, is one which is the legal order for the opening of the troncs,[85] with an account rendered of the receipts and expenditure, in which the most minute details are not neglected, and which shows to what a degree exactitude and watchfulness were carried. These rigorous precautions were the more necessary, from the people being led to be suspicious by the examples of past times; it was pretty well known that many of the collectors of the money for the crusades were not people of worth, and above suspicion. The more sacred the motive for levying this tribute was said to be, the more promptly was suspicion awakened; and the more anxious did charity itself appear as to the manner in which its offerings might be expended. Upon this point, as upon others, authority had so much the more necessity for keeping a severe watch, from there always being among the orators of the crusades some who showed more zeal than wisdom, and whose preachings were really a subject of scandal. As most of them received a salary proportionate with the amount of money dropped into the troncs of the churches, many did not hesitate to exaggerate the promises of the sovereign pontiff and the privileges attached to gifts of charity. History gives us the example of a preacher who put forth from the evangelical pulpit the following culpable maxim: When a piece of money shall be placed in the tronc of the crusade for the deliverance of a soul from purgatory, immediately that soul will be delivered, and will fly away towards heaven. The Faculty of Theology of Paris censured this proposition as contrary to the dogmas of the Church. The prudence of the heads of the Gallican Church, and the wise measures adopted by the king of France, thus prevented great disorders. It was not so in Germany, where the greatest excitement and dissatisfaction prevailed, and where seeds of heresy and trouble began to spring up even in the bosom of the clergy.
It may have been observed, how much more easy the court of Rome had hitherto daily made the opening of the treasury of pontifical indulgences. In the early expeditions to the East, these indulgences were only granted to the pilgrims of the Holy Land. They were afterwards granted to all who contributed to the support of the Crusaders. Still later, they were granted to the faithful who listened to the sermons of the preachers of the crusades; sometimes even to those who were present at the mass of the pope’s legates. As the distribution or sale of indulgences was an inexhaustible source of wealth, Leo X. took upon him to grant them not only to those who, by their alms, were willing to aid in defraying the expenses of the war against the Turks, but to all the faithful whose pious liberality should contribute to the amount necessary for the completion of the building of the church of St. Peter, which had been begun by his predecessor Julius II. Although this destination might have something noble and truly useful in it; although it might be worthy, in some sort, of an age in which the arts burst forth with great splendour, many Christians, particularly in Germany, saw nothing in it but an actual profanation, and a new means by which the court of Rome sought to enrich itself at the expense of the faithful.
Albert, archbishop of Mayence, charged with appointing the preachers of the jubilee and the distributors of papal indulgences, named for Saxony, Dominicans, to the exclusion of Cordeliers or Augustines, who had sometimes filled these kinds of missions. The latter showed themselves jealous of this preference; and as no precaution had been taken either to avert the effects of this species of rivalry, or put a stop to the abuses which might be committed, it happened that the Augustines censured severely the conduct, manners, and opinions of the Dominicans, and that the latter but too well justified the complaints of their adversaries.
Luther, an Augustine monk, put himself forward in these violent quarrels, and distinguished himself by his fervid eloquence;[86] he spoke strongly against the preachers that had been selected to receive the contributions of the faithful; and among the propositions he put forth from the pulpit, history has preserved the following, which was censured by Leo X.: “It is a sin to resist the Turks, seeing that Providence makes use of this faithless nation, to visit the iniquities of his people.” This strange maxim obtained faith amongst the partisans of Luther; and when the pope’s legate demanded, at the diet of Ratisbon, the levy of the tenths destined for the crusade, he met with a warm opposition. Murmurs and complaints arose in all parts of Germany. The court of Rome was reproached with putting holy things up to sale: it was compared to the unfaithful shepherd, who shears the sheep confided to his care; it was accused of despoiling credulous people; of ruining nations and kings; and of accumulating upon Christians more miseries than the domination of the Turks could cause them.
For more than a century, these kinds of accusations resounded throughout Germany, every time that money was raised for crusades; or that any tribute whatever was imposed upon the Christians by the sovereign pontiff. The reformers took advantage of this disposition of men’s minds to circulate new ideas, and to attempt a revolution in the Church. Among a nation led by its genius and character to speculative ideas, philosophic and religious novelties were sure to find more warm partisans and ardent apostles than elsewhere. It must likewise be added, that Germany was one of the countries of Christendom that Rome had, in its omnipotence, spared the least; and that the spirit of opposition had there taken rise, amidst long quarrels between the priesthood and the empire. When once the tie that united the minds of people was broken, and the yoke of an authority consecrated by time was shaken off, opposition knew no bounds; there was no longer a limit to opinions: the Church was attacked on all sides at once, and by a thousand different sects, all opposed to the court of Rome, and most of them opposed to each other. From that period burst forth that revolution which was destined to separate for ever many nations of Christendom from the Romish communion.
It is not our task to describe the events which accompanied the schism of Luther; but it is curious to observe, that the origin of the Reformation should be connected, not directly with the crusades, but with the abuse of the indulgences promulgated for the crusades.
Like all who begin revolutions, Luther was not at all aware of the extent to which his opposition to the court of Rome might be carried: he at first began by attacking some abuses of the pontifical authority, and soon finished by attacking the authority itself. The opinions he had kindled by his eloquence, the passions he had given birth to among his disciples, led him himself much further than he could possibly have foreseen: those who had the greatest reason to combat the doctrines of the reformers saw, no more than he did, what those doctrines were to bring with them. Germany, divided into a thousand different states, and given up to all kinds of disorders, had no authority sufficiently strong and sufficiently prescient to anticipate the effects of a schism. At the court of Rome nobody could have believed that a simple monk could ever shake the pillars of the Church. Amidst the pomp and the splendour of the arts which he patronized, and diverted by the cares of an ambitious policy, Leo X. perhaps was too neglectful of the progress of Luther. Above all, he was wrong in entirely abandoning the expedition against the Turks, which he had announced to the Christian world, and which might, at least at the first, have offered a useful distraction to minds agitated by ideas of reformation. The undertaking of a holy war which he had followed up with so much warmth at the beginning of his pontificate and for which the poets promised him eternal glory,—this enterprise, at his death, no longer engaged his thoughts, or those of his contemporaries.
In the mean time Soliman, the successor of Selim, had recently taken possession of Belgrade, and threatened the isle of Rhodes. This isle was then the last colony of the Christians in Asia. As long as the Knights of St. John remained masters of it, the sultan of the Turks had reason to fear that some great expedition might be formed in the West for the recovery of Palestine and Syria, or even for the conquest of Egypt, which had lately been united to the Ottoman empire.
The grand-master of the Hospitallers sent to solicit the assistance of Christian Europe. Charles V. had just united, in his own person, the imperial crown with that of the Spains. Entirely occupied with opposing the power of France, and anxious to draw Pope Adrian VI. into a war against the most Christian king, the emperor was very little affected by the danger which threatened the Knights of Rhodes. The sovereign pontiff did not dare to succour them, or solicit for them the support of Christendom. Francis I. exhibited more generous sentiments; but in the situation in which his kingdom was then placed, he was unable to send them the assistance he had promised.
The Knights of Rhodes were left to their own resources. History has celebrated the labours and the prodigies of heroism by which the order of the Hospitallers illustrated its defence. After many months of combats, Rhodes fell into the hands of Soliman. It was a sad spectacle to behold the grand-master L’Isle-Adam, the father of his knights and of his subjects, dragging with him the sad remains of the order, and all the people of Rhodes, who had determined to follow him. He landed at first upon the coast of Naples, not far from the spot where Virgil makes the pious Æneas land, with the glorious wreck of Troy. If the spirit of the crusades could have revived, what heart could have remained unmoved, at seeing this venerable old man, followed by his faithful companions in misfortune, seeking an asylum, imploring compassion, and soliciting, as a reward of their past services, a little corner of earth upon which he and his warriors might still unfurl the standard of religion, and combat the infidels.
When the grand-master set forward on his march towards Rome, Adrian VI. had declared war against the king of France; a league was formed by the sovereign pontiff, the emperor, the king of England, and the duke of Milan. In this state of affairs, the Christians of the East could not hope for any succour. After the death of Adrian, Pope Clement VII. showed himself more favourable to the order of the Hospitallers. He received the grand-master with all the demonstrations of a paternal tenderness. When the chancellor of the order related, in the consistory, the exploits and the reverses of the knights, the sovereign pontiff and the Romish prelates shed tears, and promised to interest all the powers of the Christian world for such noble sufferers. Unfortunately for the order of St. John, the powers of Europe were more than ever divided among themselves. Francis I. was made prisoner at the battle of Pavia. The pope, who had wished to resume the old papal title of the conciliator, only drew down upon himself the hatred and the anger of Charles V. Amidst these divisions, the Knights of Rhodes were forgotten; and it was not till ten years after the conquest of Soliman, that these noble warriors were able to obtain from the emperor, the rock of Malta, where they became again the terror of the Mussulmans.
Whilst Europe was thus troubled, the conqueror of Rhodes and Belgrade reappeared in a threatening attitude upon the banks of the Danube. Louis II. endeavoured to reanimate the patriotism of the Hungarians, and caused the old custom of exposing in public a bloody sabre to be revived, as a signal of war and of danger for the country. But neither the exhortations of the monarch, nor those of the clergy, nor even the approach of the enemy, were able to appease the discords, born of feudal anarchy and the lengthened misfortunes of Hungary. The Hungarian monarch was only able to get together an army of twenty-two thousand men, to oppose to that of Soliman. Louis, a young prince without experience, who allowed himself to be led, even in war, by ecclesiastics, named, as general of his army, Paul Temory, lately issued from a convent of Cordeliers, to become archbishop of Colotza. We are unable to ascertain whether, in this circumstance, the king of Hungary was obliged to put himself in the hands of the clergy, because he was abandoned by the nobility; or, if the nobility abandoned him, because he had put himself in the hands of the clergy. As the pope constantly excited the Hungarians to defend their own country, the ecclesiastics of Hungary, who were his interpreters to the faithful, and even to the king, must naturally have exercised a great influence in all that concerned the crusade.
In this war twenty-two thousand Christians had to contend with an army of a hundred thousand Ottomans; and this was the Hungarian army which, according to the advice of the bishops, offered battle to the infidels. What is very remarkable in holy wars is, that the clergy may almost always be recognised by the rashness of the enterprises. The persuasion of the ecclesiastics, that they were fighting for the cause of God, with their ignorance of the art of war, prevented them from seeing perils, did not allow them to doubt of victory, and made them often neglect the means of human prudence. It was then, in the confidence of a miraculous success, that the archbishop of Colotza did not hesitate to venture upon a decisive battle. The clergy who accompanied him animated the combatants by their discourses, and set an example of bravery; but religious and warlike enthusiasm cannot triumph over numbers, and most of the prelates received the palm of martyrdom in the mêlée. Eighteen thousand Christians were left upon the field of battle; and what added greatly to the misfortune, Louis II. disappeared, and perished in the general rout, leaving his kingdom torn by factions and ravaged by the Turks.
The defeat of the Hungarians brought despair to the mind of Clement VII. The pontiff wrote to all the sovereigns of Europe; he even formed the project of visiting them in person, and to engage them by his prayers and his tears to defend Christendom. Neither the touching exhortations of the pope, nor his suppliant attitude, were able to move the princes; and it is here that we can plainly perceive the rapid decline of the pontifical power, which we have so lately seen armed with all the terrors of the Church, and whose decisions were considered as the decrees of Heaven. War was about to be rekindled in Italy, and the pope was not long in becoming himself the victim of the disorders he would willingly have prevented. The imperial troops entered Rome as into an enemy’s city. The emperor, who assumed the title of temporal head of the Church, did not fear to offer to Europe the scandal of the captivity of a pontiff.
Although the authority of the head of the Church no longer inspired the same veneration, or exercised the same ascendancy over men’s minds, nevertheless the violences of Charles V. excited general indignation. England and France flew to arms. All Europe was troubled: some wished to avenge the pope, others to take advantage of the disorder; but none thought of defending Christendom against the invasion of the Turks.
Clement VII., however, from the depths of the prison in which the emperor detained him, still watched over the defence of Christian Europe: his legates went to exhort the Hungarians to fight for their God and their country. As the pontiff had been ruined by the calamities of war, he implored the charity of the faithful; he ordered that the plate should be sold in all the churches of Italy; he solicited the assistance of several Italian states; and he ordered that indulgences might be distributed and the tenths collected to support the expenses of the holy war.
The active solicitude of the pope went so far as to seek enemies against the Turks even in the East and among the infidels. Acomath, who had in Egypt shaken off the yoke of the Porte, received encouragement from the court of Rome. A legate of the pope went to promise him the support of the Christians of the West. The sovereign pontiff kept up continual relations on all the frontiers and in all the provinces of the Turkish empire, in order to be made aware of the designs and preparations of the sultans of Constantinople. It is not out of place to say here, that most of the predecessors of Clement had taken, as he did, the greatest care in watching the projects of the infidels. Thus the heads of the Church did not confine themselves to exciting the Christians to defend themselves upon their own territories; but, like vigilant sentinels, they constantly kept their eyes fixed upon the enemies of Christendom, to warn Europe of the perils which threatened it.
When the emperor broke the chains of Clement VII., the holy pontiff forgot the outrages he had received, to give all his cares to the danger of the German empire, which was about to be attacked by the Turks. The capital of Austria was soon besieged, and only owed its safety to the bravery of its garrison. In the diets of Augsburg and Spire, the pope’s legate endeavoured, in the name of religion, to rouse the ardour of the people of Germany for their own defence. A physician, named Riccius, spoke in the name of the emperor, and added his exhortations to those of the apostolic legate; he made an appeal to the ancient virtue of the Germans, and reminded his auditors of the example of their ancestors, who had never endured a foreign domination. He pressed princes, magistrates, and people, to fight for their own independence and safety. Ferdinand, king of Bohemia and Hungary, urged the princes and states of the empire to adopt prompt and effective measures against the Turks. These exhortations and counsels met with but little success, but had to encounter a strong opposition from the still too active spirit of the new doctrines. All the cities, all the provinces, were occupied by questions agitated by the Reformation. We may at this time compare the nations of Germany, menaced by the Turks, to the Greeks of the lower empire, whom history represents as given up to vain disputes, when the barbarians were at their gates. As among the Greeks, there was a crowd of men among the Germans, who entertained less dread of seeing in their cities the turban of Mahomet than the tiara of the pontiff of Rome; some, governed by a spirit of fatalism scarcely to be equalled in the Koran, asserted that God had judged Hungary, and that the safety of that kingdom was not in the power of men; others (the Millenarians) announced with a fanatical joy the approach of the last judgment; and whilst the preachers of the crusades were exhorting the Germans to defend their country, the jealous pride of an impious sect called for the days of universal desolation.
The paternal proceedings and counsels of the pope were neither able to calm men’s minds, nor to rekindle an enthusiasm for the holy war, in Germany, or even among the Hungarians. Ferdinand, brother of Charles V., whom the imperial power had caused to be declared king of Hungary; and the vaiwode of Transylvania, who, with permission of the Turks, reigned over the ruins of his country, were contending for this unfortunate kingdom, oppressed at the same time by its enemies and its allies. When Soliman returned, for the third time, to the banks of the Danube, called thither by a party of the Hungarian nobility, he found no army to oppose his march. The Ottomans advanced towards the capital of Austria, and prepared to invade the richest provinces of Germany. So pressing a danger determined the head and the princes of the empire to unite their forces against the common enemy. But when the Turks retired in disorder, no one thought of either fighting with them, or pursuing them in their precipitate retreat. The king of Hungary, abandoned all at once by the Germans, and fearing fresh attacks, had no resource but to sue to his enemies for peace. It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that the pope was comprised in the treaty: Soliman gave the title of father to the Roman pontiff, and that of brother to the king of Hungary. Clement VII., after so many useless attempts to interest the princes of Christendom, appeared to entertain no hope but in Providence; and exclaimed with bitterness, when approving the issue of the pacific negotiations, “We have nothing left but to supplicate Heaven to watch itself over the Christian world.”
It might be believed that the holy wars were drawing towards an end, when the head of the Church had laid down his arms, and made peace with the infidels. But this treaty of peace, like others that had preceded it, could only be considered as a truce, and war would most likely break out again when either the Christians or the Mussulmans saw any hopes of carrying it on with advantage. Such was the policy of the times; particularly that which governed the Christian and Mussulman powers in their mutual relations. Soliman had abandoned his projects upon Germany and Hungary, less out of respect for treaties, than because he was employing his forces against the Persians, or that he required his army to quell some revolts which had broken out in Asia against his authority. On the other side, Christendom left the Ottomans in peace, because it was a prey to discord; and because most Christian princes, occupied by their own interests, listened to nothing but the counsels of their ambition.
Europe had at that time three great monarchs, whose united strength would have been quite sufficient to crush the power of the Turks; but these three princes were as much opposed to each other by their policy as by their character and their genius. Henry VIII. of England, who had refuted Luther, and leagued himself with the king of France, to deliver the captive pope, had just separated himself from the Romish Church. Sometimes allied with France, sometimes allied with the emperor, occupied in bringing about the triumph of the schism of which he was the apostle and the head, he had no time to bestow upon war with the infidels. Francis I. had, in the first place, made pretensions to the imperial crown, and afterwards to the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples. These pretensions, which were a source of misfortunes to himself and France, disturbed the whole of his reign, and never allowed him an opportunity for seriously undertaking a crusade against the Turks, a crusade which he himself had preached in his states. The feeling of vengeance and jealousy which animated him against a fortunate and powerful rival, inspired him twice with the idea of seeking an alliance with Soliman. To the great scandal of Christendom, an Ottoman fleet was received in the port of Marseilles, and the standard of the lilies was mingled with the crescent under the walls of Nice. Charles V., master of all the Spains, head of the German empire, sovereign of the Low Countries, and possessor of several empires in the new world, was much more anxious to humble the French monarchy, and establish his domination in Europe, than to defend Christendom against the invasion of the Turks. During the greater part of his reign, this monarch conciliated the Protestants of Germany, on account of the Ottomans; and avoided collision with the Ottomans, on account of his enemies in the Christian republic. He satisfied himself with protecting, by his arms, the capital of Austria, when threatened by the Turks; but when the pope conjured him to employ his forces for the deliverance of Hungary, he preferred attempting an expedition to the coast of Africa. A war against the Moors of Africa was more popular in Spain than an expedition upon the Danube; and Charles was more desirous of acquiring popularity among the Spaniards, than of meriting the gratitude of Christendom. The Barbary powers were recently formed, under the protection of the Ottoman Porte, and began to render themselves formidable in the Mediterranean. Charles carried his arms twice to the coast of Africa: in the first expedition, he got possession of Tunis, planted his standards upon the ruins of Carthage, and delivered twenty thousand captives, who went to publish his victories in every part of the Christian world; in the second expedition, he would have annihilated the Barbary powers, so destructive to the navigation of the Franks; but a hurricane, which destroyed his fleet and his army, dispersed the hopes of commerce and navigators.
At the time Charles experienced so great a disaster whilst combating the Mussulmans of Africa, the Ottomans, invited by Francis I., were ravaging the coasts of Italy, and had recently entered Hungary, from whence they threatened Germany.
Then fresh cries of alarm resounded all over Europe, and among those who exhorted the nations to oppose the Turks, the voice of Martin Luther was heard. In a book entitled Prayer against the Turk, the reformer condemned the indifference of people and kings, and advised the Christians to resist the Mussulmans, if they did not wish to be led into captivity, as the children of Israel had formerly been. In a formula of prayer which he had composed, he expressed himself thus: “Arise, Lord, great God, and sanctify thy name, which thy enemies outrage; strengthen thy reign, which they wish to destroy, and suffer us not to be trampled under-foot by those who are not willing that thou shouldst be our God.”
Murmurs had several times arisen against Luther, who was accused of having, by his doctrines, weakened the courage of the Germans. Some time before the period of which we are speaking, he published an apology, in which, without disavowing the famous proposition censured by the pope, he gave to his words a different sense from that which the court of Rome gave them, and which he himself, no doubt, had given them in the first instance. All his explanations, which it is not very easy to analyze, were reduced to this idea:—“That it was allowable to fight with the Turks, but that it was not allowable to fight with them under the banners of Christianity.” Although the leader of the Reformation required all the qualities of a perfect Christian in the warriors called upon to fight the Mussulmans, and although he drew all the principles of his preaching from the religion of Christ; the standard of the cross in a Christian army, caused him, he said, more horror than the sight of the demon. The true motive for his repugnance for a crusade may be easily guessed; a crusade appeared necessarily to require the concurrence of the pope; and the concurrence of the pope, in a war which interested Christendom, was the thing in the world most dreaded by Luther. He had so strong an aversion to the court of Rome, that in his writings he asks himself if war ought not to be made against the Pope as well as the Turk; and in the excess of his hatred, does not hesitate to answer, against the one as against the other.
We will not repeat here the declamations and the sophisms of Luther. Through the puerile subtleties and the contrary reasonings which he employs for his justification, we must, however, remark the distinction he has made between civil authority and ecclesiastical authority: it is to the first, says the reformer, that it belongs to combat the Turks; the duty of the second is to wait, to submit, to pray, and to groan. He adds, that war was not the business of bishops, but of magistrates; that the emperor, in this circumstance, ought to be considered as the head of the German confederation, and not as the protector of the Church, nor as the support of the Christian faith; a title which can only properly be given to Jesus Christ. All these arguments, doubtless, had something reasonable in them; and the opinion of Luther upon the civil authority, although he might have adopted it only out of opposition to the papal power, would have obtained the approbation of enlightened minds, if he had not employed, in supporting it, all the passion of irritated pride; and if his apology, in particular, had not been stained by abuse which decency will not allow history to repeat.
Not content with this apology, which had for title, Of the War against the Turks, Luther, two years after the siege of Vienna, published another work, entitled, A Military Discourse, in which he also urges the Germans to take arms. This second discourse begins, as the first had done, by theological distinctions and subtleties; by declamations against the pope and the bishops; by predictions upon the approaching end of the world; and upon the power of the Turks; which the author finds clearly announced in Daniel. Although he endeavours to prove, as in his first writing, that the war against the Mussulmans is not at all a religious war, but an enterprise entirely political; he promises, not the less, the palms of martyrdom to those who shall die with arms in their hands. He represents this war as agreeable to the Divinity, and as the duty of a true disciple of the Gospel. “Thy arm and thy lance,” says he to every Christian soldier who shall take arms against the infidels, “shall be the arm and the lance of God. In immolating Turks, thou wilt not shed innocent blood, and the world will consider thee as the executioner of the decrees of divine justice; for thou wilt but kill those whom God has himself condemned. The Turk,” adds he, “ravishes terrestrial life from Christians, and procures them eternal life; he at the same time kills himself, and precipitates himself into hell.” Luther appears to be so penetrated with this idea, that he is on the point of deploring the fate of the Mussulmans; and to chastise indifferent Christians, and pusillanimous Germans, he has no punishment to wish them, unless it be that they should become Turks, and thus be the property of the devil.
A short extract is not sufficient to show what whimsical and singular ideas are contained in Luther’s discourse; it may, however, be easily perceived how much this kind of preaching differs from that of the orators who preached the crusade in preceding ages. In the second part of his discourse, the leader of the Reformation addressed himself to the various classes of society; to the nobility, who are immersed in luxury and pleasures, but for whom the hour of fight is at length come; to the citizens and merchants, for too long a time addicted to usury and cupidity; to the labourers and peasants, whom he accuses of deceiving and robbing their neighbours. The tone of the preacher is full of an excessive severity; he speaks like a man who feels no sorrow at the misfortunes which are about to happen, because he has foretold them, and his warnings and prophecies have been despised. He says, with a sort of satisfaction, that after days of joy and debauchery, after seasons of festivity and pleasures, comes the time of tears, miseries, and alarms. He finishes by a vehement apostrophe, addressed to all who shall remain deaf to his voice, and whom the enemy shall find without defence: “Listen now, then, to the devil in the Turk, you who are not willing to listen to God in Jesus Christ; the Turk will burn your dwellings; he will bear away your cattle and your harvests; he will outrage and slaughter your wives and your daughters before your eyes; he will impale your little children upon the very stakes of the hedge which serves as an inclosure to your heritage; he will immolate you yourselves, or will carry you away into Turkey, to expose you in the market, like unclean animals; it is he who will teach you what you will have lost, and what you ought to have done. It is to the Turk belongs the task to humble the haughty nobility, to render citizens docile, and to chastise and tame the gross multitude.”
Luther then gives his advice upon the manner of making war against the Turks; he is desirous that all should defend themselves even to death, and that all the countries through which the enemy was about to pass should be laid waste; he terminates his discourse by addressing consolations to them who shall fall into the hands of the Turks, and traces out for them a plan of conduct for the time of their captivity among the infidels.
This language, of which we are far from exaggerating the singularity, was not at all calculated to warm and rally men’s minds for a struggle against the enemies of Germany and Christendom. At this period, the princes and the states of the empire frequently met to deliberate on their own dangers. It was more easy to convoke diets than to get together armies. The Protestants were not willing to take arms against the Turks, for fear of strengthening their adversaries; and the Catholics were restrained by their fear of the Protestants: amidst the violent debates that agitated Germany, the Church, and even the civil authority which Luther had proclaimed, lost all that unity of action, without which it is impossible to combat a formidable enemy with advantage. Among the Germans, the spirit of sect weakened by degrees the spirit of patriotism; among Christians, the hatred they conceived for one another caused them to lose that pious ardour which had animated them against the Mussulmans. In proportion as the Reformation proceeded, Germany became divided into two parties, which were like two enemies face to face. Both parties soon had recourse to arms, and, in the fury of civil wars, the invasions of the Turks were forgotten. It was thus that the Reformation, which took its birth at the end of the crusades, completely extinguished the enthusiasm for holy wars, and no longer permitted the nations of Christendom to unite against the infidels.
The name of the Turks was still pronounced in the diets of Germany, and even in the council of Trent; but no measures were adopted for making war against them. From that time there passed nothing in either Hungary or the East which was able to fix the attention of the Christian world. The only event upon which Europe seemed interested was the defence of Malta against all the forces of Soliman. This defence increased the reputation of the military order of St. John. The port of Malta became the only place of shelter for Christian vessels on the route to Egypt, Syria, or Greece. The corsairs of Tunis and Algiers, and all the pirates who infested the Mediterranean, trembled at the sight of the rock, and of the galleys over which floated the standard of the cross. This military colony, always armed against the infidels, and constantly recruited from the warlike nobility of Europe, offered, up to the end of the eighteenth century, a living image of ancient chivalry, and of the heroic epoch of the crusades. We have described the origin of this illustrious order,—we have followed it in its days of triumph, and in its reverses, still more glorious than its victories. We will not say by what revolution it is fallen, nor how it has lost that isle which was given to it as the reward of its bravery, and which it defended, during more than two hundred years, against the Ottoman forces and the barbarians of Africa.