Fig. 108.—St. Louis and his two brothers, Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, and Charles, Count of Anjou, made prisoners by the Saracens.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand Voyage de Hiérusalem,” printed in Paris by François Regnault in 1522; folio. Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.
Fig. 108.—St. Louis and his two brothers, Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, and Charles, Count of Anjou, made prisoners by the Saracens.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand Voyage de Hiérusalem,” printed in Paris by François Regnault in 1522; folio. Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.
Louis having recovered his liberty, would not return to France without having tried every means in his power to alleviate the miseries of Palestine, or at least to deliver the Christian prisoners whom the infidels still detained.He went, with seven hundred knights who still remained under his orders, to the Holy Land, and then, rather by conciliation than by force, and by the exercise of a marvellous sagacity, he was enabled to a certain extent to re-establish the prestige of the defenders of the cross. He devoted four years to this good work, and only consented to return to France on hearing of the death of his beloved mother. He re-entered Paris, after an absence of six years (1254), with a wounded and broken spirit, “because,” says the English chronicler, Matthew Paris, “through him disorder had overspread Christendom.”
Fig. 109.—The Messengers of the Sultan, having at their head a little old man walking with crutches, come to discuss terms of ransom with the Christian prisoners.—From a miniature in the “Credo de Joinville,” Manuscript of the end of the Thirteenth Century, formerly in the National Library of Paris, but now in England.
Fig. 109.—The Messengers of the Sultan, having at their head a little old man walking with crutches, come to discuss terms of ransom with the Christian prisoners.—From a miniature in the “Credo de Joinville,” Manuscript of the end of the Thirteenth Century, formerly in the National Library of Paris, but now in England.
Palestine in 1268 had fallen into the deepest misery and desolation; the few towns and strongholds which remained in the hands of the Eastern Christians had been pillaged and sacked by the Mamelukes, who at last took Antioch, where they slew seventeen thousand of the inhabitants, and sold a hundred thousand more into slavery (Fig. 110). These dreadful tidings, which two centuries earlier would have caused a general indignation in Christendom, reached the West without creating much excitement, in the midst of the political troubles which were agitating most of the states of Europe. But since his return to France, St. Louis had worn the cross, if not on his garments, at least in his heart, and had always cherished the hope of realising the dream of his youth. “The cries of the miserable Eastern Christians,” says an old chronicle, “deprived him of rest; andhe felt within him a deep anguish of soul and a passionate desire for martyrdom.”
Fig. 110.—Plan of Antioch in the Thirteenth Century, with its five gates—of St. Paul, of the Dog, of the Duke, of the Bridge, and of St. George. To the right is Mount Oronte; in the foreground is the sea.—From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, No. 4,939, in the National Library of Paris.
Fig. 110.—Plan of Antioch in the Thirteenth Century, with its five gates—of St. Paul, of the Dog, of the Duke, of the Bridge, and of St. George. To the right is Mount Oronte; in the foreground is the sea.—From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, No. 4,939, in the National Library of Paris.
Accordingly he convened a solemn parliament, when he announced to his assembled nobles his intention of undertaking a new crusade. At first many were greatly surprised and afflicted, thinking, writes the Sire de Joinville, “that those who had counselled the undertaking had committed an evil deed and a mortal sin.” Some, indeed, of the king’s most faithful servants openly refused to join his crusade, not through fear, but from wisdom, and with the intention perhaps of persuading him to abandon his fatal project; but the majority of the barons and feudal lords found it impossible to gainsay the will of their sovereign, and the example of the king was of still greater power than his orders. His three sons, the Counts of Toulouse, of Champagne, and of Flanders, took up the cross, as well as his brother, Charles of Anjou, who had recently been raised to the throne of Sicily, and many other princes of the royal house of France.
The preparations for the crusade required three years, during which St. Louis, in the hope of persuading every Christian state to send its troopsagainst the infidels, did his best, but without success, to put an end to the political quarrels that divided kings from their subjects. He embarked, in 1270, with his sons and his principal nobles, for Sardinia, which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of the Crusaders. On his arrival there it was decided that Tunis should be attacked first. A French chronicler mentions that the king had been given to understand that “Tunis afforded great assistance to the Sultan of Cairo, which was very injurious to the Holy Land, and the barons believed that if that root of evil, the city of Tunis, were destroyed, it would be of much advantage to Christendom.” Other chroniclers, on the contrary, and amongst them Matthew Paris, give a more plausible motive for the expedition, viz., that the king had heard that the Moorish sovereign of that part of the coast had shown a disposition to embrace Christianity and join the western powers in their attempt to conquer Egypt.
Fig. 111.—Disembarkation of St. Louis at Carthage.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Passaiges d’oultremer:” small folio, Paris, 1518.
Fig. 111.—Disembarkation of St. Louis at Carthage.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Passaiges d’oultremer:” small folio, Paris, 1518.
However that may have been, the crusading fleet sailed for Tunis, carrying an army sadly tried by sickness, and whose ardour had already strangely begun to cool. The Moors permitted the Christians, almost unopposed, to disembark and take possession of Carthage (Fig. 111), which had dwindleddown to a mere village. Some of the Crusaders housed themselves in the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city, the remainder bivouacked under the burning sun of Africa, surrounded and harassed by the infidels, whose light cavalry kept continuously skirmishing around them. It was not long before the plague broke out in the Christian army, whilst it was still awaiting the arrival of the King of Sicily and his troops, and Louis IX., already in feeble health, bowed down by premature old age, and heartbroken in consequence of the death of one of his sons, was attacked by it.
Fig. 112.—St. John of Capistran, Franciscan Monk, who defended Belgrade against the Turks.—From a Painting by Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Louvre. Fifteenth Century.
Fig. 112.—St. John of Capistran, Franciscan Monk, who defended Belgrade against the Turks.—From a Painting by Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Louvre. Fifteenth Century.
As soon as this culminating misfortune was known in the camp there was unusual consternation and despondency, for every one knew that the king was the life and soul of the expedition. From his sickbed, where he was undergoing the most cruel sufferings, he still continued to issue his orders with that composure and gentleness which were habitual to him; but every hour increased his feebleness, every moment brought him nearer to his end. As soon as he perceived that his death was at hand, he tranquilly dictated his last instructions to his son Philip—instructions which have rightly been termed celestial;—then kneeling at the bedside he received extreme unction, after which, stretching himself upona bed of ashes as a sign of repentance and humility, his eyes turned beseechingly towards heaven, and the words of the psalmist on his lips, “O Lord, I will enter thy temple and glorify thy name,” he quietly breathed his last (August 25th, 1270).
Fig. 113.—Don Juan of Austria, holding a boarding-axe in remembrance of the Battle of Lepanto.—From a painting attributed to Alonso Sanchez Coello, Portuguese painter, in the possession of M. Carderera, of Madrid. End of the Sixteenth Century.
Fig. 113.—Don Juan of Austria, holding a boarding-axe in remembrance of the Battle of Lepanto.—From a painting attributed to Alonso Sanchez Coello, Portuguese painter, in the possession of M. Carderera, of Madrid. End of the Sixteenth Century.
And with the last beat of this grand and noble heart terminated the eighth crusade, the last on the heroic list of these adventurous expeditions in which the power and the influence of the Christian faith had been so signally manifested. It had indeed required all the personal influence of the revered monarch to re-awaken the religious enthusiasm, to quicken into life the zeal and faith of a state of society which had become more sceptical, if not more corrupt, as it had become more civilised, and which occupied itself less with the spiritual consolations of the soul than with the material pleasures of the body. Never again was the sceptre of France to pass intosuch sainted hands, never again was the martyr’s halo of glory to illuminate its crown. It is true that more than once since the death of St. Louis a call to the crusade has resounded from the pontifical chair and from the dais of the council hall, but it never found an echo in the heart of either prince or peasant. Nevertheless on two subsequent occasions have voices as persuasive as those of Peter the Hermit and the Monk of Clairvaux attempted to re-awaken popular enthusiasm. In the middle of the fifteenth century, while Mahomet II., master of Constantinople, was advancing full of confidence to conquer the West, John Corvin, vayvode of Transylvania, better known under the name of Huniades, put himself at the head of the Crusaders who had been assembled by the eloquent appeals of St. John of Capistran (Fig. 112). Carried away with the enthusiasm of this man of God, who, crucifix in hand, was wont to penetrate the ranks in the hottest part of an engagement, the Crusaders showed themselves worthy of their heroic leader, Huniades. At the close of a tremendous struggle, the Turks were put to flight; Belgrade remained in the hands of the Christians, and the haughty Mahomet II. was wounded and hurried off the field by his followers.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, the King of Spain and the Italian princes concluded arrangements with Pope Pius V. and the Venetians for a crusade to defend Christian Europe against the Turks. Don Juan of Austria (Fig. 113), who was appointed commander-in-chief of the troops by Pius V., obtained, on the 7th of October, 1571, that tremendous victory in which the Turks lost thirty thousand men and two hundred and twenty-four vessels, a loss that destroyed their naval supremacy and saved Europe. But in the meantime the Holy Land had again fallen beneath the yoke of the infidel, and there was soon no trace left of those principalities beyond the seas which the crusading nobles had founded in the Archipelago and in Asia Minor, and which for a brief, a very brief, space had seemed so flourishing; there was soon, indeed, no trace left of even the name of the ephemeral kingdom of Jerusalem, for the creation of which the nations of Europe had lavished, for nearly two centuries, so much blood, so much wealth, and so much heroism.
The effect of the Crusades was nevertheless a complete revolution in the manners and customs of the Western nations; the suppression of servitude, the founding of the free towns, the alienation and the division of the feudal lands, and the development of the communal system, were the immediate consequences of the tremendous emigration of men who went forth to fightand die in Palestine. The nobles ceased to wage their perpetual private quarrels, knighthood assumed a regular and solemn character, judiciary duels diminished, religious orders multiplied, and charitable institutions were established on every side. Men’s minds became more enlightened and their manners softened under the influence of the growing expansion of science, art, and literature. Law, natural history, philosophy, and mathematics came to them in direct descent from the Greeks and the Arabians; a new literature, abounding in poetic gems, sprang forth all at once from the imagination of troubadours, minstrels, and minnesingers; art, the fine arts particularly, architecture, painting, sculpture, and embroidery, began to unfold their thousand wonders; industry and commerce multiplied a hundredfold the public wealth, which at one time had seemed nearly swallowed up in ruinous expeditions; and the art of war, as well as the art of navigation, made immense strides in the direction of progress.
Fig. 114.—Assault on a Fortified Place.—From a Miniature in the “Histoire des Croisades” of Guillaume de Tyr, Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.
Fig. 114.—Assault on a Fortified Place.—From a Miniature in the “Histoire des Croisades” of Guillaume de Tyr, Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.