The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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David Reed

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 6

The Crusades.

Part I.

Preservation Of The Greek Empire. - Numbers, Passage, And
Event, Of The Second And Third Crusades. - St. Bernard. - Reign
Of Saladin In Egypt And Syria. - His Conquest Of Jerusalem. -
Naval Crusades. - Richard The First Of England. - Pope Innocent
The Third; And The Fourth And Fifth Crusades. - The Emperor
Frederic The Second. - Louis The Ninth Of France; And The Two
Last Crusades. - Expulsion Of The Latins Or Franks By The
Mamelukes.

In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps
compare the emperor Alexius ^1 to the jackal, who is said to
follow the steps, and to devour the leavings, of the lion.
Whatever had been his fears and toils in the passage of the first
crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits
which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity
and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this
threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the
neighborhood of Constantinople. While the crusaders, with blind
valor, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty
Greek improved the favorable occasion when the emirs of the
sea-coast were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks
were driven from the Isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of
Ephesu and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were
restored to the empire, which Alexius enlarged from the
Hellespont to the banks of the Maeander, and the rocky shores of
Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendor: the towns were
rebuilt and fortified; and the desert country was peopled with
colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from the more
distant and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares, we may
forgive Alexius, if he forgot the deliverance of the holy
sepulchre; but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul
reproach of treason and desertion. They had sworn fidelity and
obedience to his throne; but he had promised to assist their
enterprise in person, or, at least, with his troops and
treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the
sword, which had been the instrument of their victory, was the
pledge and title of their just independence. It does not appear
that the emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the
kingdom of Jerusalem; ^2 but the borders of Cilicia and Syria
were more recent in his possession, and more accessible to his
arms. The great army of the crusaders was annihilated or
dispersed; the principality of Antioch was left without a head,
by the surprise and captivity of Bohemond; his ransom had
oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman followers were
insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In
this distress, Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of
leaving the defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful
Tancred; of arming the West against the Byzantine empire; and of
executing the design which he inherited from the lessons and
example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine:
and, if we may credit a tale of the princess Anne, he passed the
hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin. ^3 But his reception in
France was dignified by the public applause, and his marriage
with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since the
bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command;
and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse
and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates
of Europe. ^4 The strength of Durazzo, and prudence of Alexius,
the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his
ambitious hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his
standard. A treaty of peace ^5 suspended the fears of the Greeks;
and they were finally delivered by the death of an adversary,
whom neither oaths could bind, nor dangers could appal, nor
prosperity could satiate. His children succeeded to the
principality of Antioch; but the boundaries were strictly
defined, the homage was clearly stipulated, and the cities of
Tarsus and Malmistra were restored to the Byzantine emperors. Of
the coast of Anatolia, they possessed the entire circuit from
Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljukian dynasty of Roum ^6
was separated on all sides from the sea and their Mussulman
brethren; the power of the sultan was shaken by the victories and
even the defeats of the Franks; and after the loss of Nice, they
removed their throne to Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and in land
town above three hundred miles from Constantinople. ^7 Instead of
trembling for their capital, the Comnenian princes waged an
offensive war against the Turks, and the first crusade prevented
the fall of the declining empire.

[Footnote 1: Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia
Minor Alexiad, l. xi. p. 321 - 325, l. xiv. p. 419; his Cilician
war against Tancred and Bohemond, p. 328 - 324; the war of
Epirus, with tedious prolixity, l. xii. xiii. p. 345 - 406; the
death of Bohemond, l. xiv. p. 419.]
[Footnote 2: The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a
nominal dependence, and in the dates of their inscriptions, (one
is still legible in the church of Bethlem,) they respectfully
placed before their own the name of the reigning emperor,
(Ducange, Dissertations sur Joinville xxvii. p. 319.)]
[Footnote 3: Anna Comnena adds, that, to complete the imitation,
he was shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how
the Barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction.
This absurd tale is unknown to the Latins.
Note: The Greek writers, in general, Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and
Glycas, p. 334 agree in this story with the princess Anne, except
in the absurd addition of the dead cock. Ducange has already
quoted some instances where a similar stratagem had been adopted
by Norman princes. On this authority Wilker inclines to believe
the fact. Appendix to vol. ii. p. 14. - M.]
[Footnote 4: In the Byzantine geography, must mean England; yet
we are more credibly informed, that our Henry I. would not
suffer him to levy any troops in his kingdom, (Ducange, Not. ad
Alexiad. p. 41.)]

[Footnote 5: The copy of the treaty (Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 406 -
416) is an original and curious piece, which would require, and
might afford, a good map of the principality of Antioch.]

[Footnote 6: See, in the learned work of M. De Guignes, (tom. ii.
part ii.,) the history of the Seljukians of Iconium, Aleppo, and
Damascus, as far as it may be collected from the Greeks, Latins,
and Arabians. The last are ignorant or regardless of the affairs
of Roum.]

[Footnote 7: Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and
by Strabo, with an ambiguous title, (Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121.)
Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude of Jews and
Gentiles. under the corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as
a great city, with a river and garden, three leagues from the
mountains, and decorated (I know not why) with Plato's tomb,
(Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p. 303 vers. Reiske; and the Index
Geographicus of Schulrens from Ibn Said.)]

In the twelfth century, three great emigrations marched by
land from the West for the relief of Palestine. The soldiers and
pilgrims of Lombardy, France, and Germany were excited by the
example and success of the first crusade. ^8 Forty-eight years
after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the emperor, and the
French king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh, undertook
the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of the Latins.
^9 A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor
Frederic Barbarossa, ^10 who sympathized with his brothers of
France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These three
expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness
of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the
nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel
may save the repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid
it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the
perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent
attempts for the defence or recovery of the Holy Land would
appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.

[Footnote 8: For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna
Comnena, Alexias, l. xi. p. 331, &c., and the viiith book of
Albert Aquensis.)]
[Footnote 9: For the second crusade, of Conrad III. and Louis
VII., see William of Tyre, (l. xvi. c. 18 - 19,) Otho of
Frisingen, (l. i. c. 34 - 45 59, 60,) Matthew Paris, (Hist.
Major. p. 68,) Struvius, (Corpus Hist Germanicae, p. 372, 373,)
Scriptores Rerum Francicarum a Duchesne tom. iv.: Nicetas, in
Vit. Manuel, l. i. c. 4, 5, 6, p. 41 - 48 Cinnamus l. ii. p. 41 -
49.]

[Footnote 10: For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see
Nicetas in Isaac Angel. l. ii. c. 3 - 8, p. 257 - 266. Struv.
(Corpus. Hist. Germ. p. 414,) and two historians, who probably
were spectators, Tagino, (in Scriptor. Freher. tom. i. p. 406 -
416, edit Struv.,) and the Anonymus de Expeditione Asiatica Fred.
I. (in Canisii Antiq. Lection. tom. iii. p. ii. p. 498 - 526,
edit. Basnage.)]

I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of
the first pilgrims, the chiefs were equal in rank, though unequal
in fame and merit, to Godfrey of Bouillon and his
fellow-adventurers. At their head were displayed the banners of
the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitain; the first a
descendant of Hugh Capet, the second, a father of the Brunswick
line: the archbishop of Milan, a temporal prince, transported,
for the benefit of the Turks, the treasures and ornaments of his
church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh the Great and
Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow.

The huge and disorderly bodies of their followers moved forward
in two columns; and if the first consisted of two hundred and
sixty thousand persons, the second might possibly amount to sixty
thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot. ^11 ^* The armies
of the second crusade might have claimed the conquest of Asia;
the nobles of France and Germany were animated by the presence of
their sovereigns; and both the rank and personal character of
Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their cause, and a discipline
to their force, which might be vainly expected from the feudatory
chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was
each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their immediate
attendants in the field; ^12 and if the light-armed troops, the
peasant infantry, the women and children, the priests and monks,
be rigorously excluded, the full account will scarcely be
satisfied with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome
to Britain, was called into action; the kings of Poland and
Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is affirmed by the
Greeks and Latins, that, in the passage of a strait or river, the
Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand, desisted
from the endless and formidable computation. ^13 In the third
crusade, as the French and English preferred the navigation of
the Mediterranean, the host of Frederic Barbarossa was less
numerous. Fifteen thousand knights, and as many squires, were the
flower of the German chivalry: sixty thousand horse, and one
hundred thousand foot, were mustered by the emperor in the plains
of Hungary; and after such repetitions, we shall no longer be
startled at the six hundred thousand pilgrims, which credulity
has ascribed to this last emigration. ^14 Such extravagant
reckonings prove only the astonishment of contemporaries; but
their astonishment most strongly bears testimony to the existence
of an enormous, though indefinite, multitude. The Greeks might
applaud their superior knowledge of the arts and stratagems of
war, but they confessed the strength and courage of the French
cavalry, and the infantry of the Germans; ^15 and the strangers
are described as an iron race, of gigantic stature, who darted
fire from their eyes, and spilt blood like water on the ground.
Under the banners of Conrad, a troop of females rode in the
attitude and armor of men; and the chief of these Amazons, from
her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the Golden-
footed Dame.

[Footnote 11: Anne, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse
and 100,000 foot, calls them Normans, and places at their head
two brothers of Flanders. The Greeks were strangely ignorant of
the names, families, and possessions of the Latin princes.]

[Footnote *: It was this army of pilgrims, the first body of
which was headed by the archbishop of Milan and Count Albert of
Blandras, which set forth on the wild, yet, with a more
disciplined army, not impolitic, enterprise of striking at the
heart of the Mahometan power, by attacking the sultan in Bagdad.
For their adventures and fate, see Wilken, vol. ii. p. 120, &c.,
Wichaud, book iv. - M.]

[Footnote 12: William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon 70,000
loricati in each of the armies.]

[Footnote 13: The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus,
and confirmed by Odo de Diogilo apud Ducange ad Cinnamum, with
the more precise sum of 900,556. Why must therefore the version
and comment suppose the modest and insufficient reckoning of
90,000? Does not Godfrey of Viterbo (Pantheon, p. xix. in
Muratori, tom. vii. p. 462) exclaim?

- Numerum si poscere quaeras, Millia millena militis agmen
erat.]
[Footnote 14: This extravagant account is given by Albert of
Stade, (apud Struvium, p. 414;) my calculation is borrowed from
Godfrey of Viterbo, Arnold of Lubeck, apud eundem, and Bernard
Thesaur. (c. 169, p. 804.) The original writers are silent. The
Mahometans gave him 200,000, or 260,000, men, (Bohadin, in Vit.
Saladin, p. 110.)]

[Footnote 15: I must observe, that, in the second and third
crusades, the subjects of Conrad and Frederic are styled by the
Greeks and Orientals Alamanni. The Lechi and Tzechi of Cinnamus
are the Poles and Bohemians; and it is for the French that he
reserves the ancient appellation of Germans.
Note: He names both - M.]

II. The number and character of the strangers was an object
of terror to the effeminate Greeks, and the sentiment of fear is
nearly allied to that of hatred. This aversion was suspended or
softened by the apprehension of the Turkish power; and the
invectives of the Latins will not bias our more candid belief,
that the emperor Alexius dissembled their insolence, eluded their
hostilities, counselled their rashness, and opened to their ardor
the road of pilgrimage and conquest. But when the Turks had been
driven from Nice and the sea-coast, when the Byzantine princes no
longer dreaded the distant sultans of Cogni, they felt with purer
indignation the free and frequent passage of the western
Barbarians, who violated the majesty, and endangered the safety,
of the empire. The second and third crusades were undertaken
under the reign of Manuel Comnenus and Isaac Angelus. Of the
former, the passions were always impetuous, and often malevolent;
and the natural union of a cowardly and a mischievous temper was
exemplified in the latter, who, without merit or mercy, could
punish a tyrant, and occupy his throne. It was secretly, and
perhaps tacitly, resolved by the prince and people to destroy, or
at least to discourage, the pilgrims, by every species of injury
and oppression; and their want of prudence and discipline
continually afforded the pretence or the opportunity. The
Western monarchs had stipulated a safe passage and fair market in
the country of their Christian brethren; the treaty had been
ratified by oaths and hostages; and the poorest soldier of
Frederic's army was furnished with three marks of silver to
defray his expenses on the road. But every engagement was
violated by treachery and injustice; and the complaints of the
Latins are attested by the honest confession of a Greek
historian, who has dared to prefer truth to his country. ^16
Instead of a hospitable reception, the gates of the cities, both
in Europe and Asia, were closely barred against the crusaders;
and the scanty pittance of food was let down in baskets from the
walls. Experience or foresight might excuse this timid jealousy;
but the common duties of humanity prohibited the mixture of
chalk, or other poisonous ingredients, in the bread; and should
Manuel be acquitted of any foul connivance, he is guilty of
coining base money for the purpose of trading with the pilgrims.
In every step of their march they were stopped or misled: the
governors had private orders to fortify the passes and break down
the bridges against them: the stragglers were pillaged and
murdered: the soldiers and horses were pierced in the woods by
arrows from an invisible hand; the sick were burnt in their beds;
and the dead bodies were hung on gibbets along the highways.
These injuries exasperated the champions of the cross, who were
not endowed with evangelical patience; and the Byzantine princes,
who had provoked the unequal conflict, promoted the embarkation
and march of these formidable guests. On the verge of the
Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia, ^17
rewarded the hospitable Laodicea, and deplored the hard necessity
that had stained his sword with any drops of Christian blood. In
their intercourse with the monarchs of Germany and France, the
pride of the Greeks was exposed to an anxious trial. They might
boast that on the first interview the seat of Louis was a low
stool, beside the throne of Manuel; ^18 but no sooner had the
French king transported his army beyond the Bosphorus, than he
refused the offer of a second conference, unless his brother
would meet him on equal terms, either on the sea or land. With
Conrad and Frederic, the ceremonial was still nicer and more
difficult: like the successors of Constantine, they styled
themselves emperors of the Romans; ^19 and firmly maintained the
purity of their title and dignity. The first of these
representatives of Charlemagne would only converse with Manuel on
horseback in the open field; the second, by passing the
Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, declined the view of
Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor, who had been
crowned at Rome, was reduced in the Greek epistles to the humble
appellation of Rex, or prince, of the Alemanni; and the vain and
feeble Angelus affected to be ignorant of the name of one of the
greatest men and monarchs of the age. While they viewed with
hatred and suspicion the Latin pilgrims the Greek emperors
maintained a strict, though secret, alliance with the Turks and
Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained, that by his friendship for
the great Saladin he had incurred the enmity of the Franks; and a
mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public exercise of
the religion of Mahomet. ^20

[Footnote 16: Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in
the third he commanded against the Franks the important post of
Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected with national prejudice and
pride.]

[Footnote 17: The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by
Nicetas, while the anonymous German accuses the rudeness of his
countrymen, (culpa nostra.) History would be pleasant, if we were
embarrassed only by such contradictions. It is likewise from
Nicetas, that we learn the pious and humane sorrow of Frederic.]

[Footnote 18: Cinnamus translates into Latin. Ducange works very
hard to save his king and country from such ignominy, (sur
Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p. 317 - 320.) Louis afterwards
insisted on a meeting in mari ex aequo, not ex equo, according to
the laughable readings of some MSS.]

[Footnote 19: Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum,
(Anonym Canis. p. 512.)]

[Footnote 20: In the Epistles of Innocent III., (xiii. p. 184,)
and the History of Bohadin, (p. 129, 130,) see the views of a
pope and a cadhi on this singular toleration.]

III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were
destroyed in Anatolia by famine, pestilence, and the Turkish
arrows; and the princes only escaped with some squadrons of horse
to accomplish their lamentable pilgrimage. A just opinion may be
formed of their knowledge and humanity; of their knowledge, from
the design of subduing Persia and Chorasan in their way to
Jerusalem; ^* of their humanity, from the massacre of the
Christian people, a friendly city, who came out to meet them with
palms and crosses in their hands. The arms of Conrad and Louis
were less cruel and imprudent; but the event of the second
crusade was still more ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek
Manuel is accused by his own subjects of giving seasonable
intelligence to the sultan, and treacherous guides to the Latin
princes. Instead of crushing the common foe, by a double attack
at the same time but on different sides, the Germans were urged
by emulation, and the French were retarded by jealousy. Louis
had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met by the
returning emperor, who had lost the greater part of his army in
glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the Maender.
The contrast of the pomp of his rival hastened the retreat of
Conrad: ^! the desertion of his independent vassals reduced him
to his hereditary troops; and he borrowed some Greek vessels to
execute by sea the pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying the
lessons of experience, or the nature of the war, the king of
France advanced through the same country to a similar fate. The
vanguard, which bore the royal banner and the oriflamme of St.
Denys, ^21 had doubled their march with rash and inconsiderate
speed; and the rear, which the king commanded in person, no
longer found their companions in the evening camp. In darkness
and disorder, they were encompassed, assaulted, and overwhelmed,
by the innumerable host of Turks, who, in the art of war, were
superior to the Christians of the twelfth century. ^* Louis, who
climbed a tree in the general discomfiture, was saved by his own
valor and the ignorance of his adversaries; and with the dawn of
day he escaped alive, but almost alone, to the camp of the
vanguard. But instead of pursuing his expedition by land, he was
rejoiced to shelter the relics of his army in the friendly
seaport of Satalia. From thence he embarked for Antioch; but so
penurious was the supply of Greek vessels, that they could only
afford room for his knights and nobles; and the plebeian crowd of
infantry was left to perish at the foot of the Pamphylian hills.
The emperor and the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem; their
martial trains, the remnant of mighty armies, were joined to the
Christian powers of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was
the final effort of the second crusade. Conrad and Louis
embarked for Europe with the personal fame of piety and courage;
but the Orientals had braved these potent monarchs of the Franks,
with whose names and military forces they had been so often
threatened. ^22 Perhaps they had still more to fear from the
veteran genius of Frederic the First, who in his youth had served
in Asia under his uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and
Italy had taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even
the princes of the empire, were accustomed under his reign to
obey. As soon as he lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the
last cities of the Greek frontier, he plunged into the salt and
barren desert, a land (says the historian) of horror and
tribulation. ^23 During twenty days, every step of his fainting
and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of
Turkmans, ^24 whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat to
multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to struggle and to
suffer; and such was the measure of his calamities, that when he
reached the gates of Iconium, no more than one thousand knights
were able to serve on horseback. By a sudden and resolute
assault he defeated the guards, and stormed the capital of the
sultan, ^25 who humbly sued for pardon and peace. The road was
now open, and Frederic advanced in a career of triumph, till he
was unfortunately drowned in a petty torrent of Cilicia. ^26 The
remainder of his Germans was consumed by sickness and desertion:
and the emperor's son expired with the greatest part of his
Swabian vassals at the siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes,
Godfrey of Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa could alone achieve
the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their success was a
warning; and in the last and most experienced age of the
crusades, every nation preferred the sea to the toils and perils
of an inland expedition. ^27

[Footnote *: This was the design of the pilgrims under the
archbishop of Milan. See note, p. 102. - M.]

[Footnote !: Conrad had advanced with part of his army along a
central road, between that on the coast and that which led to
Iconium. He had been betrayed by the Greeks, his army destroyed
without a battle. Wilken, vol. iii. p. 165. Michaud, vol. ii. p.
156. Conrad advanced again with Louis as far as Ephesus, and
from thence, at the invitation of Manuel, returned to
Constantinople. It was Louis who, at the passage of the
Maeandes, was engaged in a "glorious action." Wilken, vol. iii.
p. 179. Michaud vol. ii. p. 160. Gibbon followed Nicetas. - M.]

[Footnote 21: As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the
vassals and advocates of the monastery of St. Denys. The saint's
peculiar banner, which they received from the abbot, was of a
square form, and a red or flaming color. The oriflamme appeared
at the head of the French armies from the xiith to the xvth
century, (Ducange sur Joinville, Dissert. xviii. p. 244 - 253.)]
[Footnote *: They descended the heights to a beautiful valley
which by beneath them. The Turks seized the heights which
separated the two divisions of the army. The modern historians
represent differently the act to which Louis owed his safety,
which Gibbon has described by the undignified phrase, "he climbed
a tree." According to Michaud, vol. ii. p. 164, the king got upon
a rock, with his back against a tree; according to Wilken, vol.
iii., he dragged himself up to the top of the rock by the roots
of a tree, and continued to defend himself till nightfall. - M.]

[Footnote 22: The original French histories of the second crusade
are the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the ivth volume of
Duchesne's collection. The same volume contains many original
letters of the king, of Suger his minister, &c., the best
documents of authentic history.]

[Footnote 23: Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam
sterilem, inamoenam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic
language of a sufferer.]
[Footnote 24: Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, praedones sine
ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their
defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518.]

[Footnote 25: See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of
Canisius, Tagino and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the
ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated
and feared both Saladin and Frederic.]

[Footnote 26: The desire of comparing two great men has tempted
many writers to drown Frederic in the River Cydnus, in which
Alexander so imprudently bathed, (Q. Curt. l. iii c. 4, 5.) But,
from the march of the emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is
the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course.

Note: It is now called the Girama: its course is described
in M'Donald Kinneir's Travels. - M.]

[Footnote 27: Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a
precept, Quod stolus ecclesiae per terram nullatenus est ducenda.

He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather
exception, of the first crusade, (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii.
pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)]

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple
event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise
congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate
perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration;
that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and
adverse experience; that the same confidence should have
repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding
generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that
was open before them; and that men of every condition should have
staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate
adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand
miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the
council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new
emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land;
but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some
impending or recent calamity: the nations were moved by the
authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings:
their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the
voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, ^28 the
monk, or the saint, may claim the most honorable place. ^* About
eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born
of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three- and-twenty he
buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive
fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth
her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux ^29 in
Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the
humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age
has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the
honors of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are
distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least
superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race of
superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers
contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high
above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not
devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as
much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character
of a saint. In a secular life, he would have shared the seventh
part of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance,
by closing his eyes against the visible world, ^30 by the refusal
of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became
the oracle of Europe, and the founder of one hundred and sixty
convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his
apostolical censures: France, England, and Milan, consulted and
obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church: the debt was
repaid by the gratitude of Innocent the Second; and his
successor, Eugenius the Third, was the friend and disciple of the
holy Bernard. It was in the proclamation of the second crusade
that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called
the nations to the defence of his holy sepulchre. ^31 At the
parliament of Vezelay he spoke before the king; and Louis the
Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand.
The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of
the emperor Conrad: ^* a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his
language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone
and gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was
the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own
success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and
castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes, that
only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows.
^32 The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their
general; but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes;
and while he assured the crusaders of the divine favor, he
prudently declined a military command, in which failure and
victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his
character. ^33 Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of
Clairvaux was loudly accused as a false prophet, the author of
the public and private mourning; his enemies exulted, his friends
blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He
justifies his obedience to the commands of the pope; expatiates
on the mysterious ways of Providence; imputes the misfortunes of
the pilgrims to their own sins; and modestly insinuates, that his
mission had been approved by signs and wonders. ^34 Had the fact
been certain, the argument would be decisive; and his faithful
disciples, who enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day,
appeal to the public assemblies of France and Germany, in which
they were performed. ^35 At the present hour, such prodigies will
not obtain credit beyond the precincts of Clairvaux; but in the
preternatural cures of the blind, the lame, and the sick, who
were presented to the man of God, it is impossible for us to
ascertain the separate shares of accident, of fancy, of
imposture, and of fiction.

[Footnote 28: The most authentic information of St. Bernard must
be drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by
Pere Mabillon, and reprinted at Venice, 1750, in six volumes in
folio. Whatever friendship could recollect, or superstition
could add, is contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in
the vith volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain,
may be found in the prefaces of the Benedictine editor]
[Footnote *: Gibbon, whose account of the crusades is perhaps the
least accurate and satisfactory chapter in his History, has here
failed in that lucid arrangement, which in general gives
perspicuity to his most condensed and crowded narratives. He has
unaccountably, and to the great perplexity of the reader, placed
the preaching of St Bernard after the second crusade to which i
led. - M.]

[Footnote 29: Clairvaux, surnamed the valley of Absynth, is
situate among the woods near Bar sur Aube in Champagne. St.
Bernard would blush at the pomp of the church and monastery; he
would ask for the library, and I know not whether he would be
much edified by a tun of 800 muids, (914 1-7 hogsheads,) which
almost rivals that of Heidelberg, (Melanges tires d'une Grande
Bibliotheque, tom. xlvi. p. 15 - 20.)]

[Footnote 30: The disciples of the saint (Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 2,
p. 1232. Vit. iida, c. 16, No. 45, p. 1383) record a marvellous
example of his pious apathy. Juxta lacum etiam Lausannensem
totius diei itinere pergens, penitus non attendit aut se videre
non vidit. Cum enim vespere facto de eodem lacu socii
colloquerentur, interrogabat eos ubi lacus ille esset, et mirati
sunt universi. To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought, the
reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his
library the beauties of that incomparable landscape.]

[Footnote 31: Otho Frising. l. i. c. 4. Bernard. Epist. 363, ad
Francos Orientales Opp. tom. i. p. 328. Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 4,
tom. vi. p. 1235.]
[Footnote *: Bernard had a nobler object in his expedition into
Germany - to arrest the fierce and merciless persecution of the
Jews, which was preparing, under the monk Radulph, to renew the
frightful scenes which had preceded the first crusade, in the
flourishing cities on the banks of the Rhine. The Jews
acknowledge the Christian intervention of St. Bernard. See the
curious extract from the History of Joseph ben Meir. Wilken,
vol. iii. p. 1. and p. 63 - M]

[Footnote 32: Mandastis et obedivi . . . . multiplicati sunt
super numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et pene jam non
inveniunt quem apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo
ubique viduae vivis remanent viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247. We
must be careful not to construe pene as a substantive.]
[Footnote 33: Quis ego sum ut disponam acies, ut egrediar ante
facies armatorum, aut quid tam remotum a professione mea, si
vires, si peritia, &c. Epist. 256, tom. i. p. 259. He speaks
with contempt of the hermit Peter, vir quidam, Epist. 363.]

[Footnote 34: Sic dicunt forsitan isti, unde scimus quod a Domino
sermo egressus sit? Quae signa tu facis ut credamus tibi? Non
est quod ad ista ipse respondeam; parcendum verecundiae meae,
responde tu pro me, et pro te ipso, secundum quae vidisti et
audisti, et secundum quod te inspiraverit Deus. Consolat. l. ii.
c. 1. Opp. tom. ii. p. 421 - 423.]

[Footnote 35: See the testimonies in Vita ima, l. iv. c. 5, 6.
Opp. tom. vi. p. 1258 - 1261, l. vi. c. 1 - 17, p. 1286 - 1314.]

Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its
discordant votaries; since the same dispensation which was
applauded as a deliverance in Europe, was deplored, and perhaps
arraigned, as a calamity in Asia. After the loss of Jerusalem,
the Syrian fugitives diffused their consternation and sorrow;
Bagdad mourned in the dust; the cadhi Zeineddin of Damascus tore
his beard in the caliph's presence; and the whole divan shed
tears at his melancholy tale. ^36 But the commanders of the
faithful could only weep; they were themselves captives in the
hands of the Turks: some temporal power was restored to the last
age of the Abbassides; but their humble ambition was confined to
Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian
sultans, had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties,
the unceasing round of valor, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and
decay; their spirit and power were unequal to the defence of
religion; and, in his distant realm of Persia, the Christians
were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero
of his race. ^37 While the sultans were involved in the silken
web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by their slaves,
the Atabeks, ^38 a Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine
patricians, may be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar,
a valiant Turk, had been the favorite of Malek Shaw, from whom he
received the privilege of standing on the right hand of the
throne; but, in the civil wars that ensued on the monarch's
death, he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His
domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son Zenghi,
who proved his first arms against the Franks in the defeat of
Antioch: thirty campaigns in the service of the caliph and sultan
established his military fame; and he was invested with the
command of Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the
cause of the prophet. The public hope was not disappointed: after
a siege of twenty-five days, he stormed the city of Edessa, and
recovered from the Franks their conquests beyond the Euphrates:
^39 the martial tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the
independent sovereign of Mosul and Aleppo: his soldiers were
taught to behold the camp as their only country; they trusted to
his liberality for their rewards; and their absent families were
protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. At the head of these
veterans, his son Noureddin gradually united the Mahometan
powers; ^* added the kingdom of Damascus to that of Aleppo, and
waged a long and successful war against the Christians of Syria;
he spread his ample reign from the Tigris to the Nile, and the
Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant with all the titles
and prerogatives of royalty. The Latins themselves were
compelled to own the wisdom and courage, and even the justice and
piety, of this implacable adversary. ^40 In his life and
government the holy warrior revived the zeal and simplicity of
the first caliphs. Gold and silk were banished from his palace;
the use of wine from his dominions; the public revenue was
scrupulously applied to the public service; and the frugal
household of Noureddin was maintained from his legitimate share
of the spoil which he vested in the purchase of a private estate.

His favorite sultana sighed for some female object of expense.
"Alas," replied the king, "I fear God, and am no more than the
treasurer of the Moslems. Their property I cannot alienate; but
I still possess three shops in the city of Hems: these you may
take; and these alone can I bestow." His chamber of justice was
the terror of the great and the refuge of the poor. Some years
after the sultan's death, an oppressed subject called aloud in
the streets of Damascus, "O Noureddin, Noureddin, where art thou
now? Arise, arise, to pity and protect us!" A tumult was
apprehended, and a living tyrant blushed or trembled at the name
of a departed monarch.

[Footnote 36: Abulmahasen apud de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
ii. p. ii. p. 99.]

[Footnote 37: See his article in the Bibliotheque Orientale of
D'Herbelot, and De Guignes, tom. ii. p. i. p. 230 - 261. Such
was his valor, that he was styled the second Alexander; and such
the extravagant love of his subjects, that they prayed for the
sultan a year after his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been
made prisoner by the Franks, as well as by the Uzes. He reigned
near fifty years, (A.D. 1103 - 1152,) and was a munificent patron
of Persian poetry.]

[Footnote 38: See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and
Syria, in De Guignes, tom. i. p. 254; and the reigns of Zenghi
and Noureddin in the same writer, (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 147 - 221,)
who uses the Arabic text of Benelathir, Ben Schouna and Abulfeda;
the Bibliotheque Orientale, under the articles Atabeks and
Noureddin, and the Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 250 - 267,
vers. Pocock.]

[Footnote 39: William of Tyre (l. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the
loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The corruption of his
name into Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion to
his sanguinary character and end, fit sanguine sanguinolentus.]

[Footnote *: On Noureddin's conquest of Damascus, see extracts
from Arabian writers prefixed to the second part of the third
volume of Wilken. - M.]

[Footnote 40: Noradinus (says William of Tyre, l. xx. 33) maximus
nominis et fidei Christianae persecutor; princeps tamen justus,
vafer, providus' et secundum gentis suae traditiones religiosus.
To this Catholic witness we may add the primate of the Jacobites,
(Abulpharag. p. 267,) quo non alter erat inter reges vitae
ratione magis laudabili, aut quae pluribus justitiae experimentis
abundaret. The true praise of kings is after their death, and
from the mouth of their enemies.]

Chapter LIX: The Crusades.

Part II.

By the arms of the Turks and Franks, the Fatimites had been
deprived of Syria. In Egypt the decay of their character and
influence was still more essential. Yet they were still revered
as the descendants and successors of the prophet; they maintained
their invisible state in the palace of Cairo; and their person
was seldom violated by the profane eyes of subjects or strangers.
The Latin ambassadors ^41 have described their own introduction,
through a series of gloomy passages, and glittering porticos: the
scene was enlivened by the warbling of birds and the murmur of
fountains: it was enriched by a display of rich furniture and
rare animals; of the Imperial treasures, something was shown, and
much was supposed; and the long order of unfolding doors was
guarded by black soldiers and domestic eunuchs. The sanctuary of
the presence chamber was veiled with a curtain; and the vizier,
who conducted the ambassadors, laid aside the cimeter, and
prostrated himself three times on the ground; the veil was then
removed; and they beheld the commander of the faithful, who
signified his pleasure to the first slave of the throne. But
this slave was his master: the viziers or sultans had usurped the
supreme administration of Egypt; the claims of the rival
candidates were decided by arms; and the name of the most worthy,
of the strongest, was inserted in the royal patent of command.
The factions of Dargham and Shawer alternately expelled each
other from the capital and country; and the weaker side implored
the dangerous protection of the sultan of Damascus, or the king
of Jerusalem, the perpetual enemies of the sect and monarchy of
the Fatimites. By his arms and religion the Turk was most
formidable; but the Frank, in an easy, direct march, could
advance from Gaza to the Nile; while the intermediate situation
of his realm compelled the troops of Noureddin to wheel round the
skirts of Arabia, a long and painful circuit, which exposed them
to thirst, fatigue, and the burning winds of the desert. The
secret zeal and ambition of the Turkish prince aspired to reign
in Egypt under the name of the Abbassides; but the restoration of
the suppliant Shawer was the ostensible motive of the first
expedition; and the success was intrusted to the emir Shiracouh,
a valiant and veteran commander. Dargham was oppressed and slain;
but the ingratitude, the jealousy, the just apprehensions, of his
more fortunate rival, soon provoked him to invite the king of
Jerusalem to deliver Egypt from his insolent benefactors. To
this union the forces of Shiracouh were unequal: he relinquished
the premature conquest; and the evacuation of Belbeis or Pelusium
was the condition of his safe retreat. As the Turks defiled
before the enemy, and their general closed the rear, with a
vigilant eye, and a battle axe in his hand, a Frank presumed to
ask him if he were not afraid of an attack. "It is doubtless in
your power to begin the attack," replied the intrepid emir; "but
rest assured, that not one of my soldiers will go to paradise
till he has sent an infidel to hell." His report of the riches of
the land, the effeminacy of the natives, and the disorders of the
government, revived the hopes of Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad
applauded the pious design; and Shiracouh descended into Egypt a
second time with twelve thousand Turks and eleven thousand Arabs.
Yet his forces were still inferior to the confederate armies of
the Franks and Saracens; and I can discern an unusual degree of
military art, in his passage of the Nile, his retreat into
Thebais, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the
surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and countermarches in the
flats and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. His
conduct was seconded by the courage of his troops, and on the eve
of action a Mamaluke ^42 exclaimed, "If we cannot wrest Egypt
from the Christian dogs, why do we not renounce the honors and
rewards of the sultan, and retire to labor with the peasants, or
to spin with the females of the harem?" Yet, after all his
efforts in the field, ^43 after the obstinate defence of
Alexandria ^44 by his nephew Saladin, an honorable capitulation
and retreat ^* concluded the second enterprise of Shiracouh; and
Noureddin reserved his abilities for a third and more propitious
occasion. It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of
Amalric or Amaury, king of Jerusalem, who had imbibed the
pernicious maxim, that no faith should be kept with the enemies
of God. ^! A religious warrior, the great master of the hospital,
encouraged him to proceed; the emperor of Constantinople either
gave, or promised, a fleet to act with the armies of Syria; and
the perfidious Christian, unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy,
aspired to the conquest of Egypt. In this emergency, the Moslems
turned their eyes towards the sultan of Damascus; the vizier,
whom danger encompassed on all sides, yielded to their unanimous
wishes, and Noureddin seemed to be tempted by the fair offer of
one third of the revenue of the kingdom. The Franks were already
at the gates of Cairo; but the suburbs, the old city, were burnt
on their approach; they were deceived by an insidious
negotiation, and their vessels were unable to surmount the
barriers of the Nile. They prudently declined a contest with the
Turks in the midst of a hostile country; and Amaury retired into
Palestine with the shame and reproach that always adhere to
unsuccessful injustice. After this deliverance, Shiracouh was
invested with a robe of honor, which he soon stained with the
blood of the unfortunate Shawer. For a while, the Turkish emirs
condescended to hold the office of vizier; but this foreign
conquest precipitated the fall of the Fatimites themselves; and
the bloodless change was accomplished by a message and a word.
The caliphs had been degraded by their own weakness and the
tyranny of the viziers: their subjects blushed, when the
descendant and successor of the prophet presented his naked hand
to the rude gripe of a Latin ambassador; they wept when he sent
the hair of his women, a sad emblem of their grief and terror, to
excite the pity of the sultan of Damascus. By the command of
Noureddin, and the sentence of the doctors, the holy names of
Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, were solemnly restored: the caliph
Mosthadi, of Bagdad, was acknowledged in the public prayers as
the true commander of the faithful; and the green livery of the
sons of Ali was exchanged for the black color of the Abbassides.
The last of his race, the caliph Adhed, who survived only ten
days, expired in happy ignorance of his fate; his treasures
secured the loyalty of the soldiers, and silenced the murmurs of
the sectaries; and in all subsequent revolutions, Egypt has never
departed from the orthodox tradition of the Moslems. ^45

[Footnote 41: From the ambassador, William of Tyre (l. xix. c.
17, 18,) describes the palace of Cairo. In the caliph's treasure
were found a pearl as large as a pigeon's egg, a ruby weighing
seventeen Egyptian drams, an emerald a palm and a half in length,
and many vases of crystal and porcelain of China, (Renaudot, p.
536.)]

[Footnote 42: Mamluc, plur. Mamalic, is defined by Pocock,
(Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 7,) and D'Herbelot, (p. 545,) servum
emptitium, seu qui pretio numerato in domini possessionem cedit.
They frequently occur in the wars of Saladin, (Bohadin, p. 236,
&c.;) and it was only the Bahartie Mamalukes that were first
introduced into Egypt by his descendants.]

[Footnote 43: Jacobus a Vitriaco (p. 1116) gives the king of
Jerusalem no more than 374 knights. Both the Franks and the
Moslems report the superior numbers of the enemy; a difference
which may be solved by counting or omitting the unwarlike
Egyptians.]

[Footnote 44: It was the Alexandria of the Arabs, a middle term
in extent and riches between the period of the Greeks and Romans,
and that of the Turks, (Savary, Lettres sur l'Egypte, tom. i. p.
25, 26.)]

[Footnote *: The treaty stipulated that both the Christians and
the Arabs should withdraw from Egypt. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii.
p. 113. - M.]
[Footnote !: The Knights Templars, abhorring the perfidious
breach of treaty partly, perhaps, out of jealousy of the
Hospitallers, refused to join in this enterprise. Will. Tyre c.
xx. p. 5. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 117 - M.]
[Footnote 45: For this great revolution of Egypt, see William of
Tyre, (l. xix. 5, 6, 7, 12 - 31, xx. 5 - 12,) Bohadin, (in Vit.
Saladin, p. 30 - 39,) Abulfeda, (in Excerpt. Schultens, p. 1 -
12,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. Adhed, Fathemah, but very
incorrect,) Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 522 - 525, 532 -
537,) Vertot, (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. p. 141 -
163, in 4to.,) and M. de Guignes, (tom. ii. p. 185 - 215.)]
The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the
pastoral tribes of the Curds; ^46 a people hardy, strong, savage
impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the
government of their national chiefs. The resemblance of name,
situation, and manners, seems to identify them with the
Carduchians of the Greeks; ^47 and they still defend against the
Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted against the
successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to
embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers: the service of his
father and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin; ^48 and
the son of Job or Ayud, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at
his pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs.
^49 So unconscious was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his
house, that he constrained the reluctant youth to follow his
uncle Shiracouh into Egypt: his military character was
established by the defence of Alexandria; and, if we may believe
the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general
the profane honors of knighthood. ^50 On the death of Shiracouh,
the office of grand vizier was bestowed on Saladin, as the
youngest and least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of
his father, whom he invited to Cairo, his genius obtained the
ascendant over his equals, and attached the army to his person
and interest. While Noureddin lived, these ambitious Curds were
the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet murmurs of the
divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested
that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead his sons
in chains to the foot of the throne. "Such language," he added in
private, "was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals;
but we are now above fear and obedience; and the threats of
Noureddin shall not extort the tribute of a sugar-cane." His
seasonable death relieved them from the odious and doubtful
conflict: his son, a minor of eleven years of age, was left for a
while to the emirs of Damascus; and the new lord of Egypt was
decorated by the caliph with every title ^51 that could sanctify
his usurpation in the eyes of the people. Nor was Saladin long
content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled the Christians
of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir:
Mecca and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector:
his brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the happy
Arabia; and at the hour of his death, his empire was spread from
the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to
the mountains of Armenia. In the judgment of his character, the
reproaches of treason and ingratitude strike forcibly on our
minds, impressed, as they are, with the principle and experience
of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure be
excused by the revolutions of Asia, ^52 which had erased every
notion of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the
Atabeks themselves; by his reverence to the son of his
benefactor; his humane and generous behavior to the collateral
branches; by their incapacity and his merit; by the approbation
of the caliph, the sole source of all legitimate power; and,
above all, by the wishes and interest of the people, whose
happiness is the first object of government. In his virtues, and
in those of his patron, they admired the singular union of the
hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and Saladin are ranked
among the Mahometan saints; and the constant meditation of the
holy war appears to have shed a serious and sober color over
their lives and actions. The youth of the latter ^53 was
addicted to wine and women: but his aspiring spirit soon
renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies of
fame and dominion: the garment of Saladin was of coarse woollen;
water was his only drink; and, while he emulated the temperance,
he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet. Both in faith
and practice he was a rigid Mussulman: he ever deplored that the
defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the
pilgrimage of Mecca; but at the stated hours, five times each
day, the sultan devoutly prayed with his brethren: the
involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid; and his
perusal of the Koran, on horseback between the approaching
armies, may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety
and courage. ^54 The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafei
was the only study that he deigned to encourage: the poets were
safe in his contempt; but all profane science was the object of
his aversion; and a philosopher, who had invented some
speculative novelties, was seized and strangled by the command of
the royal saint. The justice of his divan was accessible to the
meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it was
only for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of
equity. While the descendants of Seljuk and Zenghi held his
stirrup and smoothed his garments, he was affable and patient
with the meanest of his servants. So boundless was his
liberality, that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the
siege of Acre; and, at the time of his death, no more than
forty-seven drams of silver and one piece of gold coin were found
in the treasury; yet, in a martial reign, the tributes were
diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed, without fear or
danger, the fruits of their industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia,
were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges, and
mosques; and Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his
works were consecrated to public use: ^55 nor did the sultan
indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a
fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin
commanded the esteem of the Christians; the emperor of Germany
gloried in his friendship; ^56 the Greek emperor solicited his
alliance; ^57 and the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps
magnified, his fame both in the East and West.

[Footnote 46: For the Curds, see De Guignes, tom. ii. p. 416,
417, the Index Geographicus of Schultens and Tavernier, Voyages,
p. i. p. 308, 309. The Ayoubites descended from the tribe of the
Rawadiaei, one of the noblest; but as they were infected with the
heresy of the Metempsychosis, the orthodox sultans insinuated
that their descent was only on the mother's side, and that their
ancestor was a stranger who settled among the Curds.]
[Footnote 47: See the ivth book of the Anabasis of Xenophon. The
ten thousand suffered more from the arrows of the free
Carduchians, than from the splendid weakness of the great king.]

[Footnote 48: We are indebted to the professor Schultens (Lugd.
Bat, 1755, in folio) for the richest and most authentic
materials, a life of Saladin by his friend and minister the Cadhi
Bohadin, and copious extracts from the history of his kinsman the
prince Abulfeda of Hamah. To these we may add, the article of
Salaheddin in the Bibliotheque Orientale, and all that may be
gleaned from the Dynasties of Abulpharagius.]

[Footnote 49: Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may
share the praise, for imitating, at least tacitly, the modesty of
the founder.]
[Footnote 50: Hist. Hierosol. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p.
1152. A similar example may be found in Joinville, (p. 42,
edition du Louvre;) but the pious St. Louis refused to dignify
infidels with the order of Christian knighthood, (Ducange,
Observations, p 70.)]

[Footnote 51: In these Arabic titles, religionis must always be
understood; Noureddin, lumen r.; Ezzodin, decus; Amadoddin,
columen: our hero's proper name was Joseph, and he was styled
Salahoddin, salus; Al Malichus, Al Nasirus, rex defensor; Abu
Modaffer, pater victoriae, Schultens, Praefat.]
[Footnote 52: Abulfeda, who descended from a brother of Saladin,
observes, from many examples, that the founders of dynasties took
the guilt for themselves, and left the reward to their innocent
collaterals, (Excerpt p. 10.)]

[Footnote 53: See his life and character in Renaudot, p. 537 -
548.]

[Footnote 54: His civil and religious virtues are celebrated in
the first chapter of Bohadin, (p. 4 - 30,) himself an
eye-witness, and an honest bigot.]

[Footnote 55: In many works, particularly Joseph's well in the
castle of Cairo, the Sultan and the Patriarch have been
confounded by the ignorance of natives and travellers.]

[Footnote 56: Anonym. Canisii, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 504.]

[Footnote 57: Bohadin, p. 129, 130.]

During his short existence, the kingdom of Jerusalem ^58 was
supported by the discord of the Turks and Saracens; and both the
Fatimite caliphs and the sultans of Damascus were tempted to
sacrifice the cause of their religion to the meaner
considerations of private and present advantage. But the powers
of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were now united by a hero, whom
nature and fortune had armed against the Christians. All without
now bore the most threatening aspect; and all was feeble and
hollow in the internal state of Jerusalem. After the two first
Baldwins, the brother and cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon, the
sceptre devolved by female succession to Melisenda, daughter of
the second Baldwin, and her husband Fulk, count of Anjou, the
father, by a former marriage, of our English Plantagenets. Their
two sons, Baldwin the Third, and Amaury, waged a strenuous, and
not unsuccessful, war against the infidels; but the son of
Amaury, Baldwin the Fourth, was deprived, by the leprosy, a gift
of the crusades, of the faculties both of mind and body. His
sister Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural
heiress: after the suspicious death of her child, she crowned her
second husband, Guy of Lusignan, a prince of a handsome person,
but of such base renown, that his own brother Jeffrey was heard
to exclaim, "Since they have made him a king, surely they would
have made me a god!" The choice was generally blamed; and the
most powerful vassal, Raymond count of Tripoli, who had been
excluded from the succession and regency, entertained an
implacable hatred against the king, and exposed his honor and
conscience to the temptations of the sultan. Such were the
guardians of the holy city; a leper, a child, a woman, a coward,
and a traitor: yet its fate was delayed twelve years by some
supplies from Europe, by the valor of the military orders, and by
the distant or domestic avocations of their great enemy. At
length, on every side, the sinking state was encircled and
pressed by a hostile line: and the truce was violated by the
Franks, whose existence it protected. A soldier of fortune,
Reginald of Chatillon, had seized a fortress on the edge of the
desert, from whence he pillaged the caravans, insulted Mahomet,
and threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina. Saladin
condescended to complain; rejoiced in the denial of justice, and
at the head of fourscore thousand horse and foot invaded the Holy
Land. The choice of Tiberias for his first siege was suggested
by the count of Tripoli, to whom it belonged; and the king of
Jerusalem was persuaded to drain his garrison, and to arm his
people, for the relief of that important place. ^59 By the advice
of the perfidious Raymond, the Christians were betrayed into a
camp destitute of water: he fled on the first onset, with the
curses of both nations: ^60 Lusignan was overthrown, with the
loss of thirty thousand men; and the wood of the true cross (a
dire misfortune!) was left in the power of the infidels. ^* The
royal captive was conducted to the tent of Saladin; and as he
fainted with thirst and terror, the generous victor presented him
with a cup of sherbet, cooled in snow, without suffering his
companion, Reginald of Chatillon, to partake of this pledge of
hospitality and pardon. "The person and dignity of a king," said
the sultan, "are sacred, but this impious robber must instantly
acknowledge the prophet, whom he has blasphemed, or meet the
death which he has so often deserved." On the proud or
conscientious refusal of the Christian warrior, Saladin struck
him on the head with his cimeter, and Reginald was despatched by
the guards. ^61 The trembling Lusignan was sent to Damascus, to
an honorable prison and speedy ransom; but the victory was
stained by the execution of two hundred and thirty knights of the
hospital, the intrepid champions and martyrs of their faith. The
kingdom was left without a head; and of the two grand masters of
the military orders, the one was slain and the other was a
prisoner. From all the cities, both of the sea-coast and the
inland country, the garrisons had been drawn away for this fatal
field: Tyre and Tripoli alone could escape the rapid inroad of
Saladin; and three months after the battle of Tiberias, he
appeared in arms before the gates of Jerusalem. ^62

[Footnote 58: For the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see William of
Tyre, from the ixth to the xxiid book. Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist.
Hierosolem l i., and Sanutus Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. iii. p.
vi. vii. viii. ix.]
[Footnote 59: Templarii ut apes bombabant et Hospitalarii ut
venti stridebant, et barones se exitio offerebant, et Turcopuli
(the Christian light troops) semet ipsi in ignem injiciebant,
(Ispahani de Expugnatione Kudsitica, p. 18, apud Schultens;) a
specimen of Arabian eloquence, somewhat different from the style
of Xenophon!]

[Footnote 60: The Latins affirm, the Arabians insinuate, the
treason of Raymond; but had he really embraced their religion, he
would have been a saint and a hero in the eyes of the latter.]

[Footnote *: Raymond's advice would have prevented the
abandonment of a secure camp abounding with water near Sepphoris.

The rash and insolent valor of the master of the order of Knights
Templars, which had before exposed the Christians to a fatal
defeat at the brook Kishon, forced the feeble king to annul the
determination of a council of war, and advance to a camp in an
enclosed valley among the mountains, near Hittin, without water.
Raymond did not fly till the battle was irretrievably lost, and
then the Saracens seem to have opened their ranks to allow him
free passage. The charge of suggesting the siege of Tiberias
appears ungrounded Raymond, no doubt, played a double part: he
was a man of strong sagacity, who foresaw the desperate nature of
the contest with Saladin, endeavored by every means to maintain
the treaty, and, though he joined both his arms and his still
more valuable counsels to the Christian army, yet kept up a kind
of amicable correspondence with the Mahometans. See Wilken, vol.
iii. part ii. p. 276, et seq. Michaud, vol. ii. p. 278, et seq.
M. Michaud is still more friendly than Wilken to the memory of
Count Raymond, who died suddenly, shortly after the battle of
Hittin. He quotes a letter written in the name of Saladin by the
caliph Alfdel, to show that Raymond was considered by the
Mahometans their most dangerous and detested enemy. "No person
of distinction among the Christians escaped, except the count,
(of Tripoli) whom God curse. God made him die shortly
afterwards, and sent him from the kingdom of death to hell." -
M.]
[Footnote 61: Benaud, Reginald, or Arnold de Chatillon, is
celebrated by the Latins in his life and death; but the
circumstances of the latter are more distinctly related by
Bohadin and Abulfeda; and Joinville (Hist. de St. Louis, p. 70)
alludes to the practice of Saladin, of never putting to death a
prisoner who had tasted his bread and salt. Some of the
companions of Arnold had been slaughtered, and almost sacrificed,
in a valley of Mecca, ubi sacrificia mactantur, (Abulfeda, p.
32.)]

[Footnote 62: Vertot, who well describes the loss of the kingdom
and city (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. l. ii. p. 226 -
278,) inserts two original epistles of a Knight Templar.]

He might expect that the siege of a city so venerable on
earth and in heaven, so interesting to Europe and Asia, would
rekindle the last sparks of enthusiasm; and that, of sixty
thousand Christians, every man would be a soldier, and every
soldier a candidate for martyrdom. But Queen Sybilla trembled
for herself and her captive husband; and the barons and knights,
who had escaped from the sword and chains of the Turks, displayed
the same factious and selfish spirit in the public ruin. The
most numerous portion of the inhabitants was composed of the
Greek and Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to
prefer the Mahometan before the Latin yoke; ^63 and the holy
sepulchre attracted a base and needy crowd, without arms or
courage, who subsisted only on the charity of the pilgrims. Some
feeble and hasty efforts were made for the defence of Jerusalem:
but in the space of fourteen days, a victorious army drove back
the sallies of the besieged, planted their engines, opened the
wall to the breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their
scaling-ladders, and erected on the breach twelve banners of the
prophet and the sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot
procession of the queen, the women, and the monks, implored the
Son of God to save his tomb and his inheritance from impious
violation. Their sole hope was in the mercy of the conqueror,
and to their first suppliant deputation that mercy was sternly
denied. "He had sworn to avenge the patience and long-suffering
of the Moslems; the hour of forgiveness was elapsed, and the
moment was now arrived to expiate, in blood, the innocent blood
which had been spilt by Godfrey and the first crusaders." But a
desperate and successful struggle of the Franks admonished the
sultan that his triumph was not yet secure; he listened with
reverence to a solemn adjuration in the name of the common Father
of mankind; and a sentiment of human sympathy mollified the rigor
of fanaticism and conquest. He consented to accept the city, and
to spare the inhabitants. The Greek and Oriental Christians were
permitted to live under his dominion, but it was stipulated, that
in forty days all the Franks and Latins should evacuate
Jerusalem, and be safely conducted to the seaports of Syria and
Egypt; that ten pieces of gold should be paid for each man, five
for each woman, and one for every child; and that those who were
unable to purchase their freedom should be detained in perpetual
slavery. Of some writers it is a favorite and invidious theme to
compare the humanity of Saladin with the massacre of the first
crusade. The difference would be merely personal; but we should
not forget that the Christians had offered to capitulate, and
that the Mahometans of Jerusalem sustained the last extremities
of an assault and storm. Justice is indeed due to the fidelity
with which the Turkish conqueror fulfilled the conditions of the
treaty; and he may be deservedly praised for the glance of pity
which he cast on the misery of the vanquished. Instead of a
rigorous exaction of his debt, he accepted a sum of thirty
thousand byzants, for the ransom of seven thousand poor; two or
three thousand more were dismissed by his gratuitous clemency;
and the number of slaves was reduced to eleven or fourteen
thousand persons. In this interview with the queen, his words,
and even his tears suggested the kindest consolations; his
liberal alms were distributed among those who had been made
orphans or widows by the fortune of war; and while the knights of
the hospital were in arms against him, he allowed their more
pious brethren to continue, during the term of a year, the care
and service of the sick. In these acts of mercy the virtue of
Saladin deserves our admiration and love: he was above the
necessity of dissimulation, and his stern fanaticism would have
prompted him to dissemble, rather than to affect, this profane
compassion for the enemies of the Koran. After Jerusalem had been
delivered from the presence of the strangers, the sultan made his
triumphal entry, his banners waving in the wind, and to the
harmony of martial music. The great mosque of Omar, which had
been converted into a church, was again consecrated to one God
and his prophet Mahomet: the walls and pavement were purified
with rose-water; and a pulpit, the labor of Noureddin, was
erected in the sanctuary. But when the golden cross that
glittered on the dome was cast down, and dragged through the
streets, the Christians of every sect uttered a lamentable groan,
which was answered by the joyful shouts of the Moslems. In four
ivory chests the patriarch had collected the crosses, the images,
the vases, and the relics of the holy place; they were seized by
the conqueror, who was desirous of presenting the caliph with the
trophies of Christian idolatry. He was persuaded, however, to
intrust them to the patriarch and prince of Antioch; and the
pious pledge was redeemed by Richard of England, at the expense
of fifty-two thousand byzants of gold. ^64

[Footnote 63: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 545.]

[Footnote 64: For the conquest of Jerusalem, Bohadin (p. 67 - 75)
and Abulfeda (p. 40 - 43) are our Moslem witnesses. Of the
Christian, Bernard Thesaurarius (c. 151 - 167) is the most
copious and authentic; see likewise Matthew Paris, (p. 120 -
124.)]

The nations might fear and hope the immediate and final
expulsion of the Latins from Syria; which was yet delayed above a
century after the death of Saladin. ^65 In the career of victory,
he was first checked by the resistance of Tyre; the troops and
garrisons, which had capitulated, were imprudently conducted to
the same port: their numbers were adequate to the defence of the
place; and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat inspired the
disorderly crowd with confidence and union. His father, a
venerable pilgrim, had been made prisoner in the battle of
Tiberias; but that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, when
the son was urged by ambition and piety to visit the inheritance
of his royal nephew, the infant Baldwin. The view of the Turkish
banners warned him from the hostile coast of Jaffa; and Conrad
was unanimously hailed as the prince and champion of Tyre, which
was already besieged by the conqueror of Jerusalem. The firmness
of his zeal, and perhaps his knowledge of a generous foe, enabled
him to brave the threats of the sultan, and to declare, that
should his aged parent be exposed before the walls, he himself
would discharge the first arrow, and glory in his descent from a
Christian martyr. ^66 The Egyptian fleet was allowed to enter the
harbor of Tyre; but the chain was suddenly drawn, and five
galleys were either sunk or taken: a thousand Turks were slain in
a sally; and Saladin, after burning his engines, concluded a
glorious campaign by a disgraceful retreat to Damascus. He was
soon assailed by a more formidable tempest. The pathetic
narratives, and even the pictures, that represented in lively
colors the servitude and profanation of Jerusalem, awakened the
torpid sensibility of Europe: the emperor Frederic Barbarossa,
and the kings of France and England, assumed the cross; and the
tardy magnitude of their armaments was anticipated by the
maritime states of the Mediterranean and the Ocean. The skilful
and provident Italians first embarked in the ships of Genoa,
Pisa, and Venice. They were speedily followed by the most eager
pilgrims of France, Normandy, and the Western Isles. The
powerful succor of Flanders, Frise, and Denmark, filled near a
hundred vessels: and the Northern warriors were distinguished in
the field by a lofty stature and a ponderous battle- axe. ^67
Their increasing multitudes could no longer be confined within
the walls of Tyre, or remain obedient to the voice of Conrad.
They pitied the misfortunes, and revered the dignity, of
Lusignan, who was released from prison, perhaps, to divide the
army of the Franks. He proposed the recovery of Ptolemais, or
Acre, thirty miles to the south of Tyre; and the place was first
invested by two thousand horse and thirty thousand foot under his
nominal command. I shall not expatiate on the story of this
memorable siege; which lasted near two years, and consumed, in a
narrow space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never did the flame
of enthusiasm burn with fiercer and more destructive rage; nor
could the true believers, a common appellation, who consecrated
their own martyrs, refuse some applause to the mistaken zeal and
courage of their adversaries. At the sound of the holy trumpet,
the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces,
assembled under the servant of the prophet: ^68 his camp was
pitched and removed within a few miles of Acre; and he labored,
night and day, for the relief of his brethren and the annoyance
of the Franks. Nine battles, not unworthy of the name, were
fought in the neighborhood of Mount Carmel, with such vicissitude
of fortune, that in one attack, the sultan forced his way into
the city; that in one sally, the Christians penetrated to the
royal tent. By the means of divers and pigeons, a regular
correspondence was maintained with the besieged; and, as often as
the sea was left open, the exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and
a fresh supply was poured into the place. The Latin camp was
thinned by famine, the sword and the climate; but the tents of
the dead were replenished with new pilgrims, who exaggerated the
strength and speed of their approaching countrymen. The vulgar
was astonished by the report, that the pope himself, with an
innumerable crusade, was advanced as far as Constantinople. The
march of the emperor filled the East with more serious alarms:
the obstacles which he encountered in Asia, and perhaps in
Greece, were raised by the policy of Saladin: his joy on the
death of Barbarossa was measured by his esteem; and the
Christians were rather dismayed than encouraged at the sight of
the duke of Swabia and his way-worn remnant of five thousand
Germans. At length, in the spring of the second year, the royal
fleets of France and England cast anchor in the Bay of Acre, and
the siege was more vigorously prosecuted by the youthful
emulation of the two kings, Philip Augustus and Richard
Plantagenet. After every resource had been tried, and every hope
was exhausted, the defenders of Acre submitted to their fate; a
capitulation was granted, but their lives and liberties were
taxed at the hard conditions of a ransom of two hundred thousand
pieces of gold, the deliverance of one hundred nobles, and
fifteen hundred inferior captives, and the restoration of the
wood of the holy cross. Some doubts in the agreement, and some
delay in the execution, rekindled the fury of the Franks, and
three thousand Moslems, almost in the sultan's view, were
beheaded by the command of the sanguinary Richard. ^69 By the
conquest of Acre, the Latin powers acquired a strong town and a
convenient harbor; but the advantage was most dearly purchased.
The minister and historian of Saladin computes, from the report
of the enemy, that their numbers, at different periods, amounted
to five or six hundred thousand; that more than one hundred
thousand Christians were slain; that a far greater number was
lost by disease or shipwreck; and that a small portion of this
mighty host could return in safety to their native countries. ^70

[Footnote 65: The sieges of Tyre and Acre are most copiously
described by Bernard Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae
Sanctae, c. 167 - 179,) the author of the Historia
Hierosolymitana, (p. 1150 - 1172, in Bongarnius,) Abulfeda, (p.
43 - 50,) and Bohadin, (p. 75 - 179.)]

[Footnote 66: I have followed a moderate and probable
representation of the fact; by Vertot, who adopts without
reluctance a romantic tale the old marquis is actually exposed to
the darts of the besieged.]

[Footnote 67: Northmanni et Gothi, et caeteri populi insularum
quae inter occidentem et septentrionem sitae sunt, gentes
bellicosae, corporis proceri mortis intrepidae, bipenbibus
armatae, navibus rotundis, quae Ysnachiae dicuntur, advectae.]

[Footnote 68: The historian of Jerusalem (p. 1108) adds the
nations of the East from the Tigris to India, and the swarthy
tribes of Moors and Getulians, so that Asia and Africa fought
against Europe.]

[Footnote 69: Bohadin, p. 180; and this massacre is neither
denied nor blamed by the Christian historians. Alacriter jussa
complentes, (the English soldiers,) says Galfridus a Vinesauf,
(l. iv. c. 4, p. 346,) who fixes at 2700 the number of victims;
who are multiplied to 5000 by Roger Hoveden, (p. 697, 698.) The
humanity or avarice of Philip Augustus was persuaded to ransom
his prisoners, (Jacob a Vitriaco, l. i. c. 98, p. 1122.)]

[Footnote 70: Bohadin, p. 14. He quotes the judgment of
Balianus, and the prince of Sidon, and adds, ex illo mundo quasi
hominum paucissimi redierunt. Among the Christians who died
before St. John d'Acre, I find the English names of De Ferrers
earl of Derby, (Dugdale, Baronage, part i. p. 260,) Mowbray,
(idem, p. 124,) De Mandevil, De Fiennes, St. John, Scrope, Bigot,
Talbot, &c.]

Chapter LIX: The Crusades.

Part III.

Philip Augustus, and Richard the First, are the only kings
of France and England who have fought under the same banners; but
the holy service in which they were enlisted was incessantly
disturbed by their national jealousy; and the two factions, which
they protected in Palestine, were more averse to each other than
to the common enemy. In the eyes of the Orientals; the French
monarch was superior in dignity and power; and, in the emperor's
absence, the Latins revered him as their temporal chief. ^71 His
exploits were not adequate to his fame. Philip was brave, but
the statesman predominated in his character; he was soon weary of
sacrificing his health and interest on a barren coast: the
surrender of Acre became the signal of his departure; nor could
he justify this unpopular desertion, by leaving the duke of
Burgundy with five hundred knights and ten thousand foot, for the
service of the Holy Land. The king of England, though inferior
in dignity, surpassed his rival in wealth and military renown;
^72 and if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valor,
Richard Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of the age.
The memory of Coeur de Lion, of the lion-hearted prince, was long
dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance
of sixty years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings by the
grandsons of the Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought:
his tremendous name was employed by the Syrian mothers to silence
their infants; and if a horse suddenly started from the way, his
rider was wont to exclaim, "Dost thou think King Richard is in
that bush?" ^73 His cruelty to the Mahometans was the effect of
temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and
fearless in the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a
dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of Montferrat, who was
slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. ^74 After the surrender
of Acre, and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the
crusaders to the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of
Caesarea and Jaffa were added to the fragments of the kingdom of
Lusignan. A march of one hundred miles from Acre to Ascalon was a
great and perpetual battle of eleven days. In the disorder of
his troops, Saladin remained on the field with seventeen guards,
without lowering his standard, or suspending the sound of his
brazen kettle-drum: he again rallied and renewed the charge; and
his preachers or heralds called aloud on the unitarians, manfully
to stand up against the Christian idolaters. But the progress of
these idolaters was irresistible; and it was only by demolishing
the walls and buildings of Ascalon, that the sultan could prevent
them from occupying an important fortress on the confines of
Egypt. During a severe winter, the armies slept; but in the
spring, the Franks advanced within a day's march of Jerusalem,
under the leading standard of the English king; and his active
spirit intercepted a convoy, or caravan, of seven thousand
camels. Saladin ^75 had fixed his station in the holy city; but
the city was struck with consternation and discord: he fasted; he
prayed; he preached; he offered to share the dangers of the
siege; but his Mamalukes, who remembered the fate of their
companions at Acre, pressed the sultan with loyal or seditious
clamors, to reserve his person and their courage for the future
defence of the religion and empire. ^76 The Moslems were
delivered by the sudden, or, as they deemed, the miraculous,
retreat of the Christians; ^77 and the laurels of Richard were
blasted by the prudence, or envy, of his companions. The hero,
ascending a hill, and veiling his face, exclaimed with an
indignant voice, "Those who are unwilling to rescue, are unworthy
to view, the sepulchre of Christ!" After his return to Acre, on
the news that Jaffa was surprised by the sultan, he sailed with
some merchant vessels, and leaped foremost on the beach: the
castle was relieved by his presence; and sixty thousand Turks and
Saracens fled before his arms. The discovery of his weakness,
provoked them to return in the morning; and they found him
carelessly encamped before the gates with only seventeen knights
and three hundred archers. Without counting their numbers, he
sustained their charge; and we learn from the evidence of his
enemies, that the king of England, grasping his lance, rode
furiously along their front, from the right to the left wing,
without meeting an adversary who dared to encounter his career.
^78 Am I writing the history of Orlando or Amadis?
[Footnote 71: Magnus hic apud eos, interque reges eorum tum
virtute tum majestate eminens . . . . summus rerum arbiter,
(Bohadin, p. 159.) He does not seem to have known the names
either of Philip or Richard.]
[Footnote 72: Rex Angliae, praestrenuus . . . . rege Gallorum
minor apud eos censebatur ratione regni atque dignitatis; sed tum
divitiis florentior, tum bellica virtute multo erat celebrior,
(Bohadin, p. 161.) A stranger might admire those riches; the
national historians will tell with what lawless and wasteful
oppression they were collected.]

[Footnote 73: Joinville, p. 17. Cuides-tu que ce soit le roi
Richart?]
[Footnote 74: Yet he was guilty in the opinion of the Moslems,
who attest the confession of the assassins, that they were sent
by the king of England, (Bohadin, p. 225;) and his only defence
is an absurd and palpable forgery, (Hist. de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xv. p. 155 - 163,) a pretended letter from the
prince of the assassins, the Sheich, or old man of the mountain,
who justified Richard, by assuming to himself the guilt or merit
of the murder.

Note: Von Hammer (Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 202) sums up
against Richard, Wilken (vol. iv. p. 485) as strongly for
acquittal. Michaud (vol. ii. p. 420) delivers no decided
opinion. This crime was also attributed to Saladin, who is said,
by an Oriental authority, (the continuator of Tabari,) to have
employed the assassins to murder both Conrad and Richard. It is a
melancholy admission, but it must be acknowledged, that such an
act would be less inconsistent with the character of the
Christian than of the Mahometan king. - M.]

[Footnote 75: See the distress and pious firmness of Saladin, as
they are described by Bohadin, (p. 7 - 9, 235 - 237,) who himself
harangued the defenders of Jerusalem; their fears were not
unknown to the enemy, (Jacob. a Vitriaco, l. i. c. 100, p. 1123.
Vinisauf, l. v. c. 50, p. 399.)]
[Footnote 76: Yet unless the sultan, or an Ayoubite prince,
remained in Jerusalem, nec Curdi Turcis, nec Turci essent
obtemperaturi Curdis, (Bohadin, p. 236.) He draws aside a corner
of the political curtain.]
[Footnote 77: Bohadin, (p. 237,) and even Jeffrey de Vinisauf,
(l. vi. c. 1 - 8, p. 403 - 409,) ascribe the retreat to Richard
himself; and Jacobus a Vitriaco observes, that in his impatience
to depart, in alterum virum muta tus est, (p. 1123.) Yet
Joinville, a French knight, accuses the envy of Hugh duke of
Burgundy, (p. 116,) without supposing, like Matthew Paris, that
he was bribed by Saladin.]

[Footnote 78: The expeditions to Ascalon, Jerusalem, and Jaffa,
are related by Bohadin (p. 184 - 249) and Abulfeda, (p. 51, 52.)
The author of the Itinerary, or the monk of St. Alban's, cannot
exaggerate the cadhi's account of the prowess of Richard,
(Vinisauf, l. vi. c. 14 - 24, p. 412 - 421. Hist. Major, p. 137
- 143;) and on the whole of this war there is a marvellous
agreement between the Christian and Mahometan writers, who
mutually praise the virtues of their enemies.]

During these hostilities, a languid and tedious negotiation
^79 between the Franks and Moslems was started, and continued,
and broken, and again resumed, and again broken. Some acts of
royal courtesy, the gift of snow and fruit, the exchange of
Norway hawks and Arabian horses, softened the asperity of
religious war: from the vicissitude of success, the monarchs
might learn to suspect that Heaven was neutral in the quarrel;
nor, after the trial of each other, could either hope for a
decisive victory. ^80 The health both of Richard and Saladin
appeared to be in a declining state; and they respectively
suffered the evils of distant and domestic warfare: Plantagenet
was impatient to punish a perfidious rival who had invaded
Normandy in his absence; and the indefatigable sultan was subdued
by the cries of the people, who was the victim, and of the
soldiers, who were the instruments, of his martial zeal. The
first demands of the king of England were the restitution of
Jerusalem, Palestine, and the true cross; and he firmly declared,
that himself and his brother pilgrims would end their lives in
the pious labor, rather than return to Europe with ignominy and
remorse. But the conscience of Saladin refused, without some
weighty compensation, to restore the idols, or promote the
idolatry, of the Christians; he asserted, with equal firmness,
his religious and civil claim to the sovereignty of Palestine;
descanted on the importance and sanctity of Jerusalem; and
rejected all terms of the establishment, or partition of the
Latins. The marriage which Richard proposed, of his sister with
the sultan's brother, was defeated by the difference of faith;
the princess abhorred the embraces of a Turk; and Adel, or
Saphadin, would not easily renounce a plurality of wives. A
personal interview was declined by Saladin, who alleged their
mutual ignorance of each other's language; and the negotiation
was managed with much art and delay by their interpreters and
envoys. The final agreement was equally disapproved by the
zealots of both parties, by the Roman pontiff and the caliph of
Bagdad. It was stipulated that Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre
should be open, without tribute or vexation, to the pilgrimage of
the Latin Christians; that, after the demolition of Ascalon, they
should inclusively possess the sea-coast from Jaffa to Tyre; that
the count of Tripoli and the prince of Antioch should be
comprised in the truce; and that, during three years and three
months, all hostilities should cease. The principal chiefs of
the two armies swore to the observance of the treaty; but the
monarchs were satisfied with giving their word and their right
hand; and the royal majesty was excused from an oath, which
always implies some suspicion of falsehood and dishonor. Richard
embarked for Europe, to seek a long captivity and a premature
grave; and the space of a few months concluded the life and
glories of Saladin. The Orientals describe his edifying death,
which happened at Damascus; but they seem ignorant of the equal
distribution of his alms among the three religions, ^81 or of the
display of a shroud, instead of a standard, to admonish the East
of the instability of human greatness. The unity of empire was
dissolved by his death; his sons were oppressed by the stronger
arm of their uncle Saphadin; the hostile interests of the sultans
of Egypt, Damascus, and Aleppo, ^82 were again revived; and the
Franks or Latins stood and breathed, and hoped, in their
fortresses along the Syrian coast.

[Footnote 79: See the progress of negotiation and hostility in
Bohadin, (p. 207 - 260,) who was himself an actor in the treaty.
Richard declared his intention of returning with new armies to
the conquest of the Holy Land; and Saladin answered the menace
with a civil compliment, (Vinisauf l. vi. c. 28, p. 423.)]

[Footnote 80: The most copious and original account of this holy
war is Galfridi a Vinisauf, Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi
et aliorum in Terram Hierosolymorum, in six books, published in
the iid volume of Gale's Scriptores Hist. Anglicanae, (p. 247 -
429.) Roger Hoveden and Matthew Paris afford likewise many
valuable materials; and the former describes, with accuracy, the
discipline and navigation of the English fleet.]

[Footnote 81: Even Vertot (tom. i. p. 251) adopts the foolish
notion of the indifference of Saladin, who professed the Koran
with his last breath.]
[Footnote 82: See the succession of the Ayoubites, in
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 277, &c.,) and the tables of M. De
Guignes, l'Art de Verifier les Dates, and the Bibliotheque
Orientale.]

The noblest monument of a conqueror's fame, and of the
terror which he inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a general tax
which was imposed on the laity, and even the clergy, of the Latin
church, for the service of the holy war. The practice was too
lucrative to expire with the occasion: and this tribute became
the foundation of all the tithes and tenths on ecclesiastical
benefices, which have been granted by the Roman pontiffs to
Catholic sovereigns, or reserved for the immediate use of the
apostolic see. ^83 This pecuniary emolument must have tended to
increase the interest of the popes in the recovery of Palestine:
after the death of Saladin, they preached the crusade, by their
epistles, their legates, and their missionaries; and the
accomplishment of the pious work might have been expected from
the zeal and talents of Innocent the Third. ^84 Under that young
and ambitious priest, the successors of St. Peter attained the
full meridian of their greatness: and in a reign of eighteen
years, he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and
kings, whom he raised and deposed; over the nations, whom an
interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their
rulers, of the exercise of Christian worship. In the council of
the Lateran he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the
temporal, sovereign of the East and West. It was at the feet of
his legate that John of England surrendered his crown; and
Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and
humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation, and the origin
of the inquisition. At his voice, two crusades, the fourth and
the fifth, were undertaken; but, except a king of Hungary, the
princes of the second order were at the head of the pilgrims: the
forces were inadequate to the design; nor did the effects
correspond with the hopes and wishes of the pope and the people.
The fourth crusade was diverted from Syria to Constantinople; and
the conquest of the Greek or Roman empire by the Latins will form
the proper and important subject of the next chapter. In the
fifth, ^85 two hundred thousand Franks were landed at the eastern
mouth of the Nile. They reasonably hoped that Palestine must be
subdued in Egypt, the seat and storehouse of the sultan; and,
after a siege of sixteen months, the Moslems deplored the loss of
Damietta. But the Christian army was ruined by the pride and
insolence of the legate Pelagius, who, in the pope's name,
assumed the character of general: the sickly Franks were
encompassed by the waters of the Nile and the Oriental forces;
and it was by the evacuation of Damietta that they obtained a
safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the tardy
restitution of the doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure
may in some measure be ascribed to the abuse and multiplication
of the crusades, which were preached at the same time against the
Pagans of Livonia, the Moors of Spain, the Albigeois of France,
and the kings of Sicily of the Imperial family. ^86 In these
meritorious services, the volunteers might acquire at home the
same spiritual indulgence, and a larger measure of temporal
rewards; and even the popes, in their zeal against a domestic
enemy, were sometimes tempted to forget the distress of their
Syrian brethren. From the last age of the crusades they derived
the occasional command of an army and revenue; and some deep
reasoners have suspected that the whole enterprise, from the
first synod of Placentia, was contrived and executed by the
policy of Rome. The suspicion is not founded, either in nature
or in fact. The successors of St. Peter appear to have followed,
rather than guided, the impulse of manners and prejudice; without
much foresight of the seasons, or cultivation of the soil, they
gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits of the superstition of
the times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal
danger: in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third
declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders by
his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon
the helm; nor was Palestine ever blessed with the presence of a
Roman pontiff. ^87 [Footnote 83: Thomassin (Discipline de
l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 311 - 374) has copiously treated of the
origin, abuses, and restrictions of these tenths. A theory was
started, but not pursued, that they were rightfully due to the
pope, a tenth of the Levite's tenth to the high priest, (Selden
on Tithes; see his Works, vol. iii. p. ii. p. 1083.)]

[Footnote 84: See the Gesta Innocentii III. in Murat. Script.
Rer. Ital., (tom. iii. p. 486 - 568.)]

[Footnote 85: See the vth crusade, and the siege of Damietta, in
Jacobus a Vitriaco, (l. iii. p. 1125 - 1149, in the Gesta Dei of
Bongarsius,) an eye- witness, Bernard Thesaurarius, (in Script.
Muratori, tom. vii. p. 825 - 846, c. 190 - 207,) a contemporary,
and Sanutus, (Secreta Fidel Crucis, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4 - 9,) a
diligent compiler; and of the Arabians Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
294,) and the Extracts at the end of Joinville, (p. 533, 537,
540, 547, &c.)]

[Footnote 86: To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the
pope (A.D. 1255) granted plenissimam peccatorum remissionem.
Fideles mirabantur quod tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine
Christianorum effundendo quantum pro cruore infidelium aliquando,
(Matthew Paris p. 785.) A high flight for the reason of the
xiiith century.]

[Footnote 87: This simple idea is agreeable to the good sense of
Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 332,) and the fine
philosophy of Hume, (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 330.)]

The persons, the families, and estates of the pilgrims, were
under the immediate protection of the popes; and these spiritual
patrons soon claimed the prerogative of directing their
operations, and enforcing, by commands and censures, the
accomplishment of their vow. Frederic the Second, ^88 the
grandson of Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the enemy,
and the victim of the church. At the age of twenty-one years,
and in obedience to his guardian Innocent the Third, he assumed
the cross; the same promise was repeated at his royal and
imperial coronations; and his marriage with the heiress of
Jerusalem forever bound him to defend the kingdom of his son
Conrad. But as Frederic advanced in age and authority, he
repented of the rash engagements of his youth: his liberal sense
and knowledge taught him to despise the phantoms of superstition
and the crowns of Asia: he no longer entertained the same
reverence for the successors of Innocent: and his ambition was
occupied by the restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily
to the Alps. But the success of this project would have reduced
the popes to their primitive simplicity; and, after the delays
and excuses of twelve years, they urged the emperor, with
entreaties and threats, to fix the time and place of his
departure for Palestine. In the harbors of Sicily and Apulia, he
prepared a fleet of one hundred galleys, and of one hundred
vessels, that were framed to transport and land two thousand five
hundred knights, with their horses and attendants; his vassals of
Naples and Germany formed a powerful army; and the number of
English crusaders was magnified to sixty thousand by the report
of fame. But the inevitable or affected slowness of these mighty
preparations consumed the strength and provisions of the more
indigent pilgrims: the multitude was thinned by sickness and
desertion; and the sultry summer of Calabria anticipated the
mischiefs of a Syrian campaign. At length the emperor hoisted
sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and army of forty thousand men:
but he kept the sea no more than three days; and his hasty
retreat, which was ascribed by his friends to a grievous
indisposition, was accused by his enemies as a voluntary and
obstinate disobedience. For suspending his vow was Frederic
excommunicated by Gregory the Ninth; for presuming, the next
year, to accomplish his vow, he was again excommunicated by the
same pope. ^89 While he served under the banner of the cross, a
crusade was preached against him in Italy; and after his return
he was compelled to ask pardon for the injuries which he had
suffered. The clergy and military orders of Palestine were
previously instructed to renounce his communion and dispute his
commands; and in his own kingdom, the emperor was forced to
consent that the orders of the camp should be issued in the name
of God and of the Christian republic. Frederic entered Jerusalem
in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would perform
the office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy
sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict on the church
which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital
and temple informed the sultan how easily he might be surprised
and slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a
state of fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and
defence was difficult; but the conclusion of an advantageous
peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and their
personal esteem for the character of Frederic. The enemy of the
church is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an
intercourse of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a
Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of
indulging a profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom
of Naples he never would have selected Palestine for the
inheritance of his chosen people. Yet Frederic obtained from the
sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of Bethlem and Nazareth, of
Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify
the city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was
ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of Mahomet; and,
while the former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter
might pray and preach in the mosque of the temple, ^90 from
whence the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven.
The clergy deplored this scandalous toleration; and the weaker
Moslems were gradually expelled; but every rational object of the
crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were
restored, the monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of
fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six
thousand. This peace and prosperity, for which they were
ungrateful to their benefactor, was terminated by the irruption
of the strange and savage hordes of Carizmians. ^91 Flying from
the arms of the Moguls, those shepherds ^* of the Caspian rolled
headlong on Syria; and the union of the Franks with the sultans
of Aleppo, Hems, and Damascus, was insufficient to stem the
violence of the torrent. Whatever stood against them was cut off
by the sword, or dragged into captivity: the military orders were
almost exterminated in a single battle; and in the pillage of the
city, in the profanation of the holy sepulchre, the Latins
confess and regret the modesty and discipline of the Turks and
Saracens.
[Footnote 88: The original materials for the crusade of Frederic
II. may be drawn from Richard de St. Germano (in Muratori,
Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii. p. 1002 - 1013) and Matthew Paris,
(p. 286, 291, 300, 302, 304.) The most rational moderns are
Fleury, (Hist. Eccles. tom. xvi.,) Vertot, (Chevaliers de
Malthe, tom. i. l. iii.,) Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,
tom. ii. l. xvi.,) and Muratori, (Annali d' Italia, tom. x.)]

[Footnote 89: Poor Muratori knows what to think, but knows not
what to say: "Chino qui il capo,' &c. p. 322]

[Footnote 90: The clergy artfully confounded the mosque or church
of the temple with the holy sepulchre, and their wilful error has
deceived both Vertot and Muratori.]

[Footnote 91: The irruption of the Carizmians, or Corasmins, is
related by Matthew Paris, (p. 546, 547,) and by Joinville,
Nangis, and the Arabians, (p. 111, 112, 191, 192, 528, 530.)]

[Footnote *: They were in alliance with Eyub, sultan of Syria.
Wilken vol. vi. p. 630. - M.]

Of the seven crusades, the two last were undertaken by Louis
the Ninth, king of France; who lost his liberty in Egypt, and his
life on the coast of Africa. Twenty-eight years after his death,
he was canonized at Rome; and sixty-five miracles were readily
found, and solemnly attested, to justify the claim of the royal
saint. ^92 The voice of history renders a more honorable
testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, a hero, and a
man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private
and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people,
the friend of his neighbors, and the terror of the infidels.
Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence,
^93 corrupted his understanding and his heart: his devotion
stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and
Dominic: he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the
faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to
seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant. A monkish
historian would have been content to applaud the most despicable
part of his character; but the noble and gallant Joinville, ^94
who shared the friendship and captivity of Louis, has traced with
the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues as well as
of his failings. From this intimate knowledge we may learn to
suspect the political views of depressing their great vassals,
which are so often imputed to the royal authors of the crusades.
Above all the princes of the middle ages, Louis the Ninth
successfully labored to restore the prerogatives of the crown;
but it was at home and not in the East, that he acquired for
himself and his posterity: his vow was the result of enthusiasm
and sickness; and if he were the promoter, he was likewise the
victim, of his holy madness. For the invasion of Egypt, France
was exhausted of her troops and treasures; he covered the sea of
Cyprus with eighteen hundred sails; the most modest enumeration
amounts to fifty thousand men; and, if we might trust his own
confession, as it is reported by Oriental vanity, he disembarked
nine thousand five hundred horse, and one hundred and thirty
thousand foot, who performed their pilgrimage under the shadow of
his power. ^95

[Footnote 92: Read, if you can, the Life and Miracles of St.
Louis, by the confessor of Queen Margaret, (p. 291 - 523.
Joinville, du Louvre.)]
[Footnote 93: He believed all that mother church taught,
(Joinville, p. 10,) but he cautioned Joinville against disputing
with infidels. "L'omme lay (said he in his old language) quand
il ot medire de la loi Crestienne, ne doit pas deffendre la loi
Crestienne ne mais que de l'espee, dequoi il doit donner parmi le
ventre dedens, tant comme elle y peut entrer' (p. 12.)]
[Footnote 94: I have two editions of Joinville, the one (Paris,
1668) most valuable for the observations of Ducange; the other
(Paris, au Louvre, 1761) most precious for the pure and authentic
text, a MS. of which has been recently discovered. The last
edition proves that the history of St. Louis was finished A.D.
1309, without explaining, or even admiring, the age of the
author, which must have exceeded ninety years, (Preface, p. x.
Observations de Ducange, p. 17.)]

[Footnote 95: Joinville, p. 32. Arabic Extracts, p. 549.

Note: Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 94. - M.]

In complete armor, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis
leaped foremost on the beach; and the strong city of Damietta,
which had cost his predecessors a siege of sixteen months, was
abandoned on the first assault by the trembling Moslems. But
Damietta was the first and the last of his conquests; and in the
fifth and sixth crusades, the same causes, almost on the same
ground, were productive of similar calamities. ^96 After a
ruinous delay, which introduced into the camp the seeds of an
epidemic disease, the Franks advanced from the sea-coast towards
the capital of Egypt, and strove to surmount the unseasonable
inundation of the Nile, which opposed their progress. Under the
eye of their intrepid monarch, the barons and knights of France
displayed their invincible contempt of danger and discipline: his
brother, the count of Artois, stormed with inconsiderate valor
the town of Massoura; and the carrier pigeons announced to the
inhabitants of Cairo that all was lost. But a soldier, who
afterwards usurped the sceptre, rallied the flying troops: the
main body of the Christians was far behind the vanguard; and
Artois was overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was
incessantly poured on the invaders; the Nile was commanded by the
Egyptian galleys, the open country by the Arabs; all provisions
were intercepted; each day aggravated the sickness and famine;
and about the same time a retreat was found to be necessary and
impracticable. The Oriental writers confess, that Louis might
have escaped, if he would have deserted his subjects; he was made
prisoner, with the greatest part of his nobles; all who could not
redeem their lives by service or ransom were inhumanly massacred;
and the walls of Cairo were decorated with a circle of Christian
heads. ^97 The king of France was loaded with chains; but the
generous victor, a great-grandson of the brother of Saladin, sent
a robe of honor to his royal captive, and his deliverance, with
that of his soldiers, was obtained by the restitution of Damietta
^98 and the payment of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In
a soft and luxurious climate, the degenerate children of the
companions of Noureddin and Saladin were incapable of resisting
the flower of European chivalry: they triumphed by the arms of
their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy natives of Tartary, who at a
tender age had been purchased of the Syrian merchants, and were
educated in the camp and palace of the sultan. But Egypt soon
afforded a new example of the danger of praetorian bands; and the
rage of these ferocious animals, who had been let loose on the
strangers, was provoked to devour their benefactor. In the pride
of conquest, Touran Shaw, the last of his race, was murdered by
his Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the
chamber of the captive king, with drawn cimeters, and their hands
imbrued in the blood of their sultan. The firmness of Louis
commanded their respect; ^99 their avarice prevailed over cruelty
and zeal; the treaty was accomplished; and the king of France,
with the relics of his army, was permitted to embark for
Palestine. He wasted four years within the walls of Acre, unable
to visit Jerusalem, and unwilling to return without glory to his
native country.

[Footnote 96: The last editors have enriched their Joinville with
large and curious extracts from the Arabic historians, Macrizi,
Abulfeda, &c. See likewise Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 322 -
325,) who calls him by the corrupt name of Redefrans. Matthew
Paris (p. 683, 684) has described the rival folly of the French
and English who fought and fell at Massoura.]
[Footnote 97: Savary, in his agreeable Letters sur L'Egypte, has
given a description of Damietta, (tom. i. lettre xxiii. p. 274 -
290,) and a narrative of the exposition of St. Louis, (xxv. p.
306 - 350.)]

[Footnote 98: For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants
was asked and granted; but the sultan's generosity reduced that
sum to 800,000 byzants, which are valued by Joinville at 400,000
French livres of his own time, and expressed by Matthew Paris by
100,000 marks of silver, (Ducange, Dissertation xx. sur
Joinville.)]

[Footnote 99: The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their
sultan is seriously attested by Joinville, (p. 77, 78,) and does
not appear to me so absurd as to M. de Voltaire, (Hist. Generale,
tom. ii. p. 386, 387.) The Mamalukes themselves were strangers,
rebels, and equals: they had felt his valor, they hoped his
conversion; and such a motion, which was not seconded, might be
made, perhaps by a secret Christian in their tumultuous assembly.

Note: Wilken, vol. vii. p. 257, thinks the proposition could
not have been made in earnest. - M.]

The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years
of wisdom and repose, to undertake the seventh and last of the
crusades. His finances were restored, his kingdom was enlarged;
a new generation of warriors had arisen, and he advanced with
fresh confidence at the head of six thousand horse and thirty
thousand foot. The loss of Antioch had provoked the enterprise;
a wild hope of baptizing the king of Tunis tempted him to steer

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