Volume 1 / Book 6 — BOOK VI. (continued 2)

The Christian armies, as in the first crusade, dragged in their train a great number of children, women, and old men, who could do nothing towards victory, and yet always greatly augmented the disorder and despair consequent upon a defeat. With this multitude no discipline could be established; nor is it apparent that the leaders made any attempt to prevent the effects of license. Geoffrey de Rançon, whose imprudence caused the destruction of half the French army, and placed the king of France in the greatest peril, had no other punishment but his repentance, and thought he expiated his neglect of duty by prostrating himself at the tomb of Christ. That which was still more injurious to discipline was the depravity of manners in the Christian army, which must be principally attributed to the great number of women that had taken arms, and mixed in the ranks of the soldiery. In this crusade there was a troop of Amazons, commanded by a general whose dress was much more admired than her courage, and whose gilded boots procured her the name of “the lady with the legs of gold.”

Another cause of the dissoluteness of manners was the extreme facility with which the most vicious men, even convicted malefactors, were admitted among the Crusaders. St. Bernard, who considered the crusade as a road to heaven, summoned the greatest sinners to take part in it, and rejoiced at seeing them thus enter into the way of eternal life. In a council of Rheims, of which the abbot of Clairvaux was the oracle, it was decreed that incendiaries should be punished by serving God one year either in Jerusalem or Spain. The ardent preacher of the holy war did not reflect that great sinners, enrolled under the banners of the cross, would be exposed to new temptations, and that during a long voyage it would be much more easy for them to corrupt their companions than to amend their own conduct. Disorders were unhappily tolerated by the leaders, who believed that Heaven was ever indulgent towards Crusaders, and did not wish to be more severe than it.

And yet the Christian army, amidst a most frightful state of morals, presented examples of an austere piety. Surrounded by the dangers of war, and harassed by the fatigues of a long pilgrimage, the king of France never neglected the most minute practices of religion. The greater part of the leaders took him for their model, and when in camp, paid more attention to religious processions than to military exercises; so that many warriors actually placed more confidence in their prayers than in their arms. In general, through the whole of this crusade, sufficient dependence was not placed on human means and human prudence,—everything was left to Providence, which seldom protects those who stray from the ways of reason and wisdom.

The first crusade had two distinctive characters,—piety and heroism; the second had scarcely any other principle but a piety which partook more of the devotion of the cloister than of a generous enthusiasm. The influence of the monks who had preached it, and who then meddled very much in temporal affairs, was but too evident through the whole of this crusade. The king of France in his misfortunes displayed nothing but the resignation of a martyr, and in the field of battle was only distinguished by the ardour and courage of a soldier. The emperor of Germany did not evince greater ability; he lost all by his mad presumption, and from having thought himself able to conquer the Turks without the assistance of the French. Both were limited in their views, and were greatly wanting in that energy which produces great actions. In the expedition which they directed, there was nothing elevated, everything seemed to keep down to the level of their character. In a word, this war developed neither heroic passions nor chivalric qualities. Camps had no great captains to admire or imitate; and the period we have described can boast of only two men of marked genius,—he who had roused the Western world by his eloquence, and the wise minister of Louis, who had to repair in France all the misfortunes of the crusade.

All the energies of this crusade were not directed against Asia. Several preachers, authorized by the Holy See, had exhorted the inhabitants of Saxony and Denmark to take up arms against some nations of the Baltic, still plunged in the darkness of paganism. This crusade was led by Henry of Saxony, several other princes, and a great number of bishops and archbishops. An army, composed of a hundred and fifty thousand Crusaders, attacked the barbarous and savage nation of the Sclaves, who unceasingly ravaged the sea-coasts, and made war upon the Christians. The Christian warriors wore upon their breasts a red cross, under which was a round figure, representing and symbolizing the earth, which ought to be obedient to the laws of Christ. Preachers of the gospel accompanied their march, and exhorted them to extend the limits of Christian Europe by their exploits. The Crusaders consigned to the flames several idolatrous temples, and destroyed the city of Malehon, in which the pagan priests were accustomed to assemble. In this holy war the Saxons treated a pagan people exactly as Charlemagne had treated their own ancestors; but they were not able to subdue the Sclaves. After a war of three years, the Saxon and Danish Crusaders grew weary of pursuing an enemy defended by the sea, and still further by their despair. They made proposals of peace; the Sclaves, on their part, promised to become converts to Christianity, and to respect Christian people.[289] They only made these promises to pacify their enemies; and when the latter laid down their arms, they returned to their idols and resumed their piracies.

Other Crusaders, to whom Christendom paid very little attention, prosecuted a more successful war on the banks of the Tagus. It was several centuries since Spain had been invaded by the Moors, and still two rival nations disputed empire and fought for territory in the names of Mahomet and Jesus Christ.[290] The Moors, often conquered by the Cid and his companions, had been driven from several provinces, and when the second crusade set out for the East, the Spaniards were besieging the city of Lisbon. The Christian army, small in numbers, was in daily expectation of reinforcements, when a fleet which was transporting to the East a great number of French Crusaders, entered the mouth of the Tagus. Alphonso, a prince of the house of Burgundy and grandson of King Robert, commanded the besieging army. He visited the Christian warriors, whom Heaven appeared to have sent to his assistance, and promised, as the reward of their co-operation, the conquest of a flourishing kingdom. He exhorted them to join him in combating those same Saracens whom they were going to seek in Asia through all the perils of the sea. “The God who had sent them would bless their army; noble pay and rich possessions would be the meed of their valour.” Nothing more was necessary to persuade warriors who had made a vow to fight with the infidels and who were eager for adventures. They abandoned their vessels and joined the besiegers. The Moors opposed them with determined pertinacity, but at the end of four months Lisbon was taken, and the garrison put to the sword. They afterwards besieged several other cities, which were wrested from the Saracens; Portugal submitted to the power of Alphonso, and he assumed the title of king. Amidst these conquests the Crusaders forgot the East, and, without incurring much danger, they founded a prosperous and splendid kingdom, which lasted much longer than that of Jerusalem.

We may judge by these crusades, undertaken at the same time, against nations of the north and others of the south, that the principle of holy wars began to assume a new character; Crusaders did not fight only for the possession of a sepulchre, but they took up arms to defend their religion wherever it might be attacked, and to make it triumphant among all nations that rejected its laws and refused its benefits. The diversity of interests which set the Crusaders in action, necessarily divided their forces, weakened their enthusiasm, and was sure to be injurious to the success of a holy war.

France, which then turned anxious looks towards Palestine, no longer demanded of God the deliverance of the holy places, but the return of a king over whose misfortunes they had wept. For a length of time, Suger, who was unable to sustain the royal authority, had endeavoured to recall his master by letters full of tenderness and devotion. Their interview, which proved an affecting spectacle for the French, alarmed the courtiers, who were desirous of awakening suspicions of the fidelity of the minister. A kingdom at peace and a flourishing people were the reply of Suger. The king praised his zeal, and bestowed upon him the title of Father of his Country. Suger enjoyed a great advantage, as he had been the only man of any consequence in Europe who had opposed the crusade. His wise foresight was everywhere the subject of praise, whilst all complaints were directed against St. Bernard. There was not a family in the kingdom that was not in mourning; and the same desolation reigned throughout Germany. So many widows and orphans had never been seen, and the glory of martyrdom, promised to all whose loss was regretted, had no power to dry their tears. The abbot of Clairvaux was accused of having sent Christians to die in the East, as if Europe had been without sepulchres; and the partisans of St. Bernard, who had seen his mission attested by his miracles, not knowing what to reply, were struck with stupor and astonishment. “God, in these latter days,” said they among themselves, “has neither spared his people nor his name; the children of the Church have been given over to death in the desert, or massacred by the sword, or devoured by hunger; the contempt of the Lord has fallen even upon princes; God has left them to wander in unknown ways, and all sorts of pains and afflictions have been strewed upon their paths.” So many evils resulting from a holy war, from a war undertaken in the name of God, confounded the Christians who had most applauded the crusade, and St. Bernard himself was astonished that God had been willing to judge the universe before the time, and without remembrance of his mercy. “What a disgrace is it for us,” said he in an apology addressed to the pope, “for us who went everywhere announcing peace and happiness! Have we conducted ourselves rashly? Have our courses been adopted from fantasy? Have we not followed the orders of the head of the Church and those of the Lord? Why has not God regarded our fasts? Why has he appeared to know nothing of our humiliations? With what patience is he now listening to the sacrilegious and blasphemous voices of the nations of Arabia, who accuse him of having led his people into the desert that they might perish! All the world knows,” added he, “that the judgments of the Lord are just; but this is so profound an abyss, that he may be called happy who is not disgraced by it.” St. Bernard was so thoroughly persuaded that the unfortunate issue of the crusade would furnish the wicked with an excuse for insulting the Deity, that he congratulated himself that so many of the maledictions of men fell upon him, making him as a buckler to the living God. In his apology, he attributes the want of success in the holy war to the disorders and crimes of the Christians; he compares the Crusaders to the Hebrews, to whom Moses had promised, in the name of Heaven, a land of blessedness, and who all perished on their journey, because they had done a thousand things against God.

St. Bernard might have been answered that he ought to have foreseen the excesses and disorders of an undisciplined multitude, and that the brigands called upon to take up the cross were not the people of God. It appears to us, at the present time, that the partisans of the abbot of Clairvaux might have found better reasons for the justification of the holy war. The second crusade, although unfortunate, procured several advantages for Europe. The peace which reigned in the West, caused states to flourish, and repaired, in some sort, the disasters of a distant war. It was held shameful to carry arms in Europe, whilst the Crusaders were contending with the Saracens in the East. Religion itself watched over Germany, which had been so long troubled by civil wars. Conrad, a weak monarch without character, who had lost his army in Asia, was more powerful on his return from Palestine than he had been before he quitted his dominions. The king of France also found his authority increased, from having been defended during his absence by the thunders of the Church and the eloquence of St. Bernard.[291] The crusade gave him a pretext for imposing taxes upon his people, and placed him at the head of a numerous army, where he accustomed the great vassals to consider him as their supreme head.

Still, if it is true that the divorce of Eleanor of Guienne was one of the consequences of the crusade, it must be admitted that the evils which resulted from this war were much greater for the French monarchy than any good it derived from it. The kingdom which then lost the province of Aquitaine, which fell into the hands of the English, was doomed to become the prey of the children that Eleanor had by her second marriage. A following age saw the descendants of these children crowned kings of France and England in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris, and the successors of Louis VII. found themselves almost reduced to seek an asylum in foreign lands.

Flattery undertook to console Louis the young, for the reverses he had experienced in Asia, and represented him, upon several medals,[292] as the conqueror of the East. He left Palestine with the project of returning thither; and in his journey to Rome, he promised the pope to place himself at the head of a new crusade.

And never did the Christian colonies stand in greater need of assistance. From the time the French quitted Palestine not a day passed without some new misfortune befalling the Christians established in Syria. A very short time after the siege of Damascus, Raymond of Poictiers lost his life in a battle against the Saracens, and his head was sent to the caliph of Bagdad. Josselin, after having lost the city of Edessa, himself fell into the hands of the infidels, and died in misery and despair in the prisons of Aleppo. Two emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain assassinated Raymond II., count of Tripoli, under the walls of his capital, which was plunged into trouble and desolation. Two young Mussulman princes, of the family of Ortok, excited by their mother, believed that the moment was come to reconquer Jerusalem from the Christians. An army which they had assembled, came and pitched its camp on the Mount of Olives, and the holy city only owed its safety to the courage of some knights who induced the people to take arms. Noureddin had got possession of all the Christian cities of Mesopotamia, and several places in the principality of Antioch had opened their gates to him. Arrived on the shores of the sea, which he had never before seen, he bathed in its waves, as if to take possession of it; and, still accompanied by victory, he established the seat of his empire at Damascus, whence he menaced the city of Jerusalem.

The afflicting news of these occurrences created great sorrow among the Christians of the West, and the sovereign pontiff exhorted the faithful once again to take up the cross and arms; but neither the danger of the Christians beyond the sea, nor the exhortations of the pope, could change the opinion which the French had formed against distant wars. Louis VII. was obliged to renounce his intention of returning to the Holy Land. At this period a circumstance occurred which it is very difficult to give credit to. The abbot Suger, who had so strongly opposed the first expedition, formed the resolution of succouring Jerusalem; and in an assembly held at Chartres, exhorted the princes, barons, and bishops to enrol themselves under the banners of the holy war. As he was only answered by the silence of grief and astonishment, he formed the project of attempting an enterprise alone in which two monarchs had failed. Suger, at the age of seventy, resolved to raise an army, to maintain it at his own expense, and to lead it himself into Palestine. In accordance with the devotion of the time, he went to Tours, to visit the tomb of St. Martin, in order to obtain the protection of Heaven, and already ten thousand pilgrims had taken up arms, and were preparing to follow him into Asia, when death came to prevent the execution of his designs.

In his last moments Suger invoked the assistance and the prayers of St. Bernard, who sustained his courage, and exhorted him not to turn his thoughts from the heavenly Jerusalem, in which both of them hoped soon to meet; but in spite of the exhortations of his friend, the abbot of St. Denis regretted, when dying, not having been able to succour the holy city. St. Bernard was not long before he followed Suger to the tomb, bearing with him a deep regret at having preached an unfortunate war.

France lost in the same year two men who had greatly illustrated her, the one by talents and qualities useful to his country, the other by his eloquence and virtues dear to all Christians. At a time when general attention was given to the defence of the privileges of the Church, Suger defended the interests of royalty and the people; whilst eloquent preachers were animating the public zeal for holy wars which were always accompanied by disasters, the skilful minister of Louis VII. was preparing France, at a future day, to gather the salutary fruits of these great events. He was accused of having gone too deeply into the mundane affairs of his age; but politics never banished from his mind the precepts of the gospel. According to the judgment of his contemporaries, he lived at the court like a wise courtier, and in his cloister like a pious monk.[293] If there is in the church of France, wrote St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius, any vase of price which would embellish the palace of the King of kings, it is doubtless the venerable abbot Suger. As abbot of St. Denis, he, perhaps, enjoyed more wealth than any monk ought to possess, since we see he proposed to maintain an army, but he always employed his treasures in the service of his country and the Church, and never had the state been so rich as under his administration. His whole life was a long series of prosperity, and of actions worthy of being remembered. He reformed the monks of his order without incurring their hatred; he created the happiness of the people without proving their ingratitude; and served kings, and yet obtained their friendship. Fortune favoured all his undertakings, and that there should be nothing unprosperous in his life, and that he might be reproached with no fault, he died when he was about to conduct an army to the East.

Suger and St. Bernard, united by religion and friendship, had a very different destiny; the first, born in a low condition, gave himself to the disposal of fortune, who carried him up to the highest dignities; the second, born in a more elevated rank, hastened to descend from it, and was nothing but by his genius. St. Bernard rendered few services to the state, but he defended religion with indefatigable zeal; and as church then took precedence of country, he was greater than the abbot Suger in the eyes of his contemporaries. Whilst he lived, the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the abbot of Clairvaux; he was as a light placed in the midst of Christendom, every word he preached had the holy authority of the religion he taught. He stifled all schisms, silenced all impostors, and by his labours, merited in his age the title of the last father of the Church, as richly as the great Bossuet merited it in his.

St. Bernard may be reproached with having too frequently issued from his retreat, and with not having always been, as he himself expresses it, the disciple of oaks and beeches. He had a hand in most of the political events of his time, and interfered in all the affairs of the Holy See. Christians often asked who was the head of the Church; popes and princes sometimes murmured against his authority; but it must never be forgotten that he unceasingly preached moderation to kings, humanity to the people, and poverty to the clergy.