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After the tragic fiasco, in 1148, of the Second Crusade, the Mohammedan
offensive went from one success to another. Nureddin conquered what
remained of the country of Edessa; he took some of the towns in the
principality of Antioch; and the King of Jerusalem found his only hope
of salvation to be an alliance with Constantinople.
In 1153 the king took from the Egyptians Ascalon, which had held out
since the days of the First Crusade; but, as against this success,
Nureddin, in the following year, took Damascus. There, for the moment,
his direct attack halted: for the next fifteen years he and the King of
Jerusalem fought each other indirectly, in the faction struggle which
divided Egypt. By 1169 the faction which Nureddin supported had
triumphed. Its leader was a man of genius, Saladin, and in 1171 he was
sole ruler in Egypt. His accession to power meant the end of the
religious schism which had for so long rent the Mohammedans; Egypt, to
the south, was now as strong as Nureddin to the north. The Latins were
yearly weaker, and more divided, while in Europe the papal energies
were now wholly occupied in beating off Frederick Barbarossa's great
bid for the control of the Church. It could only be a matter of time
before the Latins lost their hold on Jerusalem. Only so long as rival
Mohammedans faced each other in equal strength would Latins enjoy any
security. Once either Saladin or Nureddin achieved a supremacy in the
Mohammedan world, the remnant of Latin power would be swept away
without much difficulty.
In 1174 Nureddin died; and Saladin began little by little to make
himself master of Syria too. By 1183 Aleppo was his, and Damascus also.
The circle was almost complete around the doomed Latin kingdom.
Its kings, of course, had not been careless of the approaching danger.
From 1164 they called repeatedly on the West for help, and their appeal
in 1184 had produced in France and England the new institution of a
fixed tax levied for the support of the Holy Land. One very grave
internal disaster was the extinction of the dynasty when, in 1186,
Baldwin the Leper died without heirs. His mother Sybilla had, six years
earlier, married as her second husband a French adventurer, Guy de
Lusignan, highly unpopular with the barons; now, since Sybilla was
herself heiress to the throne, Guy became king.
It was at this critical moment, when the internal dissensions of the
kingdom were at their height, that Raynald of Chatillon, lord of the
impregnable fortress of Krak, half brigand, half pirate-for he had a
fleet on the Red Sea, and lived largely on the pillage of caravans --
captured a caravan in which Saladin's sister was travelling, and this
during a time of truce (1186).
Saladin proclaimed the Holy War to drive the Christians out, once and
for all. A Mohammedan army, fired with all the enthusiasm that had once
been the crusaders', swept down on the Western disorganisation. At
Tiberias, in May, 1187, a joint army of Hospitallers and Templars was
defeated and on July 4, at Hattin, the army of the kingdom was cut to
pieces. Nothing lay between Saladin and his prey. One by one he
occupied all the towns of the kingdom, except Tyre and Jerusalem. On
October 2 he entered Jerusalem, too. Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch were all
that remained of the fruits of 1095. After eighty-eight years of
occupation there was need of another Urban II.
The reigning pope to whom the news of the battle of Hattin came was
Urban III. Before he learnt of the fall of Jerusalem he was dead; and
the shock of this news, when it arrived, killed his successor, Gregory
VIII (October 21-December 17, 1187). It was to the aged Clement III
that the task fell of once more rousing the Catholic world, or rather
of organising the new enthusiasm which, immediately, began to show
itself. If Jerusalem had fallen, it was said, this was because
Christendom had sinned; and in a fervour of contrition for past apathy
the scenes of 1095 began to be renewed. Everywhere, under the
encouraging diplomacy of the papal legates, princes long at war came to
terms: Henry II of England and Philip II of France, Pisa and Genoa,
Venice and Hungary, the King of Sicily and the Byzantine emperor. All
took the cross, and none more eagerly than the emperor Frederick
Barbarossa, one of the few survivors of the disastrous crusade of 1147.
Under his leadership all Germany prepared to send into the East the
largest single army yet formed. The Sicilian Fleet set out immediately
and saved Tripoli for the cross, and in May, 1189, the Germans marched
out of Ratisbon, 100,000 strong.
Barbarossa's host made its way through Hungary easily enough but when
it reached the Byzantine frontiers it came into contact with a power,
not merely suspicious, as in previous years, but so alarmed at this
revival that it had already come to terms with Saladin, and was
prepared to act as his ally. In the last stages of the march to
Constantinople the Germans had to fight more than one pitched battle
with the Greeks. In the capital itself the emperor threw the German
ambassadors into prison, and the patriarch lavished indulgences on
whoever would kill the Latin dogs. Frederick began to think of
destroying Byzantium. He wrote home to enlist the sympathies of the
pope, to beseech that the crusade might be directed against these
traitors, and to his son, Henry VI, to assemble the necessary fleets.
Finally the Greek emperor -- Isaac Angelus -- yielded, promising a safe
passage for the Germans and opportunity to provision their forces. On
March 30, 1190, they crossed the Bosphorus and began the march through
Asia Minor. Despite terrible hardships they made their way
successfully, taking Iconium by storm and then, on June 10, the
greatest of disasters befell them. The old emperor, as he crossed the
river Salef, was thrown from his horse and drowned. Consternation
seized on the princes. Many turned for home; others got as far as
Antioch; only a small part survived to join the main operation of the
crusade, the siege of St. Jean d'Acre, the strongly defended gate to
the Holy Land.
Here, as the siege continued (June, 1189-July, 1191) all the forces
from all over Europe gathered, under a brilliant band of leaders, the
most distinguished of whom were Philip II of France and the new King of
England, Richard Coeur de Lion. As always, there were as many rivals as
princes, and the jealousy of the two kings split the crusade from the
beginning. But finally, thanks in great part to Richard's skill, the
town surrendered. Before the month was out Philip returned to France
leaving Richard supreme.
It was now decided to take Jerusalem, and through August and September
the armies marched along the coast, occupying Cesarea and Jaffa. And
now a wholly new feature appeared in the crusade. The long siege of
Acre had done as much to familiarise the newly-arrived crusaders with
their opponents as the permanent life in the East had long since
familiarised the various kings of Jerusalem and their nobles. A sort of
military camaraderie had begun to grow, and out of it there now came a
move to end the struggle by diplomacy. But Saladin, furious at
Richard's massacre of two thousand Saracen hostages, refused to treat,
as he refused also the extraordinary proposal that his brother should
marry Richard's sister and rule Palestine. The negotiations gave
Saladin time to bring reinforcements to Jerusalem, and when Richard
prepared to attack, the more experienced chiefs of the military orders
could only warn him of his foolhardiness. In the end Richard and
Saladin came to terms. There was to be a truce for three years, the
coast towns were to be shared, and small parties of crusaders were to
be allowed in Jerusalem as pilgrims. This was on September 2, 1192. The
crusade was over, and five weeks later Richard set sail for Europe.
Once more years of effort, tens of thousands of lives lost, an immense
treasure spent, and nothing achieved.
The next year Saladin died. He left to succeed him a brother, and
seventeen sons. Soon Palestine and Syria were their much- disputed
prize. The crusade had a new opportunity. This time it was left to the
emperor Henry VI, Barbarossa's son and successor, to make the most of
it. He was perhaps the greatest man the empire had known since
Charlemagne, and, apparently, about to realise that dream of universal
dominion which had haunted so many of Charlemagne's German successors.
A stroke of luck had brought even the King of England within the range
of his policies. He was ruler of Sicily and southern Italy as well as
of Germany, and now, from Sicily, he plotted the conquest of the
Eastern empire too. The first object of crusading zeal threatened now
to be Constantinople. Henry took the cross in a solemn assembly at Bari
on May 31, 1195, and six months later, at the German diet called to
organise the details of the crusade, the changes in its political
objective were admirably prefigured when the kings of Cyprus and
Armenia gave over their realms to Henry and received them from him as
their suzerain.
Meanwhile the task of recruiting new armies was pressed forward, Henry
himself taking part in it. Through the spring of 1197 the new German
forces began to gather in the harbours of southern Italy -- to the
dismay of the inhabitants upon whom they lived, and to whom they were "
less pilgrims than thieving wolves." In September 1197 the first
departures took place. The objective set them was Jerusalem, and the
Holy City taken they were to join the emperor before Constantinople.
These forces came to Acre, took Sidon, defeated the most capable of
their opponents, Saladin's brother, Malek, and by the capture of
Beyrouth (October 23, 1197) reopened the way from Tripoli -- still in
Latin hands -- to Jerusalem. They were then held up by the stronghold
of Tiberias, and at the moment when they had decided to raise the siege
the news reached them that Henry VI was dead -- had been dead, indeed,
since three weeks after their departure. This was the end of all order
in the crusade. A truce was patched up with Malek and the army
dispersed under its various leaders.
In the tragic fiasco of these first attempts to regain Jerusalem, the
beginnings are discernible of new secular encroachments in what was, in
essence and in origin, a spiritual institution. It is the lay prince
alone who now really counts in it. The crusade tends to be a thing
controlled by him alone, directed to his ends, and along what lines he
chooses. It ceases, at times, to be crusade at all; Catholics and
Mohammedans fraternise, negotiate, and even plan marriage alliances.
The old aim of expelling the unbeliever from the sacred soil of
Palestine has lost its place as the absolute determining factor of the
movement. And at this moment, when the papally-created institution is
definitely slipping from the grasp of the papacy, the Eastern empire
whose capital is Constantinople is beginning to seem to the crusader as
great a foe as Islam. When next the zeal of Christendom is roused,
these new tendencies will mature with unpleasant rapidity.
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