THE CRUSADES

 THE EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: THE GOSPEL IN ALL LANDS 1902.

THE EXCERPT IS PRESENTED AS IT IS, FOUND IN GOOGLE'S BOOKS.

 Story of the Christian Church, by George R. Crooks L.L.D.

AFTER Mohammed's death his successors entered upon a career of conquest.The condition of the Eastern empire was favorable to the success of their ambition. In every direction the Mohammedans were conquerors; Syria, Persia, North Africa, and Spain were subdued and an advance was made into India.

In 750 the caliphate was divided. The caliphs of Damascus were overthrown, a new house, that of Abbas, became supreme.The caliphs of this line chose Bagdad, a new city on the Tigris, for their capital; their rivals of Damascus established themselves in Cordova, Spain.

The Turks now appear in history first as the officers of the caliphs, then as their virtual masters,and finally as their conquerors. They are a Tartar race, widely spread over northern and eastern Asia. In the middle of the eleventh century the Turkish sultan invaded Asia Minor, "a land which the Saracens had often ravaged, but which they had never conquered. He overthrew the Emperor Romanus in battle in 1071, and from this time dates the establishment of the Turks, as distinguished from the Saracens, in the lands which had been a part of the Roman empire."

The Turks were a different race from Saracens, The latter had been content restricting the public exercise of the of the Christian religion in Jerusalem; the Turks who obtained possession of city in 1076, insulted and put to death Christian believers.The sanctuaries of Christians were profaned, their worship interrupted, and their patriarchs thrown dungeons. The fleets from Italy which been in the habit of supplying the wants the pilgrims were driven away.

Peter the Hermit, a returned pilgrim, whose  anger had been aroused by the indignities heaped on Christians in Palestine, went through Europe preaching a crusade against the infidel, and Europe was quickly kindled into a flame. Pope Urban II, in the year 1095, at a great meeting held Clermont, in gave his first sanction and blessing.

The First Crusade was led by the of the chivalry of the West. They  were Godfrey of Bouillon: Robert Duke of Normandy, Raymond Count of Toulouse Bohemond and Tancred.

Before they set out Peter the Hermit gathered two hundred thousand men, women, and children, and started for Jerusalem; only seven thousand of them reached Constantinople, and this fragment was cut to pieces soon after crossing the Bosporus.

The army under Godfrey reached Constantinople, Christmas, 1096, and crossed over to Asia, May, 1097. They marched through Asia Minor, defeated the Turks in the battle of Dorylæum, captured Antioch in 1098, and after a long delay marched down the coast to Joppa, and then turned toward Jerusalem.

When they came in sight of the city they fell down on their knees and kissed the earth; they made the rest of the journey to the city walls in bare feet and pilgrim dress.

 After a siege of thirty days, Jerusalem was taken by an assault in which the cru saders displayed a reckless bravery.The Mohammedan inhabitants were slaughtered without mercy; the streets of the city liter ally ran with blood: worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher alternated with the massacre of men, women, and children. 

The leaders of the Crusade remained in the East; Godfrey was made king of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted eighty-eight years (1099-1187).

The Second Crusade was preached by Bernard of Clairvaux, in the twelfth century. Its immediate occasion was the fall of the Latin principality of Edessa, in Asia Minor. Its leaders were Louis VII, the king of France, and Conrad, the German emperor. It was unfortunate from its beginning to its end. Shipwreck on the sea and defeat on land diminished the numbers of the armies, and an unsuccessful siege of Damascus (1148) completed its failure. Other disasters followed.

For years the warfare languished. It was revived by Saladin, the nephew of the Caliph of Aleppo, who defeated the Christian army in the battle of Tiberias (1187), and immediately turned his armies against Jerusalem. After a futile resistance the city surrendered, the cross was hauled from the dome of the Mosque of Omar, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was at an end. It never had any promise of stability; for of statesmanship the crusaders had not the slightest tincture. They could fight, they could plunder, and they could be devout after a fashion, and these were about all.

The Third Crusade was more successful, though it did not recover Jerusalem. It was led by Richard of England, the Lion hearted , and Philip Augustus of France, and  Frederick Barbarossa of Germany. It was organized in 1188. The German was drowned in a Cilician river, and nine tenths of his army perished.

The remnant encountered Saladin in neighborhood of Acre, and defeated him  (1191). Saladin was compelled to surrender to what was called the true cross, and to give the hostages for the payment of a large tribute. The tribute was not paid, and the hostages, to the number of three thousand, were slaughtered.

But for dissensions among the Jerusalem might have been taken. The Crusade ended in a truce of three years eight months between Richard and Saladin; its terms opened the way for all pilgrims to Jerusalem without molestation or tax. The total result was the acquisition of a strip land on the seacoast which included Joppa and Acre.

The Fourth Crusade was marshaled the Knights of St John (1193). The captured Joppa, which had been lost after Richard returned home, and also Berytus, but their dissensions and folly led to final defeat and the total failure of expedition.

The Fifth Crusade had a singular ending; for instead of waging a war on the infidel the crusaders turned their arms against Constantinople and founded the Latin empire of the East. While they were at Venice there came to them Alexius, the younger son of the Eastern emperor, Isaac Angelus, who implored help against a usurping brother who had cast their father into prison.

The crusaders lent a willing, ear sailed in 1203 for Constantinople, took it, and set upon the throne Baldwin, Count of Toulouse, a descendant of Charlemagne. This change was accomplished by such cruelty and bloodshed as to forever alienate the Greek Christians from the Latin Church. The Latin empire of the East only lasted fifty-seven years.

The Sixth Crusade brought into prominence one of the most extraordinary men of the  Middle Ages, Frederick II, grandson of Barbarossa. Though emperor of Germany, he lived in Sicily, where he establishd a court, of which refined sensuality was the chief feature. Saracen and Christian were alike to him. He had promised to make the Crusade, and for his delay Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him. 

Roused at length, he sailed (1228), and the next year made a treaty with the Sultan Kameel by which Jerusalem, with the exception of the Mosque of Omar, Joppa, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were restored to the Christians. It is characteristic of the age that the pope was so furiously angry with Frederick for making this treaty that not a single priest took part in the coronation service which once more gave Jerusalem a Christian king.

The Seventh Crusade was brought to an in 1240 by a treaty which was very favorable to the Christians.

The Eighth Crusade was led by the most remarkable ruler of the Middle Ages, the saintly Louis IX of France. He should have been a monk, but hereditary succession made him a king. He was no general and in 1249 he was taken as prisoner while fighting in Egypt. During his captivity he endured suffering with saintly patience. After his ransom in 1250 he made a pilgrimage, clothed in sackcloth, to Nazareth.  

The Ninth Crusade was the last, and was led by St Louis again, in association with Edward, the son of Henry III of England. Louis set out for Africa in 1270 with an army of sixty thousand men, At Carthage a plague broke out among his soldiers, to which he himself quickly succumbed.

 Edward disembarked at Acre, and took Nazareth with a great slaughter of the infifidels (1271), after which he made a truce for ten years.

Gregory X tried in 1274 to set on foot another Crusade, but failed, The religious military orders which had grown up under the inspiration of the Crusades retired from the Holy Land. The Teutonic knights took possession of Lithuania and Poland; the Knights of St John occupied Cyprus and Rhodes; the Templars were suppressed by the French king, their property was confiscated and their Grand Master burned at the stake.     

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To sum up, the Crusades were productive of good and evil.

 1. They helped to destroy the feudal system. While the knights and barons were exhausting themselves in the holy wars the kings were strengthening their authority at home. Many estates which were held on condition of military service were absorbed by the crown.

2.The weakening of the power of Mohammedanism in the East prolonged the existence of the Eastern empires. Had the Crusaders been more united, or had they possessed any statesmanlike qualities, they might have overthrown the Mohammedan power and changed the course of history.

3.  The contact of the East and the West in the Crusades quickened the energy of Western Christendom and pre pared the way for the revival of learning and the Reformation.

4. Against these advantages must be set the gain of the power of the papacy, the enormous increase of wealth and influence of the clergy, and its consequence of moral corruption, the shocking cruelties perpetrated by the crusaders, which were a stain on the Christian name.

In moral worth Richard of the Lion-heart was not a whit superior to Saladin; yet it must be said that the virtues of Tancred and St Louis, especially their purity of purpose and heroic patience, lift them to a height of almost ideal excellence. They are exemplars of knightly chivalry and devotion, justice and truth.

 Story of the Christian Church, by George R. Crooks L.L.D.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADES 

 A few words may suffice to tell the miserable story how in France under the boy Stephen thirty thousand children, in the year 1212, encamped around Vendome; how ten thousand were lost or had strayed away before they reached Marseilles a month later; how there they waited under a conviction that the waters of the Mediterranean would be cloven asunder to give them a passage on dry land; how at length two merchants offered "for the cause of God and without charge" to convey them in ships to Palestine,and how the five thousand children, who sailed from the harbor chanting hymn Veni Creator Spiritus found selves at the end of their voyage in slave markets of Alexandria and Algiers.  

A pendant to this woeful tale is found in sufferings of the twenty thousand German boys and girls who set out in the same from Cologne under the peasant lad Nicholas, and of whom five thousand only reached Genoa.Of the rest some had returned home; some marched to Brindisi, and, setting sail for Palestine, were never heard of more. The fortune of those who found their way to Genoa was more happy. Invited to settle there by the senate, many became wealthy, and not a few, rising to distinction, founded some of the noblest families in the state,- George W. Cox