Turkish warfare 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,20 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 humple 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.21 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 Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p. 317-220). Louis afterwards insisted on a meeting in mari ex æquo, not ex equo, according to the laughable readings of some Mss. 20 Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum (Anonym. Canis. p. 512). The public and historical style of the Greeks was 'Ph... princeps. Yet Cinnamus owns, that Ιμπεράτωρ is synonymous to Βασιλεύς. 21 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. A.D. 1147] 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 [October, the returning emperor, who had lost the greatest part of his army in glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the Mæander. 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.23 Without studying the lessons of experience or the nature of 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, 24 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 (Near 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 valour 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 [This is quite inaccurate. At Nicma, Conrad divided his army. About 15,000 took the coast route under Bishop Otto of Freising, the king's brother. Conrad himself proceeded to Dorylæum with the main army; but after a march of eleven days want of supplies forced him to turn back. The enemy harassed the retreat, and 30,000 Germans are said to have perished. Conrad met the French army at Nicma.] 23 [This, too, is an inaccurate account. Louis proceeded westward to Lopadium, where he waited for Conrad, and the two kings advanced together (by Adramyttium, Pergamum, and Smyrna) to Ephesus, where they spent Christmas, 1147, as we learn from Conrad's letter to the abbot Wibald of Corvei (an important source; published in the collection of Wibald's letters, in Jaffé, Bib. rer. Germ. i. no. 78). Here Conrad fell ill, and returned to Constantinople on the Emperor's invitation. He set sail from Constantinople on March 10, 1148, and reached Acre in April. During their joint march Louis VII. appears to have shown every consideration to his fellow-sovereign. The other part of Conrad's army, led by Otto of Freising, was cut to pieces near Mount Cadmus, south of Laodicea. It is to this misfortune that Gibbon's "action on the banks of the Mæander" refers. The same region was also disastrous to the army of Louis VII.] 24 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 colour. 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). Laodicea] 2. A.D. 1148] 25 [February friendly seaport of Satalia.2 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.26 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. During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans,28 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,29 who humbly sued for 25 [The ancient Attalia. 's 'Attáλeiav.] 26 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. [This work, the Gesta Ludovici VII., is a Latin translation from the Grandes Chroniques de France; in which the history of the reign of Louis VII. is based on the Historia Ludovici, an extract from the Continuatio Sangermanensis of Aimoin (written c. 1170-80). This original has been edited recently by A. Molinier, Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger (caps. 1-7 are the work of the Abbot Suger), 1887.] 27 Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam, sterilem, inamænam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language of a sufferer. 28 Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, prædones sine ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517-518. 29 See in the anonymous writer in the collection of Canisius, Tagino, and Bohadin (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120, c. 70 [leg. 69]), the ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both Saladin and Frederic. 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.30 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 alone could achieve the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their success was a warning, and in the last and most experienced ages of the crusades every nation preferred the sea to the toils and perils of an inland expedition.31 of the en of the cru The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple obstinacy event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise thusiasm congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate per- sades severance 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 tomb-stone 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, the monk or the saint, may claim the most honourable 30 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. 1. 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. [This judgment is right. Frederick was drowned in the Geuk Su or Calycadnus on his march from Laranda to Seleucia.] Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus ecclesiæ 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 most authentic information of St. Bernard must be drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by Père Mabillon [2 vols., 1667], 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 and mis Bernard. A.D. 1091 1153 Character place. About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, sion of St. 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 fervour of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux 33 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 honours of these spiritual heroes. The meanest amongst 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 34 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, 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 censure; 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 volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the prefaces of the Benedictine editor. [Mabillon's collection contains 444 letters; in Migne's Patr. Lat. vol. 182 there are 495. The life and works have been translated into English by S. J. Eales, 1889.-Neander, Der heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter (new ed. 1890); J. Cotter Morrison, The Life and Times of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (new ed. 1884). There are endless other monographs.] 33 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 1-7th hogsheads), which almost rivals that of Heidelberg (Mélanges Tirés d'une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlvi. p. 15-20). The disciples of the saint (Vit. 1ma, 1. iii. c. 2, p. 1232; Vit. 2da, 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. |
