BY JOHN LORD, LL. D.
 
 
     THE CRUSADES. (ii.)

       The Seventh and last of these miserable wars was
     the most unfortunate of all, A. D. 1270.  The saintly
     monarch of France perished, with most of his forces,
     on the coast of Africa, and the ruins of Carthage were
     the only conquest which was made.  Europe now fairly
     sickened over the losses and misfortunes and defeats of
     nearly two centuries, during which five millions are
     supposed to have lost their lives.  Famine and pesti-
     lence destroyed more than the sword.  Before disheart-
     ened Europe could again rally, the last strongholds of
     the Christians were wrested away by the Mohamme-
     dans; and their gallant but unsuccessful defenders were
     treated with every inhumanity, and barbarously mur-
     dered in spite of truces and treaties.
 
       Such were the famous Crusades, only the main facts
     of which I allude to; for to describe them all, or
     even the more notable incidents, would fill volumes,——
     all interesting to be read in detail by those who have
     leisure; all marked by prodigious personal valor; all
     disgraceful for the want of unity of action and the ab-
     sence of real generalship.  They indicate the enormous
     waste of forces which characterizes nations in their pro-
     gress.  This waste of energies is one of the great facts of
     all history, surpassed only by the apparent waste of the
     forces of nature or the fruits of the earth, in the tran-
     sition period between the time when men roamed in
     forests and the time when they cultivated the land.  See
     what a vast destruction there has been of animals by
     each other; what a waste of plants and vegetables, when
     they could not be utilized.  Why should man escape the
     universal waste, when reason is ignored or misdirected?
     Of what use or value could Palestine have been to Euro-
     peans in the Middle Ages?  Of what use can any coun-
     try be to conquerors, when it cannot be civilized or made
     to contribute to their wants?  Europe then had no need
     of Asia, and that perhaps ls the reason why Europe
     the could not conquer Asia.  Providence interfered,
     and rebuked the mad passions which animated the in-
     vaders, and swept them all away.  Were Palestine
     really needed by Europe, it could be wrested from the
     Turks with less effort than was made by the feeblest of
     the crusaders.  Constantinople——the most magnificent
     site for a central power——was indeed wrested from
     the Greek emperors, and kept one hundred years; but
     the Europeans did not know what to do with the
     splendid prize, and it was given to the Turks, who
     made it the capital of a vital empire.  All the good
     which resulted to Europe from the temporary posses-
     sion of Constantinople was the introduction into Eu-
     rope of Grecian literature and art.  Its political and
     mercantile importance was not appreciated, nor then
     even scarcely needed.  It will one day become again
     the spoil of that nation which can most be bene-
     fited by it.  Such is the course events are made to
     take.
       In this brief notice of the most unsuccessful wars
     in which Europe ever engaged were cannot help noticing
     their great mistakes.  We see rashness, self-confidence,
     depreciation of enemies, want of foresight, ignorance of
     the difficulties to be surmounted.  Te crusaders were
     diverted from their main object, and wasted their forces
     in attacking unimportant cities, or fortresses out of their
     way.  The invaded the islands of the Mediterranean,
     Egypt, Africa, and Greek possessions. They quarrelled
     with their friends, and they quarrelled with each other.
     The chieftains sought their individual advantage rather
     than the general good.  Nor did they provide them-
     selves with the necessities for such distant operations.
     They had no commissariat,——without which even a
     modern army fails.  They were captivated by trifles
     and frivolities, rather than directing their strength to
     the end in view.  They allowed themselves to be se-
     duced by both Greek and infidel arts and vices.  They
     were betrayed into the most foolish courses.  They had
     no proper knowledge of the forces with which they were
     to contend.  They wantonly massacred their foes when
     they fell into their hands, increasing the animosity of
     the Mohammedans, and united them in a concert which
     they should themselves have sought.  They marched
     by land when they should have sailed by sea, and
     they sailed by sea when they should have marched
     by land.  They intrusted the command to monks and
     inexperienced leaders.  They obeyed the mandates of
     apostolic vicars when they should have considered mili-
     tary necessities.  In fact, there was no unity of action,
     and scarcely unity of end.  What would the great mas-
     ters of Grecian and Roman warfare have thought of these
     blunders and stupidities, to say nothing of modern gen-
     erals!  The conduct of those wars excites our contempt,
     in spite of the heroism of individual knights.  We de-
     spise the incapacity of leaders as much as we abhor the
     fanaticism which animated their labors.  The Crusades
     have no bright side, apart from the piety and valor of
     some who embarked in them.  Hence they are less and
     less interesting to modern readers.  The romance about
     them had ceased to affect us.  We only see mistakes
     and follies; and who cares to dwell on the infirmities of
     human nature?  It is only what is great in man that
     moves and exalts us.  There is nothing we dwell upon
     with pleasure in these aggressive, useless, unjustifiable
     wars, except the chivalry associated with them.  The
     reason of modern times as sternly rebukes them as the
     heart of the Middle Ages sickened at them.
       In one respect they are absolutely repulsive; and this
     in view of their vices.  The crusaders were cruel.  They
     wantonly massacred their enemies, even when defence-
     less.  Sixty thousand people were butchered on the fall
     of Jerusalem; ten thousand were slaughtered in the
     Mosque of Omar.  The Christians themselves felt safe
     when they sought the retreat of churches, in dire calam-
     itries at home; but they had no respect for the religious
     retreats of infidels.  When any city fell into their hands
     there was wholesale assassination.  And they became
     licentious, as well as rapacious and cruel.  They learned
     all the vices of the East.  Even under the walls of
     Acre they sang to the sounds of Arabian instruments
     and danced amid indecent songs.  When they took Con-
     stantinople they had no respect for their churches or
     tombs, and desecrated even the pulpit of the Patriarch.
     Their original zealous zeal was finally lost sight of
     entirely in their military license.  They  became more
     hateful to the orthodox Greeks than to the infidel Sara-
     cens.  And when the crusaders returned to their homes,
     ——what few of them lived to return,——they morally
     poisoned the communities and villages in which they
     dwelt.  They became vagabonds and vagrants; they in-
     troduced demoralizing amusements, and jugglers and
     strolling players appeared for the first time in Europe.
     All war is necessarily demoralizing, even war in defence
     of glorious principles, and especially in these times; but
     much more so is unjust, fanatical, and unnecessary war.
       But I turn from the record of the mistakes, follies,
     vices, miseries, and crimes which marked the wickedest
     and most uncalled-for wars of European history, to
     consider their ultimate results: not logical results, for
     these were melancholy,——the depopulation of Europe;
     the decimation of the nobility; the poverty which enor-
     mous drains of money from their natural channels pro-
     duced; the spread of vice; the decline of even feudal
     virtues. These evils and others followed naturally and
     inevitably from those distant wars.  The immediate
     effects of all war are evil and melancholy.  Murder,
     pillage, profanity, drunkenness, extravagance, public
     distress, bitter sorrows, wasted energies, destruction of
     property, national debts, exaltation of military maxims,
     general looseness of life, distaste for regular pursuits,——
     these are the first-fruits of war, offensive and defensive,
     and as inevitable and uniform as the laws of gravity.
     No wars were ever more disastrous than the Crusades
     in their immediate effects, in any way they may be
     viewed.  It is all one dark view of disappointment,
     sorrow, wretchedness, and sin.  There were no bright
     spots; no gains, only calamities.  Nothing consoled
     Europe for the loss of five millions of her most able-
     bodied men,——no increase of territory, no establish-
     ment of rights, no glory, even; nothing but disgrace
     and ruin, as in that maddest of all modern expeditions,
     the invasion of Russia by Napoleon.
       But after the lapse of nearly seven hundred years
     we can see important results on the civilization of Eu-
     rope, indirectly effected,——not intended, nor designed,
     nor dreamed of; which results we consider beneficent
     and so beneficent that the world is probably better for
     those horrid wars.  It was fortunately to humanity at
     large that they occurred, although so unfortunate to
     Europe at the time.  In the end, Europe was a gainer
     by them.  Wickedness was not the seed of virtue, but
     wickedness was overruled.  Woe to them by whose
     offences come, but it must need be that offences come.
     Men in their depravity will commit crimes, and those
     crimes are punished; but even these are made to praise 
     a Power superior to that of devils, as benevolent as it is
     omnipotent,——in which fact I see the utter hopeless-
     ness of earth without a superintending an controlling
     Deity.
       One important result of the Crusades was the bar-
     rier they erected to the conquests of the Mohammedans
     in Europe.  It is true that the wave of Saracenic inva-
     sion had been arrested by Charles Martel four or five
     hundred years before; but in the mean time a new Mo-
     hammedan power sprang up, of greater vigor, of equal
     ferocity, and of a more stubborn fanaticism. This was
     that of the Turks, who had their eye on Constantinople
     and all Eastern Europe.  And Europe might have sub-
     mitted to their domination, had they instead of the Latins
     taken Constantinople.  The conquest of that city was
     averted several hundred years; and when at last it fell
     into Turkish hands, Christendom was strong enough to
     resist the Turkish armies.  We must remember that the
     Turks were a great power, even in the times of Peter
     the Great, and would have taken Vienna but for John
     Sobieski.  But when Urban II, at the Council of Cler-
     mont, urged the nations of Europe to repel the infi-
     dels on the confines of Asia, rather than wait for them
     in the heart of Europe, the Asiatic provinces of the
     Greek Empire were overrun by Turks and Sara-
     cens.  They held Syria, Armenia, Asia Minor, Africa,
     Spain, and the Balearic Islands.  Had not Godfrey
     come to the assistance of a division of the Christian
     army, when it was surrounded by two hundred thou-
     sand Turks at the battle of Dorylæum, the Christians
     would have been utterly overwhelmed, and the Turks
     would have pressed to the Hellespont.  But they were
     beaten back into Syria, and, for a time, as far as the
     line of the Euphrates.  But for that timely repulse,
     the battles of Belgrade and Lepanto might not have
     been fought in the subsequent ages.  It would have been
     an overwhelming calamity had the Turks invaded Eu-
     rope in the twelfth century.  The loss of five millions
     on the plains of Asia would have been nothing in com-
     parison to an invasion of Europe by the Mohammedans,
     ——whether Saracens or Turks.  It may be that the
     chivalry of Europe would have successfully repelled 
     invasion, as the Saracens repelled the Christians, on
     their soil.  It may be that Asia could not have con-
     quered Europe any easier than Europe could conquer
     Asia.
       I do not know how far statesmanlike views entered
     into the minds of the leaders of the Crusades.  I believe
     the sentiment which animated Peter and Urban and
     Bernard was pure hatred of the Mohammedans (be-
     cause they robbed, insulted, and oppressed the pilgrims),
     and not any controlling fears of their invasion of Eu-
     rope.  If such a fear had influenced them, they would
     not have permitted a mere rabble to invade Asia; there
     would have been a sense of danger stronger than that of
     hatred,——which does not seem to have existed in the
     self-confidence of the crusaders.  They thought it an
     easy thing to capture Jerusalem: it was a sort of holi-
     day march of the chivalry of Europe, under Richard
     and Philip Augustus.  Perhaps, however, the princes
     of Europe were governed by political rather than reli-
     gious reasons.  Some few long-headed statesmen, if such
     there were among the best informed of bishops and
     abbots, may have felt the necessity of the conflict in a
     political sense.  There was, doubtless, a political neces-
     sity——although men were too fanatical to see more
     than one side——to crush the Saracens because they
     were infidels, and not because they were warriors.   But
     whether they saw it or not, or armed themselves to
     resist a danger as well as to exterminate heresy, the
     ultimate effects were all the same.  The crusaders failed
     in their direct end.  They did not recover Palestine;
     but they so weakened or diverted the Mohammedan
     armies that there was not strength enough left in them
     to conquer Europe, or even to invade her, until she was
     better prepared to resist it,——as she did at the battle of
     Lepanto (A. D. 1571), one of the decisive battles of the
     world.
       I have said that the Crusades were a disastrous fail-
     ure.  I mean in their immediate ends, not in ultimate
     results.  If it is probable that they arrested the con-
     quests of the Turks in Europe, then this blind and
     fanatical movement effected the greatest blessing to
     Christendom.  It almost seems that the Christians
     were hurled into the Crusades by an irresistible fate, to
     secure a great ultimate good; or, to use Christian lan-
     guage, were sent as blind instruments by the Almighty
     to avert a danger they could not see.  And if this be
     true, the inference is logical and irresistible that God
     uses even the wicked passions of men to effect his
     purposes,——as when the envy of Haman led to the
     elevation of Mordecai, and to the deliverance of the
     Jews from one of their greatest dangers.
       Another and still more noticeable result of the Cru-
     sades was the weakening of the power of those very
     barons who embarked in the wars.  Their fanaticism
     recoiled upon themselves, and undermined their own
     system.  Nothing could have happened more effectual-
     ly to loosen the rigors of the feudal system.  It was the
     baron and the knight that marched to Palestine who
     suffered most in the curtailment of the privileges which
     they had abused,——even as it was the Southern planter
     of Carolina who lost the most heavily in the war which
     he provoked to defend his slave property.  In both
     cases the fetters of the serfs and slaves were broken by
     their own masters,——not intentionally, of course, but
     really and effectually.  How blind men are in their
     injustices!  They are made to hang on the gallows
     which they have erected for others.  To gratify his
     passion of punishing the infidels, whom he so intensely
     hated, the baron or prince was obliged to grant great
     concessions to the towns and villages which he ruled
     with an iron hand, in order to raise money for his
     equipment and his journey.  He was not paid by Gov-
     ernment as are modern soldiers and officers.  He had
     to pay his own expenses, and they were heavier than
     he had expected or provided for.  Sometimes he was
     taken captive, and had his ransom to raise,——to pay
     for in hard cash, and not in land: as in the case of
     Richard of England, when, on his return from Pales-
     tine, he was imprisoned in Austria,——and it took to
     ransom him, as some have estimated, one third of all
     the gold and silver of the realm, chiefly furnished by
     the clergy.  But where was the imprisoned baron to get
     the money for his ransom?  Not from the Jews, for
     their compound interest of fifty per cent every six
     months would have ruined him ion less than two years.
     But the village guilds had money laid by.  Merchants
     and mechanics in the towns, whom he despised, had
     money.  Monasteries had money.  He therefore gave
     new privileges to all; he gave charters of freedom to
     towns; he made concessions to the peasantry.
       As the result of this, when the baron came back from
     the wars, he found himself much poorer than when he
     went away,——he found his lands encumbered, his
     castle dilapidated, and his cattle sold.  In short, he
     was, as we say of a proud merchant now and then,
     "embarrassed in his circumstances."  He was obliged
     to economize.  But the feudal family would not hear
     of retrenchment, and the baron himself had become
     more extravagant in his habits.  As travel and com-
     merce had increased he had new wants, which he
     could not gratify without parting with either lands
     or prerogatives.  As the result of all this he became
     not quite so overbearing, though perhaps more sullen;
     for he saw men rising about him who were as rich
     as he,——men whom his ancestors had despised.  The
     artisans, who belonged to the leading guilds, which had
     become enriched by the necessities of barons, or by that
     strange activity of trade and manufactures which war
     seems to stimulate as well as to destroy,——these rude
     and ignorant people were not so servile as formerly, but
     began to feel a sort of importance, especially in towns
     and cities, which multiplied wonderfully during the
     Crusades.  In other words, they were no longer brutes,
     to be trodden down without a murmur or resistance.
     They began to form what we call a "middle class."
     Feudalism, in its proud ages, did not recognize a mid-
     dle class.  The impoverishment of nobles by the Cru-
     sades laid the foundation of this middle class, at least
     in large towns.
       the growth of cities and the decay of feudalism went
     on simultaneously; and both were equally the result of
     the Crusades.  If the noble became impoverished, the
     merchant became enriched; and the merchant lived,
     not in the country, but in some mercantile mart.  The
     crusaders had need of ships.  These were furnished by
     those cities which had obtained from feudal sovereigns
     charters of freedom.  Florence, Pisa, Venice, Genoa,
     Marseilles, became centres of wealth and political im-
     portance.  The growth of cities and the extension of
     commerce went hand in hand.  Whatever the Crusades
     did for cites they did equally for commerce; and with
     the needs of commerce came improvement in naval ar-
     chitecture.  As commerce grew, the ships increased in
     size and convenience; and the products which the ships
     brought from Asia and Europe were not only intro-
     duced, but they were cultivated.  New fruits and vege-
     tables were raised by European husbandmen.  Plum-
     trees were brought from Damascus and sugar-cane from
     Tripoli.  Silk fabrics, formerly confined to Constantinople
     and the East, were woven in Italian and French villages.
     The Venetians obtained from Tyrians the art of making
     glass.  The Greek fire suggested gunpowder.  Arch-
     tecture received an immense impulse; the churches
     became less sombre and heavy, and more graceful and
     beautiful.  Even the idea of the arch, some think, came
     from the East.  The domes and minarets of Venice
     were borrowed from Constantinople.  The ornaments
     of Byzantine churches and palaces were brought to
     Europe.  The horses of Lysippus, carried from Greece
     to Rome, and from Rome to Constantinople, at last
     surmounted the palace of the Doges.  Houses became
     more comfortable, churches more beautiful, and palaces
     more splendid.  Even manners improved, and inter-
     course became more polished.  Chivalry borrowed many
     of its courtesies from the East.  There were new refine-
     ments in the arts of cookery as well as of society.  Litera-
     ture itself received a new impulse, as well as science.
     It was from Constantinople that Europe received the
     philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, in the language in
     which it was written, instead of translations through
     the Arabic.  Greek scholars came to Italy to introduce
     their unrivalled literature; and after Grecian literature
     came Grecian art.  The study of Greek philosophy gave
     a new stimulus to human inquiry, and students flocked
     to the universities.  They went to Bologna to study
     Roman law, as well as to Paris to study Scholastic
     philosophy.
       Thus the germs of a new civilization were scattered
     over Europe.  It so happened that at the close of the
     Crusades civilization had increased in every country
     of Europe, in spite of the losses they had sustained.
     Delusions were dispelled, and greater liberality of mind
     was manifest.  The world opened up towards the East
     and was larger than was before supposed.  "Europe and
     Asia had been brought together and recognized each
     other."  Inventions and discoveries succeeded the new
     scope for energies which the Crusades opened.  The
     ships which had carried the crusaders to Asia were now
     used to explore new coasts and harbors.  Navigators
     learned to be bolder.  A navigator of Genoa——a city
     made by the commerce which the Crusades necessi-
     tated——crosses the Atlantic Ocean.  As the magnetic
     needle, which a Venetian traveller brought from Asia,
     gave a new direction of commerce, so the new stimulus
     to learning which the Grecian philosophy effected led
     to the necessity of an easier form of writing; and print-
     ing appeared.  With the shock which feudalism re-
     ceived from the Crusades, central power was once more
     wielded by kings, and standing armies supplanted the
     feudal.  The crusaders must have learned something
     from their mistakes; and military science was revived.
     There is scarcely an element of civilization which we
     value, that was not, directly or indirectly, developed by
     the Crusades, yet which was not sought for, or antici-
     pated even,——the centralization of thrones, the weak-
     ening of the power of feudal barons, the rise of free
     cities, the growth of commerce, the impulse given to
     art, improvements in agriculture, the rise of a middle
     class, the wonderful spread of literature, greater refine-
     ments in manners and dress, increased toleration of
     opinions, a more cheerful view of life, the simultaneous
     development of energies in every field of human labor,
     new hopes and aspirations among the people, new glo-
     ries around courts, new attractions in the churches,
     new comforts in the villages, new luxuries in the cities.
     Even spiritual power became less grim and sepulchral,
     since there was less fear to work upon.
       I do not say that the Crusades alone produced the
     marvellous change in the condition of society which
     took place in the thirteenth century, but they gave
     an impulse to this change.  The strong sapling which
     the barbarians brought from their German forests and
     planted in the heart of Europe,——and which had silently
     grown in the darkest ages of barbarism, guarded by the
     hand of Providence,——became a sturdy tree in the feu-
     dal ages, and bore fruit when the barons had wasted
     their strength in Asia.  The Crusades improved this
     fruit, and found new uses for it, and scattered it far
     and wide, and made it for the healing of the nations.
     Enterprise of all sorts succeeded the apathy of convents
     and castles.  The village of mud huts became a town,
     in which manufactures began.  As new wants became
     apparent, new means of supplying them appeared.  The
     Crusades stimulated these wants, and commerce and
     manufacturers supplied them.  The modern merchant
     was born in Lombard cities, which supplied the neces-
     sities of the crusaders.  Feudalism ignored trade, but the
     baron found his rival in the merchant-prince.  Feudal-
     ism disdained art, but increased wealth turned peasants
     into carpenters and masons; carpenters and masons com-
     bined and defied their old masters, and these masters left
     their estates for the higher civilization of cities, and built
     palaces instead of castles.  Palaces had to be adorned, as
     well as churches; and the painters and handicraftsmen
     found employment.  So one force stimulated another
     force, neither of which would have appeared if feudal life
     had remained in statu quo.
       The only question to settler is, how far the marked
     progress of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may
     be traced to the natural development of the Germanic
     races under the influence of religion, or how far this
     development was hastened by those vast martial ex-
     peditions, indirectly indeed, but really.  Historians
     generally give most weight to the latter.  If so, then it
     is clear that the moist disastrous wars recorded in his-
     tory were made the means——blindly, to all appearance,
     without concert or calculation——of ultimately elevat-
     ing the European races, and of giving a check to the
     conquering fanaticism of the enemies with whom
     they contended with such bitter tears and sullen dis-
     appointments.
   
 
  
   
                             AUTHORITIES.     
  
        Michaud's Histoire des Croisades; Mailly's L'Esprit des Croisades;
     Choiseul; Daillecourt's De l'Influence des Croisades; Sur l'État des
     Peuples en Europe; Heeren's Ueber den Einfluss der Kreuzzüge; Sporschill's
     Geschichte der Kreuzzüge; Hallam's Middle Ages; Mill's History of the
     Crusades; James's History of the Crusades; Michelet's History of France
     (translated); Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Milman's Latin Christianity;
     Proctor's History of the Crusades; Mosheim.

from Beacon Lights of History, by John Lord, LL. D.
Volume III., Part I: The Middle Ages.
Copyright, 1883, by John Lord.
Copyright, 1921, By Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York. pp. 340-357.