the lord of the living and the dead, every knee was bent in religious adoration; his mysteries were performed on a mountain near Cairo ; sixteen thousand converts had signed his profession of faith; and at the present hour a free and warlike people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life and divinity of a madman and tyrant.68 In his divine character Hakem hated the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his rivals, while some remains of preju 68 The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighbourhood. The little that is, or deserves to be known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354-357), and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Volney.a The religion of the Druses has been fully developed from their own writings, which have long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and Oxford, in the Exposé de la Religion des Druses,' by M. Silvestre de Sacy, deux tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life of Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors in the account of Gibbon. These errors chiefly arose from his want of knowledge or of attention to the chronology of Hakem's life. Hakem succeeded to the throne of Egypt in the year of the Hegira 386. He did not assume his divinity till 408. His life was indeed "a "wild mixture of vice and folly," to which may be added, of the most sanguinary cruelty. During his reign 18,000 persons were victims of his ferocity. Yet such is the god, observes M. de Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years! (See p. ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric meaning, alluding to the destruction of other religions and the propagation of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian religion (such is its boastful title), was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence. It was not in his "divine "character" that Hakem "hated the "Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed in the earlier years of his reign. His barbarous persecutions and the burning of the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem belong entirely to that period; and his assumption of divinity was followed by an edict of toleration to Jews and Christians. The Mahometans, whose religion he then treated with hostility and contempt, being far the most numerous, were his most dangerous enemies, and therefore the objects of his most inveterate hatred. It is another singular fact that the religion of Hakem was by no ineans confined to Egypt and Syria. M. de Sacy quotes a letter addressed to the chief of the sect in India; and there is likewise a letter to the Byzantine emperor Constantine, son of Armanous (Romanus), and the clergy of the empire-(Constantine the Eighth, M. de Sacy supposes, but this is irreconcilable with chronology: it must mean Constantine the Eleventh, Monomachus). The assassination of Hakem is, of course, disbelieved by his sectaries. M. de Sacy seems to consider the fact obscure and doubtful. According to his followers he disappeared, but is hereafter to return. At his return the resurrection is to take place, the triumph of Unitarianism, and the final discomfiture of all other religions. The temple of Mecca is especially devoted to destruction. It is remarkable that one of the signs of this final consummation, and of the re-appearance of Hakem, is that Christianity shall be gaining a manifest predominance over Mahometanism. A.D. 1009. dice or prudence still pleaded in favour of the law of Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine his cruel and wanton persecution made some martyrs and many apostates; the common rights and special privileges of the sectaries were equally disregarded, and a general interdict was laid on the devotion of strangers and natives. The temple of the Christian world, the church of the Resurrec- Sacrilege tion, was demolished to its foundations; the luminous of Hakem, prodigy of Easter was interrupted; and much profane labour was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this sacrilege the nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted: but, instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they contented themselves with burning or banishing the Jews, as the secret advisers of the impious. barbarian.69 Yet the calamities of Jerusalem were in some measure alleviated by the inconstancy or repentance of Hakem himself; and the royal mandate was sealed for the restitution of the churches when the tyrant was assassinated by the emissaries of his sister. The succeeding caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy: a free toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the emperor of Constantinople the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins; and, after a short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase of appetite to the spiritual feast.70 In the sea-voyage of Palestine the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare; but the conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between Germany and Greece. The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; and from Belgrade to Antioch they traversed fifteen hundred miles of a Christian pilgrimages, empire. Among the Franks the zeal of pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times, and the roads were covered with multitudes of either sex and of every rank, who professed their contempt of life so soon as they should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their dominions, and the numbers of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the mediocres Increase of A.D. 1024, &c. 6 See Glaber, 1. iii. c. 7, and the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, A.D. 1009. 70 Per idem tempus ex universo orbe tam innumerabilis multitudo cœpit confluere ad sepulchrum Salvatoris Hierosolymis, quantum nullus hominum prius sperare poterat. Ordo inferioris plebis reges et comites præsules..... mulieres multæ nobiles cum pauperioribus . . . . . Pluribus enim erat mentis desiderium mori priusquam ad propria reverterentur (Glaber, 1. iv. c. 6; Bouquet, Historians of France, tom. x. p. 50).* 71 Glaber, 1. iii. c. 1. Kartona (Hist. Critic. Regum Hungariæ, tom. i. p. 304-311) examines whether St. Stephen founded a monastery at Jerusalem. "Compare the first chap. of Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge.-M. banner of the cross. About thirty years before the first crusade, the archbishop of Mentz, with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan, and the multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons. At Constantinople they were hospitably entertained by the emperor, but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs; they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained a siege in the village of Capernaum till they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places they embarked for Italy, but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land. Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion of this pilgrimage; he observes that they sallied from Normandy thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed the Alps twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet at their back.72 Conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, A.D. 1076-1096. After the defeat of the Romans the tranquillity of the Fatimite caliphs was invaded by the Turks.73 One of the lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army, and reduced Damascus by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities of the province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of Persia; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to the banks of the Nile: the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of Egypt. In his retreat he indulged the licence of slaughter and rapine: the judge and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp; and their execution was followed by the massacre of three thousand citizens. The cruelty or the defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers, asserted the dominion of Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk reigned about twenty years in Jerusalem; but the hereditary command of the 72 Baronius (A.D. 1064, No. 43-56) has transcribed the greater part of the original narratives of Ingulphus, Marianus, and Lambertus. 73 See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 349, 350) and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 237, vers. Pocock). M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the testimonies, or rather the names, of Abulfeda and Novairi. 74 From the expedition of Isar Atsiz (A.H. 469-A.D. 1076) to the expulsion of the Ortokides (A.D. 1096). Yet William of Tyre (1. i. c. 6, p. 633) asserts that Jerusalem was thirty-eight years in the hands of the Turks; and an Arabic chronicle, quoted by Pagi (tom. iv. p. 202), supposes that the city was reduced by a Carizmian general to the obedience of the caliph of Bagdad, A.H. 463-A.D. 1070. These early dates are not very compatible with the general history of Asia; and I am sure that, as late as 75 holy city and territory was intrusted or abandoned to the emir Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children, after their expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the borders of Armenia and Assyria. The Oriental Christians and the Latin pilgrims deplored a revolution which, instead of the regular government and old alliance of the caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the strangers of the North.76 In his court and camp the great sultan had adopted in some degree the arts and manners of Persia; but the body of the Turkish nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes, still breathed the fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem the western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility; and the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow profits of commercial and religious freedom. The pilgrims, who, through innumerable perils, had reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private rapine or public oppression, and often sunk under the pressure of famine and disease, before they were permitted to salute the holy sepulchre. A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted the Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect the patriarch was dragged by the hair along the pavement and cast into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from the sympathy of his flock; and the divine worship in the church of the Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters. The pathetic tale excited the millions of the West to march under the standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared with the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the more irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of religious chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe. A.D. 1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of Cairo) still prevailed in Palestine (Baronius, A.D. 1064, No. 56). 75 De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 249-252. 76 Willerm. Tyr. 1. i. c. 8, p. 634, who strives hard to magnify the Christian grievances. The Turks exacted an aureus from each pilgrim! The caphar of the Franks is now fourteen dollars and Europe does not complain of this voluntary tax. VOL. VII. N CHAPTER LVIII. ORIGIN AND NUMBERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. CHARACTERS OF THE LATIN PRINCES. THEIR MARCH TO CONSTANTINOPLE. FOLICY OF THE GREEK EMPEROR ALEXIUS. CONQUEST OF NICE, ANTIOCH, AND JERUSALEM, BY THE FRANKS. - DELIVERANCE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. GODFREY OF BOUILLON, FIRST KING OF JERUSALEM. INSTITUTIONS OF THE FRENCH OR LATIN KINGDOM. The first crusade, A.D. 1095-1099. Peter the Hermit. ABOUT twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the holy sepulchre was visited by an hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy1 in France. His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the Christian name; be mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit, "the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman a pontiff. His stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively, and he possessed that vehemence of speech which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul. He was born of a gentleman's family (for we must now adopt a modern idiom), and his military service was under the neighbouring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade. But he soon relinquished the sword and the world; and if it be true that his wife, however 1 Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date earlier than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humour of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447; Longuerne, Description de la France, p. 54). 2 William of Tyre (1. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus describes the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis ingenii, et oculum habens perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium. See Albert Aquensis, p. 185; Guibert, P. 482 [l. ii. c. 8]; Anna Comnena in Alexiad. 1. x. p. 281, &c., with Ducange's notes, p. 349. There are differences on this point, and some authors say that his origin was obscure. Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, vol. i. p. 89, 4th ed.-S. |