CHAP.
LIX.

CHAPTER LIX.

Preservation of the Greek empire.-Numbers, passage, and event, of the second and third crusades. -St. Bernard.-Reign of Saladin in Egypt and Syria.-His conquest of Jerusalem.-Naval crusades.-Richard the First of England.-Pope Innocent the Third; and the fourth and fifth crusades.-The emperor Frederic the Second.— Louis the Ninth of France; and the two last crusades.- Expulsion of the Latins or Franks by the Mamalukes.

In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps compare the emperor Alexius" to the jackall, Success of who is said to follow the steps, and to devour the A. D. 1097 leavings, of the lion. Whatever had been his fears

Alexius,

-1118.

and toils in the passage of the first crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the neighbourhood of Constantinople. While the crusaders, with blind valour, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty Greek improved the favourable occasion when the emirs of the sea-coast were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks were driven from the isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of Ephesus

a Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia Minor, Alexiad, 1. xi. p. 321–325. l. xiv. p. 419; his Cilician war against Tancred and Bohemond, p. 328-342; the war of Epirus, with tedious prolixity, 1. xii, xiii. p. 345— 406; the death of Bohemond, 1. xiv. p. 419.

LIX.

and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, CHAP. were restored to the empire, which Alexius enlarged from the Hellespont to the banks of the Mæander, and the rocky shores of Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendour; the towns were rebuilt and fortified; and the desert country was peopled with colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from the more distant and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares, we may forgive Alexius, if he forgot the deliverance of the holy sepulchre; but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul reproach of treason and desertion. They had sworn fidelity and obedience to his throne; but he had promised to assist their enterprise in person, or, at least, with his troops and treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the sword, which had been the instrument of their victory, was the pledge and title of their just independence. It does not appear that the emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the kingdom of Jerusalem; but the borders of Cilicia and Syria were more recent in his possession, and more accessible to his arms. The great army of the crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the surprise and captivity of Bohemond: his ransom had oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman followers were insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In this distress, Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of leaving the defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful Tancred; of arming the West against the Byzantine empire, and of executing the design which he inherited from the lessons and example of his father

b

b The kings of Jerusalem submitted however to a nominal dependence, and în the dates of their inscriptions (one is still legible in the church of Bethlem), they respectfully placed before their own, the name of the reigning emperor (Ducange, Dissertations sur Joinville, xxvii. p. 319).

CHAP. Guiscard.

LIX.

d

C

His embarkation was clandestine; and if we may credit a tale of the princess Anna, he passed the hostile sea, closely secreted in a coffin. But his reception in France was dignified by the public applause, and his marriage with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since the bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command; and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of Europe. The strength of Durazzo, and prudence of Alexius, the progress of famine, and approach of winter, eluded his ambitious hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his standard. A treaty of peace suspended the fears of the Greeks; and they were finally delivered by the death of an adversary, whom neither oaths could bind, nor dangers could appal, nor prosperity could satiate. His children succeeded to the principality of Antioch; but the boundaries were strictly defined, the homage was clearly stipulated, and the cities of Tarsus and Malmistra were restored to the Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they possessed the entire circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljukian dynasty of Roum was separated on all sides from the sea and their Musulman brethren; the power of the sultans was shaken by the victories, and even the defeats, of the Franks; and after the

c Anna Comnena adds, that to complete the initation, he was shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how the barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This absurd tale is unknown to the Latins.

d Aro Ovans, in the Byzantine geography, must mean England; yet we are more credibly informed, that our Henry I. would not suffer him to levy any troops in his kingdom (Ducange, Not. ad Alexiad. p. 41).

• The copy of the treaty (Alexiad, 1. xiii. p. 406-416) is an original and curious piece, which would require, and might afford, a good map of the principality of Antioch.

f See in the learned work of M. de Guignes (tom. ii. part ii.) the history of the Seljukians of Iconium, Aleppo, and Damascus, as far as it may be collected from the Greeks, Latins, and Arabians. The last are ignorant or regardless of the affairs of Roum.

LIX.

loss of Nice, they removed their throne to Cogni or CHAP. Iconium, an obscure and inland town above three hundred miles from Constantinople. Instead of trembling for their capital, the Comnenian princes waged an offensive war against the Turks, and the first crusade prevented the fall of the declining empire.

by land:

crusade,

of Conrad

Louis VII.

of Frede

In the twelfth century, three great emigrations Expeditions marched by land from the West to the relief of Pa- the first lestine. The soldiers and pilgrims of Lombardy, A.D. 1101; France, and Germany, were excited by the example the second, and success of the first crusade." Forty-eight years III. and after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the em- A.D. 1147; peror, and the French king, Conrad the third, and the third, Louis the seventh, undertook the second crusade to ric I. support the falling fortunes of the Latins. A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who sympathised with his brothers of France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These three expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a

8 Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by Strabo, with the ambiguous title of Kaporoλis (Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121). Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude (anos) of Jews and Gentiles. Under the corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and gardens, three leagues from the mountains, and decorated (I know not why) with Plato's tomb (Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p. 303. vers. Reiske; and the Index Geographicus of Schultens from Ibn Said).

For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. xi. p. 331, &c. and the viiith book of Albert Aquensis).

i For the second crusade, of Conrad III. and Louis VII., see William of Tyre (1. xvi. c. 18-29), Otho of Frisingen (1. i. c. 34–45. 59, 60), Matthew Paris (Hist. Major. p. 68), Struvius (Corpus Hist. Germanicæ, p. 372, 373), Scriptores Rerum Francicarum à Duchesne, tom. iv; Nicetas, in Vit. Manuel, 1. i. c. 4, 5, 6. p. 41-48; Cinnamus, 1. ii. P. 41-49.

1 For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see Nicetas in Isaac. Angel. 1. ii. c. 3—8. p. 257–266. Struv. (Corpus Hist. Germ. p. 414), and two historians, who probably were spectators, Tagino (in Scriptor. Freher. tom. i. p. 406-416. edit. Struv.), and the Anonymus de Expeditione Asiaticâ Fred. I. (in Canisii Antiq. Lection. tom. iii. p. ii. p. 498–526. edit. Basnage).

A. D. 1189.

LIX.

CHAP. brief parallel may save the repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts for the defence or recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.

Their numbers.

I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of the first pilgrims, the chiefs were equal in rank, though unequal in fame and merit, to Godfrey of Bouillon and his fellow adventurers. At their head were displayed the banners of the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitain; the first a descendant of Hugh Capet, the second a father of the Brunswick line: the archbishop of Milan, a temporal prince, transported, for the benefit of the Turks, the treasures and ornaments of his church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh the Great, and Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow. The huge and disorderly bodies of their followers moved forward in two columns; and if the first consisted of two hundred and sixty thousand persons, the second might possibly amount to sixty thousand horse, and one hundred thousand foot.* The armies of the second crusade might have claimed the conquest of Asia; the nobles of France and Germany were animated by the presence of their sovereigns; and both the rank and personal characters of Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their cause, and a discipline to their force, which might be vainly expected from the feudatory chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their imme

* Anna, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse, and 100,000 foot, calls them Normans, and places at their head two brothers of Flanders. The Greeks were strangely ignorant of the names, families, and possessions of the Latin princes.