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, alli ance with the Turks and Saracens. Isaac Angelus com plained, that by his friendship for the great Saladin he had ncurred the enmity of the Franks; and a mosque was found. ed at Constantinople for the public exercise of the religion of Mahomet.201

be III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were de stroyed 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 attack at the same time but on different sides, the Germans were were urged by emulation, and the French were retarded by jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met by the returning emperor, who had lost the greater 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

20 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 radhi on this singular toleration, and salwegit! ar di

was the design of the pilgrims under the archbishop of Milan. See note, P. 102 M. +Conrad had advanced with part of his army along a central road, between that on the coast and that which led to Iconium. He had been betrayed by the Greeks, his army destroyed without a battle. Wilken, vol. iii p. 165. A Michaud, vol. ii. p. 156. Conrad advanced again with Louis as far as Ephesus, and from thence, at the invitation of Manuel, returned to Constantinople. It was Louis who, at the passage of the Mæander, was engaged in a "glorious action." Wilken, vol. iii. p. 179. Michaud, vol. 160 Gibbon followed Nicetas. M.

21

reduced him to his hereditary troops; and he borrowed some Greek vessels to execute by sea the pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying the lessons of experience, or the nature of the 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, 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 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 valor 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 friendly seaport of Satalia. 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 pow ers 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

"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 color. The oriflamme appeared at the head of the French armics from the xiith to the xvth century, (Ducange sur Joinville, Dissert. xviii. p. 244-253.)

They descended the heights to a beautiful valley which lay beneath them. The Turks seized the heights which separated the two divisions of the army. The modern historians represent differently the act to which Louis owed his safety, which Gibbon has described by the undignified phrase, "he climbed a tree." According to Michaud, vol. ii. p. 164, the king got upon a rock, with his back against a tree; according to Wilken, vol. iii, he dragged himself up to the top of the rock by the roots of a tree, and continued to defend himself till nightfall. -- M.

threatened.22 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 Philadel phia 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.23 During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans,24 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,25 who humbly sued for 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.26The 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

22 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.

23 Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam sterilem, inamœnam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language of a sufferer.

24 Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, prædones sine ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518.

25 See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of Canisiu.., Tagino, and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the ambiguous conluct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both Saladin and Frederic.

20 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 he emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course.*

* It is now called 'he Girama: its course is described in M’Donald Kid neur s Travels. - M.

could only achieve the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their success was a warning; and in the last and most experienced age of the crusades, every nation preferred the sea to the toils and perils of an inland expedition.27

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perse verance 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 generatious 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 recover ing a tombstone 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,28 the monk, or the saint, may claim the most honorable place.* About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three

27 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, 1. ii. pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)

28 The most authentic information of St. Bernard must be drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by Père Mabillon, 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 volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the prefaces of the Benedictine editor.

Jo Gibbon, whose account of the crusades is perhaps the least accurate and satisfactory chapter in his History, has here failed in that lucid arrangement, which in general gives perspicuity to his most condensed ard crowded narratives. He has unaccountably, and to the great perplexity of the reader, placed the preaching of St. Bernard after the second cu sade, to which it led. M.

and-twenty he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux 29 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 iberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honors of these spirit. ual heroes. The meanest among 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 action, Bernard stood high above hist 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 pov erty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world,30 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 censures: 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 Third, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard. It was in the proclamation of the second crusade that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called the nations

29 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 1-7 hogsheads,) which almost rivals that of Heidelberg, (Mélanges tirés d'une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlvi. p. 15-20.)

c. 16, No. 45, p. 1382, the

30 The disciples of saint (Vit. ima, 1. iii. c. 2, p. 1232. Vit. iida, 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 lacû 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.

VOL. VI.

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