CHAP. conquers Egypt, The caliphs of the Fatimite race continued to reign XLIV. in Egypt till the year 1171, when an end was put to Noureddin that dynasty by Noureddin, who had already distinguished himself by adding the kingdom of Damascus to that of Aleppo, and by a long and successful war against the Christians in Syria. His father Zenghi had recovered Edessa from the Franks, and had deprived them of their conquests on the left bank of the Euphrates. Noureddin extended his dominion from the Tigris to the Nile, and changed the green colours of the descendants of Ali to the black standards of the Abassides. After his death the celebrated Saladin obtained the sovereignty of Egypt, and, by his victorious arms, established his power from the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia †. The kingdom of Jerusalem was naturally an object of his ambition. That kingdom had subsisted during eighty-eight years, from Godfrey, its great conqueror, whose reign was too soon terminated by his death. He was succeeded by the two first Baldwins, his brother and cousin. After the death of the second of those princes the sceptre devolved to his daughter Melisinda, and her husband Fulk count of Anjou, the father, by a former marriage, of our English Plantagenets. Their two sons, Baldwin the Third, and Amaury, waged a strenuous and not unsuccessful war against the Infidels; but the son of Amaury, Baldwin the Fourth, was deprived by leprosy of the faculties both of body * William of Tyre describes the loss of Edessa and the death of Zenghi. We are indebted to the professor Schultens (Lugd. Bat. 1755, in folio), for the richest and most authentic materials, a life of Saladin, by his friend and minister the cadhi Bohadin, and copious extracts from the history of his kinsman, the prince Abulfeda of Hamah. To these we may add the article of Salaheddin, in the Bibliotheque Orientale, and all that may be gleaned from the dynasties of Abulpharagius. For the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see William of Tyre, from the 9th to the 22d book; Jacob a Vitriaco; Hist. Hierosolem. 1. i.; and Sanutus Secreta Fidelium Crucis, 1. iii. p. 6, 7, 8, 9. XLIV. and mind. His sister Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin CHAP. the Fifth, was his heiress. After the death of her child she crowned her second husband Guy of Lusignan, a prince of handsome person, but of base renown. Raymond, count of Tripoli, a powerful vassal, who had been excluded from the succession and the regency, entertained an implacable hatred against the king, and exposed his honour and conscience to the temptation of the sultan. Such were the guardians of the holy city—a leper, a woman, a coward, and a traitor. Yet its fall was delayed, during twelve years, by some supplies from Europe, by the valour of the military orders, and by the distant or domestic avocations of their great enemy. At length, in the year 1187, Saladin invaded the Holy Land, and, at the suggestion of Raymond, laid siege to Tiberias. By the same perfidious advice the Christians were betrayed into a camp destitute of water. Raymond abandoned them on the first onset, and Lusignan was defeated and taken prisoner, with the loss of thirty thousand men. The kingdom was left without a head. Of the grand masters of the military orders, one was slain, the other was a prisoner. The garrisons of the cities, both on the coast and in the inland country, had been drawn away for the fatal field of Tiberias; and, in three months after the battle, Saladin appeared in arms before the gates of Jerusalem. Queen Sybilla trembled for herself Saladin takes and her captive husband; and, after a short siege, A. D. 1187. the city was surrendered by a capitulation with the sultan *. The expulsion of the Franks from the rest of Syria would probably have followed in a short time, if Europe had not still continued to be actuated by the *For the conquest of Jerusalem, Bohadin and Abulfeda are our Moslem witnesses. Of the Christian, Bernard Thesaurarius is the most copious and authentic. See likewise Matthew Paris. Jerusalem, CHAP. spirit and enthusiasm of the first crusade. That enXLIV. thusiasm was perhaps, in the first instance, a natural Second crusade, and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and astonishment; 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 a desperate adventure, 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. Of these seven crusades, the first has been already A. D. 1147. described; the second was excited by the distress of the Christians, forty-seven years after the taking of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon. In this expedition the Latins were headed by Conrad the Third, emperor of Germany, and by Louis the Seventh, king of France. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their immediate attendants; and the full account of their armament will scarcely be satisfied with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome to Britain, was called into action. The kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is affirmed, that, after the passage of *William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon seventy thousand Loricati in each of the armies. XLIV. a strait or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of CHAP. nine hundred thousand, desisted from the endless and formidable computation*. The event of this mighty armament was disastrous to Christendom. The Turks having been driven from Nice to Iconium by the arms of the first crusaders, were no longer an object of terror to the Greeks; and Constantinople was more afraid of the Latins than of her former enemies. Every obstacle which could be opposed to the success of the crusaders was employed by the emperor Manuel. By the want of provisions, by epidemic diseases, by incessant attacks of the Turkish horse, and by desertion, the great army of Conrad was almost destroyed; and, after some glorious but unsuccessful actions on the banks of the Mæander, he returned through Lesser Asia with the small remains of his forces, and, borrowing some Greek vessels, proceeded by sea to execute the pilgrimage of Jerusalem. The French king had scarcely crossed the Bosphorus, when he met the returning emperor. Without profiting by the knowledge of what had happened to Conrad, he advanced through the same country to a similar fate, and, after experiencing similar disasters, he sheltered himself in the friendly port of Satalia, from whence he and his knights embarked for Antioch, leaving crowds of plebeian infantry to perish in Pamphylia. The emperor and king embraced and wept at Jerusalem, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final effort of the second crusade t. *The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus (εveνnxova μupiades), and confirmed by Odo de Díogilo apud Ducange ad Cinnamum. with the more precise sum of 900,556. Why must, therefore, the version and comment suppose the modest and insufficient reckoning of 90,000? Does not Godfrey of Viterbo (Pantheon, p. 19, in Muratori, tom. vii. p. 462) exclaim, Numerum si poscere quæras, Millia millena milites agmen erat? + For the second crusade of Conrad III. and Louis VII. see William of Tyre, Otho of Frisingen, Matthew Paris, Struvius, Scriptores Rerum Francicarum a Duchesne, Nicetas, Cinnamus. CHAP. XLIV. Third A. D. 1189. After the loss of Jerusalem the third crusade* was undertaken, by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, Philip Augustus king of France, and Richard Cœur de Lion of England. The first of these princes, with Barbarossa. great courage and perseverance, forced his way through Asia Minor to Iconium, and stormed the capital of the sultan. Frederic advanced in a career of triumph, till he was unfortunately drowned in a petty torrent of Cilicia. After his death the German army was consumed by sickness and desertion; and the son of the emperor, with the small remains of his forces, expired at the siege of Acre. The victorious course of Saladin was first checked by the resistance of Tyre t. The arrival of Conrad of Montferrat inspired the garrison with confidence, and Saladin concluded a glorious campaign by a disgraceful retreat to Damascus. In the following year the siege of Ptolemais or Acre was formed by the Christians, and was continued during two years. The whole force of the Moslems was summoned to its relief by the sultan, and nine battles were fought near mount Carmel with various success. At length, in the spring of the second year, the royal fleets of France and England arrived in the bay of Acre; and after every resource had been tried, and Richard I. every hope extinguished, by the exertions of Richard, A.D. 1191. the city was surrendered. A strong town, with a con Philip Augustus. Acre taken, venient harbour, was thus acquired; but the minister and historian of Saladin asserts that it cost the lives of more than a hundred thousand of the Christians ‡. * For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see Nicetas in Isaac Angel. and two historians, who probably were spectators, Tagino, and the Anonymus de Expeditione Asiatica Fred. I. †The sieges of Tyre and Acre are most copiously described by Bernard Thesaurarius (de Acquisitione Terræ Sanctæ), the author of the Historia Hierosolymitana, Abulfeda, and Bohadin. Bohadin, p. 14. Among the Christians who died before St. John d'Acre, I find the English names of de Ferrers, earl of Derby (Dugdale Baronage), Mowbray, de Mandevil, de Fiennes, St. John, Scrope, Pigot, Talbot, &c. |