A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (61 page)

A few days later he set out for the port
of embarkation. His attendants saw that he was a dying man; so they hid the
truth from him that not one of the princes of Europe had followed his example
and that no armies were marching behind him to embark in his galleys for the
East. Instead, as he came near to Ancona, they drew the curtains of his litter
across so that he should not see out. For the roads were covered with the crews
from his fleet, who had deserted their ships and were hurrying homeward. He
reached Ancona only to die there, on 14 August. He was mercifully spared the
knowledge of the utter collapse of his Crusade.

Nearly four centuries before, Pope Urban
II by his preaching had sent men in their thousands to risk their lives in the
Holy War. Now all that a Pope who took the Cross himself could raise were a few
mercenaries who abandoned the cause before ever the campaign was begun. The
Crusading spirit was dead.

CHAPTER
II

THE
SUMMING-UP

‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’
ECCLESIASTES I, 18

The Crusades were launched to save Eastern
Christendom from the Moslems. When they ended the whole of Eastern Christendom
was under Moslem rule. When Pope Urban preached his great sermon at Clermont
the Turks seemed about to threaten the Bosphorus. When Pope Pius II preached
the last Crusade the Turks were crossing the Danube. Of the last fruits of the
movement, Rhodes fell to the Turks in 1523, and Cyprus, ruined by its wars with
Egypt and Genoa and annexed at last by Venice, passed to them in 1570. All that
was left to the conquerors from the West was a handful of Greek islands that
Venice continued precariously to hold. The Turkish advance was checked not by
any concerted effort of Christendom but by the action of the states most nearly
concerned, Venice and the Hapsburg Empire, with France, the old protagonist in
the Holy War, persistently supporting the infidel. The Ottoman Empire began to
decline through its own failure to maintain an efficient government for its
great possessions, till it could no longer oppose the ambition of its
neighbours nor crush the nationalist spirit of its Christian subjects,
preserved by those Churches whose independence the Crusaders had tried so hard
to destroy.

Seen in the perspective of history the
whole Crusading movement was a vast fiasco. The almost miraculous success of
the First Crusade set up Frankish states in Outremer; and a century later, when
all seemed lost, the gallant effort of the Third Crusade preserved them for
another hundred years. But the tenuous kingdom of Jerusalem and its sister
principalities were a puny outcome from so much energy and enthusiasm. For
three centuries there was hardly a potentate in Europe who did not at some time
vow with fervour to go on the Holy War. There was not a country that failed to
send soldiers to fight for Christendom in the East. Jerusalem was in the mind of
every man and woman. Yet the efforts to hold or to recapture the Holy City were
peculiarly capricious and inept. Nor did these efforts have the effect on the
general history of the Western Europeans that might have been expected from
them. The era of the Crusades is one of the most important in the history of
Western civilization. When it began, western Europe was only just emerging from
the long period of barbarian invasions that we call the Dark Ages. When it
ended, that great burgeoning that we call the Renaissance had just begun. But
we cannot assign any direct part in this development to the Crusaders
themselves. The Crusades had nothing to do with the new security in the West,
which enabled merchants and scholars to travel as they pleased. There was already
access to the stored-up learning of the Moslem world through Spain; students,
such as Gerbert of Aurillac, had already visited the Spanish centres of
education. Throughout the Crusading period itself, it was Sicily rather than
the lands of Outremer that provided a meeting-place for Arab, Greek and Western
culture. Intellectually, Outremer added next to nothing. It was possible for a
man of the calibre of Saint Louis to spend several years there without the
slightest effect on his cultural outlook. If the Emperor Frederick II took an
interest in Oriental civilization, that was due to his upbringing in Sicily.
Nor did Outremer contribute to the progress of Western art, except in the realm
of military architecture and, perhaps, in the introduction of the pointed arch.
In the art of warfare, apart from castle-building, the West showed again and
again that it learned nothing from the Crusades. The same mistakes were made by
every expedition from the First Crusade to the Crusade of Nicopolis. The
circumstances of warfare in the East differed so greatly from those in Western
Europe that it was only the knights resident in Outremer who troubled to
remember past experience. It is possible that the general standard of living in
the West was raised by the desire of returning soldiers and pilgrims to copy
the comforts of Outremer in their homelands. But the commerce between east and
west, though it was increased by the Crusades, did not depend on them for its
existence.

The Crusades and the Papacy

It was only in some aspects of the
political development of western Europe that the Crusades left a mark. One of
Pope Urban’s expressed aims in preaching the Crusades was to find some useful
work for the turbulent and bellicose barons who otherwise spent their energy on
civil wars at home; and the removal of large sections of that unruly element to
the East undoubtedly helped the rise of monarchical power in the West, to the
ultimate detriment of the Papacy. But meanwhile the Papacy itself benefited.
The Pope had launched the Crusade as an international Christian movement under
his leadership; and its initial success greatly enhanced his power and
prestige. The Crusaders all belonged to his flock. Their conquests were his
conquests. As, one by one, the ancient Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and
Constantinople fell under his dominion, it seemed that his claim to be the Head
of Christendom was justified. In Church affairs his dominion was vastly
extended. Congregations in every part of the Christian world acknowledged his spiritual
supremacy. His missionaries travelled as far afield as Ethiopia and China. The
whole movement stimulated the organization of the Papal Chancery on a far more
international basis than before, and it played a great part in the development
of Canon Law. Had the Popes been content to reap ecclesiastical benefits alone,
they would have had good cause for self-congratulation. But the times were not
yet ready for a clear division between ecclesiastical and lay politics; and in
lay politics the Papacy overreached itself. The Crusade commanded respect only
when it was directed against the infidel. The Fourth Crusade, directed, if not
preached, against the Christians of the East, was followed by a Crusade against
the heretics of southern France and the nobles that showed them sympathy; and
this was succeeded by Crusades preached against the Hohenstaufen; till at last
the Crusade came to mean any war against the enemies of Papal policy, and all
the spiritual paraphernalia of indulgences and heavenly rewards was used to
support the lay ambitions of the Papal See. The triumph of the Popes in ruining
the Emperors both of the East and of the West led them on into the humiliations
of the Sicilian war and the captivity at Avignon. The Holy War was warped to
become a tragic farce.

Apart from the widening of the spiritual
dominion of Rome, the chief benefit obtained by Western Christendom from the
Crusades was negative. When they began the main seats of civilization were in
the East, at Constantinople and at Cairo. When they ended, civilization had
moved its headquarters to Italy and the young countries of the West. The
Crusades were not the only cause for the decline of the Moslem world. The
invasions of the Turks had already undermined the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad and
even without the Crusade they might have ultimately brought down the Fatimid
Caliphate of Egypt. But had it not been for the incessant irritation of the
wars against the Franks, the Turks might well have been integrated into the
Arab world and provided for it a new vitality and strength without destroying
its basic unity. The Mongol invasions were more destructive still to Arab
civilization, and their coming cannot be blamed on the Crusades. But had it not
been for the Crusades the Arabs would have been far better able to meet the
Mongol aggression. The intrusive Frankish State was a festering sore that the
Moslems could never forget. So long as it distracted them they could never
wholly concentrate on other problems.

The Crusades and Islam

But the real harm done to Islam by the
Crusades was subtler. The Islamic State was a theocracy whose political welfare
depended on the Caliphate, the line of priest-kings to whom custom had given a
hereditary succession. The Crusading attack came when the Abbasid Caliphate was
unable politically or geographically to lead Islam against it; and the Fatimid
Caliphs, as heretics, could not command a wide enough allegiance. The leaders
who arose to defeat the Christians, men like Nur ed-Din and Saladin, were
heroic figures who were given respect and devotion, but they were adventurers.
The Ayubites, for all their ability, could never be accepted as the supreme
rulers of Islam, because they were not Caliphs; they were not even descended
from the Prophet. They had no proper place in the theocracy of Islam. The
Mongol destruction of Baghdad in some way eased the Moslem task. The Mameluks
were able to found a durable state in Egypt because there was no longer a
lawful Caliphate in Baghdad, but only a shadowy and spurious line that was kept
in honourable confinement in Cairo. The Ottoman Sultans eventually solved the
problem by assuming the Caliphate themselves. Their immense power made the
Moslem world accept them, but never wholeheartedly; for they too were usurpers
and not of the prophet’s line. Christianity allowed from the outset a
distinction between the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s;
and so, when the medieval conception of the undivided political City of God
broke down, its vitality was unimpaired. But Islam was conceived as a political
and religious unity. This unity had been cracked before the Crusades; but the
events of those centuries made the cracks too wide to be mended. The great
Ottoman Sultans achieved a superficial repair, but only for a time. The cracks
have endured to this day.

Even more harmful was the effect of the
Holy War on the spirit of Islam. Any religion that is based on an exclusive
Revelation is bound to show some contempt for the unbeliever. But Islam was not
intolerant in its early days. Mahomet himself considered that Jews and
Christians had received a partial Revelation and were therefore not to be
persecuted. Under the early Caliphs the Christians played an honourable part in
Arab society. A remarkably large number of the early Arabic thinkers and
writers were Christians, who provided a useful intellectual stimulus; for the
Moslems, with their reliance on the Word of God, given once and for all time in
the Koran, tended to remain static and unenterprising in their thought. Nor was
the rivalry of the Caliphate with Christian Byzantium entirely unfriendly.
Scholars and technicians passed to and fro between the two Empires to their
mutual benefit. The Holy War begun by the Franks ruined these good relations.
The savage intolerance shown by the Crusaders was answered by growing
intolerance amongst the Moslems. The broad humanity of Saladin and his family
was soon to be rare amongst their fellow-believers. By the time of the
Mameluks, the Moslems were as narrow as the Franks. Their Christian subjects
were amongst the first to suffer from it. They never recovered their old easy
acquaintanceship with their Moslem neighbours and masters. Their own
intellectual life faded away, and with it the widening influence that it had
upon Islam. Except in Persia, with its own disquieting heretic traditions, the
Moslems enclosed themselves behind the curtain of their faith; and an
intolerant faith is incapable of progress.

The harm done by the Crusades to Islam was
small in comparison with that done by them to Eastern Christendom. Pope Urban
II had bidden the Crusaders go forth that the Christians of the East might be
helped and rescued. It was a strange rescue; for when the work was over,
Eastern Christendom lay under infidel domination and the Crusaders themselves
had done all that they could to prevent its recovery. When they set themselves
up in the East they treated their Christian subjects no better than the Caliph
had done before them. Indeed, they were sterner, for they interfered in the
religious practices of the local churches. When they were ejected they left the
local Christians unprotected to bear the wrath of the Moslem conquerors. It is
true that the native Christians themselves earned a fuller measure of this
wrath by their desperate belief that the Mongols would give them the lasting
freedom that they had not obtained from the Franks. Their penalty was severe
and complete. Weighed down by cruel restrictions and humiliations they dwindled
into unimportance. Even their land was punished. The lovely Syrian coastline
was ravaged and left desolate. The Holy City itself sank neglected into a long,
untranquil decline.

The Crusades and Eastern Christendom

The tragedy of the Syrian Christians was
incidental to the failure of the Crusades; but the destruction of Byzantium was
the result of deliberate malice. The real disaster of the Crusades was the
inability of Western Christendom to comprehend Byzantium. Throughout the ages
there have always been hopeful politicians who believe that if only the peoples
of the world could come together they would love and understand each other. It
is a tragic delusion. So long as Byzantium and the West had little to do with
each other their relations were friendly. Western pilgrims and soldiers of
fortune were welcomed in the imperial city and went home to tell of its
splendours; but there were not enough of them to make friction. There were
occasional bones of contention between the Byzantine Emperor and the Western
Powers; but either the bone was dropped in time or some tactful formula for its
division was devised. There were constant religious issues, exacerbated by the
claims of the Hildebrandine Papacy. But even there, with good-will on both
sides, some working arrangement could have been made. But with the Norman determination
to expand into the Eastern Mediterranean a new disquieting era began. Byzantine
interests were flung into sharp conflict with those of a Western people. The
Normans were checked, and the Crusades were launched as a peace-making move.
But there was misunderstanding from the outset. The Emperor thought that it was
his Christian duty to restore his frontiers to be a bulwark against the Turks,
whom he considered to be the enemy. The Crusaders wished to push on to the Holy
Land. They had come to fight the Holy War against the infidels of every race.
While their leaders failed to appreciate the Emperor’s policy, thousands of
soldiers and pilgrims found themselves in a land where the language, the
customs and the religion seemed to them strange and incomprehensible and
therefore wrong. They expected the peasants and citizens in the territory
through which they passed not only to resemble them but also to welcome them.
They were doubly disappointed. Quite failing to realize that their thieving and
destructive habits could not win them the affection or the respect of their
victims, they were hurt, angry and envious. Had it been left to the choice of
the ordinary Crusading soldier Constantinople would have been attacked and
sacked at a far earlier date. But the leaders of the Crusade were at first too
conscious of their Christian duty and restrained their followers. Louis VII
refused to accept the advice of some of his nobles and bishops to take arms
against the Christian city; and though Frederick Barbarossa toyed with the
idea, he controlled his anger and passed by. It was left to the greedy cynics
that directed the Fourth Crusade to take advantage of a momentary weakness in
the Byzantine state to plot and achieve its destruction.