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The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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In the reign of Kalaun, the third sultan in succession to him who had torn so many cities from the Christians, the war was renewed (1280), and after a few years of dreadful preparation the living cloud of war burst upon the Christians. Margat was captured; but so brave had been the resistance of the knights that it procured them a safe and honourable retreat to the neighbouring town of Tortosa (1287), and the sultan, dreading even the possibility of future opposition, razed the fortress.
PROGRESS OF THE MAMELUKES
With rapid and certain steps the power of the Latins approached its fatal termination. The city of Tripolis, that last remaining satellite of the kingdom of Jerusalem, was taken in 1289; its houses were burned, its works dismantled, and its people murdered or retained in slavery. Acre once more became the principal possession of the Christians. The sultan concluded a treaty of peace with Henry II of Cyprus, who had driven away the lieutenants and soldiers of Charles, and had been acknowledged king of Jerusalem.
The grand-master crossed the Mediterranean in order to infuse his martial spirit into the people of the West. Pope Nicholas IV heard with coldness the dismal tale. He declined to open the treasury of St. Peter for the advancement of the Christian cause, and he gave his noble friend only fifteen hundred men—the offscourings of Italy. Circular letters were sent to the different European potentates, but the light which once shone upon the holy cause had waned; cavaliers no longer thronged round the cross, and the grand-master was compelled to return to Palestine, accompanied only by his Italian banditti. When they arrived at Acre, the city was in the greatest state of turbulence. Within its walls were crowded the wretched remains of those kingdoms and principalities which had been won by the blood of the West. Every distinct people occupied a particular division, and, in the assertion of individual privileges, general interests were forgotten.
[1291-1300 A.D.]
The sultan died before his preparations of vengeance were completed; but his son Khalil was not less anxious than his father to exterminate the infidel miscreants. In April, 1291, nearly two hundred thousand mameluke Tatars of Egypt marched into Palestine, and encamped before Acre, exactly on the same ground upon which a century before assembled Europe had stood. To avoid the dreadful consequences of war, a large part of the population embarked in the numerous vessels which at that time rode at anchor in the harbour, and the defence of the place was left to the care of about twelve thousand soldiers. The garrison was speedily reinforced by a few hundred men, headed by Henry II of Cyprus, who boasted the ideal title of king of Jerusalem. But the Christians beheld their towers yielding to the mines and battering-rams. The pusillanimous monarch, seizing a few ships, sailed to Cyprus. With the morn, the mamelukes renewed the attack. Most of the German cavaliers died upon the breach; the others slowly left the walls, and the firmness of their little phalanx checked the foe. The Hospitallers chased back the mamelukes, and even forced them headlong into the ditch. But the sultan was prodigal of blood. His battalions marched to the breach, and in a few hours the entry into the city was repeatedly lost and won by the Christians and infidels.
Under the cover of a few cross-bowmen, the knights of St. John, seven only were the remnant, embarked, and left forever the scene of their virtue and their valour. Their brethren in arms, the Templars, were equally brave, and their fate was equally disastrous. Their resistance was so firm, that the sultan was compelled to promise them a free and honourable departure. But the insults of some low Saracenian people irritated the cavaliers; the sword again was drawn, and such of the Templars as survived the conflict, fled into the interior country. The unarmed population of Acre hurried to the coast; but the elements co-operated with the devastating spirit of the Turks, and the tempestuous waves refused shelter to the fugitives. While gnashing with despair, the people beheld their town in flames. The ruthless hand of death fell upon them, and the sea shore of Palestine again drank torrents of Christian blood.
TOTAL LOSS OF THE HOLY LAND
Tyre, Berytus, and other towns, were awed into submission. The Turks swept all Palestine, and murdered or imprisoned all the Christians who could not fly to Cyprus. The memory of the Templars is embalmed, for the last struggle for the Holy Land was made by the Red Cross knights. Such as escaped from Acre went to Sis, in Armenia. A Mussulman general drove them to the island of Tortosa, whence they escaped to Cyprus, and the cry of religious war no longer rung through Palestine.
The loss of the Holy Land did not fill Europe with those feelings of grief and indignation which the fall of Jerusalem, an hundred years before, had occasioned. The flame of fanaticism had slowly burned out. During the thirteenth century, the territorial possessions of the Christians in Palestine gradually diminished; the expeditions and reinforcements were in consequence less vigorous, for, both politically and personally, the people of the West declined in their interest in respect of the affairs of the East. Pope Nicholas IV endeavoured to revive holy undertakings; but the kings of Europe were deaf or disobedient. As Genoa was allied to the Grecian emperor, Venice sought the friendship of the Mussulmans. The mamelukes gave their Christian brothers a church, an exchange, and a magazine in Alexandria; and the Venetians carried on the lucrative but disgraceful trade of furnishing the Egyptian market with male and female slaves from Georgia and Circassia.
[1299-1413 A.D.]
Heralds of the Crusaders
There was some pretence for the preaching of a crusade by Pope Boniface VIII in the year 1300. Kazan, the Mongol sultan of Persia, resolved to exterminate the mamelukes of Egypt. He allied himself with the kings of Georgia, Armenia, and Cyprus. In 1299 the fortunes of war smiled on the allies; but still the success not being so great as what he had expected, Kazan sent to the pope, soliciting the more powerful alliance of the princes of the West, and agreeing that when Palestine was recovered, it should be retained by the Christians. The project, though warmly patronised by the pope, proved abortive. In the interim, the tide of victory flowed in favour of the Egyptians. Kazan died about the year 1303.
From the commencement, till past the middle of the fourteenth century, the popes repeatedly sounded the charge; but the West in most cases disregarded the summons of its ghostly instructor; and it was evident that, although the papal rulers could fan, they could not create the sacred flame. At the time when the loss of the Holy Land became known in Europe, the people had not recovered from the astonishment and terror with which the victories of Jenghiz Khan and his successors had filled the West. Part of Russia, the whole of Poland, Silesia, Moravia, Hungary and all the countries to the eastward of the Adriatic Sea, fell a prey to barbaric desolation. Several of the popes attempted in vain to soften the ferocity of these new foes; but the papal legates were dismissed with the tremendous command, for Rome herself to submit her neck to the Mongol yoke.
Though Europe in general felt that in the fall of Acre all was lost, yet despair did not immediately complete his triumph, for chivalry and policy sometimes endeavoured to revive the religious spark. If Pope John XXII had not been too open in the display of his avarice, and too prodigal in the commutation of vows for money, the knights of Germany would once more have fought under the glorious ensign of the cross. A threatened invasion from England (1328 A.D.) deterred Philip de Valois from leaving his country for Palestine, and a large body of crusaders was dispersed when (1364 A.D.) John Le Bon of France died, on whom the pope intended to have conferred the title of commander of the new crusaders. The politic Henry IV[80] of England wished to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” in order to divert his people from looking too nearly into his state, and to retain their newly sworn allegiance. Both his maritime and military preparations were considerable; but the hand of nature stopped him and it was his fate to succumb to death, before he could attempt to commence his new religious career.