Hermit led 80,000 under his banners, and they began their march towards the East in 1095. Their progress was marked by rapine and hostility in every Christian country through which they passed; and the army of the Hermit, on its arrival at Constantinople, was wasted down to 20,000. The emperor Alexius Comnenus, to whom the Crusaders behaved with the most provoking insolence and folly, conducted himself with admirable moderation and good sense. He hastened to get rid of this disorderly multitude, by furnishing them with every aid which they required, and cheerfully lent his ships to transport them across the Bosphorus. The Sultan Solyman (of Roum) met them on the plain of Nice, and cut to pieces the army of the Hermit. A new host in the meantime arrived at Constantinople, led by more illustrious commanders: 1. Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Brabant; 2. Raymond, count of Thoulouse; 3. Robert of Normandy, son of William king of England; 4. Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, the conqueror of Sicily; 5. Hugh, count of Vermandois; 6. Robert, count of Flanders; 7. Stephen, count of Chartres, and other princes of high reputation. To these, who amounted to some (six) hundred thousand, Alexius manifested the same prudent conduct, to accelerate their departure. The Turks,* overpowered by numbers, were twice defeated, and the crusaders pursuing their successes, penetrated at length to Jerusalem, which, after a siege of six weeks, they took by storm, and with savage fury massacred the whole of its Mahometan and Jewish inhabitants, 1099. Godfrey was hailed king of Jerusalem, but was obliged soon after to cede his kingdom to the pope's legate. The crusaders divided Syria and Palestine, and formed four separate states, which weakened their power, (Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa beyond the Euphrates.) The Turks began to recover strength; and the Christian states of Asia soon found it necessary to solicit aid from Europe.

3. The second crusade set out from the West in 1146, to the amount of 200,000 French, Germans, and Italians, led by Hugh, brother to Philip I. of France. These met with the same fate which attended the army of Peter the Hermit. The garrison of Jerusalem was at this time so weak, that it became necessary to embody and arm the monks for its defence, and hence arose the military orders of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers, and soon after the Teutonic, from the German pilgrims. Meantime pope Eugenius III. employed St. Bernard to preach up a new crusade in France, which was headed by its sovereign Louis VII. (the Young), who in conjunction with Conrad III. emperor of Germany, mustered jointly 300,000 men. The Ger

The powerful empire of the Seljukian Turks had some years before been divided into three kingdoms under separate sultans, Arabia, Persia, and Roum, or Rome, which comprehended Asia Minor. It was with the sultan of the latter kingdom the crusaders first contended, who being unsupported by the other sultans, was un. able to resist them.

mans were cut to pieces by the sultan of Iconium (Roum) in 1146; the French were totally defeated near Laodicea in 1147; and the two monarchs, after much disaster, returned with shame to their dominions.

4. The illustrious Saladin, nephew of the sultan of Egypt, formed the design of recovering Palestine from the Christians; and besieging Jerusalem, he took the city, and made prisoner its sovereign, Guy of Lusignan, 1187. Pope Clement III. alarmed at the successes of the Infidels, began to stir up a new crusade, from France, England, and Germany; and the armies of each country were headed by their respective sovereigns, Philip Augustus; Richard I., Coeur-de-Lion; and Frederick I., Barbarossa. In this third crusade, the emperor Frederick died in Asia, and his army, by repeated defeats, mouldered to nothing. The English and French were more successful; they besieged and took Ptolemais (Acre); but Richard and Philip quarrelled from jealousy of each other's glory, and the French monarch returned in disgust to his country. Richard nobly sustained the contest with Saladin, whom he defeated near Ascalon; but his army was reduced by famine and fatigue; and concluding a treaty, at least not dishonourable, with his enemy, he was forced at length to escape from Palestine with a single ship. (See supra, Sect. XVI. § 8.) Saladin, revered even by the Christians, died 1195.

5. A fourth crusade, undertaken at the pressing instigation of Pope Innocent III., was fitted out in 1202, under Baldwin count of Flanders, of which the object was not the extirpation of the Infidels, but the destruction of the Empire of the East. Constantinople, embroiled by civil war and revolution, from disputed claims to the sovereignty, was besieged and taken by the crusaders; and Baldwin their chief was elected emperor, to be within a few months dethroned and murdered by the Bulgarians. Five Latin emperors succeeded Baldwin until 1261, when Constantinople was retaken by the Greek emperors. The imperial dominions were shared among the principal leaders; and the Venetians, who had lent their ships for the expedition, got the isle of Candia (anciently Crete) for their reward. Alexius, of the imperial family of the Comneni, founded a new sovereignty in Asia, which he termed the empire of Trebizond. [The fifth crusade 1217 was conducted by Andrew II., king of Hungary, and landed in Egypt, but was fruitless. The emperor Frederick II. undertook the sixth crusade in 1228, and procured the restitution of Jerusalem and other cities from the Turks, but the Christian princes were unable long to defend them.]

6. At this period, 1227, a great revolution took place in Asia. Gengiskan with his Tartars broke down from the north upon Persia and Syria, and massacred indiscriminately Turks, Jews, and Christians, who opposed them. The Christian Knights Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic, made a desperate but in

Y

effectual resistance, and Palestine must have been abandoned to these invaders, had not its fate been for a while retarded by the last crusade (the seventh) under Louis IX. (the Saint) of France. This prince, summoned, as he believed by Heaven, after four years' preparation, set out for the Holy Land, with his queen, his three brothers, and all the knights of France, 1248. His army began their enterprise by an attack on Egypt, where, after some considerable successes, they were at length utterly defeated, and the French monarch, with two of his brothers, fell into the hands of the enemy. He purchased his liberty at an immense ransom (400,000 livres,) and, returning to France, reigned prosperously and wisely for thirteen years. But the same frenzy again assailing him, he embarked on a crusade against the Moors in Africa, where his army was destroyed by a pestilence, and he himself became its victim (in 1270). It is computed that, in the whole of the crusades to Palestine, two millions of Europeans were buried in the East.

7. Effects of the Crusades. One consequence of the holy wars is supposed to have been the improvement of European manners; but the times immediately succeeding the crusades exhibit no such actual improvement. Two centuries of barbarism and darkness elapsed between the termination of those enterprises and the fall of the Greek empire in 1453, the era of the revival of letters, and the commencement of civilization. A certain consequence of the crusades was the change of territorial property in all the feudal kingdoms, the sale of the estates of the nobles, and their division among a number of smaller proprietors. Hence the feudal aristocracy was weakened, and the lower classes began to acquire weight and a spirit of independence. The towns hitherto bound by a sort of vassalage to the nobles, began to purchase their immunity, acquired the right of electing their own magistrates, and were governed by their own municipal laws.—The church in some respects gained, and in others lost, by those enterprises. The popes gained a more extended jurisdiction; but the fatal issue of these expeditions opened the eyes of the world to the selfish and interested motives which had prompted them, and weakened the sway of superstition. Many of the religious orders acquired an increase of wealth; but this was balanced by the taxes imposed on the clergy. The coin was altered and debased in most of the kingdoms of Europe, from the scarcity of specie. The Jews were supposed to have hoarded and concealed it, and they became hence the victims of general persecution. The most substantial gainers by the crusades were the Italian states of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, from the increased

*The Religious and Military orders were established for the purpose of defending the new Christian States in the East, for protecting pilgrims on their journey, taking care of them when sick, &c., and the vast wealth which they acquired in most of the kingdoms of Europe, preserved their existence long after the loss of the Holy Land; and some of these orders even made a conspicuous figure in the political history of the Western nations.

trade to the Levant for the supply of those immense armies. Venice, as we have seen, took an active concern, and obtained her share of the conquered territory.

The age of the crusades brought chivalry to its perfection, and gave rise to romantic fiction.

THE EFFECT OF THE CRUSADES ON THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND.

[The Crusades had the effect of improving the social and political condition of England. Richard I. (Coeur de Lion), to defray the expenses of his expedition to the Holy Land, sold the crown lands, his castles, and the towns built on his demesnes. The Saxon inhabitants of many of the towns redeemed their houses, and once more became, under a crown and quit rent, the legal proprietors of their abode. By the simple fact of such a bargain, the town which concluded it became a corporation, organized under magistrates, responsible to the king for the payment of the municipal debt, and to the burgesses for the disposal of the sums raised by their personal contributions. Many barons and knights followed the example of the king. They sold the whole or portions of their lands, or gave perpetual leases of the farms at fixed rents occupied by their villains regardant or bondmen, for whatever sums of money they could obtain from them. These were the free or fee-farms which at one time were so numerous in the ancient cultivated districts of England. A fixity of tenure having been acquired, an impulse was given to industry which rapidly led to the formation of a middle class of society.

And

On the return of Richard from the Holy Land and his captivity in Germany, he annulled all the sales of royal domains which he had so freely made before his departure, pretending that they were merely mortgages, and that the occupiers had been sufficiently reimbursed. The barons and knights, however, were not allowed to act in a similar manner. But so early as 1224, the ninth of Henry III., or thirty-five years after the departure of Richard I. for Palestine, they became so alarmed at the improvement going on in the social condition of the small Saxon landholders, that they considered it one of those grievances they ought to provide against. Accordingly in the third great charter, obtained from Henry III. before he was of age, it was provided "that no freeman shall from henceforth give or sell any more of his land, but so that of the residue of his lands the lord of the fee may have the service due him which belongeth to him:" Cap. 32. still further to prevent the sub-division of land, the great barons obtained from Edward I., in 1285, the celebrated statute de donis conditionalibus, which has been sarcastically called "the statute of great men," its object being to perpetuate in their families their remaining possessions. The evil effects of that statute were soon evident, which led Edward I. to favour its evasion and to extend the privileges of the people by the exercise of the prerogative and his courts of law. The demand for labour, which followed the establishment of a fixity of tenure, led to the custom of allowing the villains (or manorial bondmen) to work as hired labourers, on condition of performing their stated services to their lord. Aund to prevent disputes those services came to be entered in the books of the manors, and copies in writing given to the villains. This custom having been established, the common law determined that the villain, so long as the customary services were performed, had a right to hold his lands "in spite of any determination of the lord's will:" 2 Blackstone, 95. In that way another numerous clas of free husbandmen, called copyholders, from the condition of their tenures, were enfranchised. The interest of the barons and lords of manors being

affected by that decision of the king's courts of law, the statuta quia emptores was obtained in 18 Edward I. 1289, to prevent tenants of common lords from claiming that right for the future. There is reason to believe that in 1289 the number of small freeholders and copyholders was very numerous, so that by the middle of the fourteenth century the great body of the rural population had become free labourers. From that time the Saxon population of England rapidly advanced to the position in which it is at the present day.]

SECTION XVIII.

OF CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.

1. CHIVALRY arose naturally from the condition of society in those ages in which it prevailed. Among the Germanic nations, the profession of arms was esteemed the sole employment that deserved the name of manly or honourable. The initiation of the youth to this profession was attended with peculiar solemnity and appropriate ceremonies. The chief of the tribe bestowed the sword and armour on his vassals, as a symbol of their being devoted to his service. In the progress of the feudal system, these vassals, in imitation of their chief, assumed the power of conferring arms on their sub-vassals, with a similar form of mysterious and pompous ceremonial. The candidate for knighthood underwent his preparatory fasts and vigils, and received on his knees the accollade and benediction of his chief. Armed and caparisoned, he sallied forth in quest of adventure, which, whether just or not in its purpose, was ever esteemed honourable in proportion as it was perilous.

2. The high esteem of the female sex is characteristic of the Gothic manners. In those ages of barbarism, the castles of the great barons were in miniature the courts of sovereigns. The society of the ladies, who found only in such fortresses a security from outrage, polished the manners; and to protect the chastity and honour of the fair, was the best employ and highest merit of an accomplished knight. Romantic exploit had, therefore, always a tincture of gallantry :

It hath been through all ages ever seen,
That with the praise of arms and chivalry
The prize of beauty still hath joined beau
And that for reason's special privity;

For either doth on other much rely;

For he, me seems, most fit the fair to serve,

That can her best defend from villany;

And she most fit his service doth deserve,

That fairest is, and from her faith will never swerve.

Spenser's Faery Quɛen.

3. To the passion for adventure and romantic love were added very high ideas of morality and religion; but, as the latter were ever subordinate to the former, we may presume more in favour