THE SECOND CRUSADE.
31. The fall of Edessa, and the petitions of the people of Palestine for aid, produced a sensation throughout Europe, and especially in France. Nor was an apostle wanting worthy to fill the place of Peter, and to summon the chivalry of Europe to a second crusade. Commissioned by Pope Eugenius for that purpose, the famous Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux in Champagne, traveled through France and Germany, exerting the power of his marvelous eloquence in recruiting the armies of the cross. The chiefs of the second crusade were two of the most powerful princes of Europe, Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of Germany. Under their command upward of one million two hundred thousand men, collected from all parts of Europe, marched toward Palestine in two great armies, early in 1147.
32. Notwithstanding the vastness of the preparations, the expedition was a total failure. The events of the last fifty years had rendered the
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policy of the Greek princes hostile to the crusades. Manuel Comnenus, the grandson of Alexius, who now occupied the throne, suffered both armies to pass into Asia Minor, where, misled by Greek scouts, the army of Conrad was all but destroyed by the Turks, near Iconium, while the army of Louis, after undergoing infinite hardships, was wrecked in the defiles of the Pisidian mountains. The fragments of the two armies uniting made their way to Syria, where they co-operated with forces of the princes of Jerusalem and Antioch, in laying seige to Damascus, but without effect. In 1149 Conrad and Louis returned to Europe, and the second crusade was at an end, having attained nothing but the expenditure of more than a million of lives.
THE THIRD CRUSADE.
33. A period of forty years elapsed before Europe fitted out another crusade. Meanwhile the struggle between the Christian and the Turks in Syria was carried on without intermission. Noureddin, the son of the conqueror of Edessa, displayed a genius which astonished both Christians and Turks. Keeping possession of Edessa, he aimed at extending his conquest at the expense of the Christians still further. For some time he was kept in check by the abilities of Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem. On his death, in 1162, his brother Amalric, far inferior to Baldwin in ability, succeeded to the throne.
34. At this crisis, while Noureddin, the Sultan of Aleppo, and Amalric, the Christian King of Jerusalem, were the rival powers in Syria, occurred a circumstance which exercised considerable influence on the subsequent course of events, and which makes necessary a retrospective glance.
35. At the time of the first crusade Palestine was the scene of a violent contest between the Turks, who had poured down from the North, conquering as they went, and the Fatimites of Egypt, who had
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possessed Syria for nearly a century. The Turks had at first been irresistible. The Fatimites, however, had been able to recover Jerusalem from the hands of their enemies, and held it when besieged by the Christians. Interrupted in their conflict with each other for the sovereignty of Palestine, the Fatimites and Turks turned their arms with one accord against the invader. In the person of Noureddin the Turkish power was now increasing. The Fatimite dynasty of Egypt, meanwhile, had long been showing signs of decay, the caliphs having become mere tools in the hands of their viziers. In 1163 one of these viziers, Shawer, finding himself expelled from his post by a rival, sought refuge at the court of Aleppo, and applied to the sultan for assistance. Noureddin eagerly embraced an opportunity for obtaining a footing in Egypt, and sent two persons, Chyrkouh and his nephew Saladin, to displace the usurping vizier and re-establish Shawer. They, however, usurped the government, and Shawer applied to the King of Jerusalem, Amalric, for assistance. Amalric in turn attempted usurpation, and again the officers of Noureddin came to the aid of Shawer. The vizier paid the penalty of his fickleness by losing his head, and his post was occupied by Chyrkouh, who, while ruling Egypt as a vizier of the Fatimite caliph, was in reality the lieutenant of Noureddin.
36. On the death of Chyrkouh, Saladin was appointed to the viziership. The caliph fancied that he would now regain the control of his own dominions, but he little knew the character of his new vizier. Saladin soon effected a revolution in Egypt, declared the Fatimite dynasty to be at an end, and subjected the country once more to the nominal authority of the Bagdad caliphs, whom Noureddin professed to reverence as the supreme heads of the Mohammedan Empire. Nor did he stop here. He soon showed a disposition to shake off the supremacy of Noureddin, and the sultan of Aleppo was marching into Egypt to vindicate his authority, when he suddenly died in the year 1171.
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37. Saladin now saw the great obstacle to his ambition removed, and began to aim at realizing those schemes of sovereignty which Noureddin had projected. The state of the Christian kingdom during the ten or twelve years which followed directly favored his plans. Civil dissensions arose which the keen eye of Saladin discovered, and, already master of all Syria, he resolved to complete his greatness by the conquest of Palestine. Accordingly, when in the year 1157 it was known that he was on his march against Jerusalem, the Christian crusaders saw the necessity of abandoning their dissensions and uniting cordially against the invader. Town after town surrendered to the victorious Saracen, and, in October, 1187, Jerusalem itself, after fourteen days' defense, was obliged to submit to his mercy. The conduct of Saladin on this occasion was more generous than might have been expected. A moderate ransom was fixed for every individual, on the payment of which he was at liberty to remove with his goods to whatever place he chose. To the Christian ladies, Saladin's conduct was courteous in the extreme, so that it became a remark among the Latins of Palestine that Saladin was a barbarian only in name.
38. Thus, after ninety years, was the Holy City again inhabited by the infidel, and all the fruits of the first crusade lost, as it seemed to the world. Saladin now possessed the whole of Palestine, with the single exception of the city of Tyre, which was gallantly defended by Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat.
39. The epidemic frenzy which had been gradually cooling was now extinct, or nearly so, and the nations of Europe looked with cold indifference upon the armaments of their princes. But chivalry was now in all its glory, and it continued to supply armies for the Holy Land. Poetry more than religion inspired the Third Crusade. The knights and their retainers listened with delight to the martial and amatory strains of the ministrels, minnesingers, and troubadors. Men
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fought not so much for the holy sepulchre as to gain glory for themselves in the best and only field where glory could be obtained. They fought not as zealots, but as soldiers, not for religion, but for honor.
40. The first to take the field was the illustrious German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. Marching from Ratisbon at the bead of a magnificent army in 1189, he fought his way through the Greek dominions, advanced through Asia Minor, conquering as he went, and was already on the borders of Palestine, when, imprudently bathing, he was cut off in the seventieth year of his age. His army suffered greatly from the difficulties of their march and the attacks of the Saracens. The wrecks of it under Frederick's son, the Duke of Swabia, proved a most valuable reinforcement to the Christians in Syria, who had by this time rallied and combined against the domination of Saladin, laying siege to the city of Acre on the sea-coast, a town of so much importance that the possession of it was considered almost equivalent to being master of the whole country.
41. Upon this siege, commenced in August, 1189, was concentrated all the force at the command of the Christians in Palestine, the remnants of the two great military orders the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers, the survivors of Frederick's army, together with such bodies of crusaders as were continually arriving from Europe by sea. Guy de Lusignan was the commander of the besieging forces, and so skillfully was his army fortified that Saladin was unable to dislodge him. For two-and-twenty months the siege continued, and many engagements had taken place between the Christian army and that of Saladin, which occupied the mountains to the south, but without visible advantage on either side.
42. Such was the position of affairs when, early in the summer of 1191, Philip, of France, and Richard Coeur de Lion, of England, arrived with their fleets. The struggle was soon over, and on the 12th
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