France St Bernard added the king of Germany, when, in Christmas week of 1146, he induced Conrad III. to take the vow by his sermon in the cathedral of Spires. Thus was begun the Second Crusade,[1] under auspices still more favourable than those which attended the beginning of the First, seeing that kings now took the place of knights, while the new crusaders would no longer be penetrating into the wilds, but would find a friendly basis of operations ready to their hands in Frankish Syria. But the more favourable the auspices, the greater proved the failure. Already at the final meeting at Étampes, in 1147, difficulties arose. Manuel Comnenus demanded that all conquests made by the crusaders should be his fiefs; and the question was debated whether the crusaders should follow the land route through Hungary, along the old road of Charlemagne, or should go by sea to the Holy Land. In this question the envoys of Manuel and of Roger of Sicily, who were engaged in hostilities with one another, took opposite sides. Conrad, related by marriage to Manuel, decided in favour of the land route, which Manuel desired because it brought the Crusade more under his direction, and because, if the route by sea were followed, Roger of Sicily might be able to divert the crusading ships against Constantinople. As it was, a struggle raged between Roger and Manuel during the whole progress of the Crusade, which greatly contributed towards its failure, preventing, as it did, any assistance from the Eastern empire. Nor was there any real unity among the crusaders themselves. The crusaders of northern Germany never went to the Holy Land at all; they were allowed the crusaders’ privileges for attacking the Wends to the east of the Elbe—a fact which at once attests the cleavage between northern and southern Germany (intensified of late years by the war of investitures), and anticipates the age of the Teutonic knights and their long Crusade on the Baltic. The crusaders of the Low Countries and of England took the sea route, and attacked and captured Lisbon on their way, thus helping to found the kingdom of Portugal, and achieving the one real success which was gained by the Second Crusade.[2] Among the great army of crusaders who actually marched to Jerusalem there was little real unity. Conrad and Louis VII. started separately, and at different times, in order to avoid dissensions between their armies; and when they reached Asia Minor (after encountering some difficulties in Greek territory) they still acted separately. Eager to win the first spoils, the German crusaders, who were in advance of the French, attempted a raid into the sultanate of Iconium; but after a stern fight at Dorylaeum they were forced to retreat (October 1147), and for the most part perished by the way. Louis VII., who now appeared, was induced by this failure to take the long and circuitous route by the west coast of Asia Minor; but even so he had lost the majority of his troops when he reached the Holy Land in 1148. Here he joined Conrad (who had come by sea from Constantinople) and Baldwin III., and after some deliberation the three sovereigns resolved to attack Damascus. The attack was impolitic: Damascus was the one ally which could help the Franks to stem the advance of Nureddin. It proved as futile as it was impolitic; for the vizier of Damascus, Muin-eddin-Anar, was able to sow dissension between the native Franks and the crusaders; and by bribes and promises of tribute he succeeded in inducing the former to make the siege an absolute failure, at the end of only four days (July 28th, 1148). The Second Crusade now collapsed. Conrad returned to Constantinople in the autumn of 1148, and Louis VII. returned by sea to France in the spring of 1149. The only effects of this great movement were effects prejudicial to the ends towards which it was directed. The position of the Franks in the Holy Land was not improved by the attack on Damascus; while the ignominious failure of a Crusade led by two kings brought the whole crusading movement into discredit in western Europe, and it was utterly in vain that Suger and St Bernard attempted to gather a fresh Crusade in 1150.
The result of the failure of the Second Crusade was the renewal of Nureddin’s attacks. The rest of the county of Edessa, including Tell-bashir on the west, was now conquered (1150); while Raymund of Antioch was defeated and killed (in 1149), and several towns in the east of his principality were captured. Baldwin III. attempted to make head against these troubles, partly by renewing the old alliance with Damascus, partly by drawing closer to Manuel of Constantinople. For the next twenty years, during the reigns of Baldwin and his brother Amalric I., there is indeed a close connexion between the kingdom of Jerusalem and the East Roman empire. Baldwin and Amalric both married into the Comnenian house, while Manuel married Mary of Antioch, the daughter of Raymund. In the north Manuel enjoyed the homage of Antioch, which his father had gained in 1137, and the nominal possession of Tell-bashir, which had been ceded to him by Baldwin III.: in the south he joined with Amalric I. in the attempt to acquire Egypt (1168–1171). In this way he acquired a certain ascendancy over the Latin kings: Baldwin III. rode behind him at Antioch in 1159 without any of the insignia of royalty, and in an inscription at Bethlehem of 1172 Amalric I. had the name of the emperor written above his own.[3] The patronage of Constantinople, to which Jerusalem was thus practically surrendered, contributed to some slight extent in maintaining the kingdom against Nureddin. But there were dissensions within, both between Baldwin and his mother, Melisinda, who sought to protract her regency unduly, and between contending parties in Antioch, where the hand of Constance, Raymund’s widow, was a desirable prize[4]; while from without the horns of the crescent were slowly closing in on the kingdom. Nureddin pursued in his policy the tactics which the Mahommedans used against the Franks in battle: he sought to envelop their territories on every side. In 1154 fell Damascus, and the crescent closed perceptibly in the north: the most valuable ally of the kingdom was lost, and the way seemed clear from Aleppo (the peculiar seat of Nureddin’s power) into Egypt. On the other hand, in 1153 Baldwin III. had taken Ascalon, which for fifty years had mocked the efforts of successive kings, and by this stroke he might appear to have closed for Nureddin the route to Egypt, and to have opened a path for its conquest by the Franks. For the future, events hinged on the situation of affairs in Egypt, and in Egypt the fate of the kingdom of Jerusalem was finally decided (see Egypt: History, “Mahommedan Period”). There was a race for the possession of the country between Nureddin’s lieutenant Shīrgūh or Shīrkūh and Amalric I., the brother and successor of Baldwin III.; and in the race Shīrkūh proved the winner.
Since the days of Godfrey and Baldwin I., Egypt had been a
- ↑ We speak of First, Second and Third Crusades, but, more exactly, the Crusades were one continuous process. Scarcely a year passed in which new bands did not come to the Holy Land. We have already noticed the great if disastrous Crusade of 1100–1101, and the Venetian Crusade of 1123–1124; and we may also refer to the Crusade of Henry the Lion in 1172, and to that of Edward I. in 1271–1272—all famous Crusades, which are not reckoned in the usual numbering. Crusades appear to have been dignified by numbers when they followed some crushing disaster—the loss of Edessa in 1144, or the fall of Jerusalem in 1187—and were led by kings and emperors; or when, like the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, they achieved some conspicuous success or failure. But it is important to bear in mind the continuity of the Crusades—the constant flow of new forces eastward and back again westward; for this alone explains why the Crusades formed a great epoch in civilization, familiarizing, as they did, the West with the East.
- ↑ This body of crusaders ultimately reached the Holy Land, where it joined Conrad (who had lost his own original forces), and helped in the fruitless siege of Damascus. The services which it rendered to Portugal were repeated by later crusaders. Crusaders from the Low Countries, England and the Scandinavian north took the coast route round western Europe; and it was natural that, landing for provisions and water, they should be asked, and should consent, to lend their aid to the natives against the Moors. Such aid is recorded to have been given on the Third and the Fifth Crusades.
- ↑ Manuel was an ambitious sovereign, apparently aiming at a world-monarchy, such as was afterwards attempted from the other side by Henry VI. As Henry VI. had designs on Constantinople and the Eastern empire, so Manuel cherished the ambition of acquiring Italy and the Western empire, and he negotiated with Alexander III. to that end in 1167 and 1169: cf. the life of Alexander III. in Muratori, S. R. I. iii. 460.
- ↑ The prize was won by Raynald of Chatillon (q.v.).
