armour shining in the Eastern sun, the old Latin hymn sung above the clang of steel under their great banners when they first see the Holy City, golden and mystic under the deep Syrian sky. One pictures, above the lines of steel, the English leopards, the lilies of France, the great sable eagle of the Empire, and then the other coats of the great houses of Europe—chevrons and fesses and pales—till they plant above the Holy Sepulchre the banner with the five potent crosses, argent and or, unearthly, wonderful, as should be the arms of the heavenly city. And, at any rate, some of the Crusaders were very valiant knights and courteous gentlemen. St. Lewis IX of France (1226–1270) is the one example of a king who was entirely perfect, and Godfrey of Bouillon, our Richard Lionheart, old Frederick Redbeard the Emperor, were at least eminently picturesque and imposing persons. But then, all through the Crusades, there is the other side, horrible cruelty,—as soon as they took Jerusalem (July 15, 1099) they massacred all the Jews and Moslems in the city—and then they quarrelled hopelessly among themselves. Each Crusade was less ideal than the last, till the whole movement whittled out into hordes of the riff-raff of the West pouring across Eastern Europe, plundering, burning, slaying, the pretence of fighting for the Holy Sepulchre now the merest farce.[1]
And the Crusades had no lasting effect. To save themselves
- ↑ This is what one should remember about the Crusades: 1st Crusade, 1095–1099. 1095, Council of Clermont (Peter the Hermit, Urban II). Godfrey of Bouillon, Adhemar of Puy Legate. 1099, Jerusalem taken. Kingdom of Jerusalem, Duchy of Antioch, County of Edessa. 2nd Crusade, 1147, preached by St. Bernard. Conrad III, Emperor, Lewis VII of France. Utter failure. 3rd Crusade, 1189 (Pope Clement III). Selaheddin had reconquered Jerusalem, Frederick I, Redbeard Emperor, Philip II, Augustus of France, Richard Lionheart of England. They conquer a strip of coast, not Jerusalem. Frederick I † 1190. 4th Crusade, 1202 (Innocent III). Baldwin of Flanders and Boniface of Monteferrata. Sack of Constantinople, 1204. Latin Empire, 1204–1261. Crusade of the Children, 1212. Thirty thousand children shipped off to conquer by miracle. All are made slaves by the Moslem pirates. 5th Crusade, 1228. Frederic II, Emperor, reconquers Jerusalem for about twenty years. 6th Crusade, 1248. St. Lewis IX of France taken prisoner at Damietta, in Egypt, and ransomed for a huge sum. 7th Crusade, 1270. St. Lewis IX to Tunis. He dies of the pest on the Assumption. 1291, Acre, the last Christian possession, lost.
