The History of Chivalry

pe-Their Destruction in Asia Minor-Armed Pilgrimages-The Northern Armaments-The Venetians-The Genoese and Pisans-Anecdotes of the Crusaders-Batt

igh office was so extraordinary an honour, that the writers of each nation whose forces contributed to the crusade have declared their own particular prince to have been chosen;[474] and, as it was known that none of these did actually reign, they have furnished each with a suitable excuse for declining the distinguished task. It is probable, however, that the choice of the assembly really fixed at once upon the only person fitted for the office; and (to co

all the troops he could muster, he advanced towards Ascalon, where a large infidel army had assembled, attacked and routed it completely, and thus secured the conquest he had gained.[477] But the virtues of Godfrey were not long destine

oemond been able to accept immediately the sceptre thus held out to him.[479] But the Prince of Antioch[480] was at the moment a prisoner in the hands of some Armenian Turks.[481] The Patriarch, on his part, endeavoured to raise Jerusalem into a simple hierarchy,[482] and to unite

lem under its Latin kings: I shall, however, briefly notice each, that t

y laws, and showed firmness, moderation, and activity in his new station, as well as the great military skill and enterprising spirit he had formerly evinced. He took Assur,[484] Cesarea, and Acre; and added Beritus, Sidon, and

enly surrounded, and carried a prisoner to Khortopret, where he remained in close confinement for several years. During his imprisonment Tyre was added to the territories of Jerusalem,[486] and various successful battles were fought against the Moslems. After his liberation he offered the hand of his daughter to Foulk of Anjou, who had some time before visited Jerusalem upon an armed pilgrimage. The Count of Anjou gladly accepted

m the descendants of the crusaders, and thus divided the forces, and paralyzed all the efforts made by the Christians to establish and secure their yet infirm dominion. At length Zenghi, emir of Aleppo, and Mosul marched against Edessa, the government of which principality had been transferred, on the accession of Baldwin de Bourg to the throne of Jerusalem, to Joscelyn de Courtenay, and from him had descended to his s

he Moslems; and after a captivity of two years, was permitted to pay a ransom, and return to his principality. On arriving, he found that his noble relative, Tancred,[490] had not only preserved, but increased his territories during his absence; and after several years continual warfare with Alexius on the one hand,

tories of his cousin against every attack for three years after the decease of Boemond. At last the consequences of a wound he had received some time before proved fatal, and the noblest and most chivalrous of all the Christian warriors died in the prime of his days. On his death-bed he called to him his wife, and Pontius, the son of the Prince of Tripoli,[494] and, aware of the necessity of union among the Christians, he recommended strongly their marriage, after death should have dissolved the ties between himself

their own schemes of private ambition, leaving the new kingdom of Jerusalem to be supported by its king and Tancred, with an army of less than three thousand men. This penury of forces however, did not long continue, or the Holy Land must soon have resumed the yo

ave seen flying from the land to which shame now drove him back; Stephen, Duke of Burgundy; the Bishops of Laon and of Milan; the Duke of Parma; Hugh, Count of Vermandois,[498] who now again turned towards Jerusalem; and the Count of Nevers: as well as William, Count of Poitiers; Guelf, Duke of Bavaria; and Ida, Marchioness of Austria. At Constantinople the first division met with Raimond of Toulouse,[499] who had returned to that city from the Holy Land, in search of aid to pursue the schemes of a grasping and ambitious spirit. The new crusaders put themselves, in some degree, under his command and guidance; but their first step was to disobey his orders, and to take the way of Paphlagonia, instead of following the track of the former crusade. They were for many days harassed in their march by the Turks, then exposed to famine and drought, and finally attacked and cut to pieces by Kilidge Aslan, who revenged, by the death of more than a hundred thousand Christians,[500] all the losses they had caused him to undergo. The principal leaders made good their escape, first to Constantinople, and then to Antioch; except Hugh of Vermandois, who died of his wound at Tarsus. The Count of Nevers,[501] who commanded the second body, met the same fate as the rest, and

escape alone. The rest were taken, fighting bravely for their lives; and though some were spared, Stephen of Blois[508] was one of several who were only reserved for slaughter. Thus died the leaders of the first crusade who met their fate in Palestine, and thus ended the greater and more general expeditions which had been sanctioned by the council of Clermont, and excited by the preaching of Peter the Hermit. The ultimate fate of that extraordinary individual himself remains in darkness. On the capture of Jerusalem, when the triumphant Europeans spread themselves through the city, the Christian inhabitants flocked forth to acknowledge and gratulate their deliverers.[509] Then it was that all the toils and dangers which the Hermit had endured, were a thousand fold repaid, and that all his enthusiasm met with i

otect the land. Various armaments, also, arrived at the different seaports, bearing each of them immense numbers of military pilgrims, who, after having visited

-and that of the Venetians, who afterward aided in the capture of Tyre. The Genoese[514] and the Pisans, also, from time to time sent out vessels to the coast of Palestine; but these voyages, which combined in a strange man

ch-though resting on evidence so far doubtful as to forbid their introduction as abs

bert gives a curious account of the military spirit which seized upon the children during the siege of Antioch. The boys of the Saracens and the young crusaders, armed with sticks for lances, and stones instead of arrows, would issue from the town and the camp, and under leaders chosen from among themselves,[515] who assumed the names of the principal chiefs, would advance in regular squad

er, took the strange resolution of putting himself at the head of this race of vagabonds, who willingly received him for their king. Among the Saracens these men became well known, under the name of Thafurs (which Guibert translates Trudentes), and were held in great horror from the general persuasion that they fed on the dead bodies of their enemies: a report which was occasionally justified, and which the king of the Thafurs took ca

visions, and tribute, working the machines in the sieges, and, above all, spreading consternation among the Turks, who fear

record than really took place; for we seldom find any mention of clemency to an infidel, without blame being attached to it. Thus the promise of Tancred to save the Turks on the r

els, he pursued his march. The chances of the desultory warfare of those times soon brought back her husband to the spot, and his gratitude was the more ardent as the benefit he had received was unusual and unexpected. After the fatal day of Ramula, while Baldwin, with but fifty companions, besieged in the ill-fortified castle of that place, was dreaming of nothing but how to sell his life dearly, a single Arab approached the gates in the dead of the night, and demanded to sp

found in Jerusalem, a thousand more martyrs were dug up than ever were buried, and we find one of the bishops ferens in pyxide lac sanct? Mari? Virginis. Ghosts[521] of saints, too, were seen on every occasion, and the Devil himself, in more than one instance, appeared to the crusade

, being composed of a shirt of rings, with hose, shoes, and gauntlets, of the same materials. The helmet might also be covered with a chain hood, which completed the dress. In addition to this, it is not unlikely that a cuirass was frequently worn with the shirt, as we find, from the poem of William the Breton on Philip Augustus, that it was even then a common practice to wear a double plastron or cuirass, though plate armour had returned into common use. The shield, charged with some design, but certainly not with regular armorial bearings, together with the lance, sword, and mace, completed the arms, offensive and defensive, of a knight of that day.[524] I cannot find that either the battle-axe or the armour for the horse is mentioned during the crusade; yet we know that both had been made use of long before. The foot-soldiers were in some cases allowed to wear a shirt of mail, but not a complete hauber

hose of the Christians, and in general consisted of the sword and the bow, in the use of which they were exceedingly skilful.[527] We find, however, that the various nations of which the Mahommedan armies were composed used very different weapons; though all were remarkable for the manner in which they el

en sprang up from the European[529] and Asiatic population, the children of parents from different continents being called Pullani. At the same time the country was governed by European laws,[530] which, not coming within the absolute scope of this book, I must avoid treating of, from the very limited space to which I am obliged to confine myself. Suffice it to say, that Godfrey of Bouillon, among the first cares of government, appointed a commission to inquire into the laws and customs of the variou

whole of the crusade, that the combination of the austere rules of the monk, with the warlike

nd an hospital in which pious travellers might be protected and solaced after their arrival at the end of their journey. The influence which the Italian merchants possessed through their commercial relations at the court of the calif, easily obtained permission to establish

the pilgrims, and who, on their admission, subjected themselves to the rule of St. Benedict. All travellers, whether Greeks or Latins

vices they had received, determined to embrace the order, and dedicate their lives also to acts of charity. Godfrey, as a reward for the benefits which these holy men had conferred on his fellow-christians, endowed the Hospital (now in a degree separated from the abbey of St. Mary) with a large estate, in his hereditary dominions in Brabant. Various other gifts were added by the different crusaders of rank; and the Poor Brothers of the Hospital of St. John began to find themselves a rich and flourishing community. It was at this period that they first took the black habit and the white cross of eight points, and subjected themselves, by peculiar vows, to t

ring the wealth and number of the Hospitallers serviceable to the state in other ways than those which they had hitherto pursued. His original profession of course led him to the thought of combining war with devotion, and he proposed to his brethren to reassume the sword, binding themselv

ilitary rank of the Hospitallers, and commanded in battle and in the hospital. The clergy, besides the ordinary duties of their calling, followed the armies as almoners and chaplains; and the serving brothers fought under the knights in battle, or obe

as provided for them by their community, and burning a light during the night, that they might be always prepared against the enemy. Their faults[536] were heavily punished by fasts, by imprisonments, and even by expulsion from the order; and they were taught to look for no reward but

, and bound themselves by oath to obey the commands of their grand master; to defend the Christian faith; to cross the seas in aid of their brethren; to fight unceasingly against the infidel, and never to turn back from less than four adversaries.[538] The founders of this order were Hugh de Paganis and Geoffrey de St. Aldemar-or, according to some, de St. Omer-who had both signalized themselves in the religious wars. Having no fixed dwelling, the Templars were assigned a lodging in a palace in the immediate vicinity of the Temple, from whence they derived the name by which they have since been known. The number of these knights was at first but nine, and during the nine years which followed their institution, they were marked by no particular garb,[539] wearing the secular habit of the day, which was furnished to them by charity alone. The clergy of the temple itself conferred on their body a space of ground between that building and the palace,[540] for the purpose of military exercises, and various other benefices speedily followed. At the council[541] of Troyes, their situation wa

part. He was bound in every thing to obey the commands of his superior, and poverty of course formed a part of his vow. His inclinations, his feelings, his passions, were all to be rendered subservient to the cause he embraced; and he was exhorted to remember, before he

asked three times if he still desired to enter into the order, and on giving an answer in the affirmative, he was invested with the ro

their vows did not embrace[543] the charitable avocations which, with the knights of St. John, filled up the hours unemployed in military duties, the Templars soon added to their pride all that host of vices which so readily step in to occupy the void of idleness. While the knights of St. John, spreading benefit and comfort around th