recovery of the geography, and in the study of the antiquities of the period, through exploration in the East; * but a history of the country which was the scene of these enterprises, founded on the contemporary documents of the age, has not yet appeared in England. For many years Herr Röhricht especially has devoted himself to the question, publishing many valuable materials in concise form; and his latest production is a chronological arrangement of some fifteen hundred documents, including letters, agreements, charters, land-grants, and other writings, which cast a clear and accurate light on the ideas, manners, and aims of the various actors in the very interesting and picturesque events which chroniclers of the two centuries in question have recorded. It is not proposed to examine these materials in detail; but it may be useful and interesting to the general reader to point out some of the chief results of such research, and their bearing on the history of England and of Western Europe. The main questions include the causes which led to the Crusades, the organisation which resulted in the East, the effects of the two contrary policies which prevailed, and which were due to the conditions of European and Asiatic society, and finally the influence of the East on the growth of civilisation in the West. The first attack on Syria was due to quite natural and spontaneous causes; the succeeding tenure of the Holy Land was not a unique event; the loss of Palestine was the equally inevitable outcome of weakness in Europe; and the results of English intervention were far more useful and important than an historian like Green seems willing to admit. Muhammad did not command the extermination of Christians. He placed the People of the Gospel' next to Moslems, and before the Jews. Omar accepted their submission, and the tolerance of the great Khalifs of Damascus and Baghdad left little cause of complaint to pilgrims. The Syrian monks taught to the Arab literati of the eighth and ninth centuries the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, and the relations of East and West were friendly during the A useful compilation called 'The Crusade of Richard I.' was published by the late Mr. T. A. Archer in 1888 (English History from Contemporary Writers); but the author's Oriental information is rather weak, and he has not completely grasped the topography of the campaign. He speaks of tarantulas in Palestine and of jerboas in the Carmel plain. The Arabic names also require correction. greatest age of Arab power, when Charlemagne and Harûner-Rashid exchanged presents. The tyranny which at length roused the wrath of Europe was due to the conquest of the Arabs by the rough Turkish Seljuks in the north, and to the fanatical folly of the heretic Sultans of Egypt in the south. The merchants of Amalfi had founded trading centres in Antioch and Jerusalem long before the First Crusade, and their commerce was imperilled by Turkish exactions and prejudices; but it is to the Norman conquest of the Two Sicilies that we owe the extension of Norman rule to the east coast of the Mediterranean, and this conquest due to their ambition was made practicable by the decay of the Arab power, and by the religious quarrels of Islam. When Robert Guiscard had proved that neither Greek nor Saracen could stand before the better weapons of the mailed knights from Normandy, the ambitious younger sons of European princes began to dream of kingdoms to be carved with the sword in lands not more sunny than Sicily itself, and much resembling the new Norman State in climate and in fertility. The wealth and richness of these lands had been made known by Italian traders, and by palmers throughout Europe. The conditions prevailing among the petty Turkish rulers, who hated and fought against each other, were well appreciated in the West. The woes of the pilgrims excited general sympathy among all classes; the papal policy favoured an enterprise which Hildebrand had preached ten years before; and the voice of Peter the Hermit fell on willing ears among princes and peasants alike. The ambition of rulers, the restlessness of a halfsavage populace, not yet bound at home by increased wealth and equal law, the pressure of population in poor countries, and the longing to enjoy the wealth accumulated by the infidel, all combined with religious enthusiasm to urge men to attempt a further conquest. But this conquest was not made by any undisciplined horde of ill-armed peasants. The great mobs which followed Peter to Byzantium perished miserably on the shores of Asia Minor when first they met the Turks. The wellled and disciplined army which Godefroy, Bauduin, and Boemund carried over Phrygia and Cilicia to Antioch was guided by experienced soldiers and wise statesmen. It was the only Frank army that ever succeeded in reaching Syria by this difficult road, and all the later French and German expeditions coming by land in subsequent years perished on From the time of the First Crusade every suc the way. cessful attempt to reach the shores of the Holy Land was made by sea; and the safety of the new kingdom depended on its treaties with the seaside cities of Italy. The great leaders who defeated the Turks at Dorilæum, near Nicea, who, after the terrible winter before Antioch and the treacherous surrender of that city, again defeated the full strength of the Turkish Sultan of Mosul before its walls, who marched unopposed to Jerusalem and took it by assault, who in a few years had organised great provinces, reaching from the Taurus to the borders of Egypt, and from the sea to the Syrian desert, and far beyond Euphrates to the Armenian mountains, and almost to the Tigrisprovinces which they held, and which their descendants strengthened, during more than half a century—had already learned the art of war in hard-fought campaigns before they dreamed of their future triumph. They were no mere fanatics who fought for a sepulchre and a cross, but statesmen who, by their tolerance, secured willing obedience among subjects of another race and creed, and who, from the first, were willing to hold conference and to make treaties with Moslem rulers. Churchmen and peasants might look with horror on the infidel, but the object of the leaders was peaceful possession of that which they won by military skill. To quote the great poet of the crusade'Fu de' pensier nostri ultimo segno Espugnar di Sion le nobil mura, E sottrarre i Cristiani al giogo indegno Nè sia chi neghi al peregrin devoto D' adorar la gran tomba e sciorre il voto.' * Godefroy de Bouillon was the son of Eustace II., Count of Boulogne and Lens, born 1061. He had fought against Rudolph of Suabia when he was only sixteen, and had entered Rome in the cause of Anaclete, the Anti-Pope, as a vassal of the true Emperor. In 1096 he was in the prime of manhood, loved and respected by all. Wise and prudent, a faithful friend, a sincere counsellor, strong and brave, but modest and courteous to all, this tall red-bearded knight was so pure of life that no slanderous tongue could report against him either a cruel or unmanly deed, or any lapse from virtue. By the acclamation of all the ambitious leaders *Tasso, Ger. Lib.' i, 23. VOL. CLXXIX. NO. CCCLXVII. M whom he had helped and encouraged and kept together in the long troubles of a march extending over a thousand miles, he was chosen the first ruler of the Latin kingdom which was founded after the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099, but he refused to wear a crown of gold where his Master had worn a crown of thorns, and held Jerusalem not as a vassal of any temporal prince, but as a subject of the Church of Rome. He completed his victory by the defeat of the Sultan of Egypt at Ascalon in the following month; and he laid the basis of a civil government in Palestine by the promulgation of the code entitled 'Les Assises de Jérusalem. But his glorious reign was a short one, for he died in the year 1100. Of his brother Baldwin, who was chosen by the Christians of Edessa as ruler of a province which lay astride the Euphrates at the foot of the Taurus, and which equalled the kingdom of Jerusalem in extent, we are told by a Russian abbot, who saw him when he succeeded Godfrey as the first Latin King of the Holy City, that he was a man of great 'kindness and humility, and not given to pride.' Anselm of Canterbury wrote to him* admonishing him so to rule the Jerusalem on this earth that hereafter he might reign in Jerusalem above; and such advice was heeded during the eighteen years of his reign, when the justice of the Franks was admitted even by Moslems, and the borders of the kingdom strengthened and extended. Baldwin du Bourg, cousin of these famous brothers, was equally brave and successful. To him Pope Honorius II. wrote, in 1128 A.D., to say that he had heard the king's rule to be most upright and wise,† and to confirm his dignity as a vassal of the Church; but unfortunately his wife was an Armenian, and his two half-Oriental daughters were very unlike the great ladies of the West. The courage of the Frankish dames, and the influence of chivalry on the customs of the age, are equally remarkable as features of the times; and the decay of the Latin race in Syria was due rather to intermarriage with natives than to any effects of a climate not more trying than that of Sicily. As regards their courage, we must remember that they went to the East with their husbands, that in some cases they bore children almost on the field of battle, and sailed over wintry seas with infants a few weeks old. They held wedding feasts in besieged castles, and defended the same when their knights Regesta No. 122. Regesta No. 37. were in the field. One of the most picturesque incidents of Saladin's career is related by Ernoul in connexion with the siege of Kerak in 1184 A.D. Humphrey of Toron, stepson of Renaud of Chatillon, had just married Isabel, who was to become heiress of the kingdom, and the chronicler relates that In the day that Saladin came before Crac, Humphrey espoused Ysabiaus, the king's youngest sister. (Renaud) sent to Saladin on the marriage of his son bread and wine and beeves and sheep; and sent to salute him, for he had often borne him in his arms when he (Renaud) was a captive. . . . When Saladin saw the present he was very glad, and received it and gave much thanks; and he asked those who brought it in which tower the bride and bridegroom were, and went round, and they showed it him. Then went Saladin and had it cried everywhere that none should be so bold as to attack that tower, or shoot against it in the assault.' The terms so observed by the chivalrous opponents of the twelfth century contrast with the cruelties of Bibars and Kelaun in the thirteenth; and the spirit of chivalry is evinced quite as clearly in the charters and legal documents of the age: for in all cases the knight signs by 'assent of his lady,' and the heiress by 'assent of her lord.' It was not enough among the gallant gentles of this great period of Syrian prosperity that a knight should be brave and strong and just. He must also be humble and courteous, merciful and faithful, and his good name was the patent of his rank. Whatever they thought of the dogmas of the Church (and they often did not believe them), they carried into practice the commands of their religion in their daily conduct. St. Louis, in the thirteenth century, drew the picture (as related by Joinville) of the very perfect knight and Christian gentleman, though among the dissolute and cowardly lords who followed him there were few who regarded the virtues through which the Franks became able to rule their kingdom for three generations with success. Fulk of Anjou, father of Geoffrey Plantagenet, married Milicent, the eldest daughter of Baldwin du Bourg. He was not tall, like the first three kings, but small and red-bearded; he, too, was noted for his valour and generosity, his courtesy and prudence, and, though troubled by the intrigues of his wife, his reign was prosperous during the thirteen years which closed when he met his death by a fall from his horse, while hunting a hare at Acre, when only fifty-three |