Joseph François Michaud - The History of the Crusades (Vol.1-3)

France, which then turned anxious looks towards Palestine, no longer demanded of God the deliverance of the holy places, but the return of a king over whose misfortunes they had wept. For a length of time, Suger, who was unable to sustain the royal authority, had endeavoured to recall his master by letters full of tenderness and devotion. Their interview, which proved an affecting spectacle for the French, alarmed the courtiers, who were desirous of awakening suspicions of the fidelity of the minister. A kingdom at peace and a flourishing people were the reply of Suger. The king praised his zeal, and bestowed upon him the title of Father of his Country . Suger enjoyed a great advantage, as he had been the only man of any consequence in Europe who had opposed the crusade. His wise foresight was everywhere the subject of praise, whilst all complaints were directed against St. Bernard. There was not a family in the kingdom that was not in mourning; and the same desolation reigned throughout Germany. So many widows and orphans had never been seen, and the glory of martyrdom, promised to all whose loss was regretted, had no power to dry their tears. The abbot of Clairvaux was accused of having sent Christians to die in the East, as if Europe had been without sepulchres; and the partisans of St. Bernard, who had seen his mission attested by his miracles, not knowing what to reply, were struck with stupor and astonishment. “God, in these latter days,” said they among themselves, “has neither spared his people nor his name; the children of the Church have been given over to death in the desert, or massacred by the sword, or devoured by hunger; the contempt of the Lord has fallen even upon princes; God has left them to wander in unknown ways, and all sorts of pains and afflictions have been strewed upon their paths.” So many evils resulting from a holy war, from a war undertaken in the name of God, confounded the Christians who had most applauded the crusade, and St. Bernard himself was astonished that God had been willing to judge the universe before the time, and without remembrance of his mercy. “What a disgrace is it for us,” said he in an apology addressed to the pope, “for us who went everywhere announcing peace and happiness! Have we conducted ourselves rashly? Have our courses been adopted from fantasy? Have we not followed the orders of the head of the Church and those of the Lord? Why has not God regarded our fasts? Why has he appeared to know nothing of our humiliations? With what patience is he now listening to the sacrilegious and blasphemous voices of the nations of Arabia, who accuse him of having led his people into the desert that they might perish! All the world knows,” added he, “that the judgments of the Lord are just; but this is so profound an abyss, that he may be called happy who is not disgraced by it.” St. Bernard was so thoroughly persuaded that the unfortunate issue of the crusade would furnish the wicked with an excuse for insulting the Deity, that he congratulated himself that so many of the maledictions of men fell upon him, making him as a buckler to the living God. In his apology, he attributes the want of success in the holy war to the disorders and crimes of the Christians; he compares the Crusaders to the Hebrews, to whom Moses had promised, in the name of Heaven, a land of blessedness, and who all perished on their journey, because they had done a thousand things against God.

St. Bernard might have been answered that he ought to have foreseen the excesses and disorders of an undisciplined multitude, and that the brigands called upon to take up the cross were not the people of God. It appears to us, at the present time, that the partisans of the abbot of Clairvaux might have found better reasons for the justification of the holy war. The second crusade, although unfortunate, procured several advantages for Europe. The peace which reigned in the West, caused states to flourish, and repaired, in some sort, the disasters of a distant war. It was held shameful to carry arms in Europe, whilst the Crusaders were contending with the Saracens in the East. Religion itself watched over Germany, which had been so long troubled by civil wars. Conrad, a weak monarch without character, who had lost his army in Asia, was more powerful on his return from Palestine than he had been before he quitted his dominions. The king of France also found his authority increased, from having been defended during his absence by the thunders of the Church and the eloquence of St. Bernard. [291]The crusade gave him a pretext for imposing taxes upon his people, and placed him at the head of a numerous army, where he accustomed the great vassals to consider him as their supreme head.

Still, if it is true that the divorce of Eleanor of Guienne was one of the consequences of the crusade, it must be admitted that the evils which resulted from this war were much greater for the French monarchy than any good it derived from it. The kingdom which then lost the province of Aquitaine, which fell into the hands of the English, was doomed to become the prey of the children that Eleanor had by her second marriage. A following age saw the descendants of these children crowned kings of France and England in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris, and the successors of Louis VII. found themselves almost reduced to seek an asylum in foreign lands.

Flattery undertook to console Louis the young, for the reverses he had experienced in Asia, and represented him, upon several medals, [292]as the conqueror of the East. He left Palestine with the project of returning thither; and in his journey to Rome, he promised the pope to place himself at the head of a new crusade.

And never did the Christian colonies stand in greater need of assistance. From the time the French quitted Palestine not a day passed without some new misfortune befalling the Christians established in Syria. A very short time after the siege of Damascus, Raymond of Poictiers lost his life in a battle against the Saracens, and his head was sent to the caliph of Bagdad. Josselin, after having lost the city of Edessa, himself fell into the hands of the infidels, and died in misery and despair in the prisons of Aleppo. Two emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain assassinated Raymond II., count of Tripoli, under the walls of his capital, which was plunged into trouble and desolation. Two young Mussulman princes, of the family of Ortok, excited by their mother, believed that the moment was come to reconquer Jerusalem from the Christians. An army which they had assembled, came and pitched its camp on the Mount of Olives, and the holy city only owed its safety to the courage of some knights who induced the people to take arms. Noureddin had got possession of all the Christian cities of Mesopotamia, and several places in the principality of Antioch had opened their gates to him. Arrived on the shores of the sea, which he had never before seen, he bathed in its waves, as if to take possession of it; and, still accompanied by victory, he established the seat of his empire at Damascus, whence he menaced the city of Jerusalem.

The afflicting news of these occurrences created great sorrow among the Christians of the West, and the sovereign pontiff exhorted the faithful once again to take up the cross and arms; but neither the danger of the Christians beyond the sea, nor the exhortations of the pope, could change the opinion which the French had formed against distant wars. Louis VII. was obliged to renounce his intention of returning to the Holy Land. At this period a circumstance occurred which it is very difficult to give credit to. The abbot Suger, who had so strongly opposed the first expedition, formed the resolution of succouring Jerusalem; and in an assembly held at Chartres, exhorted the princes, barons, and bishops to enrol themselves under the banners of the holy war. As he was only answered by the silence of grief and astonishment, he formed the project of attempting an enterprise alone in which two monarchs had failed. Suger, at the age of seventy, resolved to raise an army, to maintain it at his own expense, and to lead it himself into Palestine. In accordance with the devotion of the time, he went to Tours, to visit the tomb of St. Martin, in order to obtain the protection of Heaven, and already ten thousand pilgrims had taken up arms, and were preparing to follow him into Asia, when death came to prevent the execution of his designs.