of peasant levies and mercenary troops of the lower CHAP. IV. CHAP. IV. The Germans, under their Emperor Conrad, led the way through Hungary to Constantinople, and were followed by the French king. Each host was estimated at 70,000 men. Such jealous welcome did the crusaders receive from the Greek emperor, that a French prelate strongly recommended the conquest of Constantinople, as the first and necessary preliminary to a solid footing in the East. This counsel was rejected for the time. The Germans crossed the Bosphorus. One might have expected that the experience of the first crusade would not have been lost, and that at least the itinerary of a march across Asia Minor would have been known. But the crusaders of 1148 were as ignorant as those of the previous century: and the German emperor, led astray by his guides, surprised and overwhelmed by the enemy, lost almost all his forces, and was obliged to fall back, a suppliant, upon the French. These, appalled by the obstacles which the Germans could not overcome, turned their course southwards and proceeded along the coast to Ephesus. From thence they ascended the course of the Meander, in order to gain the gulph of Satalia and embark for Palestine. In this march the army was well nigh cut off. The vanguard, with some of the bravest knights, under the command of the Count of Savoy, the king's uncle, and the Baron de Rancogne, advanced too far and pitched their tents in a valley. The Turks instantly fell upon them, and destroyed numbers, ere the king could come to the rescue. Even when he did, he met with stubborn resistance, and was obliged to leap upon a rock and defend himself alone upon it with his sword for a considerable time. This defeat, graphically described by Odon de Deuil, who was present, disgusted the army with feudal leaders; and if the king's uncle had not been one of those who betrayed them into the disaster, they would have demanded their punishment. It was then decided that henceforth the Master of the Templars and another The IV. knight should have the command, and that the great CHAP. personages should follow the experienced leaders. army thus reached Satalia, which, like Ephesus and most of the maritime regions, belonged to the Greeks. The king proposed to send off by sea the foot soldiers and poorer people of the army, he himself and his knights proceeding by land. But the knights pre tended they had lost their horses, and preferred themselves to proceed by sea, and allow the commonalty to make their way by land. The king consented, and set sail with his knights, leaving the remainder under the care of the Count of Flanders, who also made his escape. The great body of French crusaders, thus abandoned to the mercy of the Greeks and Turks, were maltreated by both, the Greeks making slaves of them, the Turks compelling those who submitted to embrace Mahommedanism. The chivalry of the crusade fared not much better than the commonalty. Louis and his knights reached Antioch. Its prince, Raymond, was uncle to Queen Eleanor, and he besought the King of France to aid in crushing the neighbouring Mussulman chiefs. But the king was bent on proceeding to Jerusalem, being annoyed, amongst his other misfortunes, by the disaffection of his wife, who openly showed contempt for having but a pious husband. Unfortunately, the opinion of Eleanor began to be shared by all in France, on account of the ill success of the crusade. After having laid unsuccessful siege to Damascus, Louis returned to France in the latter months of 1149. The middle of this century marks a complete change in the political scene, in the interests which occupied it, and even in the personages prominent. Suger, abbot of St. Denis, the school companion of Louis the Fat, and the inheritor of his political views, who had governed France for almost half a century in a spirit of nationality, and with a prescience of its future grandeur, expired soon after the king's return; and the great CHAP. IV. idea of his policy expired with him. The first act of Louis, after he had lost his old minister, was to divorce his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was equally ready to take the initiative in the separation. She complained that her husband was a monk, not a king. He complained of her preference for others, even for a gallant Saracen, when they were in the Holy Land, where Eleanor sympathised more with her uncle, the Prince of Antioch, and the old crusaders, than with the ascetic spirit of her husband. A divorce was obtained on the plea of too near relationship. Eleanor, in withdrawing from Beaujency, where the divorce was pronounced, to Poictiers, her capital, as Duchess of Aquitaine, was successively waylaid by two suitors — the young Count of Chartres and a Plantagenet prince. She escaped both, in order to throw herself into the arms of the eldest Plantagenet, the future Henry the Second of England. Later historians moan over this inconceivable act of Louis, who gave away to his arch rival, Henry, the possession of the whole south-west of France. But Louis, at least since he lost Suger, seemed little possessed by the thought that France was to be a country between Rhine and Pyrenees; he thought of his house, not his country, deemed a son of greater importance than a province, and despaired of Eleanor bearing him one. Louis soon after married Constance, a princess of Castille, and took the opportunity to marry his sister to the Count of Toulouse, as a support, no doubt, against the future enmity of Aquitaine. St. Bernard died about this time, partly of chagrin at his unfortunate crusade. The saint made amends for his want of success against Mahommedanism by his vigorous persecution of the numerous sects which had sprung up in the south of France, as well as in Italy, and of which the mainspring and the faith was the denial of the authority and the doctrines of Rome. They questioned the Real Presence, scorned Purgatory as well as the revenues which the priests derived from them, insisting that poverty and simplicity were the sole attributes of the church, which, to be true, should resemble that of the apostles. These sectaries were stigmatised by the Church as Manichean, as dissolute, as condemning marriage, and as practising infamy even more than impiety. Numbers accordingly were burned and massacred; but the living protest against Rome still remained, and was propagated amongst the populations of southern France and northern Italy. The most important changes were those effected by the death of Stephen, and the accession of Henry the Second to the throne of England and to the possession of the entire west of France. From this time, indeed from Henry's marriage with Eleanor, commenced the first period of serious rivalry between France and England, that of Philip and Louis the Fat with the early Norman kings being of comparatively trifling importance; yet more than half a century's struggle between the Plantagenets and Capetians was carried on in the same spirit as the prelude to it. Louis the Seventh was apparently overwhelmed by the superior power of his rival; whilst Henry the Second, like Henry the First, had no idea of crushing Louis, of destroying or conquering France. He had even less feeling of English nationality than Louis the Young had of French. To keep the possessions of the house of Plantagenet together, and its unruly barons in obedience, sufficed him, without any aim of consolidating those possessions into a permanent empire. In one respect, indeed, the extent of the dominions of the English king and the large continental portion of them, if not diminishing his importance, at least lowered his position. The mere circumstance of doing homage to another prince, however empty in appearance, was still sown thick with the seeds of future weakness. And it is a great cause of astonishment how CHAP. IV. |