A History of the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

  This developing interest in the Near and Middle East has been researched and chronicled by others. One aspect, however, which has not been looked at in detail is the treatment of the crusades as an historical phenomenon and source of imagery. Eighteenth-century historians seem to have taken a rather sceptical view of the crusades, consistent with their attitude towards the Middle Ages and the concept of chivalry as a whole. In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon wrote that the crusades had ‘checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe’, diverting energies which would have been more profitably employed at home. Voltaire and David Hume were similarly dismissive and the Scottish historian William Robertson described the crusading movement as a ‘singular monument of human folly’, although he did allow that it had some beneficial consequences such as the development of commerce and the Italian cities.

  Nineteenth-century commentators were not uncritical of aspects of the crusading movement, but overall saw it through rather more rose-coloured spectacles, as a manifestation of Christian chivalry engaged against an exotic Muslim foe. Whilst there is always a danger in drawing out a particular theme and thereby giving it undue prominence, an examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images of the crusades, showing the development of this theme in a wide variety of ways and for a variety of purposes, is worthwhile. More generally, it illuminates modern perceptions of both the Middle East and the Middle Ages.

  It is logical to start with those who observed the Holy Land at first hand. Whilst the main interest was undoubtedly in sites mentioned in the Bible, a number of travellers also seem to have been conscious of the crusading heritage. Not all were sympathetic towards the crusading movement. Thus Edward Daniel Clarke, in his Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, published in 1812, commented: ‘It is a very common error to suppose everything barbarous on the part of the mahometans, and to attribute to the Christians, in that period, more refinement than they really possessed. A due attention to history may show that the Saracens, as they were called, were in fact more enlightened than their invaders; nor is there any evidence for believing they ever delighted in works of destruction … The treachery and shameful conduct of the Christians, during their wars in the Holy Land, have seldom been surpassed.’

  The crusades were, however, generally seen in a more favourable light. The French writer and historian Châteaubriand set out from Paris in July 1806, reaching Constantinople in the September and his ultimate goal, Jerusalem, on 7 October. On his return to France, he wrote an account of his travels, Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, published in 1811, which has been described as the most widely read book on Palestine in the early nineteenth century. Within three years it had gone through twelve editions. As a child, Châteaubriand had been read tales of chivalry by his mother and told of his ancestor Geoffrey IV of Châteaubriand, who went on crusade with Louis IX, and his Journal is permeated with references to the crusading movement: ‘We travelled to Jerusalem under the banner of the cross. I will perhaps be the last Frenchman leaving my country to voyage to the Holy Land with the ideas, feelings, and aims of a pilgrim.’ Châteaubriand criticized those who questioned the morality or justice of the crusades and seems to have had little sympathy with or understanding of the Muslims. Whilst in Jerusalem, he read Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, a sixteenth-century epic poem on the First Crusade, which seems to have been extremely popular, running to numerous editions and translations and being treated almost as a primary source. The high point of Châteaubriand’s pilgrimage was when he was made a knight of the Holy Sepulchre at the site of Christ’s tomb with the sword of Godfrey of Bouillon. As such, he vowed himself ready to join his fellow knights, fully armed, for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the ‘dominion of the infidel’. Judging by the accounts of other nineteenth-century travellers to Jerusalem, this ceremony seems to have become almost a standard feature of visits by prominent Europeans, the key elements being Godfrey of Bouillon’s spur, chain, and sword, with a feast afterwards paid for by the new knights. In a Muslim city it was not without irony and a later observer commented that these emotive ceremonies took place ‘within earshot of the Muslim effendis who were sitting on the porch, calmly smoking chibooks, or drinking sherbet, in simple unconsciousness of the tenor of the vows and the promises made’.

  The crusades also attracted the attention of the future prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. In 1831, when he was aged 27, and six years before he was elected to the House of Commons, Disraeli went on the Grand Tour, visiting Constantinople, Cairo, and Jerusalem. In the latter city, in addition to the more famous sites, he also visited the tombs of the crusader kings. After his return to England, Disraeli retained a fascination with the East, its sites, and history, and it formed the background to several of his books, including his apparent favourite Tancred (1847), the last of the Young England trilogy, subtitled The New Crusader. The hero of Tancred is a young nobleman who has all the advantages that wealth and power can provide. He decides however to reject the lure of earthly possessions and status in favour of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, following the example of one of his ancestors, who had taken part in the crusades and reputedly saved the life of Richard the Lionheart. In the novel, the crusader’s exploits are commemorated in a series of Gobelin tapestries displayed in a chamber at Tancred’s family home known as the crusaders’ gallery. Disraeli laments: ‘More than six hundred years before, it [England] had sent its king, and the flower of its peers and people, to rescue Jerusalem from those whom they considered infidels and now, instead of the third crusade, they expend their superfluous energies in the construction of railroads.’ References to the crusades also appear in some of his other novels. For example in Coningsby the fancy dress costumes at Eton’s Montem ceremony include ‘heroes of the holy sepulchre’ and the Marquis of Sidonia comments: ‘It was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades … Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions, never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.’

  The American author Mark Twain visited the battlefield of Hattin during his tour of the Holy Land (The Innocents Abroad, 1869) and, although he might have been cynical about the wonders of Italian Renaissance art, he was much impressed by the reputed sword of Godfrey of Bouillon: ‘No blade in Christendom wields such enchantment as this—no blade of all that rust in the ancestral halls of Europe is able to invoke such visions of romance in the brain of him who looks upon it … It stirs within a man every memory of the holy wars that has been sleeping in his brain for years and peoples his thoughts with mail clad images … It speaks to him of Baldwin and Tancred, and princely Saladin and great Richard of the Lionheart.’

  Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany also undertook a tour of the Holy Land, Egypt, and Syria, arranged by Thomas Cook, in 1898. The aim of the trip was to dedicate the church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem, which had been built by the German Protestants. In Jerusalem, however, the Kaiser also visited the newly founded German Templar colony and, visualizing himself as a crusader, or at least the heir of crusaders, he wished to enter the old city on horseback. Traditionally this form of entry was reserved for conquerors, and to enable the Kaiser to have his way the city wall near the Jaffa Gate was torn down and the moat filled in. He thus rode into the city, but not through a gate. To heighten the drama, the Kaiser wore a Field Marshal’s ceremonial white uniform. In Damascus, he placed a satin flag and a bronze laurel wreath, with the inscription ‘from one great emperor to another’ on Saladin’s tomb. The wreath was brought back to Britain as a trophy after the First World War by T. E. Lawrence and is now on display in the Imperial War Museum in London.

  Lawrence was of course himself very conscious of the crusading past. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on crusader castles and one of his ancestors, Sir Robert Lawrence, was reputed to have accompanied Richard I at the siege of Acre. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence wrote: ‘I felt that one more sight of Syria woul
d put straight the strategic ideas given me by the crusaders and the first Arab conquest, and adjust them to two new factors, the railways and Murray in Sinai.’ And in a tribute after his death, E. M. Forster referred to the notion of a crusade, of a body of men leaving one country to do noble deeds in another, which possessed Lawrence in Arabia and later in his airforce career.

  The 1830s and 1840s saw the establishment of European consulates in the Holy Land—Britain (1838), France, Sardinia, and Prussia (1843), Austria (1849), and Spain (1854)—and the memoirs of the British Consul, James Finn, who held office from 1845 to 1863, provide an interesting illustration of national rivalries, some of which dated back to the time of the crusades. In fact the consuls used their countries’ crusading credentials to enhance their own positions. The French consul apparently insisted on precedence over his fellows, on the grounds that his royal master was ‘Protector of Christians in the East’, and his Sardinian counterpart wore the uniform of the representative of the King of Jerusalem, a title claimed by both his monarch and the Austrian Emperor. Finn observed of the French claims: ‘It is true that the French in Turkey have a high position to maintain, not only that they are by general consent Protectors of Christianity in the east, but in virtue of their claim to be regarded as the hereditary successors of the crusaders. In their views, other nations were then suffered to associate with them in the holy wars; but Peter the Hermit was a Frenchman; the Council of Clermont was a French Council and Godfrey of Bouillon with his brother Baldwin, were Frenchmen and the last crusade was headed by Saint Louis in person.’ There were a number of visits by European royalty to Jerusalem in the midnineteenth century and, in her reminiscences, Mrs Finn recorded that Edward, Prince of Wales and later Edward VII, pitched his tent in 1862 under the great pine tree where Godfrey of Bouillon had made camp in 1099, ‘though the Pasha did not know that’. It was also noted that Edward was the first heir to the British throne to set foot in Palestine since the crusade of the Lord Edward in 1270.

  The Victorians were much attracted by the ideas and precepts of medieval chivalry and two of the four volumes of Kenelm Digby’s popular chivalric manual, The Broad Stone of Honour, were named after heroes of the First Crusade, Godefridus and Tancredus. Responding to some of the arguments advanced by eighteenth-century sceptics, Digby wrote that the crusades were ‘easily justified on every principle of justice and policy’; that the crusaders’ crimes had been ‘enormously overstated’; and that it was lawful for Christians to oblige the Saracens ‘not to injure religion by their persuasions or open persecutions’. Godfrey and Tancred were his particular crusading heroes, but he also praised the ordinary crusaders. ‘Germany, France and England poured forth the flower of their youth and nobility; men who were led by no base interest or selfish expectation, but who went with single hearts renouncing the dearest blessings of their country and station to defend the cause which was dear to them, and to protect from insult and wrong the persecuted servants of their saviour.’

  Those who seemed to their contemporaries to epitomize the chivalrous ideal were sometimes described as crusaders. For example, in 1837 George Smythe, Lord Strangford, wrote of his friend Lord John Manners:

  Thou shouldst have lived, dear friend, in those old days

  When deeds of high and chivalrous enterprise

  Were gendered by the sympathy of eyes

  That smiled on valour—or by roundelays

  Sung by the palmer minstrel to their praise

  Then surely some Provençal tale of old

  That spoke of Zion and Crusade, had told

  Thy knightly name and thousand gentle ways.

  And Charles Lister, son of Lord Ribblesdale and later a First World War casualty, who visited Constantinople with a group of friends, was, perhaps like Disraeli’s Tancred, ‘inspired with the spirit of the old crusaders’.

  Somewhat later, John Buchan described Aubrey Herbert, who served as a British intelligence officer in the Near East, in similar terms as ‘a sort of survivor from crusading times’. Herbert, with a dash of T. E. Lawrence, another of Buchan’s friends, undoubtedly served as the model for Sandy Arbuthnot in the second of Buchan’s Hannay novels, Greenmantle. ‘In old days he would have led a crusade or discovered a new road to the Indies. Today he merely roamed as the spirit took him.’ And in a later novel, The Island of Sheep, Arbuthnot speaks on Near Eastern matters in the House of Lords. It seems likely that the denouement of Greenmantle was originally intended to take place in Constantinople, the action forming a kind of crusade against a German plot to foment Islamic revolution against the land routes to India, but the story had to be revised after the disastrous Dardanelles campaign. In a very different context, the Norwegian explorer Amundsen saw himself as ‘a kind of crusader in Arctic exploration. I wanted to suffer for a cause—not in the burning desert on the way to Jerusalem but in the frosty North.’

  There was clearly great pride in any crusading ancestry and references to crusading forebears can be found in heraldic devices. For example, the motto of the Ward family, Viscounts of Bangor, is sub cruce salus and their heraldic supporters are a knight in armour with a red cross on his breast and a Turkish prince beturbaned with his hands in fetters. The de Vere family have a five pointed star (mullet), which is believed to mark their crusading credentials. In 1824, a translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata listed ‘such of the English nobility and gentry as went on the crusades’, including Roger de Clinton, an ancestor of the Earls of Lincoln and present Duke of Newcastle, slain in the battle of Antioch, and Ingelram de Fiennes, ancestor of the Lords Saye and Sele. Some families kept and displayed to visitors charm stones and mysterious objects which family history linked with the crusades. For example, the Macphersons of Cluny had a belt of red morocco leather, reputed to have been brought back from the Holy Land by a crusader, which was believed to assist the safe delivery of women in childbirth.

  The same was true of nineteenth-century France. In his memoirs, King Louis Philippe wrote that crusade armorials became like ‘hereditary fiefs’, and there was fierce competition in the 1830s amongst French families to have their coats of arms included in the Salles des croisades at Versailles, reserved by the king for those whose ancestors had brought glory to France on crusade. In fact some families resorted to forged charters, purchased from the industrious Monsieur Courtois, in order to prove their case. Rather appropriately their claims were examined by the Prince de Joinville.

  Crusading ancestors were also cited by the heroes of novels. G. A. Lawrence’s Guy Livingstone not only has the face of ‘one of those stone crusaders, who look up at us from their couches in the Round Church of the Temple’, but is the descendant of Sir Malise ‘Point de Fer’ Livingstone, a participant in the Third Crusade, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Richard I of England at Ascalon. And in his novel Guy Mannering, Sir Walter Scott makes a Galloway laird tell an English visitor: ‘I wish you could have heard my father’s stories about the old fights of the Macdingawaies … how they sailed to the Holy Land—that is to Jerusalem and Jericho … and how they brought hame relics, like those the catholics have, and a flag that’s up yonder in the garret.’

  Given this background, it is not surprising that in England, for example, the nineteenth century saw attempts to revive the military orders and even to launch a crusade. The Knights Hospitallers of St John, now commonly called the Knights of Malta, had survived Napoleon’s capture of their base in 1798, and as we shall see there was after 1827 an attempt to revive the English langue, involving a colourful group of Victorian eccentrics. As for the Templars, the key players in an effort to revive the order in England were Sir Sidney Smith, the heroic defender of Acre against the French in 1799, who clearly saw himself as a latterday crusader and Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt, uncle of the poet Alfred Tennyson. Smith was associated with the French masonic neo-Templar Order and was recognized by them as grand prior of England. He ceded the title to George III’s son the Duke of Sussex, in an effort to promote the fortune
s of the order, but few seem to have signed up and the English branch did not long survive its founders.

  The chief promoter of the crusade was Sir William Hillary, a knight of the English langue and founder of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. When he heard the news in 1840 that Acre had returned to the control of the sultan of Turkey, he wrote a pamphlet Suggestions for the Christian reoccupation of the Holy Land as a sovereign state by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Hillary noted: ‘The Christian occupation of the Holy Land has, for many centuries, been the most momentous of any subject which had ever engaged the attention of mankind.’ He envisaged the establishment of a protectorate, which would both secure Acre in Christian hands and restore the order of St John to its original splendour. In August 1841, he published an Address to the Knights of St. John on the Christian occupation of the Holy Land, which again uses language reminiscent of medieval crusade propaganda. ‘It only remains for me, with all deference, to entreat my brother knights … to form a new crusade, not as in days of yore, to convert the Holy Land into a field of carnage and of bloodshed, but a crusade of peace.’ The English langue did its best to promote Hillary’s scheme, but, given its own battle to achieve recognition and the political complexities of the time, all its efforts came to nought.