In Distant Lands

by Lars Brownworth

  The fact that all of this was perpetrated by men wearing crosses on their armor was the cruelest blow. For the Orthodox Byzantines, the Catholic westerners could no longer be considered Christians in any meaningful sense. They were, as an eyewitness wrote, “exposed as frauds... trampling on the cross for the sake of a little gold.”

  In Rome, Pope Innocent III was horrified when he heard the news. He furiously condemned everyone involved in the 'crusade', lamenting that they had set out to serve Christ but had instead 'bathed their swords in Christian blood.'

  Papal censure, however, had no effect. The damage had already been done and there was no going back now. The crusaders chose one of their own leaders – the pliant Baldwin of Flanders – to become the new emperor. The blood and gore was slowly washed from the streets, burned structures were pulled down, and new paint was applied to the ruined churches. The Orthodox Church was officially absorbed into the Catholic one, and the Roman Empire was declared restored.129 Any pangs of conscience that the crusaders felt could be squelched by telling themselves that with a Latin Constantinople behind them, they had greatly strengthened the Christian presence in the Middle East.

  In fact, they had done the opposite. Although the Byzantine government survived in exile – and even managed to recapture Constantinople in 1261 – the empire never recovered. The city itself, once renowned as the 'Queen of Cities', was now a ruined shell, huddled sadly within the former grandeur of its own walls. Christendom's greatest bulwark against the Islamic threat had been shattered by the very soldiers who had been sent to protect it.

  For the more shortsighted crusaders, this was simply an appropriate payback for the long history of imperial treachery. Ever since the First Crusade, Byzantium had been a stumbling block to well-meaning crusaders. Western knights had been treated as outsiders, uncouth thugs to be tolerated not embraced. They had been fleeced in imperial markets, snickered at by Byzantine nobles, and betrayed by a succession of unscrupulous emperors. Deceit seemed to run in eastern blood. As the great Roman poet Virgil had warned a thousand years before, Greeks weren't to be trusted – even when bearing gifts.

  The price of this revenge was only clear in retrospect. The conquest of Constantinople broke the power of the great eastern Christian protector of Outremer. No matter the actual state of relations between Constantinople and the various crusader states, the threat of imperial retribution had always acted as a restraint on Muslim ambitions. Now the protecting hand was gone. The crusader empire that took its place was a flickering light, impoverished, weak, and barely able to last five decades. It could offer no help to the desperate remnants of Outremer. The Fourth Crusade, launched to rescue the Latin Christians of the East, had instead doomed them.

  Chapter 17: The Children's Crusade

  “In this year occurred an outstanding thing… unheard of throughout the ages.”

  – Royal Chronicle of Cologne130

  In Europe, news of the conquest of Constantinople was greeted with mixed emotions. On the one hand, they now had a well-fortified city to serve as a launching pad for future campaigns to the Holy Land. On the other hand, this was more than counterbalanced by the shameful way in which they had achieved it. Even the most optimistic accounts couldn't hide the fact that the crusaders had openly defied everyone from the pope to their own leaders, been excommunicated twice, and irreparably damaged relations with eastern Christendom.

  If the Fourth Crusade was a tragic farce, what followed was simply bizarre. Popular enthusiasm for saving the Holy Land remained undimmed, and – thanks largely to the work of apocalyptic preachers – a series of peasant movements began throughout France. These are collectively known as the 'Children's Crusade', although strictly speaking they were neither a proper crusade nor an army of children.

  The fact that only the First Crusade – which lacked the participation of kings – had succeeded wasn't lost on medieval Europe. Christ had ministered specifically to the poor, spending his time with prostitutes and the downtrodden. It was the humble, he had preached, who would inherit the earth. Perhaps the reason that princes and popes had failed was because Christ was calling the weak to do his work here on earth.

  In 1212, these ideas crystallized around a young German shepherd named Nicholas of Cologne. He claimed to have had a vision instructing him to march south into Italy. When he reached the shore, the waters of the Mediterranean would miraculously part, allowing Nicholas and his followers to walk to Jerusalem. There they would liberate the Holy City by peacefully converting the Muslims to Christianity.

  This message proved enormously popular and before long Nicholas had attracted a following of thousands.131 They were a motley collection of the dregs of society: children, women, priests, and the elderly, united by their poverty and their belief in their cause. Wherever they went they were greeted as champions – an intoxicating brew for people more used to scorn – and showered with gifts. Members of the clergy who expressed doubts were roundly mocked, and each village added to the number.

  The first signs of trouble came during the crossing of the Alps. The weather was stiflingly hot, food began to run out, and there was little or no organization. Most of the participants assumed that God would provide any needed supplies. Needless to say, casualties were horrendous: as many as two thirds of the 'crusaders' abandoned the march or died crossing the mountains.

  When the survivors reached Italy, the entire crusade fell apart. Some headed to various Italian ports, others attempted to reach the pope in Rome. Nicholas himself made it to Genoa in the late summer, but his claim to be a latter-day Moses spectacularly failed when the waters refused to part. After a few weeks spent waiting for a miracle, the group dispersed, hoping to find passage to the Holy Land. One group made it as far as Marseilles, where two merchants offered to take them to Jerusalem, free of charge. The grateful pilgrims boarded the ships and were promptly transported to Alexandria and sold in the slave markets.

  Few of those who left ever saw their homes again. Those who made it back across the Alps were greeted with ridicule, mocked for their naiveté and lack of faith. Nicholas certainly never saw Germany again, most likely dying in an attempt to re-cross the mountains. He was blamed for the entire fiasco, and his father was lynched by angry neighbors whose relatives had followed the boy to their deaths.

  Innocent III viewed the entire thing as yet another tragedy. He had interviewed several members of the 'crusade', thanked them for their piety, and advised them to return to their homes. As far as he was concerned, the only good thing about it was that it showed that there was still interest in crusading.

  Calling the 5th Crusade

  The pope had been interested in calling another crusade for some time. He was fully aware of the contradictions of the Fourth Crusade, and saw the need to immediately give aid to the remnants of Outremer. The Islamic threat was something against which the entire strength of Christendom needed to be marshaled. Even now, the scimitar was poised to strike the final blow against the crusader states. A great Muslim fortress had been constructed on Mount Tabor – the site of the Transfiguration of Christ – and the enemy was preparing the final assault on the Latin East.

  Every Christian had a part to play. The nobility would do the actual fighting, but the energy of the poor could also be harnessed as well. They could pray for the success of the crusade and reap the benefits as well. In a brilliant bit of political theater, Innocent III started handing out crosses to anyone who pledged to materially or spiritually support the crusade. Now everyone, from the poorest widow to the wealthiest Duke, was invested in the success of the venture.

  The southern Italian port of Brindisi was picked as the rendezvous point, and the date of June 1, 1217 given as the official start of the crusade. Innocent III committed the papacy to a contribution of thirty thousand pounds of silver and imposed a five percent tax on all clergy. Merchants were ordered to stop trading with eastern ports, and encouraged to donate their services as troop transports. Finally, indulgences were
handed out to anyone who offered to finance a potential crusader. This last arrangement was particularly popular among both laity and clergy alike since it opened up the spiritual benefits of the crusade to those who couldn’t – or didn’t want to – attend in person. There was already a groundswell of popular support for the crusade and Innocent III had stumbled on a way to financially tap into it. Pious donations poured into church coffers.132

  It wasn't long before Europe's nobility responded. Duke Leopold of Austria and King Andrew of Hungary took the cross, along with a slew of lesser nobility. All of these magnates were overshadowed, however, by the electrifying news that Frederick II Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor himself, had pledged to liberate Jerusalem.

  Frederick II Barbarossa

  There was simply no one like Frederick. On his mother's side he was a Norman, heir to the fabulously wealthy Italian kingdom of Sicily. On his father's he was German, the rightful successor to the sprawling Holy Roman Empire. Between these two thrones, Frederick controlled nearly a third of Western Europe. But it was his curiosity that really set him apart.

  He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge of the physical world. He collected animal specimens, the more exotic the better, from places far beyond his Mediterranean home. By the end of his reign the royal menagerie in Sicily boasted, among other things, elephants, giraffes, leopards, panthers, bears, a white cockatoo from the Sultan of Cairo, and several Arctic falcons from Greenland. Everything was approached with a scientific eye. Diets were analyzed, animals were systematically observed, and Frederick even composed several treatises on falconry, where he carefully classified migration patterns, nesting habits, and daily behaviors.

  This curiosity extended to humans as well. In an attempt to discover the function of the stomach and intestines Frederick personally dissected several cadavers. According to a contemporary monk, he then took it a step further, disemboweling two men after a feast to see if activity or rest caused the food to be digested more efficiently. Perhaps his most famous experiment was a linguistic one. In an attempt to discover what humanity's natural language was, he ordered two nursemaids to raise their charges in complete silence. His guess was Hebrew, since that was the language of Genesis, but regrettably, both children are said to have died before the experiment could be completed.

  Scholars from every nation were invited to his court. Experts in arithmetic, geometry, and algebra all wrote treatises dedicated to him. This wasn't simple flattery. Frederick – unlike virtually anyone else at the time – was perfectly willing to criticize the venerated authorities of the past if his observations contradicted their conclusions. There was little use in trying to butter up a man whose censure not even Aristotle could completely escape. Rather, the dedications were a sign of patronage. Frederick was creating an international community of scholars. In many ways he was a Renaissance prince two centuries before the Renaissance.

  Indeed, he wouldn't have been at all out of place had he lived in the time of Michelangelo and da Vinci. Conversant in all six major languages of his various territories, he was also an accomplished poet whose writings played an integral part in the development of modern Italian. A gifted statesman and an enlightened ruler, he founded one of Western Europe’s oldest universities and banned torture and trial by ordeal because they violated the principle of reason.

  Frederick set up a medical academy that licensed prospective doctors, and personally endowed it with a collection of priceless texts so that students (as he put it) might 'draw new water out of old wells.' Interested students were invited to attend at his expense, they were protected by his imperial guards when they traveled, and they were offered cheap, subsidized loans to cover any additional costs.

  Somehow, in between running two governments, Frederick found the time to author several treatises on medicine, instruct veterinarians on the proper care of horses, attend the lectures of the most celebrated of his professors, and even become a practicing physician. His court became the intellectual center of Europe, and his palaces – which he personally designed – were filled to the brim with art in styles borrowed from locations as varied as North Africa and Byzantium. No wonder his dazzled subjects called him Stupor Mundi – the 'Astonishment of the World'.

  When Frederick announced that he was taking the cross at an emotional ceremony in the German city of Mainz, therefore, it caused considerable excitement. His addition to the effort – along with the upper nobility of the empire who would presumably join as well – would greatly strengthen the crusade.

  Ironically, the person least excited about the news was Innocent III. Frederick II was the last person he wanted to join the crusade. The reasons for this were mostly political. The Holy Roman Empire controlled the lands directly to the north of Rome, and the kingdom of Sicily controlled the lands to the south. Traditionally, popes had used the southern kingdom as a check against over-eager emperors, but that was no longer possible. Frederick – as both emperor and Sicilian king – represented the papal nightmare. Rome was completely surrounded in an imperial sea.

  Because of this, Innocent had done everything in his power to prevent Frederick from inheriting both of his thrones. There was nothing he could do about Sicily. Frederick had been crowned at the age of two, and there was no other serious candidate. The empire, however, was another story. Innocent III threw his support behind a rival claimant named Otto of Brunswick, crowning him emperor in 1209.

  The resulting civil war delayed the inevitable, but by 1215, it was clearly only a matter of time before Otto conceded defeat. Frederick's dramatic taking of the cross, was both an olive branch and a warning to Rome. In reality, he cared little about Christianity and even less about the crusade. He privately referred to Christians as 'swine' who had polluted Jerusalem, and – in a swipe at the world's three major religions – reportedly said that Moses, Christ, and Muhammed were imposters who had duped humanity.

  It was hard to imagine a less suitable leader of a crusade. He kept a well-stocked harem, seemed far more comfortable among his Muslim subjects than his Christian ones, and occasionally openly mocked the faith of the Catholic components of his own army.133

  Fortunately, Innocent III was spared seeing his adversary take control of his great project as he died in 1216, while preparations were still being made. Even had Innocent III lived, however, Frederick wouldn't have been ready. When the departure date of 1217 came along, the emperor was still three years away from forcing the stubborn Otto to abdicate.

  The Invasion of Egypt

  The armies of the Fifth Crusade, led by Duke Leopold of Austria and King Andrew of Hungary, left Europe in the late summer. The absence of Frederick II was disappointing, but expectations were still high since the political situation in the Holy Land was better than it had been for generations. The great enemy of Christendom, Saladin, was dead, and his empire had collapsed into civil war between three of his nephews. The oldest of them, al-Kamil, had managed to seize Egypt, and was desperate to preserve good relations with the crusaders until he could consolidate his position.

  This presented the crusaders with an unexpected problem. When they met at Acre with the remaining forces of Outremer, they made up a significant force. But what exactly should be their target? Frederick II was expected any day, and with his strength, Jerusalem was potentially within reach. If they attacked too early, however, they ran the risk of diluting their strength and ruining the opportunity when the emperor arrived. On the other hand, no one was quite sure exactly when Frederick would get there, and there was the real possibility that they would miss out on a genuine opportunity if they waited too long.

  The compromise was to focus on minor raids, but this strategy immediately backfired since it gave the less determined crusaders an excuse to leave. King Andrew of Hungary had been regretting his decision to join the crusade for some time, and after a brief skirmish he announced that his vow to defend the Holy Land had been fulfilled. He was followed by enough of the nobility to make a major operation impossible
.

  Duke Leopold stalled for another few months, hoping for Frederick’s arrival. German troops began trickling in, but there was no sign – or word – of the emperor. Faced with the slow erosion of his army, Leopold made the decision to launch an invasion before his force completely dissolved. He selected the rich port of Damietta, in Egypt, a strategic harbor on the Nile Delta within easy reach of Cairo.

  The army reached Egyptian territory in the late spring of 1218. The first sight of Damietta wasn't encouraging. The city had both land and sea walls and was bristling with defenders. Even worse, it was connected by a pontoon bridge to a huge chain tower in the middle of the Nile that blocked all access to the river. Several attempts to take it failed, each more demoralizing than the last. The city was too fortified to storm and too important to leave behind. The only option was to attempt to starve it into surrender.

  As the scorching Egyptian summer dragged on, conditions in the crusader camp began to deteriorate. Food had to be rationed, and word arrived that al-Kamil was en route with a large relief army. On August 24, a wild plan was hatched to capture the chain tower. Two crusader ships were lashed together and a rickety wooden fortress was constructed on top. A few courageous volunteers entered the contraption and somehow managed to guide it to the tower without capsizing. Then, against furious opposition, they successfully forced their way inside, ripped down the sultan's banner and hoisted an image of the cross in its place.

  The fact that all of this was done in full view of al-Kamil, who had just arrived, made it that much sweeter. The stunned sultan, who had expected a demoralized, beaten enemy, promptly turned around and retreated, ordering that the Nile be clogged with sunken ships to prevent any immediate pursuit.

  Damietta's fate was now sealed, it just remained a question of how long it would hold out. The bigger concern, however, was who was actually in charge of the crusader army. The King of Hungary had already left, and now Duke Leopold of Austria announced plans to return to the West as well. The emperor Frederick would obviously be in charge when he arrived, but in the meantime there was no obvious candidate to act as a stand in.