THE SECOND CRUSADE We speak of first, second and third crusades, but, more ex actly, the crusades were one continuous process. Scarcely a year passed in which hew bands did not come to the Holy Land. We have already noticed the great if disastrous crusade of i ioo–oi and the Venetian crusade of 1123-24, and reference is made to the crusade of Henry the Lion in 1172 and that of Edward I. in 1271-72—all famous crusades which are not reckoned in the usual numbering. Crusades appear to have been dignified by numbers when they followed some crushing disaster—the loss of Edessa in 1144, or the fall of Jerusalem in 1187—and were led by kings and emperors ; or when, like the fourth and fifth crusades, they achieved some conspicuous success or failure. But it is im portant to bear in mind the continuity of the crusades—the con stant flow of new forces eastward and back again westward ; for this alone explains why the crusades formed a great epoch in civilization, familiarizing, as they did, the West with the East.
The years 1143-44 are in many ways the turning point in the history of the Latin East. In 1143 began the reign of the first 'The manorial system in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was a continuation of the village system as it had existed under the Arabs. In each village (casale) the rustici were grouped in families (foci) ; the tenants paid from to I of the crop, besides a poll-tax and labour-dues. The villages were mostly inhabited by Syrians: it was rarely that Franks settled down as tillers of the soil. Prutz regards the manorial system as oppressive. Absentee landlords, he thinks, rack-rented the soil (p. 167), while the "inhuman severity" of their treatment of villeins led to a progressive decay of agriculture, destroyed the economic basis of the Latin kingdom, and led the natives to welcome the invasion of Saladin (pp. 327-33 z ) The French writers Rey and Dodu are more kind to the Franks ; and the testimony of contemporary Arabic writers, who seem favourably impressed by the treatment of their subjects by the Franks, bears out their view, while the tone of the assizes is admittedly favourable to the Syrians. One must not forget that there was a brisk native manufac ture of carpets, pottery, ironwork, gold-work and soap ; or that the Syrians of the towns had a definite legal position.
native kings; and about this date may be placed the final organiza tion of the kingdom, witnessed by the completion of its body of customary law. At the same date, however, the decline of the king dom also begins ; the fall of Edessa is the beginning of the end. In 1143 John Comnenus and Fulk had just died, and Zengi, seeing his way clear, was able to throw himself on the great Christian outpost, and finally entered on Christmas day 1144. Two years later Zengi died ; but he left an able successor in his son, Nured din, and an attempt to recover Edessa was successfully repelled in Nov. I146. Not only so, but in the spring of 1147 the Franks were unwise enough to allow the hope of gaining two small towns to induce them to break the vital alliance with Damascus. Thus, in itself, the position of affairs in the Holy Land in 1147 was cer tainly ominous ; aid from the West seemed a necessity.
Early in 1145 news had come from Antioch to Eugenius III. of the fall of Edessa, and at the end of the year he had sent an encyclical to France—the natural soil, as we have seen, of crusad ing zeal. The response was instantaneous : Louis VII. of France himself, who bore on his conscience the burden of an unpunished massacre by his troops at Vitry in took the crusading vow on Christmas Day of 1145. But the greatest success was at tained when St. Bernard—no great believer in pilgrimages, and naturally disposed to doubt the policy of a second crusade—was induced by the pope to become the preacher of the new movement. To the crusading king of France St. Bernard added the king of Germany, when, in Christmas week of 1146, he induced Conrad III. to take the vow by his sermon in the cathedral of Spires. Thus was begun the second crusade, under auspices still more favour able than those which attended the beginning of the first, seeing that kings now took the place of knights, while the new crusaders would no longer be penetrating into the wilds, but would find a friendly basis of operations ready to their hands in Frankish Syria. But the more favourable the auspices, the greater proved the failure. Already at the final meeting at Etampes, in 1147, dif ficulties arose. Manuel Comnenus demanded that all conquests made by the crusaders should be his fiefs ; and the question was debated whether the crusaders should follow the land route through Hungary, along the old road of Charlemagne, or should go by sea to the Holy Land. On this question the envoys of Manuel and of Roger of Sicily, who were engaged in hostilities with one another, took opposite sides. Conrad, related by marriage to Manuel, decided in favour of the land route, which Manuel de sired because it brought the crusade more under his direction, and because, if the route by sea were followed, Roger of Sicily might be able to divert the crusading ships against Constantinople. As it was, a struggle raged between Roger and Manuel during the whole progress of the crusade, which greatly contributed towards its failure, preventing, as it did, any assistance from the Eastern empire. Nor was there any real unity among the crusaders them selves. The crusaders of northern Germany never went to the Holy Land at all; they were allowed the crusaders' privileges for attacking the Wends to the east of the Elbe--, fact which at once attests the cleavage between northern and southern Germany (intensified of late years by the war of investitures), and antici pates the age of the Teutonic knights and their long crusade on the Baltic. The crusaders of the Low Countries and of England took the sea route, and attacked and captured Lisbon on their way, thus helping to found the kingdom of Portugal, and achieving the one real success which was gained by the second 'After 1143 one may therefore speak of the period of the Epigom —the native Franks, ready to view the Muslims as joint occupants of Syria, and to imitate the dress and habits of their neighbours.
has been cast on the view that a troubled conscience drove Louis to take the cross; and his action has been ascribed to simple religious zeal (cf. Lavisse, Histoire de France, iii. 12) .
body of crusaders ultimately reached the Holy Land, where it joined Conrad (who had lost his own original forces), and helped in the fruitless siege of Damascus. The services which it rendered to Portugal were repeated by later crusaders. Crusaders from the Low Countries, England and the Scandinavian north took the coast route round western Europe ; and it was natural that, landing for provisions and water, they should be asked, and should consent, to lend their aid to the natives against the Moors. Such aid is recorded to have been given on the third and fifth crusades.
Among the great army of crusaders who actually marched to Jerusalem there was little real unity. Conrad and Louis VII. started separately, and at different times, in order to avoid dissensions between their armies; and when they reached Asia Minor (after encountering some difficulties in Greek terri tory) they still acted separately. Eager to win the first spoils, the German crusaders, who were in advance of the French, at tempted a raid into the sultanate of Iconium; but after a stern fight at Dorylaeum they were forced to retreat (Oct. 1147), and for the most part perished by the way. Louis VII., who now ap peared, was induced by this failure to take the long and circuitous route by the west coast of Asia Minor ; but even so he had lost the majority of his troops when he reached the Holy Land in 1148. Here he joined Conrad (who had come by sea from Con stantinople) and Baldwin III., and after some deliberation the three sovereigns resolved to attack Damascus. The attack was impolitic : Damascus was the one ally which could help the Franks to stem the advance of Nureddin. It proved as futile as it was impolitic ; for the vizier of Damascus, Muin-eddin-Anar, was able to sow dissension between the native Franks and the crusaders; and by bribes and promises of tribute he succeeded in inducing the former to make the siege an absolute failure, at the end of only four days (July 28, 1148) . The second crusade now collapsed. Conrad returned to Constantinople in the autumn of 1148, and Louis VII. returned by sea to France in the spring of I149. The only effects of this great movement were effects preju dicial to the ends towards which it was directed. The position of the Franks in the Holy Land was not improved by the attack on Damascus; while the ignominious failure of a crusade led by two kings brought the whole crusading movement into discredit in western Europe, and it was utterly in vain that Suger and St. Bernard attempted to gather a fresh crusade in I 150.
Consequences of Failure.—The result of the failure of the second crusade was the renewal of Nureddin's attacks. The rest of the county of Edessa, including Tell-bashir on the west, was now conquered (115o) ; while Raymund of Antioch was defeated and killed (in 1149), and several towns in the east of his prin cipality were captured. Baldwin III. attempted to make head against these troubles, partly by renewing the old alliance with Damascus, partly by drawing closer to Manuel of Constantinople. For the next 20 years, during the reigns of Baldwin and his brother Amalric I., there was a close connection between the kingdom of Jerusalem and the East Roman empire. Baldwin and Amalric both married into the Comnenian house, while Manuel married Mary of Antioch, the daughter of Raymund. In the north Manuel enjoyed the homage of Antioch, which his father had gained in 1 13 7, and the nominal possession of Tell-bashir, which had been ceded to him by Baldwin III.: in the south he joined with Amalric I. in the attempt to acquire Egypt (1168-71). In this way he acquired a certain ascendancy over the Latin kings : Baldwin III. rode behind him at Antioch in 1159 without any of the insignia of royalty, and in an inscription at Bethlehem of 1172 Amalric I. had the name of the emperor written above his own'. The patronage of Constantinople, to which Jerusalem was thus practically surrendered, contributed to some slight extent in maintaining the kingdom against Nureddin. But there were dis sensions within, both between Baldwin and his mother, Melisinda, who sought to protract her regency unduly, and between contend ing parties in Antioch, where the hand of Constance, Raymund's widow, was a desirable prize; and from without the horns of the crescent were slowly closing in on the kingdom. Nureddin pur sued in his policy the tactics which the Mohammedans used against the Franks in battle: he sought to envelop their territories on every side. In 1154 fell Damascus, and the crescent closed per ceptibly in the north : the most valuable ally of the kingdom was lost, and the way seemed clear from Aleppo (the peculiar seat of 'Manuel was an ambitious sovereign, apparently aiming at a world monarchy, such as was afterwards attempted from the other side by Henry VI. As Henry VI. had designs on Constantinople and the East ern empire, so Manuel cherished the ambition of acquiring Italy and the Western empire, and he negotiated with Alexander III. to that end in 1167 and 1169: cf. the life of Alexander III. in Muratori, S.R.I. 460.
Nureddin's power) into Egypt. On the other hand, in 1153 Bald win III. had taken Ascalon, which for 5o years had mocked the efforts of successive kings, and by this stroke he might appear to have closed for Nureddin the route to Egypt, and to have opened a path for its conquest by the Franks. For the future, events hinged on the situation of affairs in Egypt, and in Egypt the fate of the kingdom of Jerusalem was finally decided (see EGYPT : History, "Mohammedan Period") . There was a race for the pos session of the country between Nureddin's lieutenant Shirguh or Shirkuh and Amalric I., the brother and successor of Baldwin III. ; and in the race Shirkuh proved the winner.
Since the days of Godfrey and Baldwin I., Egypt had been a goal of Latin ambition, and the capture of Ascalon must obviously have given form and strength to the projects for its conquest. Plans of attack were sketched; routes were traced; distances were measured; and finally in 1163 there came the impulse from within which turned these plans into action. The Shiite caliphs of Egypt were by this time the playthings of contending viziers, as the Sunnite caliphs of Baghdad had long been the puppets of Turkish sultans and amirs; and in 1164 Amalric I. and Nureddin were fighting in Egypt in support of two rival viziers, Dirgham and Shawar. For Nureddin the fight meant the acquisition of an heretical country for the true faith of the Sunnite, and the final enveloping of the Latin kingdom' : for Amalric it meant the es cape from Nureddin's net, and a more direct and lucrative con tact with Eastern trade. Into the vicissitudes of the fight it is not necessary here to enter; but in the issue Nureddin won, in spite of the support which Manuel gave to Amalric. Nureddin's Kurd ish lieutenant, ShirgUh, succeeded in establishing in power the vizier whom he favoured, and finally in becoming vizier himself (Jan. 1169) ; and when he died, his nephew Saladin (Sala-ed-din) succeeded to his position (March 1169), and made himself, on the death of the caliph in 1171, sole ruler in Egypt. Thus the Shiite caliphate became extinct : in the mosques of Cairo the name of the caliph of Baghdad was now used ; and the long-disunited Mohammedans at last faced the Christians as a solid body. But nevertheless the kingdom of Jerusalem continued almost unmen aced, and practically undiminished, for the next 16 years. If a religious union had been effected between Egypt and northern Syria, political disunion still remained; and the Franks were safe as long as it lasted. Saladin acted as the peer of Nureddin rather than as his subject ; and the jealousy between the two kept both inactive till the death of Nureddin in 1174. Nureddin left only a minor in his place : Amalric, who died in the same year, left a son (Baldwin IV.) who was not only a minor but also a leper; and thus the stage seemed cleared for Saladin. He was confronted, however, by Raymund, count of Tripoli, the one man of ability among the decadent Franks, who acted as guardian of the king dom; and he was also occupied in trying to win for himself the Syrian possessions of Nureddin. The task engaged his attention for nine years. Damascus he acquired as early as 1'74; but Ray mund supported the heir of Nureddin in his capital at Aleppo, and it was not until 1183 that Saladin entered the city, and finally brought Egypt and northern Syria under a single rule.
'Henry II., as an Angevin, was the natural heir of the kingdom of Jerusalem on the extinction of the line descended from Fulk of Anjou. This explains the part played by Richard I. in deciding the question of the succession during the third crusade.
1185 (though there had already been isolated instances in and I166), and may almost be described as the beginning of mod ern taxation. In the East itself, with the exception of the tax of nothing was done that was good, and two things were done which were evil. Sibylla married her second husband, Guy de Lusignan, in I18o—a marriage destined to be the cause of many dissensions; for Sibylla, the eldest daughter of Amalric I., carried to her husband—a French adventurer—a presumptive title to the Crown, which would never be admitted without dis pute.
In 1186 Guy eventually became king, following the death of Baldwin V. (Sibylla's son by her first marriage) ; but his corona tion was in violation of the promise given to Raymund of Tripoli (that in the event of the death of Baldwin V. without issue the succession should be determined by the pope, the emperor and the kings of France and England), and Guy, with a weak title, was unable to exercise any real control over the kingdom. At this point another French adventurer, who had already made himself somewhat of a name in Antioch, gave the final blow to the king dom. Raynald of Chatillon, the second husband of Constance of Antioch, after languishing in captivity from I159 to 1176, had been granted the seignory of Krak, to the east and south of the Dead sea. From this point of vantage he began depredations on the Red sea (1182), building a fleet, and seeking to attack Medina and Mecca—a policy which may be interpreted either as mere buccaneering, or as a calculated attempt to deal a blow at Moham medanism in its very centre. Driven from the Red sea by Saladin, he turned from buccaneering to brigandage, and infested the great trade-route from Damascus to Egypt, which passed close by his seignory. In 1186 he attacked a caravan in which the sister of Saladin was travelling, thus violating a four years' truce, which, after some two years' skirmishing, Saladin and Raymund of Trip oli had made in the previous year owing to the general prevalence of famine. The coronation of one French adventurer and the conduct of another, whom the first was unable to control, meant the ruin of the kingdom ; and Saladin at last delivered in full force his long-deferred attack. The crusade was now at last an swered by the counter-crusade—the jihad; for though for many years past Saladin had, in his attempt to acquire all the inheritance of Nureddin, left Palestine unmenaced and intact, his ultimate aim was always the holy war and the recovery of Jerusalem. The acquisition of Aleppo could only make that supreme object more readily attainable ; and he had therefore spent his time in acquir ing Aleppo, but only in order that he might ultimately "attain the goal of his desires, and set the mosque of Aksa free, to which Allah once led in the night his servant Mohammed." Thus it was on a kingdom of crusaders who had lost the crusading spirit that a new crusade swept down ; and Saladin's army in 1187 had the spirit and the fire of the Latin crusaders of 1o99. The tables were turned ; and fighting on their own soil for the recovery of what was to them too a holy place, the Mohammedans easily carried the day. At Tiberias a little squadron of the brethren of the two Orders went down before Saladin's cavalry in May; at Hattin the levy en masse of the kingdom, some 20,000 strong, foolishly marching over a sandy plain under the heat of a July sun, was utterly defeated; and after a fortnight's siege Jerusalem capitulated (Oct. 2, 1187). In the kingdom itself nothing was left to the Latins by the end of 1189 except the city of Tyre ; and to the north of the kingdom they held only Antioch and Tripoli, with the Hospitallers' fortress at Margat. The fingers of the clock had been pushed back; once more things were as they had been at the time of the first crusade; once more the West must arm itself for the holy war and the recovery of Jerusalem—but now it must face a united Mohammedan world, where in 1o96 it had found political and religious dissension, and it must attempt its vastly heavier task without the morning freshness of a new religious impulse, and with something of the weariness of loo years of struggle upon its shoulders.