BOOK V

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I

THE LAST CRUSADES

And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil.’ DANIEL XI, 33

With the fall of Acre and the expulsion of the Franks from Syria the Crusading movement began to slip out of the sphere of practical politics. After Saladin’s reconquests, a century before, the Christians still retained great fortresses on the mainland, Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch. An army of rescue had bases from which it could operate. Now the bases were gone. The little waterless island of Ruad was useless. Expeditions must be organized and provisioned from across the sea, from Cyprus. The only Christian dominion that remained was the kingdom of Armenia, in Cilicia. But the journey from Cilicia into Syria was difficult, and the Armenians could not all be trusted. Again, the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 had come as a terrible shock to Christendom, so sadden was the collapse of the kingdom. But everyone knew in 1291 that Outremer was crumbling. Its disappearance caused grief and indignation, but no surprise. Western Europe now had overriding problems and quarrels at home. There would be no glow of fervour that would drive its potentates eastward, as in the days of the Third Crusade. Still less could a great popular expedition like the First Crusade be launched. The peoples of the West were enjoying new comforts and prosperity. They would never respond now to the apocalyptic preaching of a Peter the Hermit with the simple, ignorant piety of their ancestors two centuries before. They were unconvinced by the promise of indulgences and shocked by the use of the Holy War for political aims. Nor was a great military expedition possible, with the great Empire of Byzantium reduced to a shadow. The end of Outremer was grievous news, but it provoked no violent reaction.

Lack of Allies

Only the Pope, Nicholas IV, sought to implement his sorrow by deeds; but there was no one to whom he could turn. The prestige of the Papacy had been crippled by the ill-success of the Sicilian war. Kings no longer troubled to carry out the Papal bidding. The Western Emperor, whose oecumenical power the Popes had broken, was fully occupied in Germany. If he emerged, it was only to take a wistful expedition into Italy. King Philip IV of France was able and active, but, having extricated his kingdom from the Sicilian war, he spent his energy in building up the royal authority. Edward of England had his hands full in Scotland. Moreover, England and France were moving into the state of intense rivalry that was soon to produce the Hundred Years War. The monarch with the strongest sea-power in the Mediterranean, James II of Aragon, along with his brother Frederick, claimant of Sicily, was at war with the Pope’s client, Charles II of Naples; who was willing enough in theory to help in a Crusade, but had first to eject the Aragonese from Sicily. Further East the Byzantine Emperor was busy enough warding off the Turks on the one hand and the new Balkan monarchies of Bulgaria and Serbia on the other. Besides, the Angevins of Naples were now taking over the claims of the dispossessed Latin Emperors. Their patron, the Pope, could not therefore hope for much sympathy from the Greeks. The merchant-cities of Italy were too busy adjusting their policy to the changed circumstances to make any promises that might embarrass them. The Kings of Cyprus and Armenia were most intimately concerned with the problem; for their kingdoms were in the front line now, and one or other must serve as the base for any new Crusade. But they were desperately anxious not to provoke the Sultan. The King of Armenia had to contend with the Turks as well as with the Egyptians, and the King of Cyprus had to solve the problem of the refugees. Moreover, both royal houses, which were now closely interconnected by marriage, were soon troubled by family quarrels and civil war. The Ilkhan of Persia remained a potential ally; but the Ilkhan Arghun had been cruelly disappointed by his failure to rouse the West to action before the fall of Acre. He would do no more. In 1295, soon after Arghun’s death, the Ilkhan Ghazzan adopted Islam as the state religion of the Ilkhanate, and threw off his allegiance to the Great Khan in the East. Ghazzan was a good friend of the Christians, for he had been brought up by the Despina Khatun, the Ilkhan Abaga’s gracious wife, whom all the East revered; and his conversion in no way lessened his hatred of the Egyptians and the Turks. But there were no more Mongol embassies to Rome and no more hope that Persia would become a Christian power. There was, it is true, a Papal envoy in Pekin, Brother John of Monte Corvino; but, though Brother John enjoyed the friendship of Kubilai, the Great Khan had no interest now in the affairs of the Near East.

There remained the Military Orders. They had been founded to fight for Christendom in the Holy Land, and that was still their chief duty. After the fall of Acre the Teutonic Order abandoned the East for its Baltic possessions; but the Templars and the Hospitallers set up their headquarters in Cyprus. There, unable to perform their proper task, they took to meddling in local politics. The Pope could probably count on them to provide help for any actual expedition; for their vast endowments all over Europe aroused jealousy that might have dangerous results unless they were proved to be justified. But the Temple and Hospital unaided could not undertake a Crusade.

Pope Nicholas had failed to rouse the West after the fall of Tripoli. He was equally impotent after the greater disaster at Acre. His advisers gave him no help. Charles II of Naples supported the suggestion, first made some years previously, that to end their rivalry the Military Orders should be amalgamated; but he thought that military action in the East was impossible for the moment. He advocated an economic blockade of Egypt and Syria. It would be easy to maintain and very damaging to the Sultan. But that too was in fact impracticable. Neither the Italian nor the Provencal and Aragonese merchant-cities would ever co-operate. Their welfare depended on the Eastern trade, much of which passed through the Sultan’s dominions. Indeed, were it to cease, they would no longer be able to maintain their fleets, and the Moslems might well dominate the Mediterranean Sea. It was unfortunate that the chief export with which the Christians paid for Eastern goods consisted of armaments; but would it have been worth while to deprive Europe of the benefits of all this commercial activity? The Church might protest against this nefarious exchange of goods. But business interests were now stronger than the Church. Nicholas IV died in 1291 disappointed in his endeavours.

Raymond Lull

None of his successors achieved a better result. But, though the soldiers for a Crusade were lacking, the feeling that Christendom had been shamed produced a new wave of propaganda. The propagandists were no longer itinerant preachers, as in the past, but men of letters who wrote books and pamphlets to show the need of a holy expedition, for whose conduct each author had his own special scheme. In 1291 a Franciscan friar, Fidenzio of Padua, whom the Pope had often used in the past for diplomatic missions and who had travelled widely in the East, published a treatise, called the Liber de Recuperatione Terre Sancte, which he dedicated to Nicholas IV. It contains a learned history of the Holy Land, together with a discussion of the type of army needed for its recovery and of the alternative routes that this army might follow. It was informative and well reasoned; but Fidenzio assumed that an army would be available and considered that the commander should make the ultimate choice of the route. Next year, in 1292, a certain Thaddeus of Naples published an account of the fall of Acre. It is a vivid narrative, embroidered by lavish accusations of cowardice against practically everyone who was there. Thaddeus’s violent language was intentional. His object was to shame the West into launching a Crusade; and he ended his book with a great appeal to the Pope, to the Princes and to the Faithful to rescue the Holy Land which is the Christians’ heritage.

Thaddeus’s work certainly influenced the next propagandist, a Genoese called Galvano of Levanti, a physician at the Papal Court. His book, which he published about 1294 and dedicated to King Philip IV of France, was a mixture of analogies taken from the game of chess and mystical exhortations, and was devoid of practical sense. A far more important figure was the great Spanish preacher, Raymond Lull, who was born in Majorca in 1232, and was stoned to death at Bougie in North Africa in 1315. His fame is highest as a mystic, but he was at the same time a practical politician. He knew Arabic well and he had travelled widely in Moslem countries. In about 1295 he presented the Pope with a memorandum on the action needed to combat Islam, and in 1305 he published his Liber de Fine which elaborated his ideas and offered a workable programme. Both the Moslems and the schismatic and heretical Christian Churches must be won over as far as possible by well-educated preachers, but at the same time an armed expedition is necessary. Its leader should be a King, the Rex Bellator, and all the Military Orders should be united under his command into a new Order which should be the backbone of the army. He suggests that the Crusade should expel the Moslems from Spain, then cross into Africa and move along the coast to Tunis, and so to Egypt. But later he also advocates a naval expedition, suggesting that Malta and Rhodes, with their excellent harbours should be captured and used as bases. Later still, he seems to prefer that the land expedition should take Constantinople from the Greeks and journey across Anatolia. He is full of concrete advice about the organization of the army and the fleet, and about the supply of food and war materials, as well as about the instruction of the preachers who must accompany the army. The book is prolix and at times contradicts itself, but it is the work of a man of remarkable intelligence and wide experience, though his attitude towards the Eastern Christians is unpleasantly intolerant.

When Raymond Lull wrote it seemed that a Crusade was really in the offing. King Philip of France had announced his wish to launch an expedition, and both at the Papal Court and at Paris plans for its conduct were being drawn up and studied. Philip’s true motive, which was to extract money from the Church by this admirable excuse, was not yet apparent. He had recently emerged triumphant from his quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII, who had found that the technique which had ruined the Hohenstaufen was useless against the new monarchies of the West. Pope Clement V, who was elected in 1305, was a Frenchman. He established himself at Avignon, on the border of the French King’s dominions, and he showed constant deference to the King. He hastened to collect memoranda for his own and the King’s guidance.

Suggestions for the Crusade

The most interesting of these memoranda was destined only for Philip’s eyes. A French lawyer, Peter Dubois, submitted to him a pamphlet of which half was to be issued to the princes of Europe, bidding them join the movement under the King of France, and making certain recommendations about the route to be followed and the means for financing the expedition. The Templars should be suppressed and their property annexed, and death-duties should be instituted for the clergy. He added a few general suggestions about the desirability of allowing priests to marry and of turning convents into girls’ schools. The second half was private advice to the King telling him how to secure control of the Church by packing the Cardinals’ bench, and urging him to set up an Eastern Empire under one of his sons. Soon afterwards in 13 1 0, Philip’s chief diplomatic adviser, William Nogaret, sent the Pope a memoir on the Crusade. Its strategic suggestions were slight. Its main emphasis was on finance. The Church was to provide all the money; and the suppression of the Templars was the first item on the programme. At the same time the Pope collected advice. The Armenian Prince Hethoum or Hayton of Corycus, who had retired to France and become the prior of a Praemonstratensian abbey near Poitiers, was asked to send in his views. His book, called Flos Historiarum Terre Orientis, was published in 1307 and at once achieved a wide sale. It contained a succinct summary of Levantine history, together with a well-informed discussion of the state of the Mameluk Empire. Hayton recommended a double expedition, to go by sea and be based on Cyprus and on Armenia. He recommended co-operation with the Armenians and a close alliance with the Mongols. Similar views were expressed a little later by the Papal diplomat, William Adam, who travelled widely in the East and subsequently reached India. He added the suggestion that the Christians should maintain a fleet in the Indian Ocean, to cut off Egypt’s Oriental trade. He also considered that Constantinople should be recaptured by the Latins. William Durant, Bishop of Mende, sent in a treatise in 1312, recommending the sea-route and laying emphasis on the composition of the expedition, particularly with respect to its morals. The old Genoese admiral, Benito Zaccaria, who had once been podesta of Tripoli, wrote down his views on the naval forces required.

More practical suggestions were laid down by three potentates who would have to play a leading part in any Crusade. In 1307 the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital were both at Avignon; and Pope Clement asked them for their views. The former, James of Molay, at once sent in a report. He recommended a preliminary clearance of the seas by ten large galleys, to be followed by an army of at least twelve to fifteen thousand horsemen and forty to fifty thousand infantrymen. The Kings of the West should have no difficulty in raising these numbers, and the Italian republics must be induced to provide transport. He disapproved of a landing in Cilicia. The expedition should assemble in Cyprus and land on the Syrian coast. Four years later, at the time of the Council of Vienne, Fulk of Villaret, Grand Master of the Hospital, wrote to King Philip to tell him of the preparations that his Order had made and could make for the Crusade. At the same time King Henry II of Cyprus submitted his views to the Council. He desired an economic blockade of the Mameluk Empire. With good reason he distrusted the Italian republics and urged that the Crusade should not depend on them for its sea transport. He was in favour of an attack on Egypt itself, as the most vulnerable part of the Sultan’s dominions.

After all these memoranda and all this enthusiasm it was a surprise and a disappointment to everyone but King Philip that no Crusade was launched. Philip had achieved his object in finding an excuse for raising money from the Church; and he soon showed his true views by an attack on a great organization whose help would have been essential for a Crusade.

1308: The Hospitallers occupy Rhodes

The loss of Outremer left the Military Orders in a state of uncertainty. The Teutonic Knights solved their problem by concentrating all their energies in Baltic conquest. But the Temple and the Hospital found themselves restricted and unappreciated in Cyprus. The Hospital, wiser than the Temple, began to look for another home. In 1306 a Genoese pirate, Vignolo dei Vignoli, who had obtained a lease of the islands of Cos and Leros from the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus, came to Cyprus and suggested to the Grand Master of the Hospital, Fulk of Villaret, that he and the Hospital should conquer the whole Dodecanesian archipelago and divide it between them; he would retain one-third himself. While Fulk sailed to Europe to obtain the Pope’s confirmation of the scheme, a flotilla of Hospitallers, helped by some Genoese galleys, landed on Rhodes and slowly began the reduction of the island. The Greek garrison fought well. It was only by treachery that the great castle of Philermo fell to the invaders in November 1306, and the city of Rhodes itself held out for two more years. At last, in the summer of 1308, a galley sent from Constantinople with reinforcements for the garrison was driven by storms to Cyprus and was seized at Famagusta by a Cypriot knight, Philip le Jaune, who took it with its passengers to the besiegers. Its commander, who was a Rhodian, agreed, to save his life, to negotiate the surrender of the city; which opened its gates to the Order on 15 August. The Hospital at once set up its headquarters in the island, and made the city, with its fine harbour, the strongest fortress in the Levant. The conquest, achieved at the expense of Christian Greeks, was hailed in the West as a great Crusading triumph; and indeed it gave to the Hospital new vigour and the means to carry on its appointed task. But the wretched Rhodians had to wait for more than six centuries before they recovered their liberty.

The Temple was less enterprising and less fortunate. It had always roused more enmity than the Hospital. It was wealthier. It had long been the chief banker and money-lender in the East, successful at a profession which does not inspire affection. Its policy had always been notoriously selfish and irresponsible. Gallantly though its knights had always fought in times of war, their financial activities had brought them into close contact with the Moslems. Many of them had Moslem friends and took an interest in Moslem religion and learning. There were rumours that behind its castle walls the Order studied a strange esoteric philosophy and indulged in ceremonies that were tainted with heresy. There were said to be initiation rites that were both blasphemous and indecent; and there were whispers of orgies for the practice of unnatural vices. It would be unwise to dismiss these rumours as the unfounded invention of enemies. There was probably just enough substance in them to suggest the line along which the Order could be most convincingly attacked.

1308: The Trial of the Templars

When James of Molay went to France in 1306 to discuss with Pope Clement the projected Crusade, he heard that charges were being made there against his Order, and he demanded a public inquiry. The Pope hesitated. He realized that King Philip was determined to suppress the Order, and he did not dare to offend him. In October 1307, Philip suddenly arrested all the members of the Order that were in France and had them tried for heresy on charges laid by two disreputable knights who had been expelled from it. The accused gave their evidence under torture; and though a few firmly denied everything, the majority were glad to make any admission that was required of them. Next spring, at Philip’s request, the Pope ordered every ruler in whose dominions the Templars had possessions to arrest them and start similar trials. After some hesitation the various Kings of Europe consented, except for the Portuguese Denys, who would have no truck with the sorry business. Everywhere else Templar property was sequestered, and the knights were haled before the Courts. Torture was not always used; but there was a fixed interrogatory. The accused knew what they were expected to confess, and many of them confessed.

It was particularly important for the Pope that the Cypriot government should co-operate; for the headquarters of the Order were in the island. But the ruler there was now Henry II’s brother Amalric, who had temporarily ousted the King from power with the help of the Templars. The Prior Hayton arrived from Avignon in May 1308 with a letter from the Pope ordering the immediate arrest of the knights, as they had been found to be unbelievers. Amalric delayed in carrying out the order; and the knights, under their Marshal, Ayme of Oselier, had time to prepare to defend themselves. But after a brief recourse to arms they surrendered on 1 June. Their treasure, apart from a large portion that they hid so well that it was never recovered, was taken from Limassol to Amalric’s house in Nicosia, and the knights themselves were placed under guard, first at Khirokhitia and Yourmasoyia, and later at Lefkara. There they remained for three years. In May 1310, after King Henry II had been restored to power, the Cypriot Templars were at last brought to trial at the urgent insistence of the Pope. In France many of their brotherhood had already been burned at the stake, and all over Europe the members of the Order were imprisoned or destitute. King Henry had no love for the knights, who had betrayed his cause a few years before. But he gave them a fair trial. Seventy-six of them were accused. All denied the charges. Distinguished witnesses swore to their innocence, and one of the few hostile witnesses declared that he had only come to suspect them after receiving the Pope’s account of their crimes. They were entirely acquitted. When news of their acquittal reached Avignon, the Pope angrily wrote to King Henry to order a second trial; and he sent a personal delegate, Dominic of Palestrina, to see that his justice was done. The result of the retrial, which took place in 1311, is unrecorded. Clement had ordered that, if there was danger of another acquittal, Dominic was to secure the help of the Priors of the Dominicans and the Franciscans in seeing that torture was applied; and the Papal Legate in the East, Peter, Bishop of Rodez, was dispatched to Cyprus to supplement Dominic’s efforts. It seems that the King therefore reserved his verdict and kept the accused in prison. They were still there in 1313, when Peter of Rodez read out before all the bishops and higher clergy of the island the Pope’s decree of 12 March 1312, suppressing the whole Order and handing over all its wealth and possessions to the Hospitallers, after the civil authorities had recouped themselves for the cost of the various trials. The Kings throughout Europe found that these costs had been remarkably high. The Hospital received little apart from real property. The officers of the Temple in Cyprus were never released. But they were more fortunate than their Grand Master, who after years of imprisonment and torture and many confessions and recantations, was burned to death in Paris in March 1314.

1299-1308: The Mongols again invade Syria

The abolition of the Templars and the migration of the Hospitallers to Rhodes left the Cypriot kingdom as the only Christian government acutely interested in the Holy Land. The King was nominally King of Jerusalem; and for many generations to come the Kings, after their coronation with the Cypriot crown at Nicosia, received the crown of Jerusalem at Famagusta, the city that lay nearest to their lost dominion. The Syrian coast was, moreover, of strategic importance to Cyprus. An aggressive enemy there would endanger her very existence. Fortunately the Sultan was too afraid of a new Crusade himself to make use of the Syrian ports. He preferred that they should lie derelict. Nevertheless Cyprus was in constant danger from Egypt. Believing that to attack was the best defence, King Henry in 1292 had sent fifteen galleys, aided by ten from the Pope, to raid Alexandria. It was a futile effort, and merely determined al-Ashraf to conquer Cyprus. ‘Cyprus, Cyprus, Cyprus’, he cried, as he ordered a hundred galleys to be built. But he had other grander schemes. The Mongols must first be routed and Baghdad occupied. His ambition alarmed his emirs. They murdered him on 13 December 1293. It was a poor reward for the determined young prince who had completed Saladin’s work and driven the last remnant of the Franks from Syria.

Al-Ashraf was right to remember the Mongols. In 1299, during the much interrupted reign of the Mameluk Sultan an-Nasir Mohammed, the Mongol ruler Ghazzan, who had changed his title from Ilkhan to Sultan, invaded Syria and routed the Mameluk defence force at Salamia, near Homs, on 23 December. In January 1300, Damascus surrendered to him and admitted his suzerainty. He returned to Persia next month, announcing that he would soon return to conquer Egypt. Moslem though he was, Ghazzan would have welcomed Christian allies. Raymond Lull hastened to Syria on the news of the invasion, but was too late to meet Ghazzan there. He returned to Cyprus to ask the King to help him go on an evangelical mission to the Moslem rulers. King Henry, who did not agree that the friendship of the infidels was best won by pointing out their errors to them, ignored his request. A more diplomatic approach would have been useful, but none was made; and the opportunity ended when the Mongol army was defeated in 1303 at Marj as-Saffar. Five years later, in 1308, Ghazzan again entered Syria and now penetrated as far as Jerusalem itself. It was rumoured that he would have willingly handed over the Holy City to the Christians had any Christian state offered him its alliance. But, though at the time the Pope and King Philip of France were loudly advertising their projected Crusade, no overtures were made to the Mongols from the West, while Cyprus was reduced to impotence by the struggles between King Henry and his brother. In any case Ghazzan, as a good Moslem convert, might have found it difficult to implement such a promise. On his death in 1316, the chances of a Mongol alliance with the Christians faded out. His nephew and successor, Abu Said, veered round towards a reconciliation with Egypt. He was the last great Mongol ruler of Persia. After he died in 1335 the former Ilkhanate began to disintegrate.

Despite its apparent isolation, the Kingdom of Cyprus was not yet in immediate danger. The Sultan, even when he was no longer preoccupied with the Mongols, had insufficient sea-power to risk an expedition against the island. He had no wish to offend the Italian republics, for he too derived great benefits from their trade. He captured Ruad from the Templars in 1302, but, unless Cyprus became the base for a new Crusade, he preferred to let it alone. The Cypriot government for its part tried, as far as personal and dynastic idiosyncrasies allowed, to keep on close terms with the Armenian Kings of Cilicia, and with the Kings of Aragon and Sicily, whose fleets commanded respect.

1359: Accession of Peter I of Cyprus

After all the Crusading talk that Philip of France had inspired died down, there was a lull. But about the year 13 3 o it was revived by Philip VI. His intentions were far more sincere than those of his uncle; and they were encouraged by the Pope, John XXII. Once again memoranda were submitted to the Papal and royal courts. The Queen of France’s physician, Guy of Vigevano, wrote a brief account of the armaments required. A longer and more detailed programme was sent to the King by a certain Burcard, an ecclesiastic who had worked in Cilicia to secure the adhesion of the Armenian Church to Rome. Burcard’s suggestions were plentiful, but not helpful; for he showed far more animosity against the schismatic and heretic Christians than against the Moslems, and he considered that the conquest of Orthodox Serbia and of Byzantium was an essential part of any Crusade. But his schemes were not to be put to the test. Before any Crusade could be launched the King of France was involved in the outbreak of the Hundred Years War with England.

A more practical programme, which did not require any great military expedition, had meanwhile been published by the historian Marino Sanudo. He was a member of the ducal house of Naxos and had Greek blood in his veins, and he was an acute observer and a pioneer statistician. HisSecreta Fidelium Crucis, which appeared about 1321, contained a history of the Crusades, somewhat coloured by propagandist aims, but was mainly concerned with a detailed discussion of the economic position of the Levant. He saw that Egypt could best be weakened by means of an economic blockade, but he realized that the Eastern trade could not suddenly be suppressed. Alternative routes and sources of supply must be found. His analysis was profound, and his suggestions were far-sighted and comprehensive. Unfortunately they could only be carried out if all the European powers worked together; and that could never now be achieved.

In fact, there was only one more effort made to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel. In 1359 Peter I ascended the throne of Cyprus. He was the first monarch since Saint Louis of France to have a burning and overwhelming desire to fight the Holy War. As a young man he had founded a new Order of Chivalry, the Knights of the Sword, whose one avowed object was to recover Jerusalem, and he had braved his father King Hugh IV’s displeasure by attempting to travel to the West to win recruits for his Crusade. His first wars as King were against the Turks in Anatolia, where he had obtained a foothold by the acquisition of the fortress of Corycus from the Armenians. In 1362 he set out on a general tour of Christendom to further his main object. After visiting Rhodes where he secured promises of help from the Hospital, he sailed to Venice where he stayed over the New Year of 1363. The Venetians were officially sympathetic to his plans. After calling at Milan, he went to Genoa. There he was busy settling differences between his kingdom and the republic and winning a vague support from the Genoese. He arrived at Avignon on 29 March 1363, a few months after the accession of Pope Urban V. His first task was to defend his right to his throne against his nephew Hugh, Prince of Galilee, son of his late elder brother. Hugh was compensated with an annual pension of fifty thousand besants. While he was at Avignon King John II of France visited the city and promised him his warm co-operation. The two Kings took the Cross together in April, together with many of the French and Cypriot nobility. At the same time the Pope preached the Holy War and appointed Cardinal Talleyrand as its Legate. Peter then made a circuitous tour through Flanders, Brabant and the Rhineland. In August he went to Paris to see King John once more. They decided that the Crusade should be launched the following March. From Paris Peter went to Rouen and Caen, and sailed across to England. He spent about a month in London, where a great tournament was held in his honour at Smithfield. King Edward III presented him with a handsome ship, the Catherine, and with money to cover all his recent expenses. Unfortunately he was robbed by highwaymen on his way back to the coast. He returned to Paris for Christmas, then went south to Aquitaine, to interview the Black Prince at Bordeaux. While he was there he learned to his sorrow of the deaths, first of Cardinal Talleyrand, in January 1364, then of King John in May. He went to John’s funeral at Saint-Denis and to the coronation of his successor, Charles V, at Rheims, then moved into Germany. The knights and burghers of Esslingen and Erfurt offered to join his Crusade, but the Margrave of Franconia and Rudolph II, Duke of Saxony, though they received him with honour, both said that their decision must depend on the Emperor. He therefore went with Rudolph to Prague, where the Emperor Charles was in residence. Charles professed himself to be enthusiastic and invited Peter to accompany him to Cracow, to a conference that he was about to hold with the Kings of Hungary and Poland. It was there agreed that a circular should be sent to all the princes of the Empire, inviting their collaboration in the Holy War. After visiting Vienna, where Rudolph IV, Duke of Austria, promised further help, Peter returned to Venice in November 1364. As his troops had recently helped the Venetians to suppress a revolt in Crete, he was welcomed there with the highest honours. He remained there till the end of June 1365. While he was there he signed a treaty with Genoa which settled all outstanding differences.

1365: King Peter plans his Crusade

Meanwhile Pope Urban wrote indefatigably to the princes of Europe to urge them to join the expedition; and his efforts were energetically seconded by the new Papal Legate to the East, Peter of Salignac de Thomas, nominal Patriarch of Constantinople, a man of fierce integrity, equally opposed to schismatics, heretics and infidels, but of a devotion that was respected even by those that he persecuted. Working with him was his pupil, Philip of Mezieres, a close friend of King Peter, who had appointed him Chancellor of Cyprus. All their united activity did not produce the number of recruits that King Peter had expected and been promised. No Germans came forward, and none of the greater nobles of France or England, or the neighbouring lands, apart from Ayme, Count of Geneva, William Roger, Viscount of Turenne, and the Earl of Hereford. But there were many lesser knights, coming even from so far afield as Scotland; and already before King Peter left Venice, a large and formidable army had gathered there. The Venetian contribution was particularly useful; but the Genoese held back.

It was decided that the Crusade should assemble at Rhodes in August 1365, but its further destination was kept secret. The risk that some Venetian trader would inform the Moslems was too dangerous. King Peter arrived at Rhodes early in the month, and on the 25th the whole Cypriot fleet sailed into the harbour, a hundred and eight vessels in all, galleys, transports, merchant ships and light skiffs. With the great galleys of the Venetians and those provided by the Hospital, the armada numbered a hundred and sixty-five ships. They carried a full complement of men, with ample horses, provisions and arms. Not since the Third Crusade had a proportionate expedition set out for the Holy War; and, though there was disappointment that no great potentates from the West were present, there was the counter-advantage that King Peter was the unquestioned leader. In October he wrote to his Queen, Eleanor of Aragon, that everything was ready. At the same time he issued an order warning all his subjects in Syria to return home and forbidding them to trade there. He wished it to be thought that Syria was his objective.

On 4 October the Patriarch Peter preached a stirring sermon to the assembled sailors from the royal galley, and they all cried out: ‘Vivat, vivat Petrus, Jerusalem et Cypri Rex, contra Saracenos infideles.’ That evening the fleet set sail. When all the ships were at sea it was announced that the destination was Alexandria in Egypt.

1365: The Expedition attacks Alexandria

Once a decision to attack the Sultan was made, the choice of Alexandria as an objective was intelligent. It would be impracticable to attempt to invade Syria or Palestine without a base on the coast, and the ports there, with the exception of Tripoli, had been deliberately ruined by the Egyptians. But past experience showed that when the ruler of Egypt lost Damietta he had been ready to cede Jerusalem for its recovery. Alexandria was a richer prize than Damietta. Its conquerors could strike a still more profitable bargain. It would also be an excellent base for a further advance; for it was certainly amply provisioned, and the canals made it easy to defend from the land. It was moreover the port for almost all the Sultan’s oversea trade. Its loss would subject his dominions to a drastic form of economic blockade. It was also unlikely that he would expect an attack on a city where Christian merchants had such large interests. The moment, too, was well chosen. The reigning Sultan, Sha’ban, was a boy of eleven. Power was in the hands of the emir Yalbogha, who was disliked by his fellow-emirs and by the people. The governor of Alexandria, Khalil ibn Arram, was away on a pilgrimage to Mecca. His deputy, Janghara, was a junior officer, and had been left with a hopelessly inadequate garrison. On the other hand the walls of Alexandria were notoriously strong. Even if its two harbours and the Pharos peninsula that lay between them were captured, there were still great fortifications along the harbour-front.

The armada arrived off Alexandria during the evening of 9 October. The citizens at first thought that it was a great merchant fleet and prepared to go out to bargain. It was only when next morning the ships entered the western harbour, instead of the eastern which alone was permitted to Christian ships, that their intentions became apparent. The acting-governor, Janghara, hastened to concentrate his men on the foreshore to prevent a landing; but despite the gallantry of some Moghrabi soldiers, the Christian knights forced their way ashore. While native merchants streamed out of the city through the landward gates, Janghara retired behind the walls and collected his small garrison to hold the sector opposite to the landing. King Peter intended to pause in his attack. He wished to land all his men and horses at leisure on to the Pharos peninsula. But when he took counsel of his commanders he found that many of them disapproved of the choice of Alexandria as an objective. They were too few, they said, either to hold so large a fortress or to advance from there to Cairo. They wished to sail away elsewhere, but would stay if the city were at once taken by storm before the Sultan could send a relieving force. Peter was obliged to comply with their wishes; and the assault began at once. It was launched against the west wall, as Janghara had expected; but when they were held there the assailants moved to the section opposite to the eastern harbour. Within the walls access between the two sections ran through the great Customs House; and an officious customs-officer, fearing robberies, had barricaded the doors. Janghara could not move his men in time to face the new attack. Believing that the city was lost they began to desert their posts and flee through the streets to the southern gates and safety. By midday on Friday the 10th the Crusaders were well established within the city. Fighting continued in the streets. During the Friday night there was a fierce Moslem counter-attack through one of the southern gates, which the Christians in their excitement had burned down. It was beaten off; and by the Saturday afternoon all Alexandria was in the Crusaders’ hands.

The victory was celebrated with unparalleled savagery. Two and a half centuries of Holy Warfare had taught the Crusaders nothing of humanity. The massacres were only equalled by those of Jerusalem in 1099 and Constantinople in 1204. The Moslems had not been so ferocious at Antioch or at Acre. Alexandria’s wealth had been phenomenal; and the victors were maddened at the sight of so much booty. They spared no one. The native Christians and the Jews suffered as much as the Moslems; and even the European merchants settled in the city saw their factories and storehouses ruthlessly looted. Mosques and tombs were raided and their ornaments stolen or destroyed; churches too were sacked, though a gallant crippled Coptic lady managed to save some of the treasures of her sect at the sacrifice of her private fortune. Houses were entered, and householders who did not immediately hand over all their possessions were slaughtered with their families. Some five thousand prisoners, Christians and Jews as well as Moslems, were taken to be sold as slaves. A long line of horses, asses and camels carried the loot to the ships in the harbour and there having performed their task were killed. The whole city stank with the odour of human and animal corpses.

1365 The Sack of Alexandria

King Peter vainly tried to restore order. He had hoped to hold the city, and, as the Crusaders had burned its gates, he demolished the bridge by which the road to Cairo crossed the great canal. But the Crusaders now only wished to take their plunder home as quickly as possible. An army was coming up from Cairo, and they were unwilling to risk a battle. Even the King’s own brother told him that the city was untenable, while the Viscount of Turenne, with most of the English and French knights, roundly said that they would not remain any longer. Peter and the Legate protested in vain. By Thursday the 16th only a few Cypriot troops remained in the city. The rest of the expedition had returned to the ships, ready to depart. As the Egyptians had already reached the suburbs, Peter himself embarked on his galley and gave the order for evacuation. So heavily laden were the ships that it was necessary to jettison many of the larger pieces of loot. For months to come Egyptian divers salvaged precious objects from the shallow waters off Aboukir.

Peter and the Legate had hoped that, when their gains were safely stored in Cyprus, the Crusaders would start out again with him on a new expedition. But no sooner had they reached Famagusta than they all began to make arrangements to journey home to the West. The Legate prepared to follow them, to win other recruits in their place, but he fell mortally ill before he could leave the island. King Peter held a service of thanksgiving on his return to Nicosia, but his heart was sore. His report to the Pope told of his triumph but also of his bitter disappointment.

The news of the sack of Alexandria had a mixed reception in the West. It was first hailed as a military triumph and a humiliation for Islam. The Pope was delighted, but saw that Peter must have immediate reinforcements to take the place of the deserters. King Charles of France promised to send an army. The most celebrated of his knights, Bertrand du Guesclin, took the Cross; and Amadeus, Count of Savoy, known in romance as the Green Knight, who was preparing a journey to the East, decided to sail for Cyprus. But then the Venetians announced that Peter had made peace with the Sultan. King Charles countermanded his army. Du Guesclin went to fight in Spain and Amadeus to Constantinople. The Venetians, unlike the Pope, had not been pleased by the outcome of the Crusade. They had hoped to use it to strengthen their commercial hold on the Levant. Instead, their ample property in Alexandria had been destroyed, and their whole Egyptian trade had been interrupted. The sack of Alexandria came near to ruining them as a commercial power, to the delight of the Genoese, whose restraint had been rewarded. Soon the whole of the West experienced the effects of the Crusade. The price of spices and silks and other Eastern goods to which the public was now accustomed rose steeply as the supplies ran out and were not renewed.

Peter had in fact opened negotiations with Egypt, but both sides were too bitter to wish for peace. While the emir Yalbogha, hampered by his unpopularity in Egypt, played for time until he could build a fleet for the invasion of Cyprus, Peter made extravagant demands for the cession of the Holy Land and followed them up with raids on the Syrian coast. But his Crusading mania began to alarm his subjects, who feared lest the resources of the island would be exhausted in a hopeless cause. When a knight with whom Peter had quarrelled planned his murder in 1369, not even his own brothers lifted a finger to save him. The year after his death a treaty was signed with the Sultan. Prisoners were exchanged; and Cyprus and Egypt settled down to an uneasy peace.

1375: Collapse of the Armenian Kingdom

The holocaust at Alexandria marks the end of those Crusades whose direct object was the recovery of the Holy Land. Even had all the Crusaders been as devoted as King Peter, it is doubtful whether the expedition could ever have been to the benefit of Christendom. When it took place, Egypt had been at peace with the Franks for over half a century. The Mameluks had begun to lose their earlier fanaticism. Their Christian subjects were receiving kinder treatment. Pilgrims were freely allowed to the Holy Places. Commerce was flourishing between East and West. Now all the bitterness of the Moslems was revived. The native Christians, guiltless though they were, underwent a new period of persecution. Churches were destroyed. Even the Holy Sepulchre was closed for three years. The interruption to commerce did serious damage all round to a world that had not yet recovered from the ravages of the Black Death. The kingdom of Cyprus, whose existence the Mameluks had been ready to tolerate, became an enemy to be deleted. Egypt waited sixty years for her revenge. But the ghastly devastation of the island in 1426 was a direct punishment for the sack of Alexandria.

The only other Christian kingdom in the Levant met with an earlier doom. The Armenians of Cilicia had taken no part in King Peter’s Crusade; but their royal house was now Frankish and many of the nobility had close connections with Cyprus. Their Church had admitted the sway of Rome. Throughout the fourteenth century the Egyptians had pressed on them, suspecting them rightly as friends of the Franks and the Mongols and jealous of the wealth that passed through their country by the trade-route that reached the sea at Ayas. The collapse of the Mongol Ilkhanate deprived them of their chief support. Most of their territory was annexed in 1337 by the Turks. In 1375, while the Cypriots were engrossed in a bitter war with Genoa, Moslem invaders, Mameluks and Turks in alliance, completed the subjection of the country. The last Armenian King, Leo VI, fled to the West and died as an exile in Paris; and Armenian independence was ended.

Indeed, a Crusade such as King Peter planned was now an anachronism. Christendom could not afford such luxuries. It had to face too serious a threat further to the north. The planners of the First Crusade had seen clearly that the rescue of the Holy Land depended on the maintenance of Christian power in Anatolia. But since Pope Urban II’s death no Western statesman had had the wisdom to realize that the maintenance of Anatolia depended upon Byzantium. The Crusading movements of the twelfth century had embarrassed the Byzantine Emperor. They had added to the problems that Byzantium had to face and had never allowed the Emperors the leisure to attend to the subjection of the Turkish invaders. The task may well have been impossible, for the Turkish technique of invasion, with its destruction of agriculture and of communications, made reconquest a difficult task, while the varied ambitions of Emperors such as Manuel and Andronicus Comnenus resulted in a further dispersion of energy. The disaster at Manzikert in 1071 allowed the Turks into Anatolia. The disaster at Myriocephalum in 1176 ensured that they would remain there. But it was the Fourth Crusade and its irreparable destruction of the Byzantine Imperial system that gave them the opportunity to go further. During the thirteenth century Christendom had its last opportunity for dealing with the Turks. Their power in Anatolia had hitherto been dependent on the Seldjuk Sultanate of Konya. The Mongol invasions, which began in 1242, undermined and ultimately destroyed the Seldjuk state. The Byzantine Emperors, living in exile at Nicaea, were aware of their chance, but their European preoccupations and their yearning to recover their Imperial capital against the hostility of the Latin West hampered their efforts, while the Latins lacked the foresight and experience to understand the situation. Once the Byzantines were re-established in Constantinople the occasion was gone. The Emperors of the House of Palaeologus had to contend with young and vigorous kingdoms in the Balkans, with the demands of the Italian republics and with the risk of a Latin reconquest, which was very real till Charles of Anjou was crippled by the Sicilian Vespers. By the end of the thirteenth century it was too late. The Seldjuks were gone, but in their place there were several active and ambitious emirates, strengthened by the immigration of Turkish tribes subject to the Mongols. It would need a long and concerted effort to dislodge them. Chief amongst the emirs was the Grand Karaman, whose dominions stretched along the interior of the country from Philadelphia to the Anti-Taurus. There were other emirs established at Attalia, at Aydin (Tralles) and at Manissa (Magnesia). The north coast was still held by Byzantium and its sister-Empire of Trebizond. But south of Trebizond the country was occupied by the Turcomans; and in the north-west a lively new emirate was arising, under an enterprising prince called Osman.

1344: Capture of Smyrna

The Latins were by now growing aware of the importance of Anatolia, though they saw it less as a base for aggression against themselves than as an area in which they needed bases for the control of the Mediterranean. The Hospitallers’ occupation of Rhodes was largely the result of chance, but it illustrated a new orientation. The Italian republics had long been interested in the islands of the Aegean. It was natural that their concern, and the concern of the whole Latin world, should spread to the mainland opposite. When the emir Omar of Aydin, who was in possession of the excellent harbour of Smyrna, built a fleet in order to indulge in piracy in Aegean waters, both the Venetians and the knights at Rhodes took action. In 1344 a squadron, to which the Venetians and their dependants contributed about twenty ships, the knights six and the Pope and the King of Cyprus four apiece, set out against Smyrna. The Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, Henry of Asti, was in command. The emir of Aydin was defeated in a sea-battle on Ascension Day, off the entrance to the Gulf. The Christian allies, at the Pope’s request, refused an invitation from the Genoese ex-lord of Chios, Martin Zaccaria, who had joined the expedition, to restore him his island which the Byzantines had recaptured, but sailed up to Smyrna. After a short struggle the city fell into their hands on 24 October, though the citadel was untaken. The easy victory was mainly due to the emir Omar’s unpreparedness and his jealous fear of his fellow-emirs. He came with his army too late to save the city. But the victors were lured to try to invade the interior. They were heavily defeated a few miles from the city, and Henry of Asti and Martin Zaccaria were killed. After the Turks had failed to retake Smyrna, a treaty signed in 1350 entrusted it to the Hospitallers, though the citadel remained in Turkish hands. The knights held Smyrna till 1402, when it was stormed by Timur.

While the fate of Smyrna was still in the balance, a French nobleman, Humbert II, Dauphin of Vienne, announced his desire to go on a Crusade to the East. He was a weak, vain man, but genuinely pious and without personal ambition. After some negotiations with the Pope, it was decided that he should go to supplement the Christian effort at Smyrna. He set out from Marseilles with a company of knights and priests in May 1345, and was joined on his eastward journey by troops from northern Italy. After various ineffectual adventures he reached Smyrna in 1346, and his army defeated the Turks in a battle outside the walls. He did not remain there for long. By the summer of 1347 he was back in France. The whole expedition had been singularly futile. Its importance is that the Church was now ready to regard an expedition to Anatolia as a Crusade.

In 1361 Peter of Cyprus, who had recently acquired Corycus from the Armenians, obtained the help of the Hospitallers in an attack on the Turkish port of Attalia. After a brief struggle it fell into his hands on 24 August. The neighbouring emirs of Alaya, Monovgat and Tekke hastened to offer him allegiance, thinking that his friendship might be useful against their chief enemy the Grand Karaman. They soon withdrew their submission and made various attempts to recover Attalia; which, however, remained in Cypriot hands for sixty years.

Growth of the Ottoman Sultanate

But meanwhile the attention of Europe had been forcibly turned further north. The first decades of the fourteenth century saw an extraordinary growth in the power of the Turkish emirate founded by Osman, son of Ertoghrul, and called Osmanli or Ottoman after him. In 1300 Osman was a petty chieftain with lands in southern Bithynia. By the time of his death in 1326 he was lord of Brusa and most of the territory between Adramyttium, Dorylaeum and the Marmora. His expansion was due partly to his skilful and supple diplomacy towards his fellow-emirs, and still more to the weakness of Byzantium. In 1302 the Emperor Andronicus II had rashly hired the service of a Catalan company, led by Roger Flor, the ex-Templar who had made his fortune by his disreputable behaviour during the sack of Acre. Roger fought successfully against the Turks but still more actively against his imperial master. He was murdered in 1306, but the Catalan company remained in imperial territory, in hostility to the Empire, till 1315. During its wars it brought a Turkish regiment, formerly employed by the Emperor in Asia, across into Europe. Soon after the Catalan company was gone, there was civil war in the Empire between Andronicus II and his grandson Andronicus III, which only ended on the former’s death in 1328. Both sides used the Turks as mercenaries. Meanwhile Osman’s son, Orhan, continued his father’s work. He established a vague hegemony over the emirs to the south of his lands, and he continued with the conquest of Bithynia. Nicaea was captured in 1329 and Nicomedia in 1337. In the Empire civil war broke out again in 1341, between John V and his father-in-law, John Cantacuzenus, while the growing power of Stephen Dushan of Serbia distracted the attention of all the Balkan peoples.

In 1354 Orhan, who had taken the title of Sultan, sent troops across the Dardanelles to take the town of Gallipoli. Two years later he moved several thousand of his people across the Straits and settled them in Thrace. Next year he was able to advance inland and capture the great fortress of Adrianople, which became his second capital. By the time of his death in 1359 almost all Thrace was in his hands, and Constantinople was isolated from its European possessions. His son and successor, Murad I, was well able to carry on his predecessors’ work. His first action was to found the corps of Janissaries from forcibly converted Christian slave-children sent to him as tribute.

The expansion of the Ottoman Turks was not unnoticed in the West. There seemed to be little danger as yet for the European continent; for the great Serbian Empire seemed well able to check any advance. But Constantinople itself was obviously threatened, and with it the commercial interests of the Italians. The Greeks, however, were schismatic. The policy of the Western Church was to insist on their submission to Rome before there could be any question of sending them help. This form of moral blackmail was bound to fail. Not only religious conviction but national pride and the memory of past outrages made it impossible for the Greek people to agree to Latin ecclesiastical domination, even if their rulers were ready to comply.

1366: Crusade of the Count of Savoy

In 1365 Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, took the Cross. Pope Urban VI had been busily preaching the Crusade on behalf of Peter of Cyprus; and Amadeus had every intention of proceeding to the Holy Land. But he was first cousin to the Byzantine Emperor John V, and he wished to help him. The Pope gave him permission to begin his campaign by fighting against the Turks, on condition that he secured the submission of the Greek Church. The Venetians did their best to check his Crusade, fearing that it might interfere with their commercial policy. They particularly did not wish him to join Peter of Cyprus and were relieved when their rumours of Peter’s treaty with Egypt determined him to concentrate on Byzantium. He assembled a distinguished collection of knights, but from the outset he had difficulties over finance. The expedition reached the Dardanelles in August 1366, and at once laid siege to Gallipoli, which fell on 23 August. But instead of landing in Thrace and attempting to clear the province of the Turks, Amadeus sailed on to Constantinople. There he found that the Emperor had been treacherously captured by the Bulgarian King, Shishman III; and all his energy was therefore devoted to the rescue of his cousin, which was only achieved by an attack on Shishman’s port of Varna. When John was rescued Amadeus found that he had spent all his own money, as well as all the money that he had extorted locally and borrowed from the Empress. He was obliged to return home. But first he made the Emperor promise to bring his Church under Rome; and when the Patriarch of Constantinople, Philotheus, came with a Greek knight to his galley to tell him that the Greek people would depose the Emperor if he agreed, he kidnapped them and took them with him to Italy. He returned home at the end of 1367. His Crusade had been almost valueless. The Turks recaptured Gallipoli immediately on his departure.

Under Murad the Ottoman Turks rapidly increased their power. He reduced the western Anatolian emirs to subjection, and advanced in Europe. After a victory over the Serbs on the Maritsa in 1371, Bulgaria became a vassal-state and was soon entirely annexed. In 1389 a decisive battle was fought between the Serbs and the Turks at Kossovo. Murad was assassinated by a Serb just before the battle, but his troops, which vastly outnumbered their opponents, were completely triumphant. The Turks were now masters of the Balkans.

Though the Crusading energy of the West was diverted in 1390 by a disastrous expedition led by Louis II, Duke of Bourbon, against al-Mahdiya, near Tunis, it was clear that for the safety of Christian Europe the Ottoman Turks must be checked. When in 1390 the Sultan Bayezit annexed the Bulgarian town of Vidin on the Danube, whose prince had acknowledged the suzerainty of Hungary, the Hungarian King, Sigismund of Luxemburg, the brother of the Emperor Wenzel, appealed to all his fellow-monarchs for help. Both the Roman Pope, Boniface IX, and the Avignonese Pope, Benedict XIII, issued Bulls recommending a Crusade, while the aged propagandist, Philip of Mezieres, wrote an open letter to Richard II of England to bid him co-operate with Charles VI of France for the coming Crusade. Sigismund’s German connections enabled him to find support in Germany. The princes of Wallachia and Transylvania were sufficiently terrified of the Turkish advance to join him, much as they hated the Hungarians. In the West the Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans and Lancaster all announced their desire to help. In March 1395 a Hungarian embassy, headed by the Archbishop of Gran, Nicholas of Kanizsay, arrived at Venice to secure the promise of transport from the Doge. The ambassadors then proceeded to Lyons, where they were welcomed lavishly by the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, who promised them his enthusiastic support. After visiting Dijon, to pay their respects to the Duchess, Margaret of Flanders, they went to Bordeaux to meet the King of England’s uncle, John of Lancaster, who undertook to arrange for an English contingent. From Bordeaux they journeyed to Paris. The French King, Charles VI, was suffering from a bout of madness, but his regents offered to encourage the French nobility to join the Crusade. A great international army for the rescue of Christendom began to assemble. To finance it, the Burgundian Duke raised special taxes that brought in the huge sum of 700,000 gold francs. Individual French nobles added their own contributions. Guy VI, Count of La Tremouille, provided 24,000 francs. The French and Burgundian lords agreed to accept the leadership of the Duke of Burgundy’s eldest son, John, Count of Nevers, a lively young man of twenty-four.

1396: Crusade of Nicopolis

While the Hungarian ambassadors hurried back to Buda to tell King Sigismund of their success and to advise him to continue his preparations, the Duke of Burgundy issued careful ordinances for the organization and behaviour of the Franco-Burgundian troops. They were summoned to assemble at Dijon on 20 April 1396. John of Nevers was to be in command, but in view of his youth an advisory council was formed of Philip, son of the Duke of Bar, Guy of La Tremoille, and his brother William, the Admiral John of Vienne, and Odard, lord of Chasseron. At the end of the month an army of ten thousand men set out to march through Germany to Buda. On its way it was joined by six thousand Germans, headed by the Count Palatine Rupert, son of Rupert III of Wittelsbach, and Eberhard, Count of Katznellenbogen. Close behind there followed a thousand English fighting men, under King Richard’s half-brother, John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon.

The Western armies reached Buda about the end of July. There they found King Sigismund waiting with a force of some sixty thousand men. His vassal Mircea, voyevod of Wallachia, had joined him with another ten thousand men; and about thirteen thousand adventurers came in from Poland, Bohemia, Italy and Spain. The united army of close on a hundred thousand soldiers was the largest that had ever yet taken the field against the infidel. Meanwhile a fleet manned by the knights of the Hospital, under the Grand Master, Philibert of Naillac, and by Venetians and Genoese, penetrated into the Black Sea and lay off the mouth of the Danube.

The Ottoman Sultan on his side had not been idle. When news reached him that the Crusade had assembled in Hungary, Bayezit was laying siege to Constantinople. He at once summoned all his available troops and marched northward to the Danube. His army was estimated as numbering rather more than a hundred thousand.

Three centuries of experience had taught the Western knights nothing. When the plan of campaign was discussed at Buda King Sigismund advised a defensive strategy. He knew the strength of the enemy. It would be better, he thought, to lure the Turks into Hungary and attack them there from prepared positions. Like the Byzantine Emperors during the earlier Crusades, Sigismund believed that the safety of Christendom depended on the preservation of his own kingdom; but, like the earlier Crusaders, his allies envisaged a great offensive. The Turks would be overwhelmed and the Christian armies would advance triumphantly through Anatolia to Syria and the Holy City itself. So vehement were they that Sigismund gave way. Early in August the united host set out down the left bank of the Danube, as far as Orsova, by the Iron Gates, and there it crossed into the Sultan’s dominions.

Eight days were spent in ferrying the army across the river. It then marched along the south bank to the town of Vidin. The lord of Vidin was a Bulgarian prince, John-Srachimir; but he was vassal to the Sultan, who kept a small Turkish garrison there. On the arrival of the Christians John-Srachimir joined them and opened the gates. The Turks were massacred. The next town down the river was Rahova, a strong fortress with a moat and a double enceinte, and a large Turkish garrison. The more vehement French knights, led by Philip of Artois, Count of Eu, and John le Meingre, better known as Marshal Boucicaut, at once rushed to the attack and would have been annihilated had not Sigismund brought up his Hungarians. The garrison could not hold out for long against the whole Christian army. It was stormed, and the whole population, many of whom were Bulgarian Christians, were put to the sword, except for a thousand wealthier folk who were held for ransom.

From Rahova the army moved on to Nicopolis. This was the chief Turkish stronghold on the Danube, situated where the main road from central Bulgaria came to the river. It was built beside the river on a hill whose steep slopes were crowned with two lines of formidable walls. The Crusaders had come without machines for siege-warfare. The Westerners had not realized the need for them; and Sigismund had prepared only for defensive action. When the ladders hastily erected by the French and the mines dug by Hungarian engineers proved quite inadequate, the army sat down to starve the city into surrender. In this they were aided by the arrival of the Hospitaller fleet, which sailed up the Danube and anchored off the walls on 10 September. But Nicopolis was well stocked with provisions; and the Turkish Governor, Dogan Bey, who had learned of the fate of his compatriots at Vidin and Rahova, had no intention of surrendering.

1396: The Battle of Nicopolis

The delay was fatal to the morale of the Christian army. The Western knights amused themselves in gambling and drinking and all forms of debauchery. The few soldiers who dared to suggest that the Turks were formidable foes had their ears cut off, by order of Marshal Boucicaut, as a punishment for defeatism. There were quarrels between the various contingents, while Sigismund’s Transylvanian vassals and Wallachian allies began to talk of desertion.

When the Crusade had passed a fortnight before Nicopolis, news came that the Turks were approaching. The Sultan’s army had moved swiftly up from Thrace. It was lightly armed; its cavalry was far more mobile than the Frankish; its archers were superbly trained; and it had the profound advantage of perfect discipline and obedience to the sole command of the Sultan, who was himself a man of exceptional ability. He had sent some troops ahead, which were defeated in one of the Balkan passes by a French contingent led by the Lord of Coucy; but the jealousy of Marshal Boucicaut, who accused Coucy of trying to steal from John of Nevers the honours of victory, prevented any further attempts to stem the Turkish advance. Meanwhile the knights decided to kill the captives taken at Rahova.

On Monday, 25 September 1396, the vanguard of the Turkish army came into sight, and camped in the hills some three miles from the Christians. Next morning before sunrise Sigismund visited all his fellow-commanders and begged them to remain on the defensive. Though he told them frankly that he could not trust his Transylvanians and the Wallachians, only Coucy and John of Vienne supported him. The other leaders were determined to force a battle at once. Sigismund weakly gave way. He drew up his own army in three divisions, with his own Hungarian troops in the centre, the Wallachians on the left and the Transylvanians on the right. The vanguard was composed of all the Westerners, under John of Nevers.

When morning broke, all that could be seen of the Turkish army was a division of light irregular cavalry, just over the slope of the hill. Behind it, protected by a line of stakes, was the Turkish infantry, with the regiment of archers. The main body of sipahi cavalry, commanded by the Sultan in person, lay hidden by the crest of the hill. A division of Serbian cavalry, under the Prince Stephen Lazarovic, a loyal vassal of the Sultan’s, was on his left.

The battle, like the preceding strategy, showed that the Crusaders had learned nothing in all the centuries. The Western knights in the van did not wait to tell Sigismund of their plans. In high, confident enthusiasm they charged up the hill, scattering the light Turkish horsemen before them. While the Turks regrouped behind their own infantry, the knights found themselves held up by the stakes. At once they dismounted and continued the charge on foot, pulling out the stakes as they advanced. Such was their impetus that the Turkish infantry also was scattered. Some of the Turks were able to retire behind the regrouped cavalry, but many more were slain or driven down into the plain. But when the Crusaders, triumphant but exhausted, hastened on and reached the hill-top they found themselves face to face with the Sultan’s sipahis and the Serbs. The attack of these fresh troops took them by surprise. On foot, tired and thirsty, and weighed down by their heavy armour, they were soon flung into disorder, and their victory was turned into a rout. Few of the knights survived the slaughter. Amongst those that perished were William of La Tremoille and his son, Philip, John of Cadzaud, Admiral of Flanders, and the Grand Prior of the Teutonic Knights. John of Vienne, Grand Admiral of France, fell clutching the great banner of Notre Dame entrusted to his care. John of Nevers only was spared because his attendants cried out who he was and persuaded him to surrender. With him were taken the Counts of Eu and La Marche, Guy of La Tremouille, Enguerrand of Coucy and Marshal Boucicaut.

1396: The Sultan’s Victory

When the knights had dismounted, their horses rushed riderless back to the camp. The Wallachian and Transylvanian contingents at once decided that the battle was lost and hastened to retire, seizing all the boats that they could find, in order to cross the river. But Sigismund ordered his troops to advance to the rescue of the Westerners. They slew many of the disordered Turkish infantry as they moved up the hill, but when they approached the battlefield they found that they were too late. The Sultan’s cavalry charged down on them and drove them back with heavy loss right to the banks of the river.

When his army was scattered, Sigismund himself was persuaded to abandon the fight. He took refuge on one of the Venetian ships in the river, which carried him to Constantinople and on home through the Aegean and the Adriatic. He feared to journey by land, as he suspected treachery from the Wallachians. His soldiers, together with the few survivors of the Western Crusaders, made their way to their own countries as best they could, harassed by hostile natives and wild beasts and the rigours of an early winter. The Count Palatine reached his father’s castle in rags and died a few days later. Few of his fellow-refugees were more fortunate.

Bayezit had won a great victory; but his losses had been very heavy. In his rage, remembering also the massacres committed by the Crusaders, he ordered his prisoners, to the number of three thousand, to be killed in cold blood, only sparing the few noblemen for whom a high ransom could be charged. A French knight, James of Helly, who spoke Turkish, was made to identify them and then was allowed to travel to the West to arrange for the money to be raised. It was not till the following June that a Western embassy reached the Sultan at Brusa and handed over to him the vast sums that he demanded. Many sympathizers throughout Christendom sent contributions, but the greater part was paid by King Sigismund and by the Duke of Burgundy, who provided more than a million francs. The released captives reached their homes towards the end of 1397.

The Crusade of Nicopolis was the largest and the last of the great international Crusades. The pattern of its sorry history followed with melancholy accuracy that of the great disastrous Crusades of the past, with the difference that the battlefield was now in Europe and not in Asia. The faults and follies had been the same. The same enthusiasm had been dissipated in quarrels, jealousy and impatience. All that the West learned from this final failure was that the Holy War was practicable no more.

Timur the Lame

There would be no more Crusades. But the infidel remained threatening the heart of Christendom. He had reached the Danube and the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Constantinople was Christian still, but isolated, only spared because the Sultan had not yet artillery strong enough to batter its massive walls, nor sufficient ships to interrupt its communications by sea. The Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes and the Italian lords of the Aegean archipelago found themselves on a frontier, and Cyprus was a distant outpost. The King of Hungary, the voyevods of Wallachia and Moldavia and the chieftains of Albania sought help to defend their borders. The Italian republics were kept busy calculating what policy would best preserve their commercial interests. The Pope was deeply conscious of the threat to Christendom. But the powers of the West were no longer interested. Their last experience had been too bitter; and the enthusiasm that prompted it could not be revived after such a disaster. And even the Pope himself continually intrigued in Hungary to replace Sigismund by Ladislas of Naples, regardless of the harm that civil war would do to the defences of central Europe. The French King, who found himself from 1396 to 1409 suzerain of Genoa, was sufficiently worried about the fate of the Genoese colony at Pera, opposite Constantinople, to send Marshal Boucicaut with twelve hundred men to the Bosphorus in 1399. His presence prevented a half-hearted Turkish attempt on the Imperial city; but as no one was ready to pay him or his men, he soon withdrew. The Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II, then journeyed hopefully to the West to seek for help. The Italians were shocked to see how poor the heir of the Caesars had become; the Duke of Milan gave him splendid gifts that his state might be more suited to his rank. He was magnificently received at Paris and at London. But no material help was offered. The Papacy was uninterested, for Manuel was too honest to promise the submission of his Church to Rome, knowing that his people would not endure it. But in 1402 he hurried back to his capital cheered by news that seemed to portend the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Timur the Lame was born a petty prince of Turco-Mongol descent near Samarkand in 1336. By 1369 he was sovereign of all the lands that had belonged to the Jagatai branch of the Mongols. Thenceforward he extended his dominions by ruthless warfare, slowly at first, then with increasing momentum. From 1381 to 1386 he overran the lands of the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia and in 1386 conquered Tabriz and Tiflis. For the next four years he was busy on his northern frontier. In 1392 he captured Baghdad. During the next years he campaigned in Russia against the Mongols of the Golden Horde, penetrating as far as Moscow, and in 1395 he appeared in eastern Anatolia, where Erzinjan and Sivas fell to him. In 1398 he conquered northern India, in a brilliant campaign made more efficacious by ghastly massacres. In 1400 he turned westward again and swept into Syria, defeating the Mameluk armies sent against him first at Aleppo, then at Damascus, and occupying and sacking all the great cities of the province. In 1401 he punished a revolt in Baghdad by the total destruction of the city, which was only just recovering from the effect of Hulagu’s conquest a century and a half before. In 1402 he returned to Anatolia, determined to conquer the Ottoman Sultan, who was the only potentate left in Islam that he had not humiliated. The decisive battle took place at Ankara on 20 July. Bayezit was utterly defeated and taken prisoner, and died in captivity a few months later. Meanwhile the Ottoman cities of Anatolia fell to the conqueror, who in December 1402, drove the knights of the Hospital out of Smyrna.

The Emperor Manuel had hoped that the disaster to Bayezit might end the Ottoman menace; but he was not strong enough to take action without support. The Italian republics were cautious. The Genoese hastened to make a treaty with Timur to preserve their Asiatic trade but, fearing for their Balkan trade and uncertain of the future, they helped to preserve Ottoman power by ferrying the remnants of Bayezit’s army across to Europe. The Venetians held aloof. Their caution was justified. Timur’s invasion had in fact prevented an immediate attack on Constantinople by the Sultan, and it preserved Byzantium for another half-century. Had all Europe at once intervened it might have ended the Ottoman Empire. But the Turks were too well established racially in Anatolia and politically in the Balkans to be easily dislodged; nor had Timur the political genius of Jenghiz Khan. On his death in 1405 his empire began at once to disintegrate. The Mameluks quickly recovered Syria. In Azerbaijan the dynasty of the Black Sheep Turcomans arose and established a dominion from eastern Anatolia to Baghdad. There were nationalist stirrings in Persia where soon the great Safawi dynasty appeared. In Transoxiana Timur’s descendants lasted on for nearly a century; but it was only in India that they founded an enduring empire, as the Great Moghuls of Delhi.

1444 The Expedition to Varna

In Anatolia the only ultimate effect of Timur’s invasion was to introduce a new influx of Turks and Turcomans and thus eventually strengthen the roots of Ottoman power. When Timur died the sons of Bayezit took over their father’s inheritance. For six years they fought between themselves. The civil wars offered the Christian powers another chance of checking the further growth of Ottoman power, but it was not taken. The Byzantine Emperor won back by his diplomacy a few coastal cities, and the Knights of Rhodes were allowed to build a castle on the mainland opposite their island, at Bodrun, the ancient Halicarnassus. But nothing else was gained. When in 1413 Mohammed I became sole Sultan the Ottoman Empire was intact. Mohammed was a peaceful ruler who avoided aggressive wars but firmly reorganized his dominions. On his death in 1421 the Ottomans were stronger than before.

Mohammed’s successor, Murad II, began his reign with an attempt on Constantinople. But he still lacked heavy artillery and ships; and after the Greeks had bravely defended their capital, without outside help, from June to August 1422, he abandoned the siege and concentrated his attention on conquests in the Greek peninsula, in Asia and across the Danube. In 1439 the Emperor John VIII, Manuel’s successor, agreed in desperation at the Council of Florence to submit his Church to Rome. His people repudiated the union, and he received little for his pains. In 1440 Pope Eugenius IV preached a new Crusade. Four years later an Albanian chieftain, Skanderbeg, declared war on the Turks and was joined by his suzerain King George of Serbia. The Pope himself and the King of Aragon promised to send ten galleys each to the East. The Hungarian army, under Sigismund’s bastard, John Corvinus, surnamed Hunyadi, Voyevod of Transylvania for King Vladislav, prepared to make an incursion across the Danube. But after a few skirmishes the allies lost heart and agreed to a ten years’ truce, which was signed at Szegedin in June 1444. Murad then prepared to lead his army away to deal with enemies in Anatolia; whereupon the Papal Legate with the allied army, Cardinal Julian Cesarini, persuaded its leaders that an oath sworn to an infidel was invalid, and urged them to advance. The Orthodox King of Serbia rejected such casuistry and would not allow Skanderbeg to stay with the army. John Hunyadi protested against it, but remained in command. He led the allied army, of some twenty thousand men, to Varna, where they arrived early in November 1444. But Murad, warned of their violation of the truce, hastened to meet them with about three times their numbers. The battle was fought on 10 November. The Christians resisted gallantly; and at the crisis the Sultan, who had the violated treaty borne into battle with his standard, was heard to cry: ‘Christ, if Thou art God as Thy followers say, punish them for their perfidy.’ His prayer and his numbers prevailed. The Christian allies were almost annihilated. King Vladislav, who was with his troops, was killed, together with the perfidious Cardinal. Hunyadi himself escaped with a tiny remnant of his army.

Skanderbeg’s gallant efforts saved Albanian independence for another twenty years; and John Hunyadi, despite a disastrous defeat in a three days’ battle on the ominous field of Kossovo in 1448, kept the Sultan from crossing the Danube as long as he lived. But by the time of his death in 1456 the Turks had achieved the ambition that had dominated Islam since the days of the Prophet. In 1451 Murad II was succeeded by his son, Mohammed II, a youth of twenty-one, of boundless energy, enterprise and ability. He made it his first object to conquer Constantinople. This is not the place to tell of the splendid, tragic story of the last days of Byzantium. The Greeks, divided against their rulers who had sold their Church to Rome, rallied with superb courage to face their last agony. The West sent help that was hopelessly inadequate for all its bravery. The Sultan’s vast resources, his careful preparations and his indomitable will were destined to carry him to triumph. Nor was his triumph one only of prestige. Byzantium had been a long time in dying, but its death guaranteed that the Turks would remain in Europe. It was to give them the mastery of the Eastern seas. It sounded the knell of the empires of Genoa and Venice, of the kingdom of Cyprus and of the Hospital at Rhodes; and it left the Sultan free to drive his armies to the gates of Vienna.

1464: Pius II, the Last Crusader

All over Europe the fall of Constantinople was recognized as marking the end of an era. The news was not unexpected, but it came as a bitter cause for self-reproach. Yet, except for the princes whose frontiers were immediately threatened, no one cared any longer to take action. Only the Cardinal Nuncio in Germany, the great humanist Aeneas Sylvius, tried to rouse the West to its belated duty. But his speeches to the German Diets bore no result, and his letters to the Pope told of his disillusion. In 1458 he himself became Pope, as Pius II. Throughout his pontificate he laboured to recreate such a Crusade as his great predecessors had sent forth. In 1463 his project seemed near to fruition. A timely discovery of alum mines in the Papal states provided him with unexpected revenues and threatened to break the Turkish monopoly of alum. The new Doge of Venice seemed to favour war. The King of Hungary, at peace at last with the Emperor, was eager for a Christian alliance. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, showed a welcome interest. The Bull Ezechielis, issued in October, mirrored the Papal optimism. But as the months passed, the enthusiasm faded. Only the Hungarians, who were anyhow faced with a Turkish war, offered him material support. The Venetians hesitated. None of the Italian cities was ready to risk the loss of trade that a rupture with the Sultan would bring. Philip of Burgundy wrote that the plots of the King of France made it impossible for him to leave his lands. Valiantly the Pope determined that he would finance and lead the Crusade himself. On his orders his agents assembled a fleet of galleys at Ancona; and on 18 July 1464, though he was weary and in failing health, he solemnly took the Cross at a ceremony at Saint Peter’s.

A few days later he set out for the port of embarkation. His attendants saw that he was a dying man; so they hid the truth from him that not one of the princes of Europe had followed his example and that no armies were marching behind him to embark in his galleys for the East. Instead, as he came near to Ancona, they drew the curtains of his litter across so that he should not see out. For the roads were covered with the crews from his fleet, who had deserted their ships and were hurrying homeward. He reached Ancona only to die there, on 14 August. He was mercifully spared the knowledge of the utter collapse of his Crusade.

Nearly four centuries before, Pope Urban II by his preaching had sent men in their thousands to risk their lives in the Holy War. Now all that a Pope who took the Cross himself could raise were a few mercenaries who abandoned the cause before ever the campaign was begun. The Crusading spirit was dead.