Children's Crusade
The famous medievalist historian Jacques Le Goff asked: "Were there children in the medieval West?" If you look closely at works of art, you won't find them there. Later, angels will often be depicted as children and even as playful boys - half angels, half cupids. But in the Middle Ages, angels of both sexes were portrayed only as adults. “When the sculpture of the Virgin Mary had already acquired the features of soft femininity, clearly borrowed from a specific model,” writes Le Goff, “the baby Jesus remained a terrifying-looking freak that interested neither the artist, nor the client, nor the public.” Only at the end of the Middle Ages did the iconographic theme spread, reflecting a new interest in the child. In conditions of the highest infant mortality, this interest was embodied in a feeling of anxiety: the theme of the “Massacre of the Innocents” was reflected in the spread of the holiday of the Innocents, under the “patronage” of which there were shelters for foundlings. However, such shelters appeared no earlier than the 15th century. The Middle Ages hardly noticed the child, having no time either to be touched or to admire him. Leaving the care of a woman, the child immediately found himself thrown into the exhausting rural labor or military training - depending on the origin. In both cases, the transition was carried out very quickly. Medieval epic works about the childhood of legendary heroes - Sid, Roland, etc. - draw heroes as young people, not boys. The child comes into view only with the advent of a relatively small urban family, the formation of a more personal burgher class. According to a number of scientists, the city suppressed and fettered the independence of women. She was enslaved by the hearth, while the child was emancipated and filled the house, school and street.
Le Goff is echoed by the well-known Soviet researcher A. Gurevich. He writes that according to the ideas of the people of the Middle Ages, a person does not develop, but passes from one age to another. This is not a gradually prepared evolution leading to qualitative shifts, but a sequence of internally unrelated states. In the Middle Ages, the child was looked upon as a small adult, and there was no problem of the development and formation of the human personality. F. Aries, who studied the problem of attitudes towards the child in Europe in the Middle Ages and in the early period of modern times, writes about the ignorance of the category of childhood in the Middle Ages as a special qualitative state of a person. "Medieval civilization," he argues, is a civilization of adults. Until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, fine arts saw children as reduced adults, dressed in the same way as adults and built like them. Education is not age-appropriate, and adults and adolescents are taught together. Games, before becoming children's games, were games of chivalry. The child was considered the natural companion of the adult.
Moving away from the primitive age classes with their initiation rites and forgetting the principles of education of antiquity, medieval society for a long time ignored childhood and the transition from it to adulthood. The problem of socialization was considered solved by the act of baptism. Singing love, courtly poetry contrasted it with marital relations. Christian moralists, on the contrary, warned against excessive passion in the relationship between spouses and saw in sexual love a dangerous phenomenon that must be curbed, since it cannot be completely avoided. Only with the transition to the New Age, the family began to be considered not as a union between spouses, but as a cell that was entrusted with socially important functions for raising children. But above all, this is a bourgeois family.
According to Gurevich, in the specific attitude to childhood in the Middle Ages, a special understanding of the human personality is manifested. Man, apparently, is not yet able to realize himself as a single developing entity. His life is a series of states, the change of which is not internally motivated.
A general analysis of the attitude towards children in the Middle Ages will help us understand such an episode as the children's crusade. It is now difficult to imagine that parents would let go of their children, so that they would follow on foot either to Rome or to the Middle East. Maybe for a medieval person there was nothing extraordinary in this? Why shouldn't the little man try to do what the big man can do? After all, the little one is the same son of the Lord as the big one. On the other hand, isn't this whole campaign nothing more than a fairy tale, composed already when they began to compose anything about children in general?
The legendary crusade of children gives an excellent idea of how the mentality of the people of the Middle Ages differed from the worldview of our contemporaries. Reality and fiction in the head of a man of the XIII century were closely intertwined. The people believed in miracles. Moreover, he saw and created them. Now the idea of a children's trip seems wild to us, but at the same time, thousands of people believed in the success of the enterprise. True, we still do not know whether it was or not.
The Crusades were an era in themselves. The most heroic and at the same time one of the most controversial pages in the history of chivalry, the Catholic Church and all of medieval Europe. The event held "to please God" least of all corresponded in its methods not only to Christian ethics, but also to the usual norms of morality.
The beginning of the crusades to the East was due to several serious reasons. First, it is the plight of the peasantry. Oppressed by taxes and duties, having experienced a number of terrible disasters in the form of epidemics of plague and famine over several years (from the late 80s to the mid-90s of the 11th century), the common people were ready to go as far as they liked, just to find a place where they food.
Secondly, the chivalry also experienced hard times. By the end of the 11th century, there were almost no free lands left in Europe. The feudal lords stopped dividing their possessions between their sons, switching to the system of majorat - inheritance only by the eldest son. A large number of poor knights appeared, who, by their origin, did not consider it possible to do anything other than war. They were aggressive, rushed into any adventure, turned out to be mercenaries during numerous civil strife, just engaged in robbery. In the end, they had to be removed from Europe, there was a need to consolidate the chivalry and direct its militant energy somewhere “outside”, to solve external problems, since further effective management of European territories by kings, large feudal lords and the church became very problematic.
The third factor is the ambitions and material claims of the Catholic Church and, first of all, the papacy. The unification of believers by some idea objectively led to the strengthening of the power of Rome, since the idea came from there. The campaign to the East promised "interception" by the pope of the religious initiative in Eastern Europe from Constantinople, strengthening the positions of Catholicism.
Also, such a military event promised both the church, and the feudal lords, and even the poor, enormous wealth. And the churches not only at the expense of, in fact, military booty, but also at the expense of rich donations and European lands of the crusaders who went to war.
The most convenient and, it seems, obvious pretext was a campaign under the banner of war against the "infidels" - that is, with the Muslims. The immediate reason for the start of the campaign was the appeal of the Byzantine emperor Alexei Comnenus for help to Pope Urban II (1088-1099) (his name before taking the papacy was Oddon de Lagerie). The Byzantine Empire suffered from a combined attack on it by the Seljuk Turks and the Pechenegs. Vasilevs addressed the "Latins" as brothers in faith. And without this, since the 70s of the XI century, the idea of the need to liberate the Holy Sepulcher, which was located in Jerusalem captured by the Turks, was in the air. Thus, the eyes of believers, who from the time of Augustine turned to the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the Kingdom of God, turned to the earthly Jerusalem. The dream of a future heavenly bliss after death is intricately intertwined in the minds of Christians with concrete, earthly rewards for righteous labors. These sentiments were used by the organizers of the crusades.
The Pope lifted the excommunication from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios, which had hitherto been on him as a schismatic. In March 1095, the pontiff once again listened to the ambassadors of Alexei at the cathedral in Piacenza, and in the summer of 1095 Urban II went to France. For some time he negotiated with the southern French monasteries, members of the most influential Cluniac congregation, large feudal lords and authoritative priests. Finally, on November 18, a church council began in the city of Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne. As often happened, in the city where such an important forum took place, there was a mass of visiting people. In total - about 20 thousand people: knights, peasants, vagabonds, etc. The Council discussed, in general, exclusively church problems. But at the end of it, on November 26, Urban II, not far from the city on a plain in the open air, spoke to the people with a speech, which made Clermont Cathedral so famous.
The Pope urged Catholics to take up arms in the war against "the Persian tribe of the Turks... who reached the Mediterranean... killed and took away many Christians." The liberation of the Holy Sepulcher was declared a separate task. The Pope tried to present the war as an easy walk, promising rich booty. Jerusalem, according to him, was a place where milk and honey flowed, in the East everyone will receive new lands, which in cramped Europe are not enough for everyone. The pontiff urged to abandon internal strife for the common cause. Urban II was extremely specific and straightforward. Everyone who went on a campaign was forgiven of sins (including future ones - committed during a charitable war). The crusaders could count on getting into paradise. The pope's speech was constantly interrupted by an enthusiastic crowd shouting: "God wants it so!" Many immediately vowed to go on a campaign and attached crosses made of red fabric to their shoulders.
The church took over the protection of the lands (and, of course, the conduct of business) of the departed crusaders, their debts to creditors were declared invalid. The feudal lords who did not want to go on a campaign had to pay off with rich gifts in favor of the clergy.
The news of the beginning of the campaign quickly spread throughout Europe. Probably, the pope himself did not expect such an effect from his speech. Already in the spring of 1096, thousands of poor people from the Rhine lands set off on their journey. Then the knights also moved to the East. Thus began the First Crusade.
In total, united in six large groups, tens of thousands of people made this campaign. First, separate detachments set off, largely composed of the poor, led by Peter the Hermit and the knight Walter Golyak. Their first "charitable" deed was Jewish pogroms in German cities:
Trier, Cologne, Mainz. In Hungary, they also did a lot of trouble. The Balkan Peninsula was plundered by the "Christ warriors".
Then the crusaders arrived in Constantinople. The most numerous detachment moving from southern France was led by Raymond of Toulouse. Bohemond of Tarentum went with his army to the East through the Mediterranean Sea. Robert of Flanders reached the Bosphorus by the same sea route. The number of crusaders who gathered in various ways in Constantinople probably reached 300,000. Byzantine emperor Alexei I was horrified by the prospect of unrestrained looting in the capital that opened before him. And it was not necessary to especially count on the fact that the Latins would only return to him the lands taken by the Muslims. Through bribery and flattery, the emperor won the vassal oath from most of the knights and tried to send them on their way as soon as possible. In April 1097, the crusaders crossed the Bosporus.
The first detachment of Walter Golyak was by that time already defeated in Asia Minor. But other troops that appeared here in the spring of 1097 easily defeated the army of the Nicaean Sultan. In the summer, the crusaders split up: most of them moved towards the Syrian city of Antioch. In early July 1098, after a seven-month siege, the city surrendered. Meanwhile, some French crusaders established themselves in Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey). Baldwin of Boulogne founded his own state here, stretching on both sides of the Euphrates. It was the first crusader state in the East.
In Antioch, the crusaders, in turn, were besieged by the emir of Mosul Kerbuga. Hunger has begun. Being exposed to great danger, they left the city and were able to defeat Kerbuga. After a long quarrel with Raymond, Antioch was taken over by Bohemond, who, even before its fall, managed to force the rest of the crusader leaders to agree to the transfer of this important city to him. Soon, in Asia Minor, a war began between the crusaders and the Greeks of the coastal cities, who hoped to get rid of not only the Muslim dictate, but also the new Western masters.
From Antioch, the crusaders moved south along the coast without any special obstacles and captured several port cities along the way. Before the knights opened the way to Jerusalem, but they did not immediately move to the desired city. An epidemic broke out - far from the last during the Crusades. "Christ's army" lost many people every day without any battles. The leaders split up, and their detachments scattered over the surrounding territories. Finally, the departure from Antioch was scheduled for March 1099.
Gottfried of Bouillon and the Count of Flanders set out for Laodicea. The whole army united under the walls of Arhas, the siege of which had already been begun by Raymond. At this time, the ambassadors of the Cairo Caliph, who had recently become the ruler of Jerusalem, arrived to the crusaders. They declared that the gates of the holy city would only open to unarmed pilgrims. This did not affect the plans of the Europeans in any way. Taking Arkhas, they continued to move towards the main goal. At that time, the Christian army numbered up to 50 thousand people. These were already battle-hardened warriors, and not the rabble of the first stage of the crusades. But at Jerusalem, which opened their eyes, they looked with the same childish delight and reverent awe, like any person of that era. The riders dismounted from their horses and walked barefoot; cries, prayers and a thousand times repeated exclamation "Jerusalem!" announced to the district.
The crusaders settled down in three detachments: Gottfried, Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders - to the northeast of the city, Tancred - to the northwest, Raymond - to the south. Jerusalem was defended by an Egyptian garrison of 40,000 men. The city thoroughly prepared for the siege: food was prepared, wells were filled up throughout the surrounding area and the bed of the Kidron River. The Knights are in big trouble. They suffered from thirst and heat, there was a treeless space around, they had to send expeditions to remote areas behind the forest, from which huge siege engines, ladders and battering rams were built. Logs were also used, from which rural houses and churches of the area were made. But from Genoa, the merchants promptly sent ships with food and qualified carpenters and engineers.
The Saracens staunchly defended themselves, poured boiling tar on the heads of the opponents, threw stones at them, hit them with arrows. The crusaders resorted to a variety of methods. Once they even made a religious procession around the impregnable fortress. The decisive assault began on July 14, 1099. At night, Gottfried's warriors secretly moved their camp to the eastern part of Jerusalem, which was less protected by the Saracens. At dawn, on a signal, all three parts of the army began to move. From three sides, colossal erratic towers moved towards the walls of Jerusalem. But after a twelve-hour battle, the Muslims managed to repel the enemy. Only the next day, from the tower of Gottfried, a bridge was finally thrown over the wall, along which his soldiers broke into the city. The knights managed to set fire to the defensive devices of the Saracens. Soon both Raymond and Tancred were in Jerusalem. It happened at three o'clock in the afternoon, on Friday, on that day of the week and at the time when the Savior died on the cross.
A terrible massacre and no less terrible robbery began in the city. For a week, the "pious" conquerors destroyed about 70 thousand people. And they, with prayers and sobs, with bare feet and bare heads, atoned for sins in the Church of the Resurrection in front of the Tomb of Christ.
Soon, in a battle with a large Egyptian army at Ascalon, the united crusading army defended its main conquest. The crusaders took possession of most of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Four states were created on the occupied territory by the knights: the kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Tripoli, the principality of Antioch and the county of Edessa. Chief among the rulers was the king of Jerusalem, Gottfried, but the rest behaved quite independently. The rule of the Latins, however, was short-lived.
From the very beginning, the Crusades were a gamble. Huge heterogeneous troops under the leadership of often feuding ambitious kings, counts and dukes, with an ever-decreasing religious zeal, thousands of kilometers from their homeland, had to experience insurmountable difficulties. And if during the first campaign the Europeans managed to stun the Muslims with their pressure, then they could not create a solid system of state administration here, and then they could not defend their conquests.
In 1137, the Byzantine Emperor John II attacked and captured Antioch. In 1144, the strong emir of Mosul, Imad-ad-din Zengi, took the county of Edessa, an outpost of the Christian world in the East. Difficult times have come for other knightly states. From all sides they were attacked by Syrians, Seljuks and Egyptians. The king of Jerusalem lost control of his own vassal princes.
Naturally, the fall of Edessa was to be a heavy blow for the Christians. This event caused a particularly great resonance in France. King Louis VII the Young was quite romantic and at the same time militant. He was seized with a thirst for exploits, which he had heard about since childhood. This impulse was supported by Pope Eugene III, and one of the most authoritative confessors of Europe - the abbot of Clairvaux Bernard, a supporter of strict morals, a teacher of both Eugene, and abbot Suger - an influential adviser to Louis. In the city of Wesel in Burgundy, Bernard convened a council, at which, in the presence of the king, on March 31, 1146, he delivered a fiery speech, calling on all Christians to rise up to fight against the infidels. “Woe to him whose sword is not stained with blood,” said the preacher. Immediately, many, and, first of all, Louis, laid crosses on themselves as a sign of readiness to go on a new campaign. Bernard soon arrived in Germany, where, after some struggle, he managed to persuade King Conrad III to support the new undertaking.
From the very beginning of the campaign (spring of 1147), the Germans and French coordinated their actions poorly, each pursuing their own goals. So, the French wanted to move to the East by sea, using the help of the Norman king of Sicily, Roger, while the Germans agreed with the Byzantine emperor Manuel and were going to move by land through Hungary and the Balkans. Conrad's point of view won, and the angry Roger, already at enmity with Byzantium over southern Italy, made an alliance with the African Muslims and made a series of devastating raids on the Greek coast and islands.
The Germans were the first to reach Constantinople in September 1147, just like the last time, having managed to inspire horror with their looting along the way. Manuel, like Alexei Komnenos, did everything possible to quickly bring the Latins to Asia Minor. On October 26, the Germans suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Iconian Sultan near Dorileus in Anatolia. Returning to Nicaea, many thousands of Germans died of starvation. But the warriors of Louis, who arrived in the Byzantine capital a little later, Manuel told about the amazing successes of Conrad, causing them to envy. Soon the French also ended up in Asia Minor. At Nicaea, the armies of the kings met and continued their journey together. Trying to bypass the places of the recent Dorylean tragedy, the monarchs led the troops in a difficult detour through Pergamon and Smyrna. The Turkish cavalry constantly disturbed the columns, the crusaders lacked fodder and food. The matter was complicated and slowed down by the fact that Louis VII took with him a large retinue, completely inappropriate in a difficult campaign, a magnificent court headed by his beautiful wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The help of the Byzantine army was insufficient - apparently, Emperor Manuel, in the depths of his soul, wished for the defeat of the crusaders. On July 3, 1147, a fierce battle broke out near the village of Hittin, west of Lake Genisaret. The Muslim army outnumbered the Christian forces. As a result, the crusaders suffered a crushing defeat. Countless of them were killed in battle, and the survivors were taken prisoner. In the hands of the Christians, only a few powerful fortresses remained in the north: Krak des Chevaliers, Châtel Blanc and Margat.
At the beginning of 1148, a greatly depleted crusading army arrived in Ephesus. From here, Louis with great difficulty, having endured a series of battles, cold and heavy rains, reached Antioch in March 1148. The last part of the way his army did on Byzantine ships. In Antioch, the French received a warm welcome, festivities and celebrations. Eleanor struck up an intrigue with the local ruler. Louis VII lost all enthusiasm, and his army - the necessary fighting spirit.
Meanwhile, Konrad no longer thought about joint actions with his ally. With Jerusalem's King Baldwin III, he agreed to speak not against the Emir of Mosul - the powerful offender of Edessa, for which, it seemed, the whole campaign was started - but against Damascus. The French monarch was forced to join them. The 50,000-strong Christian army spent a lot of time under the walls of the Syrian capital. Its leaders quickly quarreled among themselves, suspecting each other of treason and of wanting to capture most of the potential booty. The attack on Damascus prompted its ruler to conclude an alliance with another Muslim feudal lord, the prince of Aleppo. The combined forces of the Muslims forced the crusaders to retreat from Damascus.
In the autumn of 1148, on Byzantine ships, the Germans left for Constantinople, and from there they left for Germany. Louis also did not dare to continue military operations. At the beginning of 1149, the French crossed over to South Italy on Norman ships, and in the autumn of that year they were already at home.
The second crusade turned out to be a completely useless undertaking. In addition to numerous losses, he did not bring anything to his leaders and initiators - neither glory, nor wealth, nor lands. The abbot of Clairvaux, for whom the defeat of the campaign was a personal tragedy, even wrote a "justification" in which he attributed the disasters of the war to the crimes of Christians.
During the Second Crusade, some feudal lords organized similar local events in Europe. So, the Saxons attacked the Slavic tribes between the Elbe and the Oder, and a number of French, Norman and English knights intervened in Spanish affairs, fought against the Moors and captured Lisbon, which became the capital of Christian Portugal.
If you can imagine an "all-star match" in the Middle Ages, then it is quite possible to call it the Third Crusade. Almost all the bright characters of that time, all the most powerful rulers of Europe and the Middle East took a direct part in it. Richard the Lionheart, Philip II Augustus, Frederick Barbarossa, Saladin. Everyone is a personality, everyone is an era, everyone is a hero of his time.
After the Second Crusade, things went from bad to worse for Christians in the East. The outstanding statesman and talented commander Sultan Saladin became the leader and hope of the Muslim world. First, he came to power in Egypt, then subjugated Syria and other territories in the east. In 1187 Saladin took Jerusalem. The news of this was the signal for the start of another crusade. The Roman legates managed to convince the powerful sovereigns of France, England and Germany - Philip, Richard and Frederick to move to the East.
The German emperor chose the already well-known route through Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula for movement. His crusaders, led by the wise and practical 67-year-old Barbarossa, were the first to set out on the campaign in the spring of 1189. Naturally, relations between the Germans and the Byzantines traditionally deteriorated as soon as the Latins ended up on the territory of Byzantium. Skirmishes began, a diplomatic scandal erupted. Frederick seriously thought about the siege of Constantinople, but in the end everything was more or less resolved and the German army crossed into Asia Minor. She was slowly but surely moving south, when the irreparable happened. While crossing the Salef River, the emperor drowned. This event made a depressing impression on the pilgrims. Many of them returned home. The rest moved to Antioch.
The French and the British agreed to act together. The cunning and subtle diplomat Philip from the time of the wars against Henry II Plantagenet was on the most friendly terms with the young English king Richard I. The latter was the complete opposite of Philip. State affairs interested him insofar as. He was much more interested in war, exploits, glory. The first knight of his time, physically strong, brave Richard the Lionheart was a short-sighted politician and a bad diplomat. But so far, before the campaign, the friendship of the monarchs seemed unshakable. It took them some time to prepare, within the framework of which a special tax was established in their countries for all segments of the population - the so-called Saladin tithe. Richard was particularly diligent in raising money. It was said that the king would sell London if there was a buyer for it. As a result, a sizable army gathered under his command.
Philip Augustus and Richard set out on a campaign in the spring of 1190. Their path lay through Sicily. Already here the fragility of their union was revealed. Richard laid claim to this island. He began hostilities against the Sicilians (more precisely, the Normans who owned the kingdom), because of which he quarreled with the more peaceful Philip. Finally the British and French moved on. Philip's troops safely reached the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and the British were overtaken by a storm that nailed them to the shores of Cyprus. Richard conquered the island from the usurper Isaac Komnenos and declared it his possession. Soon he pledged it to the Templars. It was not until June 1191 that the English forces arrived at Acre.
The main events were unfolding near this seaside Syrian city. Actually, the fortress was not supposed to be of great strategic value to Christians. At first (back in 1189), the Christian ruler of Jerusalem, Guido Lusignan, deprived of his city, got involved in the struggle for it. Gradually, all detachments from Europe, who came one by one, joined him. One by one, they were crushed by Muslims. The siege dragged on, near Acre grew, in fact, a Christian knightly city. Acre was well defended, with food and reinforcements coming in by sea from Egypt and by land from Mesopotamia. Saladin was outside the city and constantly raided the besiegers. The crusader troops suffered from disease and heat. The arrival of new forces, and especially Richard, inspired the crusaders to more energetic fighting. Undermines were dug, siege towers were built ... Finally, in July 1191, the fortress was taken.
The usual strife prevented the crusaders from developing success in the east. A dispute arose over the candidacy of the new king of Jerusalem. Philip supported the hero of the defense of Tyre, Conrad of Montferatt, Richard played for Guido Lusignan. There were problems with the division of production. The episode with Leopold of Austria was evidence of fierce contradictions. He hoisted his banner over one of the towers of Acre, and Richard ordered it to be torn down. Then miraculously managed to avoid a bloody clash of Christians among themselves. Philip, dissatisfied and irritated by the actions of Richard, and simply considered his mission accomplished, departed for France. The English king remained the sole leader of the crusader host. He did not receive full confidence and approval for his actions. His relationship with Saladin was inconsistent. The Sultan was distinguished by great political tact and many truly chivalrous qualities that even Europeans appreciated in him. He willingly negotiated, but when Richard was nice to the enemy, he was suspected of treason. When he took more drastic steps, the Christians also had every reason to be dissatisfied. So, after the capture of Acre, the knights presented Saladin with conditions that were too difficult for him to ransom the Muslim hostages: the return of all the occupied territories, money, the Tree of the Cross ... Saladin hesitated. Then the enraged Richard ordered the death of two thousand Muslims - an action that horrified their fellow believers. In response, the Sultan ordered the death of the Christian captives.
From Acre, Richard moved not to Jerusalem, but to Jaffa. This path was very difficult. Saladin constantly disturbed the knightly columns. A great battle took place at Arzuf. Here Richard showed himself as an amazingly brave warrior and a good commander. The knights utterly defeated the numerically superior enemy. But the king failed to take advantage of the results of this victory. The English monarch and the sultan in 1192 made peace, which did not at all meet the goals of the campaign. Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Muslims, although it was open to peaceful Christians - pilgrims. Only a narrow coastal strip remained in the hands of the crusaders, starting north of Tire and reaching Jaffa. Richard, returning home, was captured in Austria by Leopold, who held a grudge against him, and spent two years in prison.
The Fourth Crusade clearly showed what goals the crusader army actually pursues and what its Christian piety is worth. No wonder Pope John Paul II had to apologize relatively recently to the Patriarch of Constantinople for the actions of the knights in the distant 13th century.
The initiator of the next campaign was the active Pope Innocent III. In 1198, he began to agitate Western sovereigns and feudal lords to go again to liberate the Holy Sepulcher. The powerful monarchs of England and France this time ignored Innocent's proposal, but several feudal lords nevertheless decided to take part in the campaign. These were Thibaut of Champagne, Boniface, Margrave of Montferatt, Simon de Montfort, Baudouin of Flanders and others.
The crusaders agreed with the pope that the army should first go not to Syria and Palestine, but to Egypt, from where the Muslim world drew its strength. Since the knights did not have a large fleet, they turned to the leading maritime power of that time - the Venetian Republic. From the very beginning of the crusades, the rich merchant cities of Italy took an active part in their organization. The Genoese, Pisans and Venetians transported supplies and people, being interested not only in a specific reward for these services, but also in strengthening their influence in the Eastern Mediterranean to the detriment of the interests of competitors: the Arabs and Byzantium. In 1201, the elderly (he was over 90 years old!) Doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo promised to transport 25,000 crusaders to Egypt and bring them supplies for 85,000 marks and half of the future booty for three years. In May of the same year, Boniface of Montferatt, a practical and cynical man, became the leader of the crusaders. He and Dandolo soon pushed Pope Innocent out of the leadership of the campaign and focused on their own interests, different from the original goals of the campaign.
The crusaders gathered in a camp on the island of Lido, a few kilometers from Venice. It quickly became clear that the crusaders did not have enough money to pay for food. Then the Doge agreed with Boniface that the soldiers of Christ would pay Venice a favor - they would capture the rich city of Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, which then belonged to Hungary. Only a few knew about the agreement. All the crusaders were put on ships in the autumn of 1202, and a month later they landed not at Egypt, but at Zadar, which the irritated knights easily took.
The Byzantine prince Alexei Angel arrived at the knights. His father Isaac, who was in alliance with the German emperor, was shortly before that deposed and blinded by Alexei III Comnenus. The prince managed to escape, and now he asked for help from the crusaders. And for this he promised a rich reward, assistance in the campaign to the Holy Land and, finally, the restoration of the unity of the Greek and Roman Christian churches. So there was a reason to go to Constantinople. This idea was actively supported by Boniface and Dandolo. The Venetians had a grudge against the Byzantines for a long time. In trade and maritime relations, they were stronger and had great privileges in Constantinople for a long time, but more and more often misunderstandings arose between the Venetian merchants and the emperor, which cost the Italians great losses.
On June 23, 1203, the crusaders arrived at the Bosporus and landed on the Asian coast, near Chalcedon. Then they crossed over to Galata and made a fortified camp here. The Venetian ships, having broken through the famous chain that blocked the entrance, broke into the Golden Horn Bay. By this time, the knightly host numbered about 40 thousand people, but due to illness, desertion and military losses, only about 15 thousand participated in the final division of booty.
Actually, there was no siege as such - all actions were concentrated on a relatively small section of the city fortifications. The walls seemed absolutely impregnable. Over the past seven centuries, they have repeatedly defended the city from the Huns, Bulgarians, Slavs, Arabs and Turks, whose armies greatly outnumbered the forces with which they besieged Dandolo and Boniface. But Constantinople did not have a sufficient number of defenders. In addition, in July, Alexei III fled the capital. Isaac returned to the throne. He and his son were in no hurry to fulfill their obligations to the Latins. The same behaved more and more impudently towards the locals, causing general hatred. It ended with the fact that the power in the capital in January 1204 was seized by an ardent opponent of the crusaders Alexei Duka, Alexei Angel was thrown into prison and killed. When asked by Western feudal lords whether the new emperor was going to pay the amount promised by his predecessors, he refused. The crusaders had another pretext for the capture of Constantinople.
In March, Boniface of Montferatt and Dandolo drew up a detailed plan of action, from which they did not deviate a single step. According to the agreement, the knights were to take Constantinople by storm and establish Latin rule in it. The city was to be plundered and all booty amicably divided between Venice and the French. The territory of the country was divided between them and the newly elected Latin emperor. The decisive assault began on 9 April. Constantinople was taken on April 12, 1204. This date can be considered the true end of the Byzantine Empire, although it was formally restored after sixty years, after which it existed for another two centuries.
The crusaders staged a three-day bloody orgy in Constantinople. They killed, robbed, raped. Eyewitnesses of the events, even from the side of the Latins, described these three days with horror. The knights burned libraries, destroyed priceless works of art, took out shrines from churches, did not spare either the elderly or children. And all this happened in a Christian city, as part of the Fourth Crusade, declared to fight the "infidels"! On the territory of Byzantium, the Latin Empire was formed.
During the entire time of the Fourth Crusade, in fact, only small detachments of those leaders who at one time refused to join the crusaders in Venice arrived in the Holy Land from Europe. But these few hundred knights could do little to help their co-religionists. Their army made several minor punitive expeditions against the Muslim emir in the vicinity of Sidon, and the fleet sacked the Egyptian city of Fuwu in the Nile Delta. As a result of these actions, in September 1204, a peace treaty was signed for a period of six years: the Christians were returned to Jaffa, taken from them in 1197, half of the territory of Sidon, part of the city of Nazareth. In general, the Fourth Campaign only weakened the Christian East. The emerging Latin Empire divided forces: Constantinople absorbed part of the subsidies intended for the Holy Land, attracted soldiers who could go to Syria.
In our opinion, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the story of the children's crusade was attributed to the time of Pope Innocent III mentioned above. His personality is highly curious. The pope was distinguished by indomitable energy, ambition, apparently, a sincere conviction that he was doing a just cause, devotion to the Catholic Church. During his time on the papal throne, Innocent III organized many large-scale events. He interfered in the affairs of sovereigns throughout Europe, his hands reached out to England, the Baltic states, Galicia ... The pope considered his main goal to consolidate the dominion of the popes over Europe.
Innocent III (his name before the adoption of the tiara by Giovanni-Lothair Conti) succeeded Celestine III on the papal throne on January 8, 1198. It is curious that before that he was not even a bishop, he was only 38 years old, but the cardinals already considered him the best contender for the Holy See.
The pope immediately began to deal with the enemies of the throne. To begin with, he dealt with the Roman aristocrats, while using the full support of the ordinary urban population, among whom he was unusually popular. Then Innocent turned to Italian affairs, where the Germans traditionally fought with him for influence. German barons, planted in different cities of the Apennine Peninsula by Emperor Henry VI, were forced to leave the Papal States. The Florentine cities formed an independent union, but papal sympathies were strong there too. Less than a year later, the Papal States, under the leadership of Innocent III, reached the greatest extent in all previous history. After Italy came the turn of the rest of Europe. As the historian N. Osokin writes: “For Innocent, in the whole West there was no person too poor, too insignificant, and, conversely, too influential a ruler.” That is why he boldly entered into confrontation with the most powerful sovereigns, making extensive use of the moods in the lower classes, exploiting their religiosity, and, sometimes, ignorance and militancy.
In fulfilling his plans in relation to the rulers of contemporary Europe, Innocent met with strong resistance. Influence in Germany, England, France, Leon (one of the Spanish kingdoms), Portugal, and finally, the rebellious Languedoc (a region in southern France), the pope strengthened after a hard struggle with politicians and the spirit of national identity.
In Germany, there was complete confusion: there was a struggle for the imperial throne. The hopes of the parties were also connected with the actions of Innocent III, much depended on which of the three applicants he would support: Philip Hohenstaufen, Friedrich Hohenstaufen or Otto IV, Duke of Brunswick, leader of the Welf party. Philip and Otto were elected to the throne by the German princes almost simultaneously, each with his own party. A war broke out between rivals. At first, no attention was paid to the direct heir, the son of the last emperor, Frederick. Innocent, after much deliberation, spoke out in favor of Otto, against whom almost all of central and southern Germany protested. His opponents sent a rather harsh protest to the pope. “Perhaps the holy curia,” wrote the authors of this document, “in her parental tenderness considers us an addition to the Roman Empire. If so, then we cannot but declare the injustice of all this ... ”But the Curia thought exactly that, so Innokenty continued to defend his point of view. In favor of Philip, his namesake spoke - the French king, who had just been humiliated by the pontiff, which will be discussed below. The situation was resolved in favor of Otto rather unexpectedly. On June 23, 1208, Philip Hohenstaufen was killed by his personal enemy - one of the German feudal lords. Otto, however, did not live up to the pope's hopes. In 1210, he tried to capture the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which included a significant part of the Apennine Peninsula, and was excommunicated. This once again showed that the differences between the pontificate and the Holy Roman Empire are systemic. Whoever came to power in the empire, he invariably came into conflict with the pope over the right to interfere in the affairs of the church in his country and claims to certain disputed territories.
Much more harshly, Innocent III put in place the recalcitrant English monarch, who was the notorious John the Landless, a king who did not want to share his power with anyone, even with the Catholic Church. In 1205, John attempted to reverse the papal approval of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the English Church. As a result, Innocent imposed an interdict on England. For a medieval person, the cessation of all rituals and celebrations, the closure of temples was a disaster. For some time the English king fought: he ordered to seize, expel, hang and cut those clerics who obeyed the interdict. He confiscated their estates, encouraged robbery, but achieved only that he further revolted the population of the country. In 1212, Innocent removed John from the throne and freed the English feudal lords from the vassal oath to their king. The anger of the monarch was replaced by servility. He gave up England in favor of Rome and received it back from the pope with the obligation of a large annual tribute.
The pope did not limit himself to England and Germany. It was under Innokenty that the conquests of the Teutonic Order began on the territory of the settlement of the Prussians and the Order of the Sword-bearers in the lands of the Livs. Both in Prussia and in Livonia, the crusades were accompanied by merciless devastation of the lands. The pope also fought for strengthening his influence in Spain.
One of the strongest opponents of Innocent at one time was the outstanding French monarch Philip II Augustus. Then came the time of the power of royal power, there was a process of unification of the French lands. Philip II successfully fought the British for the vast territories in France that he had ceded under Eleanor of Aquitaine, got into his hands the possessions of the feudal lords who went on crusades to the east, and established relations with the cities that he brought out of the rule of the barons. Much has been done in the field of administrative and economic structure of the state. Such a king was naturally opposed to Rome having a great deal of influence in French affairs. The reason for the clash between Philip and Innocent was the marriage problems of the king. The latter did not love his wife Ingeborg, the sister of the Danish King Knut. When Pope Celestine III refused Philip's request for a divorce, the king ordered Ingeborg to be locked up in a monastery, and he married the daughter of one of the Tyrolean princes. Having come to power, Innocent resolutely led the fight for the fulfillment of the papal order. In January 1200, the French clergy gathered for a council in Vienne. The legate of the pope announced that France was committed to excommunication for the sins of her king. Philip II Augustus was forced to yield. In 1202 the excommunication was lifted. It is said that the king bitterly said: "How happy Saladin is that he does not have a pope." Ingeborg was returned to court. But the French monarch harbored a hatred of Rome and was certainly not a reliable subject of the curia.
Innocent III had certain hopes for establishing his influence in Byzantium. It was during the reign of this pontiff that the bloody Fourth Crusade was organized, during which the crusaders defeated Constantinople. However, the pope was dissatisfied with their cruelty. Having learned about the wild atrocities of the French and Venetians, he punished the perpetrators with an excommunication bull. But Innocent himself became the organizer of the no less bloody Albigensian campaign in the south of France, during which it was with his permission that the Inquisition began to operate. It is curious that King Philip did not personally participate in the wars against heretics. The battles with the Albigensians at the first stage were fought, in fact, by Rome and the crusading army recruited by it. It is unlikely that the French king was delighted with the fact that a foreign army was in charge of his kingdom.
Thus, the crusade of children, allegedly taking place in 1212, may be most directly related to the history of Innocent's struggle with the German and French rulers. We are again dealing with some churchly called, organized and probably armed groups that gather in Germany and France and march along the roads of the domains of disobedient monarchs. Their goals in this case can be divided into formal and actual. Just as the participants of the Fourth Crusade went to Egypt, and sailed to Dalmatia, the participants of the "children's" campaign went to the Holy Land, and reached Marseilles. And, perhaps, both the French and the Germans. The French even carried a letter addressed to Philip II Augustus. What was in this document, what did the legates who secretly directed the campaign want to achieve? Speeches of the king's regular forces in the Middle East? Their participation in the Albigensian War? Full subordination of the king to the pope? Or maybe the monarch was preparing another attempt to remove the church from solving the state problems of France, and the procession of many thousands served as a preventive measure that kept him from this step? After all, since the pontiff can place colossal masses of commoners under his banner (in addition to the main part of the "children's army", local formations marched along the roads of France), is it possible to fight Rome?
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Start
Today, it is no longer possible to know for certain the real reason that brought thousands of children onto European roads and sent them to the promised land, whether this great outcome was the result of an imaginary vision to young Etienne, or was it inspired by the Catholic synclite, or was it based on some completely pragmatic goals , for example, slave traders, the main thing for us is something else: the children responded and went hundreds of kilometers away from their home in the expectation of the City of Heaven.
Children's Crusade
In 1212, the so-called Crusade of Children took place, an expedition led by the young seers Stephen (according to another historical chronicle, his name was Etienne) and Nicholas (there were many more seers), who breathed into French and German children the belief that with the help of children crusade, as innocent, poor and devoted servants of the Lord, they will be able to return Jerusalem to Christianity. The children went to the south of Europe, but many of them did not even reach the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Start
At the beginning of the XIII century. In Europe, the belief spread that only sinless children are able to liberate the Holy Land. The fiery speeches of the preachers, who mourned the capture of the Holy Sepulcher by the "infidels", found a wide response among children and adolescents, mainly from peasant families in Northern France and Rhineland Germany. The religious fervor of teenagers was fueled by parents and parish priests. In the strict sense of the word, the children's crusade was not a crusade, because the Catholic Church from the very beginning refused to support it. The pope and the higher clergy opposed the enterprise, but could not stop it.
The chronicle tells in detail: “On one of the warm May days in 1212, Stefan met a pilgrim monk coming from Palestine and asking for alms. He gave him a piece of bread. The monk accepted alms and began to talk about overseas miracles and exploits. Stefan listened in fascination. Suddenly the monk interrupted his story, and then unexpectedly dropped that he was Jesus Christ. Everything that followed was like a dream for the boy (or this meeting was a dream for him). The monk-"Christ" ordered the boy to become the head of an unprecedented crusade - a children's one, for "strength against the enemy comes from the lips of babies."
They say that there is no need for swords or armor - to conquer Muslims, the sinlessness of children and God's word in their mouths will be enough.
Then Stefan accepted a scroll from the hands of a monk - a letter to the king of France. Then the monk quickly walked away.
Stephen could no longer be a shepherd. The Spirit of God called him to action. Out of breath, the boy rushed home and retold what had happened to him dozens of times to his parents and neighbors, who peered in vain (because they were illiterate) at the words of the mysterious scroll. Neither ridicule, nor slaps on the back of the head cooled Stefan's zeal. The next day he packed his knapsack, took his staff, and set out for Saint-Denis, the abbey of Saint Denis, patron of France. The boy correctly judged that it was necessary to collect volunteers for the children's campaign in the place of the largest confluence of pilgrims.
And now it's early morning. A frail boy with a knapsack and a staff on a deserted road. And no one foresaw the tragic future. It is hardly worth calling Stefan a holy fool, as secular researchers do. He could just be an extremely impressionable, trusting boy, quick-witted and eloquent, with a great imagination. But one thing seems to be quite clear: he was tired of grazing goats.
Along the way, Stefan lingered in cities and villages, where he gathered tens and hundreds of people with his speeches.
From numerous repetitions, he ceased to be shy and confused in words. An experienced little orator came to Saint-Denis. The abbey, located nine kilometers from Paris, attracted crowds of thousands of pilgrims. Stefan was well received there: the sanctity of the place disposed to the expectation of a miracle - and here it is: a Chrysostom child.
The shepherd boy briskly recounted everything he heard from the pilgrims, deftly knocked out a tear from the crowds, who had come to be touched and cry! “Save, O Lord, those who suffer in captivity!” Stephen pointed to the relics of St. Dionysius, kept among gold and precious stones, revered by crowds of Christians. And then he asked: is this the fate of the tomb of the Lord himself, who is daily defiled by infidels?
Stephen preached to adults. But there were hundreds of children in the crowd, who were then often taken with them by the elders, heading to the holy places.
The children listened with ardent faith to the new miracle worker. He appealed to their secret dreams: about feats of arms, about travel, about glory, about serving the Lord, about freedom from parental care. And how it flattered the ambition of teenagers! After all, the Lord chose not sinful and greedy adults as his instrument, but their children! How similar it is to the emergence of today's numerous youth subcultures: goths, punks, hipsters, emo, skinheads, freaks, skaters and so on!
The pilgrims dispersed to the cities and towns of France. The adults soon forgot about Stefan. But the children excitedly talked everywhere about the same age - a miracle worker and orator, striking the imagination of the neighboring children and giving each other terrible oaths to help Stefan. And now the games of knights and squires have been abandoned, the French children have begun a dangerous game of Christ's army. The children of Brittany, Normandy and Aquitaine, Auvergne and Gascony, while the adults of all these regions quarreled and fought with each other, began to unite around an idea that was not higher and purer in the thirteenth century.
As soon as Stefan declared Vendôme a gathering place, hundreds of teenagers began to converge there. With them were a few adults: monks and priests, urban and rural poor, who joined the children "not for Jesus, but for the sake of couscous bread." There were also false elders with children, seduced by their own exploits. But how could children distinguish them from the true ones?
But where did the authorities and, most importantly, parents look?
Everyone was waiting for the children to “go crazy” and calm down. And the common people believed that God's will would allow children to convert Muslims into Christians without weapons and bloodshed and, thus, free the "Holy Sepulcher" from the hands of the infidels.
In addition, the pope declared loudly: "These children serve as a reproach to us adults: while we sleep, they joyfully stand up for the holy land." Innocent III still hoped to awaken the enthusiasm of adults with the help of children.
From distant Rome, he could not see the frenzied childish faces and probably did not realize that he had already lost control of the situation and could not stop the children's march. The mass psychosis that gripped children, skillfully fueled by spiritual rogues of all stripes, was now impossible to contain.
The king tried to stop this madness, ordered the children to be returned home, but this did not help. Some of them followed the order, but most ignored it. Stephen, who was already traveling in a chariot hung with carpets and surrounded by bodyguards, was approached not only by priests, artisans and peasants, but also by thieves and criminals who "took the right path."
Around the beginning of July, crowds of children and teenagers set off. When asked where they were going, they answered: "To God." They wanted without any worldly means - without money, without organization, without princes and kings - to achieve what their more powerful predecessors had not been able to: to win back the Holy Sepulcher and preserve it.
When detachments with singing, banners, crosses cheerfully and solemnly passed through cities and villages, heading for Vendôme, only locks and strong oak doors could keep a son or daughter at home. Enthusiastic crowds of onlookers stormily greeted the groups of children, which further fueled her enthusiasm and ambition. Like a plague swept through the country, taking away thousands of children.
Finally, some priests realized the danger of this undertaking. They began to stop the detachments where they could - they persuaded the children to go home, assured that the idea of a children's campaign was the machinations of the devil. But the guys were adamant, especially since in all major cities they were met and blessed by papal emissaries, though only in the first months of the campaign. And reasonable priests were immediately declared apostates. And many of these “apostate” priests deliberately went along with the children doomed to inevitable death, wanting to save the life and mind of at least a few of them, sacrificing themselves and their position.
It was not just an epidemic - it turned out to be a real pandemic. And soon the news of the heroic boy Chrysostom firmly settled on the banks of the Rhine. Nobody canceled the law of pairing of events during the Middle Ages - Germany immediately showed up its own seer named Nicholas.
The chroniclers turned out to be no more respectful to him than to his French associate - they unanimously talk about the fact that his own father made him a "prophet", calling the latter "a sly fool", for he was a secret slave trader.
And now the crowd eagerly listens to the young speaker, whose tribune was either large roadside stones or barrels in the middle of the squares. “Let’s walk on the sea as on dry land. Let us convert the infidels by the word of God, may they accept the holy law of Christ!”
A precious shrine for donations was installed near the cathedral. Thousands of pilgrims hurried to Cologne, this sacred place where the relics of the "Three Kings of the East" were kept - the Magi who brought gifts to the baby Christ. Once they were recaptured from the Milanese by Frederick I Barbarossa ...
And now German children are marching along with their French peers, though along different roads.
True, Frederick II, unlike Philip-August, refused to support the German crusaders and forbade their advance across the country. However, forbidden fruit is known to be sweet. And the children continued to flock to Cologne.
Not that everything happened in the strictest secrecy - try to hide thousands of guys from the all-seeing gaze of the emperor, most of whom even had to spend the night right in the fields around the city! But a halo of mystery still hung in the air.
The young Germans yearned not only for the liberation of the Holy Land, but also for revenge for those who fell in the bloody campaigns.
How it was planned to accomplish this revenge without weapons - even the Pope himself could not answer this question, unlike the emperor, who supported the zeal of his young children ... And there were at least 20 thousand of them, among whom there were much more offspring of noble families than in detachments of Etienne from France. That's why she and Germany - they loved to fight here and knew how from childhood, and the barons in the country were "innumerable".
Yes, and the primacy, in which the inheritance went entirely to the eldest son, literally pushed the younger ones on a campaign in the hope of improving their fate. That is why in the army of Nicholas it was rare to meet a fighter over 12 - and a good third were 7-year-old kids at all. Only a couple of days will pass, and they will begin to get tired, and then fall behind - and forever remain in the roadside villages. And those who still continue on their way will die in dozens of hunger and disease ... But now the trumpet was calling them on a campaign.
From the description of the chroniclers:
“Cologne poured out on the city walls. Thousands of identically dressed children are lined up in columns in the field. Wooden crosses, banners, pennants sway over the gray sea. Hundreds of adults - some in cassocks, some in rags - seem to be prisoners of the children's army. Nicholas, the commanders of the detachments, some of the children from noble families will go in wagons surrounded by squires. But many underage aristocrats with knapsacks and staffs stand side by side with the last of their serfs. The mothers of children from distant cities and villages sobbed and said goodbye. The time has come to say goodbye and sob to the Cologne mothers - their children make up almost half of the participants in the campaign. ... The children sang a hymn to the glory of Christ of their own composition, alas, not preserved for us by history. The line moved, trembled - and moved forward to the enthusiastic cries of the crowd, the lamentations of mothers and the murmur of sane people. An hour passes - and the children's army hides behind the hills. Only a thousand-voiced singing can still be heard from afar. The Colognesians are dispersing - proud: they have equipped their children for the journey, and the Franks are still digging!
Not far from Cologne, the army of Nicholas broke into two huge columns. One was led by Nicholas, the other by a boy whose name the chronicles did not save. Nicholas's column moved south in a short way: through Lorraine along the Rhine, through the west of Swabia and through French Burgundy. The second column reached the Mediterranean along a long route - through Franconia and Swabia.
For both, the Alps blocked the way to Italy. It would have been wiser to go across the plains to Marseilles, but the French children intended to go there, and Italy seemed closer to Palestine than the Burgundian Marseilles.
Here, for example, is one of the references to the crusade of children in one German chronicle:
“It happened right after Easter. We had not yet waited for the Trinity, as thousands of youths set off on their way, leaving their shelter. Some of them were barely born and were only six years old. Others, it was just right to choose a bride for themselves, they also chose a feat and glory in Christ. The cares entrusted to them, they forgot.
They left the plow with which they had recently blown up the earth; they let go of the wheelbarrow that weighed them down; they left the sheep, next to which they fought against the wolves, and thought about other adversaries, strong with the Mohammedan heresy ... Parents, brothers and sisters, friends stubbornly persuaded them, but the firmness of the ascetics was unshakable.
Laying a cross on themselves and rallying under their banners, they moved to Jerusalem ... The whole world called them madmen, but they went ahead ”
(Georges Duby "Europe in the Middle Ages")
The detachments stretched for many kilometers. Both routes ran through semi-wild lands. The local people, not numerous even in those days, clung to a few fortresses. Wild animals came out on the roads from the forests. The thickets were full of robbers. Dozens of children drowned while crossing rivers. In such conditions, entire groups fled back home. But the ranks of the children's "army" were immediately replenished by children from roadside villages. Romantic rumors about the children of God ran far ahead. Glory was ahead of the participants in the campaign. But not in all cities they were fed and left to spend the night even on the streets. Sometimes they were driven away, justly protecting their children from spiritual “infection”. The guys happened to be left without alms for a day or two. Food from the knapsacks of the weak quickly migrated to the stomachs of those who were stronger and older. Theft in the detachments flourished. Discipline in the detachments fell from day to day. We set off on our journey early in the morning. In the heat of the day, they made a halt in the shade of trees. As they walked, they sang simple hymns like this one, miraculously preserved: “Beautiful are the fields, even more beautiful than the forests, dressed in summer attire. But Christ is more beautiful, Christ is purer, and weary hearts sing his praise.
Do you remember the famous painting by Vasily Surikov "Suvorov Crossing the Alps"?
Dozens of soldiers with an expression of horror on their faces slide down a snow-covered steep slope, under which there is an abyss, ready to become a huge mass grave for the heroes of the canvas ... Several centuries before the Suvorov “eagles”, German children made the same terrible transition. Only, unlike the "brave kids", they did not have any warm clothes or food at all.
Only every third person who climbed the mountains descended into the valley.
Italy greeted the children with the fragrance of flowers, a riot of greenery, the warm radiance of the sun and fierce hatred.
After all, the “German serpents” crossed the Alps, the children of those who, together with Frederick Barbarossa, made this blessed land writhing in pain ... Uninvited guests here were ready not to caress and feed - but to stone them like stray puppies. Alms were rarely given, they ate only what they could steal in someone's garden.
Only three or four thousand children reached Genoa.
“... And in the midst of the midday heat, they saw the sea below.
To the right, bordered by hills and spurs of mountains, in a wide valley lay Genoa, basking in the sunshine.
... One of the richest and most influential trading centers in Europe grew in front of them, which in 1212 surpassed in its power both the growing Venice and ancient Pisa. A city of contrasts: majestic cathedrals coexisted here with dirty taverns, palaces - with slums, dumps, dunghills, and all this is nearby!
On the streets of Genoa, one could meet people from different countries: Danes and Arabs, Slavs and Greeks, Irish, Bulgarians, Syrians. There were crusaders lagging behind their troops, bankrupt merchants and wealthy merchants, crowds of beggars and vagabonds. The center of secrets, conspiracies, murders - and at the same time a treasury of works of art brought here from all parts of the world known at that time. A giant who bathed in luxury and bred poverty. A powerful fortress, subsequently weakened by the strife of its own inhabitants. A city destined to decide the fate of seven thousand little crusaders.
Behind the houses was the Mediterranean Sea. Sparkling, boundless, it shone in the hot rays of the sun, so that it was painful for the eyes to look and was lost behind the horizon line.
The children froze in silent delight. No one else looked at the great city below - they could not take their eyes off the sea, the magnificent, azure and awesome sea. Perhaps none of them had ever seen the sea in their lives, they had no idea what it looked like. The reality has surpassed all expectations.
Children, opening their mouths, looked at the boundless surface of the water. A little more, they will go down to the shore, Nicholas will raise his hands - and the depths of the sea will part ... However, now, when they saw with their own eyes the sea, lost somewhere in the boundless distance, vague doubts crept into the soul. Will the boundless sea really recede before them?
Waves flowing around the rocky ledges, the column of children descended to the deserted coast. On the shallows, shaded by the crowns of pines, a camp has grown up. Some guys tried to get into the city, but along the way the guards were stopped and sent home. The Genoese were determined not to let the Crusaders get close.
However, they were not particularly upset. With lust they peered into the sea distance: there, beyond the horizon, Jerusalem awaits them, a snow-white miracle created by children's imagination ... "
The fathers of the free city did not refuse the children in their modest request - to spend the night on the streets of Genoa. They were even allowed to stay for a week, and for those who wished, forever: getting so much free labor at once is a rare success.
However, to the young crusaders, the very idea of this seemed ridiculous. After all, tomorrow they had a long journey through the sea ...
In the morning, the children's "army" lined up on the shore.
Nicholas raised his hands.
“I beg you, Lord, make the sea recede before the holy army called to liberate Jerusalem!”
Silence. Seven thousand spectators froze, afraid to breathe. In the simple, ingenuous words of Nicholas, there is a genuine faith that permeates the entire appearance of the leader of the crusaders, and this faith fascinated the guys. Meanwhile, nothing happened on the sea, all the same distance, without end or beginning.
- Make way, recalcitrant element, make way before God's army and let us pass. The Lord wants it!
The azure expanse, boundless, almost motionless, stretched to the very horizon, the sun's glare still glided over the waves.
Nicholas whirled around and exclaimed:
— Pray! Please pray!
Some guys tried to kneel, but they were squeezed from all sides by the crowd, the rest continued to stand motionless, without even thinking to fold their hands in prayer and raise their eyes to heaven. In stern silence they gazed at their leader.
— Pray! his desperate cry rang out.
... The sea did not listen to him, did not condescend to his pleas, and still quietly splashed at his feet. The sea laughed at him.” (From Thea Beckman) Romantic mysticism, based on the unhealthy prayer practices of Catholicism, should have ended with such an inglorious end. We will soon write about them in a separate article.
Well, the stingy reports of chroniclers give the widest scope for writer's imagination. In the same thing that happened to the children later, there is much more harsh prose than heroic romance.
When the week period expired, each of them decided what to do next.
Some people stayed, taking advantage of the offer of the Genoese authorities. Apparently, Nicholas was among them - in the annals there is only a vague mention that he survived and in 1219 fought at Damietta in Egypt.
Compassionate Pisans, who have long competed with the inhabitants of Genoa, affectionately greeted the children.
To some extent, they even created the very miracle that everyone was waiting for - they equipped two ships and sent some of the children to the Holy Land.
The French children from Etienne's army also had a chance to see Palestine. They went on a campaign when the German children were already suffering hellish torments in the mountains. Their route was much simpler: Tours, Lyon, Marseilles - they covered 500 km in a month.
They reached the Mediterranean coast almost without loss - but the disappointment from meeting with him was no less.
Their despair touched the richest merchants of the city. The chronicle has preserved their names - Hugo Ferreus and William Porkus.
The chronicler describes how two richly dressed horsemen drove up to the children's camp:
“Oh, leader of the holy host! We also want to serve a charitable cause! Take our ships to reach your desired goal and fulfill your vow...
What was left for the boy? Of course, he agreed, immediately explaining to everyone that he misunderstood the sign of God - the sea does not part before them, but submits to them ...
Alas, the sea turned out to be much less friendly than the venerable Marseillais. Of the seven ships, which housed about five thousand children, two fell into a terrible storm near St. Peter's Island at the southwestern tip of Sardinia.
However, five ships slipped past the rocks. Where they took several thousand young crusaders, no one knew.
In fact, no one really thought about it. Even mothers were not too sad about their offspring who had sunk into oblivion - in those years they were born and died easily, and there were enough worries.
It would never have occurred to anyone to look for the missing children - especially since new crusades were already making noise in the yard. Finally, Jerusalem was taken, and in the face of this joy, all past losses seemed to be decay ...
And now, 20 years later, a mysterious monk appeared in Europe.
Once he sailed from Marseille with his children - by a lucky chance, on a ship that still managed to get to the shore. True, it turned out not to be in Palestine, but in Algeria, where it was immediately escorted to the port.
It turned out that the faithful Ferreus and Porkus sold the children - just like the one who inspired them on a difficult campaign was once sold. Well, merchants, they are merchants in Africa, and the laws of medieval business were not much more humane than they are today ...
Some of the children were immediately taken to rich houses. Others were taken to the markets of Alexandria. Most fortunate were several hundred monks and priests who accompanied the guys: they were bought by Sultan Safadin, who was an enlightened ruler.
Christians lived in his Cairo palace and whiled away their days translating Latin manuscripts into Arabic. And in the evenings they gave lessons to the Sultan and his entourage. Despite the fact that it was strictly forbidden to go beyond the city wall, their life hardly resembled slavery ...
Another thing is captive children.
“Several hundred little slaves were sent to Baghdad,” says Konstantin Kupchenko. - And you could get to Baghdad only through Palestine ... Yes, the children did set foot on the "Holy Land". But in chains or with ropes around his neck.
They saw the majestic walls of Jerusalem. They passed through Nazareth, their bare feet burned the sands of Galilee... In Baghdad, young slaves were sold. One of the chronicles tells that the Caliph of Baghdad decided to convert them to Islam.
And although this event is described according to the then stencil: they were tormented, but not one betrayed their native faith, the story could be true. The boys who went through so much suffering for the sake of a lofty goal could well show an unbending will and die as martyrs for their faith. There were, according to the chronicles, 18. The Caliph abandoned his idea and sent away the surviving Christian fanatics. In Muslim lands, juvenile crusaders died from illnesses, from beatings or mastered, learned the language, gradually forgetting their homeland and relatives. All of them died in slavery - not a single one returned from captivity ... "
Some chroniclers claim that later both slave owners who transported children fell into the hands of the enlightened Emperor Frederick II, who sentenced the criminals to hang. He, at the conclusion of an agreement in 1229 with Sultan Alkamil, may have been able to return the surviving pilgrims to their homeland.
Aged mothers listened to the monk without trembling. For two decades they have forgotten what their children looked like!
And why did he appear, why does he stir up the past? Why should they know that about a thousand former crusaders are still languishing in captivity? The sea is far away, but the sea cannot be crossed on dry land ...
“Any business begun without a proper test of reason and without relying on wise discussion never leads to anything good,” the nameless chronicler assessed the results of the children's crusade, but we will evaluate it even more strictly.
Death and slavery awaited the young French, a sad fate was prepared for their German brethren.
“And so, when these crazy crowds entered the lands of Italy, they dispersed in different directions and scattered through the cities and villages, and many of them fell into slavery to the locals. Some, as they say, reached the sea and there, trusting the crafty shipbuilders, allowed themselves to be taken away to other overseas countries. Those who continued the campaign, having reached Rome, found that it was impossible for them to go further, since they did not have support from any authorities, and they finally had to admit that the waste of their strength was empty and in vain, although, however, no one could remove their vow to make a crusade - only children who had not reached a conscious age, and old people, bent under the weight of years, were free from it. So, disappointed and embarrassed, they set off on their way back. Once accustomed to marching from province to province in a crowd, each in his own company and without stopping singing, they now returned in silence, one by one, barefoot and hungry. They were subjected to all sorts of humiliations, and not one girl was captured by rapists and deprived of innocence.
The way home was terrible. Actually, only a few dared to return to Germany. Most simply wandered off into nowhere, falling from hunger in hundreds, becoming victims of rivers and animals, freezing in the Alps. Those who managed to find shelter in Italian families could consider themselves lucky. And yet some offspring of noble families settled in Italy - they say that some patrician families originate precisely from those Germans.
And yet their mothers were more fortunate than those whom the merciful Archbishop of Brindisi put on a few fragile boats and sent to Palestine. But the sea once again took revenge on the children who tried to encroach on the laurels of Moses. The ships sank before they could hide behind the horizon.
And the bodies of those who crashed near St. Peter's Island were caught and buried in a mass grave by fishermen. Later, the Church of the New Immaculate Infants was erected on this site. 12 monks settled nearby. For three centuries, pilgrims came here in an endless stream to pilgrimage, and then the church fell into disrepair.
However, history, as you know, moves in a spiral, and at the beginning of the 18th century, those who fled from Muslim captivity settled in monastic cells. Having made a fortune on fishing and coral mining, they built an entire city on the island. But its 10 thousand inhabitants have never heard of what happened here many years ago. By that time, only ruins remained from the Church of the New Immaculate Infants ...
"They all died in slavery - not a single one returned from captivity ..."
It should be said right away that the Children's Crusade that took place in 1212 is questionable by many modern historians. That is, there was no children's campaign, and even two waves. The legend of children was invented by the chroniclers to please the Catholic Church. She needed a sacrificial rite, and innocent children's souls sacrificed themselves for the sake of Christianity. But only on paper, but in real life nothing like this happened.
This conclusion of experts in the Middle Ages is based on the fact that there are no more than 50 sources describing such a remarkable historical event. Moreover, all these sources are extremely short, from a few sentences to half a page.
Experts in medieval history divided all available information into 3 groups. The first group included texts written before 1220. The second group included sources dating back to 1220-1250. They could be written by authors who were alive during the children's campaign and put their memories on paper. The third group included texts written after 1250. It was already information obtained from second and third hands.
Modern historians do not consider sources after 1250 to be authoritative. The information given before 1250, but not all, can be considered the most plausible. There are no more than 20 most plausible texts. Moreover, these are small handwritten passages that provide generalized information. But there is no fundamental work with a chronologically detailed list of those distant events.
However, the authenticity of the Children's Crusade has been pointed out by many authorities. This is the Dominican monk Vincent Beauvais (1190-1264), who created the encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, the philosopher and Franciscan monk Roger Bacon (1219-1292), the Catholic writer Thomas Cantimpre (1201-1272), the English chronicler Matthew Paris (1200-1259). The significance of these people in history is enormous, and their authority is in no way inferior to the authority of modern professors from reputable universities. And therefore, let us reduce the share of doubt and get acquainted with those distant events that happened in 1212.
In the early spring of 1212, a 9-year-old boy who went down in history as Nicholas of Cologne claimed that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to take the children to the Holy Land in order to liberate Jerusalem. The boy said that you need to go to Italy, go to the sea, and it will part. On the bottom of the sea, the children will reach Palestine, and there the Muslims, seeing such a miracle, will convert to Christianity.
Nicholas immediately had associates. They went through the lands of Germany, calling on children and teenagers to crusade. A few weeks later a large mass of young men and women gathered in Cologne. In total, there were about 25 thousand children. All of them moved to Italy by 2 roads through the Alps. On the way, two of the three died, and some were afraid of difficulties and turned back home. At the end of August, only 7,000 people arrived in Genoa.
They all went to the harbor and waited for the sea waters to part and the bottom to be exposed. However, nothing of the kind happened, and the children were deeply disappointed. Some of them began to accuse Nicholas of betrayal, but others stood up for him.
Meanwhile, the Genoese authorities, impressed by the religious impulse of the children, offered them citizenship. Most of the crusader children took advantage of this offer, but Nicholas refused. With a small group of associates, he went to Pisa, where he met with Pope Innocent III.
The pontiff released the children who came to him from the vow of the crusade and asked them to return home to their families. After that, the boys and girls went to Germany in the same way that they came. This time, Nicholas did not survive the crossing of the Alps and died. And his father was arrested in Germany and hanged at the request of the parents of children who died on the campaign.
But the Children's Crusade did not end there, as there was a second wave that originated in France. This time, the initiator was 12-year-old shepherd Stefan from Kroyes. In the month of May 1212, he declared that Jesus appeared to him in the robe of a poor man. He told Stephen to take the children to Jerusalem and free it from the Muslims. Jesus said that adult crusaders are selfish and evil people, and therefore God does not give them victory. Only sinless children without any weapons will be able to return the Holy Sepulcher to Christians.
Very soon, at least 30 thousand young men and women gathered near Stefan. The French king Philip II learned about this mass of religiously minded young people. He ordered Stephen to be brought to him, and he appeared, accompanied by several companions. The king talked to the boy, and refused to take him seriously. But Stephen continued to preach as he traveled through France. And although the church was skeptical of the young preacher, he impressed many French with his teachings.
While Stefan was preaching, only half of the 30,000 like-minded people remained. The rest went home. With the remaining 15 thousand, the young organizer of the crusade at the end of June 1212 went to Marseille. A huge crowd of children walked along the dusty medieval roads and begged for alms. Many could not stand the hardships, hunger, and other hardships of the journey and returned home. Only a quarter of the Children's Crusade made it to Marseilles.
The young crusaders came to the port and began to wait for the sea to part so that they could walk along the bottom without getting their feet wet. But the waters did not part, and the children standing on the shore experienced a feeling of deep disappointment. Most of them turned back and returned to their families. But the remaining merchants loaded onto ships, and the further fate of these young creatures is unknown. It is assumed that they were transported to Algeria, where they were sold into slavery.
Thus ended the Children's Crusade. It consisted of 2 waves. One of them originated in Germany, and the second in France. In both cases, the boys were present - Nicholas and Stefan, to whom Christ allegedly appeared and ordered to go to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem. Nicholas died, and the fate of Stephen after the arrival of the young crusaders in Marseille is shrouded in darkness. Whether these events are true or fiction is still unknown. And therefore, they just need to be taken into account and not unconditionally believe in all of the above..
ideological inspirers
Scrupulously accurate evidence of contemporaries about the campaign of children has not been preserved. Because history has acquired a lot of myths, conjectures and legends. However, it is known for sure that Stefan from Cloix and Nicholas from Cologne are the initiators of such an enterprise. Both were shepherd boys.
The children's crusade was organized by two shepherd boys
The first said that Jesus himself appeared to him, commanding him to convey a certain letter to the King of France, Philip II, so that he would help the children in organizing the campaign. According to another version, Stephen accidentally met with one of the nameless monks, who pretended to be a god. It was he who captivated the children's mind with divine sermons, ordered Jerusalem to be freed from the "infidels" and returned to the Christians, and handed over the same manuscript.
At first, Stefan was confused in words, but step by step the boy improved
The shepherd began to preach so passionately that many teenagers and even adults began to follow him throughout France. Soon the young orator was able to get to the royal court of Philip II. The king became interested in the idea of a children's crusade because he was courting Pope Innocent III in a war with England. But Rome remained silent for a long time, and the European monarch abandoned this intention.
The children were sure that the sea would part before them.
However, Stephen did not stop, and soon a large procession of teenagers with banners moved from Vendôme to Marseille. The children sincerely believed that the sea would part before them and open the way to the Holy Sepulcher.
Despite the persuasion of their parents, the children faithfully followed Stefan and Nicholas
Hard way through the Alps
In May of the same year, a certain Nicholas organized his campaign from Cologne. Their path lay through the rugged Alps. About thirty thousand teenagers moved towards the mountains, but only seven were able to get out of there alive. Even for an army of adults, making their way through these mountains was not easy. In addition, the matter was aggravated by difficult passes and transitions. The children dressed too lightly, did not prepare sufficient supplies of provisions, and therefore many froze and starved to death in this area.
Almost all Cologne crusader children froze to death in the mountains
But even in the Italian lands they were by no means welcomed. The Italians still had fresh memory of the devastating campaigns of Frederick Barbarossa after the previous crusade. And the German children, suffering losses and hardships, hardly reached the coastal Genoa.
Italian cities were very convenient for the crusaders
The crusader children did not at all believe that the sea, after numerous prayers, would not part before them. Then many participants settled in a trading city, while others went down the Apennine Peninsula to the residence of the Pope in order to receive all-powerful support and patronage from him. In Rome, the children managed to get an audience, at which Innocent, to the chagrin of Nicholas, urged the young crusaders to return home. The return passage through the Alps proved to be even more difficult: very few returned to the German principalities. The available evidence regarding the fate of Nicholas differs: some claim that he died on the way back, while others that he disappeared after visiting Genoa. Thus, none of the German crusader children made it to the Holy Land.
And from Vendôme to Marseille
As noted earlier, Stephen of Cloix led the crusade from the city of Vendôme. Despite the fact that they were helped by the Franciscan order and that the harsh Alps were away from their route, the fate of the French children was no less tragic. And in coastal Marseille, where they reached from the starting point, the sea did not open the way for the crusaders. Therefore, the teenagers had to resort to the help of certain Hugo Ferrerus and Guillaume Porkus, two local merchants who offered to deliver them to the Holy Land on their ships. The children are known to have boarded seven ships, each of which could hold seven hundred people each. After that, no one ever saw the children in France.
At least 50 medieval chronicles mention the children's crusade
Some time later, a monk appeared in Europe, claiming that he accompanied the children all the way. According to him, all participants in the campaign were deceived: they were brought not to Palestine, but to the shores of Algiers, where they were then driven into slavery. It is quite possible that the Marseille merchants agreed in advance with the local slave traders. And it is possible that one of the young crusaders nevertheless reached the walls of Jerusalem, but not with a sword in his hands, but in shackles.
The children's crusade of 1212 ended in complete failure. He greatly impressed his descendants and contemporaries and was reflected in art. Several films have been made about this event, and Kurt Vonnegut, describing the bombing of Dresden he experienced, called the book "Slaughterhouse Five or the Children's Crusade."
AT 1212 the so-called Children's Crusade took place, an expedition led by a young seer named Stephen, who inspired the faith in French and German children that with his help, as poor and devoted servants of the Lord, they could return Jerusalem to Christianity. The children went to the south of Europe, but many of them did not even reach the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, but died on the way. Some historians believe that the Children's Crusade was a provocation arranged by slave traders in order to sell the participants in the campaign into slavery.
In May 1212, when the German people's army passed through Cologne, in its ranks there were about twenty-five thousand children and adolescents heading to Italy to reach from there by sea Palestine. In chronicles 13th century more than fifty times this campaign is mentioned, which was called the “children's crusade”.
The crusaders boarded ships in Marseilles and partly died from the storm, partly, as they say, the children were sold into Egypt into slavery. A similar movement also swept through Germany, where the boy Nikolai gathered a crowd of children of about 20 thousand. Most of them died or scattered along the way (especially many of them died in the Alps), but some reached Brindisi, from where they were supposed to return; most of them also died. Meanwhile, the English king John, the Hungarian Andrew and, finally, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, who accepted the cross in July 1215, responded to the new call of Innocent III. The beginning of the Crusade was scheduled for June 1, 1217.
Fifth Crusade (1217-1221)
Case Innocent III(d. July 1216) continued Honorius III. Although Friedrich II postponed the trip John of England died, nevertheless 1217 Significant detachments of crusaders went to the Holy Land, with Andrew of Hungary, duke Leopold VI of Austria and Otto of Meran at the head; it was the 5th crusade. Military operations were sluggish, and in 1218 King Andrew returned home. Soon new detachments of crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, led by Georg Vidsky and William of Holland(on the way, some of them helped Christians in the fight against Moors in Portugal). The crusaders decided to attack Egypt, which was at that time the main center of Muslim power in Western Asia. Son al-Adil,al-Kamil(al-Adil died in 1218), offered an extremely advantageous peace: he even agreed to the return of Jerusalem to the Christians. This proposal was rejected by the crusaders. In November 1219, after more than a year of siege, the crusaders took Damietta. Removal from the camp of the crusaders Leopold and the king John of Brienne was partly offset by the arrival in Egypt Louis of Bavaria with the Germans. Part of the crusaders, convinced by the papal legate Pelagius, moved to Mansour, but the campaign ended in complete failure, and the crusaders concluded in 1221 with al-Kamil peace, according to which they received a free retreat, but pledged to clear Damietta and Egypt in general. Meanwhile on Isabella, daughters Mary Iolanthe and John of Brienne, married Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. He pledged to the pope to launch a crusade.
Sixth Crusade (1228-1229)
Frederick in August 1227 indeed sent a fleet to Syria with Duke Henry of Limburg at the head; in September, he sailed himself, but had to return to the shore soon, due to a serious illness. Landgrave Ludwig of Thuringia, who took part in this crusade, died almost immediately after landing in Otranto. Dad Gregory IX did not accept Frederick's explanations in respect and pronounced excommunication over him for not fulfilling his vow at the appointed time. A struggle between the emperor and the pope, extremely harmful to the interests of the Holy Land, began. In June 1228, Frederick finally sailed to Syria (the 6th Crusade), but this did not reconcile the pope with him: Gregory said that Frederick (still excommunicated) was going to the Holy Land not as a crusader, but as a pirate. In the Holy Land, Frederick restored the fortifications of Joppa and in February 1229 concluded an agreement with Alcamil: the Sultan ceded Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and some other places to him, for which the emperor undertook to help Alcamil against his enemies. In March 1229, Frederick entered Jerusalem, and in May he sailed from the Holy Land. After the removal of Frederick, his enemies began to seek to weaken the power of the Hohenstaufen both in Cyprus, which had been a fief of the empire since the time of Emperor Henry VI, and in Syria. These strife had a very unfavorable effect on the course of the struggle between Christians and Muslims. Relief for the crusaders was brought only by the strife of the heirs of Alcamil, who died in 1238.
In the autumn of 1239, Thibaut of Navarre, Duke Hugh of Burgundy, Count Peter of Brittany, Amalrich of Montfort and others arrived in Acre. And now the crusaders acted discordantly and recklessly and were defeated; Amalrich was taken prisoner. Jerusalem again fell for some time into the hands of an Ayyubid ruler. The alliance of the Crusaders with Emir Ishmael of Damascus led to their war with the Egyptians, who defeated them at Ascalon. After that, many crusaders left the Holy Land. Arriving in the Holy Land in 1240, Count Richard of Cornwall (brother of the English King Henry III) managed to conclude a favorable peace with Eyyub (Melik-Salik-Eyyub) of Egypt. Meanwhile, strife among the Christians continued; barons hostile to the Hohenstaufen gave power over the kingdom of Jerusalem to Alice of Cyprus, while the legitimate king was the son of Frederick II, Conrad. After the death of Alice, power passed to her son, Henry of Cyprus. A new alliance of Christians with Muslim enemies of Eyyub led to the fact that Eyyub called for help from the Khorezm Turks, who in September 1244, shortly before that, took Jerusalem returned to the Christians and terribly devastated it. Since then, the holy city has been forever lost to the crusaders. After the new defeat of the Christians and their allies, Eyub took Damascus and Ascalon. The Antiochians and the Armenians were at the same time obliged to pay tribute to the Mongols. In the West, the crusading zeal cooled down, due to the unsuccessful outcome of the last Campaigns and due to the behavior of the popes, who spent the money collected for the Crusades on the fight against the Hohenstaufen, and declared that with the help of the Holy See against emperor it is possible to free oneself from the vow given earlier to go to the Holy Land. However, the preaching of the Crusade to Palestine continued as before and led to the 7th Crusade. He accepted the cross before others Louis IX French: During a dangerous illness, he vowed to go to the Holy Land. With him went his brothers Robert, Alphonse and Charles, Duke Hugh of Burgundy, c. William of Flanders, c. Peter of Brittany, Seneschal Champagne John Joinville (a well-known historian of this campaign) and many others.
