As the Crusades were wild and romantic adventures, it might be expected that they would have formed the great topic of popular fiction. But, excepting the romance concerning Richard, and another relating to Godfrey, the Crusades are not the subject of the romances of chivalry.* the countess of Tripoli, whom he had never seen. came, says Warton, enamoured from fancy of He embarked for the east; fell sick during the voyage through the fever of expectation, and was brought on shore half expiring. The countess, having heard the news of the arrival of this galhim by the hand: he opened his eyes, and, at lant stranger, hastened to the shore, and took once overpowered by disease and gratitude, had but just time to say inarticulately, "that having

him to be magnificently buried among the Knights Templars, was seized with a profound melancholy,

and turned nun.

merely agreeable fictions that were communicated; nothing but what might be gained from a short and casual intercourse. The circumstance of Muselmans aspiring to the dignity of chivalry, is a subject, indeed, of the Trouveurs, or poets of the north of France, who flourished from the close of the twelfth to the middle of the fourteenth century. But the wars between the Christians and infidels in the Holy Land form no part of their theme. Those Italian novels which constitute much of the basis of the Decamerone of Boccacio are likewise barren of crusading events: but if it be true that many of those novels were drawn from the Fabliaux of the Trouveurs, we cannot ex-seen her he died satisfied." The countess caused pect to find in the copy what does not exist in the original. The bright days of Troubadour song were also coeval with the Crusades. The Provençal poets sometimes emerged from the mystics of love* to excite the zeal of princes and sub. jects for the recovery of the Holy Land. Occasionally and accidentally Palestine was the scene of their romantic passion.t siasm, erected theatres, whereon, upon festival days, the mysteries of religion were represented. Bayle, Dict. art. Chocquet. Bayle has received this story without examination, and Boileau has put it into very elegant verses. See his Art of Poetry, cant. 3. Every person acquainted with French literature, knows the disposition of continental writers to magnify the consequences of the Crusades. With respect to the present question it is only necessary for me to say that the events in sacred history were dramatized and acted by the monks anterior to the holy wars : and I refer my readers for proofs of this assertion to Warton, Percy, and other writers on the origin of the Mysteries.

* Such as the difficult question, whether a lover had rather behold his mistress dead, or married to his successful rival. Every deep and delicate subject was discussed in the courts of love with the greatest solemnity, and with all the abstractions of metaphysical refinement; "and it is probable," a polite author observes, "that the disputes on these subjects would have produced as many heresies in love as in religion, but that the judgment-seat in the tribunals was filled by ladies, whose decision was very properly admitted to be final and absolute. It should seem that the Provençals were so completely absorbed in these abstract speculations, as to neglect and despise the composition of fabulous histories, only four of which are attributed to the Troubadours; and even these are rather legions of devotion than of chivalry. Preface to the Fabliaux, p. 26.

† One Troubadour, Geoffrey Rudel, died for the charms of an imaginary mistress. He be

This history may bring to the reader's recollection another equally romantic and dreadful, which is told of Ralph, Chatelain de Coucy, who went with the lord de Coucy to the Holy Land in the third Crusade, and who was mortally

wounded at the siege of Acre. In his last moments he bequeathed his heart to his mistress, who was a married woman (a fashionable sort of attachment in the twelfth century as well as in the nineteenth). The husband met the messenger, and seized the precious relic. His mode of revenge was not more gross than was the love of the Chatelain. His cooks dressed the heart, and it was placed at the family board. Unluckily for herself, the lady not being a square-elbowed family drudge, never interfered with culinary details, and knew not that the banquet was of the Thyestean description. She partook freely of the heart, whose genuine taste, like that of the young Saracen's head, eaten by Richard, was disguised by spicery powder and saffron." Her malignant lord then told her of the dreadful mistake which she had made. Out of grief and indignation she vowed that no other food should ever pass her lips; and she continued firm to her purpose till her life closed.

* 66 Nothing can be worse founded than the assertion of Warburton and Warton, that, after the holy wars a new set of champions, conquests, and countries, were introduced into romance; and that Soliman, Noureddin, with the cities of Palestine and Egypt, became the favourite topics. Mr. Ritson had justly remarked, that no such change took place as is pretended; and so far from the Crusades and Holy Land becoming favourite topics, there is not, with the exception of the uninteresting romance of Godfrey of Bouillon, a single tale of chivalry founded on any of these subjects. Perhaps those celebrated expeditions, undertaken for the recovery of the Holy Land, were too recent, and too much matters of real life, to admit the decorations of fiction.-Dunlop, History of Fiction, vol. ii, p. 140, 2d edit.

The victories of Arthur and Charlemagne the simple results of the same cause; were still dwelt upon, though the brilliant namely, the loss of the flower of the achievements of holy warriors were be- western aristocracy in Palestine. The fore the writers. The fame of the latter hereditary succession of the French had not transcended the glory of the for- monarchy had been made a fundamental mer. This love of ancient chivalry in- law in the time of Hugh Capet. Unlike fluenced the courts of princes as well as Germany, therefore, the nobles of France the haunts of poets; and it was the reputa- were not aggrandized by the possession tion of Arthur, not that of Godfrey, which of the elective franchise. The Capetian Edward III. wished to emulate, and in monarchs acquired many great and small honour of whom he kept a round table of fiefs, not on account of the absence or knights, And afterwards the favourite death of the barons in the holy wars, subject of the epic muse of Italy was the but, as we have seen, in consequence of war between Charlemagne and the Sara- circumstances totally unconnected with cens in Spain and the southern provinces the Crusades. The causes of the deof France. This was the great event pression of imperial authority were the which poetry adorned with her choicest aggrandizement of the nobles (a natural fictions, and where chivalry shone in all effect of the feudal system); the imits splendour. provident grants of lands which the Suabian family made to the clergy; the contests between the Popes and emperors respecting their different juris

His re

The last point of inquiry into the consequences of the holy wars, concerns their effects on the political relations of the great European states. As the Cru-dictions, and, above all the rest, the sades were carried on for holy objects, not for civil or national ends, their connexion with politics could only have been collateral and indirect. The spirit of crusading, composed as it was of superstition and military ardour, was hostile to the advancement of knowledge and liberty; and, consequently, no improvement in the civil condition of the kingdoms of the west could have been the legitimate issue of the principles of the holy wars. The Pope was the only monarch who mixed politics with his piety; and if Frederic II. had died in the Holy Land, or the Pope had executed his schemes of ambition, then the Asiatic annals would have become closely connected with the history of Germany and Italy. The other princes seem to have been influenced by the spirit of religion or of chivalry; and it was only in the attempts again to disorder the intellect of Europe, that we find one monarch, Henry IV. of England, acting the part of a crafty politician. Great changes in the political aspect of Europe were coeval with, but were not occasioned by, the holy wars. The power of the French crown was much higher at the end of the thirteenth, than it had been at the same period of the eleventh century; but the influence of the imperial throne was materially depressed. These opposite effects could never have been

destructive wars which the emperors
waged in the north of Italy for the
re-annexation of that country to the
throne of the descendants of the imperial
house of Charlemagne. The political
changes in England cannot with justice.
be attributed to the Crusades. Until the
days of Richard I. holy wars had not
become a general or a national concern.
The monarchy stood the same at the
close of his reign as at its commence-
ment; and the only favourable issue of
Cœur de Lion's armament was an in-
crease of military reputation.
nunciation of feudal sovereignty over
Scotland had no influence on politics.
Edward I. pressed his claim, although
Richard had deprived him of its strongest
support. The pusillanimous John as-
sumed the cross; but that circumstance
did not occur until after he had surren-
dered his crown to the papal see, and
until the barons had formed a confede
racy against him. His assumption of
the cross neither retarded nor accelerated
the progress of English liberty. The
Pope was not linked to him by stronger
ties than those which had formerly
bound them; and the barons were not
deceived by the religious hypocrisy of
the king. The transmarine expeditions
of the earls of Cornwall and Salisbury,
and of prince Edward in the reign of
Henry III., were the ebullitions of reli-

gious and military ardour, but did not affect the general course of events.

wealth of the commercial cities.* The capture of Constantinople by the French and Venetians was important in its issues. Venice regained maritime ascendancy: but it was soon taken from her by the Genoese, who aided the Greeks to recover their capital. Genoa then became a leading power in the Mediterranean, and she subdued Pisa. The rapid increase of the wealth and power of Venice and Genoa, and the eventual destruction of Pisa seem, then, to form the princi

which the Crusades were instrumental in producing. But how insignificant were these events, both locally and generally, both in their relation to Italy and to the general history of Europe, when compared with the discovery of a maritime passage to India !

The great political circumstance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which was important above all others to civil liberty, was the appearance of free and corporate towns. But the Crusades neither produced their establishment, nor affected their history. Whenever any part of the public became more rich and enlightened than the rest, the tyranny of the aristocracy was found to be insupportable. The kings of France and Eng-pal circumstances in commercial history land eagerly assisted the burghers of their respective countries, and enfranchised the towns in order to raise a barrier against baronial aggressions on the throne. In France it became a maxim, that no commune could be formed with out the king's consent, and his officers were established in every town. The free cities in Germany acknowledged some feudal rights in the emperor. The Alps separated the Lombard towns from their liege lords, and the dissimilarity of natural situation was highly favourable to the Italians, who were, moreover, encouraged in rebellion by the Pope, happy of any occasion of humbling the emperor. After various vicissitudes of fortune, the battle of Legnano, and the peace of Constance, established the independence of the towns in the north of Italy. The Crusades did not contribute to these events; for the two sacred expeditions which had taken place were as disastrous to peasants as to princes, and drained Europe of all ranks of society. Consequently it was not from the holy wars that the people gained their liberties. We find that so ill regulated was the liberty of the towns alluded to, that anarchy soon succeeded. Men of personal importance and wealth aspired to sovereign honours; an overwhelming aristocracy extinguished freedom, and at the end of the thirteenth century there were as many princes in Tuscany and Lombardy as there had been free towns at the end of the twelfth.* It is only in the maritime cities of Italy that any indisputable influence of the Crusades can be marked. Trade with the Christian states in Palestine, and the furnishing of transports to the pilgrims, increased the

Such

A view of the heroic ages of Christianity, in regard to their grand and general results, is a useful and important, though a melancholy employment. The Crusades retarded the march of civilization, thickened the clouds of ignorance and superstition; and encouraged intolerance, cruelty, and fierceness. Religion lost its mildness and charity; and war its mitigating qualities of honour and courtesy. were the bitter fruits of the holy wars! Painful is a retrospect of the consequences; but interesting are the historical details of the heroic and fanatical achievements of our ancestors. The perfect singularity of the object, the dif ferent characters of the preachers and leaders of the Crusades, the martial array of the ancient power and majesty of Europe, the political and civil history of the Latin states in Syria, the military annals of the orders of St. John and the Temple, fix the regard of those who view the history of human passions with the eyes of a philosopher or a statesman. We can follow with sympathy both the deluded fanatic, and the noble adventurer in arms, in their wanderings and marches through foreign regions, braving the most frightful dangers, patient in toil, invincible in military spirit. So visionary

Muratori, Antiq. Italiæ Med. Ævi. II. 905. James de Vitry mentions several sources of "Homines Italian wealth, during the Crusades. si quidem Italici terræ sanctæ sunt valde necessarii, non solum in præliando, sed in navali exercitio, in mercimonium, in peregrinis, et victua, * Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i., ch. iii., part i. | libus deportandis," &c., lib. i,, c. 67.

THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

Afterwards Bevis himself, meeting with a palmer, of Constantinople nor of Venice could subdue

Milton has made a most beautifully poetical ap- emperor's instigation she poisoned her husband. plication of the subject