The Glory of the Crusades (37 page)

532
David O’Connell,
Les Propos de Saint Louis
(Paris, 1974), 163–172, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 139.

533
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 143.

534
Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, 258.

535
Ibid., 260.

536
Maalouf,
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
, 248.

537
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 807.

538
Francesco Gabrieli,
Arab Historians of the Crusades
(New York: Routledge, 1969), 311, in Madden,
The New Concise History of the Crusades
, 182.

539
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 808, 809.

540
Vita
in
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France
, xx, 20, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 810.

541
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 810.

542
Ibid., 812.

543
The hour of mercy is 3 p.m., the time when Jesus died on the Cross. For Louis’s death at that time see
Vita
in
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France
, 20:23, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 226. For Louis’s last words see William of St. Pathus,
Vie de Saint Louis
, ed. Delaborde (Paris: 1899), 153–155, in Steven Runciman,
A History of the Crusades—vol. III, The Kingdom of Acre and the later Crusades
(London: The Folio Society, 1994), 244.

544
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 812.

545
It was not uncommon for women to journey on Crusade. The presence of women can be traced back to the First Crusade. Some were wives of noblemen and took the cross motivated by their faith as well as a desire not to be separated from their spouse. Like the men, most desired to receive the spiritual benefits promised for participation in the holy endeavor.

546
Kenneth M. Setton,
A History of the
Crusades
,
vol. II
(Madison, WI: 1969), 517, in Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 294.

547
Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 52.

548
Ibid., 53.

549
Ibid.

550
Ibid.

551
Acre was on a thirteenth-century list of Islamic holy sites. Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 8.

552
For Muslim numbers see Seward,
The Monks of War
, 87. For Christian numbers see Nicolle, A
cre 1291
, 39.

553
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 821.

554
Ibid., 818.

555
Ibid., 820.

556
Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 53.

557
557. Ibid., 57.

558
Ibid., 65.

559
Ibid.

560
Ibid., 68.

561
Templar of Tyre in Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 68.

562
Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 76.

563
Ibid.

564
Ibid.

565
Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, 265.

566
Templar of Tyre in Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 77.

567
Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, 265.

568
Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 81.

569
Templar of Tyre in Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 82.

570
The events in the Templar Tower were recorded by the Templar of Tyre in Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 330–331.

571
Nicolle,
Acre 1291
, 84.

572
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 826.

573
Ibid., 825.

9

Defending Christendom

Mehmet will never lay down arms except in victory or total defeat. Every victory will be for him a stepping-stone to another, until, after subjecting all the princes of the West, he has destroyed the gospel of Christ and imposed the law of his false prophet upon the whole world.

Pope Pius II
574

It’s an extraordinary thing how the very mention of the Turks is so horrifying and terrible to the Christians that it makes them lose not only their strength but also their wits.

Jérome Maurand
575

Warning bells rang out from the church, and people rushed to their homes. Men took up arms to defend their families and fellow townspeople. The town of Otranto had fallen into the crosshairs of the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Sitting on the heel of Italy near the Adriatic Sea, Otranto provided a strategic base of operations for an invasion of Italy, and the ultimate destruction of Christendom. The Muslim invasion force was ruthless and unmatched in its savagery. Turkish warriors massacred more than half of the town’s residents, and martyred the archbishop, who was seized during Mass, taken outside the cathedral, and sawed in two.
576

As an example to the rest of the townspeople and to all inhabitants of Italy, the Muslim commander, Pasha Ahmet, arranged to have 813 men put to death. Before the execution, they were exhorted to convert to Islam; a tailor named Antonio Primaldi replied that he was willing to die a thousand deaths for Christ.
577
His brothers in Christ, moved by his faith, also agreed to remain steadfast.

The next morning, on the Vigil of the Assumption, the men were led to the hill overlooking the city. Pasha Ahmet ordered the executioner to strike the neck of Antonio Primaldi first. Upon his decapitation, Antonio’s body miraculously stood up and could not be moved. It remained standing throughout the executions. One executioner was so moved by the faith of the martyrs that he converted to Christ on the spot and then joined the ranks of the martyrs.
578

The Church recognized the brave witness of these men when they were officially declared martyrs by Pope Benedict XVI in July 2006, and then canonized as saints by Pope Francis in May 2013.

The Rise and Advance of the Ottoman Turks

In the late thirteenth century, a Turkish emir known as Osman established a strong government bolstered by an efficient and ruthlessly effective military. After winning dominance over other Turkish tribes, Osman pushed westward, expanding his Ottoman Empire, and engaged the Byzantine Empire in the first of a long series of conflicts that would eventually culminate in the total destruction of the Byzantines. By the late fourteenth century the Ottomans were making incursions deep into imperial territory in the Balkan states. Military victories were the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, and the goal of its every ruler was expansion, conquest, and world domination. During his reign every Ottoman sultan was expected to bring at least one foreign state under Islamic rule.

The rise and advance of the Ottoman Turks necessitated an evolution in the Crusading movement. Previously, the movement had focused on wars to liberate ancient Christian territories from the forces of Islam. With the Turks, however, the Crusading movement focused on defensive wars to protect the European homeland, and to survive. The war against the Ottomans would be a long “war of self-defense waged by a European community that was both Christian and civilized, against an implacably aggressive and uncivilized Islamic power.”
579

A New Weapon

A man called the “Blood-Drinker” for his cruelty became sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1451 at the age of nineteen. Mehmet II was “deeply secretive and suspicious of others; self-reliant, haughty, distant from human affection, and intensely ambitious . . . astute, brave, and highly impulsive—capable of deep deception, tyrannical cruelty, and acts of sudden kindness . . . a personality of paradox and complexity.”
580

Mehmet embarked on a policy of total domination and victory over the Byzantine Empire. He knew the key to destroying Byzantium was the conquest of Constantinople. He had begun his studies of the city and its defenses and started planning his conquest at the age of thirteen.
581
Conquering Constantinople “would unite his empire, remove a potentially troublesome base for hostile troops and help define a universalist imperial ideology.”
582
Intelligence reports arrived in Constantinople informing the Byzantines of Mehmet’s plans, so Emperor Constantine XI sent envoys to Mehmet to negotiate a treaty. Mehmet had them beheaded. War was imminent.

Mehmet knew that his army was superior to the Byzantine army in terms of numbers of men, quality of officers, and expertise in siege tactics; however, he had also studied and learned from past Ottoman failures at Constantinople. Those armies had failed because they could not find a way past the massive Theodosian defensive walls. But Mehmet had something in quantity and quality those previous Ottoman armies did not: cannon. He designed a siege that focused on destroying the walls using gunpowder, but he also knew that available cannons were not strong enough to destroy the walls themselves. He needed a bigger gun.

A year before the siege, he met a Hungarian engineer named Urban who was looking for work. He had recently offered his services to the Byzantine emperor who had no use (or funds) for his skills, so he went to the Ottomans.
583
Mehmet ordered Urban to begin work on a super gun that would bring Constantinople to its knees.

It took Urban three months of hard work, but he produced the largest bronze cast cannon in the world. It was twenty-seven feet long with a barrel surrounded with eight inches of solid bronze, and measured thirty inches across the muzzle.
584
The cannon fired a solid shot eight feet in circumference, weighing fifteen hundred pounds, a full mile.
585
The cannon was so large it required sixty oxen and 200 men to move it and could only travel two and half miles a day.
586
Firing the gun was so complex and labor-intensive that it could only be done seven times a day.
587