The Road To Jerusalem (18 page)

When his troops understood that the war was over for the time being, and that they would never succeed in conquering and plundering Damascus itself, they headed for home well loaded with booty and satisfied for now. Zinki’s army melted away. At this time, he came upon his Christian eunuch secretly drinking wine out of his personal goblet. He contented himself with hurling threats about what the punishment would be for such a display of insolence, but decided first to sleep on the matter. The eunuch decided it was better to stick his dagger into him while he slept.

This too might have looked like a favorable matter for the Christians, for now Zinki’s conquests would be divided up among his sons, and that would take time and possibly lead to minor wars among themselves. The second avenging crusade could hardly wish for a more advantageous situation.

But Allah had something else in mind. Of Zinki’s sons, the one who now pulled the ring, the sign of the ruler, from his dead father’s hand was Mahmud; he would soon be given the surname Nur ed-Din, the Light of Religion.

Nur ed-Din soon created a revival movement. But he was careful not to try to take Damascus before the time was ripe, and instead made Aleppo his capital.

With Nur ed-Din and above all the one who would come after him, Salah ed-Din, the Christian presence in the Holy Land was doomed to destruction. It was now only a matter of time before Jerusalem would fall. But only someone who writes with the wisdom of hindsight and who knows the true sequence of events can tell this story.

When the news of the fall of Odessa spread through Europe, it aroused as much gloom as consternation. If Christendom did not strike back soon and hard, the unbelievers might decide to attack Jerusalem itself; that was the purely military conclusion even men of faith could understand.

Pope Eugenius
III
began working at once to promote a second crusade that would secure Christian access to the Holy Sepulchre and all the other destinations for pilgrims.

He did the only right thing in this awkward situation. He called in Bernard de Clairvaux under the holy banners.

Bernard de Clairvaux was at this time the most influential man within the spiritual world, and probably the best speaker in the secular world. When it became known that Bernard was going to speak in the cathedral in Vezelay in March 1146, such huge crowds came that it was obvious that the cathedral would not be able to hold them all. Instead a wooden platform was constructed outside the town. Bernard had not been speaking long before the ten thousand or more gathered there began shouting for crosses.

A great number of cloth crosses had been readied, and Bernard now began to pass them out, first to the king and his vassals-- not even the reluctant counts and barons would have been able to resist the wave of enthusiasm and conviction that now swept forward--and then to all the others. Finally Bernard began tearing strips from his own clothes to give new recruits a cross of cloth to wear as a sign that they had now sworn themselves to the Holy War; it also indicated that after a brief campaign they would obtain eternal forgiveness for all their sins.

Not without some pride Bernard was able to write to the Pope about his efforts:

You gave the order. I obeyed. And the Power that gave
the order made my obedience bear fruit. I opened my
mouth. I spoke and instantly the number of Crusaders had
multiplied beyond counting. Entire villages and towns are
now deserted. There is hardly one man for every seven
women, and everywhere one sees widows whose husbands
are still alive.

The Christian revival in Europe now spread with the same force as Nur ed-Din’s revival spread around Aleppo. Bernard de Clairvaux had to venture out on long journeys and day after day repeat what he had said, first to Burgundy, then to Lorraine and Flanders.

But since the revival had spread to Germany the usual problems arose, the same as those during the First Crusade. The Archbishop of Cologne had to hurriedly summon Bernard because a Cistercian monk by the name of Peter the Venerable was going around Germany with a message that was Bernard’s when it reached the Holy Land but a quite different one when it reached the Jews of Europe.

As a result of his preaching, pogroms broke out in Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Spies, and Strassburg. The Jews were murdered, in some places down to the very last one.

On his arrival Bernard quickly imposed a penance on Peter the Venerable to take a vow of silence for a year, to repent, and at once to return to his cloister in Cluny and never again get involved in something he didn’t understand.

After that Bernard had to replicate his whole French tour in Germany, where, despite the fact that he had to work through an interpreter, he won the same reception for the Holy War. But now he also had to make a monumental effort to put a stop to the persecution of the Jews, repeating over and over that “whosoever attacks a Jew to take his life, it will be as though he had struck Jesus Christ Himself.”

With that, the focus of the aroused masses could once again be directed toward what was important, and the Second Crusade became a reality. The German king Konrad made a pact with King Louis
VII
, and soon an army of countless soldiers plundered its way through Europe on its way to the Holy War. By the time they arrived in Christian Constantinople the French and German armies had created great internal discord, mostly due to quarrels about who had the first right to plunder and who would plunder second. From Constantinople they decided to take different routes toward Jerusalem. Konrad would proceed through the interior of Asia Minor while Louis would take the coastal route, and they would meet up in Antioch. King Konrad of Germany, who had chosen the interior but more dangerous road through Asia Minor in the belief that there would be more to plunder than along the safer coast road, became brutally familiar with what could happen when a heavily armored European army of knights faced the superior light Oriental cavalry. He was attacked by Turkish forces at Dorylaeum and lost ninetenths of his army.

When the two European armies met at Antioch, the French considerably less decimated than the German, they were received in princely style by the local ruler, Count Raymond. King Baldwin of Jerusalem also joined them, and it was then time for feasting, of course, but later for careful planning.

The newly arrived warriors in God’s army probably had no idea who Zinki was, much less that he was dead, and that now they would face a considerably more dangerous enemy in his son, Nur ed-Din.

The local Frankish Christians naturally had a clearer sense of the situation. Either they should now go straight to Odessa and retake the city, since it was the fall of Odessa that had triggered the whole crusade, and such a victory would be of great psychological importance, for both sides.

Or else they should head for Aleppo and the main enemy Nur ed-Din, joining the battle that must come sooner or later, and preferably now when they were at their strongest.

But King Louis and King Konrad, who no doubt understood little about conditions in the part of the world where they now found themselves, decided to strike at Damascus instead. If they could conquer the second most important city after Jerusalem then, they agreed, they would be starting the crusade with a great victory that would resound throughout the world. In addition, although they might or might not have said as much out loud, Damascus would be a most magnificent prize to plunder. If nothing else, they would rapidly recoup all their expenses.

The local Franks tried in vain to explain what a mistake it would be to attack Damascus, but they were voted down by the two kings, who were in agreement and also possessed the two largest armies.

So the entire Christian host marched on Damascus, which was sheer madness in more than one sense.

Damascus was not only the most important Muslim city in the region, it was also the only Muslim city that was allied with Jerusalem. If that pact was now broken, it would prove that a Christian’s word was not to be trusted. This was something that especially worried the Knights Templar, who did indeed make up the backbone of all Western cavalry.

Worst of all was the fact that they were playing right into Nur ed-Din’s hands—soon the carrier pigeons began flying in every direction, and all of Nur ed-Din’s brothers and other allies set off with large armies from the north, from the south, and from the east.

After laying siege to Damascus for only four days, the Christians were surrounded by an army many times larger. They had also chosen to make camp in the least favorable place, on the south side of the city where there was no protection, and where the Damascenes had filled in all the wells in good time. The commander of the Knights Templar could see that this tactical positioning was so obviously idiotic that the only possible explanation was bribery—either King Louis or King Konrad must have been paid to lose.

The Christian positions soon proved indefensible. It was not a question of even setting up any siege engines; it was a matter of fleeing for their lives.

When the Christian army broke camp and began their retreat to the south, they were attacked by the light Arab cavalry which, always out of reach, rained arrows down on the fleeing troops. The losses were unimaginable, and the stench of death lay heavy over large parts of the Holy Land for several months.

And so the Second Crusade ended.

King Konrad of Germany, as usual in extreme disagreement with King Louis, took the land route home, proceeding cautiously along the safer Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor.

King Louis no longer had a large army, so he chose to take the sea route from Antioch toward Sicily. On the way his fleet was plundered by the Byzantine navy. After that both King Louis and King Konrad remained forever uninterested in new crusades.

King Louis quite rightly received derision from his wife when he returned home. The Second Crusade was a calamitous fiasco. Nur ed-Din would soon take Damascus without raising a sword or firing a single arrow.

Logically, the Christian empire should have been doomed. There was nothing more to hope for from Europe. None of Europe’s big countries would send a new expedition after the disaster they had just witnessed, no matter how eloquently Bernard de Clairvaux and others spoke of salvation and the forgiveness of all sins for anyone who joined the Holy War. And yet it would be a long time before Jerusalem was liberated by the faithful. And it would not be granted to Nur ed-Din to cleanse the holy city of the barbaric and bloodthirsty European occupiers.

That would depend on an order of monks. The Knights Templar shared the same religious origin with the Cistercian order; it was Bernard de Clairvaux himself who had written the cloister rules for the Templar knights. From the beginning this order was conceived primarily as a sort of religious police force to protect Christian pilgrims, above all on the roads between Jerusalem and the River Jordan. Arabic robber bands had found this constant stream of pilgrims on the way to bathe in the Jordan both easy and profitable to rob. But the idea of warrior monks, at first something that must have seemed like a paradox, quickly spread far beyond the Holy Land, and many of the best knights in Europe heeded the call. But few were chosen. Only the best of the best, and the most serious in their faith, had a chance of being accepted as brothers in the order. The Knights Templar created the best force of knights that ever rode with lance and sword in the Holy Land. Or, for that matter, in any land.

The Arabs in general had no great respect for Western warriors. Often they were too heavily armored, rode poorly, and had a hard time coping with the heat and staying sober. But there was one kind of European knight they avoided, unless they had a superiority of ten to one. Sometimes even then, because victory could be very costly. The Knights Templar never surrendered. And unlike other knights, weaker in their faith, they did not fear death. They were unshakably convinced that their war was holy and that the instant they died in battle they would enter into Paradise.

These knights wearing the white mantle with a red cross and carrying the white shields with the same red cross were now the only hope of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

On the day when Arn’s voice had changed so much that he could no longer sing, and everyone noticed, he was convinced that God was punishing him severely and yet the cause was incomprehensible. He had obviously committed a great sin deserving of such harsh punishment. But how could he commit a great sin without knowing what it was? He had obeyed, he had loved all the brothers, he hadn’t lied, he had tried hard to be truthful in his confessions with Father Henri, even about the things he was most ashamed of. Without grumbling or cheating in any way he had performed the penance that Father Henri had imposed on him for self-defilement. But each time Arn had received forgiveness for his sins. Why would God punish him so sternly?

He prayed to God for forgiveness for even asking such a question, which might be interpreted as suspecting that God’s punishment was unjust. Then he added that he would like to know what his sin had been so that he might improve his ways. But God did not answer.

Yet the music master at Vitae Schola, Brother Ludwig de Betecourt, took a surprisingly sanguine view of the matter. He consoled Arn by explaining that what had happened was part of God’s natural order, that all boys sooner or later lost their soprano voice and for a time croaked like a raven. It was no more strange than the fact that boys grew up to be men, or that Arn was growing taller and stronger. But when Brother Ludwig could not guarantee that Arn’s voice after this metamorphosis would ever be good for singing again, even at a lower register, the boy refused to be consoled.

Singing had been his most important task at Vitae Schola, to such an extent that it was through his singing during mass that he felt he was doing the most good, and that his efforts had some meaning. Naturally he had been useful when the church tower was being built, but it was through singing that he accomplished something that others could not. In everything else he was only a little boy who had to learn from all the others. His other work was such that it provided sheer joy for either body or soul, like the horse or the books or Brother Guilbert’s exercises, but he felt it was of more use to himself than to the brothers. And since he loved the brothers as the rules prescribed, he longed to be able to reciprocate by making himself deserving of the brothers’ love. Singing had been the most effective way of accomplishing that, or so he thought.