One of these, Chandrabhanu, seems to have come from southeast Asia; he was, according to the Culavamsa, “a king of the Javakas,” who landed “with a terrible Javaka army under the treacherous pretext that they also were followers of the Buddha.” But most of the newcomers were from the south of India, where the Pandyan kingdom had managed to free itself from the overlordship of the Chola.6
Under the splendid Jatavarman Sundara, the renaissance of Pandyan power stretched from the central coastal city of Nellore, all the way down to the Indian Ocean. Now Jatavarman pushed the Pandyan kingdom into the north of the island as well. In 1263, he removed the “king of the Javakas,” Chandrabhanu, from his brand-new Sri Lankan throne and put the northern part of the island entirely under Pandyan domination. “Emperor of the three worlds,” Jatavarman’s inscriptions name him; his lands encompassed the north of the island, his own Pandyan realm, and had swallowed the west of the Chola as well.7
38.1 The Pandya Renaissance
The Chola, reduced to a strip of land around the capital city of Thanjavur, soon disappeared. After 1279, there are no more records of Chola kings; the Pandya had taken their place as lords of south India.
But neither the Pandyan kingdom nor their Tamil tongue completely claimed Sri Lanka. In the southern half of the island, both the Dambadeniya kingdom and the Pali language survived.
In 1283, an embassy from Dambadeniya arrived in Egypt, hoping to arrange a trade treaty with the sultan in Cairo. “They arrived at the port of Ormus,” says a contemporary Arabic account, “proceeding up the Euphrates to Baghdad, and thence to Cairo.”
A letter from the king was presented to the Sultan, enclosed in a golden box, enveloped in a stuff resembling the bark of a tree. The letter was also written in indigenous characters upon the bark of a tree. As no person in Cairo could read the writing, the ambassador explained its contents verbally, saying that his master possessed a prodigious quantity of pearls, for the fishery formed part of his dominions, also precious stones of all sorts, ships, elephants, muslins and other stuffs, bakam wood, cinnamon, and all the commodities of trade. . . .8
Parakrama Bahu’s successors still ruled in Dambadeniya; and from underneath the shadow of south India, they were reaching out to the rest of the world.
* * *
*See Chapter 16, p. 111.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Fifth Crusade
Between 1217 and 1221,
another crusade to Egypt fails
WHILE THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE was languishing towards its slow end in France, the Crusade authorized by the Fourth Lateran Council was limping towards Egypt.
The conquest of Egypt had been a Crusader goal for over half a century. Now governed by Saladin’s brother al-Adil (who had ended the squabble between Saladin’s sons by taking the Ayyubid throne himself), Egypt still controlled the city of Jerusalem. Al-Adil was seventy-two and in poor health, but still capable of mounting a sharp resistance.
“The army of the Lord assembled in great force at Acre,” writes Roger of Wendover, “under the three kings of Jerusalem,* Hungary, and Cyprus. There were also present the dukes of Austria and Bohemia, with a large knightly array from the kingdom of Germany, and several counts and men of rank.” Missing were all of the greater powers of Europe: the kings of England and France; the king of Germany and hopeful emperor, young Frederick II (although he had promised to arrive just as soon as his German crown was secure); any of the Spanish rulers.1
Andrew II of Hungary, the most powerful sovereign to take the cross, did so reluctantly, and only because he had promised twenty years to go on crusade and had still not fulfilled his vows. Nor did he stay long. He arrived at Acre in the late summer of 1217, realized that there weren’t enough soldiers to do anything effective, made a couple of desultory raids into Muslim territories, and then declared his vow fulfilled and went home.
The meager Crusader force remaining waited until the spring of 1218; Frederick II of Germany had promised, faithfully, to join their cause. In April, the hoped-for German Crusaders finally arrived, although without Frederick. He was still fighting against supporters of the deposed Otto in Germany, and again made his excuses.
The Crusaders, led by King John of Jerusalem (actually regent for his young daughter Yolande, but still the most powerful sovereign present), decided to make for the Egyptian port city of Damietta, which was under the governorship of al-Adil’s oldest son, al-Kamil. Conquering Damietta would give them a good strong base from which to attack the Egyptian capital of Cairo.
39.1 The Fifth Crusade
They sailed for Damietta, arriving in May, and found themselves faced with a triple set of walls. Damietta could not be broken into; it would have to be starved out, and it was supplied with food and water by a branch of the Nile that was protected by a tall, fortified tower; from the tower to the walls of Damietta, says the Arab historian Ibn al-Athir, “massive iron chains [were] slung across the river . . . to prevent ships arriving from the sea from travelling up the Nile into Egypt.”2
All summer, the Crusader forces labored to get past the chains and block the Nile. Late in August, they finally succeeded in scaling the fortress tower and cutting the chains. Immediately, al-Kamil sank cargo ships in the Nile in front of the city, creating a reef too shallow for the Crusaders to sail past.
This meant that the Crusaders had to spend the next winter dredging out a canal that would allow them to sail around the reef. This was unrewarding and bitterly difficult work, and Crusaders began to seep away; few new reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile, says Ibn al-Athir, Damietta was “reinforced and supplied uninterruptedly” and stood “safe and unharmed, its gates open.”3
Then the Crusaders had an unexpected piece of luck. The old sultan suffered a stroke and died, leaving the Ayyubid throne to his son; but a Cairo nobleman mounted a bid to usurp it, rallying his supporters against al-Kamil. Al-Kamil deserted Damietta and headed towards Cairo. Without its governor, the city’s defenses weakened. The Crusaders made their way around the reef, back into the Nile, by February, and blocked Damietta from resupply. The blockade gave them hope that the city might eventually fall, but Damietta still held out, even while its people began to starve.
Sometime in the late summer, a visitor arrived at the Crusader camp on the Nile: Francis of Assisi, founder of the order of the Lesser Brothers. Francis, says his thirteenth-century biographer Bonaventure, was driven in his mission both by the burning desire to preach the Gospel and by an equally fiery desire to suffer martyrdom for the sake of Christ. He had tried twice before to travel to Muslim lands; his first effort had been derailed by storm and shipwreck, his second by illness. Finally, he had managed to make his way to Egypt, where he hoped to bring peace to the Crusade-wracked country by converting the Sultan.
Jacques de Vitry, the same priest who had discovered the rotting body of Innocent III in a deserted Italian chapel, was also at the Crusader camp; three years earlier he had been appointed Bishop of Acre, and had traveled to the siege with the Crusader army. In a letter to his colleagues back at Acre, he described Francis’s visit. “He was so inflamed with zeal for the faith that he did not fear to cross the lines to the army of our enemy,” he wrote. “For several days he preached the Word of God to the Saracens, and made a little progress.”
Francis then set out for Cairo and eventually gained an audience with al-Kamil himself. By this time, al-Kamil had managed to put down the rebellion in the capital with the help of his brother al-Mu’azzam, deputy governor in Syria. He received Francis politely and listened to his sermons. (“In fact,” Jacques de Vitry adds, “the Saracens willingly listen to all these Lesser Brothers when they preach about faith in Christ and the Gospel teaching, but only as long as in their preaching they do not speak against Mohammed as a liar and an evil man.”) The new sultan was ultimately unconvinced, but he dismissed Francis of Assisi with unfailing courtesy, and had him escorted safely back to the camp at Damietta. There, Francis tried to discourage the bored so
ldiers from visiting brothels and gambling to pass the time, with an equal lack of success.4
By late October no defenders were left to man Damietta’s walls. The Crusaders stormed the city on November 4, expecting riches and glory. They found a graveyard.
Five out of six citizens had died of starvation and plague. “Not only were the streets full of the dead,” writes Oliver of Paderborn, who was in the Crusader army, “but in the houses, in the bedrooms, and on the beds lay the corpses. . . . Little ones asked for bread and there was none to break it for them, infants hanging at the breasts of their mothers opened their mouths in the embrace of one dead.” Appalled by the scene, the Crusaders—Francis of Assisi and Jacques de Vitry still among them—did not indulge in any of the violence that had marked the conquest of Constantinople. Contemporary accounts agree that they allowed the survivors to leave the city, and even tried to feed (and baptize) the starving children.5
The conquest of Damietta turned out to be the high point of the Fifth Crusade. Al-Kamil, now in full control of the sultanate, had beefed up the Ayyubid army with his brother’s men. Meanwhile, no further Crusader reinforcements arrived. The army in Damietta was too weak to attack Cairo. For the next year, it remained in the city, unwilling to leave, unable to push forward. Francis of Assisi, “making no progress” either in converting the Egyptians or in attaining martyrdom, left to visit Bethlehem and then returned home. Jacques de Vitry occupied himself in writing a comprehensive history of the Crusades. Frederick II did not arrive, although he talked Pope Honorius III into crowning him Holy Roman Emperor, in 1220, by promising to embark on crusade immediately afterwards.6
By June of 1221, the Crusader army was fed up with Damietta. Against the advice of the more experienced soldiers, the senior papal legate accompanying the Crusade, Pelagius, talked the bulk of the army into leaving Damietta and marching towards Cairo.
The long uncomfortable advance was slowed by constant attacks from al-Kamil’s front lines. The Crusader army was relying on boats from Damietta, supplying them with food by way of the Nile, but as they drew closer to Cairo, al-Kamil’s own boats cut this supply line off. By the end of August, the Crusaders were hungry, thirsty, and discouraged. They decided to retreat back towards Damietta, but by this point the Nile was in full flood, and al-Kamil ordered the sluice gates that lined the Crusader path back to Damietta opened. Their way was flooded and impassable, except for one narrow road blocked by al-Kamil’s army. The Crusaders were trapped; and that was the end of the Fifth Crusade.7
Al-Kamil could have slaughtered the pinned army, but he accepted their offer to hand over Damietta in exchange for their lives. To guarantee that Damietta would be surrendered, the Crusaders handed over twenty hostages (including the senior papal legate Pelagius, who was not particularly popular at that moment). They went back to Damietta, collected their belongings, and went home.
Blame for the failed campaign was well distributed. Pelagius came in for his share: such catastrophe is to be expected, wrote the French scholar William the Clerk, “when the clergy take the function of leading knights.” The leaders who had allowed themselves to be convinced by Pelagius were roundly condemned; they in turn blamed the pope; Honorius III blamed Frederick, who had never shown up.8
The single bright spot in the entire bleak picture was the rumor, brought back by Jacques de Vitry on his return, that help against the apparently impregnable Muslim front was on the way. He had heard tales from India, de Vitry explained, that a Christian king from deep in the heart of that unknown land was approaching Baghdad, and would sweep the Muslims away in front of him. He was known, variously, as King David or Prester John, and (as de Vitry wrote in a letter to Honorius III) he was “like unto David, the holy king of Israel . . . crowned by the will of Providence.” King David, ruler of a huge Christian realm hitherto undiscovered, had hundreds of thousands of men. He had already defeated Khwarezm and was even now hurrying towards the Holy Land to rescue its sacred sites.9
But there was no King David, no Christian army from India, no help on the horizon. The reports that had reached Jacques de Vitry were garbled tales of the Mongol advance from the east; and when the Great Khan appeared, it would not be as a rescuer of Christendom.
* * *
*By “Jerusalem,” Roger of Wendover means the remnants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem centered at Acre; increasingly it was known as the kingdom of Acre.
Chapter Forty
From the Golden Bull to the Baltic Crusade
Between 1218 and 1233,
the king of Hungary is forced to acknowledge
the rights of his nobility,
and the Teutonic Knights
embark on the long conquest of Prussia
RETURNING HOME from his perfunctory visit to the Fifth Crusade, Andrew of Hungary found his country in a state of ferment.
It had been bubbling even before his departure for the Holy Land. Andrew, now in his thirteenth year as king, had started his rule under a shadow. Intended to serve as regent to the actual heir, the five-year-old son of his brother King Emeric, Andrew had instead seized the throne for himself. His sister-in-law had taken the child and fled to Austria, where the conflict was resolved when the boy died of illness the following year.
Three weeks later, Andrew had arranged for the Archbishop of Hungary to crown him as rightful king of Hungary. And, by way of shoring up his claim, he started to give away royal lands to his supporters with abandon. Villages, castle lands, fortresses: anything that fell under his authority as a royal domain was fair game.
Andrew himself called his gifts a “new institution”: the novae institutiones, the right of the monarch to be as free and generous as he pleased. But his generosity unsettled the country. The lands he gave away had no strings attached; if you were one of Andrew’s partisans and received the gift of a village in exchange for loyalty, you owed the king no further service in return, no tithe of crops or service, no taxes, no obligation to answer to anyone for the welfare of the villagers, who now were subject to your whims.
This was bad enough, but the gifts were also distributed in uneven clumps. Taxes and military service now fell unevenly onto the shoulders of the Hungarian dukes and counts who were not in the king’s inner circles. And Andrew hit a long-festering pocket of resentment by favoring, in vast numbers, German knights who had settled in Hungary.1
These had come at the time of his marriage to his first wife, Gertrude, daughter of the Count of Bavaria and direct descendant of Charlemagne himself. Andrew had made the match in 1205, as part of his effort to position himself for the Hungarian throne; and while connection to German nobility provided him with additional allies, it had also brought numerous aristocratic retainers and relatives from Germany into Hungary. In the early years of Andrew’s reign, these German knights became, in unpopular numbers, the lords of Hungarian castles and the lawmakers of Hungarian villages.
Another massive wave of German knights had arrived in Hungary in 1211. The Teutonic Knights, a military order made up of Germanic Crusaders, had been granted papal recognition around 1200. Their original purpose had been to protect the pilgrim hospital St. Mary’s of the Germans, in the city of Jerusalem; but the hospital had been destroyed by Saladin in 1187, and the Teutonic Knights had been set adrift from their purpose. Andrew invited them into Hungary to help protect his borders from the invasions of the Cumans, a wandering tribal alliance of Turkish, Mongol, and northern Chinese peoples who had migrated slowly farther and farther to the west. In exchange, he awarded them a home in the eastern reaches of Hungary, in a thickly wooded part of his kingdom known as Erdő-elve: “through the woods,” or, in Latin, Transylvania. There the Teutonic Knights were permitted to live, govern themselves, and crusade against the Cumans; they were expected to remain loyal to Andrew, but were exempt from both taxes and tribute.2
In 1219, the year after his return from the Fifth Crusade, Andrew announced that all lands gifted by the crown would remain permanently in the hands of their receive
rs, to be passed down as hereditary estates from father to son into eternity. This would have carved Hungary up into an unrecognizable set of principalities, many of them under German control, and it was one step too far for the Hungarian knights and counts. With the encouragement of Honorius III (who believed that Andrew was not zealous enough in promoting the interests of the Church within his realm), they drew up a charter protecting their own rights, as well as the rights of the Christian priests under Andrew II’s rule.
Threatened with a mass uprising, as well as by the possibility that his noblemen might decide to enthrone his teenaged son Béla in his place, Andrew was forced to yield. On Saint George’s Day, 1222, he agreed to sign the offered charter. Called the Golden Bull (after the golden seal that dangled from the scroll), the charter began with a pointed condemnation: “The liberties of the nobility, as well as others of these realms,” it announced, “. . . have suffered great detriment and curtailment by the violence of certain kings who are impelled by their own evil propensities [and] by the cravings of their insatiable cupidity.”3
The Golden Bull, like the Magna Carta, protected the rights of the wealthy and powerful; it was not a charter for the common man. The Hungarian nobility could not be taxed arbitrarily. The noblemen could not be forced to fight in foreign wars; nor could the king create new nobility by giving away his lands.
But the Golden Bull did carve out a space where even a peasant could safely stand. “No man shall be either accused or arrested, sentenced or punished for a crime,” the second statute read, “unless he receive a legal summons, and until a judicial inquiry into his case shall have taken place.” And, like the Magna Carta, the Golden Bull made very clear that the instrument itself was greater than the king. Should Andrew refuse to abide by it, “the bishops as well as the other barons and nobles of the realm, singularly and in common . . . [may] resist and speak against us and our successors without incurring the charge of high treason.”4
The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople Page 28