Faënza fell on April 14th. Frederick remained for a few weeks in the devastated town and arranged for the construction of a fortress and a palace. While he was still there several items of good news arrived. At about the same moment the papal enclave of Benevento in the kingdom of Sicily had been conquered, destroyed and obliterated. In the west of Northern Italy the Emperor’s generals were harassing the outlying lands of Genoa to disorganise the preparations for the Council. The Apulian Marinus of Eboli, Vicar General of “Upper Pavia,” had invaded Genoese territory from the North and the Margrave Uberto Pallavicini attacked from the East. He had had several successes and had conquered two fortresses, and the Emperor, whose arms were now everywhere victorious, wrote these handsome words to him: “Continue therefore in the same path and thou wilt assuredly bring to a successful issue those royal services of ours which thou didst with honourable intention undertake. Success and Fortune will wait upon thy deeds, since thou art fighting with the guidance of wisdom in a fortunate cause, and under a prince whose star is fortunate.”
The culminating success was still lacking. Shortly before the surrender of Faënza Frederick II had sent his son, King Enzio, on a special mission to Tuscany, “representing the person and the likeness of his father.” In Florence King Enzio received the news of the Emperor’s victory. The Florentine infantry and cavalry had so long served in the Emperor’s armies that the town shared in the glory of his victory, and the son must have received in his father’s place their testimonies of exultant homage. Enzio hurried on after a few days. He travelled by way of Prato, giving instructions for the enlargement of the imperial castle (whose beautiful entrance gate recalls that of Castel del Monte and anticipates the Renaissance), and thence to Pisa. He must have reached Pisa just before the departure of the united Sicilian-Pisan fleet. He will have brought just the final orders for the Admiral. He did not himself take part in the naval action, but in Pisa awaited the outcome.
The prelates had embarked at Genoa on the 28th of April. Only a few of the spiritual princes, amongst them the English with their knowledge of the sea, had decided to be warned in time after seeing the overcrowded vessels and the imperfect equipment of some of them. These either remained behind altogether or, at best, sent on their procurators. All the rest, however: French, Spaniard and Italians from the League towns had sailed from Genoa amid the blaring of trumpets and the cheers of the people. They passed Pisa in safety and the narrow strait between Piombino and Elba. They were approaching their goal, the Roman harbour of Civitavecchia. After eight days at sea, on the 3rd of May, the festival of the Elevation of the Cross, they were attacked by the Emperor’s fleet, which had been lying in ambush between the islands of Monte Christo and Giglio. A short and bloody battle decided the victory: three enemy ships were sunk and the passengers drowned, amongst them the Archbishop of Besançon. Twenty-two ships were captured, and only three sailing ships with Spanish passengers succeeded in escaping to Genoa. It was a complete victory for the Imperialists, who took over four thousand ordinary prisoners and over one hundred Church dignitaries of high rank: three papal legates, including the Emperor’s bête noire, Cardinal Jacob of Palestrina; the abbots of the celebrated monasteries of Cluny, Citeaux, Clairvaux and Prémontré, and a host of archbishops and bishops were in Frederick’s hands.
King Enzio welcomed the victors and their captives in Pisa. He ordered a mild detention for the highest prelates till an order from the Emperor arrived commanding him to proceed with the utmost severity: the prelates had not asked his mercy; they had defied his warning. The inferior clergy remained in the prisons of Pisa, the more important were first sent to the imperial castle of San Miniato and afterwards for the most part despatched to Apulia, where they were kept in strict confinement. Frederick II now held pledges of the utmost value and utilised them with skill. After a short detention he released the French, though he had in the first instance met King Louis’ haughty demand for the release of his prelates with a courteous but decided refusal: “Where persecutors of the Empire exist, the Empire’s defenders must not be lacking. The Empire is greater than individuals, and the single animals tremble at the sight of the lion’s spoor. Your exalted majesty will therefore not marvel that Augustus keeps the prelates of France in fear, since they sought to compass the Emperor’s downfall.”
Frederick interpreted the victory as the judgment of God “who looketh down from Heaven and fighteth and judgeth righteously.” A judgment against the Empire’s deadly foe, against Pope Gregory whom God himself had smitten. The faithful followed the Emperor. The will of God had been revealed to the World: the Emperor Frederick’s office was to castigate clergy and church, and to renew Justice on the Earth and Peace. Songs were composed in praise of the Child of Apulia, victorious, world-conquering. A Dominican announced that in this sea victory “the God of the Earth and of the Sea had testified that He Himself was the ally of the victorious Caesar…” and people recalled a prophetic saying, or perhaps invented it for the occasion: “The sea will be incarnadined with the blood of the saints.” This event made an enormous impression on the world. Nothing that any previous emperor had ever dared or done was comparable to this capture of cardinals and a hundred priests. Frederick’s power seemed boundless, but a certain horror was blended with the admiration. Enemies recognised therein the ruthlessness of Satan. Nothing had so strongly ministered to the conviction that Frederick was the herald of Antichrist as the capture and continued captivity of the princes of the Church in the prisons of the Emperor. Many of them died in his dungeons, and their blood cried out against this enemy of the faith.
Possibly Frederick hoped to be able to bend the Pope by this deed of violence and to move him to peace. He presumably hoped to barter the release of the prelates against his release from the papal ban. The prisoners themselves implored the Pope to make peace at last, and the general opinion in Italy was that this blow would compel Pope Gregory to do so. Gregory was at the point of death and suffered indescribably from this rain of heavy blows, and felt himself, moreover, personally responsible before God for the death and imprisonment of so many priests, but he was less ready to make peace than ever before. More than ever must the fight be fought and the dragon laid low! He besought the captives for the sake of God and of the Church to bear their sufferings with patience and to endure to the end. Even when a new visitation came that shook the whole Christian world to its foundations, and imperatively demanded the peace and co-operation of all the western powers—even then the aged man clung to his hate, unbending and unbent. Nothing could shake him in his faith that he was called by God to fight against Frederick II, though victory after victory waited on the eagles of Rome, which the Emperor was bearing against the City.
Whilst Frederick was still encamped before Faënza, and the fleet still lay at anchor in the harbour of Pisa, Europe had, as by a miracle, escaped the direst fate. The strangest rumours were current, fed by the Crusaders who brought back tales they had heard: far in the East there was a mighty king who ruled over an enormous Empire and was moving towards the west and conquering one by one the princes of the Mussulmans. The Christians thought to see in him again the legendary Prester John, a king after the order of Melchizedek, who had so vividly appealed to the imagination not only of the people but of Innocent the Great himself. He was coming to obliterate the teachings of Muhammad, to unite in Jerusalem with the King of the West, and to fulfil the time. The Jews, on the other hand, believed that this King of the East was King David, who was returning as the Messiah to redeem them. Their faith was strengthened by the fact that the year 1240 was, according to their calendar, the year 5000. The Messiah was to appear in the first year of the sixth millennium. Christian sources tell the same tale, and the identification, in his most victorious year, of Frederick with the Messiah, was not unaffected by this belief. The Jews gave free rein to their joy at King David’s approach and even dreamt of going forth to meet him with sword and shield and spear. In many places they were bitterly persecuted and
massacred for their obstinacy in clinging to this belief.
Suddenly the West recognised its error and armed itself in terror-stricken fear against the tumultuous hordes of Chingiz Khan. We now know that it was not Chingiz Khan himself who was leading his hosts against Europe. This Earth-Shaker of Asia, for sheer power the most appalling phenomenon of historic time, the man who conquered and organised the most extensive empire the world has ever seen, who amalgamated peoples, gave them religion and laws, and let loose the greatest human hurricane that the force of one man has ever conjured up, Chingiz Khan, had already closed his unique career of conquest. But his will lived on. That will which had issued orders to his son who sought to check the hordes who were plundering Herat: “I forbid thee ever, save at my direct command, to treat the inhabitants of any land with leniency. Pity belongs to weaklings, only severity keeps men in servitude. An enemy merely conquered is not tamed, and only hates his new master.”
The Mongol Peril
In the year 1227, when Frederick II was setting out on his crusade, the Great Khan was buried in the Karakoram. He had divided up his Empire in his lifetime between his four sons. The West fell to the lot of Batu, who had his capital at Sarai on the Volga and was himself the founder of the “Golden Horde.” The momentum generated by Chingiz Khan continued uninterrupted in this son. The Russian principalities had succumbed to him by 1240, and by the beginning of 1241 he was approaching Hungary. Another section of Batu’s army had conquered Poland and was proceeding against Silesia. The danger seemed overwhelming. The whole of Asia was for once united; Europe, on the other hand, divided, disintegrated, rent by a thousand mutually-hostile forces. The West at last began to mobilise, Germany in breathless haste, for the Mongols were swarming over Hungary. An army which the King of Bohemia recruited came too late: on the 10th of April he made a stand at Liegnitz, but on the 9th, 30,000 men (it is computed) under Duke Henry of Liegnitz had been cut down by the Mongols on the battlefield. The Duke, a son of St. Hedwig, with Slav, Polish and German nobles, had flung themselves against the Tartars. His army was defeated and he himself was slain: Germany lay exposed to the onrush of the foe, but the sacrifice had not been made in vain. In spite of their victory the Mongols were shaken, and could not face another encounter with the forces of the King of Bohemia. They turned sharply south, devastating the greater part of Moravia, and thrust forward as far as Vienna, but then withdrew to Hungary. The conquering invaders had only for a short time pushed beyond the territories whose natural conditions and features resembled those of their homeland. The death of Ogotai, the Great Khan, far away in Eastern Asia, ended the danger.
The news of these events spread like wildfire throughout Europe, which conceived a new attack imminent. Minor quarrels were forgotten in face of the graver danger and the whole of Germany united—the last time for centuries. King Conrad held a Diet at Esslingen in May 1241 and proclaimed a Landpeace, preached a Crusade against the Tartars and took the Cross himself, stipulating only that this involved him in no obligations towards the Pope but only in a campaign against the foe. Otherwise the papalists would have led the Crusaders, as was now their habit, against the Emperor.
The news of Liegnitz must have reached Frederick in May, just as he was advancing on Rome from Faënza. King Bela of Hungary in his need offered Emperor Frederick suzerainty over all his lands if he would free them from the Mongol threat. This alluring offer was not needed to summon Frederick to the North East battlefields. He might have become in very deed the saviour of Europe in this year of grace 1241—King of the West he had himself united. His manifestos, masterpieces of the imperial Chancery, were despatched to all the Kings and great ones of the earth. The Christ-like Imperator, throned above the clouds, sounded the blasts of his trumpet to rally “powerful imperial Europe” against the foe before whose victorious eagles the pride of the Dragon should be laid low and the Tartar hurled to Tartarus. Each and every nation should despatch with speed her chivalry to fight under the two standards of Europe, the imperial eagles and the banner of the Cross: Germany fiery and furious in arms, France the mother and nurse of chivalry, Spain valiant and warlike, England fertile in men and ships, Allemania full of daring warriors, Dacia strong on the sea, untamed Italy and Burgundy unacquainted with peace, restless Apulia with her Adriatic and Tyrrhenian and Greek islands of unconquered sailor-folk, Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, bloodstained Hibernia with lands and islands ocean-bound, quick Wales and marshy Scotland, icy Norway, and every noble and renowned land under the Western sky.
Had Frederick hastened north he would have stilled the voices which were murmuring everywhere, that he himself had called the Dragon forth, lusting by the aid of Tartarean allies to make himself Dominus Mundi, and to destroy like Lucifer the Christian faith. These rumbling murmurs were doubtless strengthened by the intimate knowledge of Mongolian habits and customs displayed in the manifestos. Frederick II had probably made it his business, with eager curiosity, to acquire all the information he could about these unknown Mongols, a people “whose origin and first home we do not know,” who were fabled to have lived hidden beyond the seven climates under burning sun. They are described with ethnographic exactness, not without an implicit side-glance at the Emperor himself, “A wild people are they and lawless and without ruth, but they have a lord whom they follow and whom they obey, and whom they honour and whom they call Lord of the Earth. The bodily frame of this man is small and undersized, but powerful, broadshouldered, hardy and enduring. Stout of heart and courageous they plunge into any danger at a sign from their leader. Their face is broad, their gaze is sinister, they utter a terrifying cry that is like their heart. They wear untanned hides of oxen, horses and asses. Into these they stitch sheets of iron and use them as armour, or have heretofore done so. Alas, they now bear handsomer and better weapons from the spoils of conquered Christians. These Tartars are incomparable archers, and have ingeniously inflated skins in which they swim across lakes and flooded rivers. The horses they have brought with them are said to be content with roots and leaves and bark when other fodder fails, and yet they are swift and, at need, long-enduring.” Thus writes the Emperor of their customs, and he counsels his correspondents to avoid open battle, to provision their fortresses and to arm their people. But he did not himself set out against the Mongols.
*
The unity which Frederick so strongly recommended to the peoples of Europe he was unable to attain in his own Empire. Even the Mongol peril brought no peace with the Church; and as long as the war with Pope Gregory lasted he dared not quit Italy, especially as on all sides he was now victorious. His previous experience had been too bitter. “The painful memory of ancient days recurs: once of old we sailed to the rescue of the Holy Land and the destruction of the Saracens, who were no less persecutors of our religion than the Tartars of to-day, and while we were thus active beyond the sea our beloved Father, having raised troops amongst the Milanese and their allies, subjects all of our Empire, broke forcibly into our kingdom of Sicily and by the mouth of his legates forbade all followers of Christ to help us in the cause of the Crucified.” The Emperor was within sight of final success, he dared not imperil the harvest of years unless Pope Gregory, whether voluntarily, or under compulsion, would consent to peace. The Pope was unmoved by the crisis; since the capture of the prelates he was less than ever inclined to make peace. The imperial despatches kept the world informed that only the Pope’s lust for strife prevented Frederick from taking an active part in the campaign against the Mongols.
The Pope’s behaviour in other affairs was no less ambiguous. Frederick II designated his supporters as “faithful Christians” and the papalists as heretics whose “heresiarch” was Gregory IX. Other events justified his terminology: the state of affairs in the Holy Land.
Frederick had previously declared that there could be no thought of a new crusade till the expiration of the ten-year truce: that is not before 1239. In March 1239 he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory amongst other reasons because his Lombar
d war was making a crusade to the glory of the Redeemer impossible. The Crusaders were summoned to meet at Lyons in this same March, and numbers duly assembled there under the leadership of the King of Navarre. Suddenly a papal messenger arrived, forbade the Crusade for this year, ordered the pilgrims to return home, and fixed the start for March 1240. The journey was to be made not to Jerusalem but to Constantinople to bolster up the Latin Empire, a papal creation, of which Baldwin II of Flanders was now Emperor. The disobedient were threatened with spiritual penalties. The luckless Crusaders who had equipped themselves by the sale or mortgage of their possessions felt themselves befooled, and were so enraged that they nearly attacked the messenger. They did not know where to turn. The Emperor came to their relief.
It seemed that the Curia was determined on principle to permit no crusade to Syria, and did not abandon this attitude as long as Frederick lived. A little later the papal legates in Germany went so far as to excommunicate all who entertained even the idea of crusading against the Saracens or the heathen of Prussia. In England, likewise, the Curia sought to prevent a crusade to Palestine. It was perfectly obvious that the Pope was bent on wrecking the crusade he had begun by proclaiming. His motives were clear. In the previous year he had concluded an offensive alliance with Venice and Genoa against the Emperor. Both these maritime towns had interests in the Holy Land and both were at war with the Emperor. A crusade against Syria would have strengthened Frederick’s position in Jerusalem, which was none too secure, just at a moment when Venice and Genoa were hoping to drive him out of all his territories, including Sicily. It would, therefore, have stultified Pope Gregory’s whole policy: hence the crusade must be abandoned, even though the Holy Land should thus be lost not only to Frederick but to Christendom. The same indulgences could lure the crusaders to war with Frederick in Italy. It is said that when Frederick captured rebels fighting against him and wearing the sign of the Cross that he forthwith crucified them so that they might realise the meaning of the symbol. This may be untrue, but Frederick would have been quite capable of it and would have held that the responsibility fell on the Pope, who was misusing Crusaders for his own ends.
Frederick the Second Page 64