The Story Of Mankind - Part 14

The Story of Mankind was written and illustrated by Dutch-American journalist, professor, and author Hendrik Willem van Loon and published in 1921. In 1922, it was the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for its outstanding contribution to children's literature.

Transcript

This is part 14 of the story of mankind,

By Hendrik van Loon.

The Crusades But all these different quarrels were forgotten when the Turks took the Holy Land,

Desecrated the Holy Places,

And interfered seriously with the trade from East to West.

Europe went crusading.

During three centuries there had been peace between Christians and Muslims,

Except in Spain and in the Eastern Roman Empire,

The two states defending the gateways of Europe.

The Mohammedans,

Having conquered Syria in the 7th century,

Were in possession of the Holy Land.

But they regarded Jesus as a great prophet,

Though not quite as great as Muhammad,

And they did not interfere with the pilgrims who wished to pray in the church,

Which Saint Helena,

The mother of the emperor Constantine,

Had built on the spot of the Holy Grave.

But early in the 11th century,

The Tartar tribe from the wilds of Asia,

Called the Seljuks or Turks,

Became masters of the Mohammedan state in Western Asia,

And then the period of tolerance came to an end.

The Turks took all of Asia Minor away from the Eastern Roman emperors,

And they made an end to the trade between East and West.

Alexis,

The emperor,

Who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbors of the West,

Appealed for help and pointed to the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take Constantinople.

The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast of Asia Minor and Palestine,

In fear for their possessions,

Reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian suffering.

All Europe got excited.

Pope Urban II,

A Frenchman from Rhimes,

Who had been educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had trained Gregory VII,

Thought that the time had come for action.

The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory.

The primitive agriculture methods of that day,

Unchanged since Roman times,

Caused a constant scarcity of food.

There was unemployment and hunger,

And these are apt to lead to discontent and riots.

Western Asia in older days had fed millions.

It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration.

Therefore,

At the Council of Clermont in France in the year 1095,

The pope arose,

Described the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land,

Gave a glowing description of this country which ever since the days of Moses had been overflowing with milk and honey,

And exhorted the knights of France and the people of Europe in general to leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks.

A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent.

All reason stopped.

Children would drop their hammer and saw,

Walk out of their shop and take the nearest road to the east to go and kill Turks.

Children would leave their homes to go to Palestine and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety.

Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within sight of the Holy Land.

They had no money.

They were forced to beg or steal to keep alive.

They became a danger to the safety of the high roads,

And they were killed by the angry country people.

The First Crusade,

A wild mob of honest Christians,

Defaulting bankrupts,

Penniless noblemen,

And fugitives from justice,

Following the lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter without a cent,

Began their campaign against the infidels by murdering all the Jews whom they met,

By the way.

They got as far as Hungary,

And then they were all killed.

The experience taught the Church a lesson.

Enthusiasm alone would not set the Holy Land free.

Organization was as necessary as goodwill and courage.

A year was spent in training and equipping an army of two hundred thousand men.

They were placed under the command of Godfrey of Boulogne.

Robert,

Duke of Normandy,

Robert,

Count of Flanders,

And a number of other noblemen all experienced in the art of war.

In the year 1096,

This Second Crusade started upon its long voyage.

At Constantinople the knights did homage to the Emperor.

For as I have told you,

Traditions die hard,

And the Roman Emperor,

However poor and powerless,

Was still held in great respect.

Then they crossed into Asia,

Killed all the Muslims who fell into their hands,

Stormed Jerusalem,

Massacred the Muhammadan population,

And marched to the Holy Sepulcher to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and gratitude.

But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops.

Then they retook Jerusalem,

And in turn killed the faithful followers of the Cross.

During the next two centuries,

Seven other Crusades took place.

Gradually the Crusaders learned a technique of the trip.

The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous.

They preferred to cross the Alps,

And go to Genoa or Venice,

Where they took ship for the East.

The Genoese and the Venetians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very profitable business.

They charged exorbitant rates,

And when the Crusaders,

Most of whom had very little money,

Could not pay the price,

These Italian profiteers kindly allowed them to work their way across.

In return for a fare from Venice to Acre,

The Crusader undertook to do a stated amount of fighting for the owners of his vessel.

In this way Venice greatly increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in Greece,

Where Athens became a Venetian colony,

And in the islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes.

All this,

However,

Helped little in settling the question of the Holy Land.

After the first enthusiasm had worn off,

A short crusading trip became part of the liberal education of every well-bred young man,

And there never was any lack of candidates for service in Palestine.

But the old zeal was gone.

The Crusaders,

Who had begun their warfare with deep hatred for the Mohammedans,

And great love for the Christian people of the Eastern Roman Empire and Armenia,

Suffered a complete change of heart.

They came to despise the Greeks of Byzantium,

Who cheated them and frequently betrayed the cause of the cross,

And the Armenians and all the other Levantine races,

And they began to apprentice the virtues of their enemies,

Who proved to be generous and fair opponents.

Of course he would never do to say this openly,

But when the Crusader returned home,

He was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned from his Heathnish foe,

Compared to whom the average Western knight was still a good deal of a country bumpkin.

He also brought with him several new foodstuffs,

Such as peaches and spinach,

Which he planted in his garden and grew for his own benefit.

He gave up the barbarous custom of wearing a load of heavy armor,

And appeared in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional habit of the followers of the Prophet,

And were originally worn by the Turks.

Indeed,

The Crusades which had begun as a punitive expedition against the Heathen,

Became a course of general instruction in civilization for millions of young Europeans.

From a military and political point of view,

The Crusades were a failure.

Jerusalem and the number of cities were taken and lost.

A dozen little kingdoms were established in Syria and Palestine and Asia Minor,

But they were reconquered by the Turks.

And after the year 1244,

When Jerusalem became definitely Turkish,

The status of the Holy Land was the same as it had been before 1095.

But Europe had undergone a great change.

The people of the West had been allowed a glimpse of the light,

And the sunshine and the beauty of the East.

Their dreary castle no longer satisfied them.

They wanted a broader life.

Neither church nor state could give this to them.

They found it in the cities.

The Medieval City.

Why the people of the Middle Ages said that city air is free air.

The early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of pioneering and of settlement.

A new people,

Who thus far had lived outside the wild range of forest,

Mountains and marshes,

Which protected the northeastern frontier of the Roman Empire,

Had forced its way into the plains of the Western Europe,

And had taken possession of most of the land.

They were restless,

As all pioneers had been since the beginning of time.

They liked to be on the go.

They cut down the forests,

And they cut each other's throats with equal energy.

Few of them wanted to live in the cities.

They insisted upon being free.

They loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their lungs,

While they drove their herds across the wind-swept pastures.

They no longer liked their old homes.

They pulled up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures.

The weaker ones died.

The hardy fighters and the courageous women who had followed their men into the wilderness survived.

In this way,

They developed a strong race of men.

They cared little for the graces of life.

They were too busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry.

They had little love for discussions.

The priest,

The learned man of the village,

And before the middle of the thirteenth century,

A layman who could read and write was regarded as a sissy,

Was supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical value.

Meanwhile,

The German chieftain,

The Frankish baron,

The Northman duke,

Or whatever their names and titles,

Occupied their share of the territory which once had been part of the great Roman Empire,

And among the ruins of past glory,

They built a world of their own which pleased them mightily and which they considered quite perfect.

They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding country to the best of their ability.

They were as faithful to the commandments of the Church as any weak mortal could hope to be.

They were sufficiently loyal to their king or emperor to keep on good terms with those who were distant,

But always dangerous potentates.

In short,

They tried to do right and to be fair to their neighbors,

Without being exactly unfair to their own interests.

It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves.

The greater part of the people were serfs,

Or villains.

Farmhands were as much part of the soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared.

Their fate was not particularly happy,

Nor was it particularly unhappy.

But what was one to do?

The good lord who ruled the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered everything for the best.

If he,

In his wisdom,

Had decided that there must be both knight and serfs,

It was not the duty of one of these faithful sons of the Church to question the arrangement.

The serfs therefore did not complain,

But when they were too hard-driven,

They would die off like cattle which are not fed and stabled in the right way,

And then something would hastily be done to better their condition.

But if the progress of the world had been left to the serf and his feudal master,

We would still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century,

Saying abracadabra when we tried to stop a toothache,

And feeling a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help us with his science,

Which most likely was of Muhammeden or Heathenish origin,

And therefore both wicked and useless.

When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in progress,

And they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that the world does not change.

But I hope that you will not pay much attention to such talk.

You see,

It took our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs.

Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts developed into a understandable language.

Writing,

The art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations,

Without which no progress is possible,

Was invented only four thousand years ago.

The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of our your own grandfather.

It seems to me,

Therefore,

That we are making progress at an unheard of rate of speed.

Perhaps we have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical comforts of life.

That will change in due course of time,

And we shall then attack the problems which are not related to health and to wages,

And plumbing and machinery in general.

But please do not be too sentimental about the good old days.

Many people who only see the beautiful churches and the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilization with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of backfiring motor-trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago.

But these medieval churches were invariably surrounded by miserable hovels,

Compared to which a modern tenement house stands forth as a luxurious palace.

It is true that the noble Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal,

The pure young hero who went in search of the Holy Grail,

Were not bothered by the odor of gasoline.

But there were other smells of the barnyard variety,

Odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown into the street.

Of pixies surrounding the bishop's palace,

Of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats from their grandfathers,

And who had never learned the blessing of soap.

I do not want to paint too unpleasant of a picture,

But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King of France,

Looking out of the window of his palace,

Fainted at the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris,

When an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epidemic of the plague of smallpox,

Then you begin to understand that progress is something more than a catchword used by modern advertising men.

No,

The progress of the last six hundred years would not have been possible without the existence of cities.

I shall therefore have to make this chapter a little longer than many of the others.

It is too important to be reduced to three or four pages,

Devoted to mere political events.

The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria had been a world of cities.

Greece had been a country of city-states.

The history of Thonissia was the history of two cities called Sidon and Tyre.

The Roman Empire was the hinterland of the single town.

Writing,

Art,

Science,

Astronomy,

Architecture,

Literature,

The theatre,

The list is endless,

Have all been products of the city.

For almost four thousand years the wooden beehive which we call a town had been the workshop of the world.

Then came the great migrations.

The Roman Empire was destroyed,

The cities were burned down,

And Europe once more became a land of pastures and little agricultural villages.

During the Dark Ages the fields of civilization had lain fallow.

The crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop.

It was time for the harvest,

But the fruit was plucked by the burgers of the free city.

I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries,

With their heavy stone enclosures,

The homes of the knights and the monks,

Who guarded man's bodies and their souls.

We have seen how a few artisans,

Butchers and bakers,

And an occasional candlestick maker,

Came to live near the city,

To tend to the wants of their masters,

And to find protection in case of danger.

Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these people to surround their houses with a stockade,

But they were dependent for their living upon the good will of the mighty seigneur of the castle.

When he went about,

They knelt before him and kissed his hand.

Then came the crusades and many things changed.

The migrations had driven people from the north east to the west.

The crusades made millions of people travel from the west to the highly civilized regions of the south east.

They discovered that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little settlement.

They came to appreciate better clothes,

More comfortable houses,

New dishes,

Products of the mysterious Orient.

After they returned to their old homes,

They insisted that they be supplied with those articles.

The peddler with his pack upon his back,

The only merchant of the dark ages,

Added these goods to his old merchandise,

Bought a cart,

Hired a few ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which followed with great international war,

And went forth to do business upon a mere modern and large scale.

His career was not an easy one.

Every time he entered the domains of another lord,

He had to pay tolls and taxes.

But the business was profitable all the same,

And the peddler continued to make his rounds.

Soon,

Certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods which they had always imported from afar could be made at home.

They turned part of their homes into a workshop.

They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers.

They sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the abbot of his monastery,

But they exported them to nearby towns.

The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms,

Eggs and wines,

And with honey,

Which in those early days was used as sugar.

But the citizens of distant towns were obliged to pay in cash,

And the manufacturer and the merchant began to own little pieces of gold,

Which entirely changed their position in the society of the early Middle Ages.

It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money.

In a modern city one cannot possibly live without money.

All day long you carry a pocket full of small disks of metal to pay your way.

You need a nickel for the streetcar,

A dollar for a dinner,

Three cents for an evening paper.

But many people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined money from the time they were born to the day of their death.

The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath the ruins of their cities.

The world of the migrations,

Which had succeeded the empire,

Was an agricultural world.

Every farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough cows for his own use.

The medieval knight was a country squire and was rarely forced to pay for materials and money.

His estates produced everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on their backs.

The bricks for his house were made along the banks of the nearest river.

Wood for the rafters of the hall was cut from the baronial forest.

The few articles that had come from abroad were paid for in goods,

In honey,

In eggs,

In cigarettes.

But the crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a very drastic fashion.

Suppose that the Duke of Hildersheim was going to the Holy Land.

He must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel bills.

At home he could pay with products of his farm.

But he could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cartload of hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of Venice or the innkeeper of the Brenner Pass.

These gentlemen insisted upon cash.

His lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage.

Where could he find this gold?

He could borrow it from the Lombards,

The descendants of the Langebards,

Who had turned professional moneylenders,

Who seated behind their exchange table,

Commonly known as Banco or Bank,

Were glad to let his grace have a few hundred gold pieces in exchange for a mortgage upon his estates,

That they might be repaid in case his lordships should die at the hands of the Turks.

That was dangerous business for the borrower.

In the end the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the night became a bankrupt.

Who hired himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful neighbor.

His grace could also go to that part of the town where the Jews were forced to live.

There he could borrow money at a rate of fifty or sixty percent interest.

That too was bad business.

But was there a way out?

Some of the people of the little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money.

They had known the young lord all his life.

His father and their fathers had been good friends.

They would not be unreasonable in their demands.

Very well.

His lordship's clerk,

A monk,

Who could write and keep accounts,

Sent a note to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan.

The townspeople met in the workroom of the jewelry,

Who made chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand.

They could not well refuse.

It would serve no purpose to ask for interest.

In the first place it was against the religious principles of most people to take interest,

And in the second place it would never be paid except in agricultural products,

And those the people had enough and to spare.

But suggested a tailor who spent his days quietly,

Sitting upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher,

Suppose that we ask some favor in return for our money.

We are all fond of fishing,

But his lordship won't let us fish in his brook.

Suppose that we let him have a hundred ducats,

And that he gives us in return a written guarantee allowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers.

Then he gets the hundred which he needs,

But we get the fishing,

And it will be good business all round.

The day his lordship accepted this proposition,

It seemed such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces,

He signed the death warrant of his own power.

His clerk drew up the agreement.

His lordship made his mark,

For he could not sign his name,

And departed for the east.

Two years later he came back,

Dead broke.

The townspeople were fishing in the castle pond.

The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed his lordship.

He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd away.

They went,

But that night a delegation of merchants visited the castle.

They were very polite.

They congratulated his lordship upon his safe return.

They were sorry his lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen,

But as his lordship might perhaps remember,

He had given them permission to do so himself,

And the tailor produced the charter which had been kept in the safe of the jeweler ever since the master had gone to the Holy Land.

His lordship was much annoyed,

But once more he was in dire need of some money.

In Italy he had signed his name to certain documents which were now in possession of Silvestro de' Medici,

The well-known banker.

These documents were promissory notes,

And they were due two months from date.

Their total amount came to three hundred and forty pounds,

Flemish gold.

Under these circumstances,

The noble knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and his proud soul,

Instead he suggested another little loan.

The merchants retired to discuss the matter.

After three days they came back and said yes.

They were only too happy to be able to help their master in his difficulties,

But in return for the three hundred and forty-five golden pounds would he give them another written promise,

Another charter,

That they,

The townspeople,

Might establish a council of their own to be elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city,

Said council to manage civic affairs without interference from the side of the castle.

His lordship was confoundedly angry,

But again he needed the money.

He said yes and signed the charter.

Last week he repented.

He called his soldiers and went to the house of the jeweler and asked for the documents which his crafty subject had cajoled out of him under the pressure of circumstances.

He took them away and burned them.

The townspeople stood by and said nothing.

But when next his lordship needed money to pay for the dowry of his daughter,

He was unable to get a single penny.

After that little affair at the jeweler's his credit was not considered good.

He was forced to eat humble pie and offered to make certain reparation.

Before his lordship got the first installment of the stipulated sum,

The townspeople were once more in possession of all their old charters,

And a brand new one which permitted them to build a city hall and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept protected against fire and theft,

Which really meant protected against future violence on the part of the lord and his armed followers.

This in a very general way is what happened during the centuries which followed the crusades.

It was a slow process.

This gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city.

There was some fighting.

A few tailors and jewelers were killed,

And a few castles went up in smoke.

But such occurrences were not common.

Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer and the feudal lords grew poorer.

To maintain themselves they were forever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty in return for ready cash.

The cities grew.

They offered an asylum to runaway serfs who gained their liberty after they had lived a number of years behind the city walls.

They came to be the home of the more energetic elements of the surrounding country districts.

They were proud of their new importance and expressed their power in the churches and public buildings which they erected around the old marketplace,

Where centuries before the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt had taken place.

They wanted their children to have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed themselves.

They hired monks to come to their city and be schoolteachers.

When they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of wood,

They offered him a pension if he would come and cover the walls of their chapel in their town hall with scenes from the holy scriptures.

Meanwhile his lordship,

In the dreary and drafty halls of his castle,

Saw all this absurd splendor and regretted the day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign rights and prerogatives.

But he was helpless.

The townspeople with their well-filled strong boxes snapped their fingers at him.

They were free men,

Fully prepared to hold what they had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle which had lasted for more than ten generations.

Reviews

Thank you so much for this chapter 14.. I waited for it.. and so happy you’re continuing this wonderful history lesson

Awesome siempre.