Heroines of the Crusades

While the lovely exotic was thus withering under the blighting influence of the uncongenial atmosphere of the north, Jean de Brienne visited the German court. Alarmed at his daughter’s pale and wasted appearance, he regarded her with a tender sympathy, such as he had never before manifested towards her; and the heart-broken queen poured out her sorrows before him, and entreated him to take her back to Palestine. The sweet pensiveness so like the expression of her mother’s countenance, and which had already become habitual to her youthful features touched a secret chord in his heart, and the thought that Frederic had squandered the wealth of her affection, and repulsed her winning caresses with coldness and contempt, roused his indignation. He expostulated with the monarch in no measured terms. The emperor admitted, that he had won the affections of Violante, by his apparent interest in the Holy Land, and gained her hand by a promise to restore to her, her rightful inheritance; but he sneeringly insinuated, that these courteous condescensions, were the fanciful gages staked by all lovers, which as husbands they were not bound to redeem. He laid down the proposition that oaths in religion, politics, and love were but means to an end, only binding, in so far as they accorded with the convenience of those who made them. He cited examples of the clergy, with the pope at their head, who wedding the church, and professing to live alone for her interests, made her the means of their own aggrandizement, the pander of their base passions; the policy of kings, who, receiving the sceptre of dominion for the ostensible purpose, of securing peace and happiness to their subjects, pursued their own pleasure, without regard to civil commotion or discord; and he illustrated his theory by multiplied instances in the domestic life of the sovereigns of Europe, who, for the gratification of personal pique, put away those whom they had promised to love and cherish to the end of life. Violante listened to this discourse like one who for the first time comprehends the solution of a problem, that has long taxed the ingenuity and embarrassed the reason. His sentiments explained the mystery in his manner, the discrepancy between his professions and performances, and like the spear of Ithuriel, dispelled at once the illusion of her fancy, and made him assume before her his own proper character. She fixed her large dark eyes upon his countenance, as though striving to recall the image she had worshipped there. She saw only the arrogant sneer of skepticism, and the smile of selfish exultation. Her sensitive heart recoiled with horror at the prospect of the cheerless future, which in one fearful moment passed like a vision before her, and with a piercing cry she fell fainting to the floor. The husband calmly summoned the maids as he left the apartment, while the father, with a heart distracted between pity and anger, tenderly lifted her lifeless form and conveyed her to a couch.

Robert, the second son of Peter Courtenay and Yoland, succeeded his father upon the throne of Constantinople. An inglorious reign of seven years left the empire in a distracted state, and an early death transferred the crown to his infant son Baldwin. The barons of the Greek Empire felt the necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man and a hero; and messengers were despatched to the veteran King of Jerusalem, to beg him to accept the imperial purple, and become the father of the young prince, by bestowing upon him the hand of his second daughter in marriage. The position and authority of Jean de Brienne as the Emperor of Constantinople, gave him power to punish Frederic’s baseness, and he speedily signified to the emperor, that the might of his sword, backed by the strength of the Greek forces, was now ready to enforce the decrees of the pope.

Frederic, finding that he could no longer with any safety defer his pilgrimage, ordered a general rendezvous of his troops at Brundusium preparatory for departure. Before however the appointed time for sailing had arrived, a pestilence broke out in the camp, numbers died and greater numbers deserted, and the emperor himself, after having embarked and remained at sea three days, returned, declaring that his health would not admit of his taking the voyage. Exulting in the fortunate circumstance that had released him from the dreaded expedition, he hastened his march to Germany.

As he entered his palace, he was struck by the grave and serious manner with which his retainers, usually so enthusiastic, received him. An ominous gloom reigned in the court, and as with lordly tread he passed through the long corridors, he felt that his step was breaking the silence of death. In the anteroom of the queen’s apartment, he found her maidens indulging in the utmost expressions of grief. The feeble wail of an infant smote upon his ear, and striding through the hushed and darkened chamber, he sought the couch of the neglected Violante. That couch was a bier. Those lips, upon whose sportive accents he had hung with exquisite though momentary rapture, were forever dumb. Those features, that had kindled with a glow of love at his every word of tenderness, were now settled in their last calm repose.

Poor Violante! Thy pilgrimage was brief. The first sweet stage of childhood scarcely passed, Fancy led thy willing footsteps through the Elysian fields of Love, and robed the object of thy young affections with a halo of purity and truth. – The life-long experience of woman – the indefinable slight and wrong that press home upon her, the bitter sense of utter helplessness and dependence, the inexplicable woe of the primeval curse, – crowded into the little span of a few short months, brought thee early to the sepulchre, – seventeen summers, and a winter whose rigor congealed the very fountain of thy life, – to hope, to love, to give thy life to another, and die. – Such is thy history, beautiful Violante, Queen of Jerusalem, Empress of Germany, Heroine of the Sixth Crusade.

ELEANORA

CHAPTER I.

THE PARENTS OF EDWARD I

Of all the royal suitors that ever stooped to woo the love of woman, Henry III. son of John Lackland and Isabella of Angoulême, appears to have been the most luckless and unfortunate. He first fixed his affections upon the Princess of Scotland, who was dissuaded from listening to his suit, by her brother’s assurance that the king was a squint-eyed fool, deceitful, perjured, more faint-hearted than a woman, and utterly unfit for the company of any fair and noble lady.

Disappointed in Scotland, the monarch next offered his hand to the heiress of Brittany, but the rugged Bretons, too well remembering the cruelty of his father, to their beloved Prince Arthur, returned a haughty refusal.

He then proposed to confer the honor of his alliance upon a daughter of Austria, but the fair descendant of Leopold inherited all her grandfather’s enmity to the princely house of Plantagenet, and rejected his addresses with disdain.

The Duke of Bohemia, to whom he next applied, civilly answered that his child was already plighted to another, and it was not until Henry reached the mature age of thirty that he received a favorable response to his matrimonial proposal; and when at last the marriage contract was signed between himself and Joanna, daughter of Alice of France, the roving affections of this royal Cœlebs were beguiled from their allegiance by the sweet strains of the youthful poetess of Provence.

Eleanor la Belle, second daughter of Count Berenger, perhaps the youngest female writer on record, attracted the attention of the fickle King of England, by a poem which she composed on the conquest of Ireland.

Dazzled by her genius and personal charms, Henry’s vows to Joanna were forgotten, and his ambassadors received orders to break off the negotiations, while his obliging counsellors recommended a union with the very lady he so ardently admired.

His habitual covetousness intruded however into the courtship, and had well-nigh subjected him to a sixth disappointment. He intrusted his seneschal to demand twenty thousand marks as the dower of Eleanor, but privately empowering him to lessen the sum if necessary to fifteen, ten, seven, five or three thousand. He quite disgusted the haughty count her father, by his sordid bargaining, and at last wrote in great terror, to conclude the marriage forthwith, either with money or without, but at all events to secure the lady for him and conduct her safely to England without delay.

In the splendid festivities with which Henry welcomed his young bride to London, and in the preparation of her coronation robes, he displayed a taste for lavish expenditure altogether inconsistent with the state of his finances, and in ridiculous contrast to his former penuriousness.

Like his father the greatest fop in Europe, but not like him content with the adornment of his own person, he issued the most liberal orders for apparelling the royal household in satin, velvet, cloth of gold and ermine, expending in the queen’s jewelry alone a sum not less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

About the same time he bestowed his sister Isabella upon the Imperial widower Frederic II., and personally designated every article of her sumptuous wardrobe.

It was on this occasion that he first learned how imperative a check a sturdy British Parliament may be on the lawless extravagance of a king; for when he petitioned the Lords for a relief from his pecuniary difficulties, they told him they had amply supplied funds both for his marriage and that of the empress, and as he had wasted the money he might defray the expenses of his wedding as best he could.

It would be difficult to say whether the king, the queen, or the royal relations, proved the greatest scourges to Britain during the long and impotent reign of Henry III.

One of Eleanor’s uncles became prime minister; to another was given the rich Earldom of Warrenne, and a third was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and numerous young lady friends of the romantic queen were imported from Provence and married to the king’s wealthy wards.

Henry’s mother, not content with sending over all her younger children to be provided for by the impoverished monarch, involved him in a war with Louis IX., which ended disastrously for the English arms, in the loss of a great part of the rich southern fiefs and the military chests and costly ornaments of the king’s chapel.

Henry’s ambition for his children brought still greater difficulties upon the realm. His eldest son, Edward, was appointed viceroy of the disputed possessions in Aquitaine, and being too young to discharge his important trusts with discretion, so mismanaged affairs as greatly to increase the discontent of his father’s French subjects.

His eldest daughter Margaret, married to her cousin Alexander III., the young King of Scotland, was taken prisoner by Sir John Baliol, and subjected to the most rigorous confinement, thus making it necessary for Henry to undertake a Northern campaign for the rescue of his child.

But his second son, Edmund, proved more expensive to the British nation, and innocently did more to project the civil war than any other member of the royal family; for the pope, having conferred the crown of Sicily upon the young prince, the delighted father eagerly engaged in a prospective war, and promised to defray the whole expense of substantiating the claim.

Again the barons resisted the onerous tax which this new attempt at family aggrandizement would impose upon them, and the first subsidy was raised from the benefices of the church only by the exercise of spiritual authority. When the ambitious king had exhausted all his resources, the pontiff coolly transferred the coveted crown to Charles d’Anjou, brother to the King of France, leaving poor Henry to cancel his debt with the lords of exchequer as best he might, getting to himself in the eyes of his subjects little glory and great loss.

Such was the character, the political and the social position of the parents of Edward I., who commenced about the middle of the thirteenth century to take an active part in the affairs of Europe.

A splendid concourse were gathered in the spacious palace of the old temple at Paris, A.D. 1254. The royal families of England and France were convened on terms of cordiality and kindness, such as they had never enjoyed since the day when Normandy was wrested from the descendants of Charlemagne. The banquet was given in honor of Edward, the heir-apparent of England, and his sweet young bride, Eleanora of Castile. In the place of honor sat the good St. Louis King of France, on his right, Henry III. of England, and on his left, the King of Navarre, the royal descendant of Thibaut of Champagne, and Blanche the sister of Berengaria. At this magnificent entertainment, Beatrice the Countess of Provence enjoyed a reunion with her beautiful daughters, their noble husbands and blooming offspring. The eldest, Margaret, was the wife of Louis IX., Eleanor, of Henry III., Beatrice, of Charles d’Anjou, and Sancha, of Richard of Cornwall, King of the Romans.

But the queen of this Feast of kings, the fair young Infanta, around whom were gathered the nobility of a Continent, though but a child of scarce ten years, concentrated in herself more romantic associations and excited higher hopes than any of the crowned heads present. Her brother Alphonso X., the astronomer, was the most learned prince in Europe, and neither priest or peer could boast that devotion to the arts, or that success in scientific discoveries that characterized the King of Castile, surnamed Il Sabio, the wise. Her mother Joanna, had been the affianced bride of her royal father-in-law Henry III., had been rejected for the more poetic daughter of the Count of Provence; and her grandmother, Alice of France, had been refused by the gallant King Richard, in favor of Berengaria of Navarre. Her brother Alphonso, and her husband’s uncle, Richard of Cornwall, were candidates for the crown of the German Empire, in opposition to the rights of Conrad, son of Frederic and Violante, and her husband, a graceful youth of fifteen, who had received the honors of knighthood at his wedding tournament, was heir to the goodly realm of England and the beautiful provinces of Southern France.

The tourney, the banquet, and the procession, had marked their progress from Burgos, in Spain, to the Parisian court. At Bordeaux, King Henry expended 300,000 marks on their marriage feast, a sum, at that time so extravagant, that when reproached for it, he exclaimed in a dolorous tone, “Oh! pour la tête de Dieu, say no more of it, lest men should stand amazed at the relation thereof.” At Chartres, the palace once occupied by Count Stephen and Adela, was ornamented with the most brilliant decorations to honor their presence. St. Louis advanced to meet, and escort them to Paris. The cavalcade consisted of one thousand mounted knights in full armor, each with some lady by his side, upon a steed whose broidered housings rivalled the richness of the flowing habiliments of the fair rider, while a splendid train of carriages, sumpter mules, and grooms, and vassals completed the magnificent retinue.

The nuptial festival with its usual accompaniments of hunting, hawking, and holiday sports, continued through eight days, and a brilliant cortêge attended the bridal party to the coast of France, on their departure for England. The passage was rough and gloomy, and the fleet that conveyed Eleanora to her new home encountered a storm upon the Channel, and approached the harbor under the cover of a fog so dense, that the white cliffs of Dover were entirely veiled from sight.

The child queen, terrified at the profound darkness, strove to silence her own agonizing apprehensions, by repeating those words of sacred writ, which she supposed exercised some mysterious influence upon the elements. Suddenly a terrible crash made the ship groan through all its timbers. Piercing shrieks from without told a tale of horrors, and the echoing screams within rendered it impossible to ascertain the nature or extent of the danger. At length it was found, that the royal vessel had in the darkness encountered and sunk a small bark, supposed to be a fishing smack, that had been driven out to sea by the wind.

Prince Edward immediately ordered the small boat to be lowered, and despite the entreaties of his parents and little bride, sprang into it, in hope of rescuing the perishing crew.

Alarmed for his safety, Eleanora added to the anxieties of her parents, by hastening to the deck, where leaning from the vessel’s side, she scanned with intensest gaze the narrow circle of waters illuminated by the lights of the ship. A brave sailor, buffeting the waves with powerful arm, escaped the eddies made by the sinking craft, and grasping the rope which was flung to his assistance, sprang up to the vessel’s side. Another object soon after appeared rising and sinking upon the crest of the billow. Now it seemed but the sparkling foam, and now it lay white and motionless in the dark trough of the sea. At length it floated beyond the line of light, and seemed lost in the impenetrable gloom, but not till the prince had fixed his eye upon it, and ordered his rowers to pull in the direction of its disappearance. One moment of agonizing suspense, and the heir of England again appeared nearing the vessel, carefully folding a motionless form in his arms; the sailors plied the windlass, and the boat with its crew was safely received on board.

Scarcely heeding the curious inquiries of those who gathered around him, the prince made his way to the cabin and deposited the precious burden upon a couch. The dripping coverings were speedily removed, and delight, admiration, and pity, were instantly excited in the hearts of the spectators, at the sight of a lovely child, apparently less than two years of age. Eleanora watched the resuscitation of the little stranger, with anxious tenderness. She chafed its dimpled hands in her own, and strove to recall animation by soft kisses and gentle caresses. As vital warmth gradually returned, and the faint hue of life glowed on the pallid cheek, the suffering one opened her blue eyes, and whispering some indistinct words, among which they could distinguish only “Eva,” sank again into unconsciousness.

The clothing of the little foundling was such as indicated rank and wealth, and a bracelet of Eastern manufacture, clasped upon her tiny arm, excited much wonder and curiosity among the queens and their attendants. The prince had found the infant lashed to an oar with a scarf of exquisite embroidery. There seemed to be also an armorial design upon it, but the green shamrock, with a rose of Sharon, was a device which none present could decipher. The rescued sailor stated that the lost ship was a coasting vessel, and that, in an Irish harbor, they had taken on board a lady and child; but, as he had only seen them at the time of their embarkation, he could give no farther account of them.

The partiality which Eleanora manifested to the orphan, thus suddenly bereft of every friend, gained for it a home in the bosom of the royal family, and at the castle of Guilford, where her father-in-law established her with much state, she passed many pleasant hours in the care of her tender charge. The little Eva added to her infantile charms a disposition of invincible sweetness, relieved by a sportive wilfulness that elicited a constant interest, not unmixed with anxiety, lest a heart so warm might become a prey to influences against which no caution or admonition could shield her. She could give no account of her parentage or home; but sometimes spoke of her mamma, and birds and flowers, as though her childish memory retained associations that linked her thoughts with pleasant walks and tender care. Her perceptions were exceedingly quick, but her best resolutions were often evanescent, and she lacked a steadiness of purpose in the pursuit of the studies to which Eleanora invited her attention. An appeal to her heart never failed to induce immediate repentance for any fault, and she was altogether the most winning, but vexatious pupil, that ever engaged the affections of a queen. But the accomplishments of Eleanora herself were not complete, and in 1256 she was again conveyed to Bordeaux, for the purpose of receiving instruction from masters better qualified to conduct her education. At her earnest request, Eva was permitted to accompany her.

Her young husband was meanwhile engaged perfecting himself in every knightly accomplishment, “haunting tournaments,” and carrying off the prizes from all competitors, with a skill and grace that gave him a renown, not inferior to that of his great uncle Richard Cœur de Lion. At Paris, he formed an intimacy with the Sire de Joinville, companion of St. Louis in the seventh crusade, and he listened to the account of affairs in the East with an interest that inflamed his young and ardent imagination. The Lord de Joinville, high seneschal of Champagne, was one of the most erudite and affable nobles of the thirteenth century, and it was an agreeable occupation for the experienced soldier, to enlighten the mind of the young prince with an account of the customs and manners of the East, and the state of the Latin kingdom in Jerusalem, which had so much influenced the politics of Europe.

After the return of Frederic, Gregory IX. excommunicated him for declining to combat the enemy of God; but so long had been the contest between the emperor and the pontiff, and so divided were the minds of men upon the rights of the cause, that the clergy published the sentence with many explanatory clauses, that greatly modified its effect. A curé at Paris, instead of reading the bull from the pulpit in the usual form, said to his parishioners, “You know, my brethren, that I am ordered to fulminate an excommunication against Frederic. I know not the motive. All that I know is, that there has been a quarrel between that prince and the pope. God alone knows who is right. I excommunicate him who has injured the other; and I absolve the sufferer.”

Frederic, in revenge, employed his Saracen troops, of which he commanded not a few, in southern Italy, to ravage the dominions of the church, and convinced all his subjects of the wisdom of his former refusals, by taxing them heavily for the expenses of the expedition on which he determined to embark. Finding that Frederic was thus placing himself in a posture to enlist the sympathies of Christendom, the pope prohibited his undertaking the Holy War till he should be relieved from ecclesiastical censure. The emperor notwithstanding sailed directly for Acre, and was received with great joy by the Christians. The next ships from Europe brought letters from the pontiff to the patriarch, repeating the sentence of excommunication, forbidding the Templars and Hospitallers to fight under the banner of the son of perdition.

In this state of embarrassment, Frederic found his military operations limited to the suburbs of Acre; and dwelling in the palace, and gazing on the scenes which Violante had so often and so eloquently portrayed, his mind reverted, with a touch of remorseful tenderness, to the enthusiasm with which she had anticipated a return to her eastern home. The rapture with which she had dwelt upon the virtues of the Empress Elsiebede, and her noble son Melech Camel, inspired him with the thought that he might avail himself of the generous friendship entertained for his much injured wife, to further his own plans in Palestine. Acting upon this selfish policy, he opened negotiations with the Sultan of Egypt, now heir to all Saphadin’s dominions by the death of Cohr-Eddin. The Saracen emperor lent a gracious ear to the overtures of the successor of Jean de Brienne, and a truce of ten years was concluded between the belligerent powers.

Jerusalem, Joppa, Bethlehem and Nazareth, with their appendages, were restored to the Latins. The Holy Sepulchre was also ceded, and both Christians and Mussulmans, were guaranteed the right to worship in the sacred edifice, known to the former as the temple of Solomon, and to the latter as the mosque of Omar. The Emperor repaired to Jerusalem, but no hosannahs welcomed his approach. The patriarch forbade the celebration of all religious ceremonies during his stay, and no prelate could be induced to place upon his brow accursed, the crown of Godfrey of Boulogne. Frederic, notwithstanding, advanced to the church of the Sepulchre, took the crown from the altar, placed it upon his own head, and then listened with great apparent satisfaction, to a laudatory oration, pronounced by one of his German followers. Thus the memory of the gentle and loving Violante, more powerful than the heroic frenzy of King Richard, or the misguided devotion of the military orders, established the kingdom of Palestine, once more upon a firm basis, and gave the sceptre into the hands of one able to defend its rights.