A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe (5 page)

The force enjoyed some initial military success and captured Acre but arguments over the division of spoils and a mutual distrust led King Philip and Leopold V of Austria (1157–94), who had taken over from Frederick, to return home with their armies.
Richard defeated Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf but lacked the resources to take Jerusalem. He concluded a truce with Saladin and set out in October 1192 for England where he was needed. On his way home he was captured by his old rival, Leopold, and handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI (ruled 1191–97). Richard was imprisoned until a ransom was paid and he was released on 4 February
1194.

There was little heart for another crusade and, when Pope Innocent III (Pope 1198–1216) pressed for one, European monarchs took little notice. Nonetheless an army was assembled, under the leadership of the Italian Count, Boniface of Montferrat (1150–1207). The original objective was Egypt but the Crusaders made little attempt to travel there. Instead they destroyed the
Christian city of Constantinople, massacring its population after Alexius IV Angelus (who ruled briefly in 1203–4) reneged on the promises he had made of rich rewards if they helped him to overthrow his uncle, Emperor Alexius III Angelus (ruled 1195–1203). The Crusaders established a Latin Empire in Constantinople and put Baldwin of Flanders (ruled 1204–5) on its throne. Latin rule over large parts
of the Byzantine Empire lasted until 1261. Almost none of the Crusaders actually made it to the Holy Land.

The next four Crusades – in 1216, 1228, 1248 and 1270, respectively – all ended in failure, falling victim to a range of catastrophes – plague, drowning and military incompetence. By the end of the thirteenth century, the powerful military
caste of the Mamelukes of Egypt ruled the Muslim world. Their recapture of Acre in 1291 signalled the end for the Christians in the Holy Land. The Crusades were over.

As Europe readied itself to welcome in the fourteenth century, it still did not come close to resembling the Europe we know today. Indeed, the first stirrings of the modern European nation states would not begin
until late in the coming century and Europe was still made up of countless lordships and small, local power bases.

France, for instance, was controlled by a number of parties. A large part of the country, stretching from Brittany to Aquitaine, came under the power of the English throne because, since William the Conqueror, the Dukes of Normandy had been vassals of the English king. The land to
the east of the Rhône, known as Burgundy, was part of the Holy Roman Empire and therefore in German hands. Meanwhile, to the south, Provence was governed by the counts of Catalonia and Barcelona, also kings of the Iberian state of Aragon.

The thirteenth century brought some important changes to the geopolitical make-up of the continent. The French King Philip Augustus (ruled 1182–1223) regained
sovereignty over Brittany, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine and reclaimed authority over the counties of Champagne and Flanders when, at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, his army decisively defeated an alliance orchestrated by England’s King John (ruled 1199–1216) and consisting of John, Otto IV of Germany (ruled 1198–1215) and Count Ferrand of Flanders (1188–1233). Not only did John lose all the English
fiefs in France, he had to go home to face his rebellious barons. He was forced to sign the
Magna Carta
, a cornerstone of British common law and one of the most historically significant documents of all time.

The Iberian Peninsula was a mosaic of kingdoms, Portugal having gained independence in 1139. The southern part of the peninsula had been occupied by the Muslims – or Moors – since 711 and
was known to them as Al-Andalus. In 1212, a major turning point in the peninsula’s history occurred when a Christian coalition consisting of King Alfonso VIII of Castile (ruled 1158–1214), Sancho VII of Navarre (ruled 1194–1234), Pedro II of Aragon (ruled 1196–1213) and Afonso II of Portugal (ruled 1212–23) defeated the Muslim Almohad army at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. It was a victory that
hastened the decline of Moorish influence in the Iberian Peninsula and provided encouragement for the centuries-long
Reconquista
, the reconquest of the lands held by the Moors. Eventually, it would lead to the expulsion of the last Moors in 1492, when Queen Isabella of Castile (ruled 1474–1504) and her husband, King Ferdinand II of Aragon (ruled 1479–1516) began the centralisation of royal power
and, hence, the process of unifying Spain. For its part, in 1252, Portugal became the first country to establish its present-day borders when King Afonso III (ruled 1248–79) drove the Moors out of the Algarve.

It is often the case that the terms used to name art movements are insulting, rather than descriptive. So it was with Gothic art, reputedly named thus by the artist Raphael who
had a profound loathing for the style. Raphael, of course, as a great Renaissance painter, was a committed classicist and saw the Gothic style as the work of descendants of the Goths, barbarians who had destroyed his beloved Roman civilisation. It was not until the nineteenth century that there was a reappraisal of Gothic art and the term became respectable and, although inaccurate, purely descriptive.

The progenitor of the Gothic style was a patron rather than an artist. Abbot Suger (c.1081–1151) was a French abbot-statesman – one of the last of this hybrid – as well as a great historian and confidant of the French kings, Louis VI (ruled 1108–37) and Louis VII (ruled 1137–80). In 1122, he became the abbot of the Parisian church of St Denis. For Suger, the new style was
lux continua
(‘unbroken
light’), seen to some extent already at Monte Cassino in Italy and in the glorious windows of Canterbury Cathedral. He began applying the principles in evidence in these buildings to the old church of St Denis, which had been consecrated in 775 by none other than Charlemagne himself. The work took from 1135 until 1144 and was carried out by artisans from the Low Countries and craftsmen from Italy,
specially imported for the task at great expense. The transformation was incredible. On the western side, a new monumental façade was introduced, highlighted by beautifully sculpted doors made of bronze. Rich mosaics added colour to the interior and high, ribbed vaulting drew the eye heavenwards. Most striking of all were the 14 tall stained glass windows, splashing coloured light into the church’s
interior, recounting the holy story in vibrant imagery and highlighting the magnificent, bejewelled altar.

Until then, the Romanesque style of architecture (known in England as ‘Norman’) had prevailed, an imitation of Roman architecture with rounded arches. The pointed arch of the Gothic style, however, had many advantages over the rounded version. Different widths could be spanned much more
easily and flying buttresses could be used to support the walls, enabling architects to create walls of inspirational glass, with a rose window as the main highlight. The Gothic style soon spread from its Parisian birthplace and worshippers across Christendom were being offered pictures of Biblical events. In painting and sculpture, the Gothic style first appeared around 50 years after the completion
of St Denis. Increasingly applied to arches, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts, it was characterised by a more naturalistic approach to imagery and was representative of a more prosperous and ordered society than had existed several hundred years previously. In the fourteenth century, it took on a much more refined and delicate aspect, seen by some as mannered, and evolving into the style
known as International Gothic. This, in turn, would lead to the dazzling achievements of the Renaissance.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a combination of factors led to a series of revolts and general unrest in Europe. People had become tired of the systemic corruption that existed amongst the ruling classes and in the Church. Added to this were the problems
created by the rush of people from the countryside to the towns and cities where they believed there were richer pickings and a way of life that was less demanding than living off the land. However, rents were high and getting higher, as were prices, and the labour market was heavily over-subscribed. Those who were fortunate enough to find work were dismayed to find that the cost of living was
far outstripping wages. Furthermore, taxes rose on a royal whim.

In the countryside, it was, if anything, even worse and many peasants were forced to become beggars. Lawlessness was rife. The gap between rich and poor was growing dangerously wide, creating a tension that was ready to erupt at any moment in violent revolt. In northern France it led to the uprising known as the ‘Jacquerie’, after
the habit of nicknaming any French peasant ‘Jacques’ from the padded surplices known as
jacques
which they tended to wear. In 1356, the French king, John II the Good, was captured by the English at the Battle of Poitiers. In his absence, the government of France was taken over by the States General, King Charles II the Bad of Navarre (ruled 1349–87) and John’s son, the Dauphin. They were dangerously
divided, however, and disputes led to serious disunity. The nobles, merchants and clergy, fearful for their lands, wealth and rights, began to charge the peasants ever-increasing taxes, creating dissatisfaction and anger, especially since many of the peasants believed that the defeat at Poitiers had been partly due to the corruption of the nobles. The problems were exacerbated by grain shortages
and the ever-present threat of a famine such as the Great Famine that had decimated Europe from 1315 to 1317.

Rebellion finally erupted in 1358 in a series of horrifically violent and bloody revolts. A contemporary account –
The Chronicles of Jean le Bel
– describes the full horror of the events of that year:

[The peasants] killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife
and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by a miserable death.

There was little organisation, however, and the revolts were soon brought to an end when the leader, Guillaume Cale (?-1358), was captured and decapitated.

In spite of the failure and loss of life in the
Jacquerie revolts, similar expressions of public disgust occurred in other places. Rebellious peasants rose up in the cities of Béziers, Rouen and Montpellier and, between 1381 and 1384, the group known as the Tuchins, armed gangs of peasants and craftsmen, revolted against tax levies and the presence of mercenaries who robbed and killed at will without any interference from those in charge. In
Florence, workers seized the government of the city; in Flanders there were uprisings; Catalonia experienced a revolt against the nobility; and in England, in 1381, Wat Tyler (1341–81) famously led a march by discontented peasants on London which ended in his death and the deaths of his associates.

Hundreds of years of misdeeds by the clergy also placed the Church in the firing line during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some people, wishing to return to a purer form of religion, called for church reform, debating the status of the clergy and the right of the people to preach the gospel. The Waldensians were an example of this type of heresy, believing in apostolic poverty as the way to salvation. Pope Lucius III had declared them heretics in 1184 and they were persecuted for
several centuries to come.

Others had begun to develop alternative systems of worship but, in 1199, these heresies had been declared by Pope Innocent III to be treason against God. The principal targets of his anger were the Cathars, or Albigensians, a religious sect in the Languedoc in southwestern France. The Cathars were spiritual descendants of the Gnostic Manichaeans who emerged in Persia
in the third century and who believed that good and evil were two divine principles. They practised vegetarianism, believed in the equality of men and women and supported a caste of
perfecti
– the spiritual elite and true core of the movement. The murder of a papal legate returning from the Languedoc gave Innocent the excuse for which he had been looking. He called for a Crusade against the Cathars
on the same terms as were promised in the Crusades against Islam – remission of sins and unrestricted looting.

The bloody Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 and lasted for 20 years. It seems not to have mattered whether people were Cathars or not. When the Cistercian abbot-commander, Arnaud-Amaury, was asked how the troops would be able to tell the difference between Catholic and Cathar,
he is said to have replied chillingly, ‘Kill them all; the Lord will recognise his own.’ When the city of Béziers was attacked in 1209, 20,000 Cathars were massacred. The Church was ruthless in its treatment of these dissidents but they did have the lasting effect of forcing it to adjust to the rapid changes that were taking place in society.

The Middle Ages drew to a close with
the resounding crescendo of the Black Death, one of the deadliest pandemics in history. It killed an estimated 50 million Europeans, between 30 and 50 per cent of the population of the continent. Having arrived in Europe in the 1340s, it returned in 1360, 1369 and 1374. It would not really go away until the 1700s, returning with wearying regularity and with varying degrees of virulence every generation.

There are several theories as to the origins of bubonic plague, but it is widely believed that it is carried in the stomachs of fleas that infest rats. It probably first appeared in China and was brought to Europe by Genoese sailors who arrived at the port of Messina on 13 October 1347. Once in Italy, it quickly spread in a northwesterly direction, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England
by the middle of 1348. Between 1348 and 1350, it ravaged Germany and Scandinavia, eventually arriving in northwestern Russia in 1351.

There are also numerous theories for its cause. One such theory claims that it appeared because the continent had, quite simply, become overpopulated; the new developments in agriculture meant that people were living longer. The English philosopher, Thomas Malthus,
writing at the end of the eighteenth century, put forward the theory that human beings could reproduce too quickly and their numbers could outgrow the food supply. The population had, indeed, risen in the previous two centuries, from 50 million in 1315 to 73 million in 1350, in spite of famine and other epidemics such as smallpox and influenza. Whatever the cause, the social upheaval was immense
and the impact on society was immeasurable.