Part 16

William divided England up among his nobles as if it were a pie, and gave each a share in the feudal way. They had to do homage to him as his vassals and promise to fight for him and to do as he said. Each of William’s nobles built a castle on the property he was given. William himself built a castle in London by the Thames River. On the same spot Julius Cæsar had built a fort, but it had disappeared; and Alfred the Great had built a castle there, but it, too, had disappeared. But the castle William built is still standing to-day. It is known as the Tower of London.

William was a splendid boss and very businesslike. He set to work and had a list made of all the land in England, a list of all the people and of all the property they had. This record was called the Domesday Book and was something like the _census_ now taken in this country every ten years. This list gave the name of every one in England and everything each owned, even down to the last cow and pig. If your ancestors were living in England then you can look in the Domesday Book and find their names, how much land they owned, and how many cows and pigs they had.

In order that no mischief might take place at night, William started what was called the _curfew_. Every evening at a certain hour a bell was rung. Then all lights had to be put out, and every one had to go indoors--supposedly to bed.

One thing, however, that William did made the English very angry. He was extremely fond of hunting, but there was no good place where he could hunt near London. So in order to have a place for hunting, he destroyed a large number of village houses and farms and turned that part of the country into a forest. This was called the New Forest, and though it is now nearly nine hundred years _old_ it is still called New to this day.

But on the whole, William, although descended from a pirate, gave England a good government and made it a much safer and better place in which to live than it ever had been under its former rulers. So 1066 was almost like the Year 1 for the English.

We think it is remarkable when children of low-bred immigrants become society leaders, when, as we say, they rise from overalls to dress-suits, but here we have the son’s son of a pirate rising to be king of England, and those living now who find they are descended from him brag of it!

[Illustration]

51

A Great Adventure

Have you ever played the game called “Going to Jerusalem” in which every one scrambles to get a seat when the music stops playing?

Well, all during the Dark Ages “Going to Jerusalem” was not a game but a real journey which Christians everywhere in Europe wanted to take and did take if they could. They wanted to see the actual spot where Christ had been crucified, to pray at the Holy Sepulcher, and to bring back a palm-leaf as a souvenir, which they could show their friends, hang on the wall, and talk about all the rest of their lives.

So there were always some good Christians--and also some bad ones--“going to Jerusalem.” Sometimes they went all by themselves, but more often they went with others. As of course there were no such things as trains in those days, poor people had to walk nearly the whole way from France and from England, from Spain and from Germany, and so it took them many months and sometimes years to reach Jerusalem. These travelers were called _pilgrims_, and their trip was called a _pilgrimage_.

Jerusalem at that time belonged to the Turks, who were Mohammedans. The Turks did not like these Christian pilgrims who came to see Christ’s tomb, and they didn’t treat them very well. Indeed, some of the pilgrims on their return told frightful stories of the way they had been treated by the Turks and the way the holy places in Jerusalem were also treated.

Just before the Year 1100 there was a pope at Rome named Urban. He was the head of all the Christians in the world. Urban heard these tales that the pilgrims told, and he was shocked. He thought it was a terrible thing, anyway, for the Holy City, as Jerusalem was called, and the Holy Land, where Jerusalem was located, to be ruled over by Mohammedans instead of by Christians. So Urban made a speech and urged all good Christians everywhere to get together and go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with the idea of fighting the Turks and taking the city of Jerusalem away from them.

Now, there lived at that same time a monk whom people called Peter the Hermit. A hermit is a man who goes off and lives entirely by himself, usually in a cave or hut where no one can find him or go to see him, where he can spend all day in prayer. Peter the Hermit thought such a life was good for his soul, that it made him a better man to be hungry and cold and uncomfortable.

Peter the Hermit had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was very angry at what he saw there. So he, too, began to tell people everywhere he went how disgraceful it was for them to allow Christ’s tomb to belong to the Mohammedans and called on every one to start on a pilgrimage with him to save Jerusalem. He talked to people in the churches, on the street-corners, in the market-places, on the roadside. He was such a wonderful orator that those who heard him wept at his descriptions and begged to go with him.

Before long, thousands upon thousands of people, old and young, men and women, and even some children had pledged themselves to join a band to go to Jerusalem and take it away from the Mohammedans. As Christ had died on the cross, they cut pieces of red cloth in the form of a cross and sewed them on the fronts of their coats as a sign that they were soldiers of the cross. So these pilgrims were called _Crusaders_, which is the Latin word for a cross-bearer. As they knew they would be gone a long time and perhaps never return, they sold all they had and left their homes. Not only poor people but lords and nobles and even princes joined the army of the Crusaders, and there were, besides the crowds on foot, large companies of those who rode on horseback.

The plan was to start in the summer of 1096, four years before 1100, but a great many were so anxious to get started that they didn’t wait for the time that had been set. With Peter the Hermit and another pious man named Walter the Penniless as their leaders, they started off before things were really ready.

They had no idea how very far off Jerusalem was. They hadn’t studied geography nor maps. They had no idea how long it would take, no idea how they would get food to eat on their journey, no idea where they would sleep. They simply trusted in Peter the Hermit and believed that the Lord would provide everything and show them the way.

Onward they marched, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” thousands upon thousands, toward the east and far-off Jerusalem. Thousands upon thousands of them died from disease and from hunger on the way. Every time they came within sight of another city, they would ask, “Is this Jerusalem?” so little did they know of the long distance that still lay between them and that city.

When the Mohammedan army in Jerusalem heard that the Crusaders were coming they went forth to meet the Christians and killed almost all of those who had started out with Peter ahead of the rest. But those Crusaders that had started out later, as had been planned at the beginning, marched on.

Finally, after nearly four years, only a small band of that vast throng that had set out so long before reached the walls of the Holy City. When at last they saw Jerusalem before them, they were wild with joy. They fell on their knees and wept and prayed and sang hymns and thanked God that he had brought them to the end of their journey. Then they furiously attacked the city. The Christians fought so terribly that at last they beat the Mohammedans and captured Jerusalem. Then they entered the gates and killed thousands, so that it is said the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. This seems strange behavior for the followers of Christ, who preached against fighting and commanded, “Put up thy sword, for he that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.”

The Crusaders then made one of their leaders named Godfrey ruler of the city. Most of the other Crusaders that were left then went back home. So ended what is known as the First Crusade.

52

Tit-Tat-To; Three Kings in a Row

Here are three kings: Richard of England, Philip of France, and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany.

If you say their names over several times, they keep ringing through your mind and you cannot seem to stop thinking them whether you want to or not.

Jerusalem was captured. But it did not stay captured very long.

The Mohammedans attacked and won it back again.

So the Christians started a Second Crusade. Then about once in a lifetime during the next two hundred years there was one Crusade after another--eight or nine in all. Sometimes these later Crusades won back Jerusalem for a while, but for a while only. Sometimes they did not succeed at all.

The Third Crusade took place about a hundred years after the First; that is, nearly 1200 A. D. These three kings--Richard of England, Philip of France, and Frederick Barbarossa--started on the Third Crusade. But they didn’t all finish. I will tell you about them in three-two-one order.

[Illustration: Richard of England, Philip of France, and Frederick Barbarossa]

Frederick’s name, Barbarossa, meant Red Beard, for in those days it was the custom to give kings nicknames that described them. Frederick’s capital was in Aix-la-Chapelle, as Charlemagne’s had been, but Frederick was king only of Germany. When a young man he had tried to make his country as large and powerful as the new Roman Empire that Charlemagne had made. But he was not a great enough man, and so was unable to do what Charlemagne had done. Frederick was quite old when he started out on the Third Crusade with the other two kings. But he never reached Jerusalem, for in crossing a stream on the way he was drowned. So much for Frederick, the third king.

The second king, Philip of France, was jealous of the first king, Richard, because Richard was so very popular and well liked by the Crusaders. So Philip finally gave up the Crusade and went back to France.

Richard of England was then the only king left on the Crusade. It would have been better if he, too, had gone back to his country instead of gallivanting off on a Crusade. But he thought going on a Crusade was much better sport than staying at home and working over the difficult business of governing his people.

But although he had his faults, Richard was the kind of a man that all men like and all women love. He was kind and gentle, yet strong and brave. Richard the Lion-Hearted they called him. He was hard on wrongdoers but fair and square. So people loved him, but they feared him, too, for he punished the wicked and those who misbehaved. Even long, long after he had died, mothers would try to quiet a naughty and crying child by saying: “Hush! If you don’t be good, King Richard will get you!”

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Even Richard’s enemies admired him. The Mohammedan king of Jerusalem at the time of this Third Crusade was named Saladin. Saladin, though being attacked by Richard, admired him very much and even became his friend. And so Saladin, instead of fighting Richard, finally made a friendly agreement with him to treat the Holy Sepulcher and the pilgrims properly. As this arrangement was satisfactory to every one, Richard left Jerusalem to Saladin and started back home.

On his way home Richard was captured by one of his enemies and put in prison and held for a large ransom from England. Richard’s friends did not know where he was and did not know how to find him.

Now, it so happened that Richard had a favorite minstrel named Blondel. Blondel had composed a song of which Richard was very fond. So when Richard was taken prisoner, Blondel wandered over the country singing everywhere this favorite song in the hope that Richard might hear it and reveal where he was. One day he happened to sing beneath the very tower where Richard was imprisoned. Richard heard him and answered by singing the refrain of the song. His friends then knew where he was, the ransom was paid, and Richard was allowed to go free.

When, at last, Richard did reach England, he still had adventures. This was the time when Robin Hood was robbing travelers. Richard planned to have himself taken prisoner by Robin Hood, so that he might capture him and bring him to justice. So Richard disguised himself as a monk and was captured as he had planned. But he found Robin Hood such a good fellow after all that he forgave him and his men.

Richard’s coat of arms was a design of three lions, one above the other; and this same design of three lions now forms part of the shield of England.

After Richard’s Crusade there was a Fourth Crusade, and then in the year 1212--which is an easy date to remember, because it is simply the number 12 repeated--one, two, one, two--there was a crusade of children only. This was known therefore as the Children’s Crusade. It was led by a French boy about twelve years old named Stephen, who was named after the first Christian martyr.

Children from all over France left their homes and their mothers and fathers--it seems strange to us that their mothers and fathers let them start off on such a trip--and marched south to the Mediterranean Sea. Here they expected the waters of the sea would part and allow them to march on dry land to Jerusalem, as they had read in the Bible the waters of the Red Sea had done to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. But the waters did not part.

Some sailors, however, offered to take the children to Jerusalem in their ships. They said they would do it for nothing, just for the love of the Lord. But it turned out that these sailors were really pirates, and as soon as they got the children on board their ships they steered them straight across the Mediterranean to Africa into the very land of their enemies, the Mohammedans. Here, it is said, the pirates sold the children as slaves. This is not a Grimm’s Fairy-Tale, and the pirates were not trapped by the children, so I cannot make a happy ending, for it was not.

The last or Eighth Crusade was led by a king of France called Louis. He was so pious and so devoted to the Lord that he was made a saint and ever after has been called St. Louis. Yet this Crusade failed, and ever since Jerusalem has been ruled by the Mohammedans until just recently, when, in 1918, it was captured by the English, and this, then, was really the Last Crusade.

Not all the Crusaders were good Christians. Like some people nowadays, a great many were Christian only in name. In fact, though strange to say, quite a number of the Crusaders were nothing but scalawags, looking for excitement and adventure, and they went on a Crusade merely as an excuse to rob and plunder.

The Crusades did not succeed in their object, which was to keep Jerusalem for the Christians. Yet in spite of that, they did a great deal of good. When the Crusades first started, the Crusaders were not nearly as civilized as the people they went to conquer. But travel sometimes teaches people more than books, and it taught the Crusaders. They learned the customs of the other lands through which they went. They learned languages and literature. They learned history and art.

There were then no public schools. Only a very, very few people had any education at all. So the Crusades did what schools might have done. They taught the people of Europe and put an end to the Dark Ages of ignorance.

[Illustration]

53

Bibles Made of Stone and Glass

How often do you go to church?

Probably not more than once a week--on Sundays.

But in the Middle Ages people usually went to church every day and often several times a day. They did not go only when there was a church service. They went to say their prayers by themselves; they went to tell their troubles to the priest, to get advice from him, to burn a candle to the Virgin Mary, or simply to chat with their friends.

All during the Crusades, and immediately after the Crusades, the chief thing that people thought about was their church.

There was only one church in a neighborhood, and every one went to the same church for there were no Baptists, nor Episcopalians, nor Methodists; all were just Christians.

The church was every one’s meeting-house, and so people naturally gave as much money and time and labor as they could to make their church the best that could be built. That is why there were built in France and other parts of Europe at this time many of the finest churches and cathedrals in the world. These churches and cathedrals are still standing, and, because they are so beautiful, people go long distances to see them.

Do you know what a cathedral is? A cathedral is not just a large church. It is the church of a bishop. In the chancel of this church there is a special chair for the bishop. This bishop’s chair is called in Latin a “cathedra,” and so his church is named a cathedral after this chair.

These churches and cathedrals were nothing like the old Greek and Roman temples; they were not like anything that had ever been built before.

If you have ever built a house out of blocks, you probably did it this way: first you stood two blocks upright, and then you laid another block across the top of these for a roof. This is the way the Greeks and Romans built.

But the Christians throughout Europe at that time did not build in this way at all.

When you were building toy-houses, instead of laying a single block across the two standing ones, you may perhaps have tried leaning two blocks together like the sides of a letter A for a roof? If you did, you know what happened: the two leaning blocks pushed over the sides, and _crash_! everything tumbled. Well, these churches were built somewhat in this way, with stones arched across the standing stone columns. But to keep the stone arches from pushing over the standing stone columns the builders put up props or braces. These props or braces were made of stone, too, and these props of stone were called _flying buttresses_.

[Illustration: Flying buttresses--Apse of Notre Dame.]

The people in Italy thought this a crazy way of building. They thought such buildings must be shaky and might easily topple over--like a house of cards. The Goths who had conquered Italy in 476 were wild and ignorant and after that people called anything wild and ignorant “Gothic.” So people called all buildings such as I have just described “Gothic,” although the Goths had nothing to do with the buildings, for they had all died long years before.

Indeed, from my description you, too, may think such buildings propped up by flying buttresses must have been tottering and ugly, but they were neither. They were not rickety, for though occasionally one that was not carefully built did collapse, the largest and best are still standing to-day. And although there were old-fashioned people who thought no building was beautiful that was not built in the Roman or Greek style, we have come to admire the great beauty of these so called Gothic buildings.

But there were other ways in which the Gothic churches were different from the Greek and Roman temples. Before a Gothic church was started, a very large cross was first drawn on the ground with its head towards the east, because that is the direction of Jerusalem. On this cross-shaped plan, the church was built so that if you looked down from above on the finished building, it was shaped like a cross with the altar always toward the east.

Gothic churches had beautiful spires or _arrows_, which have been likened to _fingers pointing to_ _heaven_. The doorways and windows were not square or round at the top, but pointed, like hands placed together in prayer.

Nearly the whole side of a Gothic church was made of glass. These large windows were not, however, plain white glass, but beautiful pictures made of colored glass. Small pieces of different colors were joined together at their edges with lead to make what looked like wonderful paintings. But these pictures were much finer than ordinary paintings, for the light shone through the stained glass and made the colors brilliant as jewels--blue like the clear sky, yellow like sunlight, red like a ruby. These pictures in glass told stories from the Bible. They were like colored illustrations in a book. So the people who could not read, and very few could read, were able to know the Bible stories just by looking at these beautiful illustrations.

Statues of saints and angels and characters in the Bible were carved in the stonework of the church. So the churches were like Bibles of stone and glass.

Besides these holy beings, strange, grotesque beasts were also made in stone--monsters like no animal that has ever been seen in nature. These creatures were usually put on the outside edge or corner of the roof or they were used for waterspouts and called _gargoyles_. They were supposed to scare away evil spirits from the holy place.

No one now knows who were the architects or the builders of these Gothic churches or who were the sculptors or artists. Almost every one did some work on the church, for it was _his_ church. Instead of giving money he gave his time and labor. If he had any skill, he carved stone or made stained glass. If he had no skill he did the work of a common laborer.

[Illustration: Gargoyle.]

Some of these Gothic churches took hundreds of years to build, so that the workmen who started them never lived to see them finished. Some of the most famous cathedrals are Canterbury Cathedral in England, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and Cologne Cathedral in Germany.

Cologne Cathedral took the longest of all to build, as it was not entirely finished until about seven hundred years after it was begun! The beautiful Cathedral of Rheims in France was almost destroyed by the gun-fire of the Germans in the Great War only a few years ago.