Having thus given a somewhat minute and detailed account of the first crusade, we need do little more than give the dates, with a few particulars, of the following seven. The same unreasonable, and unscriptural, but exciting causes, and the same disastrous results, are apparent in each of the expeditions. They have been styled as so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.
The immediate descendants of the first Crusaders are described as giving way to a life of Syrian ease and luxury, and so becoming utterly depraved and effeminate. But, on the other hand, the Mahometans, having recovered from their sudden terror and consternation, collected large forces, and harassed the Christians with perpetual wars. In 1144 Zenghis, prince of Mosul, made himself master of Edessa. The inhabitants were slaughtered, the city plundered, and utterly destroyed. The exultation of the Mahometans was boundless; they threatened Antioch, and the courage of the Christians began to sink. With tears they now implored the help of the christian kings and the armies of Europe. The enemies of the cross are advancing, they cried; thousands of Christians have been massacred, and not one will be left alive in the Holy Land unless help come speedily.
The Roman Pontiff, Eugene III., favored these petitions, and resolved to stir up a new crusade. The kings, princes, and people of Europe were summoned by the pope's letters to the holy war; but the preaching of the crusade over these countries he wisely delegated to the celebrated St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux. He was a man of immense influence, of saintly character, and of great reputation for working miracles. In the most glowing eloquence he pictured the sufferings of the Eastern Christians, the profanation of the holy places by the infidels, and the certain success of the armies of the Lord. Louis VII. of France, his queen, and a vast number of his nobles, took the vow, and devoted themselves to the holy war. Conrad III., Emperor of Germany, after resisting for a time the appeals of St. Bernard, at length declared himself ready to obey the call to God's service. Many of the chiefs of Germany followed the Emperor's example in taking up the cross—as the phrase then was—but it was a cross without either truth or grace, the fearful delusion of Satan, and the wicked prostitution of that sacred symbol to the blinding and ruin of millions.
No sooner had these monarchs taken the vow than preparations for the expedition were urged on. Troops and supplies of every kind were collected; and in 1147 their mighty armies, composed chiefly of French, Germans, and Italians, and numbering over nine hundred thousand, moved forward in two columns towards Palestine. Proceeding, as they thought, and as Bernard had assured them, under the sanction of heaven, they expected the final blow would now be given to the power of the Mahometans, that the kingdom of Jerusalem would be firmly established, and that peace would be secured to the Latin Christians. In some respects the second crusade differed from the first. That was the result of popular enthusiasm; this was a great European movement, headed by two sovereigns, followed by their nobles, and supported by the wealth and influence of nations; but they were equally unsuccessful with the army of Peter the Hermit. They were cruelly betrayed by the treacherous Greeks, who were more afraid of the Crusaders than they were of the Mahometans. The approach of a hundred and forty thousand heavy-armed knights, with their immediate attendants, in the field, besides the light-armed troops, infantry, priests and monks, women and children—in all numbering nearly a million—so alarmed the effeminate Greeks, that the Emperor sent envoys, requiring them to swear that they had no design against the empire. But their terror took the form of hostility, and, as the Crusaders entered the imperial territory, difficulties thickened on every side.
The history of the second crusade in the Holy Land is more pitiful, shameful, and disastrous than the first. In 1149 Conrad and Louis led back to Europe the few soldiers that survived. What had become of all the rest? Their bones were whitening all the roads and deserts over which they had passed. A million had perished in less than two years. Loud murmurs were heard against Bernard, as the priest by whose preaching, prophecies, and miracles, it had been chiefly promoted. But the crafty abbot convinced the people that he had been quite right in all he said, and that the failure of the expedition was a fit chastisement for the sins of the Crusaders. Thus we see that the only effect of the second crusade was to drain Europe of a great portion of its wealth, and of the flower of its armies, without bettering the condition of Christians in the East.