Japan.1

From the reign of Ojin (270-310, p. 33) to the close of the sixth century, the history of Japan is a record of quiet progress in civilization, under the influence of continental intercourse and of increasing wealth. Throughout this period, as before, the Mikados were actual sovereigns and personal commanders. The close of this epoch saw the introduction of Buddhism into Japan and its rapid spread (p. 33). The seventh century is of surpassing interest in the history of Japan, for then it was that causes long working in silence and unseen resulted in changes subversive of the entire social and political life of the Japanese, — changes which led to the withdrawal of the Mikado from personal intercourse with his subjects behind a veil of formal etiquette and heightened reverence, and to the predominance of the military over the civil power, until the actual government of the country passed from its legal sovereign, the Mikado, into the hands of an usurping military chieftain, thus creating a long-enduring, much misunderstood system of dual government, changes whose final outcome was a feudal system corresponding to that known to medieval Europe, which, with its legitimate offspring, oppression, weakness, anarchy, lasted until 1868.

These changes were the following: I. The growth of a numerous court nobility of imperial, and hence of divine, descent. II. The creation of numerous offices of state which became the property of the court nobility. III. The division of the male population into an agricultural and a military class. IV. The separation of state offices into two sections, the civil and the military, and the continuance of each in the hands of one group of noble families.

I. The kuge, or court nobility, owed their numbers to the practice of polygamy, which the necessity of providing against the extinction of a divine dynastic line imposed on the Mikados. They comprise at present one hundred and fifty-five families, which form among themselves larger groups, or clans. Such clans are: the Fujiwara, the most famous of all the kuge; the Sugawara; the Taira (Heike in Chinese characters); the Minamoto (Genji in Chinese characters).

II. In 603 the requirements of a more extensive empire caused the establishment of eight great administrative departments, and of a host of smaller offices, which were filled by members of the kugé, and gradually became vested in certain families.

III. The demand of the growing empire for increased military efficiency led to the division of the whole male population into two classes: 1. the class of agricultural laborers, comprising all who were unfit for military service; they were relegated to a life of unbroken toil, and were burdened with the annual payment of a quantity of rice sufficient for the support of the 2. military class, the Samurai, which included all the bravest and most intellectual men in Japan. Relieved from the necessity of working by the tax received from the first class, and not overburdened with military duties, these 1 Griffis, The Mikado's Empire. Reed, Japan. Adams, History of Japan.

men were free to devote themselves to the pursuit of literature and learning, forming the best element in the nation.

IV. The Fujiwara, increasing in power, gradually absorbed all civil offices, while the military offices were filled from the two families of Taira and Minamoto, better known as Hei and Gen. Thus did the Fujiwara become enervated by the luxury of palace life; thus did the Mikado, while his office gained in respect and reverence by its environment of titled officials, lose all real power, and sink to a mere puppet in the hands of intriguing nobles, to be installed and deposed at will; thus did both emperor and court constantly lose ground before the growing influence of those energetic families to whom were given the active duties of military command. The generals, or Shoguns, became the "Mayors of the Palace" of Japan. So originated the dual government, which was not, as foreigners long thought, a constitutional institution, whereby the civil and military functions of government were vested in the Shogun or temporal emperor (Tycoon), and the religious functions in the Mikado or spiritual emperor, but an unconstitutional innovation, wherein a subordinate officer had usurped that authority which belonged of right to the only emperor, the Mikado, and whose position that emperor had never recognized.

The natural result of this state of affairs was the evolution of military feudalism, whose rise is considered in the next period.

794. The capital of the empire, the home of the Mikado and the kugé, permanently fixed at Kioto, near Lake Biwa.

1156.

Outbreak of war between the families of Gen and Hei (Minamoto and Taira), which had previously shared the military offices in peace.

THIRD PERIOD.

EPOCH OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1270).

§ 1. CRUSADES.

Cause: The pilgrimages of the Christians to the Holy Sepulchre, where St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, had built a vault for the Sepulchre and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were interrupted after the Fatimites, and yet more after the Seljuks came to power; ill-treatment of the pilgrims.

The hermit Peter of Amiens demanded of the Pope Urban II. (1088-1099) assistance in freeing the holy places, and preached the Crusade in Italy (?) and France. Councils of the church at Piacenza and Clermont in Auvergne (1095). Address by the Pope; universal enthusiasm. (It is the will of God !)

The undisciplined bands led by Peter, by the French knight Walter of Pacy, and his nephew Walter Senzaveir (the Penniless), and others, were for the most part, annihilated in Hungary and Bulgaria.

1 V. Sybel Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzugs, 1841, has shown on conclusive grounds that the idea of the Crusades originated principally with Pope Urban 11. It has recently been made doubtful whether Peter of Amiens had been in the Holy Land at all before the first Crusade.

1096-1099. First Crusade. Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Leaders of the first Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of lower Lotharingia; his brothers, Baldwin and Eustach; Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror; Robert of Flanders; Stephen of Blois; Raymond IV., count of Toulouse; Hugo of Vermandois, brother of Philip I., king of France; Bohemond of Tarentum, son of Robert Guisgard; his nephew Tancred. They led 200,000 or 300,000 warriors to the East. Bishop Adhemar of Puy, who was the first to take the Cross at Clermont, went with the expedition as papal legate (died 1098). No king took part personally in this Crusade.

The princes went to Constantinople, where all except Raymond did feudal homage to the emperor, Alexius Comnenus. Attack upon the territory of Kilij Arslan, Sultan of Iconium (or Roum). 1097. Nicca surrendered to the Grecian emperor after a siege of June. several weeks' duration. Victory of the Crusaders at DoryJuly 1. læum over the Sultan Kilij Arslan. Baldwin, separated from the main army, crossed the Euphrates, and conquered a principality for himself in Edessa.

1097-1098. The main army besieged Antiochia on the Orontes for

nine months in vain, but finally the city was betrayed to Bohemund of Tarentum by the Armenian renegade, Firuz 1098. (Pyrrhus). Kerboga, the powerful Emir of Mossul, besieged the Crusaders, exhausted through sickness and want, in Antioch, with an immense army. Victorious sally of the Christians (the holy lance !); the Seljuk army defeated and scattered. Long rest of the Crusaders in Antioch and quarrels among them.

1099. Expedition along the coast toward Jerusalem. Unsuccessful siege of the fortress of Arcas. In May they advanced beyond Cæsarea. On the 6th of June the Crusaders, now numbering but 21,500 effective men, beheld the Holy City, which the Fatimites had reconquered from the Seljuks in 1098. After a five weeks' siege, 1099. Storm of Jerusalem.

July 15. Terrible massacre; pilgrimage to the Church of the Resurrection.

Establishment of a feudal kingdom of Jerusalem, chiefly French, with vassal counties: Edessa, Antiochia, and afterwards Tripolis (Assises du royaume de Jérusalem). Three chief officers: Senechal, Connétable, Marshall. Two patriarchs, at Jerusalem and at Antiochia.

Godfrey of Bouillon, Protector of the Holy Sepulchre, defeated the Sultan of Egypt at Ascalon or Gaza. Godfrey died 1100. His brother, Baldwin I., king of Jerusalem. Acre, Trioplis, Berytus (Beirut), Sidon, conquered with the aid of Pisa and Genoa. Baldwin I. (died 1118) was succeeded by Baldwin II. (died 1131), Fueco of Anjou (died 1143), under whom the kingdom of Jerusalem reached its greatest extent, Baldwin III. (died 1162), Amalric (died 1173), Baldwin IV. (died 1185), Baldwin V. (not of age, died 1186), Veit (Guy) of Lusignan.

1147-1149. Second Crusade.

Without result.

Cause: Conquest of Edessa by Emadeddin ('Imad-ed-Deen) Zenki, Emir of Mossul (1144). Second conquest and destruction of the city by his son Noureddin (Noor-ed-Deen) (1146). Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, preached the Crusade.

Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France started for Palestine; the former from Regensburg (Ratisbon), the latter from Metz, somewhat later. Both armies passed through Hungary to Asia Minor, the German army, being far in advance, entered Phrygia, where it was almost annihilated by want and by the opposition of the Sultan of Iconium, but few regaining Nicæa. With this scanty following Conrad joined the expedition of the French army along the coast, but returned from Ephesus to Constantinople, on account of ill health. Louis and the French nobility took ship from Pamphylia for Antiochia. The common soldiery continued by land to Cilicia, and were completely annihilated by hunger and the enemy. Conrad went from Constantinople to the Holy Land by sea (1148), and in conjunction with the French made an unsuccessful attack on Da

mascus.

1189-1192. Third Crusade. Conquest of Acre (St. Jean d'Acre), or Ptolemais.

Cause Capture of Veit (Guy) of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, at Tiberias on the sea of Genezareth. Conquest of Acre and Jerusalem by Saladin (Salah-ed-Deen) (1187), the founder of the dynasty of the Ayoubites in Egypt. He treated the Christians magnanimously.

The emperor Frederic I., who in his youth had taken part in the second Crusade, undertook in his old age an expedition from Regensburg (Ratisbon) in the spring of 1189, passed through Hungary, spent the winter in Adrianople, crossed (1190) to Asia Minor, conquered Iconium, and went to Cilicia, where he was drowned in the Calycadnus (Seleph). His son, Frederic of Swabia, led a part of the pilgrims, many having turned back, by way of Tarsus, Antiochia, and Tyrus to Accon (Ptolemais, St. Jean d'Acre). He died (1191) during the siege of this city, which was conducted by the king Guy of Lusignan, who had gained his freedom.

Richard the Lion-Hearted (Cœur-de-Lion), king of England, but French in nationality and language, and Philip II., Augustus (French Auguste, a title of respect which was given him later), king of France, went by sea to the Holy Land (1190), Richard from Mar

seilles, Philip from Genoa; participation of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. After a long stay in Sicily and many quarrels the two kings reached Acre, which Lusignan had already besieged for nearly two years. The city was now soon forced to surrender (July, 1191).

Philip having quarrelled with Richard, returned to France (1191). Heroic deeds (and cruelty) of Richard, who, however, was twice obliged to turn back from before Jerusalem. Armistice with Saladin. The strip of coast from Joppa to Acre given to the Christians; pilgrimages to the holy places permitted. Richard gave Cyprus, which

to

he had conquered in 1191, as a fief to Veit (Guy) of Lusignan (autumn of 1192), who transferred his title of " King of Jerusalem Henry of Champagne.

Richard on his return suffered a shipwreck at Aquileia, was recognized in Vienna, detained by Leopold, duke of Austria, at the command of the emperor Henry VI., kept a prisoner by the emperor thirteen months in Trifels (near Annweiler in the county Palatine) and in Worms, and released only upon payment of a ransom and rendering homage.1

1202-1204. Fourth Crusade. Latin empire (1204-1261).

At the instance of Pope Innocent III. (preaching by Fulco of Neuilly) a Crusade directed originally against Egypt was undertaken by powerful French barons, assisted by Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. The Crusaders undertook the siege of Zara in Dalmatia, which the king of Hungary had seized, for the Venetians (Doge Henry Dandolo), partly in payment for transport. At the urgent request of Alexius, son of the Eastern emperor Isaac Angelus, who had been dethroned by his brother, a request strongly supported by Philip of Swabia, the Crusaders went to Constantinople with the Venetian fleet of 480 sail, captured the city, and replaced Alexius and his father on the throne (1203). The emperor was unable to fulfill his compact with the Crusaders. (Union of the Greek Church with that of Rome; large payments in money.) Contention, during which the city caught fire. Revolt of the Greek populace. (Isaac died.) After the murder of Alexius by the Greeks, second capture of the city, pillage, new conflagration, which consumed many works of ancient literature.

Establishment of the Latin empire (Baldwin, emperor); many coast districts and islands fell to the Venetians; the marquis of Montferrat became king of Thessalonica; French dukes in Athens, Achaia, Villehardouin, historian of the expedition.

etc.

Establishment of a Greek empire at Nicea by Theodore Lascaris, and a second, the empire of Trebizond on the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, by a descendant of the Commenes. Michael Palæologus, of the Nicæan empire, put an end to the Latin empire in 1261.

1212. The children's Crusade. Thousands of German and French boys started for the Holy Land. Many died on the way, many were sold into slavery.

1217. Crusade of Andrew ÏI., king of Hungary, without result. 1218-1221. Unsuccessful attack upon Egypt under John of Brienne, "king of Jerusalem."

1228-1229. Fifth Crusade.

short time.

Jerusalem regained for a

Frederic II., emperor of the West, who was under the papal ban

1 It is probable that the story of the Austrian banner having been trodden in the filth at Acre by Richard's command is not a fable (cf. Troche, Kaiser Heinrich, VI. pp. 256, 558), but the imprisonment of Richard had doubtless higher political motives, and is sufficiently explained by the alliance of Richard with the Welfic party in Germany, see p. 223.