Now people associate the Middle Ages with fires, unsanitary conditions and bloody palace intrigues. If the Crusades come to mind, then the average person will only think about religious wars that violate Christian commandments. However, the history of that era and the crusades themselves is rich in various meanings, life experiences, examples of both meanness and courage.
Today we talk about the events that happened 920 years ago, in 1097, when the crusader army besieged the ancient city of Antioch-on-Orontes. The city seemed impregnable, and its eight-month siege almost led to the failure of everything. First Crusade.
Getting to know the East
The First Crusade became a very important cultural phenomenon. The European West, in fact, for the first time became acquainted with the amazing East, where the way of life, social order and culture in general were significantly different from the West. So, despite the selfish goals of most of the leaders of the crusade, there was no limit to the admiration and surprise of its participants.
The walls of Antioch, built over centuries, appeared in all their grandeur before the Crusaders in October 1097. An ancient trading city whose history dates back to approximately the 4th century BC. e. and where the followers of the teachings of Christ began to be called Christians for the first time, was located on the left bank of the Orontes River (on the site of the modern Turkish city of Antakya). During the era of Roman rule, Antioch was the fourth largest city in the empire, and during the Byzantine period - second after Constantinople. From 637 to 968, Antioch was in Muslim hands until Byzantium regained it. However, in 1084 the city again fell to the Muslims.
The height of the fortress walls of Antioch was 25 meters, which almost completely excluded the possibility of using assault ladders. The width of the walls was such that a team of four horses could drive along them. In addition, the walls were guarded by 450 watchtowers, and the mountains against which the walls rested did not allow the city to be completely blocked. However, by the time the Crusades began, Antioch was no longer the same. Wealthy Christian residents left the city because Muslims oppressed the Christian population if they refused to convert to Islam. As a result, Antioch lost its status as a significant trading point. Most of the houses were empty; of the many city gates, only five were operational. These circumstances somewhat simplified the task for the crusaders, but they did not dare to storm, resorting to the good old method - a siege.
Intrigue, hunger, looting
Overall, the Crusader leaders showed themselves to be poor strategists, resting after two years of continuous campaigning and fighting. Provisions were not calculated in case of a long siege, which is why famine soon began, many died, others looted, some did not hesitate to plunder even settlements where Christians lived. Individual noble knights began to leave the crusader army, withdrawing their troops. This affected the combat power of the besiegers. The siege dragged on, partly because the actions of the commanders were uncoordinated; many “pulled the blanket” on themselves, wanting to gain the laurels of the liberator of the ancient city. And this despite the agreement with the Byzantine basileus (emperor) Alexios I Komnenos that Antioch would return to the Byzantine Empire.
A very cold winter came, then the spring of 1098. In May, the crusaders received news that the huge army of Emir Kerboga was moving to help the besieged. The siege would probably have had to be lifted if not for the betrayal. Prince Bohemond of Tarentum (who most wanted to get Antioch into his possession), even before the news of Kerboga's army, managed to come to an agreement with Firuz - either the commander or the gunsmith of the guards of the Antioch tower of the Two Sisters. Firuz, an Armenian, a Christian by birth, who was forced to convert to Islam, was ready to help several crusaders penetrate the tower for a large sum of money so that they would open the gates for their troops. The military council of the crusaders suspected Bohemond's intention to break the oath given to the Byzantine basileus, and refused the proposal of the Tarentine prince under the pretext that it was unworthy of a knight to resort to the tricks and deceit characteristic of women. But soon news of the approach of large enemy forces forced the leaders of the crusaders to launch an assault precisely according to Bohemond’s plan.
Key to Victory
On the night of June 2-3, 1098, the crusaders, brutalized by a tiring siege, hunger and other hardships, burst into the city. A merciless bloody massacre began, in which, in addition to the defenders of Antioch, at least 10 thousand inhabitants died. By the evening of June 3, the entire city was under the control of the crusaders, except for the citadel (it continued to defend itself), located in its southern part. The victory was celebrated with feasts and entertainment.
But the joy was soon overshadowed. Just two days later, Kerboga’s army finally approached the city and besieged it. Now the crusaders found themselves in the same position as the previous masters of Antioch. Only the position of the knightly troops was much less enviable. During the eight months that the inhabitants of Antioch were under siege, they ate almost all the provisions, and the hungry crusaders, in the first days of their rule in the city, finished off the rest. And there was nowhere for them to expect help; moreover, a significant part of the soldiers left the city soon after the successful assault. In addition, it was necessary to constantly repel attacks by the defenders of the citadel, the garrison of which was regularly replenished with reinforcements from Kerboga’s army. The starving crusaders began to eat leather belts, harnesses, tree bark... In the end, exhausted by hunger, they became completely indifferent to their future fate and only remained in constant prayer. It was as if the city had become a huge chapel.
On June 10, a poor monk from Marseille, Pierre Barthelemy, who took part in the crusade, told the army about the vision. The Apostle Andrew himself allegedly appeared to him and told him that the greatest relic, the spear of Longinus, was buried in the Antioch Church of St. Peter. And if the crusaders find him, they will be granted victory.
According to the Gospel, a Roman legionnaire pierced the side of Christ crucified on the cross with his spear to check whether He was dead. Bishop Adhemar, the legate of the Pope, who acted as the spiritual leader of the crusade, had already seen the spear of Longinus in Constantinople, but kept silent about his skeptical attitude towards the monk’s story, seeing the flash of hope in the eyes of the crusader army. In St. Peter's Cathedral, the slabs were raised, the ground was dug up and... A piece of iron was found that resembled a fragment of a spear tip. Happiness knew no bounds! Count Raymond of Toulouse immediately declared divine evidence of the impending victory.
On June 28, ready for battle, having removed their heavy armor from weakness, and practically without cavalry, the crusaders left the city and lined up in 12 detachments, stretching out in battle formation for a distance of one hour north of Antioch. Trumpets sounded, a spear was carried in front of the army, standard bearers opened the procession. Kerboga's army outnumbered them threefold (it is difficult to name the exact number, since the data is contradictory; there were probably about 25 thousand crusaders, about 75 thousand Muslims), they were well-fed and full of strength.
Kerboga decided that he could easily defeat the enemy, striking with all his might. He gave the order to feign a retreat in order to draw the crusader army into a more difficult terrain for battle. His warriors set fire to the grass behind them, and the archers, dispersing across the neighboring hills, showered the enemy with a hail of arrows. But the inspired crusaders could not be stopped. Matthew of Edessa, an Armenian historian and chronicler of the 12th century, wrote: “... the Christian army rushed together towards the foreigners, like fire that sparkles in the sky and burns the mountains.” Many soldiers later recalled that between their ranks they saw St. George the Victorious, St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, and St. Mauritius, galloping on horses.
The battle itself was short when the crusaders finally caught up with Kerboga's troops. It was described by the Arab chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi (c. 1070-1160): “... extremely weakened, they went on the offensive against the troops of Islam, which were very strong and numerous... The advanced cavalry detachments fled, and many militias and volunteers were put to the sword who joined the ranks of fighters for the faith, burning with the desire to protect Muslims.” Human courage had never known anything like this before, and the loot of the crusaders was so enormous that it took several days to move everything to the city.
Probably everyone has heard and read about the Crusades. For most people, this concept is associated with romance, albeit somewhat brutal, with Richard the Lionheart and Pushkin’s poem about the “poor knight.” There was, of course, blood and sacrifices; war is war. This is what most modern people think. However, in the history of the Crusades there are facts that can not only surprise, but also shock anyone.
Fact No. 1. The Crusaders were cannibals!
In 1098, during the siege of the Syrian fortress of Maara, the knights from Europe were very hungry: the siege lasted two months, and was preceded by a difficult march through the desert. When the Muslims finally surrendered - on the condition that the victors would spare the city's inhabitants - the Crusaders entered the city, but did not find the abundance they expected. A monstrous massacre began. And after that - no less monstrous feasts. Chronicler Ralph Cohen wrote: “Some people said that, limited in food, they had to boil adult Muslims in cauldrons and skewer children and roast them.” Another chronicler Fulcher of Chartres reported: “With a shudder I can say that many of our people, pursued by an insane feeling of hunger, cut off pieces of the buttocks from already killed Saracens, fried them on the fire and, without waiting until they were sufficiently fried, devoured them with a slurping sound, as if savages." And finally, Albert of Aachen was surprised that the crusaders did not limit themselves to eating the corpses of Saracens, but “even ate dogs.”
Fact No. 2. There were children among the crusaders.
There were nine crusades in total. The fourth ended in 1204, the fifth began in 1217. But between them there was another, probably the most tragic of all - the children's crusade. It all started with the fact that Jesus Christ allegedly appeared to a certain teenager Stephen from Cloix. He ordered the boy to lead the crusade and liberate the Holy Sepulcher without weapons, but solely by the power of prayer and the purity of young souls. Stefan began to preach and thousands of teenagers and children from all over France and then Germany followed him. According to contemporaries, Stephen's sermon attracted more than 30,000 people. This entire horde not only prayed, but also stole along the way in order to somehow get food. Having somehow reached Marseille, and it must be taken into account that children from Germany had to overcome the Alps with incredible difficulties, the young crusaders were faced with the need to get transport. Finally, two local merchants provided them with 7 ships. The teenagers boarded these galleys, sailed away, and no one has seen them since. Years later, certain monks who were on this campaign appeared in Europe. They said that the ships took the children straight to Algeria, where Muslim slave traders were already waiting for them, with whom merchants from Marseilles entered into a conspiracy.
Fact No. 3. There were women among the crusaders.
Yes, yes, many beautiful ladies, as well as simple townswomen and peasant women, went overseas to participate in the reconquest of Jerusalem, experience adventure and see distant countries. Most of them, of course, also performed female roles during a military campaign. Noble ladies inspired the warriors and healed their wounds, while the rest washed clothes and prepared food. However, among women there were also those who put a cross on themselves and fought side by side with men. The most famous Amazon during the Crusades was Ita of Austria. The beautiful margravine in 1101, as part of a South German knightly army, crossed Asia Minor - during this campaign the crusaders were languishing from hunger and thirst - and was ambushed. In this skirmish near the city of Heraclea, she died. According to one version, the brave beauty did not die, but was captured and sold to a harem in Khorasan. In addition, the Arabs talked about an unusual military detachment that was captured. The Saracens were amazed to find that they were women. Captives were sold into slavery to elderly Muslim women to provide protection from attacks on their chastity.
Fact No. 4. The Crusaders fought against Christians.
Devout Catholics, who dreamed of conquering Jerusalem from the infidels, did not consider the Orthodox to be “correct” Christians, and behaved on the territory of the Byzantine Empire as among Muslims. The Fourth Crusade ended with the sack of Constantinople and the removal of a colossal amount of valuables and relics from there to Europe. The Greek chronicler Nikita Choniates wrote this: “It is not that what amazes us is that they robbed things, but that they threw down the holy icons of Christ and his saints to the ground, trampled them underfoot, and if they found any decoration on them, they tore it off like at random, and the icons themselves were taken out to crossroads to be trampled upon by passers-by or used instead of fuel when cooking food.”
Fact No. 5. There were defectors among the crusaders.
There are cowards and traitors in any war. In the Battle of Khotyn in 1187, which became one of the main disasters of the knightly army during the Third Crusade, six knights from the army of the Count of Tripoli went over to Saladin’s side. As the chronicle reports, they told Saladin about the desperate situation in which the crusader army, tormented by thirst and tired from the long march, was in, and encouraged him to attack as soon as possible. What was the further fate of these people is unknown. It can be assumed that it was not particularly good - Saladin did not favor traitors.
Fact No. 6. The Crusaders fought not only in Asia, but also in Europe.
The First Crusade began, inspired by the words of Pope Urban II, who called for killing not only Muslims, but also everyone who professes a non-Catholic religion. Some of the knights understood these words very differently, and in 1096 the army of German crusaders moved in the opposite direction from Jerusalem - through the Rhine valley to the north. Here they carried out a bloody massacre of Jews in Mainz, Cologne and other German cities. This was the first case of mass persecution of Jews in Europe. But the crusaders were not limited to Jews. In the 13th century, they carried out a number of military operations in the Baltic states, whose population professed ancient pagan cults. Finns, Karelians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Curonians and other tribes became the object of real hunting by the soldiers of Christ. They did not ignore the principalities of northern Rus', considering the Orthodox to be as infidel as pagans, Jews and Muslims. These campaigns in the Baltic states later became known as the Northern Crusades.
Fact No. 7. The Crusaders still exist today.
The knights went on their first crusade inspired by the call “Dieu le veut!” (God wants it that way!). These words became the motto of the Jerusalem Order of the Holy Sepulcher, established in 1099. Unlike many other orders of knighthood, this one still exists today. Its members include representatives of royal families, successful businessmen and scientists. Among the famous people - members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, one can remember the composer Franz Liszt, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and the Hollywood director John Furrow. There are brothers of this knightly order in Russia. In total, there are currently 28,000 members of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher in the world.
This was the outcome... The Crusaders suffered a crushing defeat. Many dying people were left on the battlefield. The mortally wounded crusader lay in the mud. Frantically clinging to the loose and cold earth with my fingers. He did not feel the support of this earth. Lord...help me to continue my mission...to carry your Faith. The warrior coughed hoarsely. Spitting out the blood, he threw his head back helplessly. Suddenly the sun above his head was obscured by a figure. Do you really want to continue Vera's work? The knight whispered with only his lips “Yes..”, a stranger in a monk’s cloak with a hood that completely hid his face carried the warrior into the house. Within a few days, to his surprise, the crusader completely recovered. Although the monk only gave him water to drink and put his hands on him, no tinctures or powders familiar to the warrior. For some reason, the monk didn’t even read prayers, but when he put his hands on, a soothing warmth flowed through the crusader’s body, as if he had been lowered into a warm bath. A feeling of weightlessness and complete peace enveloped him. All worries and doubts left his mind. As soon as the warrior felt in shape, he went out into the street in front of the house and began to practice with his weapon. The monk looked at him silently for a long time, the warrior noticing this tried to show the best of what he could do, and he could do a lot. Mistaking the monk's silence for silent delight, he continued to complicate and complicate his techniques, knowing how spectacular his muscular body looked, making soft and precise movements from the side. Unexpectedly for him, the monk spoke in a quiet, calm voice: “Why are you practicing with weapons?” Slightly surprised by this turn of events, the crusader, pronouncing every word clearly, replied, “I can become stronger to fight.” "With whom?" - the monk asked just as calmly. The crusader looked at the monk as if he were crazy. “With enemies.” "With which?" - the monk did not let up. The warrior looked at the monk again, and still not understanding how he could not understand such simple things, he replied, “With the opponents of the Faith.” “What faith?” - the monk continued melancholy. “In Our God,” the crusader answered even more surprised, “What’s his name? God? After all, he doesn’t have a name, maybe they serve him, they just call him something else?” - the monk asked in an unchanged tone. “Okay, I just want to become stronger... That’s all... Just don’t ask why again... This is my path of service and my understanding of it...” The knight answered irritably. “Do you think that swinging a sword makes you stronger?” - the monk’s new question sounded like a barely noticeable mockery, which nevertheless did not escape the warrior. “What do you mean by this”? The crusader almost growled. “You're in great shape, you have a weapon and you've already warmed up. Try to hit me...” - The monk remained standing in place, not even thinking about taking a fighting stance or preparing for battle in any way. The crusader made feints and complex pirouettes, but the monk incredibly managed to escape at the very last moment. Angry to the extreme, the warrior pulled out a second sword and tried to reach the obsessive monk with a new style of fighting. But he left the line of attack without visible effort. At one point, the monk gently threw his hands forward and, without the slightest effort, threw the crusader several meters away, barely touching him. Once on the ground, the crusader did not even have time to blink an eye, when, having made just one jump, the monk found himself standing right above him. Startled with surprise, he saw the smiling face of the monk, right opposite his own. It was incredibly fast... With his hands folded on the ground as a sign of his defeat, the crusader asked to become a student of the monk. A lot of time has passed since that moment, after long training, the crusader’s movements became soft and smooth, but even more deadly, he completely mastered his body. He could see three hundred and sixty degrees and control the functioning of any organ in his body. He could foresee and anticipate the enemy. He was truly pleased with himself. No one, perhaps except his teacher, could cope with him. He could destroy his enemies in huge crowds. Knowing perfectly the special points on the human body, he would be deadly and at the same time almost invulnerable. "Now I'm ready, Master!" he said in a confident tone. "For what?" The monk asked him in a calm voice, as always. “I can continue the Path of my Faith! Fighting her enemies,” the student answered with pathos. “No, my boy, you are still too weak. Show me what you can do." Without even having time to take a step towards the monk, he froze. His entire body was paralyzed. “How will you fight me if you can’t even get close to me?” - the monk asked him with a grin.
As soon as the body began to obey him, the warrior again knelt before the monk and asked to continue his training. He trained for a long time, strengthening his will and spirit. He learned a large number of secrets and mysteries. Together with their teacher they sang and danced. Listening to the monk's thoughts as they sat by the fire, the warrior began to wake up early in the morning so that, together with his Master, he could go to the lake and meet the dawn. Gradually, watching how the first rays of the sun illuminate the darkness of the night, how the darkness slowly recedes under the onslaught of the sun, and in the evening again returns to its position as it sets, the crusader began to find peace. Having acquired it, he was able to grow trees, sing and dance like his Master. The monk told him about other wars that occur in the soul of everyone living on Earth. But in these wars there are no winners and losers, the goal in them is not to win, they need to find harmony. We are here as a single multicellular organism. We act together, and our goal is the embodiment of the creator's plan! You and I are cells whose task is to bring the body into harmony. The monk explained to him, continuing to reveal more and more incredible truths for his student at first. During the time spent next to the monk, the warrior cut and sewed the same clothes for himself as his teacher. Having climbed the hill, he again saw the field where he had once died. Approaching the place from which the monk had picked him up, the man dug a hole and buried his swords and armor. Having placed a tombstone with his name, he turned and left. So, in the golden rays of the setting sun, he became a monk. An anonymous cell of a huge organism called humanity. After watching the sunset, two absolutely identical monks nodded to each other and went in different directions. Pursuing one great goal. Defending your Faith.
Look at the maps of military operations, at the bold arrows of military operations, at the blots of areas of deployment of units and subunits, at the combs of positions and flags of headquarters. Take a look at thousands of names of settlements. Big and small. In the steppes, mountains, forests, on the coasts of lakes and seas. Strain your inner vision, and you will see how locusts in uniforms fill cities, settle in villages and hamlets, reach the most remote villages and everywhere leave behind the tortured bodies and devastated souls of raped women.
Neither army brothels, nor local prostitutes, nor front-line girlfriends are able to replace the ritual of violence for a soldier. He does not feel the need for physical love, but a thirst for destruction and unlimited power.
“There are many prostitutes in the fascist convoys serving German officers. In the evenings, Nazi officers from the front arrive at the convoys, and drunken orgies begin. Often Hitler’s thugs bring local women here and rape them...”
It's hard to say what goes on in a soldier's head when he turns into a rapist. Inexplicable, satanic, terrible things happen in the mind.
Only WAR can know about this.
A dark and incomprehensible story is connected with the name of the holder of the Order of Courage, Colonel Yu.D. Budanov, who, while fighting in Chechnya, arrested an 18-year-old girl in the village of Tangi-Chu and during interrogation allegedly raped and strangled her. At least, they remained alone for more than an hour, after which the Chechen woman was found naked and dead.
The scandal shook the country for almost a whole year and did not leave the pages of newspapers and television screens.
“Budanov stated during the investigation: he had information that the sniper was the mother of a young Chechen woman, and he wanted to find out where she was hiding. The girl threatened him in response, began screaming, biting, and reached for his gun. In the struggle, he tore her jacket and bra. And then he grabbed her by the throat. The colonel was drunk and admitted that he committed the murder in a state of passion. He denied the rape."
As the examination showed, the stress disorder was indeed the result of three shell shocks. Hence the inappropriate behavior, twilight state and inability to control oneself. Therefore, at the time of the crime, the colonel was in a state of passion.
Budanov was thoroughly examined. In such cases, the person undergoes special testing.
So-called clinical conversations are held with the subject about his past, about past illnesses. They do tests for aggressiveness. The patient is shown about 20 pictures of ambiguous content (two are kissing, one is peeping...). Special devices are also used for diagnostics. For example, nuclear magnetic resonance, which identifies affected brain cells.
The rape charge was eventually dropped.
Feedback from the population in the press was very diverse, ranging from the paradoxical proposal to erect a monument to the colonel and award the title of Hero of Russia to the bloodthirsty verdict: “He deserves capital punishment!”
But, in my opinion, the person who came closest to the truth was a resident of the Sverdlovsk region, Lidia K.: “My son was killed by a sniper in Chechnya. I don't want revenge. But I consider it a mockery to try a man who was sent to war, but is judged by the standards of peaceful conditions.”
“Yes, Dmitrich’s “tower” has collapsed,” Budanov’s subordinates said gloomily. “Sit here for six months without leaving, look at the heads shot by the same snipers - you’ll climb like a cow!”
Throughout human history, women have been subjected to violence during combat. “The history of mass rape is at the same time the history of massacres and pogroms. They raped people at all times and in all wars. Men have always gratified their hatred on the weakest members of human society in order to enjoy the easily accessible triumph of a sense of superiority.”
From ancient times to modern times, victorious soldiers considered rape to be their inalienable right, something of a reward.
The words of the call for an assault that have become popular: “There is wine and women in the fortress!” best characterizes the attitude towards women in war.
Alas, it was precisely these words (or the stimulus that was embodied in them) that often forced discouraged soldiers to perform miracles of courage and heroism. “The body of a dishonored woman became a ceremonial battlefield, a parade ground for the parade of victors.”
Women were simply raped, and raped to death. They raped and then killed. Or they killed first and then raped. Sometimes they were raped during the victim's death throes.
They were raped by soldiers with the Order of the Legion of Honor and St. George's bows, with Iron Crosses and medals "For Courage".
Already in the Bible (in the Book of Judges) it talks about the abduction of women, which meant mass rape.
During the next civil war between the Israelites and the Benjamites, the Israelites, as was their custom, struck everyone “with the sword, both the people in the city, and the cattle, and everything that was encountered, and they burned all the cities that were on the way with fire.” And having killed all the Benjamite women, the Israelites in return decided to gift their defeated compatriots with trophy virgins and sent an entire expedition to Jabesh-gilead specifically for this purpose. “And the congregation sent there twelve thousand men, mighty men, and gave them command, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the sword, both the women and the children. And this is what you do: consign every man and every woman who has known a man’s bed to the curse. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred virgins who had not known a man's bed, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. And the whole congregation sent to speak with the sons of Benjamin, who was in the rock of Rimmon, and declared peace to them. Then the sons of Benjamin returned and gave them wives which they had left alive from the women of Jabesh-gilead; but it turned out that this was not enough.”
The Israelites then recommended to their former enemies that on the Feast of the Lord they should raid Shiloh, “which is north of Bethel and east of the road leading from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebhonah. And they commanded the children of Benjamin and said, Go and sit in the vineyards. And see, when the maidens of Shiloh come out to dance in round dances, then come out of the vineyards, and each of you take a wife from the maidens of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And when their fathers or their brothers come with a complaint to us, we will say to them: “Forgive us for them; for we did not take a wife for each of them in the war, neither did you give them one; Now it’s their own fault.” The sons of Benjamin did so, and took wives according to their number from those who were in the dance, whom they kidnapped, and they went and returned to their inheritance, and built cities, and began to live in them.”
The oldest literary evidence in Europe about rape in war is in Homer's Iliad. The Greek commander Agamemnon, who led the siege of Troy, tried to convince his hero Achilles to continue the fight with the promise that after victory he would send to Achilles’ harem all the women of the island of Lesbos and the city of Troy, who would be “the most beautiful after Helen.”
When the Vandals burst into Rome in 455, for fourteen days they not only robbed, set fire and killed the inhabitants, but also staged the first mass hunt in history for women with the aim of raping them. Then this practice began to be repeated more and more often. Before the Vandals, “civilized” peoples tried to save the most attractive captives and virgins in order to sell them to slave traders as profitably as possible.
“There is also a scary discovery in Kyiv. Part of the layer of the death of the city is a potter's half-dugout, in one half of which there was a workshop, in the other, separated by a stove, there was a residential part.
At the entrance to the dugout there are two people lying: a man of medium height with a slight Mongoloid appearance, wearing a helmet typical of the steppe dwellers, with a crooked saber. And tall, without armor, with an axe. On the floor of the workshop is the skeleton of a young woman in a crucified position; two daggers are driven into the hands of the skeleton, the blades of which go deep into the earthen floor. And on the stove, in another “room” - the skeletons of children four and five years old... While... the Mongols were killing their father and raping their mother, the children climbed onto the stove...”
In 1097, a detachment of Byzantine troops joined the army of the crusaders of the First Crusade. Quite a special squad. The fact is that the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Komnenos, having received a letter from Pope Urban III, began to call for volunteers to stand under the banners of the liberators of the Holy Sepulcher, luring them with the opportunity to rape conquered women with impunity during the campaign. And the Byzantines willingly went to war.
However, a woman as a prey at all times attracted all kinds of adventurers, pirates, conquistadors, vagabonds and outcasts to war, who were ready to risk their lives, and in return, in addition to enrichment as a result of robberies, they took advantage of the women of the vanquished.
For such people, rape became something like a drug, a manic addiction.
The horror after the storming of Constantinople on April 12, 1204 during the Fourth Crusade was indescribable. “The sack of the city has no parallel in history,” writes the English historian Stephen Rankman. He reports how the crusaders rampaged through the city for three days: “The French and Flemings were seized by a wild impulse of destruction and broke away from their occupation only to rape and kill.”
However, when the Turks captured the city in 1453, the picture repeated itself. Rankman describes how attractive young girls and handsome boys who sought protection in the St. Sophia Cathedral were sent by the Turks to their military camp.
During the Third Period of the Italian Wars 1521–1559. “The army slowly advanced through Namburg, Coburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg to Augsburg. At the same time, the Spaniards “managed things badly.” Along the entire route along which the emperor (Charles V, who was both the German Kaiser and the Spanish king) passed, lay many dead bodies. The Spaniards treated women and girls just as poorly, sparing none of them. From Bamberg they took 400 women with them to Nuremberg and, having dishonored them, drove them away. At present it is hardly possible to convey all the horrific details of their atrocities. But Bartholomew Zastrow, the envoy of the Pomeranian dukes under Charles V, talks about them with great composure. “Isn’t this a naughty nation?...”
Of course - naughty if the women were only driven away after the rape, and not chopped into pieces and hung on the branches of roadside trees. This means that women and girls were not treated as badly as those whose bodies were seen by the emperor passing by.
And if the details of the atrocities have reached our time in a very meager presentation, then let us pay attention to another aspect. Why was there a need to dishonor someone if the army was followed by whole herds of “corrupt women” who easily served the soldiers for literally pennies (and the soldiers had money)?
A terrible fate befell women in the Thirty Years' War. In 1631, the troops of the Bavarian field marshal and generalissimo Count Johann Tilly and the cavalry of the imperial general G.G. Pappenheim captured the Saxon capital of Magdeburg and carried out a terrible massacre there. Of the thirty thousand inhabitants of the city, only about ten thousand people, mostly women, survived. Most of them were driven into a military camp by Catholic troops for mass rape.
This is a manifestation of the thirst for violence, which has nothing to do with the satisfaction of sexual needs.
In the “Charter of the Sea” of Peter the Great, in chapter 16 of the fifth book, the death penalty or exile to the galleys is provided for those who “rape the female sex.” But this applied to peacetime conditions. Try to keep the soldiers in the war!
And did Peter’s grenadiers and dragoons really stand on ceremony in Noteburg and Narva?
Descriptions have been preserved of how, during the storming of Warsaw in 1794, Russian soldiers raped and killed Polish Catholic nuns.
Documents from 1812 tell of how “girls as young as ten were raped in the streets.” Fleeing from the French, young women smeared their faces with soot and dressed in rags, trying to look as unattractive as possible and thereby save themselves from dishonor. But, as you know, “feminine nature cannot be hidden.” There are known cases of Muscovites throwing themselves from bridges to avoid rape.
Arnold Toynbee, later a world-famous English historian, published two books in 1927 about the atrocities of German soldiers in Belgium and France at the beginning of the First World War: apparently with the approval of their officers, although without their orders, German soldiers were raped and placed in front-line or stage prisons. Brothels have a huge number of girls and women.
In the 1930s, the Japanese committed atrocities in China. An example is the unprecedented rape of women in the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1936.
Here is the testimony of a Chinese woman, Wong Peng Jie, who was fifteen years old when the Japanese occupied the city:
“My father, sister and I had already been relocated to a house located in a refugee zone in which there were more than 500 people. I often saw Japanese men coming and looking for women. Once a woman was raped right in the yard. It was at night, and we all heard her screaming heart-rendingly. But when the Japanese left, we never found her, apparently they took her with them. None of those they took away on trucks returned. Only one managed to get home after being raped by the Japanese. The girl told me that the Japanese rape everyone many times. Once it happened: a woman was raped, and then the Japanese began to poke reed stalks into her vagina, and she died from this. I hid every time a Japanese approached the house - that’s the only reason they didn’t catch me.”
During the first month of the occupation of Nanjing alone, Japanese troops brutally raped 20,000 city women, and in total, before 1945, more than two hundred thousand women were raped here.
Accounts from women who were brought forward by prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials document numerous rapes in the occupied areas during World War II. There is evidence of sexual violence against Jewish women by security personnel in concentration camps.
However, the allies managed to take “revenge.”
Thus, in early 1945, French soldiers raped thousands of German women upon entering Baden-Württemberg.
The US Army recorded 971 rape convictions during World War II. “There is no doubt that many rapes went unreported because no official investigation was carried out into the misconduct of the Allied armies.”
I think that two more zeros can be safely added to the number 971.
Although the U.S. military criminal code carries harsh penalties, rape was for the most part tolerated by commanders. In Vietnam, the American command also turned a blind eye to “incidents with Viet Cong women.”
One of the US Marines explained the motives for rape during the Vietnam War: “When we searched people, the women had to take off all their clothes, and under the pretext that it was necessary to make sure that they did not hide anything else.” where, men used their penises. It was rape."
Do not rush to be indignant at this “naive” explanation of the Marine: “... you need to make sure... the men used...” Better listen to the memories of one of our “Afghans.”
“When leaving Jalalabad, in the town of Samarkhel, a truck was fired at from the window of a small shop. With machine guns at the ready, they jumped into this lousy little shop and in the back room, behind the counter, they found an Afghan girl and a door to the courtyard. In the courtyard were a kebab seller and a Hazara water-carrier. They paid in full for the murdered man. It turns out that a person can hold twenty-two kebabs, but the last one needs to be pushed in with a skewer, and only then does the person with the kebab in his throat die. But the water-carrier was lucky; he was immediately killed by machine-gun fire. But it was a girl who shot, she had a pistol, it was so beautiful, she hid it in her panties, she was a bitch...”
It is not difficult to imagine the fate of this Afghan woman, if the search was carried out in her underpants. Perhaps there was no sexual intercourse as such at that moment. Fury already gave me an excess of adrenaline. But kebabs can be rammed into a person’s throat not only...
At the same time, I involuntarily recall one document from the times of the Great Patriotic War. His friend Ebalt writes to the German lieutenant:
“It was much easier in Paris. Do you remember those honey days? The Russians turned out to be devils. I have to tie it up. At first I liked this fuss, but now that I’m all bitten and scratched, I do it easier - a gun to my head, this cools the ardor. Recently, a Russian girl blew herself and Chief Lieutenant Gross up with a grenade. Now we strip them naked, search them, and then... After all that, they disappear without a trace.”
The occupiers immediately noticed that “the Russians turned out to be devils.”
“Among the reasons for the defeat of fascist troops on the territory of our country (along with severe frosts), German historians seriously name the virginity of Soviet girls. The invaders were amazed that almost all of them turned out to be innocent. For the fascists, this was an indicator of the high moral principles of society.
The Germans had already walked all over Europe (where many pliable women easily satisfied the sexual desire of the invaders) and understood: it would not be so easy to conquer people with a core, morally strong.”
I don’t know how the German command obtained statistics about the victims’ virginity. Either it obliged the soldiers to report, or this was done by the censorship of military field mail, which “combed” soldiers’ letters, after which, with German accuracy, they compiled a classification of those raped for the higher authorities of the Imperial Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg. Perhaps these were special teams engaged in studying the virginity and temperament of future slaves of the Reich (which is quite possible after the creation by the fascists of the magical society "Thule" and the whole system of research institutes "Ananerbe", breeding a special breed of Aryan bees, sending expeditions around the world to searches for amulets and pagan artifacts, etc.).
In any case, it's disgusting.
But the story of mass rape in war did not end with World War II. Wherever another armed conflict flared up, be it in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, military violence gave rise to violence against women.
In 1971, the most notorious was the widespread rape that took place during the Pakistani invasion of Bangladesh. During this armed conflict, Punjabis raped between 200,000 and 300,000 women!
In the late 80s - early 90s of the 20th century, a civil war broke out in Sudan. The black Nubian population was attacked by the Muslim Arabs of General Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The Sudanese government called it counter-insurgency.
African Rights co-chairman Alex de Waal said at the time: “What the Nubians endure is remarkably similar to the brutal treatment of black slaves in 19th-century America: forced labor, broken families, sexual coercion.”
Most likely, Mr. de Waal expressed himself quite softly and diplomatically. This “sexual coercion” can be seen in the case of its victim, Abuk Maru Kir, a resident of Nyamlell village in South Sudan. “Leaving behind 80 corpses, the soldiers herded the surviving residents into a column. Abuk was then horrified to hear the screams of her sister and other women as they were dragged into the bushes. Soon they took her too. After she was raped by a third person, Abuk lost consciousness.”
Government soldiers turned black women and girls into concubines. Any child born from such a “marriage” was considered an Arab. One 17-year-old Nubian girl who escaped slavery told an investigator from African Rights that she was raped for a hundred nights (!) in a row.
Women were treated mercilessly in Kuwait and by Iraqis during the 1990 Gulf War. It is estimated that more than five thousand women were raped here. Most of the victims were then kicked out of the house by their husbands.
It is documented that mercenaries from the Middle East and Afghanistan raped women in Chechnya, since the local population was alien to them.
The soldiers raped not only spontaneously, satisfying their ferocity. In the 20th century, rape began to be resorted to as a means of terrorizing civilians.
A terrible mark was left behind by the troops of General Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 in Shanghai. They received orders not only to deal with the soldiers of the communist army, but also to rape and kill their women.
A French prosecutor presented materials in Nuremberg about mass rapes that were used as retribution for the operations of the French Resistance. This proves that in some cases rape was used to achieve military-political goals.
And on the Eastern Front during World War II, “German troops systematically carried out mass executions of civilians, women were raped, and their naked, mutilated bodies were put on display for surviving citizens.” To intimidate.
When approaching Stalingrad, German planes, along with bombs, bombarded the city with leaflets: “Stalingrad ladies, get your dimples ready!”
At the end of the war, Soviet troops were able to unleash their hatred on Germany.
As Viktor Suvorov wrote in his acclaimed “Icebreaker”:
“The battalion drinks bitter vodka before entering battle. Good news: they were allowed to take trophies, they were allowed to rob. The commissioner shouts. Hoarse. Ilya Ehrenburg quotes: Let's break the pride of the arrogant German people!
The black pea coats laugh: how are we going to break our pride, by total rape?
Didn't all this happen? (...)
No, it happened! True, not in forty-one - in forty-five. Then they allowed the Soviet soldier to rob, calling it “taking trophies.” And they ordered to “break German pride...”
I know that many people treat V. Suvorov’s books with a fair amount of skepticism, and therefore I do not overuse his quotation. But there is ample evidence of attacks by Soviet soldiers in 1945 on women in areas of East Germany, and above all in Berlin, which became the “city of women.”
You don't have to trust the fascists. But it’s hard not to believe eyewitnesses from among the liberators.
“...The headquarters has its own worries, the battle continues. But the city corrupts the soldiers: trophies, women, drinking bouts.
We are told that the division commander, Colonel Smirnov, personally shot one lieutenant, who from among his soldiers formed a line towards one German woman who was lying in the gateway...” (Description of the situation in Allenstein (East Prussia) after the entry of the Soviet Army at the end of January 1945, made by Lev Kopelev.)
Whatever they say, the female part of fascist Germany fully tried on the fate of the conquered nation.
Another veteran, who went through the war from the Kursk Bulge to Berlin, admits: “...Under fire, during attacks, I had no thought about it. (...) But in Germany our brother did not stand on ceremony. By the way, the German women did not resist at all.”
Cherepovets historian Valery Veprinsky noted:
“When our troops entered German territory, at first the command secretly allowed the soldiers to “satisfy their sexual hunger” - the winners are not judged. One acquaintance admitted to me that he and a friend were passing through an empty German village, went into a house to take something valuable and, finding an old woman there, raped her. But soon an order for looting came out. “The peaceful German population is not our enemy,” the command carried out explanatory work. And a certain Cherepovka resident, the liberator of Europe from the brown plague, thundered in “Magadan, the second Sochi” after the German Frau reported violence to the commandant’s office...”
After the order for looting, emboldened German women began to come with allegations of rape. There were many of these statements.
This led to new tragedies. Even in peacetime, it is not easy to prove the fact of rape: surveys, examinations, evidence. And what can we talk about during the war!
Perhaps many of the revenge brought false accusations against our soldiers.
But for me personally, the most truthful are the diaries of German girls, exhausted by fear and already far from any ideology and propaganda.
Diary entries of 17-year-old Berlin resident Lily G. about the capture of Berlin from 15.04. to 05/10/1945
“28.04. The fourth shell hit our house.
29.04. Our house has already been hit about 20 times. Cooking is very difficult due to the constant danger to life if you leave the basement.
30.04. When the bomb hit, I was with Frau Behrendt upstairs on the stairs in the basement. The Russians are already here. They are completely drunk. They rape you at night. I'm gone, mom is gone. Some 5–20 times.
1.05. Russians come and go. All the watches are gone. The horses lie in the yard on our beds. The basement collapsed. We are hiding at Stubenrauchstrasse 33.
2.05. The first night is quiet. After hell we found ourselves in heaven. They cried when they found lilacs blooming in the yard. All radios must be returned.
3.05. Still on Stubenrauchstrasse. I can’t go near the windows so the Russians don’t see me! There are rapes all around, they say.
4.05. No news from my father on Derfflingerstrasse.
5.05. Back to the Kaiserallee. Mess!
6.05. Our house was hit 21 times. We spent the whole day cleaning up and packing. Storm at night. Out of fear that the Russians would come, I crawled under the bed. But the house was shaking so much from the holes.”
But the worst thing seems to be the fate of women in civil wars. In the fight against an external enemy, at least some clarity is maintained: there are strangers, it is better not to fall into their hands, here there are our own, who will protect and will not offend. In a civil war, a woman, as a rule, becomes prey to both sides.
In 1917, the Bolsheviks, intoxicated by freedom, having misinterpreted it, clearly went too far with their projects of nationalization (or “socialization”) of women.
Here is a document drawn up on June 25, 1919 in the city of Ekaterinodar, after the White Guard units entered it.
“In the city of Ekaterinodar, in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks issued a decree, published in Izvestia Soveta and posted on poles, according to which girls aged 16 to 25 years were subject to “socialization,” and those wishing to take advantage of this decree had to apply to the appropriate revolutionary institutions. The initiator of this “socialization” was the Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Bronstein. He also issued “mandates” for this “socialization”. The same mandates were issued by the subordinate commander of the Bolshevik cavalry detachment Kobzyrev, the commander-in-chief Ivashchev, as well as other Soviet authorities, and the mandates were stamped by the headquarters of the “revolutionary troops of the North Caucasus Soviet Republic.” Mandates were issued both in the name of the Red Army soldiers and in the name of Soviet commanders, for example, in the name of Karaseev, the commandant of the palace in which Bronstein lived: under this mandate the right to “socialize” 10 girls was granted. Sample mandate:
Mandate. The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseev, is given the right to socialize in the city of Yekaterinodar 10 souls of girls aged from 16 to 20 years, whom Comrade Karaseev points out.
(Commander-in-Chief Ivashchev.)
On the basis of such mandates, the Red Army captured more than 60 girls - young and beautiful, mainly from the bourgeoisie and students of local educational institutions. Some of them were captured during a raid organized by the Red Army in the City Garden, and four of them were raped there, in one of the houses. Others, about 25 souls, were taken to the Palace of the Military Ataman to Bronstein, and the rest to the Old Commercial Hotel to Kobzyrev and to the Bristol Hotel to the sailors, where they were raped. Some of those arrested were then released - this is how a girl was released, raped by the head of the Bolshevik criminal investigation police, Prokofiev, while others were taken away by the departing detachments of Red Army soldiers, and their fate remained unclear. Finally, some, after various kinds of cruel torture, were killed and thrown into the Kuban and Karasun rivers. So, for example, a 5th grade student in one of the Ekaterinodar gymnasiums was raped for twelve days by a whole group of Red Army soldiers, then the Bolsheviks tied her to a tree and burned her with fire, and finally shot her.
This material was obtained by a Special Commission in compliance with the requirements of the Charter of Criminal Procedure.”
However, the “White Guard” did not lag behind the Bolsheviks in this regard.
To paraphrase a well-known saying, one could say: “the reds will come and rape, the whites will come and also rape.” (For example, young girls from cities and nearby villages were usually brought to the train of the ataman-general Annenkov standing at the railway station, raped, and then immediately shot.)
Another form of rape in war was the sexual exploitation of women for the army or in the sex industry.
The author of The Shadow Side of Sex, Roy Escapa, wrote about how in 1971, Pakistani soldiers kidnapped school-age Bengali girls and took them to army headquarters, stripping them naked so that they could not escape. They were also used to film pornographic films.
“During the military operations in Kosovo (1999), women were caught and forcibly kept in underground dens. They were used by American soldiers and former militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and then the concubines were killed and sent to prison. They killed carefully so that these same organs were not damaged. And “they didn’t put me on needles, and they didn’t give me a lot of alcohol, so as not to damage the liver and other organs,” says Vera K, a girl who miraculously escaped. During police raids, such slave brothels were raided. In the rays of police flashlights, a terrible picture appears: in completely inhuman conditions - two at a time on narrow beds and on stale linen, or even just on pushed chairs, in tiny shabby rooms behind curtains - “girls” are being kept, who have long looked nothing like girls. Drunk, smoke-stained, exhausted, unwashed, with empty eyes, afraid of everything - they are no longer even fit for organs. Such people work out their tasks and disappear without a trace. Having finally realized that they can now be released, one of them says: “Why?” Where should I go now? It will only get worse... It’s better to die here.” The voice with which she says this is already dead.”
During World War II, the forced consignment of women to brothels was commonplace. "War feeds war." In this case, she fed herself with women's bodies.
“In Vitebsk, for example, the field commandant ordered girls aged 14 to 25 to report to the commandant’s office, ostensibly to be assigned to work. In fact, the youngest and most attractive of them were sent by force of arms to houses of brothel.”
“In the city of Smolensk, the German command opened a brothel for officers in one of the hotels, into which hundreds of girls and women were driven; they were dragged by the arms, by the hair, mercilessly dragged along the pavement.”
A teacher in the village of Rozhdestveno Trofimova says: “All our women were herded to school and a brothel was set up there. Officers came there and raped women and girls at gunpoint. 5 officers collectively raped the collective farmer T. in the presence of her two daughters.”
Brest resident G.Ya. Pestruzhitskaya spoke about the events at the Spartak stadium, where the local population was herded: “Every night drunken fascists burst into the stadium and forcibly took away young women. Over two nights, German soldiers took away more than 70 women, who then disappeared without a trace..."
“In the Ukrainian village of Borodaevka, Dnepropetrovsk region, the Nazis raped all the women and girls. In the village of Berezovka, Smolensk region, drunken German soldiers raped and took away all the women and girls aged 16 to 30.”
“The 15-year-old girl Maria Shch., the daughter of a collective farmer from the village of Bely Rast, was stripped naked by the Nazis and taken along the street, entering all the houses where German soldiers were located.”
Brothels for guard soldiers existed at concentration camps. Women were recruited only from among prisoners.
And although the living conditions there were somewhat better, in fact it was just a continuation of the torture. The soldiers, maddened by daily executions, took out their mental disorders on the silent, foreign-language prisoners. And there were no bouncers and “mothers”, usual for such establishments, ready to stand up for the tortured woman. Such brothels turned into testing grounds for all kinds of vices, perversions and manifestations of complexes.
Contraception methods were not used, as in brothels with German staff. Prisoners were cheap material. “When pregnancy was discovered, the women were immediately destroyed.” They were replaced with new ones.
One of the worst brothels was at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. The average "service life" was three weeks. It was believed that during this time a woman would neither get sick nor become pregnant. And then - the gas chamber. During the four years of Ravensbrück's existence, more than 4 thousand women were killed in this way.
I would like to end this chapter with a quote from E. Remarque’s book “The Spark of Life”.
“We can’t think about the past, Ruth,” he said with a slight hint of impatience in his voice. - Otherwise, how will we be able to live at all?
I don't even think about the past.
Why are you crying then?
Ruth Holland wiped the tears from her eyes with her fists.
Do you want to know why I wasn't sent to the gas chamber? - she suddenly asked.
Bucher vaguely felt that something would now be revealed that it would be better for him not to know about at all.
“You don’t have to tell me about this,” he said hastily. - But you can say it if you want. It doesn't change anything anyway.
This changes something. I was seventeen. And then I wasn’t as scary as I am now. That's why they left me alive.
Yes,” said Bucher, still not understanding anything.
He looked at her. For the first time, he suddenly noticed that her eyes were gray and somehow very clean and transparent. He had never seen such a look from her before.
Don't you understand what this means? - she asked.
They kept me alive because they needed women. Young women for the soldiers. And for the Ukrainians too, who fought alongside the Germans. Do you understand now?
Bucher sat as if stunned. Ruth didn't take her eyes off him.
And they did this to you? - he asked finally. He didn't look at her.
Yes. They did this to me. - She didn't cry anymore.
It is not true.
This is true.
That's not what I mean. I mean, you didn't want this.
A bitter laugh escaped her throat.
There's no difference.
Now Bucher raised his eyes to her. It seemed that all expression had faded from her face, but that is why it turned into such a mask of pain that he suddenly felt and understood what he had only heard before: she told the truth. And he felt that the truth was tearing his insides with its claws, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it yet, in that first second he wanted only one thing: that there wouldn’t be such torment in that face.
This is not true, he said. - You didn't want this. You weren't there. You didn't do this.
Her gaze returned from the void.
This is true. And this cannot be forgotten.
None of us are given the ability to know what can be forgotten and what cannot be forgotten. We have a lot to forget. And to many..."
In my opinion, this is the best answer to the question of whether a monument to raped women is needed.
I. Monk and Sultan
At the beginning of the 13th century, the position of Frankish Syria was in no way similar to its position in the previous century. Paradoxically, they continued to call the kingdom Jerusalem, although Jerusalem was no longer part of it, and the territory now ruled by the kings was reduced to a narrow strip, which became the base of new conquests, dangerous for Muslims, since it was a coastal strip that gave access to the crusaders and made it easier for them supply. From this point of view they were, in general, in a better position than their predecessors in the 11th century. Finally, the capture of Cyprus and Constantinople made it possible to carry out many operations that in the previous century, due to the evil will of the Byzantines, were either difficult or delayed.
Conditions were thus radically different from the first century of the overseas kingdoms. But much has also changed in the Christian world: it was agitated by various economic and social movements, but especially by currents of thought with an unclear outcome of their struggle. On a religious level, hasn’t the struggle already begun between those who want to help the church in its troubles and its opponents? Everyone more or less felt that the church was in danger of suffocating under the weight of its own wealth, but who would prevail, the sectarians of various heretical movements or the mendicant orders? This was a characteristic feature of the seething of ideas and interests that shook the West in that era and gave rise to passionate university disputes, intense rivalry between trading cities, and clashes of worldviews between the bourgeoisie and the barons.
In the East, the Western world discovered and clearly realized through experience, purely empirically, without perhaps understanding the possible consequences, those new trends that appeared in the Christian world. Hence the great significance of some events of the Crusades, more significant than others, since in them a new style of life and activity emerges; pure mystics, in turn, entered into action, discarding all weapons, all technology, all human means and recognizing only grace, and, conversely, pure politicians who took into account only efficiency and were completely skeptical about those measures that were previously justified by faith alone. Finally, there appeared those who, combining two extremes, mysticism and politics, patiently and methodically served their faith.
Two men in cassocks made of coarse cloth, belted with ropes, who walked calmly through the bushes, undoubtedly gave the patrolman the impression of being abnormal, or perhaps he mistook them for apostates who were going to seek protection from Muslims, which happened from time to time during this period. Time of Troubles. There had to be at least one such person, since a little earlier the Sultan’s order had been announced everywhere, according to which the head of every captured Christian would be cut off. But, despite this, the captured Francis of Assisi and his companion Illuminati brother repeated with calm confidence the request: “We are Christians, take us to your master.” No matter how incredible this adventure may seem, they still achieved that they were both admitted to the Sultan of Egypt Malik al-Kamil.
All this happened in Egypt, not far from Damietta, when there was a real decomposition of the Holy Land, as well as the moral forces that the Franks had. However, from a purely military point of view, the events of 1218-1219. could fuel the hope of the Franks, since they were feared in the world of Islam. King Jean de Brienne of Jerusalem decided to carry out the old plan and attack the Muslim forces in Egypt. After the Franks arrived at Damietta and delivered a series of lucky blows, first the tower protecting the Nile crossing fell (August 1218), then the Muslim camp (February 1219) and, finally, Damietta itself (November 1219), after a very difficult siege, since with its double walls, thirty-two large towers and a very perfect system of fortification, this great trading city, the key to all Egypt, was considered impregnable.
But from a moral point of view, the position of the crusaders was compromised. “The Pope,” wrote one author, “sent two cardinals to the army to Damietta, Cardinal Robert de Courson, an Englishman, and Cardinal Pelagius, a Portuguese. Cardinal Robert died, but Pelagius remained alive, which is why many troubles occurred, for he caused great evil.” .
Indeed, this ill-fated character, whom some historians have tried unsuccessfully to rehabilitate, had already shown himself by failing the negotiations between the Greek and Roman churches, and then became the evil genius of a campaign that began so successfully, which he ended in complete defeat. Terribly frightened that Christians were firmly established in Egypt, Sultan Malik al-Kamil, like his brother, the ruler of Damascus Al-Muadzam, offered the king of Jerusalem in exchange for Damietta to cede to him no less than Palestine, an unexpected offer for which it was necessary immediately to grasp, because in reality, although the king was victorious, he was almost ruined and bled white by the efforts that this crusade cost him. Moreover, while he was mobilizing most of his knights, Sultan Al-Muadzam intensified devastating raids into Frankish Syria, where his bands methodically devastated the country, burning houses, cutting down trees and ripping out vineyards.
However, Cardinal Pelagius refused to listen to the king’s advice, imagining himself already the master of Egypt. He behaved like a real despot, obstructing John de Brienne in his decisions and threatening him with excommunication, so that the king, tired of this, finally left Damietta and went to Acre. The army remained inactive for a year and a half, allowing the Sultan to replenish his forces and resort to repression, which, first of all, resulted in the massacre of Syrian and Coptic Christians; One hundred and fifteen churches were destroyed, including St. Mark's Cathedral in Alexandria, and Christians were subjected to heavy taxes and countless levies. This lasted until Cardinal Pelagius, always confident in himself, began on his own initiative, without warning Jean de Brienne, a campaign against Cairo, which very quickly ended in disaster, after which he was happy to give Damietta in exchange for the liberation of the Frankish army, completely blocked by Muslim forces. Meanwhile, even before the defeat, in an atmosphere of disagreement and disastrous inaction, unrest and strife began within the Frankish army itself, especially between the Franks and Italians, who also opposed the Templars and Hospitallers. It was in the midst of these unrest, but long before they brought Christians to the brink of disaster, that the event about which the story began above took place. In September 1219, when the siege of Damietta was coming to an end (the city was taken by storm on November 5), St. Francis, accompanied by an Illuminati brother, appeared in the Crusader camp and decided to go to the Sultan’s camp to preach Christianity to him. The historian Jacques de Vitry tells about it this way: “When the army of Christians approached Damietta in Egypt, Brother Francis, armed with the shield of faith, fearlessly went to the Sultan. On the way, the Saracens grabbed him, and he said: “I am a Christian, take me to your master "When they brought him to him, this wild beast, the Sultan, seeing him, was imbued with mercy towards the man of God and listened very carefully to his sermons, which he read about Christ to him and his people for several days. But then, fearing that If anyone from his army, under the influence of these words, would turn to Christ and go over to the side of the Christians, he ordered him to be taken carefully, with all precautions, back to our camp, saying goodbye: “Pray for me, so that the Lord will reveal to me what is most pleasing to him.” law and faith."
The chronicle of brother Jean Elemozin adds several details to this story and reports, in particular, that Francis allegedly offered the Sultan a trial by fire as God's judgment: “They say that he came to the Sultan, and he offered him gifts and treasures, and since the servant of God did not desired them, said to him: “Take them and distribute them to the churches and to the poor Christians." But the servant of God, who despised earthly riches, declared that the providence of the Lord would provide for the poor in their needs. When blessed Francis began to preach, he proposed to enter the fire with Saracen priest and thus irrefutably prove the truth of the faith of Christ. But the Sultan objected: “Brother, I do not believe that any of the Saracen priests would be willing to enter the fire for their faith.”
Other chroniclers specify that a “holy elder” was sitting next to the Sultan, who, after the proposal of St. Francis, stood up and left. This episode was examined in our time by Louis Massignon, who identified this elder: “This is Fakhr-al-Din-Fanizi. But I do not think that this ascetic, a disciple of the Muslim mystic Hallaj, withdrew out of fear. He did not recognize ordeals, believing that You cannot tempt God."
Later, this scene inspired Giotto, who wrote it in the church of Sita Croce in Florence, and a legend arose among Christians that before his death, the Sultan, under the influence of the Minorite brothers sent to him, completely converted to Christianity.
This story, namely the meeting of St. Francis of Assisi with the Sultan of Egypt at a time when persecution of Christians was unfolding in that country, is in itself amazing. She was part of that golden legend that surrounded the entire life of the poor man from Assisi. Sultan Al-Kamil, at the moment of his greatest hatred for Francis' co-religionists, is defeated by the meekness of a small man who appears unarmed in the no-man's land that separates the two camps, intending to preach his faith to the one with whom they were going to fight. This appeal to the power of faith at a time when the only possible force seemed to be the power of arms, is quite in the spirit of mystical poetry that defined the atmosphere close to Francis.
This act of Francis, like his very presence at Damietta, immediately reveals those aspirations that will gain strength later. St. Francis embodied the poor man and the knight, personifying the two forces that in former times set out for the Holy Land and conquered Jerusalem. It is known how tempting the knightly ideal was for St. Francis, and he wanted to be first God's singer, and then the Lord's knight. Therefore, it is not surprising that for him, who literally understood the Gospel, the Holy Land was so attractive.
Like those who were once shocked by the call of Urban II, he understood the acceptance of the cross in a literal sense. And with his amazing mystical intuition, he defines a new path by sending his brothers to the Holy Land, he most of all wanted them to become martyrs. When he learned that five of them, who repeated his feat, were killed by the crowd, he exclaimed: “Praise Christ, now I know that I have five younger brothers.” Jacques de Vitry recalled the beginning of this evangelical mission: “The Saracens willingly listened to the Minor brothers when they spoke about the faith of Christ and the evangelical teaching until their words began to clearly contradict the teachings of Mohammed and he appeared as a treacherous liar in their sermons; then their they began to wickedly beat them, and if not for the miraculous help of God, they would have been killed.”
In the Holy Land, the saint of Assisi was also attracted to the manger of the infant Christ. It is known how he first opened the Bethlehem cave in Greccio to believers and how since then, especially since the 14th century, the veneration of the Holy Child along with the veneration of the way of the cross has developed. Everything that so profoundly renewed Christian sensibility arose in this first journey of St. Francis to the Holy Land, accomplished in the roar of battles and the noise of discord among Christians. With his lavishness of love and his insanely heroic deed, he left behind the image of an armed knight taking the cross to conquer Jerusalem. Decisions of the 11th century were no longer suitable for the XIII century, when the ideal of the “army of Christ” was completely transformed, and the first step in this desire to rethink the meaning of the cross was taken by Brother Francis between the two warring camps at Damietta.
The crusaders, however, continued to fight, completely not understanding the sublime act committed before their eyes. Cardinal Pelagius believed, while Francis was with the Sultan, that the mendicant brother had renounced Christianity. As for the other prelates, their impression of Francis can be guessed from the fears expressed by Jacques de Vitry in his Oriental History and a letter written at Damietta in March 1220: “We have seen the first founder and head of this order, to whom all its members obey as the great prior; he is a simple and illiterate man, loved by God and people, and his name is Brother Francis... The head of the Minorite brothers, who founded their order, arrived in our army; inflamed with zeal for the faith, he went to the army of the Saracens and within For several days he preached the word of God to them with great success; the Sultan, the king of Egypt, asked him to pray to the Lord to help him convert to the faith most pleasing to God. The cleric Colin the Englishman and two of my brothers, Master Michel and Ser Mathieu, joined this order. to whom I entrusted the care of the Church of the Holy Cross in Acre, and I have difficulty restraining my singer, as well as Henri and some others, from this step.”
An inexplicable impulse in the eyes of the prelate that draws his brothers to an inconspicuous man in a rough cassock. Elsewhere, with purely ecclesiastical caution, he expressed his fears regarding this man: “This man seemed very dangerous to me, since he is not only perfect, but also young, imperfect people, who should be subjected to monastic discipline for some time, so that to accustom them to it and test it, sends them out in twos all over the world.” Quite natural prudence, manifested in concern for the ways of the church, but short-sighted in relation to the miracles that the “madness of faith” began to perform. And Brother Francis’s speech soon brought unexpected results, and some facts lined up in the line of his behavior that could not have been foreseen several years earlier. First of all, these are the letters that Pope Gregory IX himself sent in 1233 to the Sultan of Morocco and the Sultan of Egypt to convince them with moving words to accept the Christian faith "We pray with all our might to the Father of light, knowing his good love, instructing us, that he will mercifully condescend to our prayers and showed his great mercy. May He open your ears and your mind, so that in piety of heart and humility of spirit you come to us, thirsting for grace in the present and glory in the future.. May He show you his only son, so that when he comes to the Christian faith through baptism, you could become, through a completely new life, beloved adopted sons of the Lord, who desires that all the faithful should reign with Him in heaven.”
It was to the disciples of St. Francis that the Pope entrusted these letters, since they had already begun to form a kind of honorary guard of the Holy Land, which was subsequently entrusted to them. The hour of missionary work had not yet struck; It was only at the end of this century that Raymond Lull outlined a real missionary program, but attempts to completely transform the crusade so as to approach the world of Islam with the mere weapon of the Gospel continued.
St. Francis himself sent two brothers, Gilles and Elie, to Tunisia; and if their preaching failed, it was more likely due to the hostility of the Venetian or Provencal merchants, whose trade agreements they harmed, than the Muslims themselves. However, from 1257, another mendicant brother Philip, provincial of the brother preachers in the Holy Land, could already report to Pope Gregory IX himself about the successes of their preaching among Eastern Christians, previously independent of Rome: the Jacobite patriarch returned to the bosom of the Roman Church and himself became a Dominican; The Maronites of Lebanon joined the same church, the conversion of the Nubians was begun, and in the Nestorian church some expressed a desire to join the Roman church. During this era, the Brethren Preachers truly established themselves in the East, particularly in Egypt, while the Brethren Minorites conquered Aleppo, Damascus and Baghdad.
From the book The Great Troubles. End of the Empire author12.3. Sultan Mehmet Khan = Sultan Mehmet II Who captured Bayezid? As we have already said, “Timur kept with him dummy khans - Suyurgatmysh... and then his son Sultan Mahmud Khan (King Mehmet Sultan - Author)... Timur was on very good terms with Sultan Mahmud Khan and had
by Ponnon EdmondMonk Constable The Friar Constable was in charge of the stables. As is known, the original meaning of the word “constable” was precisely “equerry,” and only later did this word come to mean a prestigious title, one of the most important court positions in France. This position is in
From the book Everyday Life in Europe in the Year 1000 by Ponnon EdmondMonk-gardener The monk-gardener obeyed the cellarer in everything. He was supposed to supply the monastery with fresh vegetables on Wednesday and Friday, as well as during seasonal fasts. For Easter, he had to prepare vegetables, onions and leeks, which the monks were to taste after
From the book New Chronology and the Concept of the Ancient History of Rus', England and Rome author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich"Fake Khans" of Timur. Sultan Mehmet Han = Sultan Mehmet II. Who took Bayezid prisoner? It turns out further that “Timur kept with him dummy khans - Suyurgatmysh and then his son Sultan Mahmud Khan (King Mehmet Sultan - Author) after the death of the latter, minted coins from
From the book of the Xiongnu in China [L/F] author Gumilev Lev NikolaevichKING-MONK During the twelve years of his reign, Toba Xun struggled only with drunkenness. This open passivity of the government, which equally tolerated Taoists and Buddhists, allowed the latter to completely take over the public opinion of the country. The Taoists had time
From the book of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Pernu RegineIV ...and holy monk I was as if stunned by Love all my life. But now I know. That it was crazy. Bernard de Ventadorn The road from Paris to Saint-Denis was more congested than during the fair; pilgrims huddled together; Every now and then heavy carts with hay had to move
From the book of Torquemada author Nechaev Sergey YurievichThe Dominican monk Joseph Lavallee, in his History of the Inquisitions of Italy, Spain and Portugal, narrates the first steps of Torquemada as follows: “To unwind after the unhappy love of which Cordoba reminded him, he left this city and went to Zaragoza, with
From the book 1612 author From the book Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great (311 - 590 AD) by Schaff Philip From the book In the Abyss of the Russian Troubles. Unlearned lessons from history author Zarezin Maxim IgorevichMonk or conspirator Almost two years have passed since the exile of the Romanovs, when Moscow was again excited by news of the appearance of Dimitri Ioannovich. But this time these were not rumors. Godunov immediately accused the boyars of the fact that the “resurrection” of the prince was their doing, although no names were given
From the book Book 1. Empire [Slavic conquest of the world. Europe. China. Japan. Rus' as a medieval metropolis of the Great Empire] author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich13.3. Sultan Mehmet Khan = Sultan Mehmet II Who captured Bayezid? As we have already said, “Timur kept with him dummy khans - Sutorgatmysh... and then his son Sultan Mahmud Khan (King Mehmet Sultan - Author)... Timur was on very good terms with Sultan Mahmud Khan and had
From the book Three Million Years BC author Matyushin Gerald Nikolaevich6.2. The mysterious monk Gregor Mendel was born in Czechoslovakia when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and the city of Brno, where Mendel spent his entire life, was called Brünn. (Now a monument to the great son of the Czech people, Gregor Mendel, has been erected in Brno.) Gregor
From the book The Road Home author Zhikarentsev Vladimir Vasilievich From the book Three False Dmitrys author Skrynnikov Ruslan GrigorievichThe fugitive monk Yuri Bogdanovich Otrepyev was born into a poor noble family. Otrepyev's ancestors came to Rus' from Lithuania. Yushka's great-grandfather Matvey Tretyak served in Borovsky district and, as a boyar's courtyard son, was recorded in the Household List in 1552. Between 1552 and 1566. to the same Dvorovy
From the book Treasures of the Saints [Stories of Holiness] author Chernykh Natalia Borisovna From the book Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang by Wu Han2. Wandering Monk Huangjue Buddhist Monastery was located on the slope of Mount Jueshan southwest of Guzhuangcun. It was a relatively large monastery; immediately at the entrance on both sides stood statues of four huge guards of a fierce appearance, and in the center between them