A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [352]
One further effort was made in the 1360s under the prodding of Pierre de Lusignan of Cyprus, whose interest was most immediate. After vainly touring the courts of Europe for three years trying to raise the forces for a crusade, he was able to mount an expedition from Cyprus in 1365 which triumphantly took the rich city of Alexandria in Egypt as a first step on the way to Jerusalem. Wishing to make sure of their immense booty, his followers insisted on sailing away with their gains, leaving Lusignan without enough forces to exploit his victory, or even hold it. Alexandria had to be given up.
At the same time, Amadeus of Savoy, whose aunt, Anne of Savoy, was Dowager Empress in Constantinople, led a remarkable campaign intending to join up with Lusignan. He succeeded in regaining Gallipoli, but this too was transitory. The Free Companies under Du Guesclin, who were supposed to march overland against the Turks from the West at the same time, never came. Amadeus, like Lusignan, lacked the forces to go farther, and within a few years Murad recovered Gallipoli.
In 1369 Constantinople itself called for help. In a desperate effort to excite the aid of the West, Emperor John V journeyed to Rome to abjure the schism between the Greek and Latin churches and offer himself as the first convert. He succeeded mainly in exciting the fury of his own clergy and laity, who repudiated his arrangements. Europe, preoccupied with the renewal of the Anglo-French war, was not interested.
The one person on record who consistently tried to energize a response proportionate to the challenge was Philippe de Mézières, although in his case, too, the enemy was irrelevant: crusade for its own sake was his great objective. For him it was a moral imperative, a philosopher’s stone that would cure society’s suffering and turn its evils to gold: quarrels and hostilities would cease, tyrants fall or reform, Christianity would convert Turks, Tatars, Jews, and Saracens and bring about the peace and unity of the world. But though he was an exalté, Mézières knew the Levant and the Turks at first hand, with the result that he understood the gravity of the problem and took it seriously.
As a young cleric drawn by ardor for the Holy Land, he had joined the crusade of the Latin League to Smyrna; later, as chancellor to Pierre de Lusignan of Cyprus, he lived close to the Turkish problem for many years and, on returning to the French court after Lusignan’s death, made it his purpose in life to regain the East for Christianity. He recognized that this meant not reckless adventure, but organized serious warfare to meet an organized, disciplined foe whom he knew from Smyrna to be well trained, courageous, and ruthless. He conceived of the force needed as a national army to include bourgeois and common people serving as men-at-arms, and knights as leaders, motivated by virtue and zeal rather than greed. Like the Templars and Hospitalers of old, they would be dedicated to obedience, justice, and military discipline, and in the course of their great enterprise would revive the true ideals of knighthood. He founded, for this purpose, an Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ. As indicated by the name, his interest was moral, not military.
Mézières’ insistent propaganda—which included the marvelous stage spectacle of the First Crusade performed for the Emperor’s visit to Paris—undoubtedly had its effect on Charles VI and doubtless on others. In 1389 a firsthand report on the Turks was brought back by Boucicaut on his return from the Holy