Henry Thoreau's Crusade
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HENRY THOREAU’S CRUSADE “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922 “WALKING”: I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre” — to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a sainte-terrer,” a saunterer — a holy- lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON PETER THE HERMIT “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1096 CE From this year into 1102, to recoup Palestine from the Seljuks (it seemed like a good idea at the time), the 1st Crusade was proclaimed. In this year and the next, Crusaders were arriving in Constantinople. Jerusalem would be captured in 1099. Is this Crusader praying to the God of victory in whom he truly believes — or perchance is he petitioning somebody not to whack him? Peter the Hermit (circa 1050-1115) has been said to have been a figure associated with the earliest Crusades. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The Crusades “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1099 CE July 22: Jerusalem having been captured by Crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon was elected as the first Latin ruler there. The knights of the 1st Crusade would plant sugar cane in the Holy Land. Cane sugar, although intended as a condiment, would during the siege of Acre in 1104 come in handy as bulk food for the soldiers. THE CRUSADES HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES One of the responses to the Crusades would be the Assassins, a fanatical Moslem sect organized under a chief called the Old Man of the Mountain, whose stronghold was a rock fortress at Alamut in Persia. This sect would devote itself, in this era before the invention of explosives and the invention of the suicide bomber, to the assassination of all enemies of the Moslem faith. The devotees anticipated, accurately, that immediately after their sudden deed they would be hacked to pieces by the swords of the slain person’s bodyguard. They were referred to as hashishins (assassins) because they would brace their nerves for their deed of blood so quickly to be followed by their death with draughts of an intoxicating liquor distilled from hashish. (A Tartar force would burst upon them in their stronghold in 1256 and put them wholesale to the sword.) NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Crusades HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1100 July 5: Crusaders took the city of Jerusalem after a 5-week siege. In their holy triumph they offed 10,000 residents, men, women, and children. “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922 LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Crusades HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1101 August to September: Final wave of Crusaders defeated by Turks. THE CRUSADES THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Crusades HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1115 CE July 8: Peter the Hermit died. Actually, we don’t know that he ventured on any crusades — he may have merely been a jawboner. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1189 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II of France, and King Richard I of England led a 3d Crusade.Laws of Richard I (Coeur de Lion) concerning Crusaders who were to go by sea. READ THE FULL TEXT “The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P. Taylor End of the reign of Henry Plantagenet, who had reigned as Henry II, King of England since 1154. Beginning of the reign of Richard the Lionhearted (Coeur de Lion) as Richard I (until 1199 CE, although he never would learn to speak English). As he would return from the 3d Crusade in 1192 CE after slaughtering at one point a group of 3,000 Moslem captives (with no mercy either for their wives or for their children), he would be captured by King Leopold of Austria, would be ransomed two years later, and would then do battle with King Philip II of France. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Crusades HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1204 April 12-15: Crusaders sacked Constantinople. May 9: Baldwin of Flanders was elected as the initial Latin emperor of Constantinople. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. The Crusades “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1209 From this year into 1229, the Albigensian Crusade. “The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P. Taylor CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The Crusades “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1213 April: Pope Innocent III (“I’m a thousand percent innocent, your honor”) designated the campaign against the Cathar heretics in southern France a 5th Crusade. “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922 WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF The Crusades “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1221 August 30: Crusaders were defeated at al-Mansura. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1227 A crusade against heretics in Bosnia. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1232 From this year into 1234, a crusade against Stedinger heretics in Germany. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1241 The Mongol invasion reached Hungary and the Adriatic. The good Christians proclaimed a crusade against these heathens. THE CRUSADES HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1250 February 8: Crusaders were again defeated, at al-Mansura. THE CRUSADES HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1254 The last Crusade into the Holy Land was that of King Louis IX of France. THE CRUSADES Is this Crusader praying to the God of victory in whom he truly believes — or perchance is he petitioning somebody not to whack him? HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1280 The final Frankish outpost in Syria/Palestine fell to the Moslems. THE CRUSADES HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1306 During this year and the following one, there would be a crusade against the heretic Fra Dolcino in Piedmont. THE CRUSADES France expelled its Jews. ANTISEMITISM HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1309 The Popular Crusade. THE CRUSADES A crusade against Venice. (Venice???) HDT WHAT? INDEX THE CRUSADES THE CRUSADES 1329 June 7, Wednesday (Old Style): Robert the Bruce died of leprosy (his heart would be preserved in a silver casket and taken along on a Crusade against the Moslems of the southern portion of the Iberian peninsula; at some point his skull would be taken from the casket and would remain on display until 1819).1 DIGGING UP THE DEAD SCOTLAND THE CRUSADES 1. In the movie the grisly detail of this death is distanced by assigning it not to the point-of-view character but to his relative — and this does of course make perfect Hollywood sense because not so many people could be expected to pay $7.50 to see a movie about a hero-guy who as the theme music swells is succumbing to something as unphotogenic as leprosy.