The events which proceeded in Europe brought to Marseilles a new element of vitality, supported its trade and created the first industries there.
It was the time of the Crusades; the Marseillais took a very active share with this movement. Never a larger activity had not reigned in the city. One built quantities ships. The money flowed. The traders provided not only the means of transport and the food, but the weapons and the ammunition. The manufacture of the weapons had developed marvelously
and the street Lancerie was one of the last vestiges of this time (it will be destroyed with the demolition
of the old workings in February 1943).
Marseilles had developed, of new markets which it had opened in the East. These products came to him from Alexandria, of Arabia, of Tyr, of Tripoli, of Syria, of Antioche, of Saint-Jean-in Acre. They was sugar, pepper, the saffron, silk, the fabrics of silk, the dyeings for wool and cloth, the raw hides or wrought and thousand other invaluable products. Benefitting from the establishment of the Latin Holy Land kingdoms (conquests of cross) the Marseillais devote themselves to a profitable trade. One sees the middle-class men thus extending well their city beyond the old ramparts and this to make yield by the Viscounts all their rights, so that Marseilles is a true " republic " independent at the beginning of XIIIe century. Marseilles was the first market of Europe. This new era of prosperity without equal makes of Marseilles a city already deserving to be called its gate " of the East ".
Catch of Jerusalem by the Cross ones.
Novel of Godefroy de Bouillon (14th century)


Here a coloured account of a loading at the Average Age, crossed, in Marseilles.
It is about Jean, lord de Joinville, who was not going to delay, during this crusade, with becoming the friend and the faithful companion of king de France, of which he had thereafter, to recall the exploits (Joinville (Jean, lord of) (v. 1224 ­ 1317), French chronicler.
Joinville, biographer of Saint-Louis, presenting its book.

Champagne Seneshal, it left his province to accompany Saint Louis in Egypt (1248). Its Memories are, actually, the history of this king, whom it tells as a somewhat naive witness, but with an acute direction of the observation :
" In August we entered our vessels with the Rock of Marseilles. The day that we entered our vessels, one made open the gate of the vessel, and one put all our horses inside that we must carry out overseas, and then one closed again the gate and one stopped well as when a barrel is embedded, because when the vessel is at sea all the gate is in water. When the horses were our Master nautonier inside (pilot) shouted with his nautoniers (sailors) who were with the prow of the vessel and says to them: " is Your work lends?" And they answered: " Yes, lord. That the clerks and the priests advance." At once that they had come, he shouted Chantez to them, from God!" And they exclaimed very of a voice: " Veni Creator Spiritus." And the Master shouted with his nautoniers: " Made veil, from God!" And thus they made "
" And, in little time, the wind struck, the veils, and the sight of the ground removed us which we saw only sky and water, and each day the wind moved away us from the countries where we had been born. And, by there, I show you that that one is an insane bold good which is dared to put in such danger with the good of others or in mortal sin; because one falls asleep the evening where it is not known if one will not be at the marine resources in the morning."
At that time, a strong traffic proceeds in Marseilles. According to the notes of the Marseilles notary Giraud Amalric, dating from March 27 1248, one notices the recording of twenty and one " commands " :
they are the maritime contracts of the temps.Le March 30, it draws up trente-sept acts for the only maritime transport: it records the cargo of the Holy Spirit ship, which sets sail for Acre, of Saint-Gilles bound for Messina, the Saint Nicolas's Day and the Good Adventure who will go towards Bougie and Centa, of the Stag, the Saint-Anthony, of Gerfaut, who will go to Naples. The departures spread out March at July thus. It is the time of the great departures, because one hardly travels before spring by fear of the storms.
One imagines rather well what could be the mob of the days of loading by seeing two Marseillais signing contract to go during August to the islands of Marseilles - it is indeed in the islands located in front of the port that the great departures took place, which Joinville calls
the Rock of Marseilles (archipelago of the Frioul - Ratonneau island and Pomégues island) - in order to sell wine, fish and meat to with it with
the crew and with the passengers of the ships in departure. One imagines the crowd of retailers and merchants with shouted pressing themselves in the roads, merchants of sandwiches, figs and dry grapes, badgering pilgrims and crew until the moment when the sail was hoisted and where the pilgrim saw little by little moving away the ground, then the place gained to sleep that one had assigned to him, not knowing " if it would not be at the marine resources in the morning ".
In 1130, the lord of Beirut, in Syria, exempted the Marseillais of the import duties and of output and allowed them to have, in its States, of the particular judges for the commercial disputes. Foulques of Anjou, king de Jérusalem, granted to them into 1150 great franknesses.
The pope Innocent IV made a bubble
by which it excommunicated all those which would dare to disturb the Marseillais in the pleasure of these privileges.
Later, the Marseillais helped Baudouin III, rewards some it gave them a large house in Jerusalem. Moreover, the king of Jerusalem still wanted that the Marseillais had in each seaboard town of its kingdom, a furnace, a church and a street and frees them from straight.
The pope Gregoire VIII asked also for the help of the Marseillais for the conquest of the places Saints and our ancestors answered with heat his call. They gained there capacity negotiated freely in the town of Tyr and to establish a consul there.
In 1190, a considerable fleet was equipped in Marseilles; it carried ten thousand Crossed.
Can of time after, one second naval army left our port, assembled by the many one Templiers, Germans
and of the Catalans.
The Marseillais contributed to the catch of Saint-Jean-d’Acre, they were authorized to negotiate freely, to build ships and to establish consuls. Thus the Crusades, whose political results were used only for the strengthening of the royal capacity, extended the trade, the navigation and the influence of Marseilles. Its establishment in the ports of Raising is the first stage of its colonization. It was the first time that a town of France obtained beyond the seas so broad and so serious privileges.
One can thus say, without exaggeration, that the Marseillais were the first collaborator French, the first which carried to far our civilization and our language. It is them still which, the first, instituted the consuls in foreign countries.



THE CRUSADE OF THE CHILDREN (Marseille, 1212).

One knows the painful episode of Crusade of the Children , this troop of teenagers left towards Jerusalem, since Vendômois, to the call of a young shepherd, Etienne.
Arrived into 1212 to Marseilles, these young people were victims of traders without consent there.
Embarked indeed on board naves which, diverted, took them along towards Moslem ports, these innocent was sold there like slaves.
The marked word has this occasion by the pope Innocent III, must be taken again here : « These children make us shame ».


During these crusades of other kinds it is crés, in particular: The Teutonique Command and the Command of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Command Teutonique : The Teutonique Command (in German : Deutscher Ritter Orden), known as still from Holy-Marie-of-Germans, his origin draws from a rescue station installed under the tent, by commercial rich person of Bremen and Lübeck during the seat of Saint-Jean-in Acre, at the moment of the third crusade (1189-1192).


The Command of the SAINT-SEPULCRE OF JERUSALEM : The Command of the Holy Sepulchre must its institution with the antique habit arm with the knights on the tomb of Christ, at the time of the crusades. The historians report that Godefroy de Bouillon founded into 1099 a command of regular canons whose mission was to take care on the Holy Sepulchre and to celebrate the offices there. These monks were placed in 1112 pennies the rule of Saint Augustin by the patriarch of Jerusalem, and confirmed like such ten years afterwards by a bubble of Calixte II But, it is only much later than this command did not become an order of knighthood.