THE
HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES

BY

Joseph Francois Michaud.

TRANSLATED BY W. ROBSON.

A New Edition,

WITH PREFACE AND SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER BY HAMILTON W. MABIE.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,
714 Broadway.

PREFACE.

The publication of a new edition of this standard work finds its justification in the wide-spread interest in historical study and in the importance of the events which it describes with such fullness and accuracy. The popular demand for histories of the best class is unprecedented in the annals of book-making, and is substantial evidence of a growing taste for the most important literature. The standard historians have one after another been published in attractive editions, and are rapidly filling the libraries of English-speaking people everywhere. In this remarkable development of popular interest in historical literature, so striking an episode as that of the Crusades could not be left without its record, and the story is nowhere told so entertainingly and comprehensively as in the pages of Michaud. It is a story worthy of careful study, not only on account of its intrinsic interest, but because of its significance in that larger history of Europe of which it forms, in many respects, the most dramatic and picturesque chapter.

There has been of late an immense advance in the methods of historical investigation, and the contemporaneous historian studies the events which he undertakes to portray from a new standpoint. It would be difficult to find in any other department of literary work a wider difference of method and aim than that which separates Robertson’s Charles V. from Freeman’s Norman Conquest of England. The clue is no longer sought in the hands of trained diplomatists, but in the broad, though less obvious, unfolding of the popular life. To the most advanced school of historians Robin Hood is almost as important as Richard I. The historical writer of the last age worked with a pictorial imagination, weaving his story about the striking characters and episodes of an age; the same writer to-day, with an imagination trained in philosophical methods, discerns the dimly outlined movement of national life behind the pageantry of courts, the struggles of parties, and the rush of events. It is doubtless this very deepening of historical study and broadening of historical effect which has made the history the rival of the romance in popular interest. The studied narrative of Hume repels in spite of its trustworthiness, while Green’s portrayal of the national development against a background of equally trustworthy fact charms a host of readers into repeated perusals.

The epoch of the Crusades is important from the standpoint of either school. Prescott and Professor Seeley would each find in it material to his fancy. Studied with an eye to pictorial effect, what series of events could be more impressive than that which chronicles the successive campaigns to capture and hold Jerusalem? If chivalry was ever anything more than an aftergrowth of fancy and sentiment, it was in the fierce struggles which centered around the Holy City. The virtues of Feudalism were never more strikingly illustrated than during the brief period in which a handful of knights held Jerusalem against a circle of hostile nations. Separated by long and perilous marches from Europe, hemmed in by enemies whose multitude made their own scanty ranks insignificant, sustained by a courage that nothing could daunt, a purpose that nothing could defeat, a skill in arms which made their skeleton armies a host, they long maintained the hopeless struggle of a Christian colony against Asia in arms to destroy it.

Tancred, Godfred de Bouillon, Richard and Saladin, are names which have made knighthood synonymous with honor, loyalty, and courage. Their personal exploits, no less than the larger achievements in which they bore their part, make the age of the Crusades a field from which literature has been enriched with heroic characters and dramatic incidents from the days of Raoul de Caen and Tasso to the present. These expeditions furnish the most striking episode in European history, inspired as they were by religious emotion, prosecuted under the most perilous conditions, displaying in the most effective contrasts the loftiest and the basest passions of men, and foreordained from the beginning to a disastrous failure, which hangs over the narrative as invisibly, but as inevitably, as the doom which overshadows a Greek tragedy. If they had no deeper interest than that which attaches to wide and varied disclosures of character, to vast and varied achievements, these warlike pilgrimages would be worthy the most thoughtful study.

The Crusades have, however, a deeper significance than any isolated personages or events, however picturesque or imposing, ever possess. They brought two civilizations into conflict, and no events are more important than those which secure the contact of different civilizations. In contemporaneous history nothing is so suggestive of change as the wonderful return of Western upon Eastern civilization in Egypt, Syria, India, and Japan. The contact of Western with Eastern knowledge and thought in the Crusades was by no means so fruitful as that which came about through the conquests of Alexander and, later, of Rome, but it was not without great results. The Crusades established an intercourse between the East and the West, which if often hostile, has nevertheless kept an open channel for that interchange of thought and industry, which in the single department of comparative philology has made possible a marvelous advance into an unsuspected region of knowledge. The study of Sanskrit has opened an epoch in historical and literary investigation, which Professor Fiske declares will be not less fruitful in the intellectual progress of the world than was the age of the Renaissance.

The Crusades united for the first time the warring States of Europe in a common purpose and a common enterprise. It accustomed the overburdened people to the thought of a higher authority than that of the special tyranny under which they happened to be born, and so prepared the way for the growth of larger ideas of authority and citizenship. The power of Feudalism was measurably weakened by the disasters which overtook successive expeditions led by the flower of chivalry, and this result made possible the unfolding of the monarchical principle which was to play so important a part in the political development of Europe. In short, the wide disturbance which these successive expeditions to the East introduced, loosened perceptibly the iron framework of feudal tyranny which held European society bound and helpless, and by gradual disintegration prepared the soil for the seeds of popular institutions.

H. W. M.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.

We are not of those who think that readers are without curiosity as to the position in life, actions, and fortunes of the authors who afford them instruction or pleasure; the eagerness with which the birthplaces of men of genius are sought for and commemorated; the fondness with which their most trifling actions are dwelt upon; and the endless collections that are made of their conversations and sayings, prove that this cannot be the case.

In a prefatory memoir, we can scarcely go into so many details of the life of Michaud, as, perhaps, the subject deserves. Michaud was not a mere author, whose history may be read in his works. He lived at a momentous period, and was no idle spectator of passing events; a complete life of Michaud would, indeed, swell to a history of France from 1790 to 1839.

Joseph François Michaud, born at Albens, in Savoy, on the 19th of June, in the year 1767, was descended from a family that traced its nobility beyond the tenth century. One of his ancestors, Hugh Michaud de Corcelles, was deservedly distinguished by the emperor Charles V. The father of Joseph was obliged to leave his country, in consequence of what is termed by his biographer, a piece of boyish rashness, but which we prefer relating to any of the warlike deeds of the abovenamed Hugh. Whilst on a shooting party, he sought refreshment in a cottage, and found the mistress of it in the greatest distress; for, at the moment of his entrance, officers were bearing away her humble furniture, for the paltry sum of sixty francs. He offered to pay the amount if they would come with him to his home; but they refused, and continued their operations in his presence. This irritated him to such a degree, that he threatened to make use of his gun; and, at length, struck one of them so severe a blow with the stock of it, that the fellow died immediately. He retired to a place near Bourg, in Bresse, where he married; and he afterwards established himself as a notary and commissary at Terrier, in that province. An early death left his widow burdened with a numerous family, of which Joseph was the eldest. Notwithstanding this calamity, he received an excellent education at the college of Bourg, and acquired great credit as a rhetorician and a composer of French verses. His studies and some juvenile travels completed, it became necessary for him to fix upon a mode of getting a living; and the narrowness of his mother’s resources confining his efforts to trade, he went into the house of a bookseller at Lyon, attracted, no doubt, by the affinity between the bookseller and the man of letters. He remained here till 1790, when the passage of the rich, influential, and intellectual Countess Fanny de Beauharnais through that city, aroused all the provincial muses to make their offerings to the great lady. Among the poets, Michaud was so successful, that he thought himself warranted in following her to Paris, with the view of pursuing a literary career under her auspices. Immediately on his arrival, he laid the contents of his poetical portfolio before the public, and soon became the associate of Cerisier, in the Gazette Universelle, and with Esménard, in the Postillon de la Guerre. His opinions and early associations led him towards the Royalist party, to which the accession of his talents was very acceptable. He may be said to have been faithful to his colours, through all the disasters of the unhappy cause he had embraced; for, in spite of imprisonment, banishment, and repeated concealments, we find him, in 1799, publishing two satirical pamphlets against Buonaparte, by the orders of Louis XVIII. One of his escapes was so well managed, and so opportunely effected, that we will offer an account of it to our readers. He had been sent prisoner to Paris, walking between two mounted gendarmes, who were directed not to spare him, and if fatigue relaxed his speed, they were to refresh him with the flat sides of their sabres. As he entered Paris in this forlorn condition, he was met by his zealous friend Giguet, whose sorrow only set his fertile brain to work to devise means for his escape. As Michaud was, during many days, conducted from his prison to the Tuileries, to undergo examination, Giguet at first thought that the best way would be to blow out the brains of the two gendarmes that escorted him; but this he rejected as unworthy of a man of genius. Choosing a point in Michaud’s passage that would answer his purpose, he stopped the party, and affecting to know nothing of the matter, and not to have seen his friend since his arrival in Paris, was eager in his inquiries as to how his health was, what he was doing, where he was going, and insisted upon his breakfasting with him. “No, no,” answered Michaud, “I have a little affair yonder, at the Tuileries, just a few words of explanation to give—only the business of a minute or two.—Begin breakfast without me, I shall be back presently.” “That won’t do; that won’t do; they do not despatch people so quickly as all that. Perhaps they won’t begin with you; let us have our breakfast first. I dare say these gentlemen (pointing to the gendarmes) have not breakfasted, and will have no objection to a cutlet and a glass of Bourdeaux wine! and here’s the best house in Paris, close at hand.” The gendarmes, after a little faint hesitation, suffered themselves to be seduced; and prisoner, guards, and friends were soon comfortably seated at table. They eat, they drink, they pass bumper toasts, and talk a little about everything; but most particularly about Bresse and the good cheer that was there always to be met with—but the pullets of Bresse! never was such eating as the pullets of Bresse! The mouths of the gendarmes watered at the bare description of them. “Parbleu, gentlemen,” cried Giguet, “since you have never partaken of our country pullets, I will undertake to convince you that there are none such in the eighty-three departments. We have plenty of time; you can eat a little bit more, and appetite comes with—— drinking (and he filled the glasses). Waiter, here! a Bresse pullet! no tricks, mind; it must be from Bresse—not from Mans. But, stop; Michaud, you understand these things better than anybody; have an eye to these fellows, go down into the kitchen, and see that they don’t cheat us. Good health to you, gentlemen.” Whilst they are drinking, Michaud rises, and is soon out of the house. Giguet had the art to keep the guards another half-hour at table, by saying his friend was only watching the cooking, for a Bresse pullet was worth nothing if not roasted à la Bresse; and when they discovered Michaud was not in the kitchen, he asserted it must either be a joke, or else he was ill, and gone home; and contrived to lead them a long useless search in a way directly opposite to that which he knew the late prisoner had taken. Michaud’s escape was a happy one; for that very day, the council had condemned him to death. Poor Giguet’s friendly zeal cost him nearly a month’s imprisonment, and placed his life even in jeopardy.

The career of Buonaparte was so successful, that, at length, further resistance seemed useless, and Michaud even wrote complimentary verses on the marriage of Napoleon with Maria Louisa, and upon the birth of the young king of Rome. But this submission to circumstances was no voluntary homage; he was still at heart faithfully attached to the Bourbons. For a length of time he resisted the tempting offers of the emperor, and one of his refusals, for its wit, if not for its patriotism, almost deserves to be placed by the side of Andrew Marvel’s. Fontaines, Buonaparte’s emissary, said to him: “There must be an end to all resistance; it is diminishing every day. Come, do as other men do. Look at Delille, for instance, he has just accepted a pension of six thousand francs.” “Oh! as to that,” replied Michaud, “he is so frightened, that he would accept a pension of a hundred thousand francs, if you were to offer it to him.” Posterity, perhaps, may be thankful that he was driven from politics to literature. During one of his necessary exiles, he had written his beautiful poem of “Le Printemps d’un Proscrit:” he afterwards became associated with his brother as a bookseller, and planned and executed the works of which we will furnish a list. Whatever opinion might be entertained of his talents, it is more than probable that without his implied submission to Buonaparte, he never would have obtained that object of the hopes of all French authors, the immortal fauteuil in the Academy. This honour he attained in 1813, and, upon the publication of his fourth volume of the “History of the Crusades,” had the gratification of signing himself “Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem,” and “Knight of the Holy Sepulchre:” titles bestowed upon him, unasked, by the commanders representing the order of St. John of Jerusalem in France.

He watched with intense anxiety the madly ambitious career of Buonaparte, and hailed with unfeigned delight the return of his patrons, the Bourbons. He had no cause to complain of their ingratitude, and occupied as good a position as a literary man could expect, when the escape from Elba, during a hundred days, disturbed his occupations, and placed him in considerable danger. He left Paris; returned again, and put himself forward for a struggle: but finding resistance dangerous and useless, he retired to the department of the Ain, where he concealed himself till the tempest had blown over; his celebrated journal, the Quotidienne, in the mean time, degenerating into the Feuille du Jour, or rather, as a wit said, “La Feuille de la veille ’last night’s journal); for it was only edited by scissors, and contained nothing but scraps from the Moniteur and other inoffensive journals.” The Nain Jaune ’yellow dwarf) took unfair advantage of an enemy, who, he knew, could not answer him, and bestowed upon Michaud the sobriquet of “Grand Master of the Order of the Extinguishers,” which stuck to him with the burlike pertinacity of sobriquets, for many years after the second restoration of the Bourbons. He welcomed this last event by the publication of a pamphlet entitled “The History of the Fifteen Weeks, or the Last Reign of Buonaparte,” which had a great sale, twenty-seven editions of it appearing in a very short period. Having, since his success as an author, separated from his brother as a bookseller, and sold his share in the printing office, he, after 1815, gave himself up to the prosecution of his great work on the crusades, and even parted with his portion of “La Biographie Universelle.” His love of politics led him, at this time, to get returned as deputy for the department of the Ain: but alas! he found it a very different thing for a man with a weak voice, and totally “unaccustomed to public speaking,” to sit and write uncontrolled and unobserved in his closet,—and to be subject to the “retort courteous” of an enemy who watches for your mistakes, corrects your errors, and mercilessly refutes all your favourite arguments: after the trial of one session, he retired from his deputyship, and gave up all hopes of fame as an orator.

During the celebrity of his journal, the Quotidienne, he was made reader to the king, with a salary of 3,000 francs; to which appointment was attached the somewhat strange stipulation, that he should never be called upon to perform its duties. After 1819, when a plan was devised of buying up the influential journals, Michaud and his fellow-proprietors were offered 500,000 francs for theirs, which our author declined. “Monseigneur,” said he to the excellency who solicited him, “there is but one thing for which I could be tempted to sell the Quotidienne, and that would be a little health. If you could give me that, I might allow myself to be corrupted.” The minister, Villéle, returned repeatedly to the charge, but when, in consequence of the increasing weakness of his health, the sexagenarian Michaud parted with the greater part of his shares of the journal, it was only to pass them over to another self, his friend Laurentie.

Whilst carrying on his great work, he had been surprised to meet with a vast quantity of matter which he had not dreamt of when he began it; and he conceived the idea of not only reconstructing his history, but of going to the Holy Land, in search of more information. Although it was too late for such an attempt, his fame procured him encouragement; and the king, Charles X., so far favoured it as to give him 25,000 francs to defray his expenses. He set out at the beginning of 1830. Whatever gratification he derived from his voyage, it must have been sadly damped by the news he received from France during that eventful year. To complete his griefs, he likewise at this period lost 200,000 francs, the greater part of his fortune, which he had imprudently placed in unsafe hands. He still, however, had a moderate competence, and might have passed the remainder of his days in ease, but for that mismanagement to which the families of literary men are so frequently subject. On his return from the Holy Land he sojourned for a time in Italy, where he was kindly welcomed by his natural sovereign, Charles Albert. In 1837 he was named member of the Académie des Inscriptions; but honours from monarchs and academies could not put off the fatal hour, and he died at the elegant village of Passy on the 30th of September, 1839. On this occasion was exhibited an instance of what our poet calls “the ruling passion, strong in death.” Few authors had received more adulation, and no one could be more covetous of it. Extraordinary instances are told of the copious draughts of this intoxicating beverage that were offered to him, and of the greediness with which he swallowed them. “Never,” says his biographer, “although he loved to be called the La Fontaine of journalism, did he think of the second fable of the good man.”[1] One of the most extravagant of his flatterers said to a friend, admitted for a last interview, “With all his weakness, not the least trace of decline of intellect; still the same facility of expression, still the same lucidity.”—This aroused Michaud, upon whom the affectionate words of a sincere friend had just before produced no effect. He started, and sitting upright in his bed, exclaimed, in a tremulous voice, “Yes! yes! still the same! still——” and he sunk exhausted and dying on his pillow: these were his last words!

To criticise the works of Michaud properly would require a volume; we can therefore only lay before our readers a list of such as from their merit and celebrity are ever likely to fall under the eye of English readers. His greatest claim to the attention of posterity is doubtless the one before us, “The History of the Crusades,” of which his biographer, who is certainly less of an eulogist than any one we ever saw assume a similar task, very justly says, “It may be said, without exaggeration, that it is one of the most valuable historical works that our age has produced. To its completion he sacrificed almost every moment of twenty of the best years of his life.” No reader requires to be told that it was a labour of love.—He was the founder of, and a considerable contributor to, “La Biographie Universelle,” a work which England may envy France the conception and execution of; and if to these we add his beautiful poem of “Le Printemps d’un Proscrit,” we think we name all that he wrote that would be interesting at the present day: the other historical works are feeble, and the political squibs of a journalist after a lapse of half a century, are only acceptable to him who may be writing the history of the time. In this latter vein we may, however, suppose him to have excelled; mixed up from an early age with politics and journalism; possessed of a lively imagination and great facility of expression; constantly in the world, and deeply interested in its movements; we can fancy his vers de société, of which so much is said, to have been piquant and sparkling. We subjoin a specimen, written upon Buonaparte’s expedition to Egypt:—

Que de lauriers tombés dans l’eau,
Et que de fortunes perdues!
Que d’hommes courent au tombeau,
Pour porter Bonaparte aux nues!
Ce héros vaut son pesant d’or;
En France, personne n’en doute;
Mais il vaudrait bien plus encore,
S’il valoit tout ce qu’il nous coute.

————

What laurels in the waters fall,
What fortunes sink no more to rise!
What men lie shrouded in death’s pall,
That Bonaparte may gain the skies!
This hero’s worth his weight in gold;
In France of that there’s no one doubts;
But greater far his worth, if sold
At what he costs—or thereabouts!

As a conversationalist his reputation stands even higher than that of our Coleridge; for the stream was quite as constant and abundant, and at the same time much more pellucid. One of our English biographical dictionaries says he was censor of the press under Louis XVIII., but this we believe is not correct; indeed it was an office scarcely suitable for the editor and proprietor of such a journal as the Quotidienne. He was a member of the Academy and of the Institute, a knight of St. John of Jerusalem and of the Holy Sepulchre, and for a short time representative of the department of the Ain. These were his temporary honours—much more durable and brilliant ones belong to him as the author of the work before us.

W. R.

[INTRODUCTION.]

The history of the middle ages presents no spectacle more imposing than the Crusades, in which are to be seen the nations of Asia and of Europe armed against each other, two religions contending for superiority, and disputing the empire of the world. After having been several times threatened by the Mussulmans, and a long time exposed to their invasions, all at once the West arouses itself, and appears, according to the expression of a Greek historian,[2] to tear itself from its foundation, in order to precipitate itself upon Asia. All nations abandon their interests and their rivalries, and see upon the face of the earth but one single country worthy of the ambition of conquerors. One would believe that there no longer exists in the universe any other city but Jerusalem, or any other habitable spot of earth but that which contains the tomb of Jesus Christ. All the roads which lead to the holy city are deluged with blood, and present nothing but the scattered spoils and wrecks of empires.

In this general confusion we may contemplate the sublimest virtues mixed with all the disorders of the wildest passions. The Christian soldiers have at the same time to contend against famine, the influence of climate, and enemies the most formidable; in the greatest dangers, in the midst of their successes and their constant discords, nothing can exhaust either their perseverance or their resignation. After four years of fatigue, of miseries, and of victories, Jerusalem is taken by the Crusaders; but as their conquests are not the work of wisdom and prudence, but the fruit of blind enthusiasm and ill-directed heroism, they create nothing but a transient power.

The banner of the cross soon passes from the hands of Godfrey de Bouillon into those of his weak and imbecile successors. Jerusalem, now a Christian city, is obliged again to apply for succour to the West. At the voice of St. Bernard, the Christians take arms. Conducted by an emperor of Germany and a king of France, they fly to the defence of the Holy Land; but they have no longer great captains among them; they have none of the magnanimity or heroic resignation of their fathers. Asia, which beholds their coming without terror, already presents a new spectacle. The disciples of Mahomet awaken from their apathy; they are at once seized with a frenzy equal to that which had armed their enemies; they oppose enthusiasm to enthusiasm, fanaticism to fanaticism, and in their turn burn with a desire to shed their blood in a religious war.

The spirit of discord which had destroyed their power is no longer felt but among the Christians. Luxury and the manners of the East weaken the courage of the defenders of the cross, and make them forget the object even of the holy war. Jerusalem, which had cost the Crusaders so much blood, falls again into the power of the infidels, and becomes the conquest of a wise and warlike prince, who had united under his banner the forces of Syria and Egypt.

The genius and fortune of Saladin inflict a mortal blow upon the ill-assured power of the Christians in the East. In vain an emperor of the West, and two kings celebrated for their bravery, place themselves at the head of the whole powers of their states to deliver Palestine; these new armies of Crusaders meet everywhere with brave enemies and invincible barriers, and all their united efforts produce nothing but illustrious disasters. The kingdom of Jerusalem, for whose ruins they contend, is no longer anything but a vain name; soon even the captivity and the miseries of the holy city cease to inspire the sentiments of piety and enthusiasm that they had given birth to among the Christians. The Crusaders who had taken up arms for its deliverance, suffer themselves to be seduced by the wealth of Greece, and stop short to undertake the conquest of Constantinople.

From that time the spirit of the Crusaders begins to change; whilst a small number of Christians still shed their blood for the deliverance of the tomb of Jesus Christ, the princes and the knights are deaf to everything but the voice of ambition. The popes complete the corruption of the true spirit of the Crusaders, by urging them on, by their preaching, against other Christian people, and against their own personal enemies. The holy wars then degenerate into civil wars, in which both religion and humanity are outraged.

These abuses of the crusades, and the dire passions which had mixed themselves with them, plunge Europe in disorder and anarchy; when a pious king undertakes once more to arm the powers of the West against the infidels, and to revive among the Crusaders the spirit which had animated the companions of Godfrey. The two wars directed by this pious chief, are more unfortunate than all the others. In the first, the world is presented with the spectacle of a captive army and a king in fetters; in the second, that of a powerful monarch dying in its ashes. Then it is that the illusion disappears, and Jerusalem ceases to attract all the attention of the West.

Soon after, the face of Europe is changed; intelligence dissipates barbarism; the crusades no longer excite the same degree of enthusiasm, and the first effect of the civilization it begins to spread is to weaken the spirit of the fanaticism which had given them birth. Some few useless efforts are at times made to rekindle the fire which had burnt so fiercely in Europe and Asia. The nations are so completely recovered from the pious delirium of the Crusades, that when Germany finds itself menaced by the Mussulmans who are masters of Constantinople, the banner of the cross can with difficulty gather an army around it; and Europe, which had risen in a mass to attack the infidels in Asia, opposes but a feeble resistance to them on its own territories.

Such is, in a few words, the picture of the events and revolutions which the historian of the crusades has to describe. A writer who has preceded us by two centuries and who calls the history of the Crusades a right royal history, is surprised at the silence preserved to his time.[3] “I esteem it,” says he, “a deplorable thing that such persons inferior in no way to those who have been so much celebrated by the Greeks and the Romans, should have fallen into such obscurity, that we search in vain to discover who they were and what they did; and they appear to me highly culpable, who, possessing learning and the skill to write, have left these histories neglected.” Everybody ought now to be of this opinion, and regret that our great writers have not entertained the noble subject of the Crusades. When I undertake to supply the want created by their silence, I am duly impressed with the difficulty of the task.

They who, among us, have written ancient history, had for guides the historians of Rome and Athens. The brilliant colours of Livy, of Tacitus, of Thucydides presented themselves naturally to their pencils; but I have no models to follow, and am compelled to make those historians of the middle ages speak whom our times despise. They have rarely sustained me in my labour by the charm of their style, or the elegance of their narrations; but if they have afforded me no lessons in the art of writing, they transmit to me at least events whose interest will make up for the deficiency of their talent or mine. Perhaps it will be found, in the perusal of this history, that a period in which everything is astonishing loses nothing by being presented in a simple and faithful picture. The unaffected style of our old historians, in my view, appears to reanimate the persons and the characters they describe; and if I have profited by that which they have taught me, the age in which they lived will not be ill represented in my pages. It would have been easy for me to have censured with severity, as has usually been done, their ignorance and their credulity, but I respect in them the frankness and the candour of the periods of which they are the interpreters. Without yielding faith to all they say, I have not disdained the fables they relate to us, and which were believed by their contemporaries; for that which was thought worthy of credit then serves to picture to us the manners of our ancestors, and forms an essential part of the history of past ages.

We do not now require much sagacity to discover in our ancient chronicles what is fabulous and what is not. A far more difficult thing is to reconcile, upon some points, the frequent contradictory assertions of the Latins, the Greeks, and the Saracens, and to separate, in the history of the crusades, that which belongs to religious fanaticism, to policy, or to human passions. I do not pretend to resolve more skilfully than others these difficult problems, or to elevate myself above my subject, by offering positive judgments upon the nations and ages which will present themselves before me. Without giving myself up to digressions in which it is always easy to make a display of learning, after having scrupulously examined the historical monuments which remain to us, I will tell honestly what I believe to be the truth, and will leave dissertations to the erudite, and conjectures to philosophers.

In an age in which some value is set upon an opinion of the crusades, it will be first asked, if the wars of the Crusades were just. Upon this head we have but little to answer: whilst the Crusaders believed that they were obeying God himself, by attacking the Saracens in the East, the latter, who had invaded a part of Asia possessed by Christian people, who had got possession of Spain, who threatened Constantinople, the coasts of Italy, and several countries of the West, did not reproach their enemies with making an unjust war, and left to fortune and victory the care of deciding a question almost always useless.

We shall think it of more importance in this history to examine what was the cause and the nature of these remote wars, and what has proved to be their influence on civilization. The crusades were produced by the religious and military spirit which prevailed in Europe during the middle ages. The love of arms and religious fervour were two dominant passions, which, mingling in some way, lent each other a mutual energy. These two great principles united and acting together, gave birth to the holy war; and carried, among the Crusaders, valour, resignation, and heroism of character to the highest degree of eminence.

The part which the union of these two principles necessarily had in the undertaking of the holy wars will be plainly perceived in our narration. It will be much less easy for us to make all the results of the crusades appreciated. Some writers have seen nothing in these great expeditions but the most deplorable excesses, without any advantage to the ages that succeeded them; others, on the contrary, maintain that we owe to them all the benefits of civilization. It is not, at present, my business to examine these two conflicting opinions. Without believing that the holy wars have done either all the good or all the harm that is attributed to them, it must be admitted that they were a source of bitter sorrow to the generations that saw them or took part in them; but, like the ills and tempests of human life, which render man better, and often assist the progress of his reason, they have forwarded the experiences of nations; and it may be said, that after having for a time seriously agitated and shaken society, they have, in the end, much strengthened the foundations of it. This opinion, when stripped of all spirit of exaggeration or system, will, perhaps, appear the most reasonable; I, besides, experience some pleasure in adopting it, from its being consolatory to the age in which we live. The present generation which has witnessed the outbreak of so many passions on the political scene, which has passed through so many calamities, will not see without interest that Providence sometimes employs great revolutions to enlighten mankind, and to ensure the future prosperity of empires.

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

HISTORY

OF

THE CRUSADES.

BOOK I.

A.D. 300-1095.

From the earliest ages of the Church, a custom had been practised of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Judea, full of religious remembrances, was still the promised land of the faithful; the blessings of heaven appeared to be in store for those who visited Calvary, the tomb of Jesus Christ, and renewed their baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Under the reign of Constantine, the ardour for pilgrimages increased among the faithful; they flocked from all the provinces of the empire to worship Jesus Christ upon his own tomb, and to trace the steps of their God in that city which had but just resumed its name, and which the piety of an emperor had caused to issue from its ruins. The Holy Sepulchre presented itself to the eyes of the pilgrims surrounded by a magnificence which redoubled their veneration. An obscure cavern had become a marble temple, paved with precious stones and decorated with splendid colonnades. To the east of the Holy Sepulchre appeared the church of the Resurrection, in which they could admire the riches of Asia, mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome. Constantine celebrated the thirty-first year of his reign by the inauguration of this church, and thousands of Christians came, on occasion of this solemnity, to listen to the panegyric of Christ from the lips of the learned and holy bishop Eusebius.

St. Helena, the mother of the emperor, repaired to Jerusalem, at a very advanced age, and caused churches and chapels to be built upon Mount Tabor, in the city of Nazareth, and in the greater part of the places which Christ had sanctified by his presence and his miracles. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land became much more frequent. The pilgrims, no longer in dread of the persecutions of the Pagans, could now give themselves up, without fear, to the fervour of their devotion; the Roman eagles, ornamented with the cross of Jesus Christ, protected them on their march; they everywhere trampled underfoot the fragments of idols, and they travelled amidst the abodes of their fellow-Christians.

When the emperor Julian, in order to weaken the authority of the prophecies, undertook to rebuild the temple of the Jews, numerous were the prodigies related by which God confounded his designs, and Jerusalem, for that attempt even, became more dear to the disciples of Jesus Christ. The Christians did not cease to visit Palestine. St. Jerome, who, towards the end of the fourth century, had retired to Bethlehem, informs us in one of his letters that pilgrims arrived in crowds in Judea, and that around the holy tomb the praises of the Son of God were to be heard, uttered in many languages. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were so numerous, that several doctors and fathers of the Church thought it their duty to point out the abuses and danger of the practice. They told Christians that long voyages might turn them aside from the path of salvation; that their God was not confined to one city; that Jesus Christ was everywhere where faith and good works were to be found; but such was the blind zeal which then drew the Christians towards Jerusalem, that the voice of the holy doctors was scarcely heard.[4] The counsels of enlightened piety were not able to abate the ardour of the pilgrims, who believed they should be wanting in faith and zeal, if they did not adore Jesus Christ in the very places where, according to the expression of St. Jerome, the light of the gospel first shone from the top of the holy cross.

As soon as the people of the West became converted to Christianity, they turned their eyes to the East. From the depths of Gaul, from the forests of Germany, from all the countries of Europe, new Christians were to be seen hastening to visit the cradle of the faith they had embraced. An itinerary for the use of pilgrims served them as a guide from the banks of the Rhone and the Dordogne to the shores of the Jordan, and conducted them, on their return, from Jerusalem to the principal cities of Italy.[5]

When the world was ravaged by the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals, the pilgrimages to the Holy Land were not at all interrupted. Pious travellers were protected by the hospitable virtues of the barbarians, who began to respect the cross of Christ, and sometimes even followed the pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these times of trouble and desolation, a poor pilgrim, who bore his scrip and staff, often passed through fields of carnage, and travelled without fear amidst armies which threatened the empires of the East and the West.

Illustrious families of Rome came to seek an asylum at Jerusalem, and upon the tomb of Jesus Christ. Christians then found, on the banks of the Jordan, that peace which seemed to be banished from the rest of the world. This peace, which lasted several centuries, was not troubled before the reign of Heraclius. Under this reign, the armies of Cosroës, king of Persia, invaded Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; the holy city fell into the hands of the worshippers of fire; the conquerors bore away into captivity vast numbers of Christians, and profaned the churches of Jesus Christ. All the faithful deplored the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and shed tears when they learned that the king of Persia had carried off, among the spoils of the vanquished, the cross of the Saviour, which had been preserved in the church of the Resurrection.

Heaven, at length, touched by the prayers and affliction of the Christians, blessed the arms of Heraclius, who, after ten years of reverses, triumphed over the enemies of Christianity and the empire, and brought back to Jerusalem the Christians whose chains he had broken. Then was to be seen an emperor of the East, walking barefooted in the streets of the holy city, carrying on his shoulders to the summit of Calvary, the wood of the true cross, which he considered the most glorious trophy of his victories. This imposing ceremony was a festival for the people of Jerusalem and the Christian church, which, latter still, every year celebrates the memory of it.[6] When Heraclius re-entered Constantinople, he was received as the liberator of the Christians, and the kings of the West sent ambassadors to congratulate him.

But the joy of the faithful was not of long duration. Towards the beginning of the seventh century there had arisen, in an obscure corner of Asia, a new religion, opposed to all others, which preached dominion and war. Mahomet had promised the conquest of the world to his disciples, who had issued almost naked from the deserts of Arabia. By his passionate doctrine he was able to inflame the imagination of the Arabs, and on the field of battle knew how to inspire them with his own impetuous courage. His first successes, which must have greatly exceeded his hopes, were like so many miracles, increasing the confidence of his partisans, and carrying conviction to the minds of the weak and wavering. The political state of the East seemed to offer no obstacle to the progress of a sect, which, from its birth, showed itself everywhere with fire and sword. The worship of the Magi was sinking into contempt; the Jews scattered throughout Asia were opposed to the Sabeans, and divided amongst themselves; and the Christians, under the names of Eutychians, Nestorians, Maronites, and Jacobites, were engaged in heaping, reciprocally, anathemas upon one another. The empire of Persia, torn by intestine wars, and attacked by the barbarous races of Tartary, had lost both its power and splendour; that of the Greeks, weakened both within and without, was hastening to its fall; “every thing was perishing in the East,” says Bossuet. A new religion, a new empire, sprang up easily in the midst of ruins. The armed doctrine of Mahomet invaded, within a very short period, the three Arabias, a part of Syria, and a large division of Persia.

After the death of the Prophet of Mecca, his lieutenants and the companions of his first exploits carried on his great work. The sight of conquered provinces only increased the fanaticism and the bravery of the Saracens. They had no fear of death in the field of battle, for, according to the words of their prophet, paradise, with all its voluptuous pleasures, awaited those who precipitated themselves upon the enemy, and behind them hell opened its abysses. Their conquests were so much the more rapid, from their uniting, in their military and religious government, the prompt decision of despotism with all the passions that are met with in a republic. Masters of Persia and Syria, they soon took possession of Egypt; their victorious battalions flowed on into Africa, planted the standard of the Prophet upon the ruins of Carthage, and carried the terror of their arms to the shores of the Atlantic. From India to the Straits of Cadiz, and from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, language, manners, religion, everything was changed; what had remained of Paganism was annihilated, together with the worship of the Magi; Christianity scarcely subsisted, and Europe itself was threatened with a similar destruction. Constantinople, which was the bulwark of the West, saw before its walls innumerable hordes of Saracens: several times besieged both by sea and land, the city of Constantine only owed its safety to the Greek fire, to the assistance of the Bulgarians, and to the inexperience of the Arabs in the art of navigation.

During the first age of the Hegira, the conquests of the Mussulmans were only bounded by the sea which separated them from Europe; but when they had constructed vessels, no nation was safe from their invasion; they ravaged the isles of the Mediterranean, the coasts of Italy and Greece; fortune or treason made them masters of Spain, where they overturned the monarchy of the Goths; they took advantage of the weakness of the children of Clovis to penetrate into the southern provinces of Gaul, and were only stopped in their invasions by the victories of Charles Martel.

Amidst the first conquests of the Saracens, they had turned their eyes towards Jerusalem. According to the faith of the Mussulmans, Mahomet had been in the city of David and Solomon; it was from Jerusalem that he set out to ascend into heaven in his nocturnal voyage. The Saracens considered Jerusalem as the house of God, as the city of saints and miracles. A short time after the death of the Prophet, the soldiers of Omar besieged it. The Christians, animated by despair, swore to defend the city. The siege lasted four months, each day being marked by sorties or attacks; the Saracens approaching the walls repeating the words of the Koran “Let us enter into the holy land which God has promised us.” After enduring all the miseries of a long siege, the inhabitants of Jerusalem at length surrendered to the caliph Omar, who himself came into Palestine to receive the keys and the submission of the conquered city.

The Christians had the grief of seeing the church of the Holy Sepulchre profaned by the presence of the chief of the infidels. The patriarch Sophronius, who accompanied the caliph, could not refrain from repeating these words of Daniel, “The abomination of desolation is in the holy place.” Jerusalem was filled with mourning, a gloomy silence reigned in the churches, and in all the places in which the hymns of the Christians had so long resounded. Although Omar had left them the exercise of their worship, they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The bell no longer summoned the faithful to prayer; the pomp of ceremonies was interdicted, and religion appeared but as a desolate widow. The caliph ordered a mosque to be erected on the spot whereon the temple of Solomon had been built. The aspect of this edifice, consecrated to the worship of the infidels, still further increased the affliction of the Christians. History relates that the patriarch Sophronius was unable to support the sight of so many profanations, and died in despair, deploring the misfortunes and captivity of the holy city.

In the mean time, the presence of Omar, of whose moderation the East boasts, restrained the jealous fanaticism of the Mussulmans. After his death the faithful had much more to suffer; they were driven from their houses, insulted in their churches; the tribute which they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine was increased, and they were forbidden to carry arms or to mount on horseback. A leathern girdle, which they were never allowed to be without, was the badge of their servitude; the conquerors would not permit the Christians to speak the Arab tongue, sacred to the disciples of the Koran; and the people who remained faithful to Jesus Christ had not liberty even to pronounce the name of the patriarch of Jerusalem without the permission of the Saracens.

All these persecutions could not stop the crowd of Christians who repaired to Jerusalem; the sight of the holy city sustaining their courage as it heightened their devotion. There were no evils, no outrages, that they could not support with resignation, when they remembered that Christ had been loaded with chains, and had died upon the cross in the places they were about to visit. Among the faithful of the West who arrived in Asia in the midst of the early conquests of the Mussulmans, history has preserved the names of St. Arculphus and St. Antoninus of Plaisance.[7] The latter had borne arms with distinction, when he determined to follow the pilgrims who were setting out for Jerusalem. He traversed Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. On his arrival on the banks of the Jordan, Judea had not yet fallen into the hands of the infidels; but the fame of their victories already filled the East, and their armies were threatening the holy city. Several years after the pilgrimage of St. Antoninus, Arculphus, accompanied by Peter, a French hermit, set out from the coast of England in a vessel bound for Syria. He remained nine months at Jerusalem, then under the dominion of the enemies of Christ. On his return to Europe, he related what he had seen in Palestine, and in all the sacred spots visited by the pilgrims of the West. The account of his pilgrimage was drawn up by a holy monk of the Hebrides, for the information and edification of the faithful.

The Christians of Palestine, however, enjoyed some short intervals of security during the civil wars of the Mussulmans.[8] If they were not freed from their bondage, they could at least weep in peace upon the tomb of Christ. The dynasty of the Ommiades, which had established the seat of the Mussulman empire at Damascus, was always odious to the ever-formidable party of the Alides, and employed itself less in persecuting the Christians than in preserving its own precarious power. Merwan II., the last caliph of this house, was the most cruel towards the disciples of Christ; and when he, with all his family, sunk under the power of his enemies, the Christians and the infidels united in thanks to heaven for having delivered the East from his tyranny.

The Abassides, established in the city of Bagdad, which they had founded, persecuted and tolerated the Christians by turns. The Christians, always living between the fear of persecution and the hope of a transient security, saw at last the prospect of happier days dawn upon them with the reign of Haroun al Raschid, the greatest caliph of the race of Abbas. Under this reign the glory of Charlemagne, which had reached Asia, protected the churches of the East.[9] His pious liberality relieved the indigence of the Christians of Alexandria, of Carthage, and Jerusalem. The two greatest princes of their age testified their mutual esteem by frequent embassies: they sent each other magnificent presents; and, in the friendly intercourse of two powerful monarchs, the East and the West exchanged the richest productions of their soil and their industry. The presents of Haroun created a lively surprise in the court of Charlemagne, and gave a high idea of the arts and riches of Asia. The monarch of the Franks took pleasure in showing to the envoys of the caliph the magnificence of the religious ceremonies of the Christians. Witnesses, at Aix-la-Chapelle, of several processions, in which the clergy had exhibited all their most precious ornaments, the ambassadors, on their return to Bagdad, reported that they had seen men of gold.

There was no doubt policy in the marks of esteem which Haroun lavished upon the most powerful of the princes of the West. He was making war against the emperors of Constantinople, and might justly fear that they would interest the bravest among Christian people in their cause. The popular traditions of Byzantium foretold that the Latins would some day be the liberators of Greece; and in one of the first sieges of Constantinople by the Saracens, the report only of the arrival of the Franks had reanimated the courage of the besieged, and carried terror into the ranks of the Mussulmans. In the time of Haroun, the name of Jerusalem already exercised so powerful an influence over the Christians of the West, that it was sufficient to rouse their warlike enthusiasm, and raise armies to serve against the infidels. To take from the Franks every pretext for a religious war, which might make them embrace the cause of the Greeks, and draw them into Asia, the caliph neglected no opportunity of obtaining the friendship of Charlemagne; and caused the keys of the holy city and of the holy sepulchre[10] to be presented to him. This homage, rendered to the greatest of the Christian monarchs, was celebrated with enthusiasm in contemporary legends, which afterwards caused it to be believed that this prince had made the voyage and completed the conquest of Jerusalem.[11]

Haroun treated the Christians of the Latin Church as his own subjects; and the children of the caliph imitated his moderation. Under their sway, Bagdad was the abode of the sciences and the arts. The caliph Almamon, says an Arabian historian, was not ignorant that they who labour in the advancement of reason are the elect of God. Intelligence polished the manners of the chiefs of Islamism, and inspired them with a toleration till that time unknown to Mussulmans. Whilst the Arabians of Africa were pursuing their conquests towards the West, whilst they took possession of Sicily, and Rome itself saw its suburbs and its churches of St. Peter and St. Paul invaded and pillaged by infidels, the servants of Jesus Christ prayed in peace within the walls of Jerusalem.[12] The pilgrims of the West, who arrived there without danger, were received in an hospital, the foundation of which was attributed to Charlemagne. According to the report of the monk Bernard,[13] who himself performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, about the middle of the ninth century, the hospital for the pilgrims of the Latin Church was composed of twelve houses or hostelries. To this pious establishment were attached fields, vineyards, and a garden, situated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. This hospital, like those which the emperor of the West founded in the north of Europe, had a library always open to Christians and travellers. From the tenth century there existed in the neighbourhood of the Fountain of Siloë, a cemetery, in which were interred the pilgrims who died at Jerusalem. Among the tombs of the faithful dwelt the servants of God. This place, says the relation of St. Antoninus, covered with fruit-trees, dotted with sepulchres and humble cells, brings together the dead and the living, and presents at once a cheerful and a melancholy picture.

To the desire of visiting the tomb of Jerusalem was joined the earnest wish to procure relics, which were then sought for with eagerness by the devotion of the faithful. All who returned from the East made it their glory to bring back to their country some precious remains of Christian antiquity, and above all the bones of holy martyrs, which constituted the ornament and the riches of their churches, and upon which princes and kings swore to respect truth and justice. The productions of Asia likewise attracted the attention of the people of Europe. We read in[14] Gregory of Tours, that the wine of Gaza was celebrated in France in the reign of Gontran;[15] that the silk and precious stones of the East added to the splendour of the dresses of the great and the noble; and that St. Eloi, at the court of Dagobert, did not disdain to clothe himself in the rich stuffs of Asia. Commerce attracted a great number of Europeans to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans,—the merchants of Amalfi and Marseilles,—had all stores at Alexandria, in the maritime cities of Phenicia, and in the city of Jerusalem. Before the church of St. Marie-la-Latine, says the monk Bernard, already quoted, extended a large place or square, which was called the Market of the Franks. Every year, on the 15th of September, a fair was opened on Mount Calvary, in which were exchanged the productions of Europe for those of the East.

Greek and Syrian Christians were established even in the city of Bagdad, where they devoted themselves to trade, exercised the art of medicine, and cultivated the sciences. They attained by their learning the most considerable employments, and sometimes even obtained the command of cities and the government of provinces. One of the caliphs of the race of Abbas[16] declared that the disciples of Christ were the most worthy to be trusted with the administration of Persia. In short, the Christians of Palestine and the Mussulman provinces, the pilgrims and travellers who returned from the East, seemed no longer to have any persecutions to dread, when all at once new storms broke out in the East. The children of Haroun soon shared the fate of the posterity of Charlemagne, and Asia, like the West, was plunged into the horrors of anarchy and civil war.

As the empire founded by Mahomet had for its principle the spirit of conquest; as the state was not defended by any provident institution; and as all depended upon the personal character of the prince, it might easily be perceived that symptoms of decay began to appear as soon as there remained nothing else to conquer, and the chiefs ceased either to make themselves feared or to inspire respect. The caliphs of Bagdad, rendered effeminate by luxury, and corrupted by long prosperity, abandoned the cares of empire, buried themselves in their seraglios, and appeared to reserve to themselves no other right than that of being named in the public prayers. The Arabians were no longer governed by that blind zeal, and that ardent fanaticism which they had brought from the desert. Degenerated, like their chiefs, they no longer resembled their warlike ancestors, who would weep at not having been present at a battle. The authority of the caliphs had lost its true defenders; and when despotism surrounded itself with slaves purchased on the banks of the Oxus, this foreign militia, called in to defend the throne, only precipitated its fall. New sectaries, seduced by the example of Mahomet, and persuaded that the world would obey those who should change its manners or opinions, added the danger of religious dissensions to that of political troubles. In the midst of the general confusion, the emirs or lieutenants, of whom several governed vast kingdoms, no longer offered anything beyond a vain homage to the successor of the Prophet, and refused to send him either money or troops. The gigantic empire of the Abassides crumbled away on all sides, and the world, according to the expression of an Arabian writer, was within the reach of him who would take possession of it. The spiritual power was itself divided; Islamism beheld at one time five caliphs, each of whom assumed the title of commander of the faithful, and vicar of Mahomet.

The numerous dynasties which sprung up amidst the troubles of Asia, shared amongst them the spoils of the sovereigns of Bagdad; those which ruled over Persia and upon the banks of the Tigris, under the pretence of defending the Mussulman religion, subjected their spiritual chiefs to the most humiliating subserviency. At the same time the Fatimites, who pretended to be descended from Aly, and who had usurped the title of caliph, raised armies, and launched anathemas against the Abassides; they had taken possession of Egypt, and they threatened to invade Syria, and to march to Bagdad, and dethrone the vicars of the Prophet.

The Greeks then appeared to rouse themselves from their long supineness, and sought to take advantage of the divisions and the humiliation of the Saracens. Nicephorus Phocas took the field at the head of a powerful army, and recaptured Antioch from the Mussulmans. Already the people of Constantinople celebrated his triumphs, and styled him “the star of the East, the death and the scourge of the infidels.” He might, perhaps, have merited these titles, if the Greek clergy had seconded his efforts. Nicephorus was desirous of giving to this war[17] a religious character, and to place in the rank of martyrs all who should fall in prosecuting it. The prelates of his empire condemned his design as sacrilegious, and opposed to him a canon of St. Basil, the text of which recommended to him who had killed an enemy to abstain during three years from a participation in the holy mysteries. Deprived of the powerful stimulus of fanaticism, Nicephorus found among the Greeks more panegyrists than soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against the Saracens, to whom, even in their decline, religion prescribed resistance and promised victory. His triumphs, which were celebrated at Constantinople with enthusiasm, were confined to the taking of Antioch, and only served to create a persecution against the Christians of Palestine. The patriarch of Jerusalem, accused of keeping up an understanding with the Greeks, expired at the stake, and several churches of the holy city were consigned to the flames.

A Greek army, under the command of Temelicus, had advanced to the gates of Amida, a city situated on the banks of the Tigris. This army was attacked, in the midst of a hurricane, by the Saracens, who routed it, and made a great number of prisoners. The Christian soldiers who fell into the hands of the infidels, heard, in the prisons of Bagdad, of the death of Nicephorus; and as Zimisces, his successor, gave no attention to their deliverance, their chief wrote to him in these terms: “You who leave us to perish in an accursed land, and who do not deem us worthy to be buried, according to Christian usages, in the tombs of our fathers, we cannot recognize you as the legitimate chief of the holy Greek empire. If you do not avenge those who fell before Amida, and those who now sigh in foreign lands, God will demand a strict account of them of you, at the terrible day of judgment.” When Zimisces received this letter at Constantinople, says an Armenian historian,[18] he was penetrated with grief, and resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon religion and the empire. On all sides preparations were set on foot for a fresh war against the Saracens. The nations of the West were no strangers to this enterprize, which preceded, by more than a year, the first of the Crusades. Venice, which then enjoyed the commerce of the East, forbade her people, under pain of death, to convey to the Mussulmans of Africa and Asia, either iron, wood, or any species of arms. The Christians of Syria and several Armenian princes repaired to the standard of Zimisces, who took the field, and carried war into the territories of the Saracens. So great was the confusion which then prevailed among the Mussulman powers, and with such rapidity did one dynasty succeed to another, that history can scarcely distinguish what prince,[19] or what people ruled over Palestine and Jerusalem. After having defeated the Mussulmans on the banks of the Tigris, and forced the caliph of Bagdad to pay a tribute to the successors of Constantine, Zimisces penetrated, almost without resistance, into Judea, took possession of Cesarea, of Ptolemaïs, of Tiberias, Nazareth, and several other cities of the Holy Land. He was encamped upon Tabor when he received a deputation of the inhabitants of Ramala and Jerusalem, who promised him obedience, and required of him troops to defend their cities. Zimisces received their submission and their request favourably,[20] and pursued the wreck of the Saracen army, which had sought refuge in some cities of Phenicia and in the mountains of Libanus.

After this first campaign, the Holy Land appeared to be on the eve of being delivered entirely from the yoke of the infidels, when the emperor died poisoned. His death at once put a stop to the execution of an enterprize of which he was the soul and the leader. The Christian nations had scarcely time to rejoice at the delivery of Jerusalem, when they learnt that the holy city had again fallen into the hands of the Fatimite caliphs, who, after the death of Zimisces, had invaded Syria and Palestine.

The caliphs of Cairo, who had taken advantage of the transient conquests of the Greeks to extend their empire, at first treated the Christians as allies and auxiliaries. In the hope of enriching their new dominions and repairing the evils of war, they favoured the commerce of the Europeans, and tolerated the devotion of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The markets of the Franks were re-established in the city of Jerusalem; the Christians rebuilt the hospitals of the pilgrims, and the churches which were falling to decay. They began to forget the peaceful domination of the Abassides, and felicitated themselves upon living under the laws of the sovereigns of Cairo; and still greater right had they to hope that all their troubles were about to be at an end, when they saw the caliph Hakim, whose mother was a Christian, ascend the throne. But God, who, according to the expression of contemporary authors, wished to try the virtues of the faithful, did not long delay to confound their hopes and raise new persecutions against them.

Hakim, the third of the Fatimite caliphs, signalized his reign by all the excesses of fanaticism and outrage. Unfixed in his own projects, and wavering between two religions, he by turns protected and persecuted Christianity. He respected neither the policy of his predecessors nor the laws which he himself had established. He changed, on the morrow, that which he had ordained the preceding day, and spread disorder and confusion throughout his dominions. In the extravagance of his mind and the intoxication of power, he carried his madness so far as to believe himself a god. The terror which he inspired procured him worshippers, and altars were raised to him in the neighbourhood of Fostat, which he had given up to the flames. Sixteen thousand of his subjects prostrated themselves before him, and adored him as sovereign of the living and the dead.

Hakim despised Mahomet, but the Mussulmans were too numerous in his states to allow him to think of persecuting them. The god trembled for the authority of the prince, and allowed all his anger to fall upon the Christians, whom he gave up to the fury of their enemies. The places which the Christians held in the administration, and the abuses introduced into the mode of levying the imposts, with which duty they were charged, had drawn upon them the hatred of all the Mussulmans. When the caliph Hakim had once given the signal for persecution, he found himself at no loss for executioners. At first, they who had abused their power were the objects of pursuit; the Christian religion became the next crime, and the most pious among the faithful were deemed the most guilty. The blood of the Christians flowed in all the cities of Egypt and Syria, their courage in the midst of torments only adding to the hatred of their persecutors. The complaints which escaped them in their sufferings, the prayers, even, which they addressed to Jesus Christ to put an end to their evils, were considered as a revolt, and punished as the most guilty treasons.

It is probable that motives of policy joined with those of fanaticism in the persecution of the Christians. Gerbert, archbishop of Ravenna, who had become pope, under the name of Sylvester II., had witnessed the ills to which the faithful were subjected in their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. On his return he excited the nations of the West to take up arms against the Saracens. In his exhortations, he made Jerusalem herself speak, made her deplore her misfortunes, and conjure her Christian children to hasten and break her chains. The people were deeply moved with the complaints and groans of Sion. The Pisans, the Genoese, with Boson, king of Arles, undertook a maritime expedition against the Saracens, and made an incursion upon the coasts of Syria. These hostilities, and the number of the pilgrims, which increased every day, might well create distrust in the masters of the East. The Saracens, alarmed by sinister predictions, and by the imprudent menaces of the Christians, saw nothing but enemies in the disciples of Christ; from that time terror and death guarded the gates of Jerusalem.

It is impossible, says William of Tyre, to describe all the species of persecutions to which the Christians were then exposed. Among the instances of barbarity cited by the historians, there is one which gave to Tasso the idea of his affecting episode of Olindus and Sophronia. One of the bitterest enemies of the Christians, in order to increase the hatred of their persecutors, threw, in the night, a dead dog into one of the principal mosques of the city. The first who repaired thither to morning prayer were seized with horror at the sight of this profanation, and proclaimed their anger aloud. Threatening clamours soon resounded in every part of the city; the crowd assembled in a state of tumultuous excitement around the mosque; the Christians were at once accused of this act of sacrilege, and all swore to wash out the outrage to their prophet in the blood of the perpetrators. All Christians were about to be immolated to the revenge of the Mussulmans, and already were they prepared for death, when a young man, whose name history has not preserved, presented himself in the midst of them. “The greatest misfortune that could happen,” said he, “would be that the church of Jerusalem should perish. When a people is threatened with destruction, it is just that a single man should sacrifice himself for the salvation of all; I here and now offer myself as a victim to die for you; to you I leave the charge of doing justice to my memory, and I recommend myself to your prayers.” After pronouncing these words, which dissolved the assembly in tears, he quitted them, and repaired to the chiefs of the Mussulmans; he declared himself alone to be the author of the crime imputed to the Christians, and invoked upon himself the death with which his brethren were menaced. The Mussulmans, without being in the least touched by his generous devotion, were satisfied with the victim who offered himself to their vengeance: the sword was no longer suspended over the heads of the Christians, and he who had immolated himself for their safety, went, according to the expression of William of Tyre,[21] to receive in heaven the reward reserved for those whose minds burn with a love of perfect charity.

Nevertheless, other misfortunes awaited the Christians of Palestine; all religious ceremonies were interdicted; the greater part of the churches were converted into stables; that of the Holy Sepulchre was completely destroyed. The Christians, driven from Jerusalem, were scattered throughout the countries of the East. Old historians relate, that the world took part in the mourning of the holy city, and was seized with trouble and consternation. Winter, with its frosts and storms, showed itself in regions where, till that time, it had been unknown. The Bosphorus and the Nile bore sheets of ice upon their bosoms. Earthquakes were felt in Syria and Asia Minor; and their shocks, which were repeated during two months, destroyed several large cities. When the account of the destruction of the holy places arrived in the West, it drew tears from all true Christians. We read in the chronicle of the monk Glaber, that Europe had likewise been presented with signs which foreboded great calamities: a shower of stones had fallen in Burgundy, and a comet and threatening meteors had appeared in the heavens. The agitation was extreme among all Christian nations; nevertheless, they did not take up arms against the Mussulmans, but the whole of their vengeance fell upon the Jews, whom all Europe accused of having provoked the fury of the infidels.

The calamities of the holy city rendered it still more venerable in the eyes of the faithful; persecution redoubled the pious delirium of those who went into Asia to contemplate a city covered with ruins, and to behold an empty sepulchre. It was in Jerusalem, filled with mourning, that God most manifestly distributed his blessings and delighted to point out his will. Impostors constantly took advantage of this opinion of the Christian people, to mislead the credulity of the multitude. To gain credit for their words, it was quite sufficient to exhibit letters which, they said, had fallen from heaven into Jerusalem. At this period, a prediction, which announced[22] the end of the world and the approaching coming of Jesus Christ into Palestine, very much increased the veneration of the people for the holy places. The Christians of the West arrived in crowds at Jerusalem, with the design of dying there, or there awaiting the coming of the sovereign judge. The monk Glaber informs us, that the affluence of pilgrims surpassed all that could be expected from the devotion of these remote times. First were seen on the holy march the poor and the lower classes, then counts, barons, and princes, all reckoning as nothing the grandeurs of the earth.

The inconstancy of Hakim had, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor, guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians.

In the eleventh century the Latin Church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain. This mode of performing penance agreed better with the active and restless character of the people of the West. It ought to be added, that the devotion of pilgrimages, whatever may be the opinion of an enlightened philosophy, has been received, and even encouraged, in all religions. It belongs, too, to a sentiment natural to man. If the sight of a land once inhabited by heroes and sages awakens in us touching and noble remembrances; if the soul of the philosopher finds itself agitated at the sight of the ruins of Palmyra, Babylon, or Athens; what lively emotions must not the Christians have felt on beholding places which God had sanctified by his presence and his blessings?

The Christians of the West, almost all unhappy in their own countries, and who often lost the sense of their evils in long voyages, appeared to be only employed in seeking upon earth the traces of a consoling and helpful divinity, or of some holy personage. There existed no province without its martyr or its apostle, whose support they went to implore; there was no city or secluded spot which did not preserve the tradition of a miracle, or had not a chapel open to pilgrims. The most guilty of sinners, or the most fervent of the faithful, exposed themselves to the greatest perils, and repaired to the most distant places. Sometimes they directed their steps to Apulia and Calabria, they visited Mount Gargan, celebrated by the apparition of St. Michael, or Mount Cassin, rendered famous by the miracles of St. Benedict; sometimes they traversed the Pyrenees, and, in a country given up to the Saracens, esteemed themselves happy in praying before the relics of St. Jago, the patron saint of Galicia. Some, like King Robert, went to Rome, and prostrated themselves on the tombs of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul; others travelled as far as Egypt, where Christ had passed his infancy, and penetrated to the solitudes of Scete and Memphis, inhabited by the disciples of Anthony and Paul.

A great number of pilgrims undertook the voyage to Palestine; they entered Jerusalem by the gate of Ephraim where they paid a tribute to the Saracens. After having prepared themselves by fasting and prayer, they presented themselves in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, covered with a funeral cloth or robe, which they preserved with care during the remainder of their lives, and in which they were buried after their death. They viewed with holy respect Mount Sion, the Mount of Olives, and the Valley of Jehoshaphat; they quitted Jerusalem to visit Bethlehem, where the Saviour of the world was born; Mount Tabor, rendered sacred by the transfiguration; and all the places memorable for his miracles. The pilgrims next bathed in the waters of the Jordan,[23] and gathered in the territory of Jericho palms which they bore back as evidences and relics to the West.

Such were the devotion and spirit of the tenth and eleventh centuries, that the greater part of the Christians would have thought themselves wanting in the duties of religion if they had not performed some pilgrimage. He who had escaped from a danger, or triumphed over his enemies, assumed the pilgrim’s staff, and took the road to the holy places; he who had obtained by his prayers the preservation of a father or of a son, went to return his thanks to heaven far from his domestic hearth, in places rendered holy by religious traditions. A father often devoted his child in the cradle to a pilgrimage, and the first duty of an affectionate and obedient son, when past the age of childhood, was to accomplish the vow of his parents. More than once a dream, a vision in the midst of sleep, imposed upon a Christian the obligation of performing a pilgrimage. Thus, the idea of these pious journeys mixed itself up with all the affections of the heart, and with all the prejudices of the human mind.

Pilgrims were welcomed everywhere, and in return for the hospitality they received, they were only asked for their prayers; often, indeed, the only treasure they carried with them. One of them, desirous to embark at Alexandria for Palestine, presented himself with his scrip and staff on board a ship, and offered a book of the holy Evangelists in payment for his passage. Pilgrims, on their route, had no other defence against the attacks of the wicked but the cross of Christ, and no other guides but those angels whom God has told “to watch over his children, and to direct them in all their ways.”

The greatest merit in the eyes of the faithful, next to that of pilgrimage, was to devote themselves to the service of the pilgrims. Hospitals were built upon the banks of rivers, upon the heights of mountains, in the midst of cities, and in desert places, for the reception of these travellers. In the ninth century, the pilgrims who left Burgundy to repair to Italy, were received in a monastery built upon Mount Cenis. In the following century, two monasteries, in which were received travellers who had strayed from their way, occupied the places of the temples of idolatry on Montes Jovis,[24] and thence lost the name they had received from Paganism, and took that of their pious founder, St. Bernard de Menton. Christians who travelled to Judea, found on the frontiers of Hungary, and in the provinces of Asia Minor, a great number of asylums raised by charity.

Christians established at Jerusalem went to meet the pilgrims, and often exposed themselves to a thousand dangers whilst conducting them on their route. The holy city contained hospitals for the reception of all travellers. In one of these hospitals the women who performed the pilgrimage to Palestine, were received by religious females devoted to the offices of charity. The merchants of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa, the richest among the pilgrims, and several princes of the West, furnished, by their benevolence, the means of keeping these houses open for all poor travellers.[25] Every year monks from the East came into Europe to collect the self-imposed tribute of the piety of the Christians. A pilgrim was a privileged being among the faithful. When he had completed his journey, he acquired the reputation of particular sanctity, and his departure and his return were celebrated by religious ceremonies. When about to set out, a priest presented to him his scrip and staff, together with a gown marked with a cross; he sprinkled holy water over his vestments, and accompanied him, at the head of a procession, as far as the boundaries of the next parish. On his return to his country, the pilgrim gave thanks to God, and presented to the priest a palm-branch, to be deposited on the altar of the church, as an evidence of his undertaking being happily terminated.

The poor, in their pilgrimages, found certain resources against misery; when coming back to their country, they received abundant alms. Vanity sometimes induced the rich to undertake these long voyages, which made the monk Glaber say, that many Christians went to Jerusalem to make themselves admired, and to be enabled, on their return, to relate the wonders they had seen. Many were influenced by the love of idleness and change, others by curiosity and an inclination to see various countries. It was by no means rare to meet with Christians who had spent their lives in holy pilgrimages, and had visited Jerusalem several times.

Every pilgrim was obliged to carry with him a letter from his prince or his bishop, a precaution which must have prevented many disorders. History does not record a single act of violence committed by one of the travellers who absolutely covered the route to the East. A Mussulman governor, who had seen a vast number of them pass to Emessa, said: “They have not left their homes with any bad design; they only seek to fulfil their law.”[26]

Every year, at the period of the festivals of Easter, numberless troops of pilgrims arrived in Judea to celebrate the mystery of the Redemption, and to behold the miracle of the sacred fire, which a superstitious multitude believed they saw descend from heaven upon the lamps of the holy sepulchre. There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and acts of devotion at the tomb of Christ. We find in the “Acts of the Saints,” that, in the time of Lothaire, this opinion was established among the Franks. An old relation, preserved by a monk of Redon, informs us that a powerful lord of the duchy of Brittany, named Frotmonde, the murderer of his uncle and his brother, presented himself in the habit of a penitent before the king of France and an assembly of bishops. The monarch and the prelates, as an expiation for the blood he had shed, caused him to be tightly bound with chains of iron, and ordered him to visit the holy places, his brow marked with ashes, and his body clothed in a winding-sheet. Frotmonde, accompanied by his servants and the accomplices of his crime, set out for Palestine; after having for some time sojourned at Jerusalem, he crossed the desert, went to the banks of the Nile, traversed a part of Africa, proceeded as far as Carthage, and came back to Rome, where Pope Benedict III. advised him to commence a new pilgrimage, to complete his penance and obtain an entire remission of his sins. Frotmonde saw Palestine a second time, penetrated as far as the shores of the Red Sea, remained three years on Mount Sinai, and went into Armenia, to visit the mountain on which the ark of Noah had rested after the deluge. On his return to his country he was received as a saint; he shut himself up in the monastery of Redon,[27] and died regretted by the cenobites whom he had edified by the relation of his pilgrimages.

Many years after the death of Frotmonde, Centius, prefect of Rome, who had used violence to the Pope in the church of St. Mary the Great, who had dragged him from the altar, and placed him in a dungeon, needed nothing more to expiate this sacrilege than to perform the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Foulque-Nerra, count of Anjou, charged with crimes, and stained with blood, thought to efface all his cruelties by a voyage to Jerusalem. His brother, whom he had caused to perish in a dungeon, presented himself wherever he went, before his eyes; it appeared to him that the numerous victims sacrificed to his ambition in unjust wars issued from their tombs to disturb his sleep, and reproach him for his barbarity. Pursued everywhere by these frightful images, Foulque left his states, and repaired to Palestine, in the garb of a pilgrim. When he arrived at Jerusalem, he passed through the streets of the holy city with a cord about his neck, beaten with rods by his domestics, repeating in a loud voice these words: “Lord, have pity on a perjured and fugitive Christian.” During his abode in Palestine,[28] he bestowed numerous benefactions, comforted the miseries of the pilgrims, and left everywhere testimonials of his devotion and charity. He returned to his duchy, bringing with him a portion of the true cross, and the stone upon which he had knelt when he prayed before the tomb of Christ.

Foulque, on returning to his dominions, was desirous of having always under his eyes an image of the places he had visited, and caused to be built, near the castle of Loches, a monastery and a church, which bore the name of the Holy Sepulchre. In the midst of the remembrances of his pilgrimage, he still heard the voice of remorse, and set off a second time for Jerusalem. He once more edified the Christians of the holy city by the expressions of his repentance and the austerities of his penance. As he was returning to his duchy, in passing through Italy, he delivered the Roman state from a brigand who plundered the towns and villages, and made war upon all merchants and pilgrims. The pope praised his zeal and his bravery, gave him absolution for his sins, and permitted him to bear about with him the relics of two holy martyrs. When he left Rome, he was conducted in triumph by the people and the clergy, who proclaimed him their liberator. On his arrival in Anjou, he re-established peace in his dominions, which had been in great confusion during his absence. Restored to his country, his family, and his subjects, who had forgotten his cruelties; reconciled with the Church, which declared him its benefactor, he appeared to have no more crimes to expiate, or wishes to form for his old age; but neither the absolution of the pope, nor the peace of his states, nor the blessings of the people—nothing could calm his soul, for ever torn with remorse. He could not escape from the image of his brother, which pursued him still, and recalled to his mind the crimes with which he had stained himself. Without cessation he was before him, pale, disfigured, dragging his chains, and invoking heaven to take vengeance on the fratricide. Foulque resolved to make a third pilgrimage to Jerusalem; he returned into Palestine, watered anew the tomb of Christ with his tears, and made the holy places resound with his groans. After having visited the Holy Land, and recommended his soul to the prayers of the anchorites charged to receive and console pilgrims, he quitted Jerusalem to return to his country, which he was doomed never to see again. He fell sick, and died at Metz. His body was transported to Loches, and buried in the monastery of the Holy Sepulchre, which he had caused to be built. His heart was deposited in a church at Metz, where was shown, for many ages after his death, a mausoleum, which was called the tomb of Foulque, count of Anjou.

At the same period, towards the middle of the eleventh century, Robert-le-Frison, count of Flanders, and Berenger II., count of Barcelona, resolved likewise to expiate their sins by the voyage to the Holy Land. The latter died in Asia, not being able to support the rigorous penances he had imposed upon himself. Robert came back to his dominions, where his pilgrimage caused him to find grace in the eyes of the clergy, whom he had wished to plunder. These two princes had been preceded in their pilgrimage by Frederick, count of Verdun.[29] Frederick was of the illustrious family which was one day to reckon among its heroes Godfrey de Bouillon. On setting out for Asia, he renounced earthly grandeur, and gave up his county to the bishop of Verdun. Returned into Europe, he resolved to terminate his days in a monastery, and died prior of the abbey of St. Wast, near Arras.

The weak and timid sex was not deterred by the difficulties and the perils of a long voyage. Helena, born of a noble family of Sweden, quitted her country, which was buried in idolatry, and travelled on foot into the East. When, after having visited the holy places, she returned to her country, she was sacrificed to the resentment of her relations and her compatriots, and gathered, says an old legend, the palm of martyrdom.[30] A few of the faithful, touched with her piety, raised a chapel to her memory in the isle of Zealand, near a fountain, which is still called the Fountain of St. Helena. The Christians of the North for a long time went in pilgrimage to this island, where they contemplated a grotto which Helena had inhabited before her departure for Jerusalem.

Among the celebrated pilgrims of this age, we observe the name of Robert II., duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror. History accuses him of having caused his brother Richard to be poisoned. Remorse urged him to make the pilgrimage to Palestine; and he set out accompanied by a great number of knights and barons, bearing the scrip and staff, walking barefoot, and clothed in the sack of penitence. He attached, he said, more value to the pains he suffered for Christ’s sake than to the richest city of his dukedom. On his arrival at Constantinople, he despised the luxury and the presents of the emperor, and appeared at court in the guise of the humblest of the pilgrims. Having fallen sick in Asia Minor, he refused the services of the Christians of his suite, and caused himself to be carried in a litter by Saracens. Meeting a pilgrim from Normandy, the latter asked him if he had any message that he could deliver for him to his country. “Go and tell my people,” said the duke, “that you have seen a Christian prince being carried to Paradise by devils.” When he arrived at Jerusalem, he found a crowd of pilgrims, who, not having the means of paying the tribute to the infidels, awaited the arrival of some rich lord who might deign, by his charity, to open for them the gates of the holy city. Robert paid a piece of gold for each of them, and followed them into Jerusalem amidst the acclamations of the Christians. During his sojourn here he caused himself to be remarked for his devotion, and still more for his charity, which he extended even to the infidels. As he was returning into Europe, he died at Nicea, in Bithynia, regarding only the relics he had brought with him from Palestine, and regretting that he had not finished his days in the holy city.

The greatest blessing for the pilgrims, and that which they demanded of Heaven as a reward for their labours and fatigues, was to die, like Jesus Christ, in the holy city. When they presented themselves before the holy sepulchre, they were accustomed to offer up this prayer: “Thou who died for us, and wast buried in this holy spot, take pity of our misery, and withdraw us at once from this valley of tears.” History tells of a Christian, born in the territory of Autun, who, on his arrival at Jerusalem, sought death in the excess of his fastings and mortifications. One day he remained a long time in prayer on the Mount of Olives, with his eyes and his hands raised towards heaven, whither God seemed to call him. On his return to the hospital of the pilgrims, he cried three times, “Glory to thee, oh God!”[31] and died suddenly in the sight of his companions, who envied him his fate, and believed themselves witnesses of a miracle.

The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at length so general, that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as soldiers, they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054, Litbert, bishop of Cambrai, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.[32] When he began his march, the people and the clergy accompanied him three leagues from the city, and with eyes bathed in tears, implored of God the happy return of their bishop and their brethren. The pilgrims traversed Germany without encountering any enemies, but on reaching Bulgaria, they found none but men who inhabited the forests and subsisted upon plunder. Many were massacred by these barbarous people, and some perished with hunger in the midst of the deserts. Litbert arrived with much difficulty at Laodicea, embarked with those who followed him, and was cast upon the coast of Cyprus by a tempest. He had seen the greater part of his companions perish, and the remainder were nearly sinking under their various miseries. Returned to Laodicea, they learnt that still greater dangers awaited them on the route to Jerusalem. The bishop of Cambrai felt his courage abandon him, and believed that God himself was opposed to his pilgrimage. He returned through a thousand dangers to his diocese, where he built a church in honour of the holy sepulchre, which he had never seen.

Ten years after the voyage of Litbert, seven thousand Christians, among whom were the archbishop of Mayence, and the bishops of Spires, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht, set out together from the banks of the Rhine, to repair to Palestine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of the Crusades,[33] crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having visited the churches of Byzantium, and the numerous relics which were the objects of the veneration of the Greeks, the pilgrims of the West traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. On such a sacred day, the pilgrims even who had arms employed them with much hesitation and scruple. Enclosed within the ruins of an old castle, they resisted for a time, but on the third day famine compelled them to capitulate. When they came to the arrangement of the conditions of the peace, there arose a violent quarrel, which was near leading to the massacre of all the Christians by the Arabs. The emir of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey. As the report of their combats and their perils had preceded them, their arrival created a great sensation in Jerusalem. They were received in triumph by the patriarch, and conducted, to the sound of timbrels and by the light of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. During their abode at Jerusalem, the misery into which they were fallen excited the pity of the Christians. They could not visit the banks of the Jordan, or the places most renowned in Judea, as these were all now infested by the Arabs and exposed to their incursions. After having lost more than three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[34]

New perils and the most violent persecutions at this period threatened both the pilgrims of the West and the Christians of Palestine. Asia was about once again to change masters, and tremble beneath a fresh tyranny. During several centuries, the rich countries of the East had been subject to continual invasions from the wild hordes of Tartary. As fast as the victorious tribes became effeminated by luxury and prosperity, they were replaced by others retaining all the barbarism of the deserts. The Turks issuing from countries situated beyond the Oxus, had rendered themselves masters of Persia, where the uncalculating policy of Mamouh had received and encouraged their wandering tribes. The son of Mamouh fought a battle with them, in which he performed prodigies of valour; “but fortune,” says Feristha, “had declared herself unpropitious to his arms; he looked around during the fight, and except the body which he immediately commanded, his whole army had devoured the paths of flight.” Upon the very theatre of their victory the Turks proceeded to the election of a king. A large number of arrows were collected into a bundle. Upon each of these arrows was inscribed the name of a tribe, of a family, and of a warrior. A child drew three of the arrows in the presence of the whole army, and chance assigned the throne to Togrul-Beg, grandson of Seldjouc. Togrul-Beg, whose ambition equalled his courage, embraced, together with his soldiers, the faith of Mahomet, and soon joined to the title of conqueror that of protector of the Mussulman religion.

The banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates were then troubled by the revolt of the emirs, who shared the spoils of the caliphs of Bagdad: the caliph Cayem implored the assistance of Togrul, and promised the conquest of Asia to the new master of Persia. Togrul, whom he had named his temporal vicar, marched at the head of an army, dispersed the factious and the rebellious, ravaged the provinces, and entered Bagdad, to prostrate himself at the feet of the caliph, who proclaimed the triumph of his liberators and their sacred claims to the empire. In the midst of an imposing ceremony, Togrul was successively clothed with seven robes of honour; and seven slaves born in the seven climates of Arabia were presented to him. Two crowns were placed upon his head, and, as an emblem of his dominion over the East and the West, they girded him with two scimitars. This ceremony rendered the usurpation of the Turks legitimate in the eyes of the Mussulmans. The empire which the vicar of Mahomet pointed out to their ambition was speedily conquered by their arms. Under the reign of Alp-Arsland, and that of Malek-Scha, the successors of Togrul, the seven branches of the dynasty of Seldjouc shared amongst them the largest kingdoms of Asia. Thirty years had scarcely passed away since the Tartars conquered Persia, and already their military and pastoral colonies extended from the Oxus to the Euphrates, and from the Indus to the Hellespont.

One of the lieutenants of Malek-Scha carried the terror of his arms to the banks of the Nile, and wrested Syria from the hands of the Fatimite caliphs. Palestine yielded to the power of the Turks, and the black flag of the Abassides floated triumphantly over the walls of Jerusalem. The conquerors spared neither the Christians nor the children of Aly, whom the caliph of Bagdad represented to be the enemies of God. The Egyptian garrison was massacred, and the mosques and the churches were delivered up to pillage. The holy city was flooded with the blood of Christians and Mussulmans.

The possession of Jerusalem in no degree arrested the barbarous fury of the Turks. As their empire was recent and ill-established, as they were threatened with the armies of Cairo, and even with those of the West, their tyranny became restless, jealous, and violent. The Christians trembled under the hardest and most humiliating subjugation; they were despoiled of their property, and reduced to the most frightful degree of misery. They underwent much greater evils than they had suffered during the reign of Hakim.

A great number of those who had quitted their families and their country to visit the tomb of Christ, lost their lives before they were able to enjoy the felicity of saluting the holy city; and they who arrived at Jerusalem after having escaped a thousand dangers, found themselves exposed to the insults and cruelties of the new masters of Judea. The pilgrims of the Latin Church who returned into Europe, related all that they had suffered in their voyage, and told, with groans, of the outrages committed upon the religion of Christ. They had seen the holy sepulchre profaned, and the ceremonies of the Christians become the sport of the infidels; they had seen the patriarchs of Jerusalem and the venerable guardians of the holy places dragged from their sanctuary and cast ignominiously into dungeons. These recitals, exaggerated by repetition, flew from mouth to mouth, and drew tears from the eyes of the faithful.

Whilst the Turks, under the command of Toutousch and Ortock, were desolating Syria and Palestine, other tribes of that nation, led by Soliman, nephew of Malek-Scha, had penetrated into Asia Minor. They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. These countries, in which the Christian religion had first shone forth, and the greater part of the Greek cities whose names were conspicuous in the annals of the primitive church, sunk under the yoke of the infidels. The standard of the prophet floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Nicea had become the seat of a Mussulman empire, and the divinity of Christ was insulted in that city wherein the first œcumenic council had declared it to be an article of faith. The modesty of the virgins had been sacrificed to the brutal lust of the conquerors. Thousands of children had been circumcised.[35] Everywhere the laws of the Koran took place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries and churches.

The Greeks had never had to contend against more cruel and terrible enemies than the Turks. Whilst the court of Alp-Arslan and Malek-Scha blazed with magnificence and cultivated the knowledge and intelligence of the ancient Persians, the rest of the people remained in a state of barbarism, and preserved, amidst the conquered nations, all the ferocious and savage manners of Tartary. The children of Seldjouc loved better to abide under their tents than in the walls of cities; they lived upon the milk of their flocks, disdaining both agriculture and commerce, in the conviction that war would supply all their wants. For themselves, their home was every region in which their arms could prevail and their flocks find rich pastures. When they passed from one country into another, all the members of the same family marched together; they took with them all that they loved, and all that they possessed. A constantly wandering life, and frequent quarrels among themselves and with their neighbours, kept up their military spirit. Every warrior carried his name inscribed upon his javelin, and swore to make it respected by his enemies. So eager were the Turks for battle, that it was quite sufficient if a chief sent his bow or his arrows among his tribe, to make them all instantly fly to arms.

The patience with which they supported hunger, thirst, and fatigue, rendered them invincible. No nation of the East surpassed them in horsemanship, or in skill with the bow; nothing could exceed the impetuosity of their attack, and they were at the same time redoubtable in flight, and implacable in victory. They were not guided in their expeditions by a desire for glory or a sense of honour, but simply by a love of destruction and pillage.

The report of their invasions had spread among the nations of Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and new migrations appeared to arrive every day to strengthen their armies. As they were docile in war, and turbulent and rebellious in peace, it was the policy of their chiefs to lead them constantly on to new conquests. Malek-Scha, with a view to get rid of his lieutenants rather than to reward them, had given them permission to attempt the conquest of the lands of the Greeks and Egyptians. It was an easy matter to raise armies, to which were promised the spoils of the enemies of the prophet and his legitimate vicar. All who had not shared in the booty of preceding wars flocked to the standards, and the wealth of Greece soon became the prey of Turkish horsemen, who had but recently issued from their deserts with woollen caps and stirrups of wood. Of all the hordes subject to the dynasty of Seldjouc the troops that invaded Syria and Asia Minor were the poorest, the most wild, and the most intrepid.

In the depth of their misery, the Greeks of the conquered provinces scarcely dared to lift their eyes to the sovereigns of Byzantium, who had not had the courage to defend them, and therefore left them no hope that they would assist them in their troubles. In the midst of revolutions and civil wars, the Greek empire was hastening to its fall. Since the reign of Heraclius, Constantinople had seen eleven of its emperors put to death in their own palace. Six of these masters of the world had terminated their days in the obscurity of cloisters; several had been mutilated, deprived of sight, and sent into exile; the purple, stained and degraded by so many revolutions, decorated only wicked and contemptible princes, or men without character or virtue. Their whole employment was their own personal safety; and they were compelled to share their power with the accomplices of their crimes, of whom they lived in a constant state of dread. They frequently sacrificed cities and provinces, to purchase from their enemies a few moments of security, and appeared to have nothing to ask of fortune beyond the existence of the empire during their own worthless lives.

The Greeks still cherished great names and great remembrances, of which they were proud, but which only served to show their present weakness and degradation. In the midst of the luxury of Asia and the monuments of Greece and Rome, they were scarcely less barbarous than other nations. In their theological disputes they had lost the true spirit of the Evangelists; among them everything was corrupted, even religion. A universal bigotry, says Montesquieu, depressed their courage and paralyzed the whole empire. They neglected the dangers of their country, and became zealots for a relic or for a sect. In war, superstition pointed out to the Greeks lucky and unlucky days, in which a general ought or ought not to give battle; and as religion inspired in them nothing beyond an apathetic resignation in reverses, they consoled themselves for the loss of provinces by accusing their inhabitants of heresy.

Among the Greeks, stratagem and perfidy were decorated with the name of policy, and received the same encomiums as valour; they esteemed it as glorious to deceive their enemies as to conquer them. Their soldiers were followed to the seat of war by light chariots, which carried their arms; and they had perfected every machine which could supply the place of courage in either sieges or battles. Their armies displayed great military pomp, but were deficient in soldiers. The only thing they inherited from their ancestors was a turbulent and seditious spirit, which mixed itself with their effeminated manners, and was sure to break out when their country was threatened with danger. Discord unceasingly reigned among both the army and the people; and they continued madly to dispute the right to an empire whose very existence was menaced, and blindly gave up its defence to barbarians and strangers. In short, the corruption of the Greeks was so great, that they could neither have endured a good prince nor good laws. Nicephorus Phocas, who had formed the project of re-establishing discipline, died assassinated. Zimisces had also paid with his life for his efforts to rouse the Greeks from their pusillanimous degradation. When the emperor Romanus-Diogenes was made prisoner by the Turks, his misfortunes were the signal for a fresh revolt against his person. Sent back with honours by the sultan of Persia, he met with nothing but executioners in an empire he had endeavoured to defend, and died with misery and despair in a desert island of the Propontis.

Whilst the empire of the East approached near to its fall, and appeared sapped by time and corruption, the institutions of the West were in their infancy. The empire and the laws of Charlemagne no longer existed. Nations had no relations with each other, and mistaking their political interests, made wars without considering their consequences or their dangers, and concluded peace, without being at all aware whether it was advantageous or not. Royal authority was nowhere sufficiently strong to arrest the progress of anarchy and the abuses of feudalism. At the same time that Europe was full of soldiers, and covered with strong castles, the states themselves were without support against their enemies, and had not an army to defend them. In the midst of general confusion, there was no security but in camps and fortresses, by turns the safeguards and the terror of the towns and the country. The largest cities held out no asylum to liberty, and the life of man was reckoned so trifling an object, that impunity for murder could be purchased with a few pieces of money. Frequently, to detect crime, the judges had recourse to water, fire, and iron; upon the blind and dumb evidence of the elements, victims were condemned to death; it was sword in hand that justice was invoked; it was by the sword that the reparation of wrongs and injuries was to be obtained. No one would then have been understood who would have spoken of the rights of nature, or the rights of man; the language of the barons and the lords comprised only such words as treated of war; war was the only science, the only policy of either princes or states.

Nevertheless, this barbarism of the nations of the West did not at all resemble that of the Turks, whose religion and manners repelled every species of civilization or cultivation, nor that of the Greeks, who were nothing but a corrupted and degenerated people. Whilst the one exhibited all the vices of a state almost savage, and the other all the corruption of decay; something heroical and generous was mingled with the barbarous manners of the Franks, which resembled the passions of youth, and gave promise of a better future. The Turks were governed by a gross barbarism, which made them despise all that was noble or great; the Greeks were possessed by a learned and polished barbarism, which filled them with disdain for heroism or the military virtues. The Franks were as brave as the Turks, and set a higher value on glory than any other people. The principle of honour, which gave birth to chivalry in Europe, directed their bravery, and sometimes assumed the guise of justice and virtue.

The Christian religion, which the Greeks had reduced to little formulæ and the vain practices of superstition, was, with them, incapable of inspiring either great designs or noble thoughts. Among the nations of the West, as they were yet unacquainted with the disputed dogmas of Christianity, it had more empire over their minds, it disposed their hearts more to enthusiasm, and formed amongst them, at once, both saints and heroes.

Although religion might not always preach its doctrines with success, and its influence was subject to abuse, it had a tendency to soften the manners of the barbarous people that had invaded Europe; it afforded a holy authority to the weak; it inspired a salutary fear in the strong, and frequently corrected the injustice of human laws.

In the midst of the darkness which covered Europe, the Christian religion alone preserved the memory of times past, and kept up some degree of emulation among men. It preserved, also, for happier days, the language of the royal people, the only one capable of expressing the grand and noble ideas of moral virtue, in which the genius of legislation had elevated its most splendid monuments. Whilst despotism and anarchy pervaded the cities and the kingdoms of the West, the people invoked religion against tyranny, and the princes called in its aid against license and revolt. Often, mid the troubles of states, the title of Christian inspired more respect, and awakened more enthusiasm than did the name of citizen in ancient Rome. As the Christian religion had preceded all the then existing institutions, it naturally remained for a long time surrounded by the veneration and love of the people. Under more than one relation the nations appeared to recognise no other legislators than the fathers of the councils, no other code than that of the gospel and the holy Scriptures. Europe might be considered as a religious society, wherein the preservation of the faith was the principal interest, and in which men belonged more to the church than to the country. In such a state of things it was easy to inflame the minds of the people, by showing them that the cause of religion and of Christians stood in need of defence.

Ten years before the invasion of Asia Minor by the Turks, Michael Ducas, the successor of Romanus-Diogenes, had implored the assistance of the pope and the princes of the West. He had promised to remove all the barriers which separated the Greek from the Roman Church, if the Latins would take up arms against the infidels. Gregory VII. then filled the chair of St. Peter, and his talents, his knowledge, his activity, his boldness, together with the inflexibility of his character, rendered him capable of the greatest undertakings. The hope of extending the religion and the empire of the Holy See into the East, made him receive kindly the humble supplications of Michael Ducas. He exhorted the faithful to take up arms against the Mussulmans, and engaged to lead them himself into Asia. The misfortunes of the Christians of the East, said he, in his letters, had moved him even to feel a contempt for death; he would rather expose his life to deliver the holy places, than live to command the entire universe. Excited by his discourses, fifty thousand pilgrims agreed to follow Gregory to Constantinople, and thence to Syria; but he kept not the promise he had made, and the affairs of Europe, in which the ambition of the pontiff was more interested than in those of Asia, suspended the execution of his projects.

Every day the power of the popes was augmented by the progress of Christianity, and by the ever-increasing influence of the Latin clergy. Rome was become a second time the capital of the world, and appeared to have resumed, under the monk Hildebrand, the empire it had enjoyed under the Cæsars. Armed with the two-edged sword of Peter, Gregory loudly proclaimed that all the kingdoms of the earth were under the dominion of the Holy See, and that his authority ought to be as universal as the church of which he was the head. These dangerous pretensions, fostered by the opinions of his age, engaged him immediately in violent disputes with the emperor of Germany. He desired also to dictate laws to France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and England; and thinking of nothing but making himself acknowledged as the great arbiter of states, he launched his anathemas even against the throne of Constantinople, which he had undertaken to defend, and gave no more attention to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

After the death of Gregory, Victor III., although he pursued the policy of his predecessor, and had at the same time to contend against the emperor of Germany and the party of the anti-pope Guibert, did not neglect the opportunity of making war against the Mussulmans. The Saracens, inhabiting Africa,[36] disturbed the navigation of the Mediterranean, and threatened the coast of Italy. Victor invited the Christians to take arms, and promised them the remission of all their sins if they went to fight against the infidels. The inhabitants of Pisa, Genoa, and several other cities, urged by their zeal for religion, and their desire to defend their commerce, equipped fleets, levied troops, and made a descent upon the coasts of Africa, where, if we are to believe the chronicles of the time, they cut in pieces an army of one hundred thousand Saracens. That we may not doubt, says Baronius, that God interested himself in the cause of the Christians, on the very day on which the Italians triumphed over the enemies of Christ, the news of the victory was carried miraculously beyond the seas. After having given up to the flames two cities, Al-Mahadia and Sibila,[37] built within the territories of ancient Carthage, and forced a king of Mauritania to pay a tribute to the Holy See, the Genoese and the Pisans returned to Italy, where the spoils of the conquered were employed in ornamenting the churches.

The pope Victor, however, died without realizing his promise of attacking the infidels in Asia. The glory of delivering Jerusalem belonged to a simple pilgrim, possessed of no other power than the influence of his character and his genius. Some assign an obscure origin to Peter the Hermit; others say he was descended from a noble family of Picardy; but all agree that he had an ignoble and vulgar exterior. Born with a restless, active spirit, he sought, in all conditions of life, for an object which he could meet with in none. The study of letters, bearing arms, celibacy, marriage, the ecclesiastical state, offered nothing to him that could fill his heart or satisfy his ardent mind. Disgusted with the world and mankind, he retired amongst the most austere cenobites. Fasting, prayer, meditation, the silence of solitude, exalted his imagination. In his visions he kept up an habitual commerce with heaven, and believed himself the instrument of its designs, and the depositary of its will. He possessed the fervour of an apostle, with the courage of a martyr. His zeal gave way to no obstacle, and all that he desired seemed easy of attainment. When he spoke, the passions with which he was agitated animated his gestures and his words, and communicated themselves to his auditors.[38] Such was the extraordinary man who gave the signal to the Crusaders, and who, without fortune and without name, by the ascendancy of his tears and prayers alone, succeeded in moving the West to precipitate itself in a mass upon Asia.

The fame of the pilgrimages to the East drew Peter from his retreat, and he followed into Palestine the crowd of Christians who went to visit the holy places. The sight of Jerusalem excited him much more than any of the other pilgrims, for it created in his ardent mind a thousand conflicting sentiments. In the city, which exhibited everywhere marks of the mercy and the auger of God, all objects inflamed his piety, irritated his devotion and his zeal, and filled him by turns with respect, terror, and indignation. After having followed his brethren to Calvary and the tomb of Christ, he repaired to the patriarch of Jerusalem. The white hairs of Simeon, his venerable figure, and, above all, the persecution which he had undergone, bespoke the full confidence of Peter, and they wept together over the ills of the Christians. The hermit, his heart torn, his face bathed in tears, asked if there was no termination to be looked for, no remedy to be devised, for so many calamities? “Oh, most faithful of Christians!” replied the patriarch, “is it not plain that our iniquities have shut us out from all access to the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mussulmans, all the East is sunk into a state of slavery; no power on earth can assist us.” At these words Peter interrupted Simeon, and pointed out to him the hope that the warriors of the West might one day be the liberators of Jerusalem. “Yes, without doubt,” replied the patriarch, “when the measure of our afflictions shall be full, when God will be moved by our miseries, he will soften the hearts of the princes of the West, and will send them to the succour of the holy city.” At these words Peter and Simeon felt their hearts expand with hope, and embraced each other, shedding tears of joy. The patriarch resolved to implore, by his letters, the help of the pope and the princes of Europe, and the hermit swore to be the interpreter of the Christians of the East, and to rouse the West to take arms for their deliverance.

After this interview, the enthusiasm of Peter knew no bounds; he was persuaded that Heaven itself called upon him to avenge its cause. One day, whilst prostrated before the holy sepulchre, he believed that he heard the voice of Christ, which said to him, “Peter, arise! hasten to proclaim the tribulations of my people; it is time that my servants should receive help, and that the holy places should be delivered.” Full of the spirit of these words, which sounded unceasingly in his ears, and charged with letters from the patriarch, he quitted Palestine, crossed the seas, landed on the coast of Italy, and hastened to cast himself at the feet of the pope. The chair of St. Peter was then occupied by Urban II., who had been the disciple and confidant of both Gregory and Victor. Urban embraced with ardour a project which had been entertained by his predecessors; he received Peter as a prophet, applauded his design, and bade him go forth and announce the approaching deliverance of Jerusalem.

Peter the Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, visited all parts of France, and the greatest portion of Europe, inflaming all hearts with the same zeal that consumed his own. He travelled mounted on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girded with a thick cord, covered with a long frock, and a hermit’s hood of the coarsest stuff. The singularity of his appearance was a spectacle for the people, whilst the austerity of his manners, his charity, and the moral doctrines that he preached, caused him to be revered as a saint wherever he came.

He went from city to city, from province to province, working upon the courage of some, and upon the piety of others; sometimes haranguing from the pulpits of the churches, sometimes preaching in the high roads or public places. His eloquence was animated and impressive, and filled with those vehement apostrophes which produce such effects upon an uncultivated multitude. He described the profanation of the holy places, and the blood of the Christians shed in torrents in the streets of Jerusalem. He invoked, by turns, Heaven, the saints, the angels, whom he called upon to bear witness to the truth of what he told them. He apostrophized Mount Sion, the rock of Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, which he made to resound with sobs and groans. When he had exhausted speech in painting the miseries of the faithful, he showed the spectators the crucifix which he carried with him; sometimes striking his breast and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding torrents of tears.

The people followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was received everywhere as a messenger from God. They who could touch his vestments esteemed themselves happy, and a portion of hair pulled from the mule he rode was preserved as a holy relic. At the sound of his voice, differences in families were reconciled, the poor were comforted, the debauched blushed at their errors, nothing was talked of but the virtues of the eloquent cenobite; his austerities and his miracles were described, and his discourses were repeated to those who had not heard him, and been edified by his presence.

He often met, in his journeys, with Christians from the East, who had been banished from their country, and wandered over Europe, subsisting on charity. Peter the Hermit presented them to the people, as living evidences of the barbarity of the infidels; and pointing to the rags with which they were clothed, he burst into torrents of invectives against their oppressors and persecutors. At the sight of these miserable wretches, the faithful felt, by turns, the most lively emotions of pity, and the fury of vengeance; all deploring in their hearts the miseries and the disgrace of Jerusalem. The people raised their voices towards heaven, to entreat God to deign to cast a look of pity upon his beloved city; some offering their riches, others their prayers, but all promising to lay down their lives for the deliverance of the holy places.

In the midst of this general excitement, Alexius Comnena, who was threatened by the Turks, sent ambassadors to the pope, to solicit the assistance of the Latins. Some time before this embassy he had addressed letters to the princes of the West, in which he had described to them, in a most lamentable manner, the conquests of the Turks in Asia Minor. These savage hordes, in their debauches and in the intoxication of victory, had outraged both nature and humanity.[39] They were now at the gates of Byzantium, and, without the prompt assistance of all the Christian states, Constantinople must fall under the most frightful domination of the Turks. Alexius reminded the princes of Christianity of the holy relics preserved in Constantinople, and conjured them to save so sacred an assemblage of venerated objects from the profanation of the infidels. After having set forth the splendour and the riches of his capital, he exhorted the knights and barons to come and defend them; he offered them his treasures as the reward of their valour, and painted in glowing colours the beauty of the Greek women, whose love would repay the exploits of his liberators. Thus, nothing was spared that could flatter the passions, or arouse the enthusiasm of the warriors of the West. The invasion of the Turks was, in the eyes of Alexius, the greatest misfortune that the chief of a Christian kingdom had to dread; and to avert such a danger, everything appeared to him just and allowable. He could support the idea of losing his crown, but not the shame of seeing his states subjected to the laws of Mahomet: if he was doomed one day to lose his empire, he could console himself for that loss, provided Greece escaped the Mussulman yoke, and became the prize of the Latins.

In compliance with the prayers of Alexius and the wishes of the faithful, the sovereign pontiff convoked a council at Plaisance, in order there to expose the dangers of the Greek and Latin Churches in the East. The preachings of Peter had so prepared the minds and animated the zeal of the faithful, that more than two hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, and thirty thousand of the laity obeyed the invitation of the Holy See. The council was so numerous that it was obliged to be held in a plain in the neighbourhood of the city.

At this assembly all eyes were turned upon the ambassadors of Alexius; their presence in the midst of a Latin council, announced sufficiently plainly the disastrous condition of the East. When they had exhorted the princes and the warriors to save Constantinople and Jerusalem, Urban supported their discourse and their prayers with all the reasons which the interests of Christianity and the cause of religion could furnish. The council of Plaisance, however, came to no determination upon the war against the infidels. The deliverance of the Holy Land was far from being the only object of this council: the declarations of the empress Adelaide, who came to reveal her own shame, and that of her husband, anathemas against the emperor of Germany and the anti-pope, Guibert, occupied, during several days, the attention of Urban and the assembled fathers.

It must be added, too, that among the states of Italy, in which country this council was held, the spirit of commerce and liberty began to weaken the enthusiasm of religion. The greater part of the cities only thought of the advantages that might accrue to them from the troubles; some entertaining hopes they would increase their wealth, others looking to them as a means of securing their independence, and none yielding so freely as other nations to the influence of the popes. Whilst the Christian world revered in Urban the formidable successor of Gregory, the Italians, whose charity he had frequently implored, were best acquainted with his disgraces and misfortunes: his presence did not in any degree warm their zeal, and his decrees were not always laws for them, who had seen him, from the depths of misery and in exile, launch his thunders against the thrones of the West.

The prudent Urban avoided trying to arouse the ardour of the Italians; he did not think their example at all likely to lead on other nations. In order to take a decided part in the civil war, and to interest all Europe in its success, he resolved to assemble a second synod, in the bosom of a warlike nation, which, from the most distant times, had been accustomed to give impulsion to Europe. The new council assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne, was neither less numerous nor respectable than that of Plaisance; the most renowned holy men and learned doctors came to honour it with their presence, and enlighten it with their counsels. The city of Clermont was scarcely able to contain within its walls all the princes, ambassadors, and prelates who had repaired to the council; “so that,” says an ancient chronicle,[40] “towards the middle of the month of November, the cities and villages of the neighbourhood were so filled with people, that they were compelled to erect tents and pavilions in the fields and meadows, although the season and the country were extremely cold.”

Before it gave up its attention to the holy war, the council at first considered the reform of the clergy and ecclesiastical discipline; and it then occupied itself in placing a restraint upon the license of wars among individuals. In these barbarous times even simple knights never thought of redressing their injuries by any other means than arms. It was not an uncommon thing to see families, for the slightest causes, commence a war against each other that would last during several generations; Europe was distracted with troubles occasioned by these hostilities. In the impotence of the laws and the governments, the Church often exerted its salutary influence to restore tranquillity: several councils had placed their interdict upon private wars during four days of the week, and their decrees had invoked the vengeance of Heaven against disturbers of the public peace. The council of Clermont renewed the truce of God, and threatened all who refused “to accept peace and justice” with the thunders of the Church. One of its decrees placed widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers under the safeguard of religion. They declared, as they had already done in other councils, that the churches should be so many inviolable sanctuaries, and that crosses, even, placed upon the high roads should become points of refuge against violence.

Humanity and reason must applaud such salutary decrees; but the sovereign pontiff, although he presented himself as the defender of the sanctity of marriage, did not merit the same praises when he pronounced in this council an anathema against Philip I.: but such was then the general infatuation, that no one was astonished that a king of France should be excommunicated in the very bosom of his own kingdom. The sentence of Urban could not divert attention from an object that seemed much more imposing, and the excommunication of Philip scarcely holds a place in the history of the council of Clermont. The faithful, gathered from all the provinces, had but one single thought; they spoke of nothing but the evils the Christians endured in Palestine, and saw nothing but the war which was about to be declared against the infidels. Enthusiasm and fanaticism, which always increase in large assemblies, were carried to their full height. Urban at length satisfied the impatience of the faithful, impatience which he, perhaps, had adroitly excited, and which was the surest guarantee of success.

The council held its tenth sitting in the great square or place of Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense crowd. Followed by his cardinals, the pope ascended a species of throne which had been prepared for him; at his side was Peter the Hermit, clad in that whimsical and uncouth garb which had everywhere drawn upon him the attention and the respect of the multitude. The apostle of the holy war spoke first of the outrages committed against the religion of Christ; he reverted to the profanations and the sacrileges of which he had been a witness; he pictured the torments and persecutions which a people, enemies to God and man, had caused those to suffer who had been led by religion to visit the holy places. He had seen, he said, Christians loaded with irons, dragged into slavery, or harnessed to the yoke, like the vilest animals; he had seen the oppressors of Jerusalem sell to the children of Christ permission to salute the temple of their God, tear from them even the bread of their misery, and torment their poverty itself to obtain their tribute; he had seen the ministers of God dragged from their sanctuaries, beaten with rods, and condemned to an ignominious death. Whilst describing the misfortunes and degradation of the Christians, the countenance of Peter was cast down, and exhibited feelings of consternation and horror; his voice was choked with sobs; his lively emotion penetrated every heart.

Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented, as he had done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the infidels. That land, consecrated by the presence of the Saviour, that mountain whereon he expiated our sins by his sufferings,—that tomb in which he deigned to be enclosed as a victim to death, had all become the heritage of the impious. The altars of false prophets were raised within those walls which had contained the august assembly of the apostles. God had no longer a sanctuary in his own city; the East, the cradle of the Christian religion, now witnessed nothing but sacrilegious pomps; impiety had spread its darkness over all the richest countries of Asia. Antioch, Ephesus, Nicea, had become Mussulman cities; the Turks had carried their ravages and their odious dominion even to the Straits of the Hellespont, to the very gates of Constantinople, and from thence they threatened the West.

The sovereign pontiff[41] addressed himself to all the nations that were represented at the council, and particularly to the French, who formed the majority: “Nation beloved by God,” said he, “it is in your courage that the Christian church has placed its hope; it is because I am well acquainted with your piety and your bravery, that I have crossed the Alps, and am come to preach the word of God in these countries. You have not forgotten that the land you inhabit has been invaded by the Saracens, and that but for the exploits of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, France would have received the laws of Mahomet. Recall, without ceasing, to your minds the danger and the glory of your fathers; led by heroes whose names should never die, they delivered your country, they saved the West from shameful slavery. More noble triumphs await you, under the guidance of the God of armies; you will deliver Europe and Asia; you will save the city of Jesus Christ,—that Jerusalem which was chosen by the Lord, and from whence the law is come to us.”

As Urban proceeded, the sentiments by which he was animated penetrated to the very souls of his auditors. When he spoke of the captivity and the misfortunes of Jerusalem, the whole assembly was dissolved in tears; when he described the tyranny and the perfidy of the infidels, the warriors who listened to him clutched their swords, and swore in their hearts to avenge the cause of the Christians. Urban redoubled their enthusiasm by announcing that God had chosen them to accomplish his designs, and exhorted them to turn those arms against the Mussulmans which they now bore in conflict against their brothers. They were not now called upon to revenge the injuries of men, but injuries offered to divinity; it was now not the conquest of a town or a castle that was offered to them as the reward of their valour, but the riches of Asia, the possession of a land in which, according to the promises of the Scriptures, flowed streams of milk and honey.

The pontiff sought to awaken in their minds, by turns, ambition, the love of glory, religious enthusiasm, and pity for their Christian brethren. “There scarcely exists,” said he, “a Christian family into which the Mussulmans have not brought mourning and despair. How many Christians every year leave the West, to find in Asia nothing but slavery or death! Bishops have been delivered over to the executioner; the virgins of the Lord have been outraged; holy places have been despoiled of their ornaments; the offerings of piety have become the booty of the enemies of God; the children of the faithful have forgotten in bondage the faith of their fathers, and bear upon their bodies the impression of their opprobrium. Witnesses of so many calamities, the Christians of Jerusalem would long since have left the holy city, if they had not imposed upon themselves the obligation of succouring and consoling pilgrims, if they had not feared to leave without priests, without altars, without worshippers, a land where still smokes the blood of Jesus Christ.

“I will not seek to dry the tears which images so painful for a Christian, for a minister of religion, for the common father of the faithful, must draw from you. Let us weep, my brethren, let us weep over the errors which have armed the anger of God against us; let us weep over the captivity of the holy city! But evil be to us, if, in our sterile pity, we longer leave the heritage of the Lord in the hands of the impious! Why should we taste here a moment’s repose whilst the children of Jesus Christ live in the midst of torments, and the queen of cities groans in chains?

“Christian warriors, who seek without end for vain pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have to-day found true ones. You, who have been so often the terror of your fellow-citizens, go and fight against the barbarians, go and fight for the deliverance of the holy places; you who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Machabees, go and merit an eternal reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will be your heritage; if you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will not forget that he shall have found you in his holy ranks. This is the moment to prove that you are animated by a true courage; this is the moment in which you may expiate so many violences committed in the bosom of peace, so many victories purchased at the expense of justice and humanity. If you must have blood, bathe your hands in the blood of the infidels. I speak to you with harshness, because my ministry obliges me to do so: SOLDIERS OF HELL, BECOME SOLDIERS OF THE LIVING GOD! When Jesus Christ summons you to his defence, let no base affections detain you in your homes; see nothing but the shame and the evils of the Christians; listen to nothing but the groans of Jerusalem, and remember well what the Lord has said to you: ‘He who loves his father and his mother more than me, is not worthy of me; whoever will abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall be recompensed a hundredfold, and possess life eternal.’”

At these words the auditors of Urban displayed an enthusiasm that human eloquence had never before inspired. The assembly arose in one mass as one man, and answered him with a unanimous cry, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”[42] “Yes, without doubt, it is the will of God,” continued the eloquent Urban; “you to-day see the accomplishment of the word of our Saviour, who promised to be in the midst of the faithful, when assembled in his name; it is He who has dictated to you the words that I have heard. Let them be your war-cry, and let them announce everywhere the presence of the God of armies.” On finishing these words, the pontiff exhibited to the assembled Christians, the sign of their redemption. “It is Christ himself,” said he to them, “who issues from his tomb, and presents to you his cross: it will be the sign raised among the nations, which is to gather together again the dispersed children of Israel. Wear it upon your shoulders and upon your breasts; let it shine upon your arms and upon your standards; it will be to you the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom; it will unceasingly remind you that Christ died for you, and that it is your duty to die for him.”

When Urban had ceased to speak, loud acclamations burst from the multitude. Pity, indignation, despair, at the same time agitated the tumultuous assembly of the faithful: some shed tears over Jerusalem and the fate of the Christians; others swore to exterminate the race of the Mussulmans; but, all at once, at a signal from the sovereign pontiff, the most profound silence prevailed. Cardinal Gregory, who afterwards occupied the chair of St. Peter under the name of Innocent II., pronounced, in a loud voice, a form of general confession, the assembly all fell upon their knees, beat their breasts, and received absolution for their sins.

Adhémar de Monteil, bishop of Puy, demanded to be first allowed to enter into the way of God, and took the cross from the hands of the pope; several other bishops following his example. Raymond, count of Thoulouse, excused himself by his ambassadors for not being able to be present at the council of Clermont; he had already, he said, fought against the Saracens in Spain, and he promised to go and fight against them in Asia, followed by the bravest and most faithful of his warriors. The barons and knights who had heard the exhortations of Urban, all took a solemn oath to revenge the cause of Jesus Christ; they forgot their private quarrels, and even they who were at actual war had no longer any enemies than the Mussulmans. All the faithful promised to respect the decrees of the council, and decorated their garments with a red cross. From that time, all who engaged to combat the infidels were termed “Bearers of the Cross,”[43] and the holy war took the name of Crusade. The faithful solicited Urban to place himself at their head; but the pontiff, who had not yet triumphed over the anti-pope Guibert, who was dealing out at the same time his anathemas against the king of France and the emperor of Germany, could not quit Europe without compromising the power and the policy of the Holy See. He refused to be chief of the crusade, and named the bishop of Puy apostolic legate with the army of the Christians.

He promised to all who assumed the cross, the entire remission of their sins. Their persons, their families, their property, were all placed under the protection of the Church, and of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The council declared that every violence exercised upon the soldiers of Christ should be punished by anathema, and recommended its decrees in favour of the bearers of the cross to the watchful care of all bishops and priests. It regulated the discipline and the departure of those who had enrolled themselves in the holy ranks, and for fear reflection might deter any from leaving their homes, it threatened with excommunication all those who did not fulfil their vows.

Fame soon spread everywhere the war that had just been declared against the infidels. When the bishops returned to their dioceses, they still continued to bestow their blessings upon the crosses of the crowds of Christians that required to be led to the conquest of the Holy Land. Urban went through several provinces of France, to finish the work he had so happily begun. In the cities of Rouen, Tours, and Nîmes he held councils, in which he deplored the fate of the Christians of the East: everywhere the people and the great, the nobles and the clergy, obeyed the pressing exhortations of the pontiff, and promised to take arms against the Mussulmans.

It might be said that the French had no longer any other country than the Holy Land, and that to it they were bound to sacrifice their ease, their property, and their lives. This enthusiasm, which had no bounds, was not long in extending itself to the other Christian nations; the flame which consumed France was communicated to England, still disturbed by the recent conquest of the Normans; to Germany, troubled by the anathemas of Gregory and Urban; to Italy, agitated by its factions; to Spain even, although it had to combat the Saracens on its own territory. Such was the ascendancy of the religion outraged by the infidels, such was the influence of the example given by the French, that all Christian nations seemed to forget, at once, the objects of their ambition or their fears, and furnished, for the crusade, soldiers that they absolutely required to defend themselves. The entire West resounded with these words: “He who will not take up his cross and come with me, is not worthy of me.”

The devotion for pilgrimages, which had been increasing during several centuries, became a passion and an imperative want for most Christians; every one was eager to march to Jerusalem, and to take part in the crusade, which was, in all respects, an armed pilgrimage. The situation in which Europe was then placed, no doubt contributed to increase the number of pilgrims: “all things were in such disorder,” says William of Tyre, “that the world appeared to be approaching to its end, and was ready to fall again into the confusion of chaos.” Everywhere the people, as I have already said, groaned under a horrible servitude; a frightful scarcity of provisions, which had, during several years, desolated France and the greater part of the kingdoms of the West, had given birth to all sorts of brigandage and violence; and these proving the destruction of agriculture and commerce, increased still further the horrors of the famine. Villages, towns even, became void of inhabitants, and sank into ruins. The people abandoned a land which no longer nourished them, or could offer them either repose or security: the standard of the cross appeared to them a certain asylum against misery and oppression. According to the decrees of the council of Clermont, the Crusaders were freed from all imposts, and could not be pursued for debts during their voyage. At the name of the cross, the very laws suspended their menaces, tyranny could not seek its victims, nor justice even the guilty, amidst those whom the Church adopted for its defenders. The assurance of impunity, the hope of a better fate, the love of license, and a desire to shake off the most sacred ties, actuated a vast proportion of the multitude which flocked to the banners of the crusade.

Many nobles who had not at first taken the cross, and who saw their vassals set out, without having the power to prevent them, determined to follow them as military chiefs, in order to preserve some portion of their authority. The greater part of the counts and barons had no hesitation in quitting Europe, which the council had declared to be in a state of peace, as it no longer afforded them an opportunity of distinguishing themselves by their valour; they had all many crimes to expiate; “they were promised,” says Montesquieu, “expiation in the indulgence of their dominant passion,—they took up, therefore, the cross and arms.”

The clergy themselves set the example. Many of the bishops, who bore the titles of counts and barons, and who were accustomed to make war in defence of the rights of their bishoprics, thought it their duty to arm for the cause of Jesus Christ. The priests, to give greater weight to their exhortations, themselves assumed the cross; a great number of pastors resolved to follow their flocks to Jerusalem; not a few of them, as we shall see hereafter, having in their minds the rich bishoprics of Asia, and allowing themselves to be led by the hope of some day occupying the most celebrated sees of the Eastern church.

In the midst of the anarchy and troubles which had desolated Europe since the reign of Charlemagne, there had arisen an association of noble knights, who wandered over the world in search of adventures; they had taken an oath to protect innocence, to fight against infidels, and, by a singular contrast, called themselves the Champions of God and of Beauty. The religion which had consecrated their institution and blessed their sword, called them to its defence, and the order of chivalry, which owes a great part of its splendour and progress to the holy wars, saw its warriors hasten to range themselves under the banners of the cross.

Ambition was, perhaps, not foreign to the devotion for the cause of Christ. If religion promised its rewards to those who were going to fight for it, fortune promised them, likewise, riches and the thrones of the earth. All who returned from the East, spoke with enthusiasm of the wonders they had seen, and of the rich provinces they had traversed. It was known that two or three hundred Norman pilgrims had conquered Apulia and Sicily from the Saracens. The lands occupied by the infidels appeared to be heritages promised to knights whose whole wealth consisted in their birth, their valour, and their sword.[44]

We should nevertheless deceive ourselves if we did not believe that religion was the principle which acted most powerfully upon the greater number of the Crusaders. In ordinary times men follow their natural inclinations, and only obey the voice of their own interest; but in the times of the Crusades, religious fever was a blind passion, which spoke louder than all others. Religion permitted not any other glory, any other felicity to be seen by its ardent defenders, but those which she presented to their heated imagination. Love of country, family ties, the most tender affections of the heart, were all sacrificed to the ideas and the opinions which then possessed the whole of Europe. Moderation was cowardice, indifference treason, opposition a sacrilegious interference. The power of the laws was reckoned as nothing amongst men who believed they were fighting in the cause of God. Subjects scarcely acknowledged the authority of princes or lords in anything which concerned the holy war; the master and the slave had no other title than that of Christian, no other duty to perform than that of defending his religion, sword in hand.

They whom age or condition appeared to detain in Europe, and whom the council had exempted from the labours and perils of the crusade, caused the heaven which called them to the holy war to speak aloud.[45] Women and children imprinted crosses upon their delicate and weak limbs, to show the will of God.[46] Monks deserted the cloisters in which they had sworn to die, believing themselves led by a divine inspiration; hermits and anchorites issued from forests and deserts, and mingled with the crowd of Crusaders. What is still more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers, quitting their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and promised, whilst receiving the cross, to go and expiate them in Palestine.

Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which every one was eager to quit. Artisans, traders, labourers, abandoned the occupations by which they subsisted; barons and lords even renounced the domains of their fathers. The lands, the cities, the castles for which they had but of late been at war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors, and were given up, for small sums, to those whom the grace of God had not touched, and who were not called to the happiness of visiting the holy places and conquering the East.

Contemporary authors relate several miracles which assisted in heating the minds of the multitude. Stars fell from the firmament; traces of blood were seen in the heavens; cities, armies, and knights decorated with the cross, were pictured in the clouds. The monk Robert asserts that on the very day on which the council of Clermont determined on the holy war, that decision was proclaimed beyond the seas. “This news,” adds he, “raised the courage of the Christians in the East, and caused despair among the nations of Arabia.” As the most effective of prodigies, saints and kings of preceding ages were said to have issued from their tombs, and many Frenchmen declared they had seen the shade of Charlemagne exhorting the Christians to fight against the Mussulmans.

We will not relate all the other miracles reported by historians, which were believed in an age in which nothing was more common than prodigies, in which, according to the remark of Fleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed greatly over that for the true. The readers of this history will find quite enough of extraordinary things in the description of so many great events, for which the moral world, and even nature herself seemed to have interrupted their laws. What prodigy, in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once, and like a single man, march in arms towards the East?

The council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November, 1095, had fixed the departure of the Crusaders for the festival of the Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land; every other care, every other labour was suspended in the cities and the plains. In the midst of the general excitement, the religion, which animated all hearts, watched over public order. All at once there was no more robbery or brigandage heard of.[47] The West was silent, to employ an expression from the Scripture, and Europe enjoyed during several months a peace that it had never before known.

They who had taken the cross encouraged each other, and addressed letters and sent ambassadors to hasten their departure. The benedictions of the heavens appeared to be promised to those who should be first ready to march to Jerusalem. Men even, who at the first had found fault with the delirium of the crusade, accused themselves of indifference for the cause of religion, and showed no less fervour than those who had given the example. All were eager to sell their possessions, but could find no purchasers. The Crusaders despised everything they could not carry with them; the productions of the earth were sold at a low price, which all at once brought back abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

As soon as the spring appeared, nothing could restrain the impatience of the Crusaders, and they set forward on their march to the places at which they were to assemble. The greater number went on foot; some horsemen appeared amongst the multitude; a great many travelled in cars; they were clothed in a variety of manners, and armed, in the same way, with lances, swords, javelins, iron clubs, &c. &c. The crowd of Crusaders presented a whimsical and confused mixture of all ranks and all conditions; women appeared in arms in the midst of warriors, prostitution not being forgotten among the austerities of penitence. Old age was to be seen with infancy, opulence next to misery; the helmet was confounded with the frock, the mitre with the sword. Around cities, around fortresses, in the plains, upon the mountains, were raised tents and pavilions; everywhere was displayed a preparation for war and festivity. Here was heard the sound of arms or the braying of trumpets; whilst at a short distance the air was filled with psalms and spiritual songs. From the Tiber to the ocean, and from the Rhine to the other side of the Pyrenees, nothing was to be seen but troops of men marked with the cross, who swore to exterminate the Saracens, and were chanting their songs of conquest beforehand. On all parts resounded the war-cry of the Crusaders “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”

Fathers themselves conducted their children, and made them swear to conquer or die for Jesus Christ. Warriors tore themselves from the arms of their wives and from their families, promising to return victorious. Women or old men, whose weakness was left without support, accompanied their sons or their husbands to the nearest city, and there, not being able to separate themselves from the objects of their affections, determined to follow them to Jerusalem. They who remained in Europe envied the fate of the Crusaders, and could not restrain their tears; they who went to seek death in Asia where full of hope and joy.[48] Families, whole villages set out for Palestine, and drew into their ranks all they met with on their passage. They marched on without forethought, and would not believe that he who nourishes the sparrow would leave pilgrims clothed with the holy cross to perish with want. Their ignorance added to their illusion, and lent an air of enchantment to everything they saw; they believed at every moment they were approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The children of the villagers, when they saw a city or a castle, asked if that was Jerusalem?[49] Many of the great lords, who had passed their lives in their rustic donjons, knew very little more on this head than their vassals; they took with them their hunting and fishing appointments, and marched with their falcons on their wrists, preceded by their hounds. They expected to reach Jerusalem, enjoying themselves on the road, and to exhibit to Asia the rude luxury of their castles.

In the midst of the general delirium, no sage caused the voice of reason to be heard; nobody was then astonished at that which now creates so much surprise. These scenes so strange, in which every one was an actor, could only be a spectacle for posterity.

BOOK II.

——

A.D. 1096-1097.

The number of Christians who had taken the cross in the greater part of the countries of Europe were quite sufficient to form many large armies. As these armies might exhaust the countries through which they had to pass, the princes and captains who were to conduct them agreed among themselves that they should not all set out at one time, but should pursue different routes, and meet again at Constantinople.

Whilst they were engaged in preparations for departure, the multitude who followed Peter the Hermit in his preachings, became impatient to advance before the other Crusaders; and being without a chief, they cast their eyes upon him whom they considered as an envoy from heaven. They chose Peter for their general; the cenobite, deceived by the excess of his zeal, believed that enthusiasm could alone answer for all the successes of war, and that it would be easy to conduct an undisciplined troop which had taken up arms at the sound of his voice. He yielded to the prayers of the multitude, and, clothed in his woollen mantle, a hood over his head, sandals on his feet, and only mounted on the mule upon which he had traversed Europe, he took upon himself the command. His troop, which set out from the banks of the Meuse and Moselle, proceeded towards Germany, and was increased upon the road by a vast number of pilgrims hastening from Champagne, Burgundy, and other parts of France. Peter soon saw from eighty to a hundred thousand men under his standard. These first Crusaders, dragging in their train women, children, old men, and numerous sick, began their march upon the faith of the miraculous promises made them by their general; in the persuasion they were filled with, that God himself called upon them to defend his cause, they hoped that rivers would open before their battalions, and that manna would fall from heaven to feed them. The army of Peter the Hermit was divided into two bodies; the vanguard marched under the orders of Walter the Penniless,[50] whose surname, preserved by history, proves that the chiefs were as miserable as the soldiers. This vanguard only reckoned eight horsemen; all the rest went to the conquest of the East asking charity by the way. As long as the Crusaders were upon the French territory, the charity of the faithful who were on their route provided for their wants. They warmed the zeal of the Germans, amongst whom the crusade had not been preached. Their troop, which was considered everywhere as the people of God, met with no enemies on the banks of the Rhine; but new Amalekites, the Hungarians and the Bulgarians, awaited them on the shores of the Morava and the Danube.

The Hungarians, who had issued from Tartary, had a common origin with the Turks, and, like them, had rendered themselves formidable to the Christians. In the tenth century they had invaded Pannonia, and carried the ravages of war into the richest countries of Europe. Nations terrified at the progress of their arms, considered them as a scourge which was sent as a forerunner of the end of the world. Towards the middle of the eleventh century they embraced the Christianity they had persecuted. Once obedient to the faith of the Gospel, they began to build cities and cultivate their land; they felt what it was to have a country, and ceased to be the terror of their neighbours. At the period of the first crusade, the Hungarians boasted of having a saint among their kings,[51] but, still separated from the Christian republic by their position, they did not at all partake of the fervour of the Crusaders, and looked on with indifference at the preparations of Europe for the conquest of Asia.

The Bulgarians, who were descended from the ancient people of the Sclaves, had by turns protected and ravaged the empire of Constantinople. Their warriors had killed Nicephorus in battle, and the skull of an emperor, enchased in gold, served for a long time as a cup for their chiefs in the orgies of victory. They were afterwards conquered by Basil, who put out the eyes of fifteen thousand of his prisoners, and by this act of barbarity roused the whole nation against Greece. At the time of the crusade, Bulgaria was under the power of the Greek empire, but it despised the laws and the power of its masters. The Bulgarian people spread along the southern banks of the Danube, in the midst of inaccessible forests, preserved their savage independence, and only recognized the emperors of the East when they saw their armies. Although they had embraced Christianity, the Bulgarians did not consider the Christians as their brothers; they neither respected the laws of nations nor the rights of hospitality, and during the eleventh century they were the terror of the pilgrims of the West who journeyed to Jerusalem.

Such were the people whose territories the Crusaders were about to cross, and among whom want of discipline must necessarily expose them to the most direful reverses. When the vanguard entered Hungary, they were only disturbed in their march but by a few insults, which Walter had the prudence not to avenge; but the resignation of the pilgrims could not hold out long against the misery which every day increased. Want and its attendant evils soon dispersed all the sentiments of moderation to which religion had for a moment given birth in the hearts of its defenders. The governor of Bulgaria not having been able to furnish provisions, they spread themselves about over the country, carried off the flocks, burnt the houses, and massacred several of the inhabitants who opposed their violences. The irritated Bulgarians ran to arms, and fell upon the soldiers of Walter loaded with their booty. A hundred and forty Crusaders perished in the midst of flames, in a church in which they had taken refuge; the rest sought safety in flight. After this defeat, which he did not endeavour to repair, Walter continued his march through the forests of Bulgaria, pursued by famine, and dragging along the wreck of his army. He presented himself as a supplicant before the governor of Nissa, who was touched with the misery of the Crusaders, and gave them provisions, arms, and clothing.

The soldiers of Walter, tried by merited reverses, conducted by a chief who was wanting in neither skill nor courage, became again attentive to the voice of religion, and passed through Thrace without committing any disorders. After two months of fatigue and misery, they arrived under the walls of Constantinople, where the emperor Alexis permitted them to wait for the army of Peter the Hermit.

This army, which was then passing through Germany, was about to be treated worse than its vanguard had been. The cenobite Peter, more enthusiastic than his soldiers, was more skilful in exciting their zeal than in directing it. He showed neither the moderation nor the prudence of his lieutenant, and had no idea how to avoid the dangers which awaited him on his route. On arriving on the frontiers of Hungary, he learnt the ill-fortune that his companions had met with,[52] and the projects of hostilities formed, as he was told, against the army of the pilgrims. The bodies of several of the Crusaders hung at the gates of Semlin, which the historians of the crusades call Malleville,[53] attracted his regard and drew forth his indignation. At this sight, he gave the signal for vengeance and war. The trumpets sounded, the soldiers seized their arms, and hastened to the carnage. Terror preceded them into the city. On their first attack the people took to flight, and sought refuge upon a hill, one side of which was defended by woods and rocks, and the other by the Danube. They were pursued and forced into this last asylum by the furious multitude of the Crusaders. More than four thousand of the inhabitants of Semlin fell under the swords of the conquerors. The bodies carried down by the river bore the tidings of this horrible victory as far as Belgrade.

At this intelligence the Bulgarians and Hungarians were seized with grief and indignation, and in all parts flew to arms. The Crusaders still remained in Semlin, and were glorifying themselves upon their triumph, when all at once an army, assembled in haste by Coloman, king of Hungary, presented itself to their view. Peter had nothing to oppose to his enemies but the soldiers whose blind fury he had himself excited, and with whom it was impossible to make any military disposition. He did not dare to wait for the army of Coloman, and hastened to cross the Morava.

On gaining the territories of the Bulgarians, the Crusaders found the villages and cities abandoned; even Belgrade, the capital, was without inhabitants; they had fled into the forests and mountains. Peter’s soldiers, after a painful march, in want of provisions, and with difficulty finding guides to conduct them, arrived at last at the gates of Nissa, a place sufficiently well fortified to be secure from a first attack. The Bulgarians showing themselves upon their ramparts, and the Crusaders leaning on their arms, inspired each other with a mutual fear. This fear at first prevented hostilities; but harmony could not last long between an army without discipline and a people that had been irritated by violence.

The pilgrims, after having obtained provisions, had just set forward on their march, when a quarrel between the inhabitants and some of the soldiers caused war to break forth with inveteracy.[54] A hundred German Crusaders, whom William of Tyre styles children of Belial, and who fancied they had cause of complaint against some merchants, wishing to avenge themselves, set fire to seven mills placed upon the Nissava. At the sight of this fire, the inhabitants of Nissa rushed from their ramparts, and falling upon Peter’s rear-guard, massacred all who fell in their way, bore off two thousand carriages, and made a great number of prisoners. Peter, who had already quitted the territory of Nissa, warned of the disaster of his companions, returned immediately with the bulk of his army. The eyes of the Crusaders on approaching the city, were shocked everywhere by beholding the most sorrowful spectacle. They recognized among the dead friends and brothers, and burned to revenge them.

The cenobite, however, who feared fresh reverses, had recourse to negotiations and prayers. Deputies were sent into Nissa, to demand the prisoners and the baggage of his army, which had been taken by the Bulgarians. These deputies reminded the governor that they had taken up the cross, and that they were going to fight in the East for the cause of Jesus Christ. They appealed to the religion and humanity of the inhabitants of Nissa, whom they called their brethren.

The governor, who saw nothing in these peaceful words but the language of fear, showed himself inflexible to their prayers. He sternly sent them back to their general, telling them that the Crusaders had themselves given the signal for the war, and that he could see in them nothing but enemies. When this answer was reported to the army of Peter, every soldier was fired with indignation. In vain the cenobite endeavoured to calm their spirits and attempt fresh negotiations; they accused his fidelity, they suspected his courage. The most ardent flew to arms; nothing was heard but complaints and menaces; and no Crusader would submit to any directions but those of his own angry will. Whilst Peter was conferring with the governor of Nissa, two thousand soldiers approached the ramparts, and endeavoured to scale them. They were repulsed by the Bulgarians, and supported by a great number of their companions. The fight became general, and the fire of carnage blazed on all parts around the chiefs, who were still speaking of conditions of peace. In vain the hermit had recourse to supplications, to stop the mad progress of his soldiers, in vain he placed himself between the combatants; his voice, so well known to the Crusaders, was lost in the din of arms. They braved his authority; they despised his prayers. His army, which fought without order and without leaders, was routed and cut to pieces. The women, the children, who followed the Crusaders, their horses, their camp equipages, the chest of the army, which contained the numerous offerings of the faithful, all became the prey of an enemy whose fury and vengeance nothing could stop.

The hermit Peter, with the wreck of his troop, took refuge on a hill in the neighbourhood of the city. He passed the night in alarms, deploring his defeat, and the sad effects of the violences of which he had himself given the signal and the example among the Hungarians. He had around him no more than five hundred men. The trumpets and the clarions were sounded without ceasing, to recall those who had escaped the carnage, and had lost themselves in their flight.

Whether it was that the Crusaders could find no safety but under their own standards, or whether they were still mindful of their oath, none turned back from the crusade. On the day following their defeat, seven thousand fugitives came to rejoin their general. A few days after, Peter mustered beneath his command thirty thousand combatants. All the rest had perished in the battle fought under the walls of Nissa. The army of the Crusaders, reduced to a deplorable condition, sought no opportunity of avenging their defeat, but marched with melancholy steps towards the frontiers of Thrace. They were without the means either of subsisting or fighting. They had to fear a fresh defeat if they encountered the Bulgarians, and all the horrors of famine if they came to a desert country. Misfortune rendered them more docile, and inspired them with sentiments of moderation. The pity which their misery excited was more serviceable to them than the terror which they had wished to create. When they ceased to be an object of dread, assistance was afforded them. When they entered the territories of Thrace, the Greek emperor sent deputies to complain of their disorders, but at the same time to announce his clemency. Peter, who dreaded new disasters, wept with joy when he learnt that he had found favour with Alexis. Full of confidence and hope, he pursued his march, and the Crusaders, carrying palms in their hands, arrived without further obstacles under the walls of Constantinople.

The Greeks, who entertained no love for the Latins, were more prodigal and kind in the assistance they afforded them from finding them less formidable. They secretly applauded the courage of the Bulgarians, and contemplated with complacency the warriors of the West covered with the rags of indigence. The emperor was desirous of seeing the extraordinary man who had roused the western world by his eloquence, and Peter was admitted to an audience of Alexis. In the presence of all his court, the emperor extolled the zeal of the preacher of the crusade; and as he had nothing to fear from the ambition of a hermit, he loaded him with presents, caused arms, money, and provisions to be distributed among his army, and advised him to defer the commencement of the war to the arrival of the princes and illustrious captains who had assumed the cross.

This advice was salutary, but the most renowned heroes of the crusade were not yet ready to leave Europe; they were to be preceded by fresh troops of Crusaders, who, marching without forethought and without discipline in the steps of the army of Peter, should commit the same excesses, and be exposed to the same reverses. A priest of the Palatinate had preached the crusade in several provinces of Germany. At his voice fifteen or twenty thousand men had taken the oath to fight the infidels, and had assembled in an armed body. As the preachers of the holy war passed for men inspired by God, the people believed they were obeying the will of heaven in taking them for chiefs of the crusade. Gotschalk obtained the same honour that had been conferred on Peter the Hermit, and was elected general by the men he had prevailed upon to take arms. This army arrived in Hungary towards the end of summer. The harvest, which was abundant, furnished the Germans with a ready opportunity of giving themselves up to intemperance. In the enjoyment of tumultuous scenes of debauchery, they forgot Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Christ himself, whose worship and laws they were marching to defend. Pillage, violation, and murder were everywhere left as the traces of their passage. Coloman assembled troops to chastise their license, and to recall them to a sense of the maxims of justice and the laws of hospitality. The soldiers of Gotschalk were full of courage, and, at first, defended themselves with advantage. Their resistance even inspired serious alarm among the Hungarians, who resolved to employ stratagem to reduce them. The general of Coloman feigned to be desirous of peace. The chiefs of the Hungarians presented themselves in the camp of the Crusaders, no longer as enemies, but as brothers. By dint of protestations and caresses, they persuaded them to allow themselves to be disarmed. The Germans, slaves of the most brutal passions, but simple and credulous, yielded to the promises of a Christian people, and abandoned themselves to a blind confidence, of which they very shortly became the victims. Scarcely had they laid down their arms when the chief of the Hungarians gave the signal for the carnage. The prayers, the tears of the Crusaders, the sacred sign which they bore upon their breasts, could not divert the blows of a perfidious and barbarous enemy. Their fate was worthy of pity, and history might have shed tears over it if they had themselves respected the laws of humanity.

We are doubtless the less astonished at the excesses of the first Crusaders, when we reflect that they belonged to the lowest class of the people, always blind, and always ready to abuse names and things the most holy, when not restrained by laws or leaders. The civil wars, which had so long disturbed Europe, had greatly increased the number of vagabonds and adventurers. Germany, more troubled than the other countries of the West, was filled with men trained in brigandage, and became the scourge of society. They almost all enrolled themselves under the banners of the cross, and carried with them into a new expedition the spirit of license and revolt with which they were animated.

There assembled on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle a new troop of Crusaders, more seditious, more undisciplined, even, than those of Peter and Gotschalk. They had been told that the crusade procured the forgiveness of all sins; and in this persuasion they committed the greatest crimes with security. Animated by a fanatical pride, they believed themselves entitled to despise and ill-treat all who did not join in the holy expedition. The war they were about to wage appeared to them so agreeable to God, and they thought by it to render such a signal service to the Church, that all the wealth of the earth would be scarcely sufficient to pay them for their devotion. Everything which fell into their hands appeared a conquest over the infidels, and became the just reward of their labours.

No captain durst place himself at the head of this ferocious troop;[55] they wandered on in disorder, and obeyed none but those who partook their wild delirium. A priest named Volkmar, and a Count Emicio, who thought to expiate the wildness of his youth by the excess of his fanaticism, attracted, by their declamations, the attention and confidence of the new Crusaders. These two chiefs were astonished that people should go so far to make war upon the Mussulmans, who kept up under their own law the tomb of Jesus Christ, whilst they left in peace a nation which had crucified its God. To inflame men’s passions still more, they took care to make heaven speak, and to support their opinions by miraculous visions. The people, for whom the Jews were everywhere an object of hatred and horror, had already shown themselves but too ready to persecute them. Commerce, which they almost alone carried on, had placed in their hands a great part of the gold then circulating in Europe. The sight of their wealth necessarily irritated the Crusaders, who were, for the most part, reduced to implore charity of the faithful to procure the means for undertaking their voyage. It is probable, likewise, that the Jews, by their railleries, insulted the enthusiasm of the Christians for the crusade.

All these motives, joined to the thirst for pillage, lit up the fires of persecution. Emicio and Volkmar gave both the signal and the example. At their voice a furious multitude spread themselves through the cities of the Rhine and the Moselle, massacring pitilessly all the Jews that they met with in their passage. In their despair, a great number of these victims preferred being their own destroyers, to awaiting certain death at the hands of their enemies. Several shut themselves up in their houses, and perished amidst flames which they themselves had kindled; some fastened large stones to their garments, and precipitated themselves and their treasures into the Rhine or the Moselle. Mothers stifled their children at the breast, saying that they preferred sending them thus to the bosom of Abraham, to seeing them given up to the fury of the Christians. Women and old men implored pity to assist them to die; all these wretched creatures calling upon death as earnestly as other men ask for life. In the midst of these scenes of desolation, history takes pleasure in doing justice to the enlightened zeal of the bishops of Worms, Trèves, Mayence, and Spiers, who raised the voice of religion and humanity, and opened their palaces as so many asylums for the Jews against the pursuit of murderers and villains.

The soldiers of Emicio prided themselves upon their exploits, and scenes of carnage filled them with exultation. As proud as if they had conquered the Saracens, they set out on their march, loaded with booty, invoking the heaven they had so cruelly outraged. They were slaves to the most brutal superstition, and caused themselves to be preceded by a goat and a goose, to which they attributed something divine.[56] These mean animals at the head of the battalions were as their chiefs, and shared the respect and confidence of the multitude, with all those who furnished examples of the most horrible excesses. All people fled at the approach of these dreaded champions of the cross. Christians who met them on their route were forced to applaud their zeal, whilst trembling for fear of becoming victims to it. This unrestrained multitude, without being acquainted with the people or the countries through which they had to pass, ignorant even of the disasters of those who had preceded them in this perilous career, advanced like a hurricane towards the plains of Hungary. Mersbourg shut its gates upon them, and refused them provisions. They were indignant that so little respect should be shown to the soldiers of Christ, and deemed it their duty to treat the Hungarians as they had treated the Jews. Mersbourg,[57] situated on the Leytha, a river which flows into the Danube, was defended by marshes. The Crusaders crossed the river, cut down a forest, and formed a causeway, which conducted them close under the walls of the place. After some preparation the signal was given, the ladders were raised against the ramparts, and the general assault was begun. The besieged opposed a spirited resistance, and showered upon their enemies a tempest of darts and arrows, with torrents of boiling oil. The besiegers, encouraging each other, redoubled their efforts. Victory appeared to be about to declare for them, when suddenly several ladders yielded to the weight of the assailants, and dragged down with them in their fall the parapets and the fragments of the towers that the rams had shaken. The cries of the wounded, and the rattling of the falling ruins, spread a panic among the Crusaders. They abandoned the half-destroyed ramparts, behind which their enemies trembled, and retired in the greatest disorder.

“God himself,” says William of Tyre, “spread terror through their ranks, to punish their crimes, and to accomplish that word of the wise man: ‘The impious man flies without being pursued.’” The inhabitants of Mersbourg, astonished at their victory, at length quitted the shelter of their ramparts, and found the plain covered with the fliers, who had cast away their arms. A vast number of these furious beings, whom, recently, nothing could resist, allowed themselves to be slaughtered without resistance. Many perished, swallowed up in the marshes. The waters of the Danube and the Leytha were reddened with their blood, and covered with their bodies.

The vanguard of this army met with the same fate among the Bulgarians, whose territories they had gained. In the cities and the plains, those unworthy Crusaders found everywhere men as ferocious and implacable as themselves, who appeared—to employ the words of the historians of the times—to have been placed upon the passage of the pilgrims as instruments of divine wrath. A very small number escaped the carnage. Among the few who found safety in flight, some returned into their own country, where they were welcomed by the scorn and jeers of their compatriots; the rest arrived at Constantinople, where the Greeks learnt the new disasters of the Latins, with so much the more joy, from having suffered greatly from the excesses committed by the army of Peter the Hermit.

This army, united to that of Walter, had received under its standard an accession of Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, and might amount to about a hundred thousand combatants. The remembrance of their misery caused them for a time to respect the commands of the emperor and the laws of hospitality; but abundance, idleness, and the sight of the riches of Constantinople, brought back to their camp, license, insubordination, and a thirst for plunder. Impatient to receive the signal for war, they pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even the churches, of the suburbs of Byzantium. To deliver his capital from these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them with vessels, and transported them to the other side of the Bosphorus.

Nothing could be expected from a band composed of a confused mixture of all nations, and the wrecks of several undisciplined armies. A great number of the Crusaders, on quitting their country, had thought of nothing but accomplishing their vow, and only sighed for the happiness of beholding Jerusalem; but these pious dispositions had all vanished on their route. Whatever may be the motive that brings them together, when men are not confined by any restraint, the most corrupted gain the ascendancy, and bad examples constitute the law. As soon as the soldiers of Peter had passed the straits, they considered all they met their enemies, and the subjects of the Greek emperor suffered much more than the Turks from their first exploits. In their blindness, they allied superstition with license, and under the banners of the cross, committed crimes which make nature shudder.[58] But discord soon broke out amongst them, and retaliated upon them all the evils they had inflicted upon Christians.

They had established their camp in the fertile plains which border the Gulf of Nicomedia. Every day parties strayed into the neighbourhood, and returned loaded with booty. The partition of the spoil excited frequent quarrels among them. The French, of an assuming and bantering character, attributed to themselves all the success of this commencement of the war, and treated the Italians and Germans with contempt. The latter separated themselves from the army, and under the conduct of a chief named Rinaldo,[59] advanced towards the mountains which border upon Nicea. There they rendered themselves masters of a fort, whose garrison they massacred, and although their troop was not numerous, and stood in great want of provisions, they were bold enough to await the army which was approaching to besiege them. They were not able to resist even the first attacks of the Turks, and were almost all put to the sword; their general, and some few of his soldiers, only saved their lives by embracing the faith of Mahomet, and by taking a disgraceful oath to fight against the Christians.

When the news of this disaster reached the camp of the Crusaders, it brought with it agitation and trouble. The French, who, a few days before, could not endure the Germans and the Italians, wept over their tragical fate, and were eager to march to avenge them. In vain Walter, who commanded them, represented to them that the Crusaders whose loss they deplored had fallen victims to their own imprudence, and that their principal duty was to avoid their example; nothing could restrain the impatience and the blind ardour of his soldiers. The latter believed that they already saw the Turks flying before them, and feared they should not be able to overtake them. Murmurs arose in the Christian army against a general whom they accused of want of courage, because he foresaw reverses. From murmurs they passed to revolt, and the order for departure and attack was forced from him by violence. Walter, groaning, followed a headstrong multitude, who marched in disorder towards Nicea, and whom the Turks would soon punish for the contempt with which they had treated the advice of their leaders.

The sultan of Nicea, foreseeing their imprudence, had concealed a part of his army in a forest, and waited for them with the rest of his troops in a plain at the foot of the mountain. After a march of some hours, in a country which was unknown to them, the Christians were unexpectedly attacked by the Turks, whom they believed to be in flight. They formed in haste, and at first defended themselves valiantly. But the enemy had the advantages of position and numbers, and they were soon surrounded on all sides, and completely routed. The carnage was horrible: Walter, who was worthy of commanding better soldiers, fell pierced by seven arrows. With the exception of three thousand men, who took refuge in a castle close to the sea, the whole army perished in a single battle, and there soon remained no more of them than a confused heap of bones, piled up in the plains of Nicea, as a deplorable monument to point out to other Crusaders the road to the Holy Land.

Such was the fate of that multitude of pilgrims who threatened Asia, and yet never beheld the places they went to conquer. By their excesses they had prejudiced the whole of Greece against the enterprize of the crusades, and by their manner of fighting had taught the Turks to despise the arms of the Christians of the West.

Peter, who had returned to Constantinople before the battle, and who had long lost all authority among the Crusaders, declaimed against their indocility and their pride, and beheld in them nothing but brigands,[60] whom God had deemed unworthy to contemplate or adore the tomb of his Son. From that time it was quite evident that the apostle of the holy war possessed no quality to enable him to act as its chief. Coolness, prudence, inflexible firmness, alone could conduct a multitude whom so many passions impelled, and who listened to nothing but enthusiasm. The cenobite Peter, after having prepared the great events of the crusade by his eloquence, lost in the crowd of pilgrims, played nothing but an ordinary part, and was in the end scarcely to be perceived in a war that was his work.

Europe, without doubt, learnt with terror and astonishment the unhappy end of three hundred thousand Crusaders, whom she had seen depart; but they who were to follow were not at all discouraged, and resolved to profit by the lessons which the disasters of their companions had given them. The West soon saw on foot armies more regular and more formidable than those which had been destroyed on the banks of the Danube, and in the plains of Bithynia.

When describing their march and their exploits, we are about to trace much nobler pictures. Here the heroic spirit of chivalry will display itself in all its splendour, and the brilliant period of the holy war will commence.

The leaders of the Christian armies which now quitted the West were already celebrated by their valour and their deeds. At the head of the great captains who commanded in this crusade, history, as well as poetry, must place Godfrey de Bouillon,[61] duke of the Lower Lorraine. He was of the illustrious race of the counts of Boulogne, and descended on the female side from Charlemagne. From his earliest youth he had distinguished himself in the open war carried on between the Holy See and the emperor of Germany. On the field of battle he had killed Rodolphe de Rhenfield, duke of Suabia, to whom Gregory had sent the imperial crown. When the war broke out in Italy for the cause of the anti-pope Anaclet, Godfrey was the first to enter the city of Rome, besieged and taken by the troops of Henry. He afterwards repented of having embraced a party which victory itself could not make triumphant, and which the greater part of Christendom considered sacrilegious. To expiate exploits condemned as useless by the spirit of his age, he made a vow to go to Jerusalem, not as a simple pilgrim, but as a liberator.

Contemporary history, which has transmitted his portrait to us, informs us that he joined the bravery and virtues of a hero to the simplicity of a cenobite.[62] His prowess in fight and his extraordinary strength of body made him the pride of camps. Prudence and moderation tempered his valour; his devotion was sincere and disinterested; and in no instance during the holy war did he employ his courage or inflict his vengeance but upon the enemies of Christ. Faithful to his word, liberal, affable, full of humanity, the princes and knights looked upon him as their model, the soldiers as their father—all were eager to fight under his standard. If he was not the leader of the crusade, as some writers pretend, he at least obtained that empire which virtue bestows. Amidst their quarrels and divisions, the princes and barons constantly appealed to the wisdom of Godfrey, and in the dangers of war, his counsels became absolute orders.

At the signal of the duke of Lorraine, the nobility of France and the borders of the Rhine were prodigal of their treasures in preparing for the crusades. All things serviceable in war mounted to so exorbitant a price, that the produce of an estate was scarcely sufficient to defray the equipment of a single knight. The women despoiled themselves of their most precious ornaments to furnish forth their sons and their husbands for the expedition. Men even, say the historians, who in other times would have suffered a thousand deaths rather than give up their hereditary domains, either sold them for a low price or exchanged them for arms. Gold and steel appeared to be the only desirable objects in existence.

Now appeared the stores of riches which had been concealed by fear or avarice. Ingots of gold, coined pieces, says the Abbé Guibert, were to be seen in heaps in the tents of the principal Crusaders, like the most common fruits in the cottages of villagers.

Many barons, having neither lands nor castles to sell, implored the charity of the faithful who did not take up the cross, and might hope to participate in the merits of the holy war by assisting in the equipment of the Crusaders. Some ruined their vassals; others, like William, viscount de Melun,[63] pillaged the burghs and villages to place themselves in a condition to combat the infidels. Godfrey de Bouillon, guided by a more enlightened piety, was content with alienating his domains. We read in Robert Gaguin that he permitted the inhabitants of Metz to redeem their city, of which he was suzerain. He sold the principality of Stenai to the bishop of Verdun, and ceded his rights over the duchy of Bouillon to the bishop of Liège for the small sum of four thousand silver marks and a pound of gold, which makes an historian of the Crusaders say[64] that the secular princes ruined themselves for the cause of Jesus Christ, whilst the princes of the Church took advantage of the fervour of the Christians to enrich themselves.

The duke de Bouillon had gathered under his standard eighty thousand foot-soldiers and ten thousand horsemen. He began his march eight months after the council of Clermont, accompanied by a great number of German and French nobles. He took with him his brother Eustace de Boulogne, his other brother Baldwin, and his cousin Baldwin de Bourg. These two last, who were destined one day, like Godfrey de Bouillon, to become kings of Jerusalem, held then the rank of simple knights in the Christian army. They were all less animated by sincere piety than by the hope of achieving a great fortune in Asia, and quitted without regret the mean possessions that they held in Europe. Still further were to be remarked in the train of the duke de Lorraine, Baldwin, count de Hamaut; Garnier, count de Grai; Conon de Montaigu, Dudon de Contz, so celebrated in the “Jerusalem Delivered;” the two brothers Henri and Godfrey de Hache, Gérard de Cherisi, Rinaldo and Peter de Toul, Hugh de St. Paul, and his son Engelran. These chiefs brought with them a crowd of other knights, less known, but not less formidable by their valour.

The army commanded by the duke of Lorraine, composed of soldiers formed by discipline and tried in battle, offered to the Germans a very different spectacle from the troop of Peter the Hermit, and re-established the honour of the Crusaders in all the countries they passed through. They met with assistance and allies where the first champions of the cross had found nothing but obstacles and enemies. Godfrey deplored the fate of those who had preceded him, without seeking to avenge their cause. The Hungarians and the Bulgarians, on their part, forgot the violences committed by the soldiers of Peter, Gotschalk, and Emicio; they admired the moderation of Godfrey, and offered up vows for the success of his arms.

Whilst the duke de Lorraine was advancing towards Constantinople, France was raising other armies for the holy war. A few months after the council of Clermont, the nobles of the kingdom assembled to deliberate upon the affairs of the crusade. In this assembly, held in the presence of Philip I., who had just been excommunicated, no one was opposed to the war preached under the auspices of the Holy See; no one even thought of invoking policy either to moderate or direct the passions which agitated Europe. The cabinets of princes were as much infatuated as the multitude, and it may be said that the fortune of France took charge alone of these great events, which, though unfortunate at first, afterwards concurred to raise the monarchy which had fallen into ruins under the feeble successors of Charlemagne.

Towards the middle of the tenth century, the chief of the third dynasty had consecrated the usurpation of the nobles, and to obtain the title of king, had almost abandoned the little that remained of the rights of the crown. Philip I., grandson of Hugh Capet, found that his dominions extended but little beyond Paris and Orleans; the rest of France was governed by the great vassals, of whom several surpassed monarch in power. Royalty, the only hope of the people against the oppressions of the nobles and the clergy, was so feeble, that we are at the present time astonished that it did not fall, so numerous were the difficulties and the enemies that surrounded it on all sides. As the monarch was exposed to the censures of the Church, it was an easy matter to lead his subjects to disobedience, and to legitimatize any sort of revolt, by giving it the colour of a sacred pretext.

The crusade removed far from Europe all who could have taken advantage of the unhappy situation in which the kingdom was placed; it saved the country from a civil war, and prevented such sanguinary discords as had broken out in Germany under the reign of Henry and the pontificate of Gregory.

Such were the considerations which might present themselves to the most enlightened men, and which must strike us more strongly than they would the contemporaries of Philip.[65] It would be difficult to believe that any one of the counsellors of the king of France perceived, in all their extent, these salutary results of the crusade, which were recognized long after, and which have only been properly appreciated in the age in which we live. On the other hand, they had no conception that a war in which all the most dangerous passions should be brought into action would be accompanied by great misfortunes and calamitous disorders. Ambition, license, the spirit of enthusiasm, all so much to be dreaded by the country, might also bring about the ruin of armies. Not one of the enemies of Philip, not one of those who remained at home, made this reflection. Everybody, as we have already said, they who were of the party of the Holy See and they who adhered to royalty, allowed themselves to be carried along by the current of events, without either perceiving the causes of them or foreseeing their consequences. The most wise blindly followed that invisible destiny which orders the world as it pleases, and makes use of the passions of men as of an instrument to accomplish its designs.

In a superstitious age the sight of a prodigy or of an extraordinary phenomenon had more influence over the minds of men than the oracles of wisdom or reason.[66] Historians inform us, that whilst the barons were assembled, the moon, which was in eclipse, appeared of the colour of blood. When the eclipse was over, its disc was surrounded by an unprecedented splendour. Some weeks after, says the Abbé Guibert, the northern horizon was seen to be all on fire, and the terrified people rushed from the houses and cities, believing that the enemy was advancing, fire and sword in hand. These phenomena, with several others, were regarded as signs of the will of God, and presages of the terrible war about to be made in his name. They everywhere redoubled the enthusiasm for the crusade. Men who had hitherto remained indifferent now partook of the general delirium. All Frenchmen called to the profession of arms, and who had not yet taken the oath to fight against the infidels, hastened now to take the cross.

The men of the Vermandois marched with the subjects of Philip under the colours of their count Hugh, a young prince whose brilliant qualities had been much admired by the court. Proud of being a brother of the king of France and the first of the French knights, he distinguished himself by his bravery and the ostentation of his manners. He displayed invincible courage in the field of battle, but allowed himself to be too easily overcome by flattery, and was wanting in perseverance in reverses. Although fortune was not too kind to him, not one of the heroes of the crusade exhibited more honourable and disinterested intentions. If he had not merited by his exploits the surname of Great which history has given him, he would have obtained it for having only listened to his zeal, and for having sought nothing but glory in a war which offered kingdoms to the ambition of princes and simple knights.

Robert, surnamed Courte-heuse, duke of Normandy, who led his vassals to the holy war, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror. He joined to noble qualities some of the faults the most reprehensible in a prince. He could not, even in his early youth, endure paternal authority; but, drawn away more by a desire for independence than by a real ambition, after having made war against his father for the sake of reigning in Normandy, he neglected the opportunity of ascending the throne of England on the death of William. His levity, his inconstancy, and his weakness, caused him to be despised both by his subjects and his enemies. His profusion ruined his people, and reduced him, if we may credit the monk Oderic Vital, to a condition bordering upon absolute poverty. The historian I have just quoted relates a trait, which, although difficult to be believed, at the same time describes both Robert and the age he lived in. “He was often compelled to remain in bed for want of clothes, and frequently was absent from mass because his nudity prevented him from assisting at it.” It was not an ambition for conquering kingdoms in Asia, but his inconstant, chivalric disposition, that made him assume the cross, and take up arms. The Normans, a wandering and warlike people, who had made themselves remarkable among all the nations of Europe for their devotion to pilgrimages, hastened in crowds to his banner. As Duke Robert had not the means of providing for the expenses of an army, he pledged Normandy with his brother William Rufus. William, whom his age accused of impiety, and who laughed at the knight errantry of the Crusaders, seized with joy the opportunity of governing a province which he hoped one day to unite to his kingdom. He levied taxes upon the clergy, whom he did not like, and caused the silver plate of the churches to be melted to pay the sum of ten thousand silver marks to Robert, who set out for the Holy Land, followed by almost all the nobility of his duchy.

Another Robert, count of Flanders, placed himself at the head of the Frisons and the Flemings. He was son of Robert, surnamed the Frison, who had usurped the principality of Flanders from his own nephews, and who, to expiate his victories, had performed, some time before the crusade, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The young Robert easily found soldiers for his enterprize in a country where everybody had borne arms during the civil wars, and where the people were animated by the tales of a great number of pilgrims returned from the Holy Land. He exhausted the treasures of his father, to embark in an expedition which procured him the reputation of a bold knight, together with the surname of “The Lance and Sword” of the Christians. Five hundred horsemen sent by Robert the Frison to the emperor Alexis had already preceded him to Constantinople.

Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, had also taken up the cross. He passed for the richest noble of his times. The number of his castles was said to be equal to that of the days of the year. What might be really considered a phenomenon in the eleventh century, this prince loved and cultivated letters. He proved to be the soul of the councils by his eloquence and his intelligence; but he could not long together support the fatigues of war, and he sometimes was but timid in the field of battle.

These four chiefs were accompanied by a crowd of knights and nobles, among whom history names Robert of Paris, Evrard of Prusaiè, Achard de Montmerle, Isouard de Muson, Stephen, count d’Albermarle, Walter de St. Valery, Roger de Barneville, Fergant and Conan, two illustrious Bretons, Guis de Trusselle, Miles de Braiës, Raoul de Baugency, Rotrou, son of the count de Perche; Odo, bishop of Bayeux, uncle of the duke of Normandy; Raoul de Gader, Yve and Albéric, sons of Hugh de Grandménil. The greater part of the counts and barons took with them their wives and children, and all their war equipages. They crossed the Alps, and directed their march towards the cities of Italy, with the intention of embarking for Greece. They found in the neighbourhood of Lucca Pope Urban, who gave them his benediction, praised their zeal, and offered up prayers for the success of their enterprize. The count de Vermandois, after having received the standard of the Church from the hands of the sovereign pontiff, repaired to Rome, with the other princes, to visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. The capital of the Christian world was then the theatre of a civil war. The soldiers of Urban, and those of the anti-pope Guibert, disputed, arms in hand, for the church of St. Peter, and by turns carried off the offerings of the faithful. Whatever some modern historians may say, the Crusaders took no part in the troubles which divided the city of Rome; and what is still more astonishing, Urban did not call to the defence of his own cause one of the warriors whom his appeal had induced to take up arms. For the rest, the spectacle which presented itself in the city of St. Peter must have been a subject of scandal to the greater part of the French knights. Some, satisfied with having saluted the tomb of the apostles, and perhaps cured of their holy enthusiasm by the sight of the violences which profaned the sanctuary, abandoned the standard of the cross, and returned into their own country. Others pursued their march towards Apulia; but when they arrived at Bari, the winter beginning to render the navigation dangerous, they were forced to wait during several months for a favourable moment to embark.

The passage of the French Crusaders, however, had awakened the zeal of the Italians. Bohémond, prince of Tarentum, was the first who resolved to associate himself with their fortunes, and to partake of the glory of the holy expedition. He was of the family of those knights who had founded the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Fifty years before the crusade, his father, Robert Guiscard ’the subtle) had quitted the castle of Hauteville, in Normandy, with thirty foot-soldiers and five horsemen. Seconded by some of his relations and compatriots, who had preceded him into Italy, he fought with advantage against the Greeks, the Lombards, and the Saracens, who disputed Apulia and Calabria with him. He soon became sufficiently powerful to be by turns the enemy and the protector of the popes. He beat the armies of the emperors of the East and the West, and when he died he was engaged in the conquest of Greece.

Bohémond had neither less cunning nor less talents than his father, Robert Guiscard. Contemporary authors, who never fail to describe the physical qualities of their heroes, inform us that his height was so great that it exceeded by a cubit that of the tallest man in his army; his eyes were blue, and appeared full of passion and haughty pride. His presence, says Anna Comnena, was as astonishing to the eyes as his reputation was to the mind. When he spoke, his hearers believed that eloquence had been his only study; when he appeared under arms, he might be supposed to have done nothing but wield the lance and the sword. Brought up in the school of the Norman heroes, he concealed the combinations of policy beneath an exterior of violence; and although of a proud and haughty character, he could put up with an injury when vengeance would not have been profitable to him. Everything that could contribute to the success of his designs appeared to him to be just. He had learnt from his father to consider every man whose wealth or states he coveted as his enemy; he was neither restrained by the fear of God, the opinion of men, nor his own oaths. He had followed Robert in the war against the emperor Alexis, and had distinguished himself in the battles of Durazzo and Larissa; but, disinherited by a will, he had nothing at his father’s death but the memory of his exploits, and the example of his family. He had declared war against his brother Roger, and had recently compelled him to cede to him the principality of Tarentum, when the expedition to the East began to be talked of in Europe. The deliverance of the tomb of Christ was not the object that kindled his zeal, or induced him to assume the cross. As he had sworn an eternal hatred to the Greek emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army; and, full of confidence in his own fortunes, he hoped to win a kingdom before he should arrive at Jerusalem.

The little principality of Tarentum could not supply him with an army; but in the name of religion, a leader had then the power of raising troops in all the states. Enthusiasm for the crusade soon seconded his projects, and brought a great number of warriors to his standard.

He had accompanied his brother and his uncle Roger to the siege of Amalfi, a flourishing city which refused with contempt the protection of the new masters of Apulia and Sicily. Bohémond, who knew well how to speak in proper season the language of enthusiasm, and to conceal his ambition beneath the colours of religious fanaticism, preached himself the crusade in the army of the besiegers. He went among the soldiers, talking of the princes and the great captains who had taken the cross. He spoke to the most pious warriors of the religion which was to be defended, and exalted before others the glory and fortunes which would crown their exploits. The army was won over by his discourses, and the camp soon resounded with the cry of “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” Bohémond congratulated himself in secret on the success of his eloquence, and tore his coat of arms into strips, of which he made crosses, and ordered his officers to distribute them among the soldiers. There now only wanted a chief to command the holy expedition, and the new Crusaders came to solicit the prince of Tarentum to place himself at their head. Bohémond appeared at first to hesitate; he refused that which he ardently desired; and the soldiers assembled around him redoubled their solicitations. At length he seemed to yield to their importunities, and obey their will. Instantly the eagerness and enthusiasm became more animated and more general. In an incredibly short space of time the whole army swore to follow him into Palestine. Roger was obliged to raise the siege of Amalfi, and the happy Bohémond gave himself up entirely to the preparations for his voyage.

A short time after he embarked for the coasts of Greece with ten thousand horsemen and twenty thousand foot. Every illustrious knight of Apulia and Sicily followed the prince of Tarentum. With him marched Richard, prince of Salerno, and Randulf, his brother; Herman de Cani, Robert de Hanse, Robert de Sourdeval, Robert the son of Tristan, Boile de Chartres, and Humphrey de Montaigu. All these warriors were celebrated for their exploits, but no one amongst them was more worthy to attract the attention of posterity than the brave Tancred.[67] Although he belonged to a family in which ambition was hereditary, he was fired by no other passion than a desire to fight against the infidels. Piety, glory, and perhaps his friendship for Bohémond alone, led him into Asia. His contemporaries admired his romantic pride and his haughty austerity. He yielded to no superiority but that of virtue, with the exception of occasional submission to the power of beauty. A stranger to all the motives and interests of policy, he acknowledged no other law but religion and honour, and was always ready to die in their cause. The annals of chivalry present no model more accomplished; poetry and history have united to celebrate him, and both have heaped upon him the same praises.

The Crusaders from the southern provinces of France had marched under the command of Adhémar de Monteil and Raymond, count de St. Gilles and Thoulouse. Bishop Adhémar acted as the spiritual chief of the crusade; his title of apostolic legate, and his personal qualities, earned for him in the holy war the confidence and respect of the pilgrims. His exhortations and his counsels contributed greatly to the maintaining of order and discipline. He consoled the Crusaders in their reverses, he animated them amidst dangers; clothed at the same time with the insignia of a pontiff and the armour of a knight, he exhibited in the tent a model of the Christian virtues, and in the field often gave proofs of undaunted valour.

Raymond, who marched with Adhémar, had had the glory of fighting in Spain by the side of the Cid; and of conquering several times the Moors under Alphonso the Great, who had bestowed his daughter Elvira upon him in marriage. His vast possessions on the banks of the Rhone and the Dordogne, and still more his exploits against the Saracens, rendered him one of the most remarkable among the great leaders of the crusade. Age had not extinguished in the count of Thoulouse either the ardour or the passions of youth. Hasty and impetuous, of a character haughty and inflexible, he had less ambition to conquer kingdoms than to make every will bend beneath his own. Both Greeks and Saracens have acknowledged his bravery. His subjects and his companions in arms hated him for his obstinacy and violence. Unhappy prince, he bade eternal farewell to his country, which was one day to be the theatre of a terrible crusade preached against his own family!

All the nobility of Gascony, Languedoc, Provence, the Limousin, and Auvergne, accompanied Raymond and Adhémar. Contemporary historians name among the knights and lords who had taken the cross, Héracle, count de Polignac, Pons de Balazan, Guillaume de Sabran, Eléazar de Castrie, Eléazar de Montrédon, Pierre Bernard de Montagnac, Raymond de Lille, Pierre Raymond de Hautpool, Gouffier de Lastours, Guillaume V., lord of Montpellier, Roger, count de Foix, Raymond Pelet, Seigneur d’Alais, Isard, count de Diè, Raimbaud, count d’Orange, Guillaume, count de Ferez, Guillaume, count de Clermont, Gerard, son of Guillabert, count de Roussillon, Gaston, viscount de Béarn, Guillaume Amanjeu d’Albret, Raymond, viscount de Turenne, Raymond, viscount de Castillon, Guillaume d’Urgal, and the count de Fortcalquier. After the example of Adhémar, the bishops of Apt, Lodève, and Orange, and the archbishop of Toledo, had taken up the cross, and led a part of their vassals to the holy war.

Raymond, count of Thoulouse, followed by his wife Elvira and his sons, placed himself at the head of a hundred thousand Crusaders, advanced to Lyons, where he crossed the Rhone, traversed the Alps, Lombardy, and Frioul, and directed his march towards the territory of the Greek empire, over the savage mountains and through the equally savage nations of Dalmatia.[68]

Alexis, who had implored the assistance of the Latins, was terrified when he learnt the numbers of his liberators. The leaders of the crusade were only princes of the second order, but they drew with them all the forces of the West. Anna Comnena compares the multitude of the Crusaders to the sands of the sea or the stars of the heavens, and their innumerable bands to torrents which unite to form a great river.[69] Alexis had learnt to dread Bohémond on the plains of Durazzo and Larissa. Although he was less acquainted with the courage and ability of the other Latin princes, he repented of having imparted to them the secret of his weakness by asking their aid. His alarms, which were increased by the predictions of astrologers and the opinions spread among his people, became more serious as the Crusaders advanced towards his capital.[70]

Seated on a throne from which he had hurled his master and benefactor, he could have no faith in virtue, and was better aware than another what ambition might dictate. He had displayed some courage in gaining the purple, but only governed by dissimulation,—the ordinary policy of the Greeks and all weak states. If Anna Comnena has made an accomplished prince of him, the Latins have represented him as a perfidious and cruel monarch. Impartial history, which alike rejects the exaggerations of eulogy or satire, can see nothing in Alexis but a weak ruler, of a superstitious character, led away much more by a love of vain splendour and display than by any passion for glory. He had it in his power to put himself at the head of the Crusaders, and reconquer Asia Minor, by marching with the Latins to Jerusalem. This great enterprize alarmed his weakness. His timid prudence made him believe that it would be sufficient to deceive the Crusaders to have nothing to fear from them, and to receive a vain homage from them in order to profit by their victories. Everything appeared good and just to him which would assist in extricating him from a position of which his policy increased the dangers, and which the unsteadiness of his projects made every day more embarrassing. The more earnestly he endeavoured to inspire confidence, the more suspicious he rendered his good faith. By seeking to inspire fear, he discovered all the alarms which he himself experienced. As soon as he had notice of the march of the princes of the crusade, he sent them ambassadors to compliment them, and to penetrate their intentions. In the meanwhile, he placed troops everywhere to harass them on their passage.

The count de Vermandois, cast by a tempest on the shores of Epirus, received the greatest honours from the governor of Durazzo, and was led a prisoner to Constantinople by the orders of Alexis. The Greek emperor hoped that the brother of the king of France would become, in his hands, a hostage that might protect him from the enterprizes of the Latins; but he only awakened suspicion, and provoked the hatred of the leaders of the crusade. Godfrey de Bouillon had arrived at Philippopoli, when he heard of the captivity of the count de Vermandois. He sent to the emperor to demand instant reparation for this outrage; and as the deputies reported but an unfavourable answer, he restrained neither his own indignation nor the fury of his army. The lands through which they passed were treated as an enemy’s country, and during eight days the fertile plains of Thrace became the theatre of war. The crowd of Greeks who fled towards the capital soon informed the emperor of the terrible vengeance of the Latins. Alexis, terrified at the fruits of his own policy, implored the pardon of his prisoner, and promised to restore him his liberty when the French should have arrived at the gates of Constantinople. This promise appeased Godfrey, who caused the war to cease, and resumed his march, treating the Greeks everywhere as friends and allies.

In the meanwhile, Alexis employed every effort to obtain from the count de Vermandois the oath of obedience and fidelity, hoping that his submission would lead to that of the other princes of the crusade, and that he should have less to fear from their ambition if he could reckon them in the number of his vassals. The brother of the king of France, who, on arriving in the territories of the empire, had written letters filled with pride and ostentation, could not resist the caresses and presents of the emperor, and took all the oaths that were required of him. On the arrival of Godfrey, he appeared in the camp of the Crusaders, who rejoiced at his deliverance, but could not pardon him for having yielded submission to a foreign monarch. Cries of indignation arose around him when he endeavoured to persuade Godfrey to follow his example. The more gentle and submissive he had shown himself in his captivity, the more strong became the opposition and resistance to the will of the emperor of his companions, who had drawn their swords to avenge the insult offered to him.

Alexis refused them provisions, and thought to reduce them by famine; but the Latins were accustomed to obtain all they wanted by violence and victory. At the signal of their leader, they dispersed themselves over the surrounding country, pillaged the villages and the palaces near the capital, and, by force, brought abundance to their camp. This disorder lasted several days; but the festival of Christmas was approaching, and the epoch of the birth of Christ revived generous sentiments in the breasts of the Christian soldiers and the pious Godfrey. Advantage was taken of these feelings to bring about peace. The emperor granted provisions, and the Crusaders sheathed their swords.

But it was impossible for harmony to subsist long between the Greeks and the Latins. The Latins haughtily boasted of having come to the rescue of the empire. On all occasions they spoke and acted as masters. The Greeks despised the barbarous courage of the Latins, and placing all their glory in the refinement of their manners, believed that they disgraced the language of Greece when pronouncing the names of the warriors of the West. The rupture which had for a long time subsisted between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, increased the antipathy which the difference of manners and customs had given birth to. On both sides anathemas were launched, and the theologians of Greece and Italy detested each other more than they detested the Saracens. The Greeks, who employed themselves in nothing but vain subtleties, had never been willing to place in the list of martyrs those who had died fighting against the infidels. They abhorred the martial character of the Latin clergy, boasted that they possessed in their capital all the relics of the East, and could not understand what they could be going to seek at Jerusalem. On their side, the Franks could not pardon the subjects of Alexis for not partaking in their enthusiasm for the crusade, and reproached them with a culpable indifference for the cause of God. All these motives of discord and hatred provoked frequent scenes of violence, in which the Greeks displayed more perfidy than courage, and the Latins more valour than moderation.

Throughout all these divisions Alexis constantly sought to obtain from Godfrey the oath of obedience and fidelity; sometimes he employed protestations of friendship, sometimes he threatened to exercise powers that he did not possess. Godfrey braved his menaces, and placed no faith in his promises. The imperial and the Latin troops were twice called to arms, and Constantinople, badly defended by its soldiers, had cause to fear beholding the standard of the Crusaders floating over its walls.

The report of these serious quarrels conveyed joy to the heart of Bohémond, who had just landed at Durazzo. He believed the time was come to attack the Greek empire, and to divide the spoils. He sent envoys to Godfrey, to invite him to take possession of Byzantium, promising to join him with all his forces, for the prosecution of this great enterprize. But Godfrey did not forget that he had taken up arms for the defence of the holy sepulchre, and rejected the proposal of Bohémond, reminding him of the oath he had taken to fight against the infidels.

This embassy to Bohémond, the object of which could not be concealed, redoubled the alarm of Alexis, and made him employ every means to subdue the firmness of Godfrey de Bouillon. He sent his own son as a hostage to the army of the Crusaders. From that time all mistrust was dissipated. The princes of the West swore to respect the laws of hospitality, and repaired to the palace of Alexis. They found the emperor surrounded by a splendid court, and entirely occupied in endeavouring to conceal his weakness under an exterior of vain magnificence. The chief of the Crusaders, and the princes and knights who accompanied him, in an apparel on which shone the martial luxury of the West, bowed before the throne of the emperor, and bent the knee to a mute and motionless majesty. After this ceremony, during which the Greeks and the Latins must have afforded each other a strange spectacle, Alexis adopted Godfrey for his son, and placed the empire under the protection of his arms. The Crusaders engaged to replace the cities they had taken belonging to the empire in the hands of the emperor, and to pay him homage for the other conquests they might make. Alexis, on his part, promised to aid them by land and by sea, to furnish them with provisions, and to share the perils and the glory of their expedition.

Alexis considered this homage of the Latin princes as a victory. The leaders of the Crusaders returned beneath their tents, where his gratitude loaded them with presents. Whilst Godfrey caused it to be proclaimed in his army by sound of trumpet, that the most profound respect for the emperor and the laws of Constantinople should be preserved, Alexis ordered all his subjects to carry provisions to the Franks, and to observe the laws of hospitality. The alliance they had just made appeared to have been sworn to in good faith on both sides; but Alexis could not destroy the prejudices the Greeks entertained against the Latins, nor could Godfrey restrain the turbulent multitude of his soldiers. Besides, the emperor of Byzantium, although he might feel reassured as to the intentions of the duke of Lorraine, still dreaded the arrival of Bohémond, and the union of several large armies in the neighbourhood of his capital. He engaged Godfrey to pass with his troops over to the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and turned his attention to whatever means his policy could suggest to abate the pride, and even to diminish the powers of the other Latin princes who were marching towards Constantinople.

The prince of Tarentum was advancing through Macedonia, now listening to the harangues of the deputies from Alexis, and now contending with the troops which opposed his passage. Several provinces and several cities had been ravaged by the Italian and Norman Crusaders, when their chief received an invitation from the emperor to precede his army, and come to Constantinople. Alexis made Bohémond protestations of friendship, in which the latter placed no faith, but from which he hoped to reap some advantage. He, on his part, declared his good feeling, and went to meet Alexis. The emperor received him with a magnificence proportionate to the fear he entertained of his arrival. These two princes were equally skilled in the arts of seducing and deceiving. The greater cause they had to complain of each other, the warmer were their protestations of friendship. They complimented each other publicly on their victories, and concealed their suspicions, and perhaps their contempt, under an exterior of reciprocal admiration. Both unscrupulous on the subject of oaths, Alexis promised vast domains to Bohémond, and the Norman hero swore without hesitation to be the most faithful of the vassals of the emperor.

Robert, count of Flanders, the duke of Normandy, and Stephen, count of Chartres and Blois, as they arrived at Constantinople, rendered their homage, in their turn, to the Greek emperor, and received, as others had done, the reward of their submission. The count of Thoulouse, who arrived the last, at first answered the messengers of Alexis, that he was not come into the East to seek a master. The emperor, to bend the pride of Raymond and his Provençals, was obliged to stoop to them.[71] He flattered by turns their avarice and their vanity, and took more pains to show them his treasures than his armies. In states in their decay it is not uncommon for wealth to be mistaken for power, and the prince believes he reigns over all hearts as long as he possesses the means of corrupting them. Ceremonial was, besides, at the court of Constantinople, the most serious and the most important of all things; but whatever value may be attached to vain formulæ, we cannot but be astonished to see warriors so haughty, who went to conquer empires, on their knees before a prince who trembled with the fear of losing his own. They made him pay dearly for an uncertain and transient submission, and not unfrequently contempt was apparent through their outward marks of respect.

During a ceremony in which Alexis received the homage of several French princes, Count Robert of Paris advanced to seat himself by the side of the emperor. Baldwin of Hainaut pulled him by the arm, and said, “You should remember, when you are in a foreign country, you ought to respect its customs.” “Truly!” replied Robert, “this is a pleasant clown who is seated, whilst so many illustrious captains are standing!” Alexis was desirous of having his words explained to him, and when the counts were gone, he retained Robert, and asked him what were his birth and country. “I am a Frenchman,” replied Robert, “and of the most illustrious rank of nobles. I only know one thing, and that is, that in my country there is a place near a church to which all repair who burn with a desire to signalize their valour. I have often been there without anybody yet having dared to present himself before me.” The emperor took care not to accept this kind of challenge, and endeavoured to conceal his surprise and vexation by giving some useful advice to the daring warrior. “If you waited then,” said he, “without meeting enemies, you are now going where you will find enough to satisfy you. But do not put yourself either at the head or the tail of the army; remain in the centre. I have learnt how to fight with the Turks; and that is the best place you can choose.”

The policy of the emperor, however, was not without effect. The pride of a great number of the counts and barons was not proof against his caresses and his presents. There still exists a letter which Stephen of Blois addressed to Adela his wife, in which he felicitates himself on the welcome he had received at the court of Byzantium. After having described all the honours with which he had been received, he exclaims, whilst speaking of Alexis, “Truly, there is not at this time such a man beneath the heavens!” Bohémond could not have been less struck with the liberality of the emperor. At the sight of an apartment filled with riches, “There is here,” said he, “enough to conquer kingdoms with.” Alexis immediately ordered these treasures to be conveyed to the tent of the ambitious Bohémond, who at first refused them with a kind of modesty, and finished by accepting them with joy. He went so far as to demand the title of grand domestic or of general of the empire of the East. Alexis, who had himself held that dignity, and who knew that it was the road to the throne, had the courage to refuse him, and contented himself with promising the office to the future services of the prince of Tarentum.

Thus the promises of the emperor retained for a short period the Latin princes under his laws. By his skilfully-distributed favours and flatteries he created a spirit of jealousy among the leaders of the crusade. Raymond de St. Gilles declared himself against Bohémond, whose projects he revealed to Alexis; and whilst this prince debased himself thus before a foreign monarch, the courtiers of Byzantium repeated with warmth, that he excelled all the other chiefs of the crusade, as the sun excels the stars.

The Franks, so dreaded in the field of battle, were powerless against the skill and address of Alexis, and could not sustain their advantage amidst the intrigues of a dissolute court. An abode at Byzantium might become otherwise dangerous for the Crusaders; the spectacle of the luxury of the East, which they beheld for the first time, was calculated to corrupt them. The Christian knights, according to the report of the historians of the times, were never weary of admiring the palaces, the splendid edifices, the riches, and perhaps the beautiful Greek women, of whom Alexis had spoken in his letters addressed to the princes of the West. Tancred alone, inflexible to all solicitations, would not expose his virtue to the seductions of Byzantium. He deplored the weakness of his companions, and, followed by a small number of knights, hastened to quit Constantinople, without having taken the oath of fidelity to the emperor.

The departure and resistance of Tancred disturbed the joy which the success of his policy had given Alexis. He applauded himself for having softened, by his presents, the principal leaders of the crusade; but he did not so entirely depend upon his means of corruption as to be perfectly free from apprehension. Every day brought new Crusaders, whom he must seduce and load with presents; the very riches he displayed to them might, in the end, awaken their ambition, and inspire them with most fatal designs. He felt by no means secure against their enterprizes until all the armies of the West were on the other side of the Bosphorus. There, without the power of insulting the capital of the empire, they turned all their attention to their preparations for the war against the Saracens.

As the Crusaders advanced across the plains of Bithynia, they saw, seeking refuge in their tents, several soldiers of Peter’s army, who having escaped from the sword of the Saracens, had lived concealed in the mountains and forests. They were clothed in the rags of misery, and with lamentations and tears related the disasters of the first army of the Christians. On the east they pointed to the fortress in which the companions of Rinaldo, pressed by hunger and thirst, had surrendered to the Turks, who had massacred them all. Near to that they showed them the mountains, at the foot of which had perished Walter and his whole army. Everywhere the Crusaders encountered the remains of their brethren; everywhere they found reason to deplore the imprudence and disasters of the first soldiers of the cross; but nothing affected them so deeply as the sight of the camp in which Walter had left the women and the sick, when he was forced by his soldiers to advance to the city of Nicea. There the Christians had been surprised by the Mussulmans, at the moment their priests were celebrating the sacrifice of the mass. Women, children, old men, all whom weakness or sickness detained in the camp, pursued to the foot of their altars, had been either borne away into slavery, or slaughtered by a pitiless enemy. The remembrance of so great a calamity stifled discord, silenced ambition, and rekindled zeal for the deliverance of the holy places. The leaders profited by this terrible lesson, and laid down useful regulations for the maintenance of discipline. The formidable army of the Crusaders advanced in the best order through the country of the infidels, and commenced the war with the first days of the spring.

Although the empire of the Seljoucide Turks, at the period of the arrival of the Crusaders in Asia, already inclined towards its fall, it nevertheless presented a formidable barrier to the warriors of the West. The kingdom of Ezeroum, or Roum, extended from the Orontes and the Euphrates to the neighbourhood of the Bosphorus, and comprised the richest provinces of Asia Minor. The Turks were animated by the double enthusiasm of religion and victory. Abandoning the cares of agriculture and commerce to the Greeks, their slaves, they knew no profession but that of arms, or desired other wealth but the booty obtained from their enemies. Their present chief was the son of Soliman, whose victories over the Christians had procured him the name of the Sacred Champion. David, surnamed Kilidge-Arslan, or the Sword of the Lion, brought up amidst the troubles of civil war, and for a long time detained a prisoner in the fortress of Koraçan by the orders of Malek-Scha, had ascended the throne of his father, and maintained his position by his valour. He possessed a genius rich in resources, and a character not to be subdued by reverses. On the approach of the Crusaders, he summoned his subjects and his allies to his defence. From all the provinces of Asia Minor, and even from Persia, the bravest defenders of Islamism hastened to range themselves beneath his banner.

Not content with assembling an army, he at first gave all his attention to the fortifying of the city of Nice, to which the earliest attempts of the Christians would be directed. This city, the capital of Bithynia, and celebrated by the holding of two councils, was the seat of the empire of Roum; and it was there that the Turks, as in an advanced post, awaited an opportunity to attack Constantinople, and precipitate themselves upon Europe. High mountains defended the approach to it. Towards the west and the south the Lake of Ascanius bathed its ramparts, and preserved to the inhabitants an easy communication with the sea. Large ditches, filled with water, surrounded the place. Three hundred and seventy towers of brick or stone protected the double enclosure of its walls, which were wide enough for the passage of a chariot. The chosen of the Turkish warriors composed its garrison, and the sultan of Roum, ready to defend it, was encamped upon the neighbouring mountains, at the head of an army of a hundred thousand men.

Full of just confidence in their own strength, and ignorant of that which could be opposed to them, the Crusaders advanced towards Nice. Never had the plains of Bithynia presented a more magnificent or a more terrible spectacle. The numbers of the Crusaders exceeded the population of many great cities of the West, and were sufficient to cover the largest plains. The Turks, from their encampments on the summits of the mountains, must have beheld, with terror, an army composed of more than a hundred thousand horse and five hundred thousand foot,[72] the picked men of the warlike nations of Europe, who were come to dispute with them the possession of Asia.[73]

When it had been determined to besiege Nice, the posts were distributed to the various bodies of the Christian army. The camp of the Crusaders extended over a vast plain, intersected by rivulets which fell from the mountains. Fleets from Greece and Italy transported provisions, and kept the besiegers in a state of abundance. Foulcher de Chartres reckons in the camp of the Christians nineteen nations, differing in manners and language. Each nation had its quarters, which they surrounded with walls and palisades, and as they were without wood or stone for the divisions, they employed the bones of the Crusaders lying unburied in the country round Nice; “by which,” Anna Comnena says, “they at once constructed a tomb for the dead and an abode for the living.” In each quarter they quickly raised magnificent tents, which served as churches, in which the chiefs and the soldiers assembled to perform the ceremonies of religion. Different war-cries, drums, the use of which had been introduced into Europe by the Saracens, and sonorous horns, pierced with several holes, summoned the Crusaders to their military exercises.

The barons and knights wore a hauberk, or coat of mail, a sort of tunic, composed of small rings of iron or steel. Over the coat of arms of every squire floated a blue, red, green, or white scarf. Every warrior wore a casque, covered with silver for the princes, of steel for the knights and nobles, and of iron for the common men. The knights bore round or square bucklers, and long shields covered the foot-soldiers. The arms employed in fight by the Crusaders were the lance, the sword, a species of knife, a poniard, called miséricorde, the club, the masse d’armes, with which a warrior could, at a single blow, strike an enemy to the earth; the sling, from which were thrown stones and balls of lead; the bow, and the cross-bow, a murderous weapon, till that time unknown to the Orientals. The warriors of the West did not then cover themselves with that heavy iron armour described by the historians of the middle ages, which they afterwards borrowed from the Saracens.

The princes and knights bore upon their shields figures or signs of different colours, which served as rallying-points for their soldiers. Here might be seen, painted on the bucklers and standards, leopards and lions; there, stars, towers, crosses, Asiatic trees, and European trees. Several caused to be represented on their shields the birds of passage which they had met with on their route, which birds, by changing their climate annually, presented to the Crusaders a symbol of their own pilgrimage. These distinctive marks at the time served to animate their valour in the field of battle, and were destined, at a future day, to be one of the attributes of rank among the nations of the West.

In the immense crowd of Crusaders, no count, no prince, deigned to receive orders from any one.[74] The Christians presented the image of a republic under arms. This republic, in which everything appeared to be in common, recognised no other law but that of honour, no other tie but that of religion. So great was their zeal, that chiefs performed the duties of common men, and the latter required no signal to rush to victory or encounter death. The priests passed continually amongst the ranks, to recall to the Crusaders the maxims of scriptural morality. Their discourses were not thrown away; for, if we may credit contemporary authors, who seldom spare the champions of the cross, the conduct of the Christians during the siege of Nice offered nothing but examples of warlike virtue and subjects of edification.

In the first days of the siege the Christians made several assaults, in which they uselessly displayed prodigies of valour. Kilidge-Arslan, who had placed both his family and his treasures in Nice, animated the garrison by his letters, and resolved to spare no efforts to succour the besieged. He called together the chiefs of his army; he reminded them of the advantages they had gained over the Christians, and predicted still more brilliant trophies to their valour. “The greatest disorder,” he told them, “reigned in the Christian army, and the numbers of their enemies assured them the victory. They were going to fight for their wives, their children, and the country which they owed to the conquests of their fathers; the religion of the prophet implored their help, and the richest booty would be the reward of their exploits.” The Mussulmans, animated by the speeches and the example of their chief, prepared for battle, and descended the mountains. Their army, divided into two bodies, attacked with impetuosity the quarter of Godfrey de Bouillon and that of Raymond de Thoulouse, who had just arrived before Nice. The Provençals were not able to resist the first shock, but they rallied soon at the voices of Raymond and Adhémar. “Then the two armies,” says Matthew of Edessa,[75] who speaks of this battle, “joined, mingled, and attacked each other, with equal fury. Everywhere glittered casques and shields; lances rung against cuirasses; the air resounded with piercing cries; the terrified horses recoiled at the din of arms and the hissing of arrows; the earth trembled beneath the tread of the combatants, and the plain was for a vast space bristling with javelins.” Godfrey, Tancred, and the two Roberts, appeared to be everywhere at once, and carried death and terror into the ranks of the infidels. The Turks could not long withstand the impetuous valour of the Crusaders; they were put to the rout, and pursued by the conquerors even to the mountains which served them as a place of refuge.

The sultan, instead of deploring his defeat, only thought of avenging the disgrace of his arms, and on the very morrow, at break of day, led back his troops to the combat. The Turks attacked the Christians, uttering loud cries. Sometimes they rushed with fury into the ranks of the Crusaders, sometimes they fought at a distance, pouring in showers of arrows. Then they feigned to fly, only to return to the charge with greater fury. This second battle, in which the Turks showed the courage of despair seconded by all the stratagems of war, lasted from morning till night. The victory, which was for a long time doubtful, cost the Christians two thousand lives. The Crusaders made a great many prisoners; four thousand Mussulmans fell on the field of battle; the heads of a thousand were sent to Alexius; and the rest, by the aid of machines, were cast into the city, to inform the garrison of this fresh defeat of the Turks.

Kilidge-Arslan, despairing to save Nice, retired with the wreck of his army, and hastened to gather together in the provinces new forces, with which to oppose the Christians. The Crusaders, having no longer to dread the neighbourhood of an enemy’s army, pushed on the siege with vigour. Sometimes they made approaches by galleries covered by a double roof of boards and hurdles; sometimes they dragged towards the walls towers mounted on a number of wheels, constructed with several stages, and loaded with arms and soldiers. Here the rams beat against the walls with redoubled shocks; at a short distance balistas vomited, without ceasing, beams of wood and showers of arrows; and catapultas cast into the air combustible matters and enormous stones, which fell with a crash into the city.

The Christians employed in this siege all the machines[76] known to the Romans. The Greeks were better acquainted with the construction of them than the Latins, and directed their operations. It is likewise probable that the Greeks who were in Nice, and subject to the power of the Mussulmans, instructed the latter in the means of defending the place.

The Christians allowed the besieged no respite, and they defended themselves with obstinate fury. All the inhabitants of Nice had taken arms. Their ramparts were covered with formidable machines, which hurled destruction among the assailants. Fiery darts, beams, enormous pieces of stone, launched from the height of the walls, destroyed, day after day, the labours of the Crusaders. When the Christians had made a breach in the ramparts, another wall arose from the bosom of the ruins, and presented a new barrier to the besiegers.

As the Crusaders attacked without order or precaution, their imprudence and their rashness were often very fatal to them. Some were crushed beneath the fragments of their own machines; others fell pierced with poisoned darts; sometimes, even, says an historian, the besiegers sported with their efforts, catching them with iron hands,[77] or hooks, which, falling upon them, seized them, and lifted them alive into the city. After having stripped them, the Turks hung them upon their ramparts, and then launched them, by means of their machines, stark naked into the camp of the Christians.

A Saracen,[78] whom history describes to us as a giant, performed during this siege exploits which surpass those related of fabulous antiquity. He was not less remarkable for his skill than for the strength of his arm; he never cast a javelin in vain, and all whom he hit were sure to sink beneath the blow. When he had exhausted his arrows, and could make no more use of his bow, he seized masses of rock, and rolled them down upon the assailants. One day, when he was standing on the platform of a tower attacked by Raymond, he alone defied the efforts of the enemies. At one time he hurled a shower of stones upon the besiegers; then, raising his voice, he defied the bravest of the Christians to the combat, loading them with the most violent abuse. All eyes were turned towards him, and a thousand arrows flew at once from the Christian army to punish his audacity. For a moment all the efforts of the besiegers were directed against a single man. His body was covered with wounds and bristling with arrows; but he defended himself skilfully, and was still braving the crowd of his enemies, when Godfrey, attracted by the noise of this general attack, seized a cross-bow, and taking aim at the redoubtable Saracen, shot him through the heart, and his immense body rolled from the platform into the ditch.

This victory, which appears rather to belong to the heroes of the epopea than to those of history, was celebrated by the acclamations of the Christian army. The Crusaders, who gained several other advantages, redoubled their zeal and their valorous efforts, and the besieged began to offer a less animated resistance. As the Saracens received provisions and reinforcements by the Lake Ascanius, it was resolved to cut off this last resource. A large number of boats, furnished by the Greeks, were transported by land, and launched into the water in the night-time. When day appeared, the lake was covered with barks, each bearing fifty combatants; the flags were displayed, and floated over the waters, and the lake and its shores resounded with the various war-cries and the noise of the trumpets and drums. At this sight the besieged were struck with surprise and terror; and the Christians renewed their attacks with greater success. The soldiers of Raymond had undermined the foundations of one of the principal towers of Nice. This tower sank down in the middle of the night, and its fall was accompanied by so frightful a noise, that both the Christians and the Mussulmans were aroused from their sleep, and believed that an earthquake had taken place. On the following day the wife of the sultan, with two infant children, endeavoured to escape by the lake, and fell into the hands of the Christians. When the news of this reached the city, it greatly increased the general consternation. After a siege of seven weeks, the Mussulmans had lost all hopes of defending Nice, and the Christians were expecting every day to be able to take it by assault, when the policy of Alexius intervened to deprive their arms of the honour of a complete conquest.

This prince, who has been compared to the bird who seeks his food in the tracks of the lion, had advanced as far as Pelecania. He had sent to the army of the Crusaders a weak detachment of Greek troops, and two generals intrusted with his confidence, less for the purpose of fighting than to negotiate, and seize an opportunity to get possession of Nice by stratagem. One of these officers, named Butumitus, having got into the city, created in the inhabitants a dread of the inexorable vengeance of the Latins, and advised them to surrender to the emperor of Constantinople. His propositions were listened to, and when the Crusaders were preparing to begin a last assault, the standards of Alexius all at once appeared upon the ramparts and towers of Nice.

This sight created the most lively surprise in the Christian army. The greater part of the leaders could not restrain their indignation, and the soldiers who were preparing for the assault returned to their tents trembling with rage. Their fury was increased when they found they were prohibited from entering more than ten at a time into a city which they had conquered at the price of their blood, and which contained riches which had been promised to them. In vain the Greeks alleged the treaties made with Alexius, and the services they had rendered the Latins during the siege; the murmurs were never silenced for a moment, except by the largesses of the emperor.

This prince received the greater part of the chiefs at Pelecania, where he duly praised their bravery and loaded them with presents. After having taken possession of Nice, he gained a new victory, perhaps not less flattering to his vanity; he at length triumphed over the pride of Tancred, who took the oath of fidelity and obedience to him. Nevertheless, he did not stifle the suspicions they had conceived of his perfidy. The liberty to which he restored the wife and children of the sultan, and the kind manner in which he treated the Turkish prisoners, gave the Latins good reason to believe that he sought to conciliate the enemies of the Christians. Nothing more was necessary to renew former hatreds, and from this period war was almost declared between the Greeks and the Crusaders.

A year had passed away since the Crusaders had quitted the West. After having reposed some time in the neighbourhood of Nice, they prepared to set forward on their march towards Syria and Palestine. The provinces of Asia Minor which they were about to cross were still occupied by the Turks, who were animated by fanaticism and despair, and who formed less a nation than an army, always ready to fight and to pass from one place to another. In a country so long ravaged by war, the roads were scarcely to be seen, and all communication between cities was stopped. In the mountains, defiles, torrents, precipices, must constantly create impediments to the march of a numerous army; in the plains, mostly uncultivated and barren, famine, the want of water, the burning heat of the climate, were inevitable evils. The Crusaders fancied they had conquered all their enemies at Nice, and without taking any precaution, without any other guides than the Greeks, of whom they had so much reason to complain, they advanced into a country with which they were totally unacquainted. They had no idea of the obstacles they should encounter in their march, and their ignorance created their security.

They had divided their army into two bodies, which marched at some distance the one from the other, across the mountains of Lesser Phrygia. By marching thus separately they could more easily procure provisions; but they ran the risk of being surprised by an active and vigilant enemy. Kilidge-Arslan, twice conquered by the Christians, had gathered together new forces. At the head of an army, which the Latin historians say amounted to two hundred thousand men, he followed the Crusaders, watching for an opportunity to surprise them, and to make them pay dearly for the conquest of Nice.

Whilst the main army, commanded by Godfrey, Raymond, Adhémar, Hugh the Great, and the count of Flanders, was crossing the plain of Dorylæum, the other body, which was commanded by Bohemond, Tancred, and the duke of Normandy, directed its march to the left. It was following the banks of a little river, and was advancing into a valley to which the Latin historians have given the name of Gorgoni or Ozellis.[79] Some intimations had been given by the Greeks that the enemy was nigh, but the Crusaders believed they had nothing to fear. After a day’s march, on the evening of the 30th of June, they arrived at a place which offered them abundant pasturage, and they resolved to encamp. The Christian army passed the night in the most profound security; but on the morrow, at daybreak, the scouts and clouds of dust on the heights announced to them the presence of the enemy. Immediately the camp was roused, and all flew to arms. Bohemond, thus become the leader of the army in the midst of peril, hastened to make the necessary dispositions for receiving the Turks. The camp of the Christians was defended on one side by the river, and on the other by a marsh covered with reeds. The prince of Tarentum caused it to be surrounded with chariots, and with palisades made of the stakes employed in erecting the tents. He next assigned the posts to the infantry, and placed the women, the children, and the sick in the centre of them. The cavalry, divided into three bodies, advanced to the head of the camp, and prepared to dispute the passage of the river. One of these bodies was commanded by Tancred, and William his brother, and another by the duke of Normandy and the count de Chartres. Bohemond, who commanded the centre, placed himself with his horsemen upon a height, whence he might observe everything, and follow the order of the battle.

Scarcely had the prince of Tarentum finished his preparations, when the Saracens, uttering loud cries, descended from the mountains, and, when within bow-shot, discharged a shower of arrows upon the Christians. This did very little harm to the horsemen, who were defended by their shields and their armour, but it wounded a great many of the horses, which threw the ranks into disorder. The archers, the slingers, the crossbow-men, scattered here and there upon the flanks of the Christian army, were not able to return to the Turks all the arrows that were launched at them. The horsemen becoming impatient to make use of the lance and the sword, the most eager of them imprudently crossed the river and fell upon the Saracens. But the latter avoided the mêlée; as fast as the Crusaders presented themselves before them, they opened their ranks, dispersed, rallied at some distance, and darkened the air with a fresh cloud of arrows. The speed of their horses seconded them in these evolutions, and secured them from the pursuit of the Crusaders, whom they fought whilst appearing to fly.

This manner of fighting was quite in favour of the Turks, and rendered the disposition the Christian army made before the battle, entirely useless. Every leader, every horseman, took counsel only of his own courage, and abandoned himself to its dictates. The Christians fought in disorder upon ground with which they were quite unacquainted, and the bravest ran the greatest risks. Robert of Paris, the same who had seated himself on the imperial throne by the side of Alexius, was mortally wounded, after having seen forty of his companions fall around him. William, the brother of Tancred, fell pierced with arrows. Tancred himself, whose lance was broken, and who had no weapon left but his sword, only owed his safety to Bohemond, who came to his succour, and extricated him from the hands of the infidels. Whilst the victory between strength and agility remained uncertain, new troops of Saracens descended from the mountains and joined the fight. The sultan of Nice took advantage of the moment at which the cavalry of the Crusaders could scarcely resist the shock of the Turkish army, to attack their camp. He ordered a body of his choicest soldiers to draw their swords and follow him. He crossed the river, and overcame every obstacle that was placed in his way. In an instant the camp of the Christians was invaded and filled by the Turks. The Saracens massacred all who came within reach of their swords; sparing none but young and beautiful women, whom they destined for their seraglios. If we are to believe Albert of Aix, the daughters and the wives of the barons and knights preferred on this occasion slavery to death; for they were seen, in the midst of the tumult, decking themselves in their most beautiful vestments, and presenting themselves thus before the Saracens, seeking by the display of their charms to soften the hearts of a pitiless enemy.[80] In the meanwhile Bohemond, rendered aware of the attack upon the camp, came promptly to its succour, and forced the sultan to rejoin the body of his army. Then the conflict recommenced on the banks of the river with increased fury. The duke of Normandy, who had remained alone with some of his knights on the field of battle, snatched his white pennon embroidered with gold from the hand of him who bore it, and rushed into the thickest of the fight, crying aloud, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” He cut down with his sword all who were in his path; among the victims to his valour being one of the principal Turkish emirs. Tancred, Richard prince of Salerno, Stephen count of Blois, and other chiefs, followed Robert’s example and seconded his valour. Bohemond, who was pursuing the sultan of Nice, met a troop of soldiers who were flying, and stopped them, saying, “Whither are you flying, Christian soldiers? Do you not see that their horses have more speed than ours? Follow me, I will show you a safer road than flight!” Scarcely had he spoken these words, than he rushed with them into the midst of the Saracens, and renewed the fight. In the disorder of the mêlée, the women, who had been liberated from the hands of the Saracens, and who were eager to revenge their outraged modesty, went through the ranks bearing refreshment to the soldiers, and exhorting them to redouble their courage to save them from slavery.

But so many generous efforts were nearly proving useless. The Crusaders were exhausted with fatigue, and could not long resist an enemy whose force was being constantly renewed, and who overwhelmed them with numbers. The Christian army, surrounded on all sides, was compelled to retreat fighting and to retire to the camp, into which the Turks were upon the point of entering with them. It is impossible to paint the confusion and the despair which reigned at that moment among the Crusaders. Priests were seen imploring, by their groans and their prayers, the assistance of the God of armies; women filled the air with lamentations for the dead and the wounded; whilst soldiers fell on their knees to the priests to obtain absolution for their sins. Amid this frightful tumult the voices of the leaders were but little attended to; the most intrepid were covered with wounds, burning with thirst and heat, and could fight no longer. They despaired of seeing Jerusalem, and were in momentary expectation of death, when all at once a thousand voices proclaimed the approach of Raymond and Godfrey, who were advancing with the other division of the Christian army.

Before the commencement of the battle, Bohemond had sent messengers to inform them of the attack of the Turks. On learning this, the duke of Lorraine, the count de Vermandois, and the count of Flanders, at the head of the main body of their army, had directed their march towards the valley of Gorgoni, followed by Raymond and Adhémar, who brought up the baggage, at the head of the rear-guard. When they appeared upon the ridge of the mountains on the eastern side, the sun was in the midst of his course, and his light shone full upon their shields, their helmets, and their naked swords; the ensigns were displayed; the noise of their drums and clarions resounded afar; and fifty thousand horsemen, fully armed and eager for the fight, advanced in good order. This splendid sight revived the hopes of the Crusaders, and cast fear and dread among the infidel ranks.

Scarcely had Godfrey, who, followed by fifty knights, had preceded his army, mixed with the combatants, when the sultan sounded a retreat and retired to the heights, where he hoped the Crusaders would not dare to follow him. The second body of the Christian army soon arrived on the plain smoking with the blood of the Christians. The Crusaders, recognising their brothers and companions stretched in the dust, became impatient to revenge their death, and with loud cries demanded to be led to the fight. Even the combatants who had been fighting from morning, now would not hear of repose. The Christian army immediately formed in order of battle. Bohemond, Tancred, and Robert of Normandy, placed themselves on the left; Godfrey, the count of Flanders, and the count of Blois led on the right wing. Raymond commanded the centre, and the rear-guard, or body of reserve, was placed under the orders of Adhémar. Before the leaders gave the word, the priests passed among the ranks, exhorting the Crusaders to fight manfully, and giving them their benedictions. The soldiers and the leaders, drawing their swords, and threatening the enemy, cried with one voice, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” and this animating war-cry was repeated by the echoes of the mountains and the valleys. At length the Christian army advanced, marching full of confidence against the Turks, for whom the rocks and the hills appeared to be a sure place of refuge.