aspect. Those vassals who ranged themselves under the banners of their
lord erected tents around his castle; while those who undertook the war on
their own account constructed booths and huts in the neighbourhood of the
towns or villages, preparatory to their joining some popular leader of the
expedition. The meadows of France were covered with tents. As the
belligerents were to have remission of all their sins on their arrival in
Palestine, hundreds of them gave themselves up to the most unbounded
licentiousness. The courtesan, with the red cross upon her shoulders,
plied her shameless trade with sensual pilgrims without scruple on either
side; the lover of good cheer gave loose rein to his appetite, and
drunkenness and debauchery flourished. Their zeal in the service of the
Lord was to wipe out all faults and follies, and they had the same surety
of salvation as the rigid anchorite. This reasoning had charms for the
ignorant, and the sounds of lewd revelry and the voice of prayer rose at
the same instant from the camp.
It is now time to speak of the leaders of the expedition. Great multitudes
ranged themselves under the command of Peter the Hermit, whom, as the
originator, they considered the most appropriate leader of the war. Others
joined the banner of a bold adventurer, whom history has dignified with no
other name than that of Gautier sans Avoir, or Walter the Pennyless, but
who is represented as having been of noble family, and well skilled in the
art of war. A third multitude from Germany flocked around the standard of
a monk named Gottschalk, of whom nothing is known except that he was a
fanatic of the deepest dye. All these bands, which together are said to
have amounted to three hundred thousand men, women, and children, were
composed of the vilest rascality of Europe. Without discipline, principle,
or true courage, they rushed through the nations like a pestilence,
spreading terror and death wherever they went. The first multitude that
set forth was led by Walter the Pennyless early in the spring of 1096,
within a very few months after the Council of Clermont. Each man of that
irregular host aspired to be his own master. Like their nominal leader,
each was poor to penury, and trusted for subsistence on his journey to the
chances of the road. Rolling through Germany like a tide, they entered
Hungary, where, at first, they were received with some degree of kindness
by the people. The latter had not yet caught sufficient of the fire of
enthusiasm to join the Crusade themselves, but were willing enough to
forward the cause by aiding those embarked in it. Unfortunately this good
understanding did not last long. The swarm were not contented with food
for their necessities, but craved for luxuries also. They attacked and
plundered the dwellings of the country people, and thought nothing of
murder where resistance was offered. On their arrival before Semlin, the
outraged Hungarians collected in large numbers, and, attacking the rear of
the crusading host, slew a great many of the stragglers, and, taking away
their arms and crosses, affixed them as trophies to the walls of the city.
Walter appears to have been in no mood or condition to make reprisals; for
his army, destructive as a plague of locusts when plunder urged them on,
were useless against any regular attack from a determined enemy. Their
rear continued to be thus harassed by the wrathful Hungarians until they
were fairly out of their territory. On his entrance into Bulgaria, Walter
met with no better fate. The cities and towns refused to let him pass; the
villages denied him provisions; and the citizens and country people
uniting, slaughtered his followers by hundreds. The progress of the army
was more like a retreat than an advance; but as it was impossible to stand
still, Walter continued his course till he arrived at Constantinople with
a force which famine and the sword had diminished to one-third of its
original number.
The greater multitude, led by the enthusiastic Hermit, followed close upon
his heels, with a bulky train of baggage, and women and children
sufficient to form a host of themselves. If it were possible to find a
rabble more vile than the army of Walter the Pennyless, it was that led by
Peter the Hermit. Being better provided with means, they were not reduced
to the necessity of pillage in their progress through Hungary; and had
they taken any other route than that which led through Semlin, might
perhaps have traversed the country without molestation. On their arrival
before that city, their fury was raised at seeing the arms and red crosses
of their predecessors hanging as trophies over the gates. Their pent-up
ferocity exploded at the sight. The city was tumultuously attacked, and
the besiegers entering, not by dint of bravery, but of superior numbers,
it was given up to all the horrors which follow when victory, brutality,
and licentiousness are linked together. Every evil passion was allowed to
revel with impunity, and revenge, lust, and avarice,--each had its
hundreds of victims in unhappy Semlin. Any maniac can kindle a
conflagration, but it may require many wise men to put it out. Peter the
Hermit had blown the popular fury into a flame, but to cool it again was
beyond his power. His followers rioted unrestrained, until the fear of
retaliation warned them to desist. When the king of Hungary was informed
of the disasters of Semlin, he marched with a sufficient force to chastise
the Hermit, who, at the news, broke up his camp and retreated towards the
Morava, a broad and rapid stream that joins the Danube a few miles to the
eastward of Belgrade. Here a party of indignant Bulgarians awaited him,
and so harassed him, as to make the passage of the river a task both of
difficulty and danger. Great numbers of his infatuated followers perished
in the waters, and many fell under the swords of the Bulgarians. The
ancient chronicles do not mention the amount of the Hermit's loss at this
passage, but represent it in general terms as very great.
At Nissa, the Duke of Bulgaria fortified himself, in fear of an assault;
but Peter, having learned a little wisdom from experience, thought it best
to avoid hostilities. He passed three nights in quietness under the walls,
and the duke, not wishing to exasperate unnecessarily so fierce and
rapacious a host, allowed the townspeople to supply them with provisions.
Peter took his departure peaceably on the following morning; but some
German vagabonds, falling behind the main body of the army, set fire to
the mills and house of a Bulgarian, with whom, it appears, they had had
some dispute on the previous evening. The citizens of Nissa, who had
throughout mistrusted the Crusaders, and were prepared for the worst,
sallied out immediately, and took signal vengeance. The spoilers were cut
to pieces, and the townspeople pursuing the Hermit, captured all the women
and children who had lagged in the rear, and a great quantity of baggage.
Peter hereupon turned round and marched back to Nissa, to demand
explanation of the Duke of Bulgaria. The latter fairly stated the
provocation given, and the Hermit could urge nothing in palliation of so
gross an outrage. A negotiation was entered into, which promised to be
successful, and the Bulgarians were about to deliver up the women and
children, when a party of undisciplined Crusaders, acting solely upon
their own suggestion, endeavoured to scale the walls and seize upon the
town. Peter in vain exerted his authority; the confusion became general,
and after a short but desperate battle, the Crusaders threw down their
arms, and fled in all directions. Their vast host was completely routed,
the slaughter being so great among them, as to be counted, not by
hundreds, but by thousands.
It is said that the Hermit fled from this fatal field to a forest a few
miles from Nissa, abandoned by every human creature. It would be curious
to know whether, after so dire a reverse,
"His enpierced breast
Sharp sorrow did in thousand pieces rive,"
or whether his fiery zeal still rose superior to calamity, and pictured
the eventual triumph of his cause. He, so lately the leader of a hundred
thousand men, was now a solitary skulker in the forests, liable at every
instant to be discovered by some pursuing Bulgarian, and cut off in mid
career. Chance at last brought him within sight of an eminence, where two
or three of his bravest knights had collected five hundred of the
stragglers. These gladly received the Hermit, and a consultation having
taken place, it was resolved to gather together the scattered remnants of
the army. Fires were lighted on the hill, and scouts sent out in all
directions for the fugitives. Horns were sounded at intervals, to make
known that friends were near, and before nightfall the Hermit saw himself
at the head of seven thousand men. During the succeeding day, he was
joined by twenty thousand more, and with this miserable remnant of his
force, he pursued his route towards Constantinople. The bones of the rest
mouldered in the forests of Bulgaria.
On his arrival at Constantinople, where he found Walter the Pennyless
awaiting him, he was hospitably received by the Emperor Alexius. It might
have been expected that the sad reverses they had undergone would have
taught his followers common prudence; but, unhappily for them, their
turbulence and love of plunder was not to be restrained. Although they
were surrounded by friends, by whom all their wants were liberally
supplied, they could not refrain from rapine. In vain the Hermit exhorted
them to tranquillity; he possessed no more power over them, in subduing
their passions, than the obscurest soldier of the host. They set fire to
several public buildings in Constantinople out of pure mischief, and
stripped the lead from the roofs of the churches, which they afterwards
sold for old metal in the purlieus of the city. From this time may be
dated the aversion which the Emperor Alexius entertained for the
Crusaders, and which was afterwards manifested in all his actions, even
when he had to deal with the chivalrous and more honourable armies which
arrived after the Hermit. He seems to have imagined that the Turks
themselves were enemies less formidable to his power than these
outpourings of the refuse of Europe: he soon found a pretext to hurry them
into Asia Minor. Peter crossed the Bosphorus with Walter, but the excesses
of his followers were such, that, despairing of accomplishing any good end
by remaining at their head, he left them to themselves, and returned to
Constantinople, on the pretext of making arrangements with the government
of Alexius for a proper supply of provisions. The Crusaders, forgetting
that they were in the enemy's country, and that union, above all things,
was desirable, gave themselves up to dissensions. Violent disputes arose
between the Lombards and Normans commanded by Walter the Pennyless, and
the Franks and Germans led out by Peter. The latter separated themselves
from the former, and, choosing for their leader one Reinaldo, or Reinhold,
marched forward, and took possession of the fortress of Exorogorgon. The
Sultan Solimaun was on the alert, with a superior force. A party of
Crusaders, which had been detached from the fort, and stationed at a
little distance as an ambuscade, were surprised and cut to pieces, and
Exorogorgon invested on all sides. The siege was protracted for eight
days, during which the Christians suffered the most acute agony from the
want of water. It is hard to say how long the hope of succour or the
energy of despair would have enabled them to hold out: their treacherous
leader cut the matter short by renouncing the Christian faith, and
delivering up the fort into the hands of the sultan. He was followed by
two or three of his officers; all the rest, refusing to become Mahometans,
were ruthlessly put to the sword. Thus perished the last wretched remnant
of the vast multitude which had traversed Europe with Peter the Hermit.
Walter the Pennyless and his multitude met as miserable a fate. On the
news of the disasters of Exorogorgon, they demanded to be led instantly
against the Turks. Walter, who only wanted good soldiers to have made a
good general, was cooler of head, and saw all the dangers of such a step.
His force was wholly insufficient to make any decisive movement in a
country where the enemy was so much superior, and where, in case of
defeat, he had no secure position to fall back upon; and he therefore
expressed his opinion against advancing until the arrival of
reinforcements. This prudent counsel found no favour: the army loudly
expressed their dissatisfaction at their chief, and prepared to march
forward without him. Upon this, the brave Walter put himself at their
head, and rushed to destruction. Proceeding towards Nice, the modern
Isnik, he was intercepted by the army of the sultan: a fierce battle
ensued, in which the Turks made fearful havoc; out of twenty-five thousand
Christians, twenty-two thousand were slain, and among them Gautier
himself, who fell pierced by seven mortal wounds. The remaining three
thousand retreated upon Civitot, where they entrenched themselves.
[Illustration: ISNIK.]
Disgusted as was Peter the Hermit at the excesses of the multitude, who,
at his call, had forsaken Europe, his heart was moved with grief and pity
at their misfortunes. All his former zeal revived: casting himself at the
feet of the Emperor Alexius, he implored him, with tears in his eyes, to
send relief to the few survivors at Civitot. The emperor consented, and a
force was sent, which arrived just in time to save them from destruction.
The Turks had beleaguered the place, and the Crusaders were reduced to the
last extremity. Negotiations were entered into, and the last three
thousand were conducted in safety to Constantinople. Alexius had suffered
too much by their former excesses to be very desirous of retaining them in
his capital: he therefore caused them all to be disarmed, and, furnishing
each with a sum of money, he sent them back to their own country.
While these events were taking place, fresh hordes were issuing from the
woods and wilds of Germany, all bent for the Holy Land. They were
commanded by a fanatical priest, named Gottschalk, who, like Gautier and
Peter the Hermit, took his way through Hungary. History is extremely
meagre in her details of the conduct and fate of this host, which amounted
to at least one hundred thousand men. Robbery and murder seem to have
journeyed with them, and the poor Hungarians were rendered almost
desperate by their numbers and rapacity. Karloman, the king of the
country, made a bold effort to get rid of them; for the resentment of his
people had arrived at such a height, that nothing short of the total
extermination of the Crusaders would satisfy them. Gottschalk had to pay
the penalty, not only for the ravages of his own bands, but for those of
the swarms that had come before him. He and his army were induced, by some
means or other, to lay down their arms: the savage Hungarians, seeing them
thus defenceless, set upon them, and slaughtered them in great numbers.
How many escaped their arrows we are not informed; but not one of them
reached Palestine.
Other swarms, under nameless leaders, issued from Germany and France, more
brutal and more frantic than any that had preceded them. Their fanaticism
surpassed by far the wildest freaks of the followers of the Hermit. In
bands, varying in numbers from one to five thousand, they traversed the
country in all directions, bent upon plunder and massacre. They wore the
symbol of the Crusade upon their shoulders, but inveighed against the
folly of proceeding to the Holy Land to destroy the Turks, while they left
behind them so many Jews, the still more inveterate enemies of Christ.
They swore fierce vengeance against this unhappy race, and murdered all
the Hebrews they could lay their hands on, first subjecting them to the
most horrible mutilation. According to the testimony of Albert Aquensis,
they lived among each other in the most shameless profligacy, and their
vice was only exceeded by their superstition. Whenever they were in search
of Jews, they were preceded by a goose and goat, which they believed to be
holy, and animated with divine power to discover the retreats of the
unbelievers. In Germany alone they slaughtered more than a thousand Jews,
notwithstanding all the efforts of the clergy to save them. So dreadful
was the cruelty of their tormentors, that great numbers of Jews committed
self-destruction to avoid falling into their hands.
Again it fell to the lot of the Hungarians to deliver Europe from these
pests. When there were no more Jews to murder, the bands collected in one
body, and took the old route to the Holy Land, a route stained with the
blood of three hundred thousand who had gone before, and destined also to
receive theirs. The number of these swarms has never been stated; but so
many of them perished in Hungary, that contemporary writers, despairing of
giving any adequate idea of their multitudes, state that the fields were
actually heaped with their corpses, and that for miles in its course the
waters of the Danube were dyed with their blood. It was at Mersburg, on
the Danube, that the greatest slaughter took place,--a slaughter so great
as to amount almost to extermination. The Hungarians for a while disputed
the passage of the river, but the Crusaders forced their way across, and
attacking the city with the blind courage of madness, succeeded in making
a breach in the walls. At this moment of victory an unaccountable fear
came over them. Throwing down their arms, they fled panic-stricken, no one
knew why, and no one knew whither. The Hungarians followed, sword in hand,
and cut them down without remorse, and in such numbers, that the stream of
the Danube is said to have been choked up by their unburied bodies.
This was the worst paroxysm of the madness of Europe; and this passed, her
chivalry stepped upon the scene. Men of cool heads, mature plans, and
invincible courage stood forward to lead and direct the grand movement of
Europe upon Asia. It is upon these men that romance has lavished her most
admiring epithets, leaving to the condemnation of history the vileness and
brutality of those who went before. Of these leaders the most
distinguished were Godfrey of Bouillon duke of Lorraine, and Raymond count
of Toulouse. Four other chiefs of the royal blood of Europe also assumed
the cross, and led each his army to the Holy Land; Hugh count of
Vermandois, brother of the king of France; Robert duke of Normandy, the
elder brother of William Rufus; Robert count of Flanders, and Bohemund
prince of Tarentum, eldest son of the celebrated Robert Guiscard. These
men were all tinged with the fanaticism of the age, but none of them acted
entirely from religious motives. They were neither utterly reckless like
Gautier sans Avoir, crazy like Peter the Hermit, nor brutal like
Gottschalk the Monk, but possessed each of these qualities in a milder
form; their valour being tempered by caution, their religious zeal by
worldly views, and their ferocity by the spirit of chivalry. They saw
whither led the torrent of the public will; and it being neither their
wish nor their interest to stem it, they allowed themselves to be carried
with it, in the hope that it would lead them at last to a haven of
aggrandisement. Around them congregated many minor chiefs, the flower of
the nobility of France and Italy, with some few from Germany, England, and
Spain. It was wisely conjectured that armies so numerous would find a
difficulty in procuring provisions if they all journeyed by the same road.
They therefore resolved to separate; Godfrey de Bouillon proceeding
through Hungary and Bulgaria, the Count of Toulouse through Lombardy and
Dalmatia, and the other leaders through Apulia to Constantinople, where
the several divisions were to reunite. The forces under these leaders have
been variously estimated. The Princess Anna Comnena talks of them as
having been as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore, or the stars in the
firmament. Fulcher of Chartres is more satisfactory, and exaggerates less
magnificently, when he states, that all the divisions, when they had sat
down before Nice in Bithynia, amounted to one hundred thousand horsemen,
and six hundred thousand men on foot, exclusive of the priests, women, and
children. Gibbon is of opinion that this amount is exaggerated; but thinks
the actual numbers did not fall very far short of the calculation. The
Princess Anna afterwards gives the number of those under Godfrey of
Bouillon as eighty thousand foot and horse; and supposing that each of the
other chiefs led an army as numerous, the total would be near half a
million. This must be over rather than under the mark, as the army of
Godfrey of Bouillon was confessedly the largest when it set out, and
suffered less by the way than any other.
[Illustration: GODFREY DE BOUILLON.]
The Count of Vermandois was the first who set foot on the Grecian
territory. On his arrival at Durazzo he was received with every mark of
respect and courtesy by the agents of the emperor, and his followers were
abundantly supplied with provisions. Suddenly, however, and without cause
assigned, the count was arrested by order of the Emperor Alexius, and
conveyed a close prisoner to Constantinople. Various motives have been
assigned by different authors as having induced the emperor to this
treacherous and imprudent proceeding. By every writer he has been
condemned for so flagrant a breach of hospitality and justice. The most
probable reason for his conduct appears to be that suggested by Guibert of
Nogent, who states that Alexius, fearful of the designs of the Crusaders
upon his throne, resorted to this extremity in order afterwards to force
the count to take the oath of allegiance to him, as the price of his
liberation. The example of a prince so eminent as the brother of the king
of France, would, he thought, be readily followed by the other chiefs of
the Crusade. In the result he was wofully disappointed, as every man
deserves to be who commits positive evil that doubtful good may ensue. But
this line of policy accorded well enough with the narrowmindedness of the
emperor, who, in the enervating atmosphere of his highly civilised and
luxurious court, dreaded the influx of the hardy and ambitious warriors of
the West, and strove to nibble away by unworthy means the power which he
had not energy enough to confront. If danger to himself had existed from
the residence of the chiefs in his dominions, he might easily have averted
it, by the simple means of placing himself at the head of the European
movement, and directing its energies to their avowed object, the conquest
of the Holy Land. But the emperor, instead of being, as he might have
been, the lord and leader of the Crusades, which he had himself aided in
no inconsiderable degree to suscitate by his embassies to the Pope, became
the slave of men who hated and despised him. No doubt the barbarous
excesses of the followers of Gautier and Peter the Hermit made him look
upon the whole body of them with disgust, but it was the disgust of a
little mind, which is glad of any excuse to palliate or justify its own
irresolution and love of ease.