CHAPTER XVI.----THE CRUSADES, THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR SUCCESS.

Amongst the great events of European history, none was for a longer time

in preparation or more naturally brought about than the Crusades.

Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in Jerusalem her sacred

cradle; it had been, in past times, the home of her ancestors, the Jews,

and the centre of their history; and, afterwards, the scene of the life,

death, and resurrection of her Divine Founder. Jerusalem became, more

and more, the Holy City. To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of

Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days, and

in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion

with the early Christians. When, under Constantine, Christianity had

ascended from the cross to the throne, Jerusalem had fresh attractions

for Christian faith and Christian curiosity. Temples covered and

surrounded the Holy Sepulchre; and at Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Tabor,

and nearly all the places which Jesus had consecrated by His presence and

His miracles were seen to rise up churches, chapels, and monuments

dedicated to the memory of them. The Emperor Constantine’s mother, St.

Helena, was, at seventy-eight years of age, the first royal pilgrim to

the holy places. After the Pagan revival, vainly attempted by the

Emperor Julian, the number and zeal of the Christian visitors to

Jerusalem were redoubled. At the beginning of the fifth century, St.

Jerome wrote, from his retreat at Bethlehem, that Judea overflowed with

pilgrims, and that, round about the Holy Sepulchre, were heard sung, in

divers tongues, the praises of the Lord. He, however, gave but scant

encouragement to his friends to make the trip. “The court of heaven,” he

wrote to St. Paulinus, “is as open in Britain as at Jerusalem;” and the

disorder which sometimes accompanied the numerous assemblages of pilgrims

became such that several of the most illustrious fathers of the Church,

and amongst others St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, exerted

themselves to dissuade the faithful. “Take no thought,” said Augustine,

“for long voyages; go where your faith is; it is not by ship, but by

love, that we go to Him who is everywhere.”

Events soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult, and for some

time impossible. At the commencement of the seventh century, the Greek

empire was at war with the sovereigns of Persia, successors of Cyrus and

chiefs of the religion of Zoroaster. One of them, Khosroes II., invaded

Judea, took Jerusalem, led away captive the inhabitants, together with

their patriarch, Zacharias, and even carried off to Persia the precious

relic which was regarded as the wood of the true cross, and which had

been discovered, nearly three centuries before, by the Empress Helena,

whilst excavations were making on Calvary for the erection of the church

of the Holy Sepulchre. But fourteen years later, after several victories

over the Persians, the Greek emperor, Heraclius, retook Jerusalem, and

re-entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer containing the

sacred relic. He next year (in 629) carried it back to Jerusalem, and

bore it upon his own shoulders to the top of Calvary; and on this

occasion was instituted the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Great was the joy in Christendom; and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem

resumed their course.

But precisely at this epoch there appeared an enemy far more formidable

for the Christians than the sectaries of Zoroaster. In 622 Mahomet

founded Islamism; and some years after his death, in 638, the second of

the khalifs, his successors, Omar, sent two of his generals, Khaled and

Abou-Obeidah, to take Jerusalem. For to the Mussulmans, also, Jerusalem

was a holy city. Mahomet, it was said, had been thither; it was thence,

indeed, that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to heaven. On

approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these words from the Koran:

“Enter we the holy land which God hath promised us.” The siege lasted

four months. The Christians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in

person, who came from Medina to receive their submission. A capitulation

concluded with their patriarch, Sophronius, guaranteed them their lives,

their property, and their churches. “When the draft of the treaty was

completed, Omar said to the patriarch, ‘Conduct me to the temple of

David.’ Omar entered Jerusalem preceded by the patriarch, and followed

by four thousand warriors, followers of the Prophet, wearing no other

arms but their swords. Sophronius took him, first of all, to the Church

of the Resurrection. ‘Be-hold,’ said he, ‘the temple of David.’ ‘Thou

sayest not true,’ said Omar, after a few moments’ reflection; ‘the

Prophet gave me a description of the temple of David, and it tallieth not

with the building I now see.’ The patriarch then conducted him to the

Church of Sion. ‘Here,’ said he, ‘is the temple of David.’ ‘It is a

lie,’ rejoined Omar, and went his way, directing his steps towards the

gate named Bab-Mohammed. The spot on which now stands the Mosque of Omar

was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to the street were

covered with it, and that the rubbish reached almost to the top of the

vault. ‘You can only get in here by crawling,’ said the patriarch. ‘Be

it so,’ answered Omar. The patriarch went first; Omar, with his people,

followed; and they arrived at the space which at this day forms the

forecourt of the mosque. There every one could stand upright. After

having turned his eyes to right and left, and attentively examined the

place, ‘Allah alchbar!’ cried Omar; here is the temple of David,

described to me by the Prophet.’”

He found the Sakhra (the rock which forms the summit of Mount Moriah,)

and which, left alone after the different destructions of the different

temples, became the theme of a multitude of traditions and legends,

(Jewish and Mussulman) covered with filth, heaped up there by the

Christians through hatred of the Jews. “Omar spread his cloak over the

rock, and began to sweep it; and all the Mussulmans in his train followed

his example.” (_Le Temple de Jerusalem,_ a monograph, pp. 73-75, by

Count Melchior de Vogue, ch. vi.) The Mosque of Omar rose up on the site

of Solomon’s temple. The Christians retained the practice of their

religion in their churches, but they were obliged to conceal their

crosses and their sacred books. The bell no longer summoned the faithful

to prayer; and the pomp of ceremonies was forbidden them. It was far

worse when Omar, the most moderate of Mussulman fanatics, had left

Jerusalem. The faithful were driven from their houses, and insulted in

their churches; additions were made to the tribute they had to pay to the

new masters of Palestine; they were prohibited from carrying arms and

riding on horseback; a girdle of leather, which they might not lay aside,

was their badge of servitude; their conquerors brooked not even that the

Christians should speak the Arab tongue, reserved for disciples of the

Koran; and the Christian people of Jerusalem had not the right of

nominating their own patriarch without the intervention of the Saracens.

From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation remained very much

the same. The Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, continued in

possession of Jerusalem; and the Christians, native inhabitants or

foreign visitors, continued to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated

there. At two periods their condition was temporarily better. At the

commencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with

the greatness of his mind and of his power. “It was not only in his own

land and his own kingdom,” says Eginhard, “that he scattered those

gratuitous largesses which the Greeks call alms; but beyond the seas, in

Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage,

wherever he knew that there were Christians living in poverty, he had

compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them money.” In one

of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph: “Alms to be

sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God.” “If Charlemagne was so

careful to seek the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above

all in order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help

and relief. . . . He kept up so close a friendship with Haroun-al-

Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to

the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accordingly, when the

ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with presents, to visit the sacred

tomb of our divine Saviour, and the site of the resurrection, presented

themselves before him, and expounded to him their master’s wish, Haroun

did not content himself with entertaining Charles’s request; he wished,

besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places

hallowed by the certification of our redemption,” and he sent him, with

the most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. At the

end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful

and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war

against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself

master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a deputation

which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, “and we have placed,” he says

himself, “garrisons in all the district lately subjected to our rule.”

These were but strokes of foreign intervention, giving the Christians of

Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminution of their

miseries. However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages

multiplied, and were often accomplished without obstacle. It was from

France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims went, and some of

them wrote, or caused to be written, an account of their trip,--amongst

others the Italian Saint Valentine, the English Saint Willibald, and the

French Bishop Saint Arculf, who had as companion a Burgundian hermit

named Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zealous

apostle of the Crusade three centuries later. The most curious of these

narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard, a pilgrim of about the year

870. “There is at Jerusalem,” says he, “a hospice where admittance is

given to all who come to visit the place for devotion’s sake, and who

speak the Roman tongue; a church, dedicated to St. Mary, is hard by the

hospice, and possesseth a very noble library, which it oweth to the zeal

of the Emperor Charles the Great.” This pious establishment had attached

to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the valley of

Jehosaphat.

But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Christians thus going to

satisfy in the East their pious and inquisitive zeal, the Mussulmans,

equally ardent as believers and as warriors, carried Westward their creed

and their arms, established themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very

heart of France, and brought on, between Islamism and Christianity, that

grand struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Poitiers, the victory

for the Cross. It was really a definitive victory, and yet it did not

end the struggle; the Mussulmans remained masters in Spain, and continued

to infest Southern France, Italy, and Sicily, preserving even, at certain

points, posts which they used as starting-points for distant ravages.

Far then from calming down and resulting in pacific relations, the

hostility between the two races became more and more active and

determined; everywhere they opposed, fought, and oppressed one another,

inflamed one against the other by the double feelings of faith and

ambition, hatred and fear. To this general state of affairs came to be

added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century,

incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil. Hakem, khalif of Egypt

from 996 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem,

with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a

despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross five

pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or

asses; and, without assigning any motive for his acts, he confiscated

their goods and carried off their children. It was told to him one day

that, when the Christians assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to

celebrate Easter, the priests of the church rubbed balsam-oil upon the

iron chain which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards

set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the fire stole down to

the wick of the lamp and lighted it; then they shouted with admiration,

as if fire from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified

their faith. Hakem ordered the instant demolition of the church of the

Holy Sepulchre, and it was accordingly demolished. Another time a dead

dog had been laid at the door of a mosque; and the multitude accused the

Christians of this insult. Hakem ordered them all to be put to death.

The soldiers were preparing to execute the order when a young Christian

said to his friends, “It were too grievous that the whole Church should

perish; it were better that one should die for all; only promise to bless

my memory year by year.” He proclaimed himself alone to blame for the

insult, and was accordingly alone put to death. It is from this story of

the historian William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his _Jerusalem Delivered,_

has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example,

and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring

a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece. “All the deeds of Hakem

were without motive,” says the Arab historian Makrisi, “and the dreams

suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable

interpretation.”

These and many other similar stories reached the West, spread amongst the

Christian people and roused them to pity for their brethren in the East

and to wrath against the oppressors. And it was at a critical period,

in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the

expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of

the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for

purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from

suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their creed. On all sides arose

challenges and appeals to the warlike ardor of the faithful. The

greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become Pope Sylvester II.,

constituted himself interpreter of the popular feeling. He wrote, in the

name of the Church of Jerusalem, a letter addressed to the universal

Church: “To work, then, soldier of Christ! Be our standard-bearer and

our champion! And if with arms thou canst not do so, aid us with thy

words, thy wealth. What is it, pray, that thou givest, and to whom,

pray, dost thou give? Of thine abundance thou givest a small matter, and

thou givest to Him who hath freely given thee all thou possessest; but He

will not accept freely that which thou shalt give; for he will multiply

thine offering and will pay it back to thee hereafter.” Some years after

Gerbert, another great mind, the greatest among the popes of the middle

ages, Gregory VII., proclaimed an expedition, at the head of which he

would place himself, to go and deliver Jerusalem and the Christians of

the East from the insults and the tyranny of the infidels.

Such being the condition of facts and minds, pilgrimages to Jerusalem

became, from the ninth to the eleventh century, more and more numerous

and considerable. “It would never have been believed,” says the

contemporary chronicler Raoul Glaber, “that the Holy Sepulchre could

attract so prodigious an influx. First the lower classes, then the

middle, afterwards the most potent kings, the counts, the marquises, the

prelates, and lastly, what had never heretofore been seen, many women,

noble or humble, undertook this pilgrimage.” In 1026, William

Traillefer, count of Angouleme; in 1028, 1035, and 1039, Foulques the

Black, count of Anjou; in 1035, Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy,

father of William the Conqueror; in 1086, Robert the Frison, count of

Flanders; and many other great feudal lords quitted their estates, or,

rather, their states, to go and--not deliver, not conquer, but--simply

visit the Holy Land. It was not long before great numbers were joined to

great names. In 1054, Liedbert, bishop of Cambrai, started for Jerusalem

with a following of three thousand Picard or Flemish pilgrims; and in

1064, the archbishop of Mayence and the bishops of Spire, Cologne,

Bamberg, and Utrecht set out on their way from the borders of the Rhine

with more than ten thousand Christians behind them. After having passed

through Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thrace, Constantinople, Asia Minor,

and Syria, they were attacked in Palestine by hordes of Arabs, were

forced to take refuge in the ruins of an old castle, and were reduced to

capitulation; and when at last, “preceded by the rumors of their battles

and their perils, they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received in

triumph by the patriarch, and were conducted, to the sound of timbrels

and with the flare of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The

misery they had fallen into excited the pity of the Christians of Asia;

and, after having lost more than three thousand of their comrades, they

returned to Europe to relate their tragic adventures and the dangers of a

pilgrimage to the Holy Land.” (_Histoire des Croisades,_ by M. Michaud,

t. i. p. 62.)

Amidst this agitation of Western Christendom, in 1076, two years after

Pope Gregory VII. had proclaimed his approaching expedition to the Holy

Land, news arrived in Europe to the effect that the most barbarous of

Asiatics and of Mussulmans, the Turks, after having first served and then

ruled the khalifs of Persia, and afterwards conquered the greater part of

the Persian empire, had hurled themselves upon the Greek empire, invaded

Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and lately taken Jerusalem, where they

practised against the Christians, old inhabitants or foreign visitors,

priests and worshippers, dreadful cruelties and intolerable exactions,

worse than those of the Persian or Egyptian khalifs.

It often happens that popular emotions, however profound and general,

remain barren, just as in the vegetable world many sprouts appear at the

surface of the soil and die without having grown and fructified. It is

not sufficient for the bringing about of great events and practical

results that popular aspirations should be merely manifested; it is

necessary, further, that some great soul, some powerful will, should make

itself the organ and agent of the public sentiment, and bring it to

fecundity by becoming its personification. The Christian passion, in the

eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the

Cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a

soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk

and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood

of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem “to

say his prayers there.” Struck disconsolate at the sight of the

sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an interview

with Simeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, who “recognizing in him a man of

discretion and full of experience in affairs of the world, set before him

in detail all the evils with which the people of God, in the holy city,

were afflicted. ‘Holy father,’ said Peter to him, ‘if the Roman Church

and the princes of the West were informed, by a man of energy and worthy

of belief, of all your calamities, of a surety they would essay to apply

some remedy thereto by word and deed. Write, then, to our lord the pope

and to the Roman Church, and to the kings and princes of the West, and

strengthen your written testimony by the authority of your seal. As for

me, I shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my soul;

and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek out all of them,

solicit them, show unto them the immensity of your troubles, and pray

them all to hasten on the day of your relief.’” The patriarch eagerly

accepted the pilgrim’s offer; and Peter set out, going first of all to

Rome, where he handed to Pope Urban II. the patriarch’s letters, and

commenced in that quarter his mission of zeal. The pope promised him not

only support, but active co-operation when the propitious moment for it

should arrive. Peter set to work, being still the pilgrim everywhere, in

Europe, as well as at Jerusalem. “He was a man of very small stature,

and his outside made but a very poor appearance; yet superior powers

swayed this miserable body; he had a quick intellect and a penetrating

eye, and he spoke with ease and fluency. . . . We saw him at that

time,” says his contemporary Guibert de Nogent, “scouring city and town,

and preaching everywhere; the people crowded round him, heaped presents

upon him, and celebrated his sanctity by such great praises that I

remember not that like honor was ever rendered to any other person. He

displayed great generosity in the disposal of all things that were given

him. He restored wives to their husbands, not without the addition of

gifts from himself, and he re-established, with marvellous authority,

peace and good understanding between those who had been at variance. In

all that he did or said he seemed to have in him something divine,

insomuch that people went so far as to pluck hairs from his mule to keep

as relics. In the open air he wore a woollen tunic, and over it a serge

cloak which came down to his heels; he had his arms and feet bare; he ate

little or no bread, and lived chiefly on wine and fish.”

In 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the Hermit, Pope Urban II.

was at Clermont, in Auvergne, presiding at the grand council, at which

thirteen archbishops and two hundred and five bishops or abbots were met

together, with so many princes and lay-lords, that “about the middle of

the month of November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were

full of people, and divers were constrained to have their tents and

pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the

season and the country were cold to an extreme.” The first nine sessions

of the council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West; but

at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject

of deliberation. The Pope went out of the church wherein the Council was

assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the

midst of the throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke

first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of

the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had

suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into

the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the exactions,

insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him Pope Urban II.

spoke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter had spoken, for he was

himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandees and

populace. He made a long speech, entertaining upon the most painful

details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem,

“that royal city which the Redeemer of the human race had made

illustrious by His coming, had honored by His residence, had hallowed by

His passion, had purchased by His death, had distinguished by His burial.

She now demands of you her deliverance . . . men of France, men from

beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right valiant

knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness

of King Charlemagne and your other kings; it is from you above all that

Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations,

God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms. Take ye, then, the road to

Jerusalem for the remission of your sins, and depart assured of the

imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven.”

From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, “God

willeth it! God willeth it!” The Pope paused for a moment; and then,

making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued, “If

the Lord God were not in your souls, ye would not all have uttered the

same words. In the battle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that

came from God; in the army of the Lord let nought be heard but that one

shout, ‘God willeth it! God willeth it!’ We ordain not, and we advise

not, that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be

not suited for arms, and let not women set out without their husbands or

their brothers; let the rich help the poor; nor priests nor clerks may go

without the leave of their bishops; and no layman shall commence the

march save with the blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to

enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his brow or his breast the

cross of the Lord, and let him, who, in accomplishment of his desire,

shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his

shoulders; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said,

‘He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.’”

[Illustration: “God willeth it!”----383]

The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first shout of the

crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adhemar, bishop of Puy, was the

first to receive the cross from the Pope’s hands. It was of red cloth or

silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on

the front of the helmet. The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it.

Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the determining

motive of the crusade. It is to the honor of humanity, and especially to

the honor of the French nation, that it is accessible to the sudden sway

of a moral and disinterested sentiment, and resolves, without prevision

as well as without premeditation, upon acts which decide, for many a long

year, the course and the fate of a generation, and, it may be, of a whole

people. We have seen in our own day, in the conduct of populace,

national assemblies, and armies, under the impulse not any longer of

religious feeling, but of political and social agitation, France thus

giving herself up to the rush of sentiments, generous indeed and pure,

but without the least forecast touching the consequences of the ideas

which inspired them or the acts which they entailed. It is with nations

as with armies; the side of glory is that of danger; and great works are

wrought at a heavy cost, not only of happiness, but also of virtue. It

would be wrong, nevertheless, to lack respect for and to speak evil of

enthusiasm: it not only bears witness to the grandeur of human nature, it

justly holds its place and exercises its noble influence in the course of

the great events which move across the scene of human errors and vices,

according to the vast and inscrutable design of trod. It is quite

certain that the crusaders of the eleventh century, in their haste to

deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were far from foreseeing that, a

few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would

fall again beneath the yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric

stagnation; and this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would

doubtless have chilled their zeal. But it is not a whit the less certain

that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for, in the

panorama of the world’s history, the crusades marked the date of the

arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive

preponderance of Christian civilization.

[Illustration: The Four Leaders of the First Crusade----385]

To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive less

disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still very vivid

recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the

Mussulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing

them begin again. Instinctively war was carried to the East to keep it

from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country

of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks. And this

prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope

of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance. They were about

to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for evil, to the enemy from whom

they had suffered in the same way; hatred and pride, as well as piety,

obtained satisfaction.

There is moreover great motive power in a spirit of enterprise and a

taste for adventure. Care-for-nothingness is one of man-kind’s chief

diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively

enlightened and favored communities, amidst the labors and the enjoyments

of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in

times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence. To escape

therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in

man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any resource but

war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions.

Thither rushed the masses of the people, whilst the minds which were

eager, above everything, for intellectual movement and for knowledge,

thronged, on the mountain of St. Genevieve, to the lectures of Abelard.

Need of variety and novelty, and an instinctive desire to extend their

views and enliven their existence, probably made as many crusaders as the

feeling against the Mussulmans and the promptings of piety.

[Illustration: Crusaders on the March----386]

The Council of Clermont, at its closing on the 28th of November, 1095,

had fixed the month of August in the following year, and the feast of the

Assumption, for the departure of the crusaders for the Holy Land; but the

people’s impatience did not brook this waiting, short as it was in view

of the greatness and difficulties of the enterprise. As early as the 8th

of March, 1096, and in the course of the spring three mobs rather than

armies set out on the crusade, with a strength, it is said, of eighty or

one hundred thousand persons in one case, and of fifteen or twenty

thousand in the other two. Persons, not men, for there were amongst them

many women and children, whole families, in fact, who had left their

villages, without organization and without provisions, calculating that

they would be competent to find their own way, and that He who feeds the

young ravens would not suffer to die of want pilgrims wearing His cross.

Whenever, on their road, a town came in sight, the children asked if that

were Jerusalem. The first of these mobs had for its head Peter the

Hermit himself, and a Burgundian knight called Walter _Havenought_; the

second had a German priest named Gottschalk; and the third a Count Emico,

of Leiningen, potent in the neighborhood of Mayence. It is wrong to call

them heads, for they were really nothing of the kind; their authority was

rejected, at one time as tyrannical, at another as useless. “The

grasshoppers,” was the saying amongst them in the words of Solomon’s

proverbs, “have no king, and yet they go in companies.” In crossing

Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the provinces of the Greek empire, these

companies, urged on by their brutal passions or by their necessities and

material wants, abandoned themselves to such irregularities that, as they

went, princes and peoples, instead of welcoming them as Christians, came

to treat them as enemies, of whom it was necessary to get rid at any

price. Peter the Hermit and Gottschalk made honorable and sincere

efforts to check the excesses of their following, which were a source of

so much danger; but Count Emico, on the contrary, says William of Tyre,

“himself took part in the plunder, and incited his comrades to crime.”

Thus, at one time taking the offensive, at another compelled to defend

themselves against the attacks of the justly irritated inhabitants, these

three immense companies of pilgrims, these disorderly volunteers, with

great difficulty arrived, after enormous losses, at the gates of

Constantinople. Either through fear or through pity, the Greek emperor,

Alexis (or Alexius) Comnenus, permitted them to pitch their camp there;

“but before long, plenty, idleness, and the sight of the riches of

Constantinople brought once more into the camp license, indiscipline, and

a thirst after brigandage. Whilst awaiting the war against the

Mussulmans, the pilgrims pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even the

churches in the outskirts of Byzantium. To deliver his capital from

these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them with vessels, and got

them shipped off across the Bosphorus.”

[Illustration: The Assault on St. Jean d’Acre----386]

Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad auspices, chieftains of

more sense and better obeyed were preparing to give it another character

and superior fortunes. Two great and real armies were forming in the

north, the centre, and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst

the Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of Naples and

Sicily, just before their countryman, William the Bastard, conquered

England. The first of these armies had for its chief, Godfrey de

Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, whom all his contemporaries have described as

the model of a gallant and pious knight. He was the son of Eustace II.,

count of Boulogne, and “the lustre of nobility,” says Raoul of Caen,

chronicler of his times, “was enhanced in his case by the splendor of the

most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the world as of heaven. As

to the latter, he distinguished himself by his generosity towards the

poor, and his pity for those who had committed faults. Furthermore, his

humility, his extreme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his

chastity were great; he shone as a light amongst the monks, even more

than as a duke amongst the knights. And, nevertheless, he could also do

the things which are of this world, fight, marshal the ranks, and extend

by arms the domains of the Church. In his boyhood he learned to be

first, or one of the first, to strike the foe; in youth he made it his

habitual practice; and in advancing age he forgot it never. He was so

perfectly the son of the warlike Count Eustace, and of his mother, Ida de

Bouillon, a woman full of piety, and versed in literature, that at sight

of him even a rival would have been forced to say of him, ‘For zeal in

war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.’ The second

army, consisting chiefly of crusaders from Southern France, marched under

the orders of Raymond IV., count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of the

crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth with the

experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the graybeard. At the

side of the Cid he had fought, and more than once beaten the Moors in

Spain. He took with him to the East his third wife, Elvira, daughter of

Alphonso VI., king of Castile, as well as a very young child he had by

her, and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would return no

more to his country, and would fight the infidels to the end of his days,

in expiation of his sins. He was discreet though haughty, and not only

the richest but the most economical of the crusader-chiefs:

“Accordingly,” says Raoul of Caen, “when all the rest had spent their

money, the riches of Count Raymond made him still more distinguished.

The people of Provence, who formed his following, did not lavish their

resources, but studied economy even more than glory,” and “his army,”

adds Guibert of Nogent, “showed no inferiority to any other, save so far

as it is possible to reproach the inhabitants of Provence touching their

excessive loquacity.”

Bohemond, prince of Tarento, commanded the third army, composed

principally of Italians and warriors of various origins come to Italy to

share in the exploits and fortunes of his father, the celebrated Robert

Guiscard, founder of the Norman kingdom of Naples, who was at one time

the foe, and at another the defender, of Pope Gregory VII., and who died

in the island of Cephalonia just as he was preparing to attempt the

conquest of Constantinople. Bohemond had neither less ambition nor less

courage and ability than his father. “His appearance,” says Anna

Comnena, “impressed the eye as much as his reputation astounded the mind;

his height surpassed that of all his comrades; his blue eyes gleamed

readily with pride and anger; when he spoke you would have said he had

made eloquence his study; and when he showed himself in armor, you might

have believed that he had never done aught but handle lance and sword.

Brought up in the school of Norman heroes, be concealed calculations of

policy beneath the exterior of force, and, although he was of a haughty

disposition, he knew how to be blind to a wrong when there was nothing to

be gained by avenging it. He had learned from his father to regard as

foes all whose dominions and riches he coveted; and he was not restrained

by fear of God, or by man’s opinions, or by his own oaths. It was not

the deliverance of the tomb of Christ which fired his zeal or decided him

upon taking up the cross; but, as he had vowed eternal enmity 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 fortunes, he hoped to

make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem.”

Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade his cousin Tancred de

Hauteville, great-grandson, through his mother, Emma, of Robert Guiscard,

and, according to all his contemporaries, the type of a perfect Christian

knight, neither more nor less. “From his boyhood,” says Raoul of Caen,

his servitor before becoming his biographer, “he surpassed the young by

his skill in the management of arms, and the old by the strictness of his

morals. He disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill

had been spoken of himself. About himself he would say nought, but he

had an insatiable desire to give cause for talking thereof. Glory was

the only passion that moved that young soul; yet was it disquieted within

him, and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his knightly

combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord. The Lord bids us

give our coat and our cloak to him who would take them from us; whereas

the knight’s part is to strip all that remains from him from whom he hath

already taken his coat and his cloak. These contradictory principles

benumbed sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety; but when

the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of all their sins to

all Christians who should go and fight the Gentiles, then Tancred awoke

in some sort from his dream, and this new opportunity fired him with a

zeal which cannot be expressed. He therefore made preparations for his

departure; but, accustomed from his infancy to give to others before

thinking of himself, he entered upon no great outlay, but contented

himself with collecting in sufficient quantity knightly arms, horses,

mules, and provisions necessary for his company.”

With these four chieftains, who have remained illustrious in history,--

that grave wherein small reputations are extinguished,--were associated,

for the deliverance of the Holy Land, a throng of feudal lords, some

powerful as well as valiant, others valiant but simple knights; Hugh,

count of Vermaudois, brother of Philip I., king of France; Robert of

Normandy, called Shorthose, son of William the Conqueror; Robert, count

of Flanders; Stephen, count of Blois; Raimbault, count of Orange;

Baldwin, count of Hainault; Raoul of Beaugency; Gerard of Roussillon, and

many others whose names contemporary chroniclers and learned moderns have

gathered together. Not one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, kings

or emperors, of France, England, Spain, or Germany, took part in the

first crusade. It was the feudal nation, great and small, castle owners

and populace, who rose in mass for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the

honor of Christendom.

These three great armies of crusaders got on the march from August to

October, 1096, wending their way, Godfrey de Bouillon by Germany,

Hungary, and Bulgaria; Bohemond by the south of Italy and the

Mediterranean; and Count Raymond of Toulouse by Northern Italy, Friuli,

and Dalmatia. They arrived one after the other in the empire of the East

and at the gates of Constantinople. Godfrey de Bouillon was the first to

appear there, and the Emperor Alexis Comnenus learned with dismay that

other armies of crusaders would soon follow that which was already so

large. It was not long before Bohemond and Raymond appeared. Alexis

behaved towards these formidable allies with a mixture of pusillanimity

and haughtiness, promises and lies, caresses and hostility, which

irritated without intimidating them, and rendered it impossible for them

to feel any confidence or conceive any esteem. At one time he was

thanking them profusely for the support they were bringing him against

the infidels; at another he was sending troops to harass them on their

road, and, when they reached Constantinople, he demanded that they should

swear fealty and obedience to him, as if they were his own subjects.

One day he was refusing them provisions and attempting to subdue them by

famine; and the next he was lavishing feasts and presents upon them. The

crusaders, on their side, when provisions fell short, spread themselves

over the country and plundered it without scruple; and, when they

encountered hostile troops of Greeks, charged them without warning. When

the emperor demanded of them fealty and homage, the count of Toulouse

answered that he had not come to the East in search of a master. Godfrey

do Bouillon, after resisting every haughty pretension, being as just as

he was dignified, acknowledged that the crusaders ought to restore to the

emperor the towns which had belonged to the empire, and an arrangement to

that effect was concluded between them. Bohemond had a proposal

submitted to Godfrey to join him in attacking the Greek empire and taking

possession at once of Byzantium; but Godfrey rejected the proposal, with

the reminder that he had come only to fight the infidels. The emperor,

fully informed of the greediness as well as ambition of Bohemond,

introduced him one day into a room full of treasures. “Here,” said

Bohemond, “is wherewith to conquer kingdoms.” Alexis had the treasures

removed to Bohemond’s, who at first refused, and ended by accepting them.

It is even said that he asked the emperor for the title of Grand Domestic

or of General of the Empire of the East. Alexis, who had held that

dignity and who knew that it was the way to the throne, gave the Norman

chieftain a present refusal, with a promise of it on account of future

services to be rendered by him to the empire and the emperor.

The chiefs of the crusade were not alone in treating with disdain this

haughty, wily, and feeble sovereign. During a ceremony at which some

French princes were doing homage to the emperor, a Count Robert of Paris

went and sat down free-and-easily beside him; when Baldwin, count of

Hainault, took the intruder by the arm, saying, “When you are in a

country you must respect its masters and its customs.” “Verily,”

answered Robert, “I hold it shocking that this jackanapes should be

seated, whilst so many noble captains are standing yonder.” When the

ceremony was over, the emperor, who had, no doubt, heard the words,

wished to have an explanation; so he detained Robert, and asked him who

and whence he was. “I am a Frenchman,” quoth Robert; “and of noble

birth. In my country there is, hard by a church, a spot repaired to by

such as burn to prove their valor. I have been there often without any

one’s daring to present himself before me.” The emperor did not care to

take up this sort of challenge, and contented himself with replying to

the warrior, “If you there waited for foes without finding any, you are

now about to have what will satisfy you. I have, however, a piece of

advice to give you; don’t put yourself at the head or the tail of the

army; keep in the middle. I have learned how to fight with Turks; and

that is the best place you can choose.” The crusaders and the Greeks

were mutually contemptuous, the former with a ruffianly pride, the latter

with an ironical and timid refinement.

This posture, on either side, of inactivity, ill-will, and irritation,

could not last long. On the approach of the spring of 1097, the crusader

chiefs and their troops, first Godfrey de Bouillon, then Bohemond and

Tancred, and afterwards Count Raymond of Toulouse, passed the Bosphorus,

being conveyed across either in their own vessels or those of the Emperor

Alexis, who encouraged them against the infidels, and at the same time

had the infidels supplied with information most damaging to the

crusaders. Having effected a junction in Bithynia, the Christian chiefs

resolved to go and lay siege to Nicaea, the first place, of importance,

in possession of the Turks. Whilst marching towards the place they saw

coming to meet then, with every appearance of the most woful destitution,

Peter the Hermit, followed by a small band of pilgrims escaped from the

disasters of their expedition, who had passed the winter, as he had, in

Bithynia, waiting for more fortunate crusaders. Peter, affectionately

welcomed by the chiefs of the army, recounted to them “in detail,” says

William of Tyre, “how the people, who had preceded them under his

guidance, had shown themselves destitute of intelligence, improvident,

and unmanageable at the same time; and so it was far more by their own

fault than by the deed of any other that they had succumbed to the weight

of their calamities.” Peter, having thus relieved his heart and

recovered his hopes, joined the powerful army of crusaders who had come

at last; and, on the 15th of May, 1097, the siege of Nicaea began.

The town was in the hands of a Turkish sultan, Kilidge-Arslan, whose

father, Soliman, twenty years before, had invaded Bithynia and fixed his

abode at Nicrea. He, being informed of the approach of the crusaders,

had issued forth, to go and assemble all his forces; but he had left

behind his wife, his children, and his treasures, and he had sent

messengers to the inhabitants, saying, “Be of good courage, and fear not

the barbarous people who make show of besieging our city; to-morrow,

before the seventh hour of the day, ye shall be delivered from your

enemies.” And he did arrive on the 16th of May, says the Armenian

historian, Matthias of Edessa, at the head of six hundred thousand

horsemen. The historians of the crusaders are infinitely more moderate

as to the number of their foes; they assign to Kilidge-Arslan only fifty

or sixty thousand men, and their testimony is far more trustworthy, being

that of the victors. In any case, the Christians and the Turks fought

valiantly for two days under the walls of Niccea, and Godfrey de Bouillon

did justice to his fame for valor and skill by laying low a Turk

“remarkable amongst all,” says William of Tyre, “for his size and

strength, whose arrows caused much havoc in the ranks of our men.”

Kilidge-Arslan, being beaten, withdrew to collect fresh troops, and,

after six weeks’ siege, the crusaders believed themselves on the point of

entering Nicaea as masters, when, on the 26th of June, they saw floating

on the ramparts the standard of the Emperor Alexis. Their surprise was

the greater in that they had just written to the emperor to say that the

city was on the point of surrendering, and they added, “We earnestly

invite you to lose no time in sending some of your princes with

sufficient retinue, that they may receive and keep in honor of your name

the city which will deliver itself up to us. As for us, after having put

it in the hands of your highness, we will not show any delay in pursuing,

with God’s help, the execution of our projects.” Alexis had anticipated

this loyal message. Being in constant secret communication with the

former subjects of the Greek empire, and often even with their new

masters the Turks, his agents in Nicaea had induced the inhabitants to

surrender to him, and not to the Latins, who would treat them as

vanquished. The irritation amongst the crusaders was extreme. They had

promised themselves, if not the plunder of Nicaea, at any rate great

advantages from their victory; and it was said in the camp that the

convention concluded with the emperor contained an article purporting

that “if, with God’s help, there were taken any of the towns which had

belonged aforetime to the Greek empire all along the line of march up to

Syria, the town should be restored to the emperor, together with all the

adjacent territory and that the booty, the spoils, and all objects

whatsoever found therein should be given up without discussion to the

crusader in recompense for their trouble and indemnification for the

expenses.” The wrath waxed still fiercer when it was know that the

crusaders would not be permitted to enter more the ten at a time the town

they had just taken, and that the Emperor Alexis had set at liberty the

wife of Pilidge-Arslai together with her two sons and all the Turks led

prisoners of war to Constantinople. The chiefs of the crusaders were

then selves indignant and distrustful; but “they resolved with on

accord,” says William of Tyre, “to hide their resentment, and they

applied all their efforts to calming their people, while encouraging them

to push on without delay to the end of the glorious enterprise.”

All the army of the crusaders put themselves in motion I cross Asia Minor

from the north-west to the south-east, and to reach Syria. At their

arrival before Nicaea they numbered, it is said, five hundred thousand

foot and one hundred thousand horse, figures evidently too great, for

everything indicates that at the opening of the crusade the three great

armies, starting from France and Italy under Godfrey de Bouillon,

Bohemond and Raymond of Toulouse, did not reach this number, and the, had

certainly lost many during their long march through their sufferings and

in their battles. However that may be, after they had marched all in one

mass for two days, and had then extended themselves over a larger area,

for the purpose, no doubt, of more easily finding provisions, the

crusaders broke up into two main bodies, led, one by Godfrey de Bouillon

and Raymond of Toulouse, the other by Bohemond and Tancred. On the 1st

of July, at daybreak, this latter body, encamped at a short distance from

Doryleum, in Phrygia, saw descending from the neighboring heights a cloud

of enemies who burst upon the Christians, first rained a perfect hail of

missiles upon them, and then penetrated into their camp, even to the

tents assigned to the women, children, and old men, the numerous

following of the crusaders. It was Kilidge-Arslan, who, after the fall

of Nicaea, had raised this new army of Saracens, and was pursuing the

conquerors on their march. The battle began in great disorder; the

chiefs in person sustained the first shock; and the duke of Normandy,

Robert Shorthose, took in his hand his white banner, embroidered with

gold, and waving it over his head, threw himself upon the Turks,

shouting, “God willeth it! God willeth it!” Bohemond obstinately sought

out Kilidge-Arslan in the fray; but at the same time he sent messengers

in all haste to Godfrey de Bouillon, as yet but a little way off, to

summon him to their aid. Godfrey galloped up, and, with some fifty of

his knights, preceding the rest of his army, was the first to throw

himself into the midst of the Turks. Towards mid-day the whole of the

first body arrived, with standards flying, with the sound of trumpets and

with the shouting of warriors. Kilidge-Arslan and his troops fell back

upon the heights whence they had descended. The crusaders, without

taking breath, ascended in pursuit. The Turks saw themselves shut in by

a forest of lances, and fled over wood and rock; and “two days afterwards

they were still flying,” says Albert of Aix, “though none pursued them,

unless it were God himself.” The victory of Doryleum opened the whole

country to the crusaders, and they resumed their march towards Syria,

paying their sole attention to not separating again.

It was not long before they had to grapple with other dangers against

which bravery could do nothing. They were crossing, under a broiling

sun, deserted tracts which their enemies had taken good care to ravage.

Water and forage were not to be had; the men suffered intolerably from

thirst; horses died by hundreds; at the head of their troops marched

knights mounted on asses or oxen; their favorite amusement, the chase,

became impossible for them; for their hawking-birds too--the falcons and

gerfalcons they had brought with them--languished and died beneath the

excessive heat. One incident obtained for the crusaders a momentary

relief. The dogs which followed the army, prowling in all directions,

one day returned with their paws and coats wet; they had, therefore,

found water; and the soldiers set themselves to look for it, and, in

fact, discovered a small river in a remote valley. They got water-drunk,

and more than three hundred men, it is said, were affected by it and

died.

On arriving in Pisidia, a country intersected by Water-courses, meadows,

and woods, the army rested several days; but at that very point two of

its most competent and most respected chiefs were very nearly taken from

it. Count Raymond of Toulouse, who was also called Raymond of Saint-

Gilles, fell so ill that the bishop of Orange was reading over him the

prayers for the dying, when one of those present cried out that the count

would assuredly live, for that the prayers of his patron saint, Gilles,

had obtained for him a truce with death. And Raymond recovered. Godfrey

de Bouillon, again, whilst riding in a forest, came upon a pilgrim

attacked by a bear, and all but fallen a victim to the ferocious beast.

The duke drew his sword and urged his horse against the bear, which,

leaving the pilgrim, rushed upon the assailant. The frightened horse

reared; Godfrey was thrown, and, according to one account, immediately

remounted; but, according to another, he fell, on the contrary, together

with his horse; however, he sustained a fearful struggle against the

bear, and ultimately killed it by plunging his sword up to the hilt into

its belly, says ‘William of Tyre, but with so great an effort, and after

receiving so serious a wound, that his soldiers, hurrying up at the

pilgrim’s report, found him stretched on the ground, covered with blood,

and unable to rise, and carried him back to the camp, where he was, for

several weeks, obliged to be carried about in a litter in the rear of the

army.

Through all these perils they continued to advance, and they were

approaching the heights of Taurus, the bulwark and gate of Syria, when a

quarrel which arose between two of the principal crusader chiefs was like

to seriously endanger the concord and strength of the army. Tancred,

with his men, had entered Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul, and had

planted his flag there. Although later in his arrival, Baldwin, brother

of Godfrey de Bouillon, claimed a right to the possession of the city,

and had his flag set up instead of Tancred’s, which was thrown into a

ditch. During several days the strife was fierce and even bloody; the

soldiers of Baldwin were the more numerous, and those of Tancred

considered their chief too gentle, and his bravery, so often proved,

scarcely sufficed to form an excuse for his forbearance. Chiefs and

soldiers, however, at last, saw the necessity for reconciliation, and

made mutual promises to sink all animosity. On returning to the general

camp, Tancred was received with marked favor; for the majority of the

crusaders, being unconcerned in the quarrel at Tarsus, liked him for his

bravery and for his gentleness equally. Baldwin, on the contrary, was

much blamed, even by his brother Godfrey; but he was far more ambitious

on his own account than devoted to the common cause. He had often heard

tell of Armenia and Mesopotamia, their riches and the large number of

Christians living there, almost equally independent of Greeks and Turks;

and, in the hope of finding there a chance of greatly improving his

personal fortunes, he left the army of the crusaders at Maresa, on the

very eve of the day on which the chiefs came to the decision that no one

should for the future move away from the flag, and taking with him a weak

detachment of two hundred horse and one thousand or twelve hundred foot,

marched towards Armenia. His name and his presence soon made a stir

there; and he got hold of two little towns which received him eagerly.

Edessa, the capital of Armenia and metropolis of Mesopotamia, was peopled

by Christians; and a Greek governor, sent from Constantinople by the

emperor, lived there, on payment of a tribute to the Turks. Internal

dissensions and the fear ever inspired by the vicinity of the Turks kept

the city in a state of lively agitation; and bishop, people, and Greek

governor, all appealed to Baldwin. He presented himself before Edessa

with merely a hundred horsemen, having left the remainder of his forces

in garrison at the town he had already occupied. All the population came

to meet him, bearing branches of olive and singing chants in honor of

their deliverer. But it was not long before outbreaks and alarms began

again; and Baldwin looked on at then, waiting for power to be offered

him. Still there was no advance; the Greek governor continued where be

was; and Baldwin muttered threats of his departure. The popular

disquietude was extreme; and the Greek governor, old and detested as he

was, thought to smooth all by adopting the Latin chief and making him his

heir. This, however, caused but a short respite; Baldwin left the

governor to be massacred in a fresh outbreak; the people came and offered

him the government, and he became Prince of Edessa, and, ere long, of all

the neighboring country, without thinking any more of Jerusalem, of

which, nevertheless, he was destined at no distant day to be king.

Whilst Baldwin was thus acquiring, for himself and himself alone, the

first Latin principality belonging to the crusaders in the East, his

brother Godfrey and the main Christian army were crossing the chain of

Taurus and arriving before Antioch, the capital of Syria. Great was the

fame, with Pagans and Christians, of this city; its site, the beauty of

its climate, the fertility of its land, its fish-abounding lake, its

river of Orontes, its fountain of Daphne, its festivals, and its morals,

had made it, under the Roman empire, a brilliant and favorite abode. At

the same time, it was there that the disciples of Jesus had assumed the

name of Christians, and that St. Paul had begun his heroic life as

preacher and as missionary. It was absolutely necessary that the

crusaders should take Antioch; but the difficulty of the conquest was

equal to the importance. The city was well fortified and provided with

a strong citadel; the Turks had been in possession of it for fourteen

years; and its governor Accien or Baghisian (_Yagui-Sian_, or _brother of

black_, according to Oriental historians), appointed by the sultan of

Persia, Malekschah, was shut up in it with seven thousand horse and

twenty thousand foot. The first attacks of the Christians failed; and

they had the prospect of a long siege. At the outset their situation had

been easy and pleasant; they encountered no hostility from the

country-people, who were intimidated or indifferent; they came and paid

visits to the camp, and admitted the crusaders to their markets; the

harvests, which were hardly finished, had been abundant: “the grapes,”

says Guibert of Nogent, “were still hanging on the branches of the

vines; on all sides discoveries were made of grain shut up, not in

barns, but in subterranean vaults; and the trees were laden with fruit.”

These facilities of existence, the softness of the climate, the

pleasantness of the places, the frequency of leisure, partly pleasure

and partly care-for-nothingness, caused amongst the crusaders

irregularity, license, indiscipline, carelessness, and often perils and

reverses. The Turks profited thereby to make sallies, which threw the

camp into confusion and cost the lives of crusaders surprised or

scattered about. Winter came; provisions grew scarce, and had to be

sought at a greater distance and at greater peril; and living ceased to

be agreeable or easy. Disquietude, doubts concerning the success of the

enterprise, fatigue and discouragement made way amongst the army; and

men who were believed to be proved, Robert Shorthose, duke of Normandy,

William, viscount of Melun, called the Carpenter, on account of his

mighty battle-axe, and Peter the Hermit himself, “who had never

learned,” says Robert the monk, “to endure such plaguy hunger,” left the

camp and deserted the banner of the cross, “that there might be seen, in

the words of the Apocalypse, even the stars falling from heaven,” says

Guibert of Nogent. Great were the scandal and the indignation. Tancred

hurried after the fugitives and brought then back; and they swore on the

Gospel never again to abandon the cause which they had preached and

served so well. It was clearly indispensable to take measures for

restoring amongst the army discipline, confidence, and the morals and

hopes of Christians. The different chiefs applied themselves thereto by

very different processes, according to their vocation, character, or

habits. Adhdmar, bishop of Puy, the renowned spiritual chief of the

crusade, Godfrey de Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, and the military

chieftains renowned for piety and virtue made head against all kinds of

disorder either by fervent addresses or severe prohibitions. Men caught

drunk had their hair cut off; blasphemous and reckless gamesters were

branded with a red-hot iron; and the women were shut up in separate

tents. To the irregularities within were added the perils of incessant

espionage on the part of the Turks in the very camp of the crusaders:

and no one knew how to repress this evil. “Brethren and lords,” said

Bohemond to the assembled princes, “let me undertake this business by

myself; I hope, with God’s help, to find a remedy for this complaint.”

Caring but little for moral reform, he strove to strike terror into the

Turks, and, by counteraction, restore confidence to the crusaders. “One

evening,” says William of Tyre, “whilst everybody was, as usual,

occupied in getting supper ready, Bohemond ordered some Turks who had

been caught in the camp to be brought out of prison and put to death

forthwith; and then, having had a huge fire lighted, he gave

instructions that they should be roasted and carefully prepared as if

for being eaten. If it should be asked what operation was going on, he

commanded his people to answer, ‘The princes and governors of the camp

this day decreed at their council that all Turks or their spies who

should henceforth be found in the camp should be forced, after this

fashion, to furnish meat of their own carcasses to the princes as well

as to the whole army!’” “The whole city of Antioch,” adds the

historian, “was stricken with terror at hearing the report of words so

strange and a deed so cruel. And thus, by the act and pains of

Bohemond, the camp was purged of this pest of spies, and the results of

the princes’ meetings were much less known amongst the foe.”

Bohemond did not confine himself to terrifying the Turks by the display

of his barbarities; he sought and found traitors amongst them. During

the incidents of the siege he had concocted certain relations with an

inhabitant of Antioch, named Ferouz or Emir-Feir, probably a renegade

Christian and seeming Mussulman, in favor with the Governor Accien or

Baghisian, who had intrusted to him, him and his family, the ward of

three of the towers and gates of the city. Emir-Feir, whether from

religious remorse or on promise of a rich recompense, had, after the

ambiguous and tortuous conversations which usually precede treason, made

an offer to Bohemond to open to him, and, through him, to the crusaders,

the entrance into Antioch. Bohemond, in covert terms, informed the

chiefs, his comrades, of this proposal, leaving it to be understood that,

if the capture of Antioch were the result of his efforts, it would be for

him to become its lord. The count of Toulouse bluntly rejected this

idea. “We be all brethren,” said he, “and we have all run the same risk;

I did not leave my own country, and face, I and mine, so many dangers to

conquer new lord-ships for any particular one of us.” The opinion of

Raymond prevailed, and Bohemond pressed the matter no more that day. But

the situation became more and more urgent; and armies of Mussulmans were

preparing to come to the aid of Antioch. When these fresh alarms spread

through the camp, Bohemond returned to the charge, saying, “Time presses;

and if ye accept the overtures made to us, to-morrow Antioch will be

ours, and we shall march in triumph on Jerusalem. If any find a better

way of assuring our success, I am ready to accept it and renounce, on my

own account, all conquest.” Raymond still persisted in his opposition;

but all the other chiefs submitted to the overtures and conditions of

Bohemond. All proper measures were taken, and Emir-Fein, being apprised

thereof, had Bohemond informed that on the following night everything

would be ready. At the appointed hour three-score warriors, with

Bohemond at their head, repaired noiselessly to the foot of the tower

indicated; a ladder was hoisted and Emir-Feir fastened it firmly to the

top of the wall. Bohemond looked round and round, but no one was in a

hurry to mount. Bohemond, therefore, himself mounted; and, having

received recognition from Emir-Fein, he leaned upon the ramparts, called

in a low voice to his comrades, and rapidly re-descended to reassure them

and get them to mount with him. Up they mount; that and two other

neighboring towers are given up to them; the three gates are opened, and

the crusaders rush in. When day appeared, on the 3d of June, 1098, the

streets of Antioch were full of corpses; for the Turks, surprised, had

been slaughtered without resistance or had fled into the country. The

citadel, filled with those who had been able to take refuge there, still

held out; but the entire city was in the power of the crusaders, and the

banner of Bohemond floated on an elevated spot over against the citadel.

In spite of their triumph the crusaders were not so near marching on

Jerusalem as Bohemond had promised. Everywhere, throughout Syria and

Mesopotamia, the Mussulmans were rising to go and deliver Antioch; an

immense army was already in motion; there were eleven hundred thousand

men according to Matthew of Edessa, six hundred and sixty thousand

according to Foucher of Chartres, three hundred thousand according to

Raoul of Caen, and only two hundred thousand according to William of Tyre

and Albert of Aix. The discrepancy in the figures is a sufficient proof

of their untruthfulness. The last number was enough to disquiet the

crusaders, already much reduced by so many marches, battles, sufferings,

and desertions. An old Mussulman warrior, celebrated at that time

throughout Western Asia, Corbogha, sultan of Mossoul (hard by what was

ancient Nineveh), commanded all the hostile forces, and four days after

the capture of Antioch he was already completely round the place,

enclosing the crusaders within the walls of which they had just become

the masters. They were thus and all on a sudden besieged in their turn,

having even in the very midst of them, in the citadel which still held

out, a hostile force. Whilst they had been besieging Antioch, the

Emperor Alexis Comnenus had begun to march with an army to get his share

in their successes, and was advancing into Asia Minor when he heard that

the Mussulmans, in immense numbers, were investing the Christian army in

Antioch, and not in a condition, it was said, to hold out long. The

emperor immediately retraced his steps towards Constantinople, and the

crusaders found that they had no Greek aid to hope for. The blockade,

becoming stricter day by day, soon brought about a horrible famine in

Antioch. Instead of repeating here, in general terms, the ordinary

descriptions of this cruel scourge, we will reproduce its particular

and striking features as they have been traced out by contemporary

chroniclers. “The Christian people,” says William of Tyre, “had recourse

before long, to procure themselves any food whatever, to all sorts of

shameful means. Nobles, free men, did not blush to hungrily stretch out

the hand to nobodies, asking with troublesome pertinacity for what was

too often refused. There were seen the very strongest, those whom their

signal valor had rendered illustrious in the midst of the army, now

supported on crutches, dragging themselves half-dead along the streets

and in the public places; and, if they did not speak, at any rate they

showed themselves, with countenances irrecognizable, silently begging

alms of every passer-by. No self-respect restrained matrons or young

women heretofore accustomed to severe restraints; they walked hither and

thither, with pallid faces, groaning and searching everywhere for

somewhat to eat; and they in whom the pangs of hunger had not

extinguished every spark of modesty went and hid themselves in the most

secret places, and gnawed their hearts in silence, preferring to die of

want rather than beg in public. Children still in the cradle, unable to

get milk, were exposed at the cross-roads, crying in vain for their usual

nourishment; and men, women, and children, all threw themselves greedily

upon any kind of food, wholesome and unwholesome, clean and unclean, that

they could scrape together here and there, and none shared with another

that which they picked up.” So many and such sufferings produced

incredible dastardliness; and deserters escaped by night, in some cases

throwing themselves down, at the risk of being killed, into the

city-moat; in others getting down by help of a rope from the ramparts.

Indignation blazed forth against the fugitives; they were called

rope-dancers; and God was prayed to treat them as the traitor Judas.

William of Tyre and Guibert of Nogent, after naming some, and those the

very highest, end with these words: “Of many more I know not the names,

and I am unwilling to expose all that are well known to me.”

“We are assured,” says William of Tyre, “that in view of such woes and

such weaknesses, the princes, despairing of any means of safety, held

amongst themselves a secret council, at which they decided to abandon the

army and all the people, fly in the middle of the night, and retreat to

the sea.” According to the Armenian historian Matthew of Edessa, the

princes would seem to have resolved, in this hour of dejection, not to

fly and leave the army to its fate, but “to demand of Corboghzi an

assurance for all, under the bond of an oath, of personal safety, on the

promise of surrendering Antioch to him; after which they would return

home.” Several Arab historians, and amongst them Ibn-el-Athir, Aboul-

Faradje, and Aboul-Feda confirm the statement of conditions. Whatever

may have been the real turn taken by the promptings of weakness amongst

the Christians, Godfrey de Bouillon and Adhemar, bishop of Puy,

energetically rejected them all; and an unexpected incident, considered

as miraculous, reassured the wavering spirits both of soldiers and of

chiefs. A priest of Marseilles, Peter Bartholomew, came and announced to

the chiefs that St. Andrew had thrice appeared to him in a dream, saying,

“Go into the church of my brother Peter at Antioch; and hard by the high

altar thou wilt find, on digging up the ground, the head of the spear

which pierced our Redeemer’s side. That, carried in front of the army,

will bring about the deliverance of the Christians.” The appointed

search was solemnly conducted under the eye of twelve reputable

witnesses, priests and knights; the whole army was in attendance at the

closed gates of the church; the spear-head was found and carried off in

triumph; a pious enthusiasm restored to all present entire confidence;

and with loud shouts they demanded battle. The chiefs judged it proper

to announce their determination to the chief of the Mussulmans; and for

this mission they chose Peter the Hermit, who was known to them as a bold

and able speaker. Peter, on arriving at the enemy’s camp, presented

himself without any mark of respect before the Sultan, Corbogha,

surrounded by his satraps, and said, “The sacred assembly of princes

pleasing to God who are at Antioch doth send me unto thy Highness, to

advise thee that thou art to cease from thy importunities, and that thou

abandon the siege of a city which the Lord in His divine mercy hath given

up to them. The prince of the apostles did wrest that city from

idolatry, and convert it to the faith of Christ. Ye had forcibly but

unjustly taken possession of it. They who be moved by a right lawful

anxiety for this heritage of their ancestors make their demand of thee

that thou choose between divers offers: either give up the siege of the

city, and cease troubling the Christians, or, within three days from

hence, try the power of our arms. And that thou seek not after any, even

a lawful, subterfuge, they offer thee further choice between divers

determinations: either appear alone in person to fight with one of our

princes, in order that, if victorious, thou mayest obtain all thou canst

demand, or, if vanquished, thou mayest remain quiet; or, again, pick out

divers of thine who shall fight, on the same terms, with the same number

of ours; or, lastly, agree that the two armies shall prove, one against

the other, the fortune of battle.” “Peter,” answered Corbogha

ironically, “it is not likely that the affairs of the princes who have

sent thee be in such state that they can thus offer me choice betwixt

divers proposals, and that I should be bound to accept that which may

suit me best. My sword hath brought them to such a condition that they

have not themselves any longer the power of choosing freely, and that

they be constrained to shape and unshape their wishes according to my

good pleasure. Go, then, and tell these fools that all whom I shall find

in full possession of all the powers of the manly age shall have their

lives, and shall be reserved by me for my master’s service, and that all

other shall fall beneath my sword, as useless trees, so that there shall

remain of them not even a faint remembrance. Had I not deemed it more

convenient to destroy them by famine than to smite them with the sword, I

should already have gotten forcible mastery of the city, and they would

have reaped the fruits of their voyage hither by undergoing the law of

vengeance.”

On returning to camp, Peter the Hermit was about to set forth in detail,

before all the people of the crusaders, the answer of Corbogha, his

pride, his threats, and the pomp with which he was surrounded; but

Godfrey de Bouillon, “fearing lest the multitude, already crushed beneath

the weight of their woes, should be stricken with fresh terror,” stopped

Peter at the moment when he was about to begin his speech, and, taking

him aside, prevailed upon him to tell the result of his mission in a few

words, just that the Turks desired battle, and that it must be prepared

for at once. “Forthwith all, from the highest to the lowest, testify the

most eager desire to measure swords with the infidels, and seem to have

completely forgotten their miseries, and to calculate upon victory. All

resume their arms, and get ready their horses, their breastplates, their

helmets, their shields, and their swords. It is publicly announced

throughout the city that the next morning, before sunrise, every one will

have to be in readiness, and join his host to follow faithfully the

banner of his prince.”

Next day, accordingly, the 28th of June, 1098, the feast of St. Peter and

St. Paul, the whole Christian army issued from their camp, with a portion

of the clergy marching at their head, and chanting the 68th Psalm, “Let

God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!” “I saw these things, I who

speak,” says one of the chroniclers, Raymond d’Agiles, chaplain to the

count of Toulouse: “I was there, and I carried the spear of the Lord.”

The crusaders formed in twelve divisions; and, of all their great chiefs,

the count of Toulouse alone was unable to assume the command of his; he

was detained in Antioch by the consequences of a wound, and he had the

duty of keeping in check the Turkish garrison, still masters of the

citadel. The crusaders presented the appearance of old troops ill clad,

ill provided, and surmounting by sheer spirit the fatigues and losses of

a long war; many sick soldiers could scarcely march; many barons and

knights were on foot; and Godfrey de Bouillon himself had been obliged to

borrow a horse from the count of Toulouse. During the march a gentle

rain refreshed souls as well as bodies, and was regarded as a favor from

heaven. Just as the battle was commencing, Corbogha, struck by the

impassioned, stern, and indomitable aspect of the crusaders, felt

somewhat disquieted, and made proposals, it is said, to the Christian

princes of what he had refused them the evening before--a fight between

some of their knights and as many Saracens; but they in their turn

rejected the proposition. There is a moment, during great struggles,

when the souls of men are launched forth like bomb-shells, which nothing

can stop or cause to recoil. The battle was long, stubborn, and, at some

points, indecisive: Kilidge-Arslan, the indefatigable sultan of Nicaea,

attacked Bohemond so briskly, that, save for the prompt assistance of

Godfrey de Bouillon and Tancred, the prince of Antioch had been in great

peril. But the pious and warlike enthusiasm of the crusaders at length

prevailed over the savage bravery of the Turks; and Corbogha, who had

promised the khalif of Bagdad a defeat of the Christians, fled away

towards the Euphrates with a weak escort of faithful troops. Tancred

pursued till nightfall the sultans of Aleppo and Damascus and the emir of

Jerusalem. According to the Christian chroniclers, one hundred thousand

infidels, and only four thousand crusaders, were left on the field of

battle. The camp of the Turks was given over to pillage; and fifteen

thousand camels, and it is not stated how many horses, were carried off.

The tent of Corbogha himself was, for his conquerors, a rich prize and an

object of admiration. It was laid out in streets, flanked by towers, as

if it were a fortified town; gold and precious stones glittered in every

part of it; it was capable of containing more than two thousand persons;

and Bohemond sent it to Italy, where it was long preserved. The

conquerors employed several days in conveying into Antioch the spoils of

the vanquished; and “every crusader,” says Albert of Aix, “found himself

richer than he had been at starting from Europe.”

This great success, with the wealth it was the means of spreading, and

the pretensions and hopes it was the cause of raising amongst the

crusaders, had for some time the most injurious effects. Division set in

amongst them, especially amongst the chiefs. Some abandoned themselves

to all the license of victory, others to the sweets of repose. Some,

fatigued and disgusted, quietly prepared for and accomplished their

return home; others, growing more and more ambitious and bold, aspired to

conquests and principalities in the East. Why should not they acquire

what Baldwin had acquired at Edessa, and what Bohemond was within an ace

of possessing at Antioch? Others were jealous of the great fortunes made

before their eyes: and Raymond of Toulouse was vexed at Bohemond’s rule

in Antioch, and refused to give up to him the citadel. One and another

troubled themselves little more about the main end of their crusade, the

deliverance of Jerusalem, and devoted themselves to their personal

interests. A few days after the defeat of the Turks, the council of

princes deliberated upon the question of marching immediately upon

Jerusalem, and then all these various inclinations came out. After a

lively debate, the majority decided that they should wait till the heat

of summer was over, the army rested from its fatigues, and the

reinforcements expected from the West arrived. The common sort of

crusaders were indignant at this delay: “Since the princes will not lead

us to Jerusalem,” was said aloud, “choose we among the knights a brave

man who will serve us faithfully, and, if the grace of God be with us, go

we under his leading to Jerusalem. It is not enough for our princes that

we have remained here a whole year, and that two hundred thousand men-at-

arms have fallen here! Perish all they who would remain at Antioch, even

as its inhabitants but lately perished!” But, murmuring all the while,

they staid at Antioch, in spite of a violent epidemic, which took off, it

was said, in a single month, fifty thousand persons, and amongst them the

spiritual chief of the crusade, Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who had the

respect and confidence of all the crusaders. To find some specious

pretext, or some pious excuse for this inactivity, or simply to pass the

time which was not employed as it had been sworn it should be, war-like

expeditions were made into Syria and Mesopotamia; some emirs were driven

from their petty dominions; some towns were taken; some infidels were

massacred. The count of Toulouse persisted during several weeks in

besieging Marrah, a town situated between Hamath and Aleppo. At last he

took it, but there were no longer any inhabitants to be found in it; they

had all taken refuge under ground. Huge fires lighted at the entrance of

their hiding-place forced them to come out, and as they came they were

all put to death or carried off as slaves; “which so terrified the

neighboring towns,” says a chronicler, “that they yielded of their own

free will and without compulsion.”

It was all at once ascertained that Jerusalem had undergone a fresh

calamity, and fallen more and more beneath the yoke of the infidels.

Abou-Kacem, khalif of Egypt, had taken it from the Turks; and his vizier,

Afdhel, had left a strong garrison in it. A sharp pang of grief, of

wrath, and of shame shot through the crusaders. “Could it be,” they

cried, “that Jerusalem should be taken and retaken, and never by

Christians?” Many went to seek out the count of Toulouse. He was known

to be much taken up with the desire of securing the possession of Marrah,

which he had just captured; still great confidence was felt in him. He

had made a vow never to return to the West; he was the richest of the

crusader princes; he was conjured to take upon himself the leadership of

the army; to him had been intrusted the spear of the Lord discovered at

Antioch; if the other princes should be found wanting, let him at least

go forward with the people, in full assurance; if not, he had only to

give up the spear to the people, and the people would go right on to

Jerusalem, with the Lord for their leader. After some hesitation,

Raymond declared that the departure should take place in a fortnight, and

he summoned the princes to a preliminary meeting. On assembling “they

found themselves still less at one,” says the chronicler, and the

majority refused to budge. To induce them, it is said that Raymond

offered ten thousand sous to Godfrey de Bouillon, the same to Robert of

Normandy, six thousand to the count of Flanders, and five thousand to

Tancred; but, at the same time, Raymond announced his intention of

leaving a strong garrison in Marrah to secure its defence. “What!”

cried the common folk amongst the crusaders, “disputes about Antioch and

disputes about Marrah! We will take good care there be no quarrel

touching this town; come, throw we down its walls; restore we peace

amongst the princes, and set we the count at liberty: when Marrah no

longer exists, he will no longer fear to lose it.” The multitude rushed

to surround Marrah, and worked so eagerly at the demolition of its

ramparts that the count of Toulouse, touched by this popular feeling as

if it were a proof of the divine will, himself put the finishing touch to

the work of destruction and ordered the speedy departure of the army.

At their head marched he, barefooted, with his clergy and the bishop of

Akbar, all imploring the mercy of God and the protection of the saints.

After him marched Tancred with forty knights and many foot. “Who then

may resist this people,” said Turks and Saracens one to another, “so

stubborn and cruel, whom, for the space of a year, nor famine, nor the

sword, nor any other danger could cause to abandon the siege of Antioch,

and who now are feeding upon human flesh?” In fact a rumor had spread

that, in their extreme distress for want of provisions, the crusaders had

eaten corpses of Saracens found in the moats of Marrah.

Several of the chiefs, hitherto undecided, now followed the popular

impulse, whilst others still hesitated. But on the approach of spring,

1099, more than eight months after the capture of Antioch, Godfrey of

Bouillon, his brother, Eustace of Boulogne, Robert of Flanders, and their

following, likewise began to march. Bohemond, after having accompanied

them as far as Laodicea, left them with a promise of rejoining them

before Jerusalem, and returned to Antioch, where he remained. Fresh

crusaders arrived from Flanders, Holland, and England, and amongst them

the Saxon prince, Edgar Atheling, who had for a brief interval been king

of England, between the death of Harold and the coronation of William the

Conqueror. The army pursued its way, pretty slowly, still stopping from

time to time to besiege towns, which they took and which the chiefs

continued to dispute for amongst themselves. Envoys from the khalif of

Egypt, the new holder of Jerusalem, arrived in the crusaders’ camp, with

presents and promises from their master. They had orders to offer forty

thousand pieces of gold to Godfrey, sixty thousand to Bohemond, the most

dreaded by the Mussulmans of all the crusaders, and other gifts to divers

other chiefs. Aboul-Kacem further promised liberty of pilgrimage and

exercise of the Christian religion in Jerusalem; only the Christians must

not enter, unless unarmed. At this proposal the crusader chiefs cried

out with indignation, and declared to the Egyptian envoys that they were

going to hasten their march upon Jerusalem, threatening at the same time

to push forward to the borders of the Nile. At the end of the month of

flay, 1099, they were all masse upon the frontiers of Phoenicia and

Palestine, numbering according to the most sanguine calculations, only

fifty thousand fighting men.

Upon entering Palestine, as they came upon spots known in sacred history

or places of any importance, the same feelings of greed and jealousy

which had caused so much trouble in Asia Minor and Syria caused divisions

once more amongst the crusaders. The chieftain, the simple warrior

almost, who was the first to enter city, or burgh, or house, and plant

his flag there halted in it and claimed to be its possessor; whilst those

“whom nothing was dearer than the commandments of God,” say the

chroniclers, pursued their march, barefooted, beneath the banner of the

cross, deplored the covetousness and the quarrels of their brethren.

When the crusaders arrived a Emmaus, some Christians of Bethlehem came

and implore their aid against the infidels. Tancred was there; and he,

with the consent of Godfrey, set out immediately, in the middle of the

night, with a small band of one hundred horsemen, and went and planted

his own flag on the top of the church at Bethlehem at the very hour at

which the birth of Jesus Christ had been announced to the shepherds of

Judea. Next day, June 10th 1099, on advancing, at dawn of day, over the

heights of Emmaus, the army of the crusaders had, all at once, beneath

their gaze the Holy City.

“Lo! Jerusalem appears in sight. Lo! every hand point, out Jerusalem.

Lo! a thousand voices are heard as one in salutation of Jerusalem.

“After the great, sweet joy which filled all hearts at this first glimpse

came a deep feeling of contrition, mingled with awful and reverential

affection. Each scarcely dared to raise the eye towards the city which

had been the chosen abode of Christ, where He died, was buried, and rose

again.

“In accents of humility, with words low spoken, with stifled sobs, with

sighs and tears, the pent-up yearnings of a people in joy and at the same

time in sorrow sent shivering through the air a murmur like that which is

heard in leafy forests what time the wind blows through the leaves, or

like the dull sound made by the sea which breaks upon the rocks, or

hisses as it foams over the beach.”

It was better to quote these beautiful stanzas from “Jerusalem Delivered”

than to reproduce the pompous and monotonous phrases of the chroniclers.

The genius of Tasso was capable of understanding and worthy to depict the

emotions of a Christian army at sight of the Jerusalem they had come to

deliver.

We will not pause over the purely military and technical details of the

siege. It was calculated that there were in the city twenty thousand

armed inhabitants and forty thousand men in garrison, the most valiant

and most fanatical Mussulmans that Egypt could furnish. According to

William of Tyre, the most judicious and the best informed of the

contemporary historians, “When the crusaders pitched their camp over

against Jerusalem, there had arrived there about forty thousand persons

of both sexes, of whom there were at the most twenty thousand foot, well

equipped, and fifteen hundred knights.” Raymond d’Agiles, chaplain to

the count of Toulouse, reduces still further to twelve thousand the

number of foot capable of bearing arms, and that of the knights to twelve

or thirteen hundred. This weak army was destitute of commissariat and

the engines necessary for such a siege. Before long it was a prey to the

horrors of thirst. “The neighborhood of Jerusalem,” says William of

Tyre, “is arid; and it is only at a considerable distance that there are

to be found rivulets, fountains, or wells of fresh water. Even these

springs had been filled up by the enemy a little before the arrival of

our troops. The crusaders issued from the camp secretly and in small

detachments to look for water in all directions; and just when they

believed they had found some hidden trickier, they saw themselves

surrounded by a multitude of folks engaged in the same search; disputes

forthwith arose amongst them, and they frequently came to blows. Horses,

mules, asses, and cattle of all kinds, consumed by heat and thirst, fell

down and died; and their carcasses, left here and there about the camp,

tainted the air with a pestilential smell.” Wood, iron, and all the

materials needful for the construction of siege machinery were as much to

seek as water. But a warlike and pious spirit made head against all.

Trees were felled at a great distance from Jerusalem; and scaling-towers

were roughly constructed, as well as engines for hurling the stones which

were with difficulty brought up within reach of the city. “All ye who

read this,” says Raymond d’Agiles, “think not that it was light labor; it

was nigh a mile from the spot where the engines, all dismounted, had to

be transported to that where they were remounted.” The knights protected

against the sallies of the besieged the workmen employed upon this work.

One day Tancred had gone alone to pray on the Mount of Olives and to gaze

upon the holy city, when five Mussulmans sallied forth and went to attack

him; he killed three of them, and the other two took to flight. There

was at one point of the city ramparts a ravine which had to be filled up

to make an approach; and the count of Toulouse had proclamation made that

be would give a denier to every one who would go and throw three stones

into it. In three days the ravine was filled up. After four weeks of

labor and preparation, the council of princes fixed a day for delivering

the assault; but as there had been quarrels between several of the

chiefs, and, notably, between the count of Toulouse and Tancred, it was

resolved that before the grand attack they should all be reconciled at a

general supplication, with solemn ceremonies, for divine aid. After a

strict fast, all the crusaders went forth armed from their quarters, and

preceded by their priests, bare-footed and chanting psalms, they moved,

in slow procession, round Jerusalem, halting at all places hallowed by

some fact in sacred history, listening to the discourses of their

priests, and raising eyes full of wrath at hearing the scoffs addressed

to them by the Saracens, and seeing the insults heaped upon certain

crosses they had set up and upon all the symbols of the Christian faith.

“Ye see,” cried Peter the Hermit; “ye hear the threats and blasphemies of

the enemies of God. Now this I swear to you by your faith; this I swear

to you by the arms ye carry: to-day these infidels be still full of pride

and insolence, but to-morrow they shall be frozen with fear; those

mosques, which tower over Christian ruins, shall serve for temples to the

true God, and Jerusalem shall hear no longer aught but the praises of the

Lord.” The shouts of the whole Christian army responded to the hopes of

the apostle of the crusade; and the crusaders returned to their quarters

repeating the words of the prophet Isaiah: “So shall they fear the name

of the Lord from the West, and His glory from the rising of the sun.”

On the 14th of July, 1099, at daybreak, the assault began at divers

points; and next day, Friday, the 15th of July, at three in the

afternoon, exactly at the hour at which, according to Holy Writ, Jesus

Christ had yielded up the ghost, saying, “Father, into Thy hands I

commend My spirit,” Jerusalem was completely in the hands of the

crusaders. We have no heart to dwell on the massacres which accompanied

the victory so clearly purchased by the conquerors. The historians,

Latin or Oriental, set down at seventy thousand the number of Mussulmans

massacred on the ramparts, in the mosques, in the streets, underground,

and wherever they had attempted to find refuge: a number exceeding that

of the armed inhabitants and the garrison of the city. Battle-madness,

thirst for vengeance, ferocity, brutality, greed, and every hateful

passion were satiated without scruple, in the name of their holy cause.

When they were weary of slaughter, “orders were given,” says Robert the

monk, “to those of the Saracens who remained alive and were reserved for

slavery, to clean the city, remove from it the dead, and purify it from

all traces of such fearful carnage. They promptly obeyed; removed, with

tears, the dead; erected outside the gates dead-houses fashioned like

citadels or defensive buildings; collected in baskets dissevered limbs;

carried them away, and washed off the blood that stained the floors of

temples and houses.”

Eight or ten days after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusader chiefs

assembled to deliberate upon the election of a king of their prize.

There were several who were suggested for it and might have pretended to

it. Robert Shorthose, duke of Normandy, gave an absolute refusal,

“liking better,” says an English chronicler, “to give himself up to

repose and indolence in Normandy than to serve, as a soldier, the King of

kings: for which God never forgave him.” Raymond, count of Toulouse, was

already advanced in years, and declared “that he would have a horror of

bearing the name of king in Jerusalem, but that he would give his consent

to the election of anyone else.” Tancred was and wished to be only the

first of knights. Godfrey de Bouillon the more easily united votes in

that he did not seek them. He was valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest;

and his own servants, being privately sounded, testified to his

possession of the virtues which are put in practice without any show. He

was elected King of Jerusalem, and he accepted the burden whilst refusing

the insignia. “I will never wear a crown of gold,” he said, “in the

place where the Saviour of the world was crowned with thorns.” And he

assumed only the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.

It is a common belief amongst historians that after the capture of

Jerusalem, and the election of her king, Peter the Hermit entirely

disappeared from history. It is true that he no longer played an active

part, and that, on returning to Europe, he went into retirement near Huy,

in the diocese of Lige, where he founded a monastery, and where he died

on the 11th of July, 1115. But William of Tyre bears witness that

Peter’s contemporaries were not ungrateful to him, and did not forget him

when he had done his work. “The faithful,” says he, “dwellers at

Jerusalem, who, four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter

there, recognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the

patriarch had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the

West, bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all

humility. They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first voyage;

and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with effectual power of

speech and with strength to rouse up nations and kings to bear so many

and such long toils for love of the name of Christ. Both in private and

in public all the faithful at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to

Peter the Hermit the highest honors, and attributed to him alone, after

God, their happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under

which they had been for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy

city recovering her ancient freedom.”

END OF VOLUME I.